Wind River Protector

by Lindsay McKenna

  Groaning, Dev said, “I’ve been waiting for this moment all day.” He sank into the water near her. “Feel good to your feet?” he asked, meeting her shadowed eyes.

  “My feet are barking. I don’t know about yours, but this is heaven.” Well, almost heaven. She couldn’t stop herself from gazing one last time at his mouth, one of his many delicious features. Last night, despite how exhausted she was, she’d dreamed of kissing Dev. And it wasn’t a peck on the cheek. It was hot, juicy and filled with many promises to come.

  “We don’t know how much we sit around until we’re on our feet for unrelieved hours,” he said, sluicing the water across his face.

  Trying to ignore the water trickling down his strong neck and onto his powerful chest, the way some droplets caught in the red hair, she felt her lower body clench. How many times had she thought about what it would feel like to slide her fingertips through that silky hair that only made him look more intensely masculine? Way too many. She pulled her thoughts back to his earlier comment. “We do sit a lot. I think if I was a waitress, on my feet eight hours a day, they’d hurt too. My mother hates sitting around for too long. She’s usually up and out of her desk chair every twenty minutes or so. She’s restless.”

  “I think Maud’s speech, while short, was the best of all this morning,” he said.

  “All her life, whatever goals she sets, she’s gone after them with passion,” Andy agreed, her voice softening with pride. “She always told us kids never to leap into anything unless our heart’s passion was connected to it. That we had to use that passion as fuel for our engine, ourselves, and lead a life that mattered for our planet and humanity.”

  “She seems to talk in symbols a lot,” Dev murmured, running water through his opened fingers, watching it drop and momentarily glitter in the semidarkness.

  “My mother sees life through a very different lens,” Andy agreed. “My father sees everything through a historical and architectural lens.”

  “Brought up to see symbols and history isn’t such a bad thing,” he said, holding her gaze.

  “No, I loved it. I think and see everything the way they see life. I guess that’s what parents are supposed to do: give their children a grounding, a worldview, so they can successfully navigate life.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, lifting his chin, looking up and out the window toward the swath of Milky Way stars, “that’s true. My dad taught me to survive in the wilderness. We took a trip overnight to the woodlands when I was nine years old. He gave me a compass when I was six years old and taught me how to use it. He gave me a hard copy of a Google map. We had breakfast the next morning over a campfire and then he left. An hour later, I had to follow the map coordinates and locate where he was.”

  “Wow,” Andy said, her eyes widening, “he was serious, wasn’t he?”

  Laughing a little, he said, “Yeah, but I ate it up. I loved being outdoors and being challenged by him. I usually found him. Or he found me because I screwed up on a coordinate and was lost.”

  She gave him a tender smile. “But he always found you, though, didn’t he? You weren’t abandoned.” Even saying the word pinged a sharpened sadness that had never left the inside of her. There wasn’t a day that went by that Andy didn’t remember that she’d been abandoned. No matter how she tried to ignore that hole in her heart, it would never go away. Wanting to change the topic, she asked, “How did your mom see life? What was her lens?”

  “Oh,” he groaned, “she was a three-dimensional chess player.”

  “No!” Andy gasped and sat up. “I love chess! My dad is a chess master! Did you know that?”

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Small world, huh? My mother is a chess master.” He gave her a searching look. “What are the chances we’d both have parents who are that good at chess?”

  She cupped water, sluicing it over her face. “I think the odds are pretty small. That’s incredible, Dev.”

  “I feel strongly that after the crash in Afghanistan, the things my parents taught me as survival skills helped keep us alive. And yours did, too.”

  “That’s amazing,” she said wryly. “When we were out there running for our lives, I was thinking in chess terms. Just knowing all the things my mom taught me about chess calmed me down and helped me stay focused. I looked at the mountains we were traveling through to get down on the other side of that range and find that Army outpost in the valley below. You knew where that firebase was located, had the coordinates, and you had your compass to guide us to it.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, the same compass my dad gave me when I was six years old. I never flew without it, even though we had electronics that did all the math and coordinates for us.”

  “Yeah, but electronics stuff needs to be recharged and can die when you least expect it. That old-fashioned compass wouldn’t die on us out in the middle of nowhere. I’m positive your compass got us back to the firebase.”

  “You bet it did. I couldn’t retrieve my go bag from the Hawk after we crashed; the fire was too big and drove me back. I was lucky to have gotten out at all.” He became pensive. “That was a terrible night, Andy. I’d lost two great friends an hour before I found you. I had a lot of grief inside me, but I knew I couldn’t let it loose. The area we were in was a beehive of Taliban activity in every direction.” Pursing his lips, he offered, “I didn’t expect to survive that crash. I really didn’t. And when I did, then realized where we crashed, I didn’t think we’d get out of there alive.”

  “Honestly? I didn’t either. But you and I ignored the fear and went for broke. I don’t think it’s in our DNA to give up, Dev. We’ll die fighting until our last breath.”

  “You’re right. We’re not the type of people to sit down, cry and feel helpless, giving up without a fight.”

  “Every time your father took you out in the woods, he was developing your instincts in areas you weren’t familiar with. I couldn’t have made it out of there without you at my side.”

  “You brought your own skills to that dance,” he told her, his voice deep with emotion. “I think that ‘chess mind’ that we both have helped us see the best places to climb, or to hide, or to sense where the Taliban might try to bushwhack us, and we avoided those areas. You saw details I didn’t, and they were life-and-death important. Don’t think you weren’t contributing to our escape, because you were.”

  “That’s good to know. Most of the time I was feeling like a third leg, not doing much at all except to try and keep up with the pace you set for us.”

  He reached out, trailing his fingers down her upper arm in a light caress. “You did. Neither of us would have survived without the other’s contributions.”

  Her skin tingled where his fingers had briefly grazed her. His touch was unexpected. Wonderful. Welcomed by her, no question. Her brows drifted downward as she absorbed that light, intimate touch. Although his face was shadowed, she could see the interest burning in his eyes for her. Since their last talk, Dev hadn’t tried to hide so much of how he felt toward her. He rarely touched her, but the expression in his eyes told her everything that lay quietly building between them.

  “Two strangers thrown together in a hellish place where everything was against us,” he said, giving her a sideway glance. “You know what was funny? Not funny ha-ha, but quirky?”

  “What?”

  “When we were making the last run for the firebase, I kept wanting to tell you that you were a great friend to me. I liked you because we worked seamlessly together, as if we were in telepathic contact with each other, like good friends sometimes are. We had five days together, very little speaking because voices carry. I wanted you to be single, not in a relationship. I wanted to ask if you had someone in your life or if you were married.” His mouth twisted and he gave her a dry look. “Of course, I figured you did have a man in your life. Either that or you were married. I finally convinced myself to ask you once we got safely back to the firebase.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “You can tel
l we didn’t share much telepathy between us, even though we truly did work well together on that run.”

  Giving her a quizzical look, Dev asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “By the time we were let inside the base, I wanted to ask you the same things you wanted to ask me.” She saw the surprise in his expression. “I was dying to know more about you, the man, not us in the middle of the crisis. And yes, I thought of you as a good friend, someone who was there for me, who had my back, like friends do.”

  “That is ironic,” he muttered, awe in his tone. He sat up, sluicing his upper body with warm water.

  “But then, at Bagram, they separated us and I never saw you again.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I wanted badly to reconnect with you.”

  Giving her a sad, searching look, he asked, “Did you feel I’d abandoned you? Knowing your mother gave you up puts a different light on what happened between us at Bagram. I’m trying to look through your eyes to see what your reaction might have been to us being split apart.”

  Her heart bloomed with warmth toward him. “You’re the first guy I’ve met who has that kind of depth and self-awareness.”

  “I didn’t know it then,” he apologized, “but I do now. I’m trying to see life through your eyes, not mine. You know that old saying, walk a mile in my shoes?”

  Reaching out, she grazed his wet, slick shoulder, his skin taut and muscles powerful beneath her fingertips. Reluctantly, she lifted her hand away. “I was exhausted,” she whispered unsteadily, “relieved to be alive, but I wanted you beside me. I wanted you near me, Dev.” She blinked back tears that rushed forward, out of nowhere. “I . . . uh . . . yeah, the feeling of being abandoned once again hit me really hard. I tried to argue with myself that you had, after all, seen me through what I considered the worst time in my life, and we got safely back behind the wire.” Ashamed, she quickly wiped her eyes, battling back the unbidden emotional boulder rising up within her. “I tried to find out where you were, later. No one would tell me. I finally got hold of the head nurse, and she told me you’d been ordered back to your squadron. She couldn’t reveal any more than that. If I’d had a squadron number, I could have found you.” Her voice lowered. “Your security clearance was way above mine. It meant they weren’t going to tell me anything. I was so bummed out, Dev. I didn’t even get to thank you. That’s what hurt the most.”

  He murmured her name, enclosing her wet hand within his. “And I’m sure the abandonment felt like a knife going through you.”

  “Through my heart.” Her fingers curled around his as she held his darkened gaze. “I knew we’d shared only five days, but I felt closer to you than to anyone else, except for my parents and siblings. I felt like we were one, working together, in unison, like a good team of plow horses,” and she managed a trembling, slight smile that faintly curved one corner of her mouth.

  The silence settled over them except for the soft, bubbling sounds of the water surrounding them.

  “Are you glad we’re back together again?” he asked her.

  “At first, I was shocked it was you. And then? I’d never felt so happy.”

  He squeezed her fingers and released them. “I felt the same way. I’d given up on finding you. I think the hardest thing I’d ever done was to let go of the idea that I’d find you someday.”

  Nodding, she whispered, “I’m not sorry we’ve met again, Dev. You make me feel good because you treat everyone fairly. I like that you’re self-aware, and you try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Those are important traits I’ve always wanted in a man but have never found.”

  “Until now,” he rumbled, holding her glistening gaze.

  “Until now,” she agreed, clearing her throat.

  “And with the craziness of everything going on with opening up the airport, getting this new medevac business on its feet, we’re all running hard and there’s barely any time to breathe, much less have downtime to just savor life.”

  Rolling her eyes, she said, “Oh, all of that.”

  “I think, from what your dad said to me one time, that everything slows down from Mach 3 with our hair on fire to January molasses from Vermont in the fall. Maybe then we’ll have more time when we can do some things we enjoy doing together.”

  “September is when the snow starts flying,” she warned him. “Yes, everything in this valley slows to a crawl from September through May. It’s our eight months of winter.”

  “What would you like to do if we get a day off together?”

  “That’s easy. I love hiking. There are some fabulous areas in the Salt and Wilson Ranges.”

  “And you probably know them by heart?”

  She grinned. “Yeah, I do. My parents took us kids out every weekend to the mountains. Sometimes, we trailered our horses and rode specific trails. Other times, it was hiking in and out on foot. We would leave on a Saturday morning, pitch our tents, sleep out overnight and hike back to the trailhead on Sunday morning. We loved those months and always looked forward to our weekends.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You mentioned earlier that at the crash you came to see me as your friend?”

  “A close friend,” she corrected. “Yes, the more time we spent together, the more I recognized that we worked well together. There was so little talking, but I saw again and again how you seemed to know what to do next, or get me to follow your hand signals, that it felt like I was with my best friend. I didn’t know how you knew about me, Dev, but you did. I’m a very visual person, and you automatically seemed to know that. You’d draw a trail or where we were going in the dirt, showing me what you wanted us to do next.”

  “You were a combat pilot,” he offered. “They’re visual. They have to be.”

  Nodding, she said, “It was smart of you to realize that. But you were a Night Stalker pilot, so you’re very visual, too.”

  “True,” he said, “but my senses told me you needed to see, not have it told to you.”

  “Yeah, I’m really tired of mansplaining. A map drawn in the dirt was a very good way to communicate clearly and effectively with me.”

  “Anyone who ejects out of a jet has my admiration. I knew you were used to HUDS, heads-up displays, and other consoles with maps or targeting something, and I needed to reach you without words.”

  Propping her elbows on her drawn-up knees, she held his gaze. “Now I wonder about ‘what if.’ What if we hadn’t been separated in the ER? What if we’d been able to reconnect sooner? What then?”

  “I was going to find out if you were single and available. Like you, Andy, I felt like you were my combat buddy on a SERE: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape mission.”

  “Oh, SERE.” She wrinkled her nose with utter distaste.

  “We were assigned a buddy and then we had to escape together.”

  “I see what you’re saying now. I hated SERE. I got hooked up with a guy who didn’t have the nerve it took to get through capture and evasion. He always wanted to quit and surrender.”

  “Bad example, then,” Dev agreed. “But you were the ideal SERE buddy, Andy. I wanted to tell you that. I try not to look at women as being the ‘weaker sex’ that all guys are brainwashed into believing. You were strong, smart and just as motivated as I was to get the hell out of there alive. And every day that passed, I had more and more respect for your intelligence, the details you saw that made a huge difference to us on the run.”

  “You didn’t try to boss me around like a lot of other male pilots have in the past,” she muttered, frowning, remembering those intense days in flight training.

  “From the get-go, you were right there.”

  “I saw myself as your wingman,” she teased, smiling a little. “I took care of what was following and chasing us. You took care of the compass directions, what was in front of us, the route we needed to take to get up and over that mountain range.”

  “I began to lose the wingman symbol,” he admitted, “the third day into our escape and evasion. Yo
u were like an old friend who knew me as few ever had. It blew me away, Andy. You had to have remarkable sensing about me in order to trust me.”

  “I did,” and she looked around the moist, humid tiled room. “I’ve always had what I consider a paranormal sense about some situations and people. My senses are heightened, my hearing is beyond human range at those times, and so is my sense of smell.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “I attribute it to the adrenaline pouring into my bloodstream.”

  “Everything becomes more intense and beyond normal human ranges in emergencies,” Dev said, nodding. “But your skills in those areas saved our bacon a number of times.”

  “Remember when I smelled tea on the night air?”

  “Yes. And we halted, hid behind some large bushes and tried to locate what direction it was coming from.”

  “And I did. It was a group of Taliban getting ready to go to bed. They were having a final cup of tea before hitting the sack.”

  “Yes, and you sussed the area out, hand singling me which way to go so we didn’t alert them to our presence. I was amazed that you could smell that tea on the air. I sure didn’t.”

  “We all have our skills,” Andy said. “You had your compass and I had my nose. My mom always told us kids that the secret to any good relationship started with a solid friendship. She said she was friends with Steve and it eventually led to marriage.”

  Grinning, Dev laughed. “Good advice. But you also have a wolf nose, Andy. You sensed very accurately where the groups tracking us were located. That helped us figure out where to go next instead of running into them by mistake.”

  “It was a brutal time for us,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Even now, I wonder how we got through it. I really do.”

  “I think part of it was our natural compatibility with each other,” he suggested.

  “And we respected what we each brought to the table,” Andy said, nodding.