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“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, sweeping her hair back, the length still damp from her shower.
His eyes tracked her, stayed on her hair. She forced her hands back to her lap.
“Can I trust you?”
“I don’t know. Can you? On the one hand, I did save your life. And on the other, I’m a guy you’ve just met.”
Somehow the way he left the decision up to her put her more at ease. “For now you’re a better option than some folks I’ve known a lot longer.”
Like the deputy who’d played duck shoot with them earlier. My God, she needed to warn so many people in her community who trusted that man.
“It would help if you told me what you’re talking about.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, muscular arms straining the sleeves of his uniform.
She stared into Wade’s eyes, the same steady gaze that had gotten her safely off a mountain and away from a madman. Taking a deep breath, steadying herself, she needed to reach out to him again if she wanted any chance of warning her sister.
“Call me a paranoid, off-the-grid kook who sees conspiracy theories everywhere, but I just can’t shake the weird feeling that the deputy’s actions have to be a part of something bigger.” She didn’t trust the local sheriff’s department now, not when she knew how many friends Rand had back home. The corruption had to go deeper. And if it did, the military’s phone call to his boss wasn’t going to save Misty. “Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense for him to kill two people.”
She hoped he wouldn’t think she was crazy. She needed him to believe her. And sitting so close to him and confiding her deepest fears, she realized she needed him. All those raw feelings he’d stirred inside her back on the mountain came roaring to life again now, like frostbitten toes recovering sensation with a vengeance.
“He could have had the hots for the woman.” His shoulders shrugged, his chair nudging closer until she could almost feel the body heat radiating off him. “It could have been an assault situation gone over the edge. Then he came after us because we found the bodies. He was probably trapped out there in the storm the same way we were.”>“I went to the same medic training for six months at Fort Bragg just like you did, smart-ass.” He stepped into his ABU pants, for once grateful that he spent so much time at the base, he had uniforms to spare in the squadron locker room. Reaching back into the locker, he almost managed to suppress a wince at the tug to his shoulder. A T-shirt was definitely out of the question. He yanked off the button-down blouse—why the hell did they call it a blouse? Like it was some silky woman’s shirt rather than a camouflage jacket.
Battle boots next. He dropped to the bench, glad for an excuse to sit so the room would stop spinning. “I know how to take care of myself.”
“Then next time you can patch yourself up, princess.” Franco sat next to him, lacing up his own hiking boots. “Hardship duty, dude, being holed up with her for two days.”
He kept his mouth zipped. His old man would be proud of his self-control these days.
Jose slammed his locker shut. “Ah, he’s embarrassed. It was chillier than usual. This cold-ass tour of duty can be hell on a guy’s ego, what with shrinkage and all.”
If only that had been the problem. It may have been cold as hell out there, but that hadn’t stopped him from almost losing his objectivity over a woman he barely knew. Sliding the last button through, he flinched at his own lack of control.
Laughter fading, Marcus closed his Sudoku puzzle book, studying him through narrowed eyes. “You hurt yourself out there worse than you’re saying?”
“Jump out of a plane, you’re gonna be sore.” He dismissed the worry fast. “But then you guys wouldn’t know that, since you were back here playing Xbox.”
Gavin looked up from cleaning his gun, one eyebrow raised. “Cranky, cranky, are we?”
And he was. Not because of the injury. Or because of the bodies they’d discovered, although that definitely cast a huge dark cloud over the day all on its own.
He was edgy and cranky because he was all but chewing nails over how bad he wanted a woman who’d so far refused even to tell him her last name.
Marcus set aside his Sudoku book. “Maybe you should give that last girl you dated a call, the one who worked at that diner across from your place. What was her name… Katie… Kimmy…”
“Kammi,” Jose sighed reverently, hitching a Nike running bag over his shoulder. “That was one smokin’ hot babe. Still don’t understand why you let her get away.”
Wade smiled tightly. “Feel free to ask her out anytime. I hear she’s working the lunch shift now.”
Not that he was keeping tabs on her or any of his other exes. He just wasn’t the get-serious kind. Most women he’d gone out with over the years didn’t have the patience for his kind of workaholic devotion to the job.
A door across the room creaked open, and he welcomed the distraction from discussion of his dating history. A fresh recruit airman stopped just inside. “Sergeant Rocha?”
Wade pushed to his feet, buttoning the cuffs on his uniform. “That would be me.”
“The lady from the mountain, Sunny Foster, she’s asking for you.”
Whistles and wolf calls came from his buds, but he didn’t even rise to the bait. He was too focused on what the airman had said.
Foster.
