First to Burn (10 page)

The enlisted woman’s forehead wrinkled. “Can I walk you to sick call? Or your hut?”

Both would be empty at dinner. She wanted people, a lot of them. “I should eat. Maybe the dining facility...”

“I’m headed to the DFAC myself, ma’am.”

Theresa glanced at the bundled uniform left behind on the bench as she locked the door. For now, the women’s shower was probably the safest place for the stained shirt. As she descended the three steps to ground level, the other woman’s hand hovered next to Theresa’s elbow. From the corner of her eye, Theresa saw the watcher sidle away between two prefabs.

“Thanks for your help.” She meant those words more than the other woman could imagine.

* * *

Wulf’s first two servings of ravioli had disappeared by the time Theresa entered the chow hall with a female private. Not likely she’d confide in someone that junior, so he let himself absorb her while she paused in front of the tray rack. Her hair was darker and smoother. Wet, from a shower. They’d been doing the same thing in different places. Maybe they’d been thinking about the same thing too.

Of course they had. He’d been thinking about her, and no doubt she’d been freaking out about him and what she’d seen.

“Going to talk to her?” Cruz asked from his left.

“Here?” He watched her hands hover over the silverware baskets. Those hands hadn’t hesitated when she’d worked on Nazdana or him.

“No way, dude,” Kahananui interrupted from his other side.

“He’s good to go.” Cruz argued. “I can tell he puts the salsa in Doc’s tacos.”

“My life, fucked up by committee.” Craving more fat and sugar, Wulf shoveled vanilla ice cream down his throat. “Got more brilliant advice?”

“Don’t let her think too much,” Cruz said. “Women get worked up real fast about shit.”

She made her way to the hot chow line. Her hair probably smelled like oranges again. If he talked to her, the scent would carry him to Karachi. Part of him wanted that hit, like a rush of adrenaline to his soul instead of to his muscles, but part of him knew he should stay in his seat.

He was a trained killing machine afraid of smelling a woman’s shampoo...

“I live with four women.” The Big Kahuna held up a hand with the thumb folded down. “My wife, her mother—” he wiggled two hot-dog-size fingers.

“So that’s why you volunteered for this unit,” Cruz muttered.

“—and our girls. I’m saying, privacy’s a big-f-deal. I told Jewel about that tenth-anniversary cruise in a takeout line, and I did not hear the end of it for two damn months. You got to find private space if you’re serious about some please-be-quiet magic. The dining facility is not the spot to talk, I’m saying.”

“Gentlemen, just because I’m not married and I won’t help Cruz pick up twenty-five-year-old twins on the internet doesn’t mean I lack a working knowledge of women.” Wulf knew very well how to engage and entertain the softer gender. He also knew the cost of caring, something Cruz and Kahananui couldn’t advise him how to avoid.

Theresa slid to the end of the line with her empty tray, past the cordon bleu the server had automatically held out to her.

“He could ask her to step outside.” Cruz leaned across Wulf’s chest to argue with Kahananui. “Parking lot’s usually quiet during chow.”

Wulf tilted his shoulders to see around Cruz. Theresa had paused before the salad bar.

“Earth to Cruz—that, booga, is why you haven’t done a horizontal hula in nine months.”

“We’ve been here seven!”

Soldiers behind Theresa stepped around her to reach the lettuce, but she didn’t move.

“My point,” Kahananui shot back. “You wasted two months at home because you don’t know a parking lot from a—”

He didn’t know what he’d say, but the way she seemed to vibrate with tension convinced him he had a chance to persuade her to remain quiet. He would beg, if that’s what it took, because if he couldn’t win her over, the ride to the border Deavers had arranged for him might have to pull double duty as his final exit.

* * *

The salad bar wouldn’t answer her questions no matter how long Theresa stared. A jostle at her shoulder cued her to take a plate and pretend to the normal motions. No one freaked over cherry tomatoes, although she remembered a guy who’d lost it when the cooler ran out of his favorite sports drink. He’d kicked the metal sides and screamed while half the mess occupants worried he’d shoot the fridge. The other half had cheered him on until his platoon leader hauled him out. Stuck here, it wasn’t nuts to imagine an out-of-stock beverage becoming the last straw.

Tonight nothing in the hot line or the salad bar appealed, so she turned to the ice-cream cooler. For the first time since she’d entered the building, she glanced at the room.

Wulf sat facing her at his team’s usual table.

Her breath stuck in her chest, but her heart dropped the opposite direction to her stomach. She’d been so relieved that the special ops sergeant hadn’t followed her, she hadn’t bothered to wonder about his team, and the joke was on her. Plates and bowls littered Wulf’s table like detritus from an Atlantic City eating contest. Even though barely more than two hours had passed since the killer shot through his vest armhole, the goat-cheese color of his skin had returned to a healthy flush, and he was as whole as any of the other soldiers. He was perfect.

Slow, deep breaths, that’s what she told patients and reminded herself. She couldn’t lose her shit. Not here, not publicly.

Two of his team argued across him, but they faded around the edges as he filled her vision. She felt as if a zip line linked them. If she didn’t go to him, he’d careen over here to swoop her away and everything—her hold on that scream, her promotion, her references, her future, everything she wanted—would end.

Another bump, this one against her hip, encouraged her to stop blocking the drinks.

As soon as she moved, Wulf stood.

She whirled and shoved her empty tray at the return slot, but missed. While the clatter of the tray hitting the floor echoed behind her, her palms slammed the exit door hard enough to jar her teeth. For once the darkness offered more security than the light behind her.

Under her feet, gravel crunched loud enough to hear over the generators. Or maybe her hearing had sharpened from the adrenaline pumping through her system.

The door squeaked behind her. For an instant the clattering of pans and blur of voices increased as another person left dinner.

She sped around the corner and smacked into something. Correction, someone
.

“Doc.” The voice belonged to Chris Deavers, Wulf’s commander. He gripped her left arm. Doors in the two long sides of the building had overhead lights, and the kitchen at the opposite end had a lit fire exit, but she and Chris stood in a dark pocket created by the windowless wall that supported the dining room’s giant television.

“Let go.” She pulled sideways, straining to hear whether whoever had left the mess was coming.

“Can’t do that,” the Special Forces captain said, his voice clipped.

She opened her mouth to argue, but he must’ve thought she intended to scream, because she suddenly found herself spun in a one-eighty, legs and feet twisted weird directions. His hand slammed over her mouth as he jerked her arm behind her back and up, and
fuck
,
that hurt.

“Ease it, boss.” Wulf’s voice lashed out of the dark. “She’s not the enemy.”

Chris released her so abruptly she crashed into the end of the building.

Wulf stepped between his commander and her, hands held in front of him as if prepared to fight.

Oh please
,
God
,
no.
She flattened herself to the wall. Having a married officer and an enlisted man brawling over her would be the hottest gossip in ten deployment cycles.

Chris retreated and dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets as if waking up. In front of her, Wulf’s shoulders relaxed.

“You’re toast, both of you.” Her inadequate threat was further weakened by her croak. Their combined stares didn’t help her recover, but after scrubbing her hand across her mouth where Chris had stifled her, she tried again. “Let me put it more clearly. You’re fucked. You better kill me and clean it up extremely well, because in three minutes I’m calling a lawyer at JAG and reporting you.” She glared while she massaged her shoulder. “For
assault.
”

“Wulf hasn’t done anything wrong. Just me. I’m sorry. I’m really—shit.” Chris grabbed his head. “I don’t know. Everything went red. Oh God, I’m sorry, Doc.” He seemed as genuinely horrified as the surgical nurse Theresa had known during her residency who’d neglected to count used clamps until after the appendectomy had been closed.

The weight of his career hung between them.

“I know it’s no excuse. I should never have grabbed you, never. But it feels like I haven’t breathed since everything went down today. I’m sorry.”

The fact that Chris was apologizing instead of threatening her went a long way toward making her decision. “Leave,” she ordered. “Just leave me alone.”

“I screwed up.” He turned to Wulf. “Ninety minutes and ticking until your ride’s here. Make it count.” He stumbled around the corner.

Wulf remained. “Hey.” The shadows were too dark to decipher his expression, but that single syllable, spoken low and slow, carried a familiar warmth. “You didn’t eat before you ran out.” He held out an orange wrapped in a paper napkin. “Here.”

She ignored his offering. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” The hand with the orange fell to his side. “I’m fine. Isn’t that the problem?”

“I don’t mean...that.” She waved her hand in the air, uncertain how to describe what she’d seen in the helicopter. “I mean tonight. The sergeant watching me. You, following me. Chris, just now. What’s going on?”

“The captain’s handling a lot. I’ve never seen him flip like that, but he knows he made a huge mistake.” He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. “You do like oranges, don’t you?”

“Chris was bad cop and now you’re good cop?”

“Not at all.” There was enough light to see him dig a thumb into the fruit and pull off a chunk of peel. “You have a secret clearance? Standard for officers?”

“Uh-huh.” She licked her lips and tried not to watch his hands as he unveiled the orange’s flesh. The pith glowed in the faint light at this end of the building.

“You know what level clearance we have?” He stowed a handful of peel in his pocket.

She shook her head. Her mouth felt drier as the citrus scent reached her, and she yearned for a taste, but asking would be tantamount to surrender.

“Top secret with sensitive compartmentalized information access,” he said.

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“You need to understand there are things my team knows, things we do, that we legally cannot tell you. Things the president or secretary of defense tells our chain of command directly and that neither you nor anyone else, not even Congress, is allowed to know.” He inserted his thumbs into the end of the orange and pulled. As it separated into two hemispheres, a mist of juice sprayed the air and landed on her cheeks and lips, as fine as dew. “We could go to jail for discussing those things. So could you.”

“Today...” Was he trying to explain why no one had talked to her in the helicopter?

He nodded. “Now you know one of those things. Here.” He held out a section to her.

The orange scent that enveloped her was already strong enough to taste, so she might as well accept. It burst with flavor in her mouth, sweetness after a day of hell, and strengthened her urge to push on. “That’s not enough of an explanation.”

“Ask away.” He handed her a second slice of orange. “I can’t promise to answer.”

“You were shot today?” She continued even as he nodded. “And the other times?”

He nodded again.

“And your body repaired itself completely?”

Another silent affirmative.

“Is this...” While she considered her phrasing, she accepted two more orange sections. Their taste reminded her of sunshine. “Are you part of a medical experiment?”

He nodded a fourth time.

“The others?”

He shook his head. So it was only him.

“This is ridiculous. I suck at charades.” Although she wanted to tell him to stuff his crapload of games and contradictions into the holding tank of a porta-john, the compulsion to unravel this mystery overwhelmed her frustration. “Is this a drug trial?”

He parried her question with one of his own. “Are you familiar with hemoglobin?”

“The iron-containing metalloprotein in red blood cells? A little.”
More like a lot.
Curiosity built in her chest, threatening to bubble over as she leaned toward Wulf. After her hypoxia sickness on the first hike to Nazdana’s village, she’d never admit that her thesis had focused on isolating a genetic mutation that allowed certain mammals to survive at extremely high altitudes. Hemoglobin, which assisted in carrying blood oxygen, had been a key factor in her research, but she didn’t see how it could’ve caused Wulf’s abnormally rapid healing. “If it’s a research project, I’d love to help. Can I report on today to—”

“Whoa, Doc.” He raised his hand, palm out, and shook his head. “You can’t talk about what happened. It’s above your clearance, way above. You shouldn’t even think about it.”

“You think I can forget?”

“You have to.”

“A treatment that can repair injuries nearly instantly? Do you know how many lives could be—”

He leaned so close she could smell hints of Italian seasoning from his dinner, and she realized she was famished as well as excited.

“It’s no longer available.” The flat tone of his voice almost stopped her.

“But someone could—”

“The source is dead.”

Four short words, spoken so slowly they carried enough weight to crush her excitement, her hunger and maybe even her breathing.

“Go pack. You’re out of here, remember. Don’t think about me again.”

As if she could control her thoughts. Tonight she’d honor his request and let it go, because tomorrow she was scheduled to boogie out of Caddie, but like hell would she drop it.