CHAPTER SIX
“You told me to take the flashlight,” Ashley shouted at Jim over the roar of the rain as he pulled her closer to the main trunk of the banyan tree. “You tried to talk me into leaving you here! And now that’s not an option…?”
The branches overhead helped only a little, and she had to close her eyes because the rain was streaming down her face. Without a hat, it was like standing in the bathtub with her face aimed up at the shower head.
“It was actually a good idea,” he shouted back. “I wanted to see if you’d do it. And since you didn’t want to, I didn’t have to shut it down. Until you did, and then I did. Shut you down. Because yeah, we’ve gotta stay together. We can definitely run—I can keep up.”
Ashley opened her eyes to look at him and had to use her hands to shield her face from the rain. “You’re serious.”
He was still holding the flashlight and it made his eyes look very blue. “Yeah. Navy SEAL…?”
It was then, as their gazes were locked with the rain pouring down around them and on top of them that Ashley realized… She may not have had a map, but she had a Navy SEAL.
“What would you do?” she asked him. “If you were in charge.”
“First, it’s called command, if I were in command.”
“That,” she said. “What would you do?”
He was silent but only for a few seconds before he said, “I’d take inventory.”
“Inventory?” she repeated.
“Yeah, you know, what do I have, what do you have…?” he said. “I’d also do an inventory of the team members’ skill sets. You’re a runner, that’s great, but alas, right now I’m an anti-runner, with my knees. But okay, what else are you good at? Arguing a court case—not gonna do us a helluva lot of good out here…”
“What are your skill sets?” Ashley asked him. “An ability to pull an extra baseball cap out of your ass during a thunderstorm would be awesome.”
Jim laughed. “Okay, so you’re way funnier than I thought.”
“What,” she repeated as pleasantly as she could, “are your skills sets?”
“Are you sure that’s the question you want to start with?” he countered.
Ashley rewound their conversation just a bit and… “What are you carrying in your pockets or… wherever… that could help us? I have the GPS tracker thing that’ll let them find us, and basically my clothes and underwear, although right now I’m desperately wishing I took the time to put on a bra. You have… a flashlight… What else?”
His gaze had flickered down to her chest at bra, but her arms were crossed because the rain was chilling. And also because her shirt and PJ top were both white and probably transparent while soaking wet.
“Here,” he said, shrugging out of it. “Take my over-shirt.”
“What I really want is your ass-cap.”
He laughed again. “Sorry. No extra hat, or… ass-pulling-out-of hat-producing skill-set.”
“That’s too bad.” She took his shirt gratefully. It was heavier than hers—more like a jacket than a shirt—and still warm from his body heat. “So what else do you have with you?”
“A power bar,” he told her. “And… drum roll, please… my phone.”
She gasped. Oh my God! “You have your phone? Are we allowed to use it?” She answered her own question. “Yes, because there’s only one rule—that we stick together. So, hand it over—wait! Does it have a water resistant case?” God forbid she got him to hand over his phone, only to have it drown in the ongoing deluge.
Jim was grinning broadly at her. “Navy SEAL,” he said. “And congratulations—”
“Hold the champagne, and be less cryptic,” she ordered.
“SEAL stands for Sea, Air, Land,” he said, still smiling as he handed her his unlocked phone, “so yes, my case is waterproof not just resistant. It’s not dive-proof, though.”
“Not planning to scuba dive any time soon, thanks,” Ashley told him, already manipulating the screen through the plastic cover. He had great cell connection—a surprising full set of bars out here in the middle of nowhere—so she scrolled through his applications to find a map with GPS, and the fastest, shortest route back to camp.
“Brains over brawn,” Jim said. “We just might win this thing.”
* * *
They didn’t win.
But they placed, coming in second, which was significantly better than Bull had done a few months back, when he’d done his Team Leader Night Hike.
Or so Jim had heard.
“Thank you again,” Ashley said, handing him his shirt—still soaking wet—as he’d walked her to the fork in the path leading to their separate RVs.
And yeah, the long-sleeved, button-down shirt she was wearing beneath it was white and glued to her body like she’d inadvertently entered some super creepy corporate version of a wet-T-shirt contest. Don’t look, don’t look… Ah, shit, he’d looked, and it was something he could never un-see, because yes, she was female and kinda freaking perfect in a way that was weird, because he generally liked breasts in the XXL range, and hers were far from that.
But Jim now kept his gaze glued to her face—even though it was shadowed by the new boonie she’d picked up at the Gedunk. He had to clear his throat before his vocal chords would work. “You did good.”
She recognized that her costume had, indeed, malfunctioned exactly as she’d predicted it would, probably due to his insanely intense eye contact, and awkwardly folded her arms across her chest. “With your help. It seems a little unfair that you have to be up by six, too.”
Jim checked his watch. It was just after 0330. And he still had to talk to Dunk… “We get a bit of a break, since our first session’s on the paintball field.”
“Paintball…?” And yes, that was dismay in her voice.
“Don’t worry, we don’t start with a game. That’s not scheduled until later in the day. It’s good,” he tried to reassure her. “It’s a learning session. A lot of sitting and listening. Some target practice. But no running or jumping.”
“Just Bull and Todd clutching weapons of death in their sweaty, misogynistic hands.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t call a paintball marker a weapon of death. A weapon of humiliation, maybe. Still, bravo. Ability to joke at oh-dark-thirty is a highly rated skill in the SpecOp community.”
“I wasn’t joking,” she said, but she did manage to smile back at him. And damn, that smile lit her up. Even wet and bedraggled, she was prettier than most of the women on the planet—at least the ones he’d bumped into in his life. He was lucky they’d spent most of their one-on-one time tonight in pitch darkness. And he was lucky, too, that their being alone together was unlikely to happen again. Which should have made him feel relieved, but didn’t, damn it.
“Get some sleep,” he said abruptly because the silence had turned slightly odd and charged with… Nope. Not going there. No, no, no. “You did a good job tonight.”
“Thanks.” Ashley finally turned and headed toward her RV, but then turned back. “Your knees—”
He cut her short, forcing a smile. “No worries, I’m fine.”
She was looking at him hard, so he pushed his smile wider. Fine, see? She nodded, but he knew she didn’t buy it.
“See you in the morning, TL,” Jim tossed over his shoulder as he headed back down the trail to the main building.
He tried not to make it obvious, but he watched until she was safely inside of her trailer. Once the door had firmly closed though, he picked up his pace—as well as let himself limp.
Fine—like that crazy-eyed cartoon dog sitting as the room burned around him….
The mess was dark when he got there, but a light was shining from the open door of Dunk’s office.
Rio was sprawled—yawning—on the sofa, along with Lucky who was frowning at something he was reading on his phone.
“He here?” Jim asked, he being the senior chief—Dunk.
“He’s back in the medical supply closet, with his majesty, King Thomas,” Lucky looked up to say. He was one of a very few people who dared to tease Thomas—he’d first met the young SEAL officer back when the kid was still in high school—but even he didn’t push too hard or far. In a community filled with nicknames—Lucky’s real name was Luke, Rio came from Mario, and Jim got called his unfortunate moniker Spaceman far more often than he liked—Thomas usually wasn’t even shortened to Tom or Tommy.
He was respected that enormously. Even in a squad made up of the best of the best, Thomas King was recognized as being elite.
“Hey, LT.” Thomas appeared from the back room, carrying a bucket of ice, along with some other gear, including towels and a heating pad.
“Uh-oh, did someone get hurt tonight?” Jim asked.
“Nah, I was gathering this stuff for you, sir.”
“Me?”
“Your team leader asked me to get you set up with some ice—and heat, too, if you want it,” Thomas told him.
His team leader…? When had Ashley…? Ah, Jim had come out of the head to see her talking quietly with the hospital corpsman, soon after they’d arrived back in the mess hall, right after she’d bought that new hat.
“I’m fine,” Jim said again, and it made him think about that word-cloud he’d imagined, and Ashley’s Sorry. His size-four-hundred-font phrase would be I’m fine.
Jesus.
“Yes, sir,” Thomas agreed evenly. “But your TL thought a little ice might move you from fine to a little more comfortable.”
“Then she should’ve asked you to bring me a cold beer, too,” Jim quipped.
Thomas smiled as he pushed a bit of the ice aside to reveal a bottle of Sam Adams nestled in the middle of the bucket. “She appears to be a step ahead of you, sir.”
And for once Jim didn’t have a smart-ass response, so he just said, “She does.”
“I’ll walk you back, sir,” Thomas said.
“You really don’t have to. I can carry my own ice bucket,” Jim tried.
As expected, Thomas wouldn’t take his no. “I’m going that way.” He started out the door before Jim could tell him that he needed to talk to Dunk.
But it was Lucky who spoke first. “Oh, hey, Space,” he said. “Your team’s at the paintball field in the A.M., right? And you’ve got the O-course after lunch, before our two teams meet for a late session paintball game…?”
Dunk had posted the schedule on a white board that was hanging right there on the wall, so Jim’s response was unnecessary. Instead, he simply waited.
“I’m trying to change Team Three’s schedule for the morning,” Lucky continued. “And I thought I had it worked out with Rio and Team Two, but it’ll only work if you guys—Team One—flip your first two sessions to O in the A.M., and paintball instruction after lunch. You mind if we…?”
“Hell, yeah, I mind,” Jim said. “My TL earned herself the easier morning.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, you’re right, she did.” The blond-haired SEAL immediately backed down.
Rio, however, spoke up, telling Jim, “Syd sent him a We need to talk email, but her only free time tomorrow is at eleven-hundred, pacific time, which is fourteen-hundred here, and cell signal up at the range is for shit. That’s where Lucky’s currently slotted. So if you flip your times, and I flip my times, then he can be at the O-course in the afternoon, where the cell signal is great.”
Despite never having been being married, Jim knew that a formal request for serious conversation from one’s wife was never good. He looked from Rio to Lucky, who was shaking his head.
“It’s really not as dire as it sounds,” Lucky said. “We’re good. We’re really good. But Syd’s at this writer’s conference—that’s why her schedule’s so tight—and I’m guessing she’s been offered another ghost-writing assignment that’ll require some insane amount of travel for some ridiculously tiny amount of pay.”
Thomas came more completely back into the room. “She can’t talk right now, sir? It’s not that late in California.”
“Nah, she’s been dealing with some kind of weird food poisoning for the past week,” Lucky said. “She ate a taco that just won’t leave her system. It’s been relentless, so she went to bed early.”
“Food poisoning as in, throwing up?” Thomas asked.
Lucky nodded. “Yeah, just when she thinks it’s better, it’s back. She’s exhausted.”
“Oh. Wow. Um, sir, that doesn’t sound like any kind of food poisoning that I know,” Thomas pointed out. “I mean, maybe it’s a stomach bug, but…”
“Ah, shit,” Jim said on a sigh as he realized what Thomas was implying. Throwing up, exhausted… “Yeah, we’ll switch times, so you can talk to Syd without any interference.”
Lucky was clueless. “Thanks, but I’ll email her and we’ll find another time to—”
Even Rio had connected the dots. “By any chance does she puke in the morning and feel a little better in the afternoon?” he asked.
And now Lucky laughed. “Wait, what, you seriously don’t think…?”
“The taco that won’t leave her system,” Rio repeated, snickering. “I think, sir, that this particular taco might need a name, and help learning to drive when it turns sixteen…”
“Holy shit.” Lucky looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I don’t even need to ask my TL,” Jim told the SEAL. “I know for a fact she’d say yes to the switch.”
“And I’ll make sure I’m near the O-course in the afternoon,” Thomas added. “I’ll keep an extra eye on your team while you talk to Syd and, you know, pick out a name. If it’s a girl, Thomasina’s way underused.”
“Yeah, for a reason.” Rio snorted as they all laughed.
“Congratulations.” Jim held out his hand to Lucky, who pulled back in mock horror.
“Not yet,” he said. “Don’t jinx it.”
“So… this… taco… is a good thing, sir…?” Rio asked.
“Damn straight,” Lucky said, laughing even as he surreptitiously wiped his eyes. “We’ve both wanted this for a long time. Syd just started researching the whole hormone thing, you know, where she gives herself injections and then we have to have sex at the exact right nano-second, and that was going to be hard because I just can’t come home at any time, like I could if I worked in an office, so I was actually thinking I’d have to resign my—”
“No!” Thomas and Rio said at the same time.
“I hear you, but… Guys, I really want a baby. I want to make a family with Syd,” Lucky told them with a shrug. “I love her more than life, and she really wants this, too. You tadpoles are adorable, but let’s face it, changing your diapers is just not the same.”
And yeah, everyone laughed, but Jim was struck by the concept that happy-go-lucky Lieutenant Luke O’Donlon wanted a baby, apparently even more than he wanted to remain an active-duty U.S. Navy SEAL.
“Leaving the Teams just isn’t as bad as you think it’ll be, back when you’re in your twenties.” Dunk had come out from the back room, and yeah, he was looking at Thomas and Rio, but he was really talking to Jim.
Except Jim didn’t have a long-held secret desire to travel the world to see art museums, or to have a baby, Jesus save him. He didn’t even have anyone in his life that he loved even a small fraction as much as Lucky loved his wife.
Although, weirdly, the image of Ashley’s expressive eyes beneath the brim of that boonie flashed crazily through his mind.
She was attracted to him, too—he’d been alive long enough to recognize that something-something in a woman’s attitude and body language.
But really, she was little more than another shiny, pretty thing that he could acquire for a while. A woman like Ashley DeWitt would never stand for being second to anyone or anything for very long.
And Jim’s own devotion, for well over a decade, had been to the SEAL Teams. But the Teams didn’t always love you back, especially when your knees started to go. And the truly sad thing was that his constant focus on his knees had put distance between himself and his teammates. In fact, because he’d spent so much time over the past few years away from the units, rehabbing, he doubted he’d get the same resounding no to his announcement he was leaving that Lucky had just received from Team Ten’s younger members.
And wah-wah-wah, he himself was such a freaking baby. Still, try as he might to shake off the bitterness of his envy and frustration, it just seemed to settle and solidify into a brick of sadness, smack in the center of his chest.
In the positive, it gave him something to focus on other than the constant pain in his knees.
“You need me for something, Space?” Dunk asked Jim, who shook his head.
“Nah, it can wait ’til tomorrow,” he told the Senior Chief. He’d wanted to talk about Ashley, but not in front of a crowd. “Oh, except O’Donlon, Rosetti, and I are adjusting the schedule a bit, so he can talk to Syd in the early afternoon.” Jim gave a nod in Lucky’s direction. The man’s nickname was appropriate as always—lucky son of a bitch, getting everything his heart desired. At least he had a good heart—big and warm and not too full of himself. Jim managed a smile that was sincere. “Fingers crossed, man. See you guys in the morning.”
This time, he led Thomas out of the room on his goddamn aching knees.