Will tasted a laugh, his first real one in months, and responded to the familiar joke as he had a dozen times before. “We can compare later.”
God, how many times had he imagined this moment? Pictured Coop standing over him, staring down at him, her mouth satisfied and her eyes dancing. He’d had different, more intimate circumstances in mind, imagined her laid bare before him, rather than the other way around. Circumstances where pleasure trumped gratitude and clothes were optional.
Still, this wasn’t the first time he’d had her at his back, and the sense of security in that wasn’t new, but it was the first time he’d felt so damn vulnerable beneath her watch. The first time he’d wondered if life and the cost of living had gotten the better of him, if there was anything left of the man he’d been when they met.
“Wanna get out of here?” She extended her hand and helped pull him to his feet, gripping his elbow when the Earth tilted slightly to the left.
She ran her gaze from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, then up again, which made him feel both exposed and also very aware of the difference in their heights. From the flat of his back she’d looked tall and lean, but on his feet and face-to-face he realized she couldn’t be an inch over five-eight with her boots on.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, nodding toward where Matías, may the bastard rot in hell, had caught him with the knife.
Will tugged at the hem of his shirt, pulling the fabric away from a ragged gash that still hadn’t clotted.
Cooper whistled through her teeth. “You’re supposed to zag, Bennett.”
“Always preferred to zig.” He dropped his shirt and tried to ignore the heartbeat beneath his ribs and the hot slide of blood down his side.
“Keep pressure on that. I’ve got a med kit in my pack, but you’re going to need stitches.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I’ll try to keep them neat.”
“Straight scars are for pussies,” he said through gritted teeth. “I want a lightning bolt.”
“My initials it is.”
Will suppressed a laugh as he followed her toward the ancient SUV that had been cobbled together with random parts, copious duct tape, and ran on a steady diet of diesel and dreams. Coop opened the door and popped the hood, then bent at the waist, her shirt riding up to reveal a gun holstered at the small of her back. “Well, this thing is a piece of junk, but at least it doesn’t look like I cracked the engine block.”
He scanned the clearing, looking for backup, for support, for someone monitoring the perimeter. Instead he found her discarded pack and the rifle she’d used to clean the scene. It wasn’t military issue, and it sure as fuck wasn’t a weapon a well-supported field asset would carry. That thing was Frankenstein’s monster. At a quick glance, Will counted six parts, none of which were original, and none designed to work together. That was black market and homemade, put together will skill, knowledge and, if he had to guess, a bit of MacGyver magic.
“What are you doing here, Coop?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, snapping the hood closed and rolling her neck. “I’m not Luke Skywalker but I am here to rescue you.”
A grin that wasn’t stretched and brittle and brought to life by some morbid thought or self-deprecating acknowledgement eased across his face.
“Wait.” He drew up short. “Does that make me Princess Leia?”
“You’re doing a better impression of Chewbacca at the moment,” she said, tugging lightly at the end of his beard.
He caught her hand, held her eyes. “Thank you.” He squeezed her fingers but because she went still and wary, as if she expected him to use proximity and size to his advantage, he let go. She unzipped the top of her pack, pulled out a wad of clean, plastic-wrapped socks, and tossed them over. “Dry your feet and grab a pair of boots from someone who no longer needs them. We’re leaving.”
He did as she said, watching as she broke down the rifle as if she’d done it a thousand times before.
That wasn’t a last-minute weapon choice. It was hers. Something she knew as intimately as an old friend or dedicated lover. Which meant if she was still with the CIA, she was way, way off the reservation. That, or she’d been burned and abandoned.
Forgotten.
She stowed her rifle, then shoved her pack onto the floorboard behind the driver’s seat.
“Let’s go home, Will.”
Let’s go home.
There was something in the way she’d said it—the inclusiveness, the shared desire, the united goal—that set him at ease.
He didn’t know what had brought her here.
But it didn’t matter. Not yet. Because whatever else she wasn’t saying, there were only two things that mattered. First, she’d saved his life—twice—and second, she said the word “home” with all the melancholy yearning of a desire long out of reach.
And that was enough for him.
For now.
Will stood, adjusted to the weight of shoes, then scavenged a handgun and an extra clip. “Hey, Coop?”
“Yeah?” Cooper asked.
“You were right,” he whispered through a stress-roughened throat.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, and for a moment, he wondered if she knew what he meant.
Her mouth didn’t so much as twitch, but her eyes crinkled with a little I-told-you-so smirk. “It’s like I always said, Bennett.” She held his gaze and he drank in a face he so desperately wanted to wipe clean and memorize. “Patience is a virtue. And meeting me? It’s always worth the wait.”
A laugh lodged in his throat and became a cough that had him doubling over and wheezing for air. But when a palm, tentative and warm, landed on his back, he calmed. Stood. And took his first true breath of freedom. Let himself believe it might not be the last.
“You always have to be right?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow at him, which was answer enough.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” She stepped away, jerked open the passenger door on a creak of rusty hinges, and gestured him inside. “Ladies first,” she offered with a smile.
He climbed in, forced himself to take a calm, steadying breath when the door slammed closed and locked him in. After a year in the pit—little more than a doublewide grave dug into the earth, covered by heavy steel bars—Will had a new appreciation for his sister’s aversion to tight spaces.
He kept his hand on the door and his heart rate slowed. Cooper slid in behind the wheel and revved the engine, which had only come to life after she pumped the accelerator and grumbled a whole host of promises and threats.
A squeal cut through the night like the wail of a pissed off wraith, sharp and high and blessedly brief as they left the clearing.
“Subtle,” Cooper grunted, forcing the stick to find third against the grinding protest of abused gears.
“Fan belt,” Will offered, wincing as each bounce of the SUV echoed through his body like phantom fists. “Could hear this beast a mile out.”
Cooper sighed. “We’ll ditch the SUV a few miles outside town and walk the rest.” She pitched a glance toward Will, her expression loud in the silence between them.
Sweat beaded on his brow and drenched the back of his neck. His breath rattled in his chest, and the cut along his ribs throbbed. Exhaustion poured into him, his limbs going limp and heavy.
They left the clearing behind them, trees rising on all sides, the canopy stretching across the road, obscuring the sky and casting them into a murky, rainy darkness. Cooper flicked on the headlights and tried the air conditioner.
“Optimist,” Will accused with a laugh when the engine squealed but the vents only pushed warm air. He glanced into the sideview mirror as the road curved and watched as the jungle swallowed up the last year of his life.
He’d expected this place to swallow him, too. Consume him, piece by piece, until nothing remained but carrion for the birds and the bugs and the brutal efficiency of the jungle.
And even as the road passed beneath him and the pit
disappeared behind him, he wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t.
Chapter Four
The feeble cry of a new day, still weak and gray, tinged a horizon that would soon be bright blue and cloudless.
They’d made better time down the rough-cleared mountain road than Cooper had expected, and they’d managed to ditch the car where no one was likely to stumble upon it. But that had been the easy part.
They’d faced half of the five-mile walk into the outskirts of the small fishing village where she had a standing arrangement with the captain of a trawler. But they’d lost their window for slipping into town undetected.
And Will was dead on his feet, pain and exhaustion and the silent slide into sickness weighing him down.
They couldn’t keep going. He couldn’t keep going.
So she’d led them off the road and several hundred yards into the tree line.
“There,” Cooper said, pointing toward the base of a ceiba tree that rose so far into the darkness that neither of their beams revealed the top. “We can shelter in the roots. Grab some food and some rest then get the hell out of here.”
She took the flashlight from him, converted it to a lantern, and set it in the middle of a wide arc created by the base of a tree the size of New York City apartment. A beetle scuttled along the spine of a giant root and Will stepped away with a full-body shiver.
In less than a minute, she cleared the forest floor, nudging away the flotsam and jetsam of an environment caught in the throes of life, death, and rebirth. She dropped her pack, her spine sighing in relief, then opened the top and pulled out a waterproof cover. She spread it out, then gestured for Will to take up a seat against the base of the tree.
“Hungry?” she asked, sorting through her supplies and wishing she’d brought a little more in the way of cover.
“Starving.” He sank gracelessly to the ground, almost as if he’d given his muscles permission to relax and they’d simply turned liquid. “Please tell me you got a bucket of fried chicken in there,” he groaned, dropping his head back against the trunk of the tree.
“’Course I do.”
“And coleslaw? Gotta have the coleslaw.”
“Damn,” Cooper said, withdrawing two of the MREs she’d brought. “Knew I forgot something.”
“Can't have fried chicken without the slaw,” he mumbled, his voice slow and thick with the sap of encroaching sleep. “And baked beans. And rolls. Big, fluffy, buttered rolls.”
“Guess you’ll have to make do with either chili mac or beef brisket.”
“Mac works.”
“You got it.” She brought it to him, along with a bottle of Tylenol for the fever that clung to his cheeks.
He stared up at her, a bony sprawl of folded, too-thin limbs that reminded her of the spiders that used to lurk on her father’s deck. He snatched the food from her hand like a cornered, feral thing, and tore the top off with his teeth.
“Oh wait, I’ve got . . .” She rooted through the pockets of her bag for the stainless-steel spork she carried. She turned to Will, then stumbled to a halt.
He’d already dug in, scooping out food with his fingers and shoving it into his mouth.
Cooper shrugged off the shock and went to hand him the spork, but he jerked away, hunching over the food and toward the tree, snarling at her like a vicious, starving dog that had long ago forgotten how to trust.
She didn’t blame him.
She’d known gnawing hunger and the desperate relief of food—and the all-too-rational fear of having it taken away.
But before she could regroup, stow her pity, and hide her surprise, Will came back to himself. Caught her staring.
And dropped his head in shame.
He set the food next to his boot, glanced at his hands, flexed his fingers.
He went to wipe them against his pants, then stopped mid-movement, as if he’d remembered how dirty they were.
Caught somewhere between exhaustion and embarrassment, he glanced away, closed his eyes, and clenched his jaw as if he could rewind time or at least become invisible.
Cooper knelt next to him, took a wet cloth from the pack she’d set out earlier, and grasped his hand.
He jerked, his eyes snapping open, his gaze wary and confused and defensive, and tried to pull away.
“You hit the MREs the way I hit my dad’s smoked ribs—all go, no quit, napkins are for pussies and forks are for stabbing people who get too close to your plate.” When he didn’t say anything, just stared at her between long, slow blinks, she grinned at him. “Respect.”
She pulled his arm forward, and when he only resisted a little, she gentled her touch, forced herself to slow down, to tackle something that should be quick and efficient with soft, soothing strokes. “Never could get used to the grime I’d pick up in the field,” she admitted. “Always hated having my hands coated in dirt or gun oil or whatever. Made my skin dry out and crack; couldn’t stand the way it changed the touch of my rifle, the feel of the trigger. Guys used to make unmerciful fun of me for carrying these around.” She shrugged, turned his palm face up, and gently cleaned his hand from wrist to fingertip, revealing wide palms and long fingers.
It was her turn to push back a shiver and slide away from the thought of what those hands might feel like on her skin.
“Five or six days in, no shower, restricted water, baby wipes started to look pretty damn good.” She reached for his other wrist, and he gave it to her willingly, sighing as she pulled out another wipe, then another and another, until his hands were clean of earth and sweat and food and blood. “At five bucks a wipe, I got the last laugh,” she said with a wink.
“I bet you usually do,” he whispered, staring at his fingers as if the memory of what clean and comfortable felt like was so damn distant it was practically déjà vu.
Clean skin was such a little thing. But a dignity—one he’d probably been denied for months—and one she could easily restore.
Kindness, as her mother would say, didn’t cost a thing.
A lie, as it turned out. And one of the first a life on the run had stripped her of.
Kindness. Compassion. Empathy. They were all little more than currencies to be traded and used to purchase an advantage or seal a fate.
But reaching for Will had been instinctual and easy. Honest. She wasn’t trying to trick or manipulate him.
She was losing her touch.
“It’s not as good as a hot shower but does the job in a pinch.”
“Thank you,” Will whispered.
Coop pulled another wipe free—the package half gone already—and slid it across his forehead and beneath the tangled mass of hair they’d likely have to shave.
“Don’t!” he barked, jerking away and grabbing her hands in an unyielding grip that wavered after only a few seconds, betraying his flagging strength. “Don’t,” he repeated on a whisper, tilting his head away, as if there were something to hide, something he couldn’t bear for her to see.
She pulled away, pressed a few more wipes into his open palms, and didn’t tell him she’d already seen the half-missing ear, or that the months of captivity were painted across his body in bold strokes and subtle lines. Some would fade. Others . . . well, those he’d learn to carry. In time, when exhaustion and depravation weren’t riding him, he’d remember he was more than strong enough to face whatever scars were left behind. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go all Aunt Edna on you.”
“W-wha—?” His cheeks hollowed, and his beard flexed, the lines around his eyes creasing.
“You know . . .” Cooper pretended to lick the edge of her thumb, then mimed swiping it across his cheek. “Aunt Edna. We all got one.”
He laughed, the sound tight and strangled, as if at some point he’d outgrown it until he no longer knew how to wear it. “Not me. No aunts. No uncles.”
Cooper raised an eyebrow as she pressed the stainless-steel spork into his hand.
“Okay, okay. No Aunt Edna. Just a cranky octogenarian who taught second grade.”
“Everyone’s got an Edna,” Cooper said with a grin. “Sorry I brought her to the party.”
“It’s fine.” Will pulled a wipe over his face and along the back of his neck, smearing months of layered dirt and sweat away until his skin began to show through. When the pack ran out, a tiny pile of discolored cloth next to him, he leaned his head back on a sigh.
“I know it’s not fried chicken, but eat up, Bennett.” She nudged his foot and set the last of her water near his hand. She’d have to source more later and use the purification tablets in her pack to make it drinkable.
Water that tasted vaguely of a public pool, yay.
“God, the things I’d do for an ice-cold cider.” Sure would make this slop go down easier.
“Apple juice? Seriously?” he asked as he picked up his discarded meal and scooped out something that did not look like chili mac.
“Beer snob,” she accused, opening her own pouch of barely edible dinner. “Should’ve known. You have the look about you.”
“What look?”
“You know,” she said, stroking her chin as if she had a beard and the gesture somehow increased her contemplative prowess. “The paper-towel-selling, beard-balm-buying, I-only-drink-craft-IPA hipster look.”
Will scoffed. “I don’t know what beard-balm is, paper towels aren’t environmentally friendly—”
“Hipster,” Cooper coughed into her hand.
“And I imagine I look more like Grizzly Adams or Robinson Crusoe—”
“Or Chewbacca—”
Will glared as Cooper pulled on her sweetest smile. It was the one she wore to church, the one that made her mother happy and her father scoff, her teachers sigh and CO scream—and it was one that had always made her spotter swear and reach for his helmet.
“You’re gonna be trouble, aren’t you, Coop?” Will asked, folding up the top of his empty MRE and licking the edge of the spork clean.
“Wouldn’t be much fun if I wasn’t.” Though just how much trouble she was bringing into Will’s life, she couldn’t say. It hardly mattered. Even if she wanted to send him home, to write him off as a dead end or a man who’d paid enough for any sins of his past, the reality was, there was a price on his head and it would grow. Cooper hadn’t invented whatever trouble was after Will.
Fearless (Somerton Security Book 3) Page 4