Lucy Monroe - Willing

They found the trail and followed it, after Daniel saw that they were both armed with weapons he kept in his car at all times. The trail ended at a logging road, and fresh tracks indicated a four-wheel drive had been there recently. The width of the tires indicated a truck, but their tread was too common to get anything else from the tracks.

“Darn it.” Josie sank to the ground, letting her head rest against her knees. “The tracks are too fresh for them to be very long gone, but we can’t follow on foot with any hope of catching them.”

He said something pithy and unpleasant.

She looked up at him. “That’s one way of putting it, but I think you’ve got some verb confusion going on.”

He was in no mood to appreciate her subtle humor. “If I’d gotten to the hospital sooner, or come by here first, I could have caught their sorry asses.”

She shook her head.

“You doubt it?”

“I doubt your culpability in timing that they obviously took a lot of effort making sure was right.”

“I’d like to see whatever it is they wanted from your dad’s files.” But that was about as likely as Tyler McCall showing up to allay Josie’s fears.

“No problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just finished computerizing dad’s files. I’ve got a backup of the data on the hard drive in my apartment.”

“I don’t like computers much.”

“Hotwire told me. Don’t worry. I’ll do all the interfacing with the computer.” She yawned.

“You need to sleep before doing anything else.”

“First, we’ve got to hike back. Then we have to see if Dad’s journal survived. Then I can sleep.”

When she stood up, she wobbled, but like the trouper she was, she started marching back toward the charred buildings.

He shook his head, caught up with her, then bent down and lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry before she had time to figure out what he planned and stage a major protest. He started double-timing it back to the compound.

“What do you think you are doing?” Her words came out funny, like hiccups, because her diaphragm was hitting his shoulder.

“You’re too tired to hike back.”

“I am not.”

He didn’t bother to argue, but she wasn’t so sanguine.

“Listen here, Neanderthal man, I’m a trained soldier. A mile hike is nothing for me.”

“You’ve been awake for twenty-four hours or more, inhaled smoke, saved your dad from a burning building and tracked perps at a running jog.”

“So? I’m not a wimp.”

“No, but you are a termagant.”

“What’s that?”

He smiled as he told her.

“I do not nag and I am not a shrew!”

“But you are overbearing on occasion.”

“You can say that when you’re the one carrying me against my will?” she asked furiously. “If anyone’s a termagant here, it’s you.”

“Men can’t be termagants.”

“You use pretty big words for a mercenary,” she grumbled.

“I like to read.”

“I do, too, but the word I want to call you is one I learned listening to soldiers.”

He laughed, something he rarely did…except when he was with Josie. How could she think he didn’t like her? She made him smile, and that wasn’t easy.

“Put me down, Nitro, or I’m going to get mean, and I don’t want to because you’re helping me.”

“Call me Daniel.” He didn’t like being reminded of his past when he was with her.

“What?”

“Daniel. It’s my name.”

“Hotwire and Wolf call you Nitro.”

“I want you to call me Daniel.”

“Daniel, put me down or things are going to get ugly.” The tone of her voice said she meant what she was saying.

They were more than halfway back to the compound, so he stopped and let her slide to her feet, his hands loosely guiding her at the hips. When she was solidly on terra firma again, he should have let go, but he didn’t.

And she didn’t move away immediately, but stood staring up at him like an accident victim. It was a look he’d gotten very familiar with on their last mission, but he still didn’t know what it meant. She licked dry lips, and his body told him what he wanted it to mean. She was too close not to notice the change, and she jumped away from him like a scalded cat.

It wasn’t the first time she’d responded that way to evidence of his desire, but his ability to deal with it rationally diminished the more he wanted her. “I can’t help my reaction. If a woman is going to press herself against me like a succubus, I’m going to get hard.”

“I didn’t press myself against you like a succubus, whatever that is…I didn’t press myself at all. You’re the cretin who insisted on carrying me and then, and then…”

“And then?” he taunted.

“Letting me down that way.” She glared at him, but her expression was wounded.

Damn it. She was right. His hard-on was his own damn fault, but his jaw locked on the words of apology he knew he needed to say.

She made a dismissive motion with her hand and spun away from him, setting off for the compound at a trot. He followed her the whole way back, letting her set the pace because of her fatigue, but anger must have given her strength because he had to jog to keep up with her.

When they arrived at the compound, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder.

She went stiff. “What?”

He wasn’t angry with her. He was sexually frustrated, and it wasn’t her fault except that she was the object of his lust, and he could hardly blame her for that. She didn’t do anything on purpose to seduce his senses.

She didn’t have to.

“I’m sorry.” He could count on one hand the number of times he’d said those words in his life. The last one he could remember had been as he stood over his mother’s grave.

Her shoulders slumped. “It’s no big deal.”

He turned her around to face him and got a sucker punch to his gut at the sight of shimmering green eyes.

“It’s not your fault you set me off like a Roman candle.”

“I…what?”

“Never mind. Just try to forget about what happened back there.”

She nodded, about to turn away again when he remembered something.

“It’s not because I don’t like you. I like you too much, and it’s not your fault,” he repeated.

“I—”

“Come on, show me where this footlocker is kept.”

She let him direct her toward the burned building and then picked her way through the debris to an area on the far right. He didn’t know what had been there, but judging from what was left of the building, he guessed it was Tyler’s secret bedroom. She bent down and grabbed what looked like it might have been a metal plate and started digging the ashes out of an area. He looked around for something to help her with and found a helmet.

With both of them working, it didn’t take very long to dig down to where the floor had been. Under it was a rectangular sheet of composite, the lightweight but extremely sturdy stuff airplane floors were made out of. He’d used it himself in both Wolf’s and his homes’ designs.

The composite had two handles, and as she lifted it, he realized it was a door to an underground room.

A cement stairway led downward in the dark. Josie stepped on the first tread, but he grabbed her before she could take another step.

“You don’t have a flashlight,” Daniel said to her. “Wait and I’ll get one from the SUV.”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s a light at the bottom of the stairs. Dad’s safety room has everything.”

Everything turned out to be a supply of weapons sufficient to equip a small force, lights, food, a bed, two chairs, small table and the infamous footlocker.