Page 7 of Brooks

“You ready to tell me why someone’s trying to kill you?”

If I still didn’t need his hands under me to help me float, I would’ve swam away from him. However, my lungs were still burning and my limbs wouldn’t cooperate.

“Maybe you were the target.”

“Negative.”

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t been in Bahrain long enough to piss anyone off. And the enemies I’ve made over the years wouldn’t be so sloppy.”

What a smug bastard. He even had to outdo me in an assassination attempt. Of course anyone who would possibly come after him would be far more sophisticated than someone trying to kill me. Yet another thing I didn’t miss about my ex-husband. I couldn’t even tell him I needed a jacket because I was chilly without the programmed response of: you don’t know cold until you know Navy SEAL cold.

“Damn, you have a chip on your shoulder.” He chuckled.

Who the hell laughed while treading water after being a hair’s breadth away from being blown up by an RPG?

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. Your eyes say everything you don’t. Hate to tell you this, Doll, but you can’t hide shit.”

“Were you able to tell your team where to find us?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

“We wait. They’ll be along shortly.”

“Be along shortly? What does that mean?”

“It means just that, we wait. I can’t see the dock from here. Which means I don’t know if someone is waiting there for us. While I could swim back undetected, I don’t think you want me leaving you out here by yourself to float. So, we wait together.”

As much as it pissed me off, he was right. I could swim the almost half-mile back to the dock, but it wouldn’t be any covert maneuver, that was for sure. And while he made treading water look like a walk in the park, there was no way I wanted to find out if I could do it for the length of time it would take him to go to shore and come back.

No, my best bet was to float on my back, with my mouth shut and wait for his team to come.

Fuck. I hated being the damsel in distress, but there was nothing I could do.

Chapter 3

“You need to relax, Doll.”

Even with Tatiana’s lips flattened and her brows drawn, she was a pretty woman. I wished I could smooth the worry lines on her forehead. I could’ve told her this was an easy day, floating out there in the warm water of the Gulf, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate my comment. She didn’t seem to like anything I had to say. Yesterday it’d been fun pushing her buttons, even more when we she stopped to drop anchor, but now it seemed cruel. I may’ve been a lot of things, but malicious wasn’t one of them.

There was something working behind her intelligent eyes, and it looked a lot like pain. Not the physical kind, the emotional aftermath of heartache. It was the only thing that explained why she had the need to hide behind piss and vinegar. I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a bitch, but damn she had snark. It was unfortunate for her, I liked sassy and spirited women. Her demeanor in no way was a deterrent. She was waving the proverbial red flag in front of the bull.

“And you need to stop calling me ‘Doll’.”

Yeah, I liked her spunk. I wanted to call her baby cakes just to see what she’d do but I was too afraid she’d drown.

“Okay, Tatiana. While we’re waiting, why don’t we talk about your job? What does a political affairs officer do?”

If it were possible for her to become stiffer in the water, she did. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know the real reason you’re in Bahrain, but I doubt you’ll tell me that. So tell me about working for the UN.”

“I analyze security reports and verify information.”