Jennifer Taylor - The Forever Assignment

In the end it was Daniel who saved the day. He took it upon himself to introduce her to everyone present and soon put her at her ease as he filled her in on people’s backgrounds. He also insisted she sit with him at dinner and regaled her with stories of other missions he’d been on so that by the end of the evening Kasey felt more like one of the team. The only disquieting note throughout the whole evening, in fact, was that Adam ignored her. He spoke to everyone else present but made no attempt to speak to her. It was as though she didn’t exist and she had to admit that it hurt to be treated in such an off-hand fashion.

The party finally broke up around midnight. Everyone was worn out after the journey and started to drift away. Daniel begged her to stay and have a final cup of coffee with him but she refused first of all because she was tired and secondly because she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. She liked Daniel but there was no way that she was going to risk inciting Adam’s wrath by getting romantically involved with him or anyone else.

She bade Daniel a studiedly casual goodnight and made her way across the hall. Most people had gone straight up to bed so there was nobody about. She headed towards the stairs then paused as she passed the front door. Even though she was bone-tired as well, she desperately needed a breath of fresh air before turning in for the night.

She let herself out of the hostel and walked down the path, carefully picking her way through the rubble. Like most of the buildings they’d passed on the drive from the airfield, the hostel had suffered extensive damage during the recent fighting. Kasey stopped when she reached a clump of straggly bushes and looked back at the building, trying to imagine what it must have been like for the students who’d lived there during those troubled times. It must have been awful for them, living in constant danger—

The sharp report of a rifle cracked through the still night air and she jumped. She spun round to see where the shot had come from then gasped in alarm when a figure suddenly mate-rialised out of the shadows and hurled her to the ground.

‘Let me go,’ she screamed, punching the man’s broad back with her clenched fists. ‘Let…me…go, damn you!’

‘For God’s sake, woman!’ Adam’s face suddenly loomed into view and she gulped when she realised that he was her attacker.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she snapped, glaring up at him.

‘Saving your damned life.’ He put his hand over her mouth when she went to speak. ‘Just shut up, Kasey. There’s someone out there shooting at us so this is neither the time nor the place to discuss your injured feelings.’

Kasey fell silent, not that she could have said very much with his hand clamped over her mouth. She could feel the hard pressure of his fingers on her lips and a tingle of awareness that was totally inappropriate for the seriousness of the situation scudded through her. All of a sudden she became alarmingly aware of the intimacy of their position. Adam was lying right on top of her, his broad chest squashing her breasts, his hips and thighs crushing her against the rocky ground. Every muscle in his body was rigid with tension as he drew back his head and looked around the clearing, and a small moan rushed up her throat because she could feel every single one of them.

Intimately.

Trapezius, pectoralis major, deltoid, obliquuos externus…She made herself recite the names of all those muscles from memory, hoping it would help if she focused on some basic anatomy rather than the effect they were having on her. It worked to a point until another volley of shots suddenly cracked through the air. Yelping in fear, she buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around him. He felt so big and solid that she clung fast, using him as her rock in an unstable world.

‘It’s OK.’ His hand strayed from her mouth and her heart leapt again when she felt his fingers gently stroking her hair. ‘They’re not firing at us. Whoever they’re aiming at is in those trees over to our left.’

His voice rumbled up from his chest and she shuddered when she felt its vibrations rippling into her. Adam obviously misunderstood her reaction because his tone deepened, taking on the soothing cadence people use with the very scared.

‘They probably don’t even know we’re here, Kasey, so all we need to do is sit tight until it’s over. OK?’

‘OK,’ she muttered in mortification, because if she’d hoped to impress him with her sang-froid under fire she’d obviously failed.

They stayed where they were for another ten minutes, although it felt a lot longer than that to her. It wasn’t just the fact that Adam was squashing her with his weight that bothered her so much, but that she was enjoying the experience. She should have loathed this kind of intimate contact with him but although her mind knew that, her body didn’t. Every time he shifted his weight, she had to make a conscious effort not to respond so that it was a relief when he finally decided the danger had passed.

‘Stay there while I check out the lie of the land,’ he instructed tersely, easing himself away from her. He cautiously stood up, keeping well back into the shadows as he looked around for the gunman.

‘He seems to have gone,’ he said at last, glancing down at her. ‘Let’s get back inside but keep your head down and stay close to the bushes just in case.’

Kasey scrambled to her feet and brushed the grit off her backside, wincing when her fingers encountered a dozen different sore spots caused by being squashed on the stony ground. Adam took another quick look around then pointed towards the path, silently indicating that she should go ahead of him.

They’d almost reached the front doors of the hostel when a man suddenly appeared from around the side of the building. Kasey didn’t have time to react as Adam grabbed hold of her and thrust her behind him, using himself as a shield in case the man had a gun, but even as they watched, the stranger dropped to his knees then slumped face down onto the ground.

‘Looks like he’s the guy who was being shot at,’ Adam shouted as he ran forward. Kasey raced after him, dropping to her knees and staring in horror at the gaping wound in the back of the young man’s right shoulder.

‘He’s been hit, and more than once, by the look of it.’ Adam pointed to the twin exit wounds caused when the bullets had torn through the flesh. ‘I’m not sure how many bullets were fired so there might be others still inside him. I’ll have to check. There’s bound to be extensive soft tissue damage, though, and possibly some damage to the shoulder joint so it’s going to take some time to sort it all out.’

‘You’re going to operate?’ she exclaimed.

‘Of course.’ He frowned. ‘Although I’m not sure where would be the best place to use. One of the bedrooms would be easiest but the lighting is too poor for this kind of intricate surgery.’

‘You mean that you’re going to operate here?’

‘Yes. It’s far too risky to take him to the hospital. Matthias warned me that we mustn’t drive around at night so we’ll have to make do with whatever facilities we have here and simply hope for the best.’

‘I see,’ she murmured, trying to get her head round what was going on. Obviously Adam was less concerned about the injured man being a terrorist than he was about saving his life, so she made herself focus on the problem of finding a suitable place to use as a makeshift operating theatre. It would need to be somewhere with decent lighting, as he’d pointed out, and it would also help if they had access to water for washing.

‘How about the dining room?’ she suggested. ‘The lighting isn’t too bad in there and we have direct access to the kitchen. We can use one of the tables as a temporary operating table, too.’