SIX
Ryan helped sort the gear and then watched as the rest of his team disappeared into the trees.
“How much longer until, you know, lights out?”
He looked at Emma.
“It happens fast,” she added.
“You noticed that, huh?” He glanced up at the trees. “I’d say about . . . eight minutes.”
“Eight?”
“It’s an estimate.”
She cast a nervous look at the shelter. She started to get to her feet, and Ryan helped her. “I, um . . .” She looked around.
“You’re afraid of the dark?”
She blinked up at him.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Plenty of guys I know don’t like sleeping in the jungle.”
She looked around again, and realization dawned.
“You need to relieve yourself.”
She nodded.
“We’d better make it quick.”
“I got it.” She shook his hand off.
“You don’t need to be shy around me, Emma. I’ve pretty much seen it all.”
She glared up at him now. Even with all the dirt, he could see that her cheeks were pink with embarrassment.
“Fine, suit yourself,” he said, stepping away.
She hobbled off, and Ryan turned his attention to the shelter. He’d built it for one, so he made a few adjustments before spreading an olive-green poncho on the ground.
“Looks like we’re going to get some rain tonight,” he told her when she came back. She didn’t say anything as he helped her into the shelter. She arranged her ankle on top of a rock and leaned back against the tree, not looking at him.
She seemed quiet, but he didn’t know whether that was her usual state or whether she was in some kind of mental lockdown, maybe brought on by their rapidly darkening surroundings.
He combed through his pack until he managed to find a flattened granola bar.
“Chocolate chip.” He handed it to her.
“No, thank you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “It’s weird, I’m just . . . I don’t think I could keep anything down.”
He set the granola bar aside for later and glanced through the foliage of the hide he’d made. They were situated in a stand of trees that backed up to an outcropping of rock, which made a natural shelter. They were in for some weather, but he hoped it wouldn’t be anything bad enough to delay the extract.
Around them the forest started to take on a purple hue. Emma remained silent and tense, and he found himself in the unusual position of trying to think up ways to get a woman to talk to him.
“So.” He cleared his throat. “What exactly were you doing out here?”
She turned to look at him. “You mean . . . here here? Like, this particular trip or—”
“Yeah.” He figured if he could get her talking, he’d be better able to dodge a looming anxiety attack.
“Our basic aid mission,” she said. “We go to the most remote provinces and administer vaccines, bring medical supplies. We help with sanitation—you know, water purification, building latrines, stuff like that.”
“So this is a regular thing?”
“It’s been almost a year, so I guess it’s still sort of new. Renee wants—” She paused. “Wanted to reach some of the overlooked areas in the countryside.”
“The ambassador ever go on these things?”
“Sometimes. He’s away a lot, so . . .” She looked away. “He’d planned to go on this one, but he got tied up in Singapore. Some kind of economic forum.” She turned to face him. “Does he even know yet? About Renee?”
He heard the distress in her voice and felt a stab of sympathy for her. “I don’t know what he knows,” Ryan said. And that was the truth. This entire op had been thrown together at the last minute, and he’d barely been briefed on the logistics, much less the broader circumstances.
And then it happened. Everything went black.
“Lights out,” he said softly.
Emma didn’t respond. He looked at her, but of course he couldn’t see a damn thing, not even an outline of her. He could feel her tension, though, almost as thick as the darkness. “Ryan?” Her voice was soft and tentative.
“I’m right here.”
She scooted closer to him on the poncho, and he felt an odd sense of satisfaction. His presence steadied her, made her feel safer. She hadn’t wanted him to go on the recon mission, and now she wanted him practically glued to her side. He knew it was just a natural response to everything she’d been through, but still he liked it. Maybe a little too much.
“What’s an LZ?” she asked.
He thought back to the conversation earlier, trying to come up with what else she’d overheard.
“A landing zone,” he said. “Our extraction point tonight is at the top of a hill.”
He heard her quick intake of breath. “So we’re going by air, then.”
“Helo,” he said. “That’s Navy-speak for helicopter.”
And suddenly he understood. It wasn’t the darkness that was freaking her out, it was the extraction. Shit, why hadn’t he realized it sooner? Her plane had crashed, and he was about to take her right back up in the air.
“It’ll be a breeze,” he said. “We’re looking at a quick hop up to Clark. That’s the air base in Manila.”
“I know what Clark is.” Her voice sounded tight.
Ryan sat there, listening to her breathing. He had this crazy urge to put his arm around her. His instincts told him she’d like that, that it would soothe her. But he held off. “You okay?” Which was definitely a dumb-ass thing to ask her. What would he do if she said no?
“I’m fine. I guess . . . You guys are SEALs, right? I guess I was hoping for maybe a boat.”
He smiled in the darkness. “Who told you we’re SEALs?”
“I figured it out.”
Good for her. She was smart, but she hadn’t figured out all of it. She had no way of knowing he was with Alpha Crew, an elite fighting force within an already-elite fighting force. Alpha was a secret unit, so secret few people even knew of its existence. Ryan hadn’t even known of it until he’d been tapped to join.
“Yes, we’re SEALs. But no, I’m afraid a boat’s not in the plans tonight. Not unless something goes wrong.”
She tensed beside him, and he realized that had been an even dumber-ass thing to say. He needed to get his shit together, but he was distracted by a few things. Her scent, for one. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hunkered down on a mission with a woman’s coconut-scented shampoo a few inches from his nose.
And her body, for another. He couldn’t stop picturing that smear of dirt between her breasts. He’d never given mud wrestling much thought, but his brain had been busy all afternoon with images of Emma Wright straddling him in the mud.
And he had to remind himself that she was completely off-limits. She was his mission, period. Not someone he should be dreaming about.
She was a crash survivor. A congressman’s daughter, no less. His job was to rescue her, not make her the star of his personal sex fantasy. But damn, why did she have to have that mouth on her?
Ryan needed to get home. Soon. This was always a danger at the end of a tour. Guys would start getting distracted, lose focus. It was the reason so many people died in combat when they were mere days away from going home.
And wasn’t that a sobering thought?
Nobody was fucking dying tonight. He needed to stop thinking about sex and focus his full attention on the task at hand.
Emma had gotten quiet again. Definitely not a good sign.
———
“So how’d a nice girl like you end up building latrines?”
Emma looked at the man beside her. Not that she could see his face any more than he could see hers.
A nice girl like her . . . She’d gone from “ma’am” to “girl,” and she didn’t like either.
“Uh, girl? I’m twenty-six years old, thank you very much.”
“I know.”
He knew. Of course he did.
He’d probably seen the State Department’s file on her, which meant he knew not only her age but plenty of even more personal details, such as her height and her weight and her medical history. He probably knew that her mother was dead and that her father was a famous politician. He probably knew that her fiancé had dumped her three weeks before their wedding day.
Emma closed her eyes. She was being a bitch here. Touchy and difficult wasn’t her normal style. But right now she was sleep-deprived and thirsty. And deathly afraid of whatever was going to happen later tonight.
Don’t think about it.
“Are you going to tell me, or is it some top-secret story?”
She sighed. “I guess you could say it was luck.”
“Luck, huh?” His voice was low and deep, and again she tried to place his accent. Something Southern but not twangy. Florida, maybe?
“More or less. I had kind of an abrupt career change that put me on a different course,” she said. “I had taken the Foreign Service exam after college, and then later, when an opening in the Philippines came up, they asked if I wanted it, and . . . I ended up here.”
“An abrupt career change. So you got fired, huh?”
So much for euphemisms. “Yup,” she said. “Ever happen to you?”
“Nope, never.” He shifted beside her. “Wait, that’s a lie. I got fired when I was sixteen.”
“What happened?” She blinked at him in the darkness, wishing she could see his face as he gave her this glimpse of who he was underneath all the camouflage paint.
“It was my first real job.” His voice sounded relaxed now, and she felt herself relax some, too. “I was a lifeguard down on the beach in Jacksonville. I got to work by the water, meet girls. It was an excellent gig, until one afternoon I told my supervisor to eff off. He canned me on the spot.”
“Why’d you tell your supervisor to eff off?”
“Ah, I don’t even remember now. Something stupid, I’m sure. I had a temper then.”
“And now?”
“Navy pretty much whipped it out of me. I’m a little more levelheaded.”
She smiled.
“Why’d you get fired?” he asked.
“Well, it’s kind of a long story. Pretty boring, actually.”
“I want to hear it.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
She sighed. “It was my first job out of college. I was working for this law firm in Seattle.”
“I thought you were an art major?”
Damn, he had read her file. She felt a flutter of nerves. She’d only known him a few hours, but somehow his opinion mattered. “I was just an assistant to someone’s assistant,” she said. “Total entry-level stuff. I didn’t exactly need a law degree. Anyway, we were representing this tech company that was having an IPO, and I dropped the ball on something important with the paperwork, so they fired me. Which was a blessing, actually, because I realized I wasn’t cut out for office work.”
“What are you cut out for?”
She paused. “I’m not sure yet.”
It seemed like a strange question. The whole conversation was strange, but he was just trying to distract her. It was all part of his mission, probably.
Locate survivors, check.
Administer first aid, check.
Hide survivors safely in the jungle and provide conversational distractions until time for extraction . . .
A soft drizzle started coming down on the leaves over their heads. He’d said it would rain tonight, and now it was. So far, he’d been right about everything.
She thought of his buddies out there scouting the landing zone. A shudder rippled through her.
“You cold?” he asked, and the concern in his voice gave her a little buzz.
“No.” But she scooted closer anyway. Maybe he wouldn’t notice because it was so dark. She sat with him in the inky blackness, listening to the rain and trying to summon her courage.
———
“Ryan?”
Her voice was a whisper now, and it seemed to wrap around him in the dark. This was the goddamn strangest mission of his life. “Yeah?”
“Tell me what happens later.”
He’d been waiting for her to ask. He’d hoped it would be in a few hours, though, so she wouldn’t have so much time to fixate on it.
“It’s a straightforward op. Basically, we get up to the top of a hill and catch a ride home.”
She scoffed. “Right.”
“I’m serious. You don’t need to do anything but follow directions, let us do all the work.”
He felt her tense beside him, then let out a breath.
“You want more?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She was one of those people who wanted to know more about the thing that scared them, and he respected the hell out of her for that.
“Okay, first we get you to the LZ.”
“The landing zone,” she said.
“Right. It’s about two klicks north. But I’ll be honest with you, it’s a tough hike.”
“There’s no way you can carry me. I’ll just have to walk it.”
“Nope. I absolutely will carry you. That’s the fastest way.”
“But what about the climbing part? You said—”
“That’s where teamwork comes in. Jake and Lucas and Ethan are all part of this, too. We’ve got ropes and climbing gear, whatever we need. And we will get you safely aboard that helo, I can promise you that.”
“And . . . all this is happening in the pitch dark while it’s raining?”
“Yeah.”
She sighed, and he sensed her frustration.
“You have to trust us, Emma. We train for this stuff. We know what we’re doing.”
Another sigh, but this one was quieter. “Ouch!”
“What?”
She swatted at something on the ground. “These damn bugs. I swear they made a meal out of me last night.”
“Ants,” he said.
“You’re getting them, too?”
“They don’t bother me.”
“I forgot. You’re Superman.”
“Really, they don’t. Sit on my lap if you want. Get yourself up off the jungle floor.”
Silence.
Shit, now he’d done it. She probably thought he was a pervert.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You should lie down, try to get some rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
Ryan didn’t believe that for a second. He did believe she was wound up. He turned to face her, trying to read her expression in the darkness, which was impossible. But even though he couldn’t see her face, she was giving off some other kind of body language that he picked up on. “Will you tell me something, Emma?”
“Huh?”
“What happened up there?”