AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This time, it was Nik’s turn to laugh.
CHAPTER 7
“Do you thinkBrudin will follow us this morning?” Daria asked, shifting the straps of her knapsack across her shoulders. She walked with Nik down the always noisy and crowded tourist area of the town. Overhead, the clouds had parted and she saw rifts of blue sky here and there between them. Machu Picchu rose like a loaf of French bread sat up on one end. Its massive black lava sides were covered with thousands of orchids and bromeliads, making it green, hiding the sharp, cutting basalt it was made from. She cast Nik a concerned look. He had been quiet and she could feel him digesting something but didn’t know what. She tried to keep her emotions out of this op, having given herself a stern talking to last night before she fell asleep, all the while her body aching for this complex soldier.
“There’s a good chance.” His mouth lifted a little. “But I lied to them atdesayunoearlier this morning. I told them I was going to take a certain trail but we’re taking another one. If Brudin thinks he can get ahead of us and hide on the trail we aren’t going to use, I don’t care.”
“Aren’t you the sly fox,” she teased. Daria wore a rainproof jacket with a hood because the weather was still coolish and one never knew when it was going to rain again in the jungle. She wore her dark-green cammo pants, waterproof hiking boots, and a short-sleeved gray pullover with her jacket over it. Nik was dressed in nearly the same colors and style except for a black t-shirt that showed off the expanse of his deep chest beneath his waterproof black jacket. Like her, he had a knapsack or what he referred to as a ruck, on his back. She’d made sure she’d brought all her tools and orchid identification books with her. If they were going to be watched, she had to turn into a botanist for a while.
Nik shrugged. He kept his voice low, so that only she could hear him as they turned onto the plaza, made a left turn and headed for the railroad tracks just outside of town. “I have to be.”
“How is your team handling your new romance?” she wondered aloud to him.
His face hardened. “They tease me, but that’s nothing new. I feel they are buying it, but Korsak isn’t sure yet.” He gestured down the tracks and stepped over them. “We need to continue to validate that you’re a botanist.”
“Well, I’ve got everything in my knapsack to prove it, plus a degree in it,” and Daria gave him a wry smile. He wore a black baseball cap and he hadn’t shaved this morning. The dark stubble did nothing but emphasize the rugged, harsh lines of his face. Yet, Daria was constantly surprised because he usually spoke in a low, softened tone exactly like she would expect of a military medic. No one knew better the power of a calm voice during the chaos of combat when a fallen team mate was bleeding out than the wounded. She would never forget the combat medic, Pascal, who was the first on scene after the Black Hawk medevac had landed to rescue her and Melissa. The carnage, the bodies, her continued bleeding out as he knelt next to her, his hands incredibly gentle, his voice low and soothing. That was when Daria knew she would survive.
Stealing a look at Nik as he walked down the middle of the railroad tracks, the gravel crunching beneath their boots, she felt that same sense of protectiveness radiating out from him toward her. There was more than care burning in his blue eyes when he’d knocked at her apartment door earlier. There had been desire in their depths. Daria had tossed and turned all night, her body achy with the memory of what good sex felt like. Having had none for such a long time made her edgy. And the look in Nik’s eyes confirmed that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
As they followed the tracks out of town between the huge, rising monolith of Machu Picchu on their left, Mama Putukusi, the equally loaf-like lava mountain on their right and between the two, further down, Huynu Picchu, Daria felt the size of an ant in comparison to these mighty giants thrusting up out of the green jungle that surrounded them on all sides. To her left she could hear the roar of the Urubamba River which snaked and slid between these three massive mountains. The river almost sounded angry. Looking around, Daria saw they were alone, now that they’d left the town behind them. Only a swath that had been carved out to allow the trains to come and go through the massive, thick triple-canopy jungle, embraced them now.
“Is it safe to talk right now?” she asked.
“Yes.” Nik cut her a look, his gaze never still, always alert. “What do you want to ask?”
“I’ve got hundreds of questions,” she assured him in a droll tone, watching the corner of his mouth hook upwards for a moment. Nik was tense and on guard this morning, although to any observer he would look relaxed and casual. He was not.
“Korsak suspects something about us?” she asked him.
“I think he’s being very careful, which is normal for him.” Nik replied.
“What do we have to do to convince him?” She saw Nik grimace.
“Probably, by tomorrow night, I need to stay at your apartment. They will think we’re making love, of course. We want him to think that. I believe if I spend the nights with you from now on, it will convince Korsak about us.”
“Okay,” she murmured, her body suddenly taking off with possibilities. The way Nik had kissed her, had cherished her, left Daria wanting to explore this man intimately and thoroughly. But would he go that far? Daria wasn’t sure about anything right now.
“It’s just a cover,” he reassured her, giving her a concerned look. “I’ll sleep out on the couch. They’ll never know otherwise.”
Nodding, Daria said nothing, afraid to broach how she really felt. “What trail are we taking?” because she saw two branching off and Nik was slowing down.
“The one on the left.” He stopped and turned, looking back down the railroad tracks toward Aguas Calientes. There was no one following them. He shifted his attention back to Daria. “From this point on, you must expect we are being watched and monitored. Only when we get back here to the tracks, can we speak more honestly.”
“Got it.” She followed him up the narrow, winding path that would take them to the slope of Mama Putukusi. Everything was muddy, wet drops would fall off and strike her hat and shoulders from the canopy of leaves above. By the time they had climbed about five hundred feet around the base of the lava mountain, the bill of her cap dripped with the water coming off it. The jungle was dark, hiding the druzy light from above. It was a depressing place to Daria.
Nik halted at a wide spot in the trail and pointed up at some trees. “See the orchids up there?”
Narrowing her eyes, about ten feet above them on an overhanging limb, she saw two flowering orchids growing where the branch forked out from the trunk of the tree. “Yes.”
“How do you want to do this? I can climb the tree and pull them out of that notch and bring them down to you?”
“Sounds good to me. But can you put them back up there when we’re done?”
“Yes.” Nik shed his knapsack, laying it over some damp branches that had fallen near the trail. Better to keep it out of mud if he could.
Daria found several limbs on the ground and laid them in a grid so they would keep her own knapsack off the wet earth. She opened it, pulling out a square oilcloth, and then finding her notebook, pen and a small Canon camera. She spread the oilcloth across the limbs, creating a waterproof table of sorts. She remembered all the things that a botanist would do on the hunt for an orchid. Pulling a cloth measuring tape from her pocket, she set it down with her other items. Nik came over to take a look at her equipment. She felt his body heat as he neared. The temperature was lower within the jungle, she’d discovered, and was glad for the jacket she wore.
“You are out in this for thirty days at a time?”
