CHAPTER NINE
Ashley arrived a few minutes early at the double-wide trailer designated as one of the official paintball safety zones. It was a repurposed construction-site trailer, with a wooden ramp leading up to the door.
The building was dark, but she tried the knob anyway. The door was tightly locked, which confirmed that she’d gotten here before Jim.
The trailer sat along the fence line of the paintball grounds—a large, secluded area of woods. The only way into and out of the fenced grounds was via this trailer. Although there was another designated safety zone in a smaller trailer that was parked up at the north end of the expansive grounds. It not only provided a second safe place to de-mask, but it also contained a medical kit and a supply of water.
This was only day two of the week, and she’d already heard “masks stay on out on the paintball grounds, no exceptions” many dozens of times. She suspected, during this afternoon’s paintball equipment training session, that she was going to hear it many times more.
“I’m all right. Just stop.”
“Well, you don’t look all right.”
Ashley turned to see Clark and Kenneth coming down the trail, bickering.
“I’ll be okay,” Kenneth insisted. He saw that Ashley had heard them, and gave her a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but Clark was right. Kenneth looked pale—paler than normal—and his smile was forced. “Lunch didn’t agree with me. It’s really no big deal.”
“Lunch,” Clark said, “and breakfast, and dinner last night, and lunch and dinner the night before…”
“You both eat way too fast,” Ashley pointed out.
“It’s been going on for a while,” Clark told her. “The stomach aches. It’s been weeks, actually. It gets a little better, but then it gets worse. And each time it gets worse it’s worse.”
Kenneth shook his head. “That’s just not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
“And you’re not just eating too much crap?” Ashley asked. Their diets were atrocious at school—candy and soda and pizza and cheese-steaks and sugared breakfast cereals, washed down with beer and stout and Jell-O shots. Of course, here at camp, they weren’t drinking since they were both underage, and the junk food wasn’t as plentiful, although she suspected that one of their giant suitcases had been entirely filled with snacks.
“He’s barely eating anything at all,” Clark reported.
“That’s not good.” Ashley pulled both boys aside, lowering her voice as Bull and Todd arrived. Now they were only waiting for Jim—Lieutenant Slade. “You think I should call Lieutenant King?”
“No,” Kenneth said, as Clark said, “Yes!”
Kenneth turned to give Clark a withering look, that—along with his clipped British delivery—called to mind the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey. “To do what…? Rub my tum-tum…?”
“No, to just make sure you’re really okay,” Clark argued.
“Lieutenant King’s a medic—a first responder—not a doctor,” Kenneth pointed out. “Am I bleeding? No. Am I on fire? Not since the last time I checked. He’ll take my blood pressure, which I’m sure is dead normal, and suggest I take the afternoon off, feet up in the trailer, to which I say, No, thank you. Paintball’s the one activity I actually want to learn, and, if you must know the truth, I suspect my problem is that I’m celiac.” He turned to Ashley. “Louise was having similar symptoms and has just been diagnosed.”
“Who’s Louise?” she asked.
“My twin,” Kenneth reported.
Kenneth had a twin. Wow.
“Oh, my God, of course you’re celiac if Louise is,” Clark realized, “I mean, you’re identical twins.”
“Not identical,” Ashley pointed out.
“I’ve seen her picture,” Clark insisted. “They look exactly alike.”
“Because we’re siblings,” Kenneth hissed. “We not exactly identical. Do the math, Clark.”
Ashley did it for him. “Male, female…?”
“Oh!” he said. “Yeah. Right. Huh.” But then he also realized, “When was Louise diagnosed, and how come you didn’t tell me?”
“I got an email from her about a week ago,” Kenneth said. “I was sort of still processing it.”
“Celiac,” Clark said. “That sucks.”
“Since we’re twins, we share a lot of DNA,” Kenneth said, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have it. It is, however, more likely, and since I haven’t been feeling well…”
“Celiac,” Clark said. “Oh, man, no more pasta…? I don’t think I could live without pasta.”
“It’s not life-threatening,” Kenneth told Ashley. “Certainly not at this stage. I just feel a bit under the weather. Some moments are a little bit worse, but, really…”
“No more Twinkies,” Clark said.
“I’m going to mention it to both Lieutenants Slade and King,” Ashley told him. “And the first thing I know they’ll both ask me is if you’re drinking enough water.”
“I am,” he told her.
“Oh, dear God,” Clark said, “no more beer…?”
Ashley looked at her brother. “How is that helping?”
“No more Italian bread,” Clark lamented, “or croissants, bagels, pizza, donuts…”
“Why didn’t I tell you, you asked,” Kenneth said. “Hello. This is why.”
It was then that Jim appeared. He was driving one of Dunk’s golf buggies and as he pulled up by the paintball field fence, he looked from Ashley—standing with Kenneth and Clark—to Bull and Todd.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he said as he cut the electric motor. “My meeting with Senior Chief Duncan ran a little long.”
“You’re actually right on time,” Ashley informed him as he climbed out of the cart. He managed not to wince, but she didn’t miss the muscle flexing in his jaw as he clenched his teeth against what must’ve been pain from his knees.
Still he managed to sound breezy. “Early is on-time in SEAL World,” he reminded them as he moved toward the back of the cart. “And on-time is late. So first round’s on me in the lounge tonight.”
No one responded—team spirit was definitely suppressed—so Ashley spoke up. “You really don’t have to—”
Jim must’ve realized that almost half of the team couldn’t drink, so he quickly amended with, “Or the equivalent in video game plays.”
And although Clark quietly all-righted, Kenneth’s smile was wan. It was clear that Jim noticed, because he glanced at Ashley again, a question in his sharp blue eyes as he reached for the huge trunk—some kind of storage container made of heavy duty black plastic—that was in the back of the cart.
“Hold up, LT!” No way was she letting him carry that. God, his knees… “Clark and… um, Todd, please,” Ashley called in her best Team Leader’s voice. “Get that trunk. Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, Kenneth needs to speak to you for a sec.”
If Jim was surprised by her commanding tone, he didn’t show it. He simply stepped back as Clark scrambled over to get one end of the trunk. Todd took a little bit longer to snap to, so Jim handed the key to the trailer—old school, on a ring—to Clark. “You’ll need the keypad code, too,” he told her brother, leaning in to share the code in a lower voice that Ashley couldn’t hear. And then, no doubt because Clark had reached him first, he drove home the point that the kid was in charge of Operation: Move the Trunk by ordering Todd, “Help Clark move it all the way onto the field.” Back to Clark, “Find us a good patch of shade. We’ll be talking safety, and that’s gonna take a while.” And with that, he turned toward Kenneth.
Which left Ashley with Bull.
“Safety instructions take longer when half the team are morons,” the big man informed her with a smugness to his tone.
Don’t worry. We don’t mind going slowly so that you and Todd can keep up. Things she’d never dare to say aloud, because frankly, escalating the hostility never worked. Not only was it rude, it was ineffective. Getting angry didn’t help, either—all it did was make her feel more powerless and impotent, as well as potentially putting her into danger.
Although the sad truth was, Ashley had spent most of her life feeling powerless, impotent, and in danger. But at least no one could ever call her impolite.
That wayward thought reverberated in her head as she gazed into Bull’s mocking eyes, and all she could think was of all the ways he’d been unbelievably rude to her over the past few days.
He was an a-hole—no question.
But what was she…? She’d earned her “Politeness” Girl Scout Badge a gazillion times over, and… She had exactly nothing to show for it—aside from the giant boot treadmarks on her doormat-of-a-face.
“Hey, TL.” Jim’s voice interrupted her and she looked over to where he was standing with Kenneth, near the golf-cart-dune-buggy hybrid.
“I’m good with Kenneth staying in the program, if you are,” Jim told her. “He says he’s hydrating sufficiently. I’ll inform the kitchen, and we’ll make sure he’s got gluten-free options for each meal.”
“You really can do that?” Ashley asked.
Jim’s smile was infectious. “Navy SEAL,” he reminded her. “Come on, let’s get in there. We got about five thousand safety rules to cover before we get to the fun part.”
“The fun part…?” she echoed as she followed them into the trailer, and then almost immediately out the other side into an expansive fenced-in area filled with trees and other obstacles.
* * *
“The fun part isn’t getting hit with one of these pellets,” Jim told his team, after distributing both the masks and the air-guns that were called markers because they fired pellets of paint that exploded on contact and marked their targets.
He’d lectured, in some detail, about the tanks of compressed air, as well as the hoppers that fed the marble-sized paintball pellets into the markers. And although both the tanks and hoppers had yet to be dispersed, he’d passed around a handful of the pellets, which were a non-toxic, biodegradable mix of oil, gelatin, and water-soluble dye.
“It stings,” he told them. “The pellets come at you, somewhere between one-sixty and one-ninety miles per hour, so yeah. It stings. Gentlemen, wear your athletic cups. But when it comes to velocity, combined with the three meter rule—which is…?”
“No firing at anyone closer than three meters,” his team all repeated, in unison, although Bull and Todd mumbled unenthusiastically. They’d been through this before and were making sure that Jim knew they were bored.
Tough shit.
Jim hammered it home. “And in American, rounding up, three meters is…?”
“Ten feet,” they all said.
“Good. But you combine the three-meter rule with the relatively low velocity of the paintball pellets,” he said, “and you get an astonishingly high rate of bouncers—pellets that bounce off without breaking. And what’s the rule, Team Leader, when a pellet bounces off of you without breaking?”
“Keep going,” Ashley said. “You’re not dead.”
“And what’s the consensus on wipers?” Jim asked. “Mr. DeWitt?”
“No one likes wipers,” Clark said as, interestingly, neither Bull nor Todd managed to hold Jim’s gaze.
Wipers were the guys—people—who, in the course of a paintball game, attempted to cheat by wiping off the paint that marked them as “dead.”
“But hits to the head and face don’t count,” Jim reminded them. “So wipe away, if your mask gets splattered. Mr. Edison, our rule about blind-firing is…?”
Bull’s body language was pure nonchalant scorn—he was leaning back on his elbows—and his laughter was dismissive. “Don’t.” He leaned over to add to Todd, in a stage whisper meant to be overheard, “Get caught.”
“No blind firing,” Jim said. Blind-firing was when you hunkered down behind a tree or another obstacle, lifted your marker up over your head, and fired without eyes on your potential target. Without eyes on your target, there was no way of knowing if your target was three meters—or three inches—away. Without eyes on, you ran the risk of hitting another player—possibly even one on your own team—in the head. And at close range, that could be dangerous.
Jim felt his ire rising as Bull and Todd high-fived and laughed. These assholes… How did Ashley manage to not go off on them…? “And you’re right. Don’t get caught—so don’t do it, because you will get caught. FYI, Dunk’s just seeded the playing field with an array of wireless mini-cams.” That was an exaggeration of the truth—Dunk had installed cameras in only a few key locations. Still, it was obvious Bull and Todd didn’t have the honor and integrity needed to follow the rules on their own merit. They needed to fear being seen. “Anyone caught blind-firing—or breaking any of the safety rules—will be ejected not just from the paintball game, but from the camp session. Is that clear?”
Ashley was the only one who responded with, “Sir, yes, sir!” Clark and Kenneth nodded, but Bull and Todd still snickered and rolled their eyes.
So Jim repeated. Loudly. While glaring at Bull and Todd. “Is. That. Clear?”
“Sir! Yes, sir!”
The smug smiles were gone, and the response was delivered without any eye rolls. Which meant that Bull and Todd were spared from dropping and doing a hundred pushups—for the moment.
Jim cleared his throat. “And the number one safety rule…?”
“Masks on at all times on the field,” the entire team repeated.
Kenneth put his hand up, so Jim pointed at the kid.
“Aren’t we on the field right now?” he asked in his crisply proper accent. “I mean, the rule is Masks on before we step outside of the trailer, yet here we are and our masks aren’t on…?”
“Today is the sole exception,” Jim told them. “Masks also fog up in high humidity, and for this session, I want you to see clearly. Especially as we move the topic of conversation from safety to physics. In fact, I need a volunteer.” He didn’t wait—he pointed at Ashley. “Team Leader, if you will. Mask and marker, too, please.”
She sighed, but she didn’t argue. She just pushed herself up off the ground, wiping the seat of her jeans as she moved toward him, carrying her gear.
She wasn’t happy to be his “volunteer,” but she trusted him. Jim could see it—on her face, in her approach, in the way she met his eyes.
She trusted him—and he brutally quashed any regret or remorse he might’ve been feeling, before it even registered. He’d made up his mind during his discussion with Dunk. Jim was here to teach—not to be Ashley’s friend.
He told the rest of the team, “Before you put on your masks and do a little target practice with your markers—” he pointed to the outlined targets that had been painted onto a length of wooden stockade fencing that was positioned in the yard, some distance away “—TL and I are going to demonstrate how and why firing a paintball pellet from a marker is different from firing a real weapon up at the shooting range.”
But as he curtly ordered Ashley, “Mask on,” and took her marker out of her hands, she gave him a smile that made his heart break just a little.
And it was the ridiculousness of that—the idea that he felt anything at all, let alone something that could put a crack into his Teflon heart—made him more determined to do this—to get it done.
So he quickly attached the air canister to Ashley’s marker, and then added a hopper filled with bright red paintball pellets. He also jammed his own mask on his head—to find that she still hadn’t gotten her mask on properly.
“Hold this,” he ordered her, brusquely pushing the faux-weapon at her.
She clutched it as he moved her mask into place—again, roughly at first. He’d do this to the entire team—a smack and a yank, making sure their masks were secure—each time they left the trailer and took the field.
But then, he steeled himself and let his hands linger on the warmth of Ashley’s head, his fingers sliding through the silk of her hair, against the smoothness of her ears and jawline and neck. And Jesus, he hated this. What should’ve felt amazing—all that deceptive softness covering her runner’s muscles and pure female strength—instead made his stomach clench with disgust. He hated the entire sorry-assed world—himself included.
Because he was the genius who’d come up with this plan, after that long conversation with Dunk.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Dunk had warned Jim as they’d sat in his office, after Jim had told Dunk he wanted to try to push Ashley past her breaking point. “Some people just don’t allow themselves to get angry. It’s more than they don’t let anger in—they actually can’t.”
“Yeah, but I know her hot buttons,” Jim pointed out.
“Oh, good,” Dunk said dryly. “If you get me sued, settlement’s coming out of your pay.”
“She’s not gonna sue,” Jim said.
“She’s a lawyer.”
“She’s not gonna—” Jim regrouped. “Senior, just cover your ass, okay? Tell me not to do this, write up a memo about our conversation—”
“Don’t do this,” Dunk said as he pushed himself out of his chair. “And you write the flipping memo—arrogant asshole officer, giving me paperwork…? If you really have to do this—but I’ll say it again: don’t—use my computer and printer and leave it on my desk so I can sign it.” He shook his head as he left Jim in his office, but he also muttered “Good luck, goddamn quixotic idiot,” as he closed the door behind him.
Writing that memo had made Jim late.
He now moved his hands down to Ashley’s shoulders—she was wearing one of her tank tops over a running bra—she’d brought a long-sleeved shirt as the paintball rules instructed, but it was so freaking hot out she hadn’t yet put it on. Her sun-kissed shoulders were warm and smooth beneath his hands. And it occurred to him that if, say, Clark had been his volunteer, he might’ve put his hands on the kid’s shoulders in this exact same way. Why, then, was this different? Because, God, it was.
“You’re good to go,” he told her as she stood there, hanging onto her marker as she stared up at him through the hard plastic view shield of her mask.
And yeah. All that trust he’d seen in her body language had already transformed to surprise and confusion at his sudden handsy behavior. Not that he was being handsy like Bull or Todd. He most certainly wasn’t grabbing her ass. And yet she now had an electric wariness that almost made her vibrate. But she didn’t pull away. It was possible she was frozen.
All-righty then. Jim kept his hands on her shoulders as he turned her to face the fencing with the outlined targets. There were seven of them—all big, blocky, vaguely male outlines in clean, fresh black paint against the weather-silvered wood. “Aim for the one in the middle, TL.”
As he’d expected her to do, Ashley looked down with some uncertainty at the marker in her hands.
“Step one—before firing for the first time,” he raised his voice to announce to the entire team, “is to check the setting velocity.” He stepped even closer to Ashley—his front close enough to her back to feel her body heat. It wasn’t quite as close as they’d been when going over the cargo net on the mock-O-course that morning, but right now he made it far less impersonal by lightly running his hands from her shoulders all the way down her arms—God damn it, this was not okay, and nope, he would never have done that to Clark—to help her lift the marker into position so she could view the setting.
“Dunk tests all the markers regularly,” he loudly continued his lesson even as he started to sweat beneath his mask. Because, yeah, Ashley had stiffened—her shoulders were now up and tight, her body taut. So he pressed a little closer—but upper body only, because Jesus. “We fire each marker into a chronograph that verifies the velocity. So your setting should be locked around 280 for outdoor play. That’s feet per second, which translates, again, to about 190 miles an hour. TL, what is your velocity?”
“Two-eighty,” she said.
This was where he’d expected her to pull away from him, or to shrug him off, or at least to say or do something, but she didn’t. She just stood there inside the circle of his arms. So he, too, stayed where he was as he continued, “Check the safety—and it should be on.”
It was, but her fingers fumbled as she attempted to flip it, and it was all he could do not to push her hand away and do it for her. Because all he could feel was the smooth heat of her bare arms against the sensitive insides of his own. Thank God she was wearing the kind of mask that had full head cover, or her hair would’ve been against his neck and cheek. As it was, every breath he took was filled with the sweet scent of her soap and sunblock—even her sweat smelled delicious.
“Okay, safety’s off,” he could finally announce as he also finally let her go and stepped back. “Aim for the center target.”
She glanced back at him over her shoulder before awkwardly hauling the marker up into a ridiculously bad firing position. Her feet were close together, and her shoulders were still up and tight. As soon as she pulled the trigger, the kick of the marker—usually not an issue—pushed her off-balance.
Jim was ready for that—but not ready enough as she stumbled back into him with a full body-slam. She was far less fragile than she looked, with a butt that was as tight and muscular as her runner’s thighs. Her abs were equally impressive—while she didn’t have a complete six-pack, the softness of both her belly and her smooth skin covered a core that was solid. And yeah, as he’d caught her, mid-flail, her shirt rode up so that his hand accidentally slipped into the gap between it and her jeans.
His right hand. His left wrapped around her in not quite a full boob-grab, but pretty damn close.
“Sorry,” he said quickly as he made sure she was steady even while he leapt back, away from her. His left hand got entangled between her arm and the marker and he ended up brushing her entire breast with his fingers. “Sorry!”
Christ, after the way he’d touched her arms, she was going to think that was intentional and Jesus, what was he doing…?
Except, she was apologizing to him. “No, sorry, I’m sorry!” She’d stepped on his toe, but he’d barely felt it through his boots.
“I’m too far away,” she said, and for several weird seconds, Jim had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but then realized that she’d turned to look at the fence.
The paintball she’d fired from her marker hadn’t even made it as far as the target. It had landed with a red splash on the small strip of concrete in front of the fence.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “No, this is a good distance. If you can only hit your target when you’re close to it, you won’t stand a chance against the other team. You just have to think about the physics. The relatively low velocity, plus the weight of the pellet…”
“It’s like Angry Birds,” Clark realized. “You know, the video game…? Instead of aiming at where you want the pellet to go, you have to lob it.”
Ashley looked over at her brother. “Lob it…?”
The kid’s own marker was without air or pellets, but he used it to demonstrate, aiming it up and then using his hand to show the pellet’s imagined trajectory—an arc rather than a direct line.
“Let’s try it,” Jim said. “See what happens. TL…?”
She glanced at him again before moving her marker up to her shoulder, but he stopped her, adding, “This time don’t stand like a bowling pin.”
As Ashley looked down at her stance, the chatter in the cheap seats continued.
“But doesn’t that—lobbing—increase the likelihood of a hit to a target’s head?” Kenneth asked, sounding worried. But then again, worried tended to be the kid’s default. “Isn’t that problematic…?”
Jim helped Ashley adjust, his hands back on her shoulders. Again, exactly like he would’ve done with Clark, except… not… “Feet apart, legs spread,” he told her as Bull moaned, “Oh, my God, enough with all of the questions already. No, it’s not problematic, Queen Mary. It’s part of the game. You catch one on your head or your mask, you wipe it, and you keep going.”
“A little bit more,” Jim told Ashley, using his boot to push her into a wider stance, his leg between hers—don’t think about that, don’t think about that… “Unlock your knees—” he reached down and pushed on the backs of her knees “—lean into it.” She leaned too far forward, so he pulled her back. “Not that much. Just a little.”
“I was thinking more in terms of the marker-er,” Kenneth replied—the conversation going on in the background—the weirdest soundtrack ever, considering Jim’s world had shrunk to these few feet of sandy soil that he was sharing with Ashley, to the quiet sound of her breath, to the accelerated beating of his heart, to the warmth of her body against his. It occurred to him that none of them—all male—saw anything wrong with his casual handling of their Team Leader.
Kenneth kept talking. “The shooter, if you will. Potential penalties. And I prefer Queen Elizabeth, thanks.”
“Find your balance,” Jim told Ashley as he put his hands on the warm softness of her waist. “Use your core.” He slid one hand around to cover her stomach, and she just stood there, letting him touch her. He might’ve touched Clark’s stomach, if the kid had been his volunteer, but he probably would’ve done it with a smack. Definitely not a linger… “These are the same muscles you use when you run. You’re just using them differently when you’re firing a weapon.”
“A lob’s gonna hurt a lot less than a direct, up-close hit,” Clark told Kenneth.
“Can we get to the target practice?” Bull whined. “Some of us already know this shit.”
Ashley was still aiming her marker too low, so Jim adjusted for her. “Pull the trigger.
She did, and this time she absorbed the kick—and the pellet landed with an explosion of red directly in the center of the target.
Clark and Kenneth both applauded. Bull and Todd were less impressed. “Great. Now just keep a Navy SEAL glued to your ass throughout the entire game. Oh, wait, maybe that won’t be a problem for you.”
It was only then that Ashley spoke up. “Back off,” she said to Jim, then kinda ruined it by politely adding, “Please…?”
But Jim did as she asked, and she raised her marker again—she’d been paying attention, which was remarkable since their close proximity had damn near fried his working brain cells—and fired.
The pellet hit the target—not quite as dead center as when Jim had been helping, but pretty darn close.
But Bull still scoffed. “Beginner’s,” he said, but before he could utter luck, Jim clapped his hands together and loudly announced, “Masks on, markers loaded! Let’s go, Team One, let’s get you out there!”