Cover Story

She did the most dangerous job in the war. He swore he'd get her out. Four years later, the only way left to keep her alive is to marry her. Jonah Tully came home from Anbar, took a quiet trade in a quiet town, and locked the worst year of his life in a box — all of it but her. Noor al-Bayati gave two years to the most dangerous job on the base, turning a war into words so Marines could live through it, and was promised, on paper, with seals and signatures, a way out when it was over. The promise became a maze with no center. Now her time in the country is running out, a man from Ramadi has crossed an ocean with her name in his mouth, and going back means a grave. There is one road left, and Tully offers it without flinching: marry me. It's only paper. It's only to keep you alive. Noor agrees — on her terms. Equals. An end date. Separate rooms. No debts, and no one setting himself on fire to keep her warm. But a marriage you have to make real enough to survive a federal fraud interview is a marriage you have to live — and living it turns the cover story into the truest thing either of them has ever had. Which is the one thing Noor cannot allow. Because how do you trust a love that began as a rescue? How do you let yourself be chosen by the man who saved you, when you can never be sure the saving isn't all it is? And the man who hunts her is patient. He has learned that in America you don't need a gun to destroy someone. You only need a telephone, and the truth. Cover Story is an emotionally charged marriage-of-convenience military romance about the interpreters America almost left behind, the debt no paperwork can settle, and the slow, frightening work of letting yourself be known. Book 4 in the Need to Know series — a complete standalone with a hard-won happy ending.