Midnight Trust

by M. L. Buchman

  No, she didn’t need to belong. And each step she took closer to Chad was just going to make it harder when she left.

  What had she been thinking when she kissed him?

  Mission. Get back on the mission.

  Tanya unslung her rifle and did a fast patrol, leaving Chad to untangle himself. At every turn, topiaries confronted her. Incan heads rose twice her height in a line. A massive mausoleum made of topiary rose in a three-story edifice. Things that might have been snails or hedgehogs watched her as she moved.

  She finally found an exit from the bewildering maze. It opened onto a wide green lawn with no gravestones—still hedged in on all sides by the monstrous topiaries. At the far corner was the exit to the surrounding city. Before she could slip across the lawn to peer out at what part of the city they’d have to cross, people began streaming in. Some had lanterns, others flashlights. Within moments, a small band was playing music and people were spreading out blankets and late suppers. No way to tell if it was a religious celebration, a party, or simply dinnertime on whatever day this was.

  More people kept coming. Soon, they were expanding beyond the green square of grass. Some people were dancing, others walking arm in arm. Several couples lay curled together more intimately on their blankets while they enjoyed the music. The Latinos were such a demonstrative race. In Israel, holding hands didn’t happen at all except among the rebellious teens—and not even very often then. Here it was unusual not to.

  Small family groups began wandering the cemetery’s pathways.

  Tanya faded back fast, retracing her route to Chad.

  “We have to hide.”

  Some things a Special Operations soldier didn’t need to be told twice.

  In moments they had ducked under the feet of a topiary that might have been a giant Angry Bird…or maybe one of the green pigs they were so angry at.

  Either way, it made their hide above the river where they spotted la Capitana seem generous. Tanya’s leg was crossed over Chad’s. Their bodies were pressed together from shoulder to hip. Neither of them could draw their rifles even if they had to. It was dark and smelled richly loamy under the hedge where the air had seemed dry and drawn thin with the altitude in the open.

  “Well, this is fun,” Chad’s whisper had a teasing laugh behind it.

  “What is it with you and sex?”

  “What’s wrong with sex?”

  Nothing as far as Tanya was concerned, she just didn’t make a joke of it every moment. Maybe if she and Chad had sex—something meaningless and mind-numbing—then they’d be done with all this. Or she’d be hooked worse than some cokehead dope-fiend.

  Chad twisted until they lay face to face so smoothly that not a single leaf or branch rustled. Their parachute harnesses were crammed under the edge of a pinch-faced gnome who squatted as the next topiary over. Now, only their clothes separated them—their South American, summer-weight clothes. Her leg, which had been casually hooked over his, was now wrapped around the back of his thighs, drawing them even closer together than the cramped space called for.

  Again that breathtakingly light touch of Chad’s fingers brushed over her knife, but this time it didn’t linger there for long. Instead, it traced a line as smooth as a serpent, tracking over buttock, hip, dipping down around her shoulder before circling back to her breast. Her body leaned into his palm even though she knew it was a mistake.

  “Mistakes aren’t supposed to feel so good.”

  The brush of his lips on hers was even lighter than his touch. “Am I a mistake?” His whisper tickled her ear as he nuzzled it.

  “In so many ways.” Yet, her own traitorous hand began exploring his chest. It was even more well-toned than she remembered. She slid a little deeper into the topiary so that she could lay her face against that chest. It also forced his hand to other places. Of all ludicrous things, he cupped that big hand of his into her hair and held her gently against his chest. Not aggressive or controlling—supportive.

  In the stillness she could hear couples chatting softly as they moved along the walkways. A nearby topiary rustled loudly as a woman giggled—a giggle that shifted to a moan of delight. They didn’t seem to care who saw or heard them. Tanya tried to imagine the innocence of soul necessary for a woman to giggle. She couldn’t. It was too foreign. Sexual play could be erotic, wild, gentle, soothing, but it was never cause for something like that giggle that broke out again into the night.

  “Someone’s having fun,” Chad whispered in her ear.

  For half a second she took it as an insult, as if he wasn’t. Or maybe it was just Chad’s teasing observation—not teasing her, but the other couple.

  He wanted fun did he?

  Tough!

  It was her turn to have fun. Her turn not to be losing teammates, falling out of helicopters, or crashing motorcycles. Her turn not to be the teased.

  And nothing sounded better at the moment than torturing Chad.

  She let loose a sub-vocalized groan—that wasn’t quite as much pretended as she meant it to be—just enough for him to feel it with their bodies pressed so tightly together. Then she slid a hand back down the exact route he’d followed up her body: magnificent pecs, around his shoulder blade, and over hip and buttock. She felt his breathing hitch as she traced her finger around the edge of his knife sheath. Instead of something particularly fancy or nasty, he wore a traditional Ka-Bar knife. An old one by the feel of it.

  “What is down with this?” She ran her fingers over it again.

  “Up with this.”

  “Up with this.”

  “Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Wollson.” His voice almost went dead.

  She left her hand there and waited for him to say something more.

  He buried his face in her hair and gave his head the tiniest of negative shakes.

  Tanya tapped the knife sheath with her finger hard enough that he’d feel it. She wasn’t even sure why she did it. What did she care if the man had secrets? She just wanted to play with his body. Torture him with a little fun.

  But she waited.

  With his face still nuzzled against the top of her head, he wrapped those big arms around her shoulders and back and pulled her in so tightly that it was difficult to breathe. Then he inhaled, as if he was breathing her in. His chest pressed against hers. His heady scent of pure, well-deserved testosterone-laden maleness reminded her of her original goal. She didn’t care about his knife, she cared about his body and just what she could do with it.

  She slid her hand once more around the long sheath of his blade, feeling the echo on her own thigh of when he’d done the same around her Ari B’Lilah. As her hand moved away, he reached down and clamped it in place.

  Tanya was strong. Far stronger than the average woman. Stronger than most men, even most military men. Against Chad’s strength, she couldn’t have moved her hand if her life depended on it.

  He breathed her in hard once more until his expanding chest threatened to crush her against his encircling arm.

  “I stripped his body.”

  She couldn’t read a single emotion in his voice.

  “That war-torn old bastard kept me alive on the streets back when I was a dumbshit kid. Half his brain was gone. Cracker musta been seventy by the time I met him, and he was still living in the Vietnam jungle in his head. Never came out of it, I guess. I was a skinny waste of space working as a drug runner out of Coleman Airport. Wollson was really old, but still as big as a house. For three years we worked out together every day. Hours of it. He’d tell me we had to be ready when the pajama people came down the trail. Only ever saw one guy in black pajamas—a Latino delivery driver for one of the gangs who didn’t know better and thought he was swaggering. Wollson almost beat him to death.”

  And Chad could feel the darkness of the Street—despite the brilliant light of the woman lying quiet in his arms.

  A couple decades back, the area of Detroit between Gratiot and Rosemary was vying for worst neighborhood in America—and d
oing a fine job of it.

  “Three in twenty used to die there every year. Every seventh person. Every year. And don’t think I’m forgetting that I’m now seventh man on this team. Not saying I didn’t put down my fair share, but I never did anyone that the justice system—if it had worked at all—wouldn’t ha’ done the same to.” He could feel his voice slipping into Street patterns—ones he normally kept buried very deep. He struggled to pull himself back from that. It was an inner darkness that was still far too easy to find.

  Tanya lay quiet. Listening. Listening to a story he’d never told. It was weird to be telling it here. Crouched in the darkness fit…too well. But the warm, lithe woman in his arms didn’t. The happy, gasping moans nearby. The music pattering across the night air.

  “Wollson taught me that they were just using me ’til I was caught or gunned down. Then they’d just find another joeboy. He’s the one who kept me straight. Taught me to be smart. And he taught me to fight. I watched the gangs and the drugs chew up a lot of friends.”

  “As much as the Street even lets you have friends,” Tanya’s voice whispered with understanding.

  “Yeah. As much as.” Chad kept his face in her white-blonde hair. Despite the darkness, he knew it was there, how it caught the wind, how it framed her lovely face.

  Maybe that was what gave Tanya such power over him—she was so damn memorable.

  “He went down hard. Some up-and-comer chose the wrong old man to harass on the Street, showing off to his friends. Wollson took him down and five more besides. I kept his knife, the only thing he had left other than his pride at being a Marine.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Took me three months to locate and air out the rest of the gang. The last two hid deep, even knowing there was no escape—had to go to Memphis to put them down.”

  “Why aren’t you a Marine?”

  Chad could almost laugh about it now, though he’d considered taking down the Marine recruiter at the time. “Wouldn’t have me. I was a street shit who lied about my age—never once thinking they’d actually check. No record because Wollson had taught me to be careful, but they didn’t want squat to do with me. Still wouldn’t touch me at eighteen because they kept a record that I’d lied and they didn’t want ‘my kind.’ Went Green Berets the next day. Thought I was gonna be John Wayne.”

  “Who?’

  “What?”

  She clamped a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.

  “Moo mea fuk mif Hon Hayne?” This couldn’t be happening. He shoved her hand aside, but kept his voice down. “How can you be the perfect woman if you don’t know who John Wayne is?”

  Tanya giggled.

  She couldn’t believe that she was doing it, but she actually giggled—very quietly.

  Chad had just spilled out his heart about his past—even worse than hers if you ignored the occasional rape attempts. (Some of which had been close and ended bloody. Twice she’d left corpses behind.) And what he’d gotten upset about was when she pretended to not know about the Duke? How much more charming could the man be?

  She’d thought to tease him to the edge of insanity using sex as they lay beneath a topiary in the middle of a crowded cemetery. It was a weapon that had never failed her.

  Instead she kissed him. Kissed him until his protests died. Kissed him until he stopped thinking about anything except her.

  He may have shot her—twice—but he was such a good man in so many ways. He too had scraped himself up off the Street and made himself who he was today.

  There wasn’t enough room to undress here; besides, the low branches and ground detritus would prickle when out of their clothes. But that didn’t slow down Chad. He teased and enticed her body until all she could hear was her ragged breath and her racing heart. Not once did he break the kiss she’d initiated. She’d locked her arms around his neck and hadn’t let go. Not because she wanted to pin him there. She wanted, she needed to feel his mouth on her. She clamped onto him because it was the sole anchor in the storm he aroused in her.

  When he at long last slid his hand down her front, beneath her underclothes, the heat of his touch burned. It burned and escalated until even the sounds of heart and blood ceased and all that remained was his touch. His kiss. Her need. Her—

  Her releases, on the rare occasions when she found them, were soft rides. An easy shudder that smoothed out her thoughts and her nerves.

  With Chad, her mind blanked. Her body bucked as if trying to escape. Or get closer, which was impossible. His kiss and his palm against her were all that existed for her until they escalated her past reason.

  The Tanya Zimmer she knew never lost control. Ever.

  Not even when they’d been lovers three years ago.

  Tonight, in the middle of a massive bird topiary, she completely lost it. Her body was no longer hers. Her very breath was no longer hers, it came from Chad as she groaned into his kiss.

  The final release, though, that was a hundred percent hers. A bullseye strike from two thousand meters. A .50 cal blow that knocked her out of herself and placed her over a whole new horizon.

  Finally breaking the kiss, she buried her face at the base of his neck and did her best to ride it out. Nothing had ever made her so doubt the woman she’d spent so many years carefully fabricating. As the blast’s heat continued rolling over her, some tiny part of her mind struggled to classify and categorize, to understand. Pointlessly. Chad had reached down and somehow found an aspect of her inner woman that Tanya knew nothing about.

  “Christ, lady,” Chad’s whisper sounded breathlessly in her ear. “What was that?”

  She could only shake her head, rubbing her nose against his collarbone.

  She had no idea.

  12

  An hour later, Chad eased out into the open. Whatever event had brought the locals to the park hadn’t lasted but the hour. Tanya had slept, curled up in his arms, her legs clamped so tightly around his hand that he couldn’t remove it. He’d been left in silence to consider what had just happened, but he wasn’t any wiser for all his thinking.

  Some women gave themselves up to the act of sex, but that was the key—the act of sex. When he’d been with Tanya before, it had been a glorious romp. They’d used bathroom walls, balcony ledges, even going at it when the other one was driving a car. The best game he’d ever played.

  He’d expected a rematch.

  Instead Tanya had kissed him like she really meant it, meant it all the way down to her core. And rather than it being about the act of sex, or even real sex, it had taken on some whole other meaning. No woman had so exposed herself to him as Tanya had, unraveling in his arms.

  When the coast was clear, he woke her gently.

  She offered no reaction for him to read.

  He held out a hand to help her from under the topiary—which she ignored. The Kidon assassin was back. He could respect that. At least he knew what to do with that version of the woman.

  “We need to lose the parachutes.” She was going to play it a hundred percent practical, then so would he.

  He spotted a dug grave, dirt mounded to one side, and a pair of shovels. The grave was deep and empty. Probably a burial first thing in the morning.

  No need to tell Tanya to keep watch; she’d know to do that without his telling her.

  Dropping down into the hole, he quickly punched down another two feet. She tossed down the chutes and harnesses, and he buried them at the bottom of the hole. Tomorrow they’d be under a coffin and another six feet of soil. Couldn’t think of any reason for a corpse to mind and the family would never know. Good enough. He leveraged himself out of the hole.

  Tanya handed him a burlap sack she’d scrounged up from somewhere in the garden. Her rifle was already in it. It probably wouldn’t be too strange around here if they wore sidearms and knives with their camo, but a pair of four-foot-long sniper rifles was another story. He slid in his own. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he swiped one of the shovels and stuck it i
n the bag as well. Slinging it over his shoulder with the shovel blade sticking up into the air, he figured no one was likely to bother them.

  No one remained in the cemetery. At the exit Tanya dropped her NVGs into the bag as well.

  As they stepped out onto the street, he pulled Tanya against him and slid his hand into her back pocket. The finest ass in Christendom. He’d always admired that about her. He’d never taken her from behind, but he was looking forward to a chance to do it.

  She slid her hand into his back pocket as well, and gave a quick double squeeze like a hug of approval.

  The paved street was quiet. The few streetlights lay blocks away. Most of the buildings were unlit. The occasional light still burned in a second-story bedroom, and the city didn’t extend to third stories other than a few apartment blocks and a cathedral that towered several blocks to the west. They passed a couple staggering home from a taberna who paid them no attention. A lone car eased by but also didn’t hesitate. A dog barked but didn’t put much heart into it. It was as easy to walk along the quiet street as the narrow sidewalk.

  Six blocks later, they’d crossed the width of the city from one side to the other.

  “Gotta love small towns,” Chad commented in Spanish as they slipped through the airport fence a hundred meters away from the official entrance. He’d stay in the language for the rest of the mission so that they wouldn’t be caught speaking English—the team rarely spoke English outside their suite despite their diverse backgrounds.

  “Is that what you want when you’re done, a small town?” Tanya slipped their rifles and her NVGs out of the burlap bag.

  When he was done?