Chapter 2 #3
“Possibly. I’ll talk to the commander,” Mustang said. “If someone is out there pretending to be a SEAL, that shit needs to be nipped in the bud.”
“Agreed,” Slate said.
“Keep your heads down. I’ll be in touch when things calm down. Might be a few hours,” Mustang said.
“Ten-four.”
“Over and out.”
Pid hadn’t looked away from Monica. It was more than obvious not much got by her. Many people would dismiss her because of her size and gender, but the intelligence and perception in her gaze were easy to see…if you were looking.
“So we’re staying here for a while?” she asked.
“Yeah. Mustang knows where we are and he’ll send in a chopper as soon as it’s safe,” Slate said.
“How?”
“How what?” Pid asked.
Monica looked at him. “How does your friend know where we are?”
“We’ve got trackers,” Slate said.
Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “You let the government put trackers inside you?” she asked in disbelief.
Pid chuckled. “Hell no. But when we’re on a mission, we’ve learned the importance of our teammates knowing where we are at all times if we’re separated.” He reached into a pocket of his vest and pulled out a piece of metal about the size of a quarter. “Tracker.”
“What if your vest comes off? Or is stolen?” she asked.
Slate pointed to his boot.
“And if your boots are taken?”
She was like a dog with a bone. But she was dead right.
Someone had taught her to not only be wary, but distrustful…
and a bit about military tactics as well.
“We have a friend who’s somewhat of an expert with trackers.
He works independently from the government, and we’re more than happy to let him track us when we’re deployed. ”
Monica sat forward, curiosity obviously getting the better of her. “How?”
“We’d tell you, but then we’d have to kill you,” Slate joked.
Every muscle in Pid’s body tightened. He was going to beat the shit out of Slate for saying something like that. The woman already distrusted them, and that comment wouldn’t help.
To his surprise, Monica chuckled once more.
Shit. Slate had made her laugh twice now.
Pid wanted to be the one to coax that dimple out.
“Injected or swallowed?” she asked with uncanny insight.
“Swallowed,” Slate admitted without hesitation.
“But it’ll only stay in your stomach a day or so. That’s not going to be much help in a long-term deployment,” she said.
Pid sat back and listened as she and Slate talked. Monica was turning out to be utterly fascinating.
“True. But this tracker doesn’t stay in our stomachs. It gets into our bloodstream and swims around for up to two weeks before it dissolves completely. I don’t understand the science behind it, but our friend’s a genius.”
“And you have a backup in case your mission takes longer than two weeks?” she asked.
Slate nodded.
She breathed out a sigh and leaned back against the wall. “That’s scary smart,” she observed.
“Yup,” Slate agreed. “Tex is one guy who I’m glad is on our side.”
“You’re sure about him being on your side? He could sell you out. There are lots of people and governments who would love to get their hands on a SEAL team.”
“One hundred-thousand percent,” Slate said without hesitation.
Monica didn’t comment.
The three sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the distant shouts of the rioters in the neighborhood nearby.
“So…your nicknames are weird,” Monica said after a few more minutes.
Pid wasn’t offended. On the contrary, he was thrilled she’d initiated some sort of conversation. “They could be worse,” he said with a shrug.
“Worse than Stu-pid?” she asked, emphasizing the second part of the word.
“Yup,” he insisted.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Twinkie,” Slate offered.
“Pig,” Pid said.
“Fart,” Slate added.
“Shut up,” Monica said with a shake of her head. “You’re making those names up.”
“I’m not,” Slate insisted. “A guy I went to bootcamp with was saddled with the name Fart, and deservedly so. The kid passed gas so much, something had to be wrong with his innards. I’m talking silent but deadly farts too. Ones so awful, the entire barracks wanted to throw up.”
There was that dimple again. Pid was coming to terms with the fact that he sucked at making her smile, too fascinated by the small feature to care.
“Remember Slug?” Pid asked Slate.
“Of course. That asshole was the laziest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met.”
Pid turned to Monica. “I was actually relieved when Pid caught on. Growing up, I’d been called Little and Mouse so much, I learned to loathe them both. I’m not sure I could’ve stomached being called either of those for the rest of my life.”
“Stuart Little?” she asked.
Pid winced and nodded.
“But it’s such a cute movie,” she protested with a small twitch of her lips. It wasn’t enough to bring out that dimple, but Pid was counting it as a win anyway.
He purposely shuddered, shaking his head. “No. Just no,” he said.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Stuart,” she said. “I refuse to call you by that stupid nickname.”
And just like that, Pid wished things were different. Wished they’d met at the grocery store back in Hawaii. Or maybe on the beach. Hell, he even wished she’d jumped on his head, like Kenna did to Aleck when they’d first met.
But in a few hours, he’d say goodbye and most likely never see Monica Collins again.
It was really too bad; she was the first woman in a very long time to catch his interest. There were so many layers to the woman, he’d need a lifetime to peel them all back.
Which made him mourn for something he’d never had in the first place.
“What?” she asked, using the belligerent tone he’d first heard from her.
Pid shrugged. “You can call me whatever you want.”
She stared at him for what seemed like an emotionally charged moment before quietly saying, “Whatever.”
“What happened to your hand?” Slate asked in the awkward silence that followed.
Pid held his breath. For once in his life, he was damn glad for Slate’s lack of social skills.
“You’re kind of rude,” Monica told him.
Slate shrugged. “Think of me like one of your kids. Straight to the point, sayin’ it like it is.”
She snorted. “Right. You’re nothing like the kids I look after. You’re a military guy.”
“You say that with such disdain,” Slate said. “I might get a complex.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Monica retorted with a roll of her eyes.
“So anyway, your hand? You get hungry one day and gnaw off your fingers?” Slate asked.
Pid wasn’t surprised at his friend’s silly joke. He was trying to bait her into talking.
“No. My father wanted to teach me a lesson, so he made me hold a doorjamb and he slammed a steel door on them.” Her voice was almost monotone.
Pid gasped in surprise. Anger closely followed.
Monica kept talking in the same unemotional voice, as if it didn’t matter one way or another how it had happened.
“My fingers were shattered and the skin had broken open. The next day, he told me to stop being a baby and took me hunting. Told me we’d stay out in the cold until I shot a deer.
No eating. No going home. It took two days, since I was left-handed and had to shoot with my right.
Then he made me skin and dress it before we went home. ”
“Holy fuck,” Pid breathed, too appalled to say anything else. He literally couldn’t imagine anyone doing that to their own child.
“How old were you, and what lesson was he trying to teach you?” Slate asked quietly.
“Ten. Earlier that day, he’d been running me through the obstacle course he’d built on our land, and when I couldn’t get up the vertical climb, I asked him for help.
He went to the top and helped me up and over it, but later, after he’d crushed my hand, he told me that asking for help came with consequences.
Always. And my consequence was my dominant hand getting smashed.
“Anyway, not surprisingly, after field dressing the deer, my hand got infected. But Dad taught me well. I didn’t ask for help.
A month later, he told me to get in the car.
I didn’t ask why. He took me to the hospital.
There were lots of questions, but Dad deflected them all.
My fingers were amputated…and that was that. ”
“I don’t like your father,” Slate said after a long pause.
Monica snorted. “Join the club.”
There was so much more Pid wanted to know. Where was her father now? Where had her mother been while her dad was abusing her? Did she have siblings? Why did her dad make an obstacle course? Where had she grown up?
Her hatred for all things military was beginning to make sense. Pid assumed her dad had some connection to the military. Which branch wasn’t clear, but he supposed it didn’t matter.
He wanted to reassure Monica that she could ask him for help and there would never be any strings attached, but he had a feeling now wasn’t the time or place. Besides, the clock was ticking on their acquaintance. Dammit.
But he couldn’t just sit there and say nothing.
“I give you my word, I’m gonna get you out of this country safely,” he said, his voice a low promise.
Monica merely shrugged.
Pid wasn’t happy. Not at all. He’d never felt as frustrated as he did right that moment. He didn’t know what to say to make this woman feel better. He wanted to comfort her, reassure her…wanted to beat the shit out of her father. But all he could do was give her the space she so obviously wanted.
It stung. A lot.
He wasn’t so conceited to think that everyone he came into contact with would look at him with admiration in their eyes.
He might not be able to make Monica Collins trust military men again, but he’d be damned if he’d do anything that would perpetuate her uneasy feelings toward him or anyone else who fought for their country.
That thought brought him back to the asshole who was pretending to be a SEAL.
The man who’d scared her earlier that night.
Who’d taken advantage of the current instability to pillage.
There was even a good chance if he’d found Monica’s hiding spot, he might’ve assaulted her. And that was fucking unacceptable.
Pid was proud to be a SEAL. He’d worked damn hard to earn his Budweiser pin. He might not be in Monica’s life for long, but he’d do what he could to prove to her that at least one military man was honorable.