by Rachel Grant
Water swirled around her head and flowed toward the swamp. They should get up. Follow the road. Get to higher ground. But right now all she wanted to do was lie in the middle of the flooded road with the Green Beret who’d just saved her life again.
He started to rise from her chest, and she gripped his filthy, muddy shirt, holding him in place. She imagined how they would look to a stranger coming upon them, coated in mud, embracing. Hysterical laughter bubbled inside her chest. Insane didn’t begin to describe this day.
Bastian’s body quaked before the rumble of his own laugh erupted.
She was alive, coated in muck, and above her, Bastian’s equally coated face was lit with a warm, wild light. She wrapped her muddy hands around his muddy, bearded cheeks and pulled his face to hers. She pressed her muddy lips to his. They kissed, openmouthed and exuberant, a celebration that tasted of earth and rain and joy. They’d cheated the bog god of his sacrifice.
Who would’ve thought rain would be the most dangerous thing she faced today?
The kiss ended, and he peeled his body from hers, climbing to his feet. He reached down and pulled her upright. Standing, she faced him and wiped a streak of muck from his face, but it was a lost cause. They were both hopelessly, endlessly drenched in mud.
“We need to get to higher ground,” he said. He nodded toward a low rise back in the direction they’d just driven through.
She turned to where the vehicle had disappeared in the muck. “The map,” she said. She’d left it in the cab. It was destroyed now. She closed her eyes. “I stared at it enough. I remember—I hope.” She studied the road. “The road jogged left for half a klick, then there was a fork where we’d go right. Several more twists and turns, and we’ll reach the main road. From there, ten miles south is a village—one I know. I make weekly rounds to monitor food and other supply levels. The village is on my rotation. They might be able to help us there.”
“Is there a way to get there without taking the main road?”
She closed her eyes, pictured the map. “Maybe. But it’s probably as flooded as this road is.”
“Then we’ll go to the road.” They started walking, following the line of the high ground as best they could. After they’d gone about a hundred yards, Bastian patted the side of his pack, then cursed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Aside from everything, that is.”
“My radio is gone. Sonofafucking bitch. It must’ve slipped from the side pocket in the mud. It could be in the cab, or in the swamp next to the road.”
He glanced backward, toward where the vehicle had been lost to the swamp, not saying what they both knew: there was no going back for the radio.
They’d never find it. Hell, they probably wouldn’t be able to find the SUV at this point.
They walked side by side, following the line of the road as best they could discern it. It was slow going and she stepped tentatively, in case the road disappeared again under her feet. Her ankle screamed with each step, but she didn’t complain. Walking was the only option.
At one point, she did accidentally step off the road, but lacking the weight of the truck, she wasn’t sucked out into the swamp. Bastian caught her and pulled her back to the firmer ground.
Gray sky and relentless rain made it hard to judge the time of day. As near as she could guess, it had been mid-afternoon when they left the market and the rain started. Several hours had passed since then, given the trek through the woods, the drive slowed by mud, rain, and twisted route, and now they’d been walking for well over an hour. The sun would set soon, and they’d lose even the ambiguous gray light.
She couldn’t keep walking in the dark. Bastian might have night vision goggles, but she didn’t, and she’d already stepped off the road once. Plus her ankle hurt like hell, every step sent pain shooting up her leg. “What are we going to do?” she asked, a little afraid of his answer.
“We need to find high ground. Rest. Regroup.” He pointed to a rise in the distance. Trees surrounded the low hill. “We’re going there.”
It was the swampy version of an oasis in the desert.
“We’ll take a break. Figure out our next move.”
The storm lightened by slow degrees. By the time they reached the hill, it was reduced to a sprinkle. Night fell as if a switch were flipped on the sun, telling her it was about seven p.m. This close to the equator, sunrise and sunset were consistent and fast.
Adrenaline had kept her going, but with a destination in sight, the pain in her ankle became all-consuming. By the time they reached the hill, she could no longer hide her limp. Between the cut on her foot and twisted ankle, she could barely put weight on it.
Bastian cursed and scooped her into his arms. “Why didn’t you say something?”
She draped her arms around his neck. “Because you’d do something like this. You can’t carry me ten miles.”
“Instead of resting for only an hour, we’ll stop here for the night. Take care of your foot. Maybe you can walk tomorrow.”
“We’ll miss the rendezvous.”
“That was going to happen anyway once we lost the truck.”
She leaned her cheek against his shoulder as he carried her up the rise. At the top, he set her down and spread a plastic sheet over the tall grass. A wasted effort, considering how wet and muddy she was, but it would be more comfortable than soaking into the mucky ground.
He sat on the sheet, and she dropped down beside him. Now that the adrenaline that had seen her through the worst of the day had faded, she began to tremble with pain and fatigue.
“Let’s take a look at that foot,” he said as he pulled a first aid kit from his pack.
“Mud didn’t get inside the pack,” she said as he laid out items from the kit on the plastic sheet.
“The main pocket was cinched tight. We lost the radio because it was on the outside.” He washed her foot with a damp towel. “Sorry I didn’t have shoes or clothes for you. We had to pull together the rescue fast.”
She tugged at the muddy, bloody cloth she wore. “This works.” She wasn’t feeling particularly picky in that moment.
He used sanitizer to clean the cut on the arch of her right foot, and she sucked in air through her teeth at the sting.
With the mud removed, it started to bleed, a fresh flow of bright red blood. He wrapped it tightly with gauze, then shifted to her ankle, which he probed with gentle fingers. “A little swelling. Does this hurt?” he asked.
“No. Only when I put weight on it.”
He pulled out a cold pack and snapped it to release the icing chemical. “Keep this on it tonight. No walking unless absolutely necessary.”
She nodded and frowned. “I need to pee.”
He inclined his head toward a tree that was only a few feet away. “I’ll turn around.”
She did and he did, and she grimaced at the thought that they’d progressed rapidly to the peeing-with-the-door-open stage. Living in South Sudan had cured her of inhibitions around bathroom habits—one couldn’t be squeamish and live here—but it was different being around an American she didn’t really know.
She adjusted her sarong and settled back on the plastic sheet and put the ice pack on her ankle. He pulled a protein bar from his pack and handed it to her. “Dinner is served.”
She gave a short laugh. Even though she’d had the snack earlier, her stomach was collapsing in on itself from hunger. She opened the bar and broke it in half. One thing she’d learned working in a famine-struck country, they needed to ration. There was no telling how long they’d be stuck out here, and there weren’t any crops to be found in the grasslands. No edible berries. Nothing. In South Sudan, all available food resources were picked clean. Uninhabited areas like this one had nothing to offer, or people would have settled here.
He took his portion without argument. They both needed strength if they were going to get out of this situation. “I have several more bars, some MREs and jerky. Enough for two or three days if we’re careful.”<
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She looked toward rain dripping from the leaves. “At least water won’t be a problem. It’ll take a few hours to walk to the village tomorrow.”
“If you can walk.”
“I will walk.” She would because she had to.
He finished his miniscule dinner and stretched out on the sheet. “You need to sleep.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she admitted. She was wet and muddy and maybe just a tad bit freaked out.
He pulled her down so the back of her head rested on his chest. “I’ll be your pillow,” he said. His arm draped over her chest. He found her wrist and trailed along her skin until his fingers entwined with hers.
The reminder she needed that she wasn’t alone.
Stars peeked in small clusters as the clouds dissipated. “So, your friends call you Bastian. Your enemies call you asshole. What do lovers call you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
She smiled up at the stars. “Future reference.”
He chuckled. “Bastard mostly. I don’t tend to stick around.”
“Good to know. I’ve been called bitch for the same reason.”
“What’s wrong with people that they don’t understand a simple hookup?” he asked. “It’s not like I ever promised it would be anything more.”
“Right? I mean, you bang a guy in an elevator, and he gets mad because there’s no need to invite him into your penthouse after that.”
“That’s just efficient right there. He loses points for being fast, but still, efficient. Doesn’t even mess up the sheets.”
“In his defense, it was a tall building.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“For future reference,” she repeated. “I mean, right now, you smell like swamp. And I’m guessing your junk is coated in mud.”
She felt his body shake with laughter as his fingers threaded through her muddy hair. “This might be where the term ‘rain check’ comes from.”
After the day she’d just endured, it was crazy to realize she was stretched out on a grassy hilltop with Chief Bastard, laughing. But it felt right.
Plus, it was so much better than crying. “So. It’s been…quite a day.”
“Yep.” He plucked something from her hair—a twig, probably. Then combed out the short strands with his fingers. “You chopped off your hair,” he said idly, as if this was normal conversation after rescuing a woman from slavery and swamps.
“It’s easier to wash.” She wasn’t about to admit it had anything to do with him. She’d cut off a foot of hair because that was her usual reaction to rejection. No need to feed his ego, which was probably inflated enough as it was.
“I like it.”
She sighed as his fingers scraped her scalp. She was a sucker for scalp massages.
“If anyone told me ten years ago,” he said, “we’d end up on a hilltop stargazing together in South Sudan, coated in mud after having escaped a slave market, I’d have told them they were nuts.”
She laughed. “I think it’s a nutty scenario for any two Americans, but admit we might be a more unlikely pair than most.”
“Princess Prime and an Indian? No one could predict that.”
“Hey, I’ll have you know not all Native Americans hate me. I do have a master’s degree in cultural anthropology, you know.”
“Yeah, but you must know what Indians think of cultural anthropologists.”
She nodded. When she first started graduate school, she’d assumed she was hated for her family name and oil company connections; it had been a surprise to learn the reputation ethnologists had with some tribes. But the feeling wasn’t universal thanks to the efforts of anthropologists and tribal members to bridge the chasm and work together to protect cultural heritage.
“The discipline is changing. We work together more than we divide.”
“I know. But it’s still there for some of us, the feeling that anthropologists and archaeologists want to tell us our past and our culture, study us like we’re lab rats, then appropriate some parts of our culture and denigrate the rest.”
It was true. Many had done that. Some cultural anthropologists still did.
“What tribe are you from?” She rolled to her side, so she could see his face, still resting her head on his ribs.
He brushed flecks of dried mud from her forehead. “Kalahwamish. We’re on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.”
“I know of it. I went to grad school in Portland. That’s the tribe that inherited the sawmill properties about fifteen years ago, right?”
“Yep.”
“I believe both an archaeologist and a cultural anthropologist had something to do with that.”
He smiled. “True. And I never said I don’t like anthropologists. I helped rescue one from a warlord last month.”
She laughed. “Ah, the old I have anthropologist friends defense.”
He laughed too. “Hey, it’s true.” He cupped the back of her head and pulled her mouth to his. His lips were a scant centimeter from hers when he said, “I’m going to make an exception for you. If you want to study me—every inch of me—I’m willing to be your lab rat.”
“Well, I’d need to have research questions if it’s going to be a valid scientific endeavor.”
His lips brushed hers, soft and sweet, then he released her, and she lowered her head to use his chest as a pillow again. “We’ll have plenty of time to come up with questions, because the study can’t happen now. Aside from the fact that you smell like moldy bog, I need to stay alert.”
“Moldy bog? Bog wasn’t bad enough?”
“I call ’em like I smell ’em.”
She made a show of smelling her underarm, then said, “Fair enough.” She studied the sky, her head gently rising with each inhalation of Bastian’s. “What happens now?”
“You sleep. In the morning, we’ll walk to your village. See if we can find someone there with a radio. If not, we’ll try to buy a ride to Juba.”
It wasn’t an impossible scenario, which gave her hope.
“We should take turns sleeping. You need to sleep too.”
“We will, but you need to sleep first. You sleep for six to eight hours. You need it. After you’ve gotten decent rest, I’ll wake you to keep watch and grab two hours. I’m trained for this and can go longer, but I’ll be more effective if I sleep when I can.”
She nodded, glad he was being reasonable, not macho. Clearly, Special Forces were smart and practical.
She wanted to do her part, but had to admit, right now she was desperately tired. “Sounds fair.” She turned so she could see his eyes in the starlight. “Thank you. For coming to my rescue.”
He traced her eyebrow. “You’re welcome, Brie. Now get some sleep. I’ve got your back.”
She closed her eyes, figuring sleep would be impossible in spite of her exhaustion, but Bastian’s rhythmic breathing, gentle touch, and promise of protection overrode her fear, and she slipped into much-needed oblivion.
10
Bastian waited until Brie was in a deep sleep before carefully sliding out from beneath her. He pulled his combat uniform shirt from his pack—he hadn’t worn his ACU in the market—and slipped it under her head. She stirred but didn’t wake.
He circled the clearing at the top of the rise, scouting for danger. Their situation was so fucked. In a few hours, a Blackhawk would land at the rendezvous point, and they would be nowhere to be found.
He’d fucked up and lost the vehicle and the radio. This was all his own damn fault.
He paced and circled their hilltop refuge. Thank goodness the rain had stopped. He had a rain shelter but would only break it out when necessary. He had to conserve their supplies because getting to the village probably wouldn’t be simple, and if they had to go all the way to Juba, that could take days.
He pulled his knife from his pack and turned to the cluster of trees that ringed the hill. He needed to make a cane for Brie if she was going to be able to make the trek. He would also mak
e sandals for her, using paracord and the insoles from his boots.
He found a sturdy branch and set to work.
As he whittled, his gaze repeatedly flicked to the woman who lay sleeping on the thin plastic sheet. He shouldn’t have kissed her as they lay in the muddy road.
He wasn’t even entirely certain who’d initiated the kiss, but there was no doubt it was not standard operating procedure for a Special Forces operator. The fact that she’d been stripped naked and sold to him just hours before made his actions even worse. Reprehensible.
Then he’d compounded his mistake by flirting with her, offering to let her study him anthropologically. He’d mentally justified it by telling himself she needed comfort after the horrors she’d been through. And that was true, but it was also self-serving justification.
He’d enjoyed flirting with her. Making her laugh.
And the truth was, he hadn’t been thinking about what she’d just been through when he kissed her. He hadn’t been thinking at all. There was no justification.
He should have recused himself from this mission so someone objective, who wouldn’t take advantage of her, was sent in to save her.
Ten years ago, she’d been queen of his fantasies. That alone disqualified him from being her rescuer. Then a month ago, he’d kissed her.
An outside observer might think he was taking advantage of a vulnerable woman, and he couldn’t deny it.
He wasn’t a nice guy when it came to relationships. He had sex and was out the door, but he was always upfront about it. There were those who felt his behavior was synonymous with asshole, but even he’d never imagined he was this far gone, that he could want a woman because she was the ultimate forbidden fruit, and act on the impulse when she was at her most vulnerable.
That was what this was about, right? She was forbidden because she represented the very things that attacked the fabric of his culture. Oil companies. Anthropologists.
Hell, she was a recovering addict just like his uncle, making her a risk he couldn’t afford.