by Julie Rowe
He looked at her like she’d said something ridiculous. “I’m not doing or saying anything. How am I bothering you?”
By being an alpha male? She couldn’t say that. “I like working alone.”
“Is this an antisocial thing or is it a result of that jackass who manhandled you last night?”
“What?” Where had that come from? “No, I haven’t given that another thought.”
Now he looked at her like he’d caught her hand in the cookie jar. “Maybe not consciously, but shit like that doesn’t get written over in your short-term memory. It sticks with you, and fucks with your reactions to all kinds of things.”
How would he know that? Was he emotionally compromised? “Does that explosion you lived through still affect you now?”
His expression turned glacial. “The murder of several of my best friends, my battle brothers, will always affect me.”
Way to stick your foot in your mouth. Stupid. She sucked in a breath with the intention to offer some kind of apology, but he spoke first.
“All I want is a real shot at this assignment. I didn’t come here to waste your time or mine, but you’ve got to meet me halfway.” He turned and leaned toward her. “How can I earn your trust if you’ve already decided this isn’t going to work?”
She raised her chin and met him stare for stare. “I just don’t know what you, or anyone else with your type of training, can do for us. The first couple of guys assigned to me got the benefit of the doubt, then got in the way. One of them treated me like a first-year med student and argued with me about everything.” That was being polite. He’d been a complete ass. “I just don’t know how this is going to work.”
“It works for Sharp and Dr. Samuels.”
“I’ve met him and their situation is different. They worked together and became friends over a period of months during a training mission. We don’t have that kind of time.”
“You’re going to have to give someone the time. The colonel sounded like he wasn’t going to back off on finding you a partner.”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
“Look.” He tapped the file of papers he was reading through. “I’ve been going through this summary of all the outbreaks your team is observing, and this shit is scary.”
“So, how do you think you can help?”
“By staying out of your way, and keeping everyone else out of your way, too.” He lowered his voice. “There’s one other thing. I’d like to give you some remedial self-defense training, so you can kick ass the next time an asshole gets handsy.”
“Remedial? Try initial.”
“Huh?”
“I wasn’t given any self-defense training.”
“During basic everyone gets—”
She cut him off. “Except me.” She gave him a tight smile and stood. “I’m in the level four lab the rest of the day.” As soon as he found out why they hadn’t trained her, he’d turn into every other big brother who saw her as a little sister in need of protection.
No thanks.
* * *
Con stared at the door long after Sophia had walked out it.
What. The. Fuck.
How did a guy get a straight answer out of these people?
He left the file on the desk and went in search of Colonel Maximillian. The man’s office was empty.
“Where’s the colonel?” he asked Eugene.
“In the level four lab.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Con fixed a laser-guided glare at the kid. “Is there a reason why Captain Perry received no self-defense training during basic?”
“Yeah. She has a blood disorder called ITP.” He shrugged “She gets massive bruises sometimes.”
The one on her hand was pretty big. “Is this a life-threatening disorder?”
“It can be,” Eugene replied, “but she’s been taking medication that keeps it from getting worse.”
The only person who could explain what it really meant was in an airtight outfit only slightly less complicated than a space suit, in an environment no more accessible to him than the moon.
Chapter Three
Con was a patient hunter. He read through the file and waited for Sophia to come back to her office. What he discovered could’ve easily turned his hair gray.
He’d heard of Ebola in Africa and MERS in Asia, but there were dozens of other hot spots of one infectious disease or another all over the world. The file focused on cases in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, but also listed places in South America and the United States where outbreaks of malaria, West Nile and antibiotic resistant E. coli were putting people in hospitals, and a few of them in the ground.
Also included were task lists of what responders had done to combat these outbreaks. Some of them required more work than others. Months of medical support for the areas affected might be needed, while others were resolved in a few weeks, or even days.
It all depended on how many people were infected and how easy it was to determine which bug or virus caused the outbreak.
The Army’s policy of using Standard Operating Procedures wouldn’t work. SOPs only helped if the situation was predictable. Infectious diseases typically weren’t.
Sophia walked into the room as he was trying to figure out how any one doctor could be involved in all these cases.
She gave him a tight smile and asked, “Learn anything?”
“Yeah,” he said giving her a once-over. “You’ve got to be half octopus to be involved in all of these outbreaks.”
She blinked.
Not what you were expecting to hear, sweetheart?
He watched her mentally regroup and tilt her head to one side. “What are you reading?”
“It’s a summary of all the current outbreaks your team is monitoring. What I can’t figure out is how any one group can keep track of all this without having a whole lot more people working for them than I see around here.”
“We obtain a lot of information from other groups with people on the ground at the site of the outbreaks. The Centers for Disease Control, the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and others all share information.”
“Does the information flow both ways?”
“Yes and no. Max determines what information we pass along.”
“Do you have any input?”
“Some. It’s usually case by case.”
She was talking to him, giving him no attitude for the first time since meeting her. “Speaking of cases...I asked why you hadn’t been given any self-defense training. Eugene said it was a medical condition. Can you tell me more about that?”
Her back went rigid, but she still answered him. “It’s a blood disorder.”
Hmm, not a lot of help there. “There are a couple things I could show you right now that could help if someone ever grabs you like that moron did.”
“Really?”
“Moves every woman should know.”
“I’d have to get permission—”
He cut her off. “Nah, we don’t need to go to a gym or anything. I can show you right here.”
She paused, a tiny frown pinching her brows together. “Okay. Show me.”
He stood and moved to the middle of the room, which gave him about five feet of space on all sides. “What you want to do is make whoever has a hold of you let go. That close, neither one of you has a lot of leverage or room for a powerful punch or kick, so there are three or four top spots you want to aim for.”
“The testicles,” she said right away.
“Yes, but sometimes that pain takes a second or two to register. The kneecap and the toes are equally accessible and hurt like a son of a bitch immediately.” He waved his hands at her to come at him. “Go through the motions.”
“Right
now?”
“Yeah, now, so if you really have to do it, you won’t hesitate.”
She shrugged and pretended to knee him, kick his kneecap and stomp on his foot.
“Good, now,” he said turning her around and wrapping his arms around her from behind. “What are you going to do to get away?”
She wiggled experimentally, but he kept his grip on her. “I don’t know.”
“Lean forward,” he said into her ear. “Shove your butt back. That’ll give you some space between us.”
She did that.
“Now kick my kneecap with your heel or stomp on my foot. Go through the motions.”
She delivered a slow-mo mule kick to his knee.
“That move hurts. It’ll make it easier for you to get away.”
She twisted and broke out of his hold.
She spun around, looking surprised. “You let go.”
“Nope. You incapacitated me. Let’s do it again a little faster.”
Excitement changed her face, made her seem younger. She didn’t hesitate, turning to present her back to him.
He wrapped her in his arms again and said, “Do it.”
“Sergeant,” a voice barked. “Take your hands off the captain.”
Con released her and was three feet away before Colonel Maximillian was finished yelling.
“This is unacceptable. No, it’s reprehensible behavior,” the colonel continued. “Take a seat in my office until the MPs arrive.” He turned to Sophia. “Captain, I’m sure you’ll want to press charges for—”
“For what?” she snarled. “Him showing me how to defend myself from an attacker who grabs me from behind?”
Max rocked back on his heels. “Say again.”
“Sergeant Button wasn’t assaulting me, he was demonstrating how to get away from someone grabbing me from behind.”
“He wasn’t...oh.”
“Sergeant, can we try again?” she asked Con.
Shit, he was going to have to prove he wasn’t doing anything funny with the captain before the colonel made that call to the MPs.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave him her back and he got a grip on her again. “Go.”
She bent forward, pushing him back with her ass, straightened, rotated her arms around and was free in about three seconds.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now what do you do?”
“Kick you in the testicles and run?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She turned, gave her boss a narrow-eyed look and hooked a thumb at Con. “I’m starting to like him.”
“Starting?” Con asked.
At the same moment, the colonel asked, “Really?”
She looked at the two of them like they were five years old and she had caught them putting a frog down someone’s shorts. “Don’t let it go to your heads.”
* * *
Sophia was already at her microscope when Con walked into her office at 0800 the following morning.
She’d met with Max at 0700 to discuss the more worrisome disease hot spots in their part of the world. Neither had brought up the subject of Sergeant Connor Button.
She’d woken with the decision to accept him as her partner, with conditions, but she wanted to talk to Con first.
“Morning, Sergeant,” she said with a glance at him before returning her attention to the slide she was evaluating.
“Morning, Captain.” He paused, then asked with audible curiosity, “What are you looking at?”
She didn’t take her eyes off the slide. “A blood smear. I’m checking the morphology of the cells.”
“Morphology... Size, shape, color?”
“Yes, all that and more. Normal cells look one way. Abnormal, every way else.” And this was where he’d check out of the conversation like every other soldier she’d ever met.
“What can change how a cell looks?”
Wait, had that been an intelligent question?
She pulled away from the microscope to meet his surprisingly inquisitive gaze. “Everything from your diet to a virus. Sometimes the change is so specific, I can tell you which vitamin you’re deficient in or which virus you have without doing any other tests.”
“Huh. So.” He cleared his throat. “What else do you do?”
“You tell me,” she said instead of answering the question.
“I think I know the basics. You go into areas where possible biological weapons have been used, determine what agent has been released and recommend treatment and clean up procedures.”
“Change the word agent to pathogen, and you’ve got most of it. Treatment and clean-up can be complicated depending on the pathogen.”
“Understood.” He gave her a masculine nod that said the conversation was finished.
He was so wrong.
“That’s a nice, neat description, but in real life, there’s nothing nice or neat about it. It is dangerous, messy and often disgusting work. I could be wading through dead and partially decomposed bodies for samples, or if the pathogen is nasty enough, having to watch people die before a treatment can be administered.”
She’d been in those destined-to-die shoes and sometimes pitied the doctors and nurses who’d had to appear strong and upbeat, despite their belief she couldn’t be saved.
She’d been one of the lucky ones. She’d lived. In a cancer hospital for children, the word remission had an almost mythical quality to it. A state they all attempted to achieve. Not everyone made it.
“War is never pretty and I’ve seen my share of gruesome.”
Right, he’d been blown up. Body parts were never easy to see, and if those parts belonged to a friend...perhaps he did understand.
“Point taken.” She studied him a little more. She didn’t want a babysitter, a man who’d watch her like the hawk he resembled. He’d see more than he should, but refusing him without a reason Max would accept wasn’t possible. She’d been bothering Max as little as six months ago to get out into the field. If she changed her mind and said she didn’t want to go, Max was going to want to know why.
She wasn’t ready to tell him she was too sick to go on assignment. Leukemia had taken its toll on her body, the chemo and radiation therapy leaving her with weak bones and a disorder that had plagued her on and off for years even after she was declared cancer-free. Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. In the last six months her ITP had gotten much, much worse. Her bone marrow had slowed production of platelets, special blood cells that played a big role in clotting blood. Without them, a person could bleed to death from cuts received while playing with their cat.
She was taking medication that spurred the bone marrow to produce more blood cells, but her platelet count had dipped dangerously low. She was going to have to start infusing units of the tiny cells into her blood in order to maintain a normal-looking life. Unfortunately, transfused platelets didn’t survive near long enough.
Her next physical was only four months away.
She wasn’t going to pass.
If her ITP carried on like it was, she might not even survive. The cancer that had nearly taken her life when she was a child might kill her yet. She and Max had talked about a bone marrow transplant in theory about a year ago, when her platelet count had been hovering around the low end of normal. There was no guarantee she’d find a match. Even if she put her name into the system, she’d have to go home, and provide all the reasons for the move. It would effectively end her military career.
If she wanted to do something worthwhile, now was the time. Before it ran out. Before the little voice in the back of her head stopped whispering hurry, hurry and started to scream it.
It appeared her partner had the same goal. If she could keep the severity of her ITP a secret, she might... Oh, this was ridiculous.
She was kidding herself. She wasn’t going to be able to keep it a secret for much more than a couple of weeks. Unless she and her babysitter were deployed soon her body wouldn’t have the strength or stamina to do the part of her job she craved to do. She wanted to help people. People who’d been forgotten, abandoned and abused.
Sophia stared at the broad shoulders of this soldier, so desperate to do his job he was willing to babysit the geek. Could she work with him?
It had taken only an hour to get rid of the last guy Max had tried to pair her up with. Mr. Army way or no way had been intelligent enough, but with all the flexibility of a piece of steel. The one before that had treated her like a china cup, fragile and delicate, rushing to do everything for her. Terrified she’d stub her toe and the damn thing would fall off.
She needed a partner, a real one.
“If I take you on, I expect to be part of the decision-making process. None of this it’s for your own good shit. My situation is unique enough that you can’t know what’s good for me or not.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” he replied. “From what I’ve learned from Colonel Maximillian and Private Walsh, you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. I’m not here to give you orders, it’s the other way around.”
“You’ll take my orders, no questions asked?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll be honest, I probably will ask a lot of questions, but not to argue. I need to understand what we’re doing and why, so the next time we’re in a similar situation, I’ll know what to do or what not to do.”
That was a pretty good answer, but she wasn’t going to make this easy for him. She couldn’t. The wrong man could end her career months too soon. “Got any other questions?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Quite a few. You’re one of the people who identify which pathogen is causing an outbreak, right?”
She nodded.
“I get how you do that here. I mean, this is a fully equipped lab, but how would you do it in the field?”
“See that large duffel bag?” She pointed around the microscope at it, parked along the wall to one side of her desk. “That’s my portable level two lab-in-a-bag.”
Interest sharpened his gaze. “You got one of these for level three or four?”