Short Fuse: Elite Operators, Book 2

by Rebecca Crowley

  “Be thorough. Take as much time as you need.” He shut the door behind him.

  Nicola took a deep breath and surveyed the room around her. Except for the dirty footprints the security team had left on the fake-wood floor, it seemed utterly unchanged. She hadn’t had much time to unpack before dinner so her imprint on the empty space was still minimal. She checked the few valuables she’d dared to bring onsite—passport, camera, laptop, a pretty but not particularly expensive silver necklace. Nothing was missing. As far as she could tell, nothing had even been touched.

  She tried to conceal her sheepishness when she opened the door and seven anxious faces snapped up.

  “Everything looks fine. Maybe I didn’t latch the door properly and it fell open.”

  A few shoulders sagged in disappointment, but for the most part the security staff seemed to have enjoyed the brief excitement. They drifted back to the two vehicles.

  “I’ll have maintenance look at the door tomorrow,” Roger announced. “It shouldn’t be opening on its own, no matter how hard you shut it.”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.”

  The site manager squeezed into the second vehicle. Ignitions coughed and dirt flew and then she and Warren were alone again, as if the onslaught of security personnel had never arrived.

  “Well, that’s embarrassing,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around herself. “All that commotion and I probably forgot to shut the stupid thing in the first place.”

  “It was closed when we left.” His words were quiet, contemplative. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Go in and lock the door. I’ll check it from out here.”

  She nodded, and climbed the single step up to the door. She felt like she should say something, make a joke to ease the tension, but he spoke first.

  “Shout if you need me. I’ll hear you. I’m only a wall away.”

  She swallowed. “Good night, Warren.”

  “Good night.”

  She shut the door and froze in front of it, her palm flat on the plastic surface. She strained to listen but couldn’t hear Warren cross the grass or mount the step. Was he standing out there, watching the door? Had he turned to check the open field ahead of them? Would he circle around to inspect the overgrown space between the back of the cabins and the towering chain-link fence? Or had he already—

  The handle jerked and she gasped, leaping back from the door. There were two raps on the wall and then his muffled voice. “Secure.”

  Her heart beat so fast she couldn’t even muster a response. Instead she sank down on the bed, listening to the door on his side open and shut, picturing the inch or two of plywood wall that stood between them. Such a thin, penetrable barrier. She couldn’t decide whether to be grateful for it or hope it cracked and fell to the floor.

  Chapter Four

  Warren had to duck to get his head under the shower in the porta-cabin. The pressure was terrible and he could barely move in the tiny stall, but at least the water was hot.

  The pooled liquid in the drain turned red as water sluiced down his body. The deforestation required to build the site meant the ill-suited grass dried and withered in the harsh equatorial sunlight, exposing the bare, packed earth beneath. He hadn’t realized how much dirt he’d picked up on that morning’s ten-mile run until he peeled off his socks to find a precise border between his rust-colored calf and pale ankle.

  He lowered his chin and lathered shampoo into his hair, then watched red rivulets snake down his chest. Like bloody tears.

  He thought about his run, started just after dawn when he couldn’t stand another minute lying awake in bed, listening for movement on Nicola’s side of the wall. He’d pulled on his shorts and shoes and set off, cutting through the main site to the mine head, its twenty-four-hour operation in full swing. A group of miners in blue coveralls and yellow hard hats waved as he jogged past. He waved back.

  Then he’d wound around to the far, back edge of the site, the unused section that was a good two miles from anywhere. The corner from which he’d seen smoke rising the day before.

  He’d stopped and peered through the chain-link fence. A squatter camp sat on the other side, less than a mile away, hidden in amongst some trees but still blatant from where he stood. It was the type of informal settlement that almost always managed to spring up near major mining operations, no different from the ones edging any of his family’s mines across the continent. There were rows of shacks with tattered rags hung as makeshift doors, tires and rocks held down tin roofs, and piles of trash overflowed down the gentle incline toward the fence.

  The people who lived there weren’t on the official payroll. Some of them hung around hoping to sneak onto a shift, sharing fake IDs and borrowed coveralls. Some of them would try to illegally mine the same vein, sneaking into barricaded, structurally unsound stretches of tunnels and praying they didn’t cave in. Others were there to sell cheap, counterfeit goods, stolen tobacco and homebrewed alcohol, offering credit and demanding interest and breaking bones when it didn’t appear.

  He’d shaken his head as he watched from the other side of the fence. They could publish as many rosy corporate responsibility reports as they liked. At the end of the day, this industry would always be about material profit at human cost.

  He’d been about to leave when a stern-faced woman emerged from one of the shacks, eyeing him suspiciously while she sat on an overturned plastic bucket, rocking her infant. He hesitated, wishing again that he’d attempted to listen to even one of the French lessons on the CDs his sister had given him over dinner the night before he left. Maybe he could’ve assured this woman he was here to help, asked her what she needed, told her—

  Another curtain shifted and two men emerged to join the woman. They were unusually well dressed for a settlement like this one, in new shoes, clean jeans and spotless button-down shirts. Too fancy for miners, too fashion conscious for visiting aid workers, not that he was aware of any NGO presence in Namaza. Were they loan sharks? Drug dealers?

  One of them took a step forward and crossed his arms. Whoever they were, they wanted Warren to know they’d seen him.

  He’d held up two palms in a gesture of innocence and backed away from the fence. No sense in picking a fight where there didn’t need to be one. But he squinted hard at them in the instant before he turned, memorizing their faces. Satisfied, he broke into a run. He’d know them if he saw them again.

  He pivoted under the shower, letting the water trail down his back. He thought of that open door last night, the same one that had swung and creaked in his dreams every time he closed his eyes. He was sure someone had opened it while they were at dinner, and his inability to assign a motive to that act was driving him insane. There was no theft, no interference, no impoverished miner stealing cash from a purse, no corporate spy pilfering confidential files. It was as if someone had broken in and simply stared, surveying the room, assessing its content. It felt like someone was making a plan. Like someone would be back.

  They were welcome to try. No one was getting anywhere near Nicola without dispatching him first.

  Whoa, where did that come from? He’d known her for all of twenty-four hours. For a guy who took at least ninety minutes to decide whether or not to approach a woman in a bar—and usually settled on no—she was still a complete stranger. He wasn’t the trusting type, never had been, and it had served him perfectly well until now. A gold mine in the middle of a cautiously peaceful country in the center of Africa was not the time or place to get giddy over big blue eyes and pretty red hair.

  And those breasts, oh my God. He put his face back under the water, closing his eyes. He’d been awake for so long last night, listening to the box springs squeaking on the other side of the wall and imagining what she was doing. Was she brushing that long, silky hair, running her fingers through those wavy locks? Was she slipping off her bra and leaning back on the mattress, her bare nipple
s hardening in the cool evening air? Was she running her hand down her stomach, beneath the waist of her jeans, fingers furrowing through coppery red strands before pausing between her legs while she bit her lower lip, hesitant, knowing he might hear her?

  His own hand moved to the erection that had surged out from his body with the same, sudden force as the drills roaring on the other end of the site. He really shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t let his libido get this much power over his mind, which he should be keeping clear, cold, sharp for the task at hand.

  But imagine if she’d known he could hear her and touched herself anyway. What if she’d thought of him, of their proximity all day in the car, of the way their knees had bumped on the plane and then at the dinner table, what if her index finger had circled and then her middle finger had extended and—

  Warren hissed a curse as the water spluttered and turned freezing cold, jumping backward so quickly he smacked his elbow on the wall. With his arm throbbing he reached through the icy spray to turn off the shower, then snatched up a towel and wrapped it around his waist. So much for his steamy fantasy.

  He dried and dressed and went next door, where the Garraway-branded Post-it stuck to the wall informed him Nicola couldn’t wait any longer for coffee and had left for the canteen. He didn’t love the idea of her wandering the site unaccompanied, but he grudgingly admitted that was her prerogative. He was here as a security consultant, not a bodyguard. Nonetheless he crumpled the note and shoved it in his pocket, so if someone came by the cabin looking for her they wouldn’t know where she’d gone.

  He smelled the canteen before he reached it, hearty scents of pork grease and baked beans and burned toast preceding the murmured sounds of early-morning conversation. He rounded the corner and found Nicola and Alex loading their plates from catering dishes lined up on the patio sideboard.

  “Good morning, sunshine.” Nicola took a seat at the table as he poured a glass of orange juice. “I knocked on your door but you didn’t answer.”

  “I must’ve been in the shower.” Having unbelievably inappropriate thoughts about you. “I went for a run.”

  “Then I guess you win the prize for virtue,” she teased, and he almost choked on the juice. He set the glass down and busied himself with the food, barely seeing what he heaped on the plate.

  “How far did you run?” Alex asked as he took the opposite seat.

  “Out to the northwestern corner and back.”

  The finance manager blinked. “But that’s, like, five miles each way.”

  Warren shrugged. He hadn’t meant to brag.

  Nicola looked up from her breakfast. “See anything interesting?”

  “I wanted to check out the informal settlement on the other side of the fence. I think you should have a look, too.”

  “Be careful out there,” Alex warned. “A lot of people were displaced by the fighting during the coup, and plenty of them seem to have found their way here, looking for work where there is none. We’ve had a couple of problems with theft and illegal mining. Poverty breeds desperation, and desperate people are dangerous.”

  “And it’s my job to identify and implement programs to alleviate the poverty that breeds that desperation,” she replied congenially. She turned back to him. “Was there anything that stuck out on first glance? Lots of kids, maybe, or obviously bad sanitation?”

  “Not exactly.” He hesitated, not wanting to alarm her—then decided that wasn’t giving her enough credit. She knew what she was doing. “There were two men, and they didn’t look like—”

  “Here are these lazy okes, still munching down their breakfast.” Roger burst through the door from the office wearing coveralls with Nel stitched in white thread on the left front pocket. “I’ve been in and out of that mine twice this morning and you’re still hanging around drinking coffee.”

  Alex straightened in his seat. “Actually, Warren already ran—”

  “If you two want to see this operation in action, you need to come along now,” Roger plowed ahead. “One of the load trucks needs to come up for repair and since these morons can’t even turn it on without instructions, it’ll probably take the whole afternoon to get the thing on the elevator.”

  Nicola met Warren’s eyes with the promise they’d talk later, then stood from the table. “We’re ready.”

  Chapter Five

  “You’re not claustrophobic, right? No panic attacks, anxiety disorders?”

  Nicola had to smother her smirk as Warren met Roger’s patronizing tone with a cool smile.

  “I disarm bombs for a living. I think I can manage an elevator into a tunnel.”

  “We’ll see.” Roger snatched a spare folded boiler suit from the bin in the corner of the locker room and tossed it to Warren. “Not sure we have anything that’ll fit a stringy oke like you. This’ll have to do.”

  He turned to her, rheumy eyes wandering southward. She held up her gym bag. “Don’t worry, I brought my own.”

  Roger grunted his disappointment. “We only have the one changing room. Not enough female visitors to justify two. Of course, you’re welcome to use my office if you want privacy.”

  She imagined hidden cameras with motion detectors. “I’m sure Warren will be gracious enough to turn his back while I change.”

  It was supposed to be a joke, but the way Roger’s expression darkened and Warren’s ears flushed suggested she might have misjudged. The site manager huffed out of the room with a barked admonishment to meet him by the shaft entrance in ten minutes.

  She and Warren stared at each other across the single bench.

  “I can wait outside until you’re done,” he offered, those quicksilver eyes refusing to meet hers.

  “It’s fine,” she insisted more breezily than she felt. “It’ll take two minutes, and then I can help you with your safety gear. Just, you know, don’t look.”

  “I wouldn’t.” But he hesitated a second too long before turning, like a kid who suspects his sister will steal his Monopoly money while he leans down to find the dice.

  As she raced to strip down to her underwear she was keenly aware of every sound from his side of the room, simultaneously worried he would turn around too soon and absurdly hopeful that he did. She heard his boots thud onto the floor, heard the bench creak under his weight. By now he had to be dressed, sitting down to put on the steel-toed rubber boots worn by every mine employee. She yanked up the zipper on her Garraway-branded coveralls and spun.

  And blinked.

  “Oh, sorry.” Warren hurried to drag on the boiler suit’s sleeves but not before she got an eyeful of his exquisite back and shoulders, smooth muscles creating perfectly curved topography on either side of his spine, a tattooed falcon swooping in the hollow just below his neck.

  She cleared her throat and turned around, declaring with false brightness, “You’re fine. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll help you with the gear. I’m not sure how the Copley operations compare, but—”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You’ve never been down a mine?” She heard his oncoming footsteps and pivoted to face him.

  He shook his head. “Neither has my father, at least not since he was a kid. My grandfather introduced all the technological innovations that made the company successful. My dad just reads maps and watches the news, looking for fledgling African governments he can exploit.”

  “Governments who otherwise might have no capital with which to fund infrastructure like hospitals and roads, and who can create thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen when they give Copley Ventures permission to mine.”

  His expression hardened. “What did you say about gear? We should hurry up. Roger’s waiting.”

  Guess we’ll conclude that debate another time. “Twist your belt around so those hooks are on either side. This one’s for your safety pack, the other’s for your lamp battery.” She grabbed
two of the aluminum cases from a locker, tossed one to him and affixed the other on her belt.

  “What do I do with this?”

  “It’s a self-rescue kit. If the air turns toxic you open the case, blow into the rubber bag inside to inflate it, then strap it on like those masks you see in airplane safety demonstrations. Supposedly it’ll keep you alive for thirty minutes.”

  His nod bordered on indifferent. She had to smile.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Warren, you’re denying me the sadistic pleasure of the terrified looks I usually get when I explain this stuff.”

  He shrugged. “I can do a lot with thirty minutes.”

  Prove it. She bit her lip against several saucy double entendres and pointed to the rack of hard hats with lights mounted over the brims. “Grab one of those and attach the battery pack to the other belt clip. Make sure the lamp works and we’re good to go.”

  “Shall I grab you one as well?” He stretched to reach the few remaining hats on the top shelf.

  “I’ve got my own.” She reached into her gym bag and retrieved her customized miner’s hat, which was Garraway-blue with white, fluffy clouds all over. At the sight of it Warren cracked one of his fleeting smiles.

  “Let me guess, that refers to Garraway’s outstanding record on air pollution?”

  “It was a gift from my boss. Apparently I’m a blue-sky thinker. Plus it looks great in the press releases.”

  “Are you princesses almost ready?” Roger bellowed through the door. “It’s a gold mine, not a fashion show.”

  “On our way,” Nicola called back, and Warren trailed her outside.

  They followed Roger to the entrance of the head frame, the cement tower that stood over the mineshaft.

  “That’s the hoist house,” she pointed out to Warren, indicating the smaller structure beside the head frame. “There’s a huge wheel in there that winds up the cables taking the elevator up and down. The ore comes out on the conveyer belt at the back, but the humans go up and down in what we call the cage.”