Chapter Eighteen
“T hey know you’ve been shot a couple of times, right?” Grace asked with a touch of disbelief as she grabbed her pack and began pulling out fresh bandages.
Sharp snorted. “Like that would stop me.”
“Excuse me?” Grace froze and stared at him with her eyes wide.
He gave her a mischievous grin. “For you, two measly bullet wounds are nothing.”
“Be serious,” she said, sounding impatient. Like every irritated woman talking to a man she was comfortable with. “A rumor like that could make things awkward.”
Except, her hands were shaking.
“Grace—” he began.
“Sharp,” she interrupted. “Take your goddamn pants off.”
Her hands might be shaking, but her voice was rock solid.
“Yes, ma’am.” He shucked his pants, got on the ground, stretched out his legs, and reclined on his elbows so he could watch.
She looked him over, starting from the pants wrapped around his ankles to his face. Whatever she saw there made her shake her head. “You’re such a guy.” She grabbed a pair of gloves, snapped them on, and went after the bandages over his latest wound. “How does this one feel?”
“Okay. No worse than before.”
She peeled the last layer off and leaned forward to get a better look. Dirt streaked her face, her short hair was messy, and there was blood splattered all over her uniform.
He had never seen a more beautiful woman. Ever.
What kind of degenerate moron gets a hard-on in this crummy situation?
Him, obviously.
She poked at the wound and made a happy noise at the back of her throat. A little antibiotic ointment smeared over the stitches, new nonstick pads, and more bandages secured it all to his leg.
She switched to the wound on his thigh, leaning over him further in order to reach, and he had to force himself not to grab her and pull her across his lap.
Her hands brushed the skin of his inner thigh as she took the bandage off and he nearly came in his underwear.
Once the bandage was off, she removed the pads and pushed his leg up, so she could see, and prod, both entry and exit wounds.
“How bad is the pain?” she asked, her hands handling him with confident care. No hesitation, just the competence only experience and knowledge gives a person.
Fuck, that was hot.
He let his head fall back and said, “I’m going to hell.”
“What?”
He brought his head up and let her see the need on his face. The kind a man never gets over, never lets go.
She glanced at the erection the size of a canoe in his underwear, rolled her eyes and said, “Put that thing away before someone sees it.”
Sharp had to choke down a belly laugh that would have alerted anyone within a mile of where they were. It shook his body so hard tears leaked out of his eyes and he collapsed on the ground.
“Goddamn, Doc, I love your mouth,” he managed to wheeze out.
When she looked at him like he was the dirty-minded man he was, he added, “But I love your brain even more.”
“Stop with the sucking up,” she said, as she gave his thigh the same TLC as his other leg, then wrapped it all up with another bandage. Again, she seemed fine, until you looked at her mouth and the white lines of strain around it.
Great job, dickhead. Was he determined to fuck everything up today?
He wiped the stupid grin off his face. “I’m sorry.”
She glanced at him as she collected all the dirty bandages and moved back so he could pull up his pants. “Okay.”
The word sounded forced to him, and she headed toward the hillside exit a little too fast. If he’d thought he’d gotten himself out of the doghouse with that sorry excuse for an apology, he was wrong.
“Shit,” he said, jumping as he tried to get his pants over his butt. “Grace, wait.”
She paused, but only for a second.
“Grace.” He finally wrestled his fatigues up and leaped forward to catch her arm in a careful grip. “I really am. Sorry, I mean.”
Her blank face didn’t change.
“Fuck, I’m no good at this touchy-feely stuff.” He ran a hand over his face. “I shouldn’t have acted like a sailor who hasn’t seen port in months. I’m such an asshole to even think that shit. How can I make things right between us?”
Her shoulders relaxed and she blinked fast a few times, like she was trying not to cry. “You just did it.”
“What are you apologizing for?” a voice said from behind Sharp.
Hernandez. Just what he needed, a peanut gallery. Not.
Sharp turned to head off anything else the moron was going to say, but Grace beat him to it. “Being an asshole. Your turn is next.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grace keep going toward the exit with the garbage.
Hernandez grinned at him. “Making time with the doc?” he asked in a confidential speaking tone of voice.
Sharp’s reply wasn’t any louder, but it had a backbone of cold steel. “Fuck you.” He glared at his friend. “Say whatever you want about me, but do not disrespect the doc.”
“Ah, shit, sorry, Sharp.” Hernandez looked genuinely hang-dogged. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yeah, well, start, will ya? We’ve got to be on top of this and back her up all the way or we might all be dead.”
“You bozos are too hardheaded for dead,” Grace said, coming back into the main cave. “I bet you’d even argue with Saint Peter at the Gates about being a wrong delivery.”
“Us?” Sharp said, turning to include her in their conversation. “Argue? Never.”
Hernandez held out his hand to her. “I’m really sorry, Doc.”
After a brief hesitation, she took it. “We’re good.” She turned her intelligent gaze on Sharp’s face. “I’ve heard this kind of thing before in the heat of the moment.”
“Oh yeah?” Hernandez asked.
Sharp was going to kick his ass. He opened his mouth to start the beating, but Grace got there first.
“Two years ago, I ended up in the middle of a firefight. There was this one Marine sergeant who kept yelling at me to get my, and I quote, ‘sweet American ass back inside the armored vehicle.’ I told him he could go fuck himself, but I wasn’t going without my wounded.” She laughed softly. “I thought he was going to strangle me, but after it was all over, you know what he did?”
Sharp and Hernandez shook their heads.
“He came up to me and said, ‘Good job, Sweet. Good job. Oorah! ’” She smiled at both men. “Best compliment I’ve ever been paid.” She headed for her pack and began putting things away.
“That was when she won the Star?” Hernandez asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to take that as a win,” Hernandez said.
“ Oorah. ”
***
G race glanced over her shoulder at the two soldiers standing several feet behind her. They were both looking at her with identical proud expressions on their faces, like she was important to them.
Tears prickled the corners of her eyes, and she had to pretend interest in organizing her pack to hide how much it meant. How much it helped with the difficult job ahead of her. Because the really hard part hadn’t even started yet.
Max would be here soon, perhaps in just a couple of hours. The work to identify how this strain of anthrax had been altered, magnified, and weaponized was going to take some time. Then they had to test the bacteria against all known antibiotics to discover if any could kill it or even slow it down. This would take up more time they didn’t have. Given the deaths of the discovery patrol members, finding a quick answer didn’t seem likely. In the meantime, they had to pray the creator of the anthrax wouldn’t use it before they were ready.
Even less likely.
Doubt and despair attempted to pull her down, but she refused to give in to them. She had a job to do and people counting on her.
She glanced around the cave, trying to picture how the equipment might fit into the space.
“How can we help?” Sharp asked, coming over to stand next to her. Hernandez flanked her on the other side.
“Well,” she began, “I think these stone benches will make the best working surface, but we’ll need to put down plastic sheeting to remove the possibility of dust contamination. If our CIA friend has some, we could start that before Max and his team arrives.” She shifted her weight, and a spear of pain shot up her sore leg. It was work to keep a wince off her face, but she couldn’t let it show. These knuckleheads, especially Sharp, would make her rest. There wasn’t time for that.
Hernandez nodded. “I’ll ask him. How much do you need?”
“I don’t know, guesstimating stuff like this isn’t a skill of mine, but it’s got to cover from here—” she moved to stand at the end of one bench, then walked about twenty feet down the wall and stood at the end of another one “—to about here, but a few extra feet wouldn’t hurt.”
“About seven or eight yards. Got it.” He headed out, entering the tunnel and disappearing into the dark.
“What’s the next job on your list?” Sharp asked.
She handed him a bottle of water. “You’re going to drink all of this while I talk.”
“They gave me a unit of blood in the medical center at Bostick,” Sharp told her softly, even as he opened the bottle and took several swallows.
“Not nearly enough. Did they give you any saline or other fluids?”
“Saline, I think, while I waited for the blood to arrive, and an electrolyte drink right after, but I don’t know how much.”
She harrumphed. “You need to eat too.”
“We’ve got MREs, is that okay?”
Why was he asking so carefully? “It’s better than nothing.” She frowned at him. “Is something wrong?”
He shook his head, then finished the water and grabbed an MRE and another bottle of water.
He wasn’t arguing with her and seemed genuinely interested in preparing for Max’s arrival, so why did she feel like something was wrong?
“So, what’s the next job?” he asked, a pleasant, cooperative smile on his face.
She didn’t trust that expression at all. “We could move everything, so nothing is in the way when the team gets here. Thirteen more people occupying this space.”
“Might get a bit cozy,” Sharp remarked, looking around.
“We’re going to need to work and sleep in shifts, so setting aside an area for sleeping would be useful too.”
“Good idea. There was a smaller room off to the right just as the tunnel starts. That might work. Is Max bringing anyone besides his A-Team?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you’ll be the only woman.” It was a statement of fact. An irrelevant fact in her opinion, but the way he said it, with just a touch of extra stress on the word only made her wonder why it was relevant to him.
“So?” she asked.
“So, stay within sight of one of our guys, okay? Until I have a chance to see who’s on Max’s team.”
Her jaw dropped open and for several seconds she couldn’t even breathe, let alone articulate how ridiculous his request sounded.
“You,” she said, “are paranoid.”
“I’m cautious. It’s my job to prote—”
“Shut up,” she interrupted, tapping his meal with one finger. “And eat your food. Maybe a little sugar in the bloodstream will aid your thinking.”
“When did you eat last?”
“While you were sleeping.” Sick of his overbearing, taking-care-of-the-little-woman attitude, she deliberately limped away him and began moving things away from the area she wanted for the lab.
He ate his food, drank the sports drink, and another bottle of water before going in search of the trash inside this camouflaged garbage heap.
She was alone for the first time in days.
The starch went out of her knees and she plopped onto the bench she’d been sweeping rocks off of.
Fear was exhausting. It took a lot of energy to remain in a constant state of terror, and every time she thought she and Sharp were out of danger, something else would happen to make things worse.
Unfortunately, worse seemed to be coming at them from every direction.
Her emotions were all tangled up and not only that, but physically, she was at her limit. At some point soon, her body was going to shut down whether she wanted it to or not. She closed her eyes and dropped her head onto her hands.
“Hey, you okay?”
She pulled her hands away from her face. Sharp was crouched on the ground in front of her.
“Just running out of gas. I thought medical school was bad, but this is...worse by an order of magnitude.”
He nodded. “Yeah, this kind of constant-alert shit will kick your ass in short order. Have another nap before this place gets busy.”
“I thought I was okay, until I had more than two seconds of quiet, then I couldn’t even stand anymore.” Tears leaked out to wet her face, which made her feel even more inadequate and weak.
One of his big hands reached out to brush the wetness off her cheeks.
He frowned and felt her forehead. “Grace, you’re burning up.”