Jo Leigh - Reckoning

It killed him to hear her sobs. In all the time he’d known her, in all the horrendous situations she’d been in, she’d never wept, not like this. It was as if he were listening to a heart shatter, to a world come apart at the seams. Which, of course, it was.

She’d worked so goddamn hard on the dispersal system for the antidote to the gas. When it hadn’t worked, something had broken inside her. Although he’d tried to get her to talk about it, she wouldn’t. All he knew for sure was that she blamed herself for the failure. Shit, it would have been a miracle if it had worked.

He took her into his arms and comforted her the only way he knew how. He wasn’t accustomed to this role, well, not unless he was trying to get laid. Then he had no trouble offering up a shoulder to cry on. This was different.

As far as he was concerned, she was a soldier under his command. He didn’t take the responsibility lightly. He’d have given anything to have kept her safe. If there was anyone in the room who’d failed, it was him. He hadn’t been at the lab to protect her. His precautions weren’t sufficient. “How did they know?”

She pushed away from his shoulder to look at him through tear-filled eyes. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s not important.”

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, then sniffed again. “I had a bad dream.”

“I could tell,” he said, wanting to touch her, but painfully aware that she was naked and that the comforter had fallen to her waist. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” she said, “but I probably should.” She gazed around the room, stopping at the window. He’d made sure the blackout curtains were closed, knowing how badly she needed to sleep. “What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “Almost eleven.”

“In the morning, right?”

“Yeah.”

When she was settled, she pulled the comforter up, covering her breasts. He dragged his gaze up to her face. He tended to think of her as delicate because she was so petite. Though her long hair was black and straight and her eyes were darkly Asian, her skin was creamy pale, as if she’d never been in the sun. But he knew she was tough, stronger than she even realized.

“I heard someone coming down the stairs, but you hadn’t called. So I got the gun and the flash drive and I hid, you know, in that fake closet.”

The previous tenants had thought of everything, including false walls and trick doors.

“They searched the place for a long time. I heard them breaking things and cursing. I just stayed as quiet as I could.”

The words were so easily spoken, but he could just imagine how terrified she must have been. He should have been there. “When did you call me?”

She looked at him quizzically. “I didn’t have the phone. I was so busy thinking about the data, I forgot it.”

“But I got a call. From your cell.”

“Who was it?”

“That was just it. No one spoke. I answered, then I heard a gunshot.”

“There was a fire. I couldn’t stay hidden or I would have burned to death and taken the data with me. When I pushed out the wall, the man was standing right in front of me. I shot him.”

He liked to think of her as his soldier, but the truth was, she wasn’t. Before they’d met, she’d never even held a gun.

“You know,” she said, pushing her hair behind her shoulder. “I think that’s why I was able to kill him.”

“What was?”

“He hesitated. Because he was dialing the cell phone. He didn’t get his gun up quickly enough.”

“Let’s hear it for the phone company,” Nate said sardonically.

“After that, I ran. I headed straight for the stairs. I know someone was behind me, but it was so dark out there I wasn’t as afraid of him as I was of falling down an elevator shaft. I went straight to plan B, but I was sure he was going to catch me. I could practically feel the bullet in my back.”

He knew exactly what she was talking about. If anyone ever did invent eyes in the back of the head, he’d be first in line with the check. “You lost him.”

She nodded. “I don’t know how.”

“Training. That’s what it’s all about. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”

“How could you have known?”

“The question is, how did they know? I would have expected them to find me long before you. That lab was way the hell off the radar.”

“I don’t know. I also don’t know what they took out before they torched the place.”

“Every computer in there was wired to blow without the proper access keys,” Nate assured her. “They won’t get anything important.”

“But they’ll know that I was working, and they’d have to be stupid not to realize I was all over the antidote.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true.”

“Which means…”

“That whatever they’re planning, the timetable just moved up.”

“Oh, crap,” she said, with such a heavy sigh that it made Nate laugh.

“I don’t think it’s very funny.”

“It’s not. It’s a damn tragedy. But all we can do is what we can do.”

She shook her head, looking at him seriously, as if she needed him to hear her. He lost his smile and listened.

“I don’t want to die alone,” she said.

He almost spoke, but the words had been uttered so softly, so forcefully, that he waited and thought. With her hair a wild dark tangle, her eyes puffy from crying and her skin so smooth all he wanted was to touch her, he understood clearly. It wasn’t that she was almost killed last night, or that she’d had to take a life, but that she was alone. Had been alone for months. He had Seth, Boone, Cade. They all understood exactly what it was to be a soldier. They knew what the risks were, how to cope with the unbearable stress of a mission that seemed to have no end. Even Kate and Christie were holding up their end. But Tam had been forced into a bubble, a tiny world where there was no one to lean on or to question or run her ideas by. She’d been flying solo since Kosovo, and she was exhausted.

He nodded slowly, wondering briefly how he could justify kidnapping another biochemist to work with her. That was no answer. He had none. “What can I do?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But you can start by taking off your clothes.”

“Pardon me?”

Her cheeks had blushed a vivid pink and her hands were twisted tightly together but she looked him right in the eyes. “I think, I hope, that I haven’t been wildly off the mark with you being attracted to me.”

He thought she was going to continue but when she just kept staring, he nodded. “Yeah.” It was an understatement, but he wasn’t exactly at his best at the moment.

“I’m attracted to you, too. And since the odds of us living long, happy lives is about one in a million, I think we should do whatever we can in whatever time we have that brings us pleasure. And happiness. And comfort.”

He ought to have some kind of reasonable argument. He was the team leader. He was responsible for her, for all of them. Having sex would complicate things in ways he couldn’t possibly foresee. But all he kept thinking was thank you, God. Thank you, thank you.

“On the other hand, if I’m totally freaking you out, we can pretend I never said a word.”

“What?”

She looked away, then back again. “Nate, cut it out. If you don’t want to, just say so.”

“Don’t want to? Oh, Tam…”

“Oh, Tam, what?” She looked down pointedly. “Naked here. Can we say vulnerable?”

“Vulnera—Shit. I’m sorry. No. I want to. I just haven’t thought about us actually, you know…”

“You haven’t thought about it? Wow. I have. A lot.”

“You have?”

She nodded. “I had a lot of time alone in that lab.”