by Loye, Trish
They ran up to the doors of the E.D.G.E. building and he jogged in place. “Well, thanks for the run,” he said. “I think I’m going to do another loop. Do you want to join me?”
She smirked at him. “We’re not finished yet, Lucky. That was only the warmup. We’re hitting the Beast now.”
CHAPTER 6
Cat wanted to laugh at the look on Rhys’s face.
“The Beast?” he asked.
“Follow me.” She entered the building, waved at the security personnel at the front desk—who were civilians but still under E.D.G.E. employment—and went to the E.D.G.E. private elevator. Inside, she pressed her thumb against the scanner and typed B3 on the keypad.
“How many sub levels are there?” Rhys asked.
“Below the parking? Seven, as far as I know,” she said. “Research, weapons and ranges, and training takes three floors. The Beast takes two.”
The elevator doors slid silently open. Lights flickered on, revealing a large two-story room filled with an inclined rock wall for climbing, four hanging ropes for the same, a two-lane lap pool, and a massive obstacle course that would impress the best of athletes. Rhys didn’t disappoint in his reaction.
He whistled and walked straight toward the ten-foot wall, the first obstacle, and ran his hands over the smooth polished wood. “This is the Beast?”
Cat nodded. “You’ve got five minutes to look over the obstacles.”
“And then?”
She smiled. “And then we have some fun.”
She turned her back and began stretching her legs from the run, then swung her arms in circles, warming them up. There was a lot of upper-body work required to get through the Beast and she needed to be ready if she was going to prove her point to Rhys.
After the designated five minutes, she turned back to see Rhys studying her. “How are we doing this?” he asked.
She knew what he was asking. “A race. You against me.”
He huffed a breath. “You want to race me?”
“Not particularly,” she said. “The Beast is made to instill teamwork. It’s very tricky to do alone, but I need to prove a point to you.”
He frowned. “What’s that?”
“That I am just as capable as you physically.” She could tell by his eyes that he didn’t believe her, but that was okay. He would soon.
“On three,” she said, her blood already starting to pump at the thought of the race. “Two. One.”
They both ran at the ten-foot wall. Cat remembered her first obstacle course in basic training. Then, it had only been a six-foot wall and she’d only made it over because she was taller than the average girl. Most of the recruits had been left behind that first day, until the directing staff had taken pity on them and shown them how to get over it.
Getting over a wall was more technique than brute force. It helped that Cat kept up her strength, both upper and lower, by working out religiously when she wasn’t on a mission—and sometimes even when she was, depending on what it was. Rock climbing was one of the things she loved to do, and it helped her keep up her strength more than most things.
She sprinted toward the wall. A step away, she leapt and placed her foot on the wall and kicked off as hard as she could, reaching for the top edge. Her fingers grazed the lip and she gripped it hard, pulling herself up.
Rhys already straddled the wall, watching her. He grinned. “This is gonna be fun.”
“Only if you like losing,” she said, and dropped down to the other side.
The other side was a misnomer, though. Two narrow planks, six feet apart and held up by chains, ran perpendicular to the wall. She dropped to the one in front of her, her arms out as it wobbled underneath her feet. After Rhys landed on his, he had to take a moment to steady himself against the wall.
She used that second to get ahead of him, walking quickly along the plank to the other side. Jumping off the end, she faced the under-and-over obstacle. She dropped and wiggled under a thick pole placed horizontally, only eight inches from the ground. Rhys grunted behind her and she grinned as she took a running step at the six-foot wall in front of her, swinging up and over easily, dropping again to go under the next pole. She had the advantage when going under, being more slender than Rhys. Thank god she didn’t have big boobs or she’d be in trouble.
As it was, Rhys almost caught up to her. She needed some distance between them and pushed herself harder, not thinking, just moving fast and sure. Down, roll, up, leap and push over the wall. Two more times and then she was through.
Hanging rings were the next obstacle. She jumped and grabbed the first one, swinging her way through them in a rhythm. She could just see Rhys in her peripheral vision, a look of determination on his face. He so didn’t want her to win. She laughed as she grabbed the next ring.
His gaze snapped to her and his outstretched hand missed the ring he needed. She didn’t look back, but took advantage of his mistake, keeping her eyes focused on what lay ahead of her. She needed that extra second for what was coming next.
She swung hard with the last ring to make it across the line on the floor, bending her knees to take the shock of the landing. Ahead of her was a metal tunnel, only two feet wide, that snaked along the floor and ended in a twenty-five meter, covered pool. Being a SEAL, Rhys would probably kick her butt swimming underwater, so she needed as much time ahead of him as she could get.
She dove into the tunnel, the cold metal of it banging her knees. She moved as fast as she could, now unable to check on Rhys’s progress. Darkness grew as she crawled and water began to cover her hands and knees as the tunnel sloped downwards into the dark pool. She slowed fractionally and mentally kicked herself.
This is just the tunnel, Cat. You’ve done it hundreds of times. It’s a pool, not a river.
This obstacle posed more of a mental challenge than a physical one. Especially for her. She splashed her way further into the dark. The cold water rose past her elbows now. It was a gradual incline into the pool, with the last five meters completely submerged in the narrow confines of the darkened tube. She turned her head to the side to get her last breath of air before plunging in fully. Her legs kicked powerfully, while her arms pulled her along gripping the sides of the tunnel. Her lungs began to burn and her heartrate climbed too high, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around. She had to keep going forward.
Almost done. Keep going.
Within seconds she was at the end and out into open water. Here, some light shone down around the edges of the pool cover and her heartrate steadied. Then, she mentally cursed.
Rhys waited ahead of her, watching her tunnel. She glared as much as she could while holding her breath like a puffer fish. She didn’t need his help.
He grinned and let some air bubbles out before turning and swimming like a freaking fish to the other end. She was a decent swimmer, but Rhys was something else entirely. She pulled through the water as hard as she could, but he was at least three body lengths ahead of her before she reached the end.
She pulled herself up and out, dragging in a huge breath while still moving toward the final obstacle. A fifteen-foot rope net.
Rhys was halfway up. She ran and leapt as high as she could, the ropes slipping a little in her wet hands, but she held firm. She used her upper body as much as her lower, pushing herself hard. Her panting breaths competed with her heartbeat thundering in her ears. Everything burned—her arms, her legs, her lungs.
She couldn’t seem to gain on Rhys, but he wasn’t pulling ahead. He looked back at one point and his eyes widened.
That’s right, she thought. I’m almost on you.
His hand touched the bar at the top and in an incredible athletic feat he pulled himself up and swung over. His eyes tracked her for a second before he started his descent.
Showoff.
She reached the top bar and pulled herself up with both hands and swung her legs over. She didn’t use her legs on the way down, hoping to gain
some time. It was a bit dangerous because it was trickier, but she’d done it before. She dropped from rung to rung, making up time on Rhys. He was almost at the bottom.
“Gotta touch the wall,” she called out.
He dropped the last few feet and sprinted to the wall.
She let go. It was about eight feet and her knees complained, but she didn’t listen and leapt after him. He slapped the far wall a mere second before she did.
They both stood there panting, hands on hips, grinning with the adrenaline rush of the race.
“Damn,” Rhys said. “I haven’t had that much fun in a long time.”
Cat snorted. “Well, be prepared for some more.”
“More?”
Cat’s grin widened. “Now that you’re familiar with the Beast, it’s time to do it again.”
Rhys pulled off his wet t-shirt. “Are you sure you want to go up against me again?”
Cat swallowed and pulled her eyes away from Rhys’s sculpted chest. Keep it professional.
“Anytime, Lucky,” she said. “But that’s not the objective this time around.”
He frowned, but she turned away and led him back to the start line. This way, she didn’t have to see the water drip down the muscles of his chest—muscles that begged for her hands to caress them.
“This time we work as a team,” she said. Behind the start line against the wall was a mini fridge. She bent and snagged two water bottles from it.
“A team?”
She turned and his gaze snapped up to hers from where it had been…eyeing her ass? He’d said that night how much he loved it.
Professional, Cat!
She nodded and tossed him a water bottle. “We do it together, carrying that.” She pointed behind her to a weighted stretcher lying against the wall. Six feet long, it only weighed a hundred pounds, not the actual weight of a person if someone had been strapped to it, but it served its purpose in the Beast.
He twisted the lid off the bottle and gulped down some water. She did the same. He was watching her again when she looked up.
“What?” she said, arching an eyebrow. Did he not think she could handle her end?
He shook his head a little without breaking eye contact. “It’s just…I never knew you were so tough.”
She opened her mouth to defend herself and he held up his hands. “Wait. I mean I knew you were in special operations. Hell, you saved our asses that time in Afghanistan, but still… You almost beat me.”
“If you weren’t such a fish, I would have.”
“We’ve all got our strengths.” He crossed his arms, his biceps flexing. Cat took a step back, away from temptation, and toward the stretcher hanging on the wall.
“What’s yours?” he asked.
She heaved the stretcher off the wall and carried it over to him. “What?”
“What’s your strength? It’s the question you asked me before. What’s your specialty? What do you bring to the team?”
“You can’t guess?” She couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. “I’m a demolitions expert. I like to blow shit up.”
CHAPTER 7
They did the Beast three more times carrying the stretcher. With each run-through, Rhys’s admiration of the woman working beside him grew. She never gave up, pushed them both hard, and asked just as much of herself as she did of him—if not more. He could see why her other team members respected her.
They both carried the stretcher back to the wall, breathing hard.
“Is it the water you don’t like?” he asked. “Or the tunnel?”
She blew out a breath and shook her head. “Both. Was it that obvious?”
“Not really,” he said. And it hadn’t been, but those first couple of runs he’d been watching her closely to see if she could keep up with him. Now he knew she could, but he’d seen a hesitation in her each time they’d approached the tunnel.
“It’s why I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that threw you off. Claustrophobic?”
“Nothing so extreme. I just…” She shrugged. “I hate small, dark spaces filled with water.”
“So does everyone,” he said. “It seems like more.”
She didn’t say anything. In a normal situation he’d drop it, but they were going to be on a team together. He had to know everything, to trust her implicitly. “I need to know,” he said.
She expelled a deep breath. “You’re right. It was a mission that almost went sideways. A car chase at night that ended in us going over a bridge.”
“What happened?”
Her hands fisted while she stared at a spot over his shoulder. He ached to hold her in his arms, but knew a stupid move like that would end with him in traction. Instead, he waited.
“I think I went unconscious when we hit the water. I woke up in the dark. We were fully submerged already. Icy water covered my legs and stole my breath. It climbed rapidly. My partner, who’d been driving, didn’t answer me.”
Her breathing picked up. Rhys pressed his arms to his sides so he wouldn’t touch her.
“He had a heartbeat. I had to get us out of there. I used my gun to break the window. Freezing water poured in with massive pressure. There was no pushing past it. It felt like a death sentence sitting there, waiting for the water to fill the car past the broken window so we could swim out.”
Her eyes met his and he saw the nightmare in them.
“I’d made a stupid mistake,” she whispered. “I’d forgotten to get his seatbelt off before the water came in. I couldn’t undo it. My hands were numb from the cold.” She shook her head.
“Hell,” he muttered and he reached for her, wrapping her tight in his arms, surprised when she didn’t protest. She just rested her head on his shoulder and shivered. He stroked her hair and gave her the comfort she sought. He tried hard not to think about her lithe body against his and just focused on being what she needed—a shoulder to lean on, if only for a moment.
“What happened?” he asked gently when she stopped shivering.
“I managed to get him out,” she said. “Barely. I was so close to leaving him behind. We almost didn’t make it even after I got him out of the car. The current was strong. It pulled us back under more than once.” She lifted her head and he lost himself in her striking blue eyes, but it didn’t surprise him that this woman had been able to rescue her partner.
“Thank you,” she said, stepping back out of his arms. “It was a dark moment that still gives me nightmares.”
He nodded solemnly. “I know about nightmares.” Anyone in special ops had seen and done things that chased them in their dreams. It was a consequence of what they did. “I’m surprised that tunnel doesn’t have more of an effect on you.”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I spent hours going through the Beast, and sitting at the bottom of the pool in the dark.”
“So you’re a woman who likes to torture herself.”
She grabbed a towel from the table beside the fridge and threw it at his head. “Dry off, sailor. We’ve got a full day planned.”
He used the towel on his hair and noticed how she averted her gaze from his chest. He smiled. Nice to know that she was as affected by him as he was by her. But now wasn’t the time to explore that. They were teammates. He had to put aside his memories of their night together. He could do that.
He hoped.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Cat ran excess water from her short hair. The water darkened it to a golden color that made her blue eyes brilliant against her lightly tanned skin. Water dripped down her neck and a drop ran down over her collarbone and toward…
“Lafayette?”
Shit. His gaze snapped to hers and he thankfully saw a twinkle there. “Yes?”
“I asked if you have full clearance yet?”
He nodded. They’d given it to him on his first day, and they already had his fingerprints on file from the last time he’d been to E.D.G.E.
“Good. Meet me on level B4 in an hour. That sho
uld be enough time to clean up and have breakfast.”
“What’s on B4?”
“The range.” She smiled, and the look of mischief in her eyes made those inappropriate thoughts hard not to think. It was the same look she’d gotten when she’d first approached him in the elevator so long ago. “I’m going to put you through your paces.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and almost growled with desire.
No. He had to get it together. They were just teammates. He could do this.
Cat sat at her desk at the end of the day going over reports. At a knock on her door, she glanced up. “Dani, when’d you get back?”
“Last night,” Dani said. She walked into the office, her t-shirt declaring ‘What the Frak?’ and her dark hair swept up in a ponytail.
“Success?”
“Close,” Dani said, flopping down into a chair. “We’ve got most of the Rusakov trafficking contacts rounded up, but there’s still more to be found.”
Cat nodded and then grinned. “Been in any shootouts lately?”
“Hell, no!” Dani said. “I’m staying right where I’m supposed to, in front of my laptop.”
“Yeah, right,” Cat said with a snort. “You couldn’t follow a rule if you tried.”
“And you, my friend, follow them too closely.” Dani stood up. “Come on, you’re coming for dinner tonight.”
“I’ve got reports,” Cat said. After the Beast, she’d spent the morning on the range with Rhys. In the afternoon, she’d shown him some of the explosives she’d designed in the lab. They’d had fun, blowing things up together—in fact, she’d never had so much fun with a man before. He made her laugh, and that had made her linger longer than she should have, but now she was behind on her paperwork.
“We all have reports,” Dani said.
She sighed, knowing Dani wouldn’t give up. Cat hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time, and she treasured her friendship with Dani. Besides, maybe she’d have some advice on how to keep it professional with Rhys.
“Fine,” she said. “Let me finish these up and I’ll meet you at your place. What are we ordering tonight?”
