Badass

by Linda Barlow

  Fuck it. Back to my tent. I couldn’t figure out why this woman was getting to me. I didn’t trust her, or her dad for that matter. She was one of those academic types, like my father had been. He’d been a geology professor. Met my mom when he was a professor at Montana State University in Billings. My mom loved him, or so she said, though they never married. I don’t fucking remember him at all. The second he was offered a better position at some university in bumfuck Idaho, he bailed. Though his child support payments arrived on time, I never saw him again. He didn’t know a fucking thing about me—he didn’t even know I was a SEAL.

  The starlight shone into my tent and I decided to use the illumination. I rummaged through my pack and grabbed my sketchpad and pencils. The fast, dark lines filled the page. I drew the moonlit sky, the stars, and of course, Cassie sitting under the constellations.

  Some softer strokes added the luscious curves to her body, and I accentuated her features with short, dark marks—almost like exclamation points.

  I never understood exactly why drawing calmed me down, and it didn’t matter. Creating a picture was more powerful to me than explaining my thoughts in words.

  Finished. A final examination showed the Baja mountain landscape in the distance—a looming contrast to Cassie’s lithe figure. This trip would be nothing more than a memory by the end of the week, but I’d preserved this moment in time.

  Chapter 30—Cassie

  On the third morning, as we folded the tent and stowed our gear, I noticed that Shane was once again withdrawing into inscrutable silence. He’d been the same yesterday morning, too. Cold. Controlled. Distant. It reminded me of how he had behaved on the night we’d met. At least he’d been polite then, even if it had been clear he wanted to be rid of me. Now he couldn’t get rid of me, so he didn’t even bother to be nice.

  Why had I ever agreed to this crazy idea? A road trip, sex, and camping with a man who didn’t like me any more than I liked him? What a brilliant plan! Yet another example of how stupid humans could be when they let their genitals do their thinking.

  “Not like that,” he said sharply as I tried to stuff my sleeping bag into the Harley carry-all. “That’s not how you do it.”

  “Fine.” I tossed the bundle to him. “Sorry for screwing up. You want me to roll around in the sand until every inch of my skin is covered with it?” That’s what they did when their SEAL trainees messed up. Actually, that was one of the milder punishments.

  “I want you to sit down and shut up while I finish packing. We are carrying a lot more gear than usual, thanks to you, and it has to be balanced. We’re not driving a fucking limo, or whatever you’re used to.”

  “I only brought what you told me to bring.”

  I hated the way he assumed that we were some sort of rich, spoiled assholes. It wasn’t true. Dad was a university professor who made extra money doing consulting. He had always worked hard and saved. Our home back in Massachusetts had been nice, but not a mansion. I’m sure my background was more privileged than Shane’s but it wasn’t as if we were part of the one percent.

  In Rolling Meadows, my hometown in Massachusetts, I’d gone to the public school and my friends had come from a broad swathe of different incomes. I’d worked part-time in high school and college like everyone else. I had student loans to pay off. I lived in a modest apartment near campus in La Jolla during the academic year and I earned a little extra cash working at the Birch aquarium.

  As for Dad’s house overlooking the beach in Coronado, we didn’t own that place. Dad had done a house trade with some wealthy dude who was doing a visiting professorship in Boston for the academic year. We got that guy’s gorgeous mansion overlooking the beach, and he’d taken our more modest home back in Massachusetts. Dad was planning to sell our old house and buy a new one out here, but it wouldn’t be anything as expensive as the Coronado place, because California real estate on that level was out of his price range.

  I’d considered making this all clear to Shane, but what was the point? I didn’t care what he thought of me. If he’d seen my dad’s sailboat—the thing Shane kept calling his yacht—he’d have to adjust his fantasies. It was small, kinda old, and could probably have used a good, thorough barnacle cleaning.

  Now I was in a bad mood, too. I plopped myself down on a nearby boulder and sulked while Shane did the final packing. “Let’s get started,” he snarled, even though I’d done exactly what he’d told me to do. He climbed on the bike. “Hurry up. Put on sunscreen, and don’t forget your sunglasses. Get your helmet on.”

  “Save the commands for the bedroom.” I jerked on my helmet and climbed on behind him. If we could have ridden without my touching him, that would have been fine with me. Dick.

  But of course I had to fold my arms around his strong chest. I had to press up against that firm back, that rock-hard ass, those amazing thighs. Damn him. I wished he’d take his stupid pheromones and get the hell out of my life.

  Long-term, even the thrill of pressing my belly and chest against Shane’s firm back got monotonous. We were in a hot desert climate with the sun beating down, but the breeze from the draft of riding was enough to keep us relatively cool. But in this part of Baja, there wasn’t much to see but scrub and cactus, road and more road.

  The ride today was long, too. We grabbed lunch in San Ignacio, which was an oasis compared with the desert we had just ridden through—there were even date palm trees. We restocked on gas and water and I got into a short debate with His Lordship over my desire to take a side trip down to the lagoon where the gray whales come to breed at this time of year. When I showed him the map and how to get there, he rejected the idea.

  “That’s almost fifty miles in the wrong direction. We’d have to stay here for a day, maybe two. You want to miss this wedding you’ve insisted on dragging me to?”

  Obviously I didn’t. “I just want to see some whales.”

  “We’ll soon be riding down the east coast. Maybe you’ll see some there.”

  Shoving the map back under his nose, I pointed to a spot off the main highway on the east coast between Mulegé and Loreto. “Okay, well, let’s take this smaller road off the highway and camp by the sea tonight instead of going all the way into Loreto. Maybe we’ll see some whales or dolphins in the Sea of Cortez. And even if we don’t, it’s supposed to be beautiful there.”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “Isn't that the spot where you claimed some old fortune-teller guy hangs out?”

  “Somewhere near there,” I admitted. I had read about the old Mayan shaman on one of the blogs I’d consulted before the trip. “He’s a whale-whisperer.”

  Shane rolled his eyes. “I’m not even gonna ask.”

  But, to my utter amazement, when we finally got down to the area I’d indicated on the map, late in the day, he swung the bike off the main road and onto a dirt road heading east.

  Whoa. He was doing something I’d asked for? I could hardly believe it.

  I hugged him harder than usual. I was clinging to him happily with my cheek pressed to his back for quite a while on the rough road, wondering when we were going to see the sea. We hit a bump. It felt like a big bump. I hung on tightly, seeing the road race by alongside us, not particularly rutted. It wasn’t a good road, by any means, but now it felt as if it was coming apart under our wheels.

  Shane stiffened and slowed down. The shaking continued. Got worse. What the fuck? Maybe we had a flat tire or something?

  The bike started to skid. Or turn. Or something. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I just hung on as we leaned over to the right and slowed and bucked and then there was a sickening sensation of something very, very wrong.

  The bike shuddered and jerked. I was slammed against Shane and he was sent forward. Fuck, fuck, fuck. We pitched up and then down. Everything was confusion.

  Next thing I knew the bike seemed to slip out from under me and I was rolling on the ground, pain of all types shuddering into me. I let out a moan of fear because I thought I had stoppe
d but I kept bucking up and down—me, the ground, the sky and where was Shane? I wasn’t clutching his body anymore. I was curled on my side on a patch of ground that wouldn’t stop shaking. It was making an unearthly noise, too.

  Maybe if I’d grown up on the West coast instead of in Massachusetts, I’d have realized what was happening. It wasn’t until I managed to push myself up on my hands and knees and feel the earth still shuddering beneath me that I got it.

  Earthquake. Oh my God, it was an earthquake. A big one. A very big earthquake that had sent us careening off the road.

  Chapter 31—Cassie

  Shane. Where was Shane? I was about to scream his name when I heard my own being yelled:

  “Cassie? Cassie!”

  He was there, behind me. In my blind spot. I grabbed my helmet and yanked it off. My arm hurt. My shoulder hurt. My legs and ass and back all hurt. But I didn’t see any blood or any bones sticking out.

  Shane was also on his ass, pushing himself up on his arms. I could see a tear in his sleeve. Some blood. A lot of blood. He looked even more dazed than me, but it didn’t stop him. He pushed himself to a squat and then rose shakily. He rocked as he stood. I couldn’t tell if it was the ground still rocking or if he was injured.

  He limped the few steps to me and went back into a squat. “Are you hurt? Cassie? Are you okay?” He actually sounded as if he cared.

  “You have blood on your arm.” He had blood on his leg, too, I realized. Same side. Another place where his bike riding clothes were ripped. He must have landed on a rock or something. “Shane, you’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine. Don’t move. Let me check you out. I’m a corpsman.”

  I obeyed because I was still confused and I honestly didn’t know if I was hurt. I thought I was just shaken up. He told me to move this and lift that and he looked into my eyes and took my pulse both in my throat and wrist. He then had me move my limbs and point my freaking fingers and toes, all of which I could do.

  Meanwhile, red blood was seeping from wounds on his right arm and leg. It wasn’t gushing, though. Or pulsing. That was good. Not arterial wounds then.

  “Sit,” I commanded when he had finished examining me. “I’m okay. You’re bleeding. Let me examine you now. Tell me what to look for.”

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, but he started putting pressure on the wound on his leg. As he bent over to do this, though, the blood coming from his arm increased. I squatted down beside him and looked more closely at the arm. His jacket was torn and so was his skin—there was a gash on his forearm that must have been close to four inches long.

  “I’m putting pressure on this,” I told him, doing so as calmly as I could. He had pushed aside the fabric over the leg wound. It wasn’t as bad as the arm wound, but both were still bleeding. “Shane. I think you need stitches.”

  He looked again at the arm wound. “Fuck. We usually don’t suture wounds in the field. We stop the bleeding with pressure bandages.”

  “And then what?”

  He looked a little sheepish. “Then we evacuate the wounded to a medical facility. But that’s for the big shit. These are just scratches. I mean, sure, they could use a suture or two, but it’s not necessary. They’ll heal without stitches. I’ll just have a couple more scars to decorate my body with. Calm down.”

  “I’m calm,” Actually, I was panicking. There was nothing around us that I could see. We were alone in the desert and Shane was hurt.

  He obviously realized how scared I was because he looked at me steadily and said, “It’ll be okay. I have a great med kit. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Yeah right. How? His right arm was the one with the wound. Not even an experienced corpsman could patch himself up left-handed, could he?

  “Get my med pac and I’ll show you how you can help. I’m fine with the leg, but I could use a bit of assistance with the arm.” He gave me another assessing look. “But not if you’re squeamish. I don’t need you fainting on me.”

  “I’m not squeamish,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Good. Biggest problem with wounds is the possibility of infection. That’s more important than a damn suture. So we’re gonna wash, disinfect and seal me up with a pressure bandage. I’ll heal just fine.”

  “That was an earthquake, right?”

  “That was a fucking Big One. I had to steer off the road. Look. It was breaking up.”

  I was a little better oriented now. We were off in the dirt on the side of the road. About 20 yards ahead of us, the packed dirt track had buckled up in a slope that wasn’t supposed to be there. Beyond it was a jagged fissure with a smoke or dust cloud billowing around it. If we had hit that we’d have had a much worse spill.

  I didn’t even want to think what might be inside that crack in the earth.

  The bike was on its side a couple of yards away from us. It didn’t look too messed up. He must have slowed it way down before it had skidded out from under us. I guess we were lucky that it hadn’t landed on any part of our bodies.

  “I’ve never been in an earthquake before.”

  He gave me an incredulous look.

  “I’m from Massachusetts.” I managed to stand and limp toward the bike. “Where is the first aid kit packed?”

  “Rear container, left side. It should pull right out.”

  The fact that he hadn’t insisted on getting it himself worried me. Was he doing the I’m-so-tough-I-don’t-feel-pain thing? Of course he was. He was a SEAL.

  The carrier was battered from the crash and didn’t open as easily as usual. My hands felt slippery with sweat as I struggled with it. Sweat wasn’t good. We were in a desert climate. The sun was low in the sky now, but it had been hot during the middle of the day. Night was coming on and it would get chilly.

  What if we were stuck here? Shane had made a big deal about carrying plenty of water, but water would go fast if the motorcycle was too damaged to drive.

  A big fucking earthquake. Where was its epicenter? Here in Baja or someplace else? Maybe we hadn’t even felt the worst of it. Maybe it was a big disaster? Had it been felt off the coast? What if it had caused a tsunami and my Dad and his small sailboat had been caught in it?

  I felt dizzy and really scared as various horrible possibilities swept through me.

  Calm down, I told myself. What did my mother always say? It’s no good worrying about things that will probably never happen. Yeah. Like cancer killing you when you were only forty-one.

  “Did you find it? Do you need help?”

  I pulled myself together. Had to think and act smartly. “Got it.” I grabbed one of the canteens and the Mylar blanket from the pack, too, then returned to Shane, who was sitting on the ground, still applying pressure. The leg wound appeared to have stopped bleeding, but he was still losing blood from his arm.

  He showed me a rock. It was rounded on one end and pointed on the other. It had reddish stuff on it. “Blood,” said Shane. “That’s what cut me. I must have landed on it. See? It’s pretty clean. Once I irrigate the wounds to get the dirt out, they should be good. They aren’t deep, so stop worrying. This is totally minor shit.”

  “You still lost blood,” I said stubbornly. If I wanted to worry about him, I would.

  “Listen to me, Cassie. It’s no big deal. I haven’t popped any arteries, so that’s good.” He tore open a sterile pack and pressed it to his leg, then put another on his arm. “Put your hand on that and hold on hard.”

  I did so. Shane’s blood was on me now, lending a coppery scent to the air. There were other unfamiliar smells too from dust and plants being stirred up in the desert by the force of the tremor.

  “Where’s your cell phone?”

  With my left hand, I pulled out of my pocket.

  “Check for connectivity. Don’t panic if we don’t have any. Cell service often goes down in an earthquake.”

  “There’s no signal.”

  “I figured.” He was fishing through the medical kit. “Get me some water.” He looked up a
t me. “You brought a sun hat, right? Find it and put it on. Find mine, too.”

  “The sun’s going down.”

  “Then we’ll need our hats to keep our bodies warm. We are no longer on the main highway, as you may have noticed. We are, in fact, out in the middle of no-fucking-where.”

  I said nothing to this. We were here, I knew, because of me. If we were lost in the damn desert, it was my fault.

  When I gave him the water, he told me to take a few good swallows. “It’s been ages since we stopped to drink. Need to stay hydrated.” He drank a large swig too.

  “But what if we run out?”

  “We’ll get more.”

  He didn’t say how.

  Shane was all business: “First we’ll patch me up. Then I’ll need to see what kind of shape the bike is in. If we can travel to a more sheltered area, we will. If we can’t, we’ll figure out a way to shelter here.”

  I looked around nervously. I saw nothing in any direction except scrub and cactus. This wasn’t good.

  Chapter 32—Shane

  Bad. This was really fucking bad.

  Didn’t matter that I had extensive training, I mean fuck the Navy had spent over half a million dollars to train every one of us, even more to train me since I was a medic. But an earthquake, middle of the desert, in a developing country with an unstable government meant we were royally fucked.

  “Start the small camp stove and boil up some water. Don’t waste any. Just enough to fill this plastic bag.”

  She did as she was told without speaking. In the meantime, I’d grabbed a pair of gloves from the med kit and used sterile gauze to clean out as much gunk from my wounds as I could—dirt and dust and gravel from the road. When Cassie poured the water in the bag, she turned off the stove and returned to me. “Now what?”