by Dale Mayer
“I lost everything,” Colton said. “I’ll have to talk to the insurance adjuster about it, I guess, but there won’t likely be anything worth claiming.”
“Cell phone, laptop, what else?”
“Personals, gear, toiletries, that’s it.”
“Let me talk to the base and see what we can do.”
And, with that, Colton had to be satisfied. They ended the call, and he returned to the barracks, grabbed the towel he’d been given and walked to the showers, where he stood under the hot water and scrubbed. When he finally dried off, he put on his same clothes again and headed back to his room. He didn’t see another soul while he was there. This was normally a fairly isolated place, and he preferred that in most instances. But tonight he would have liked to have a bit of access to the outside world.
In the middle of the night, he woke up but didn’t understand why. He lay here, listening for sounds, but he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. A wind had picked up outside and was definitely howling as it vented around the buildings, trying to bend them to its will. But instead it just left a weird eerie feeling.
Not exactly sure what was going on, he hopped out of bed, threw on his pants, and, barefoot, padded down toward Kate’s room. He listened outside her door and heard her whimpering inside. He knocked gently, and, when he got no answer, he opened the door and stepped inside. The room was in darkness, but he didn’t need a light to see her pale skin as she tossed on the bed, the sheet barely covering any of her. He grabbed the sheet and blankets and pulled them around her. He sat down beside her, his hand going to her cheek as he gently stroked it and whispered, “You’re safe now, Kate. It’s okay.”
She whimpered again, curling against his hand, while he gently used his other to stroke the side of her face and her hair. “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he said. “It will get better.”
Chapter 5
Kate woke up with a start, caught between the arctic chill of her nightmare and the heated warmth of somebody’s hand. Somebody she recognized, bringing back a longing from years before. She stared up at Colton’s familiar face and gasped. “Oh, my God. How long will the nightmares last?”
“Quite a while probably,” he said, and, picking up her hand, he held it against his cheek. “It will get better though. I can promise you that.”
She shook her head. “It just seemed like all I could think about was the engine blowing up and the wing falling off and the crash,” she said. “The parachuting down wasn’t a problem, but, when I slammed into that icy-cold water, everything inside me went numb. I don’t know how I stayed afloat as long as I did.”
“I’m grateful you did,” Colton said, “because it was hard enough to keep George afloat. Once you started to sink too, I knew I couldn’t hold both of you up for long.”
“I don’t know how you did it at all. But I knew George needed to stay up,” she said. “He has a family. Those boys need their father.”
“That doesn’t make your life any less valuable.” Colton stroked the sweaty strands of hair off her face. “Can you sleep again now?”
She rolled over, blowing out a long sigh, and stared at the small room. “I guess,” she said. She could hear the wind howling around the small building. “It’s such a strange location, isn’t it?”
“I like it. I didn’t realize the actual training I came for wasn’t due to start for another couple days though.”
“Are you giving or receiving?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be here at all, but Troy is doing some of the instruction, and he needed a hand, so I’ll be helping him teach as well.”
Kate laughed at that. “Me, I’m just spare baggage apparently,” and then she started to shiver again. She cried out, “Oh, my God, I’m so damn cold all the time.”
Colton grabbed another blanket and piled it on top of her. She curled up underneath, but no way he couldn’t feel her shivering underneath. “I need more clothes,” she said, struggling to keep her teeth from chattering.
“Do you want me to grab your T-shirt?”
“I already put it back on at some point,” she said. “It’s amazing how much not having pajamas makes a difference.”
“You’re used to California. Out there it’s not necessary to wear anything to bed.”
“No,” she said. “Except when I get chilled, when I get really chilled.” She lay underneath the blankets, shuddering in the darkness. “What time is it anyway?”
“I think it’s just around midnight, but maybe it’s a little after.”
“And, of course, we have no cell phones,” she said, then groaned. “I think I still had a year to pay on that contract too. Damn it.”
He smiled. “I’m sure there’ll be some compensation for this, wouldn’t you think?”
“At least I didn’t have my laptop,” she said. “I stopped packing it when the phones got so advanced. What about you?”
“My laptop, other electronics, my phone, my personal gear,” he said cheerfully. “Yep. All gone.”
“How can you be so chipper about it?” she muttered, focused on the upcoming hassle of dealing with the phone contract and getting a new phone. “I wonder if we can even get phones up here.”
“If we go into town, we can,” he said, “but you might want to wait until you get back to the States.”
“Yeah,” she said, stifling a yawn. “If I’m going home in another day anyway, it’ll be inconvenient, but I’ll survive.”
“It really goes to show how much our world has changed,” Colton said. “That we can’t go anywhere without feeling lost without technology.”
“It’s a convenience. An instant gratification. I can get my emails. I get chat messages from family and friends. And I can check the weather,” she said, with a hand wave to the window. “From the gusty winds out there, it sounds like a hell of a storm.”
“I don’t think it’s a storm at all,” he said. “I think it’s literally just wind.”
“You’re kidding? That’s depressing,” she said, and again another yawn took over.
“But back to our phones. I like always being able to check the time,” Colton said with a smile. He straightened, and Kate watched sadly as he walked to the doorway.
“Why did you never call me?” she asked impulsively.
He stopped, looked at her in surprise and turned the tables on her. “Why did you never call me?”
“It felt weird to,” she said honestly. “I kept hoping you’d call me.”
His smile flashed in delight. “And maybe I was hoping you’d call me too,” he teased.
“I guess I’m not as modern and forward-thinking as I thought,” she said. “Because it didn’t feel right, you know? I knew you were really busy, and so was I.”
“So why don’t we leave it as, It just wasn’t the right time.” He gave her a gentle smile and said, “Now I’ll head back to bed. Try to get some sleep.” He shut the door softly behind him.
She lay here, listening to the wind howling outside, thinking about his words about it not being the right time.
So when was the right time? Was there a right time? Or had that right time come and gone, and she had failed to pick up the opportunity when it came by? She had wanted to spend a lot more time with him but felt awkward about trying to call him the morning after—as if they had this odd system in place, where it was for one night only and never again.
At the time she hadn’t been looking for anything more, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him afterward, and it had bothered her that she never got the chance to see him again, that she never heard back from him. He’d been busy off on missions; she’d been busy flying all over the place. And yet, in all those years, they still hadn’t reconnected. And now, of all the times for them to connect, she had to admit this was one of the best times for it. After all, he had saved George’s life.
He had saved her life too.
As questions ran through her mind, she lay tucked under the blankets, trying desperately
to warm up again. She understood it would take time, and sometimes she thought she was doing better, and then, all of a sudden, she wouldn’t be so good. This was one of those times. She realized, now that she was wide awake, how she needed to get up and go to the bathroom. And that meant putting more clothes on to get down the hallway. Only to take away some once there.
She grabbed her pants and pulled them on, then slipped the still-damp socks over her bare feet. She opened the door and moved as quickly and as quietly as she could to the communal bathroom. Once inside, she used the facilities, washed up and opened the door to step back out. She almost screamed at the tall figure standing in front of her.
“Easy,” Colton said.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said, “you scared me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to, but I heard you running this way and wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“So, the problem with being cold and awake,” she said, “is that my bladder won’t stop calling to me.”
“It’s to be expected. You’d have the same problem anytime you woke up, but the cold just makes it harder to ignore.”
“True enough.” Stepping out, she said, “It’s empty now, if you need to use it.”
“I’ll just follow you back to your room.”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Any reason for that?”
“The escort? Just being a gentleman,” he said smoothly.
She snorted. “Well, the last time we met, and you were escorting me to the bedroom, a gentleman you were not.”
“Hey,” he said. “Now that was a two-way street.”
“It was, indeed. I guess I wasn’t much of a lady, at that,” she said with a laugh. In truth, the sex had been hot and heavy and hadn’t stopped from the time they’d started to the time they had to leave. “It took me days to recover from that night,” she said with a laugh.
“Me too,” Colton said. “We were a couple rabbits.”
“That sounds terrible,” she protested.
He burst out laughing. “It didn’t sound very classy, did it?”
“Nope,” she said. “It sounds disgusting, but it’s very honest.” At her door she smiled up at him. “Thanks for the escort.” She frowned and mumbled, “Wait. I didn’t leave a light on.”
“What was that?” He turned to face her, a questioning look on his face.
“I didn’t turn my light on before I left,” she said, “but look. The lamp is on.” Colton stepped inside, closed the door behind her and held a finger up to his lips. She nodded, but nobody could have hidden in this tiny space she called her room. There was a closet, but it had no door, and it was open and empty, as far as she could see. There was the bed, and the only option was under it.
Colton dropped to the floor and checked, but it was empty.
“What the devil?” Kate said, turning to look around. “Am I losing my mind?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe it wasn’t you who I heard running.”
She stared at him. “To the bathroom? I wasn’t running. I moved fast—as fast as I could, given the circumstances—because I was cold, but I didn’t run.”
“No,” he said. “Now that I think about it, I should have known. Damn it.” He ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. “Somebody else was running down the hallway. You wouldn’t have been in the bathroom long enough by the time I was standing there.” He frowned, then turned and said, “The chances of catching anybody at this point are nonexistent. They are long gone.”
“But why would somebody have been in my room anyway?” Kate asked softly. Confusion and fear spiked through her. “How would anybody have known where I was?”
“We are new arrivals,” Colton said, “and got here with a fair bit of excitement, I’m sure. So it’s not hard to imagine other people know we’re here. Remember how it was when we were at dinner in the mess hall?”
“I get that.” Kate looked around and sighed. “It doesn’t make me feel any better though.”
“My room has bunks,” he said, “so you’re welcome to grab one, if you want.”
She thought about it and then nodded. “You know what? Maybe I should. I don’t think I’d sleep another wink knowing somebody was in here. Particularly as I don’t know why.”
Colton looked around and said, “Do you have anything in here to move?”
She shook her head. “I’m wearing it, except my boots.”
“Good. Maybe that also confused him, except that the blankets were turned back, so it’s obvious somebody had been sleeping there. Come on. Let’s go.”
He left the light on, then shut the door. He also set a hair in such a way that, if somebody opened the door, it would fall. She watched him but didn’t question it. He just smiled and led her to his room. There, he said, “I’m in the bottom bunk. Are you okay with the top?”
She nodded, shivering still, and said, “At this point”—her teeth chattering again—“I just want to get warm.”
“Up you go,” he said, “and maybe I’ll return to your room and grab those blankets.”
“Unless you have some here,” she said. He checked the closet and pulled out two. He tossed them over her and tucked her in as much as he could from where he stood. She rolled over against the wall and muttered, “Good night.” She waited until he settled back into his own bunk before she relaxed.
A part of her wondered about taking their relationship back to the same level it had been. Only she didn’t want to go backward because she didn’t want what they’d had, since that had been based solely on sex. She wanted to go forward to something better; she just didn’t know how to get there. She wasn’t very good at relationships. She’d had plenty of them, but they never lasted more than a few months.
She thought she was a giving, caring person and didn’t understand why her relationships kept breaking down. One man had said she didn’t seem to care enough, and another had said she cared too much. She figured she couldn’t win. Her mother always told her that she just hadn’t met the right man and that he’d come along eventually. She didn’t know about that either because she’d dated a lot, and there certainly wasn’t any sign of the right man for her coming around.
Her mom also hadn’t really liked any of the men she’d brought home either. And Kate never introduced someone to her parents unless she had been seeing them for several months. She had tried living with one guy, thinking it was a step in the right direction, but she couldn’t handle it. He had been such a messy person to live with, expecting her to be his maid, that she’d found herself screaming at him. He had finally packed up and walked out on her.
She knew she’d overreacted, but, when his hair was everywhere from his shaving—all over the mirror, the sink and the faucets, and he hadn’t cleaned up any of it, clearly expecting her to—she’d come undone. She had already had the pick-up-after-yourself conversation with him. Yet his socks and clothes remained on the floor. Until he left. For once he had picked up after himself.
After that, she muted her responses a lot and often checked out the guy’s bathroom to see how bad it was. She figured, just out of respect and common courtesy for others, plus a sense of self-responsibility, that people would clean up their own messes, but apparently that wasn’t a theory held by all. It was such a dumb thing to have lost it over, but it had been an accumulation of his other aspects. He had just looked at her, like she was being so picky. He had said, if she didn’t like it, why wasn’t she cleaning it up?
On that note, she stopped wondering about the vagaries of relationships and the problems within them. Then she closed her eyes and let sleep snag her up and take her under again.
*
Colton woke up the next morning and froze. Something was different. Then he realized the breathing he heard was Kate above him. He slid out of bed and checked on her. She slept heavily. He picked up his blanket and tossed it over her, so she’d have yet another layer of warmth and headed to the bathroom. He used the facilities, scrubbed his teeth, and washed his face and hair
. Realizing it had to be at least sevenish from the light outside, he headed to her assigned room.
At the door, he squatted to see the hair was still in place, so nobody had entered the room since. He stepped back into his room and finished dressing, then made up his bunk without the blanket and slipped out again. If he could find coffee, he’d bring a cup back for her. As he headed toward the mess tent, the base commander stepped out of a building and called him over.
Colton saluted and was told, “At ease, son. Come in and take a seat.” As Colton sat down, the commander said, “You want to tell me what happened yesterday?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yesterday?”
The commander waved his hand. “You guys crashed in the ocean and were picked up, correct?”
Colton nodded.
“Can you give me any details on the flight?”
Colton gave him a rundown, adding, “We lost everything, from our cell phones, my laptop and our personal gear and bags.”
“Good thing you weren’t taking off on a big holiday,” the commander said with a half smirk. “You could have lost a lot more.”
“So true. We do need to roust up some cell phones though, as soon as possible.”
“I hear you. I have a laptop you can probably use. I was talking to a couple men at the Coronado base.”
Colton frowned. “Was it Mason?”
“Yes, Mason. Smart man. He’s asked for you to have a laptop for your use while you’re here, and he’s airlifting a cell phone for you.”
“Good,” Colton said. “That would be helpful. And the laptop would be appreciated.”
“Mind telling me what it is you plan on doing with it?”
Colton lowered his voice and said, “Looking into the sabotage issue, sir.”
The commander nodded. “We do have MPs too, you know? Now, son, I can’t have you going around half-cocked, thinking you’re James Bond.”
“More like Sherlock, sir,” Colton said with a smile.
“Same diff as far as I’m concerned. You can work with my MPs, who will be assigned to this investigation. How long are you supposed to be here?”