The Woman Left Behind: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  Again the cutting glance. His eyes were so dark she couldn’t tell the difference between his irises and pupils. “Be still,” he said, and there was something in his voice, some subtle inflection, that she couldn’t decipher but nevertheless went all the way to the bone and froze her in place.

  Levi looked back down at the slender foot he held and concentrated on keeping all reaction out of his face. It was just a foot, for fuck’s sake—a girly foot, with bright pink polish on the toenails, and a glittery stripe painted diagonally across each nail, but still just a foot. The hard truth remained, literally, that he’d been less turned on by looking at a completely naked woman than he was by holding Babe’s bare foot. He was touching her skin. Not the skin he preferred to be touching, but still, her skin.

  And it was skin that needed some first aid. The blisters on her heels had broken open and could easily get infected.

  “How did your feet get wet?” he asked as he opened the kit and took out a squeeze-pack of antibiotic salve.

  “Drainage ditch. I didn’t see it until I was in it.”

  He gave a brief nod. Shit happened to everyone. He’d gotten his feet wet a time or twenty, about half the time on purpose. You had to plan for it, because dry feet were essential. All of them were former military, except for her. The importance of keeping their feet dry had been drilled into them, but he’d overlooked getting her in the same frame of mind. These blisters were his fault.

  “I should have told you to always pack extra pairs of socks,” he said, trying to ease the curtness of his tone. He fought a constant battle when he was around her, and only by erring on the side of asshole could he keep things completely hands-off. Now, in spite of himself, he was touching her, just like when she’d started to fall off the rope and before he knew it he’d grabbed her to keep her from getting hurt. Keeping his distance was getting tougher by the day. He didn’t have a noble bone in his body; his dick was pointing at her like a bird dog toward a nice fat quail, and telling his dick no didn’t come naturally to him.

  But she looked as if she’d jump like a scalded cat if he barked at her, or moved too fast, so he had to tone it down. Getting her feet taken care of was more important than keeping his distance. “My fault,” he said calmly. “I didn’t think about it. But in the future, always keep two or three pairs of socks with you if we’re in the field—as well as a first aid kit,” he added pointedly, squeezing the salve onto the broken blister on her right foot.

  “I wondered when you’d get around to that,” she grumbled.

  Deftly he plastered a bandage over her heel, then took care of the blisters on top of her toes, using one bandage to cover two toes, taping them together, then another bandage on the other two small toes on that foot. Only her big toe had escaped blistering.

  On her left foot, all five toes were blistered. He shook his head. “If you’re in a jungle and don’t take care of your feet, you’ll end up with jungle rot, and that’s a bad deal.” As he bandaged that foot he told her about the time he’d overlooked taking care of his feet in humid conditions, how he’d spent six days in sick bay, completely pissed off because his team deployed without him. All the while he talked, in a separate part of his brain he was thinking what it would be like to crawl up between her legs and put her flat on the big rock. He already had her foot in his hand, all he had to do was move it to the side, stand, and he was there.

  With his hands on her foot and ankle he could feel the fine tremors that were quaking her, though when he glanced up she was staring fixedly at her right foot as if she could will it to heal. Her cheeks were pink, though, and he could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her slender neck. Instinctively he looked lower, to where twin little points tented her tee, and his mouth started watering like a damn teenager’s. He wanted his mouth on those nipples. He wanted his mouth on her, period, wanted her under his hands, under him.

  Fuck.

  He set his jaw and finished slapping bandages on her left foot. Then, to give himself something to do, shifted around to sit beside her and picked up her boots, running his fingers around the inside to feel for any rough edges. Granted, her feet were soft, but she’d rubbed up those blisters faster than he’d have thought, even after getting the boots wet.

  No seams or edges. He frowned and looked at her socks, noticed that they were oddly lumpy. He turned one inside out and pieces of foam fell on the rock. “What the hell?”

  “Foam,” she said, picking up the pieces and slipping them into her pocket.

  “I can see that. Why do you have foam in your socks?”

  “To keep my boots from flopping up and down on my feet and rubbing blisters.” She scowled. “Doesn’t work when everything’s wet.”

  She could effortlessly punch buttons he hadn’t even known he had. Just the idea—“Why the hell don’t you just buy boots that fucking fit?” he snapped. At first they’d all tried to watch their language around her, but as the days had gone by they’d slipped back into their old habits, and she never paid any attention to their language or reacted in any way. But sitting so close to her, being turned on by her and knowing she reacted the same way to him . . . saying fuck wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done, because it took his thoughts right back to the track he’d been trying to get out of.

  She whirled toward him, amber and blue eyes spitting fire. “Because they don’t make these boots that fucking fit,” she snarled back at him. Then she caught herself and turned facing forward again. “At least not that I’ve found. I need size seven narrow, with extra narrow heels. These are medium width.”

  They looked like a kid’s boots to him, but then he wore a size thirteen. Again he felt an unaccustomed surge of guilt, because he should have realized she wouldn’t know how to find the proper boots—though, damn it, she could have asked.

  “How in hell have you been running?” Because she had. She’d had to work up to their stamina, but now she pretty much ran as much as the rest of the team, unless she was on drone training.

  Defiantly she pointed toward the foam. “That and insoles. Low tech, but it’s mostly worked. I stuff the foam around my heels. I guess now I’ll start putting it over my toes, too.”

  “No, now we’ll find you some boots that damn well fit. Where did you get these?”

  “The mall.”

  He muttered a few more cuss words. “Because it never occurred to you to ask us where to get boots that fit, huh?”

  She bristled up at him again. Even though they were sitting side by side, the top of her head barely came to his chin, but that didn’t stop her. She had no common sense, he thought; most men wouldn’t cross him, but she didn’t hesitate. But maybe she sensed he’d rather break his own hands than hurt her. No, that wasn’t it, because she fired up at all the other guys, too, and as far as he knew none of them were tied up in knots over her.

  “A: Y’all were gone. B: I needed them fast. Running in sneakers was hell, with sand getting inside them. C: I was too tired at the end of the day to do much more than eat a sandwich and take a shower. I found what I could find as fast as I could find it.” She bit the words off, clipping each sound with an audible snap of her teeth.

  He could chew her out, argue with her, or just cut bait and move on. He decided on the latter, because she’d argue until nightfall. “All right. I’ll find you some boots that fit. In the future, damn it, tell me if you have a problem. I’m not a fucking mind reader.” Again that uncomfortable awareness at his word choice zinged through him. Fuck, was he going to have to stop saying fuck?

  “Yes, sir,” she said so flatly he knew he’d be lucky if she so much as asked him what time it was.

  He scrubbed his hand over his face and blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know how much good it did to put those bandages on your feet when you have to put those wet socks back on, but it’s either that or I carry you to the pickup point. Boom should be there soon.”

  She muttered something that sounded like “cold day in hell,” but it wa
s enough under her breath that he didn’t push her on it. Instead she picked up the socks and began working them on her feet. After packing the pieces of foam inside the socks, around her heels, she gingerly tugged on her boots and stood. She made a face. “Not great, but I can walk. It’s better than before.” Then she grudgingly added, “Thanks.”

  Probably just as well he didn’t have to carry her; he’d have liked getting his hands on her again way too much. Better that they keep on the way they were, with her throwing up her temper as a way to keep him at a distance, and him locking away his impulses to go all caveman on her because, God, he’d like nothing better than to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to bed, or to the floor, or hell, against the wall.

  And that would destroy the team. Even if the changed dynamics didn’t blow everything to hell, if he made a move on her himself after putting her off-limits to the other guys, their resentment would do the damage. He’d done what was safest for her and best for the team, and now he had to live with it.

  He could hear the far-off rumble of an engine. Both relieved and annoyed, he said, “There’s Boom. Let’s move.”

  Six

  When one was trying to draw a coyote into a trap, one had to be very careful not to set off any alarms. Coyotes—in this case Axel MacNamara—were sly and notoriously skittish. Joan Kingsley knew she didn’t have a prayer of getting close to him, therefore he had to come to her. That was where the trap came in, because he couldn’t know she was involved in any way. If he even suspected, he not only wouldn’t venture into the trap, she was likely to lose her own life.

  Sometimes she wondered why she hadn’t already been assassinated, but the knife edge of grief had been so keen she hadn’t really cared. He could easily make her death look like an accident, though really that could be gotten around just by controlling the “investigation.” The fact that he hadn’t made her suspect he anticipated having some use for her in the future, by blackmailing her into cooperating with whatever scheme he’d concocted. There was nothing she put past him.

  Perhaps she wanted to live, now, though she hadn’t at first after Dexter was killed. Not even their son had been enough to ease her grief. He was grown, and no longer lived at home; though she loved him very much, he was no longer a part of her everyday life and she accepted that he never would be again. Nevertheless, part of her wanted to stay alive because of him, because of the possibility of future grandchildren that would be Dexter’s grandchildren as much as hers.

  For that, she would live. And to live, she needed to rid herself of the pestilence that was Axel MacNamara.

  She had a plan. It would involve moving some chess pieces into place without MacNamara realizing who was doing the moving. At this point Devan was doing all the actual work, because she had to look absolutely uninvolved.

  Devan likely thought she was still in the dark about his real identity, and in a sense she was, because she didn’t know the name he’d been born with. Nevertheless, since Dexter’s murder, from Devan’s actions and resources she had concluded that he was a Russian plant, perhaps even Russian himself. Instead of disappearing and protecting himself, he’d remained in touch with her, subtly feeding ideas of vengeance to her. At least, he thought they were subtle. Joan Kingsley was a born politician, and she could spot half-truths and emotional bullshit manipulation from a thousand yards away.

  Before Dexter’s murder, she had even appreciated the lack of bullshit in Axel MacNamara. That was likely his only good point, but having no subtlety himself meant recognizing it in others was difficult for him. He functioned in D.C. only because those in power saw the benefit of having a rabid wolverine on their side.

  But she would bring him down. The end game would be his death, but before then she would drive him mad by attacking what he cared about the most: his precious GO-Teams, and using those attacks to maneuver him into position.

  Graeme Burger, South African banker, obscure and easily manipulated, was the current chess piece to be moved into place.

  The game had begun.

  “Guys,” Jina said the next day when they were taking a break, sitting on the ground and guzzling water. The September sun was hot, the sky a cloudless blue bowl overhead. “What do you tell your family about what you do? My parents are making noises about visiting.” She hated being worried about seeing them, but reality was reality and she had to deal with it.

  Boom scratched the side of his nose. “My wife knows, in general. Not the details, but she knows I can get called at any time, and that I can’t tell her where I’m going or how long I’ll be gone.”

  “Ditto,” Snake added. “No way to hide it, when you’re married. My kids are too young right now to ask questions, they just accept whatever we tell them. I don’t know what we’ll tell them when they get older, just play it by ear, I guess.”

  Behind her, Levi folded his long length to the ground; she knew it was him without looking around. Her skin tingled, up her spine and neck, and abruptly she felt as if she was being blasted by heat. She was always acutely aware of his location, though they seldom spoke directly to each other. He didn’t want her there and she knew it, knew too that proving to him she could do the job was way too important. She didn’t want it to be, but it was. The best she could do was keep him from seeing how he affected her, even if only for the sake of her pride.

  Crutch tilted his blond head back and poured water on his face, then flopped on his back and folded one arm back to pillow his head. “I told my mom I work for an engineering firm that gets sent all over the world.”

  “What’s weird about that is he doesn’t have an engineering degree, and his mom buys the lame-ass excuse anyway,” Jelly said, snickering.

  Crutch shrugged, as if to say there was no explaining what people chose to believe.

  “My mom would never buy that.” Jina squinted up at the blue sky. “I told her I was learning a new computer program.”

  “True enough, as far as that goes,” Snake said. “But, yeah, they’d have to be blind and stupid to buy that’s all you’re doing. Look at you.”

  Look at her? Jina looked, frowning. Okay, she wasn’t dressed like someone who normally worked with computers; she knew computer nerds, given that she had one foot at least halfway into nerdhood herself. She should be wearing jeans and sneakers and a tee from some obscure rock concert. Instead she wore lace-up boots that looked as if she’d run a hundred miles in them—she had—and brown cargo pants. She was definitely wearing a tee, but it was a sweat-stained dingy white. “Not wearing this, no, but I can change clothes. I was talking about the hours I spend with you guys, and how dirty I am when I get home unless it’s a swim day.” Thank God for swim days; at least then she could shower before she went home.

  Trapper snorted, leaning back on his elbows. “The girl doesn’t have a mirror,” he commented to the others.

  “Do too. I brush my teeth and hair every morning.”

  Several of them chuckled. She slugged back some water, enjoying the level of camaraderie she and the guys had established, with the exceptions of Levi and Voodoo. Voodoo didn’t like her, but as far as she could tell he didn’t like anyone, so she didn’t take it personally. Levi, though . . . he watched her with cold assessment, as if waiting for her to screw up so bad he could legitimately refuse to let her join his team. She knew he could do it, too; the team leaders had a lot of autonomy, because a smooth-working team was so essential to their success. She’d busted her ass for three months to keep from giving him that excuse. Whenever she had the time to think about it logically, she should be giving him that excuse, rather than half killing herself trying to do what they asked of her. Because she couldn’t think of any logical reason for her illogical actions, she had long since given up trying to explain it to herself.

  “You’re skinny and tan and have muscles,” Jelly explained.

  Huh. According to the scale, she’d actually gained about ten pounds, after some initial weight loss. Despite gaining weight, though, all her old c
lothes were too big for her now, to the point her sweatpants barely hung on her hips and she didn’t dare wear them out of the condo. But buying more meant going shopping, and she didn’t have the time, energy, or interest. She’d made the effort for boots, but the boots were important. She’d ordered the cargo pants—several pairs—off the internet. Other than that . . . meh. She’d shop some other time, like maybe next year.

  She hadn’t been heavy before—the description that kept coming to her was “normal.” Not tall, not short; not heavy, not skinny. She kind of wasn’t normal, now, and whenever she caught sight of herself in the mirror she was briefly taken aback, but the truth was that beyond the teeth-and-hair brushing she seldom had time to even check what she was wearing. She’d never been blessed in the boob department, but now they were almost nonexistent because she’d lost so much body fat while adding muscle. She did like her arms, though, liked the definition of her triceps, and being able to pop her biceps up. In just three months she was so much stronger that even though she was always tired at the end of the day she could bound up the stairs to her condo.

  “Maybe I could tell them I’ve been working out,” she mused. “That’s true enough.”

  Two or three grunts answered that. “They won’t believe that, unless they’re dense,” Boom said. “You don’t have gym muscles, and that wouldn’t explain the tan.”

  Well, damn. Her folks weren’t dense. They hadn’t successfully raised five kids by being either naive or gullible. Three months before, Jina wouldn’t have known the difference between gym muscles and the kind of muscles achieved by hard work, but now she did. Gym muscles were for posing; work muscles were for doing, and there was a definite difference.

  “Maybe they won’t come,” she said, feeling guilty because not wanting to see them felt awful. She loved her family and normally saw them four or five times a year—until now. Maybe she could go home around Christmas, and by then her tan, attained despite a liberal application of sunscreen every morning, should have faded. And she’d still have to run, even on vacation, because staying in shape was a constant effort. When the guys weren’t on a mission, they were either working out or going through training exercises, keeping their skills sharp. She’d be expected to do the same, so her family would see her running and assume her weight loss and muscle gain was because of that.