The Woman Left Behind: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  Jelly, on the other hand, looked barely old enough to be shaving. He was also the most likely to instigate the others by ragging on them, sitting back with a smile of satisfaction if he could get something started between the others. He bore watching. What was it about these guys that made her suspicious of cheerfulness, smiling, and low-key geniality? That was just wrong. This whole situation was wrong.

  Last was Voodoo, and he looked less pleased by her presence than even Levi. He’d had nothing to say to her, hadn’t given her any tips or encouragement, hadn’t interacted with her in any way. She might as well have been invisible to him. Too bad she hadn’t been invisible to the rest of them.

  “Drink all the water you can,” Snake advised. “It’ll keep you from getting so sore.”

  “Fat chance,” she muttered. “I won’t be able to move tomorrow.”

  “You will,” Levi said. “One way or the other. When we’re on a mission, we do whatever we have to do, no matter how it hurts or how we feel.”

  Great. She took that to mean she wouldn’t get a day off to heal and work out some of the inevitable soreness.

  “Soak in hot water,” Snake continued. “Then cold water, ice if you can stand it.”

  Her horrified look told them how she felt about that, because most of them chuckled—not Levi or Voodoo; they both looked even more grim.

  She drank more water, then capped the bottle and determinedly struggled to her feet. “It’s been great, guys—” Not. “But unless you want to continue killing me after dark, I need to get back to my group and go home.”

  “Good luck with that,” Levi said, tipping up his own water bottle. “They left over an hour ago.”

  What? Jina whirled—ouch—and in horror surveyed the empty training field. Even Baxter was gone. There were still some vehicles parked to the side, seven of them, which meant they belonged to the seven team members who had been getting their jollies by tormenting her.

  “I’ll take you home,” Jelly offered.

  “Don’t trust him,” Trapper promptly said. “He drives worse than a drunk eighty-year-old. I’ll take you.”

  Snake snorted. “Forget that. You’d take her home via New York and think it was funny. I can drop her off.”

  “I’ll do it,” Levi said, getting to his feet. His deep voice cut through the chuckles, stopping the discussion in its tracks. “I need to brief her on some things anyway.”

  That was that. There were no more offers, no joking. The boss had spoken, and while they didn’t hesitate to involve him in their rough joking around, when it came to GO-Team business, he was undisputed. “Let’s go,” he said, striding across the uneven ground to where the vehicles were parked. Resigned, Jina trudged in his wake.

  There were two types of vehicles, she noticed: three sports cars, and four four-wheel drive pickup trucks. She was hoping for one of the sports cars, figuring she could simply drop into the seat, but of course her luck wasn’t going to turn on a day that had been sucky from start to finish. He went straight to the truck that looked as if Darth Vader should be driving it. It was black, but not the shiny black of a normal paint. Instead it was matte, no shine to it. In fact, there was no shine anywhere on the truck, not an inch of chrome, not on the wheels, not on the rearview mirror or side mirrors, not even the door handles.

  “How do you find it in the dark?” she asked. “Tie a balloon to it?”

  “I’m good at finding things in the dark.” He didn’t crack a smile. “The doors are unlocked, get in.”

  Get in. Yeah, uh-huh. Already knowing what she would face, she opened the passenger door and stared inside. The floorboard was at least a foot higher than that of a normal truck, but on a normal day she’d have hoisted herself inside without much trouble. This, however, wasn’t a normal day. Every muscle in her body was quivering with fatigue, to the point that walking was an effort. And he didn’t even have running boards. The truck was as stripped down and no-frills as he was.

  He slid behind the wheel and sat there, watching her expressionlessly.

  Was this some kind of test? Was he expecting her to ask for help? Say she couldn’t get in his freaking Vadermobile?

  She started to do just that. Maybe she’d wash out; maybe all that was needed was for the team leader to nix her as an addition to his team. MacNamara had said that if any of them couldn’t handle the physical demands, they wouldn’t be fired. If not getting into Levi’s truck would also get her out of this physical torture, wouldn’t she be smart to jump at the chance?

  Except she couldn’t. Giving up wasn’t in her. No matter how tempting it was to take the easy way out, she had to give her best effort or know she’d been a quitter.

  Her best meant she mumbled a grumpy, “They must have been out of tanks when you went car shopping, so you settled for this,” as she gripped the armrest with her right hand and stretched to grab the sissy handle. She strained, lifting one foot, her arms trembling as she tried to pull herself up far enough that she could get one foot on the edge of the floorboard. Didn’t happen. Her biceps gave up the effort and with a grunt she dropped back to the ground.

  Darth Vader didn’t make a sound, just waited, his soulless dark gaze on her.

  She glanced over her shoulder. All six of the others were standing shoulder to shoulder, watching. Even if they offered help, she couldn’t accept, not that it mattered, because none of them looked as if they had any intention of offering. They weren’t her friends. She had to remember that. She was here because she’d been more or less forced on them; she suspected straws had been drawn, and Levi had gotten the short one.

  Short one. Hah! She cracked herself up.

  By God, she’d get in that truck if she had to stick a knife in all the tires and bring it down to her level. She enjoyed that mental image enough that she managed to put some extra effort into her next lift and heave—for all the good it did, because she still couldn’t manage to get her foot quite high enough.

  One toe, she thought grimly; she needed just one toe. She didn’t need her whole foot on the sill. She looked around, searching for a block, a bucket, a . . . rock, about as big as her fist, right beside the front tire as if God had placed it there to see if she’d yield to the temptation to throw it at her tormenters.

  “Hold on,” she said, stretching her leg under the door toward the tire and using her foot to drag the rock toward her.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “There’s a rock here. I need it.”

  “Don’t throw—”

  “I’m going to stand on it,” she said tersely. “Don’t be a moron.” Oops. She probably shouldn’t have called the boss a moron. “Sorry,” she tacked on, while thinking, Not sorry.

  He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, waiting.

  Okay, this was it. If the rock didn’t work, she doubted he’d hang around while she scouted for something else to stand on. She could bum a ride with one of the others, but damn it, this was a test. She might fail, but it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. She put her left foot on the rock and lifted herself a couple of precious inches. Gripping her handholds again, she mentally yelled at her quivering muscles to get their act together for just a few freaking seconds, bent her knee, and launched—well, kind of launched—herself upward at the same time as she pulled up for all she was worth.

  Her left arm gave up the effort, the weakling, but her right arm hung in there. She twisted, swung her right leg, and by God got her foot high enough to hang her toes on the doorsill. Her leg muscles quivered, her arm shook, and the bastard sat there watching her with that inscrutable expression as if he didn’t care whether she got in the truck or fell dead to the pavement, where he would undoubtedly run over her body as he left. She ground her teeth together, biting back her anger before she said something she might regret—though the “might” was just a faint possibility—and concentrated her puny store of remaining energy into boosting herself up using one arm and a tenuous connection with one foot.

  Okay,
maybe “boost” was optimistic. In reality, she hauled herself partway up, then her foot slipped out from under her but she landed on her knee, and that was better, more secure. She grabbed the far edge of the seat with her left hand, wedged more of herself into the floorboard, and from there laboriously crawled into the seat and sat down.

  The six men watching from outside, lined up like cheerleaders, applauded and hooted. She shot them all a middle finger, then slammed the door, fastened her seat belt, and silently stared straight ahead. That was the only way she could resist shooting another finger toward the man behind the wheel.

  He started the truck and put in in gear. The smooth, deep rumble of the engine caught her attention. No factory engine sounded like that, as if it had never had a catalytic converter anywhere near it. Considering the appearance of the truck and the sound of the engine, the modifications he’d done or had done had likely voided every warranty on the truck.

  She wrinkled her nose. The truck stank. Or rather, Levi Butcher stank, fouling the air with his sweat and dirt and testosterone. After another sniff, she admitted that she herself was adding to the stench. Lord, she was rank! She needed a shower even more than she needed to lie down, which meant the situation was dire. Good thing the truck seats were leather, because cloth seats would be ruined.

  “So you know where you stand,” he said without preamble. “We don’t want you here. None of us, and I’m talking about all the teams, like having to drag amateurs along with us. Untrained personnel can get us killed. Because you’re a woman you’re even more of a liability; I got saddled with you because Mac judged if anyone can deal with the handicap, we can.”

  “Wow,” Jina said. “I’m honored.”

  The sarcasm in her tone wasn’t subtle. He shot a her a dark, level glance. “That isn’t sexist. We work with female agents all the time. But they’re trained, and they want to be there. You don’t tick either one of those boxes.”

  She’d like to argue with that, but couldn’t . . . damn it.

  “If it comes to a choice between you and my men, I’m going to choose my men, every time. Don’t think you being a woman means we’ll jump in front of a bullet for you, because that won’t happen.”

  Okaaay. That was plain. In case she ever mistakenly began thinking she might be of value to this bunch, all she had to do was remember this conversation. “Got it,” she said. “I’m of no value.”

  Again the dark glance, but he didn’t jump to reassure her. He let his statement stand. “You won’t be going with us for a while. You have a lot of training to get through, not just physical training with us, but the tech stuff with the camera drone, plus enough weapons training that you aren’t a complete burden in a tight spot, jump training—”

  What?

  “What?” she interjected. “Jump training?”

  “Sometimes we have to insert by parachute. We can’t run a special road delivery just for you.”

  “Uh-uh. No. I do not jump out of airplanes.” She meant it. The very idea filled her with horror. She wasn’t afraid of flying, or of heights, but her sense of survival was too fine-tuned for her to even try bungee jumping.

  “You will,” he said, his tone saying Don’t argue.

  She shut her mouth. She wouldn’t argue now, but that didn’t mean she was giving up. She’d find a way out of this, a suitable work-around—something, anything.

  “Some of the places we go, you’ll need to wear dark contacts. Your eye color is too light. Get some, and get used to them. Also, if you aren’t already on long-term birth control, take care of that too.”

  She firmly kept her mouth closed. This was one of the times when no comment was the best response. Whether or not she was on birth control, and what type, was none of his business. Besides, she could see his point, and he didn’t need to belabor it. They would be in some dangerous places; if she was captured, her treatment would be rough, rape a given. Her stomach knotted at the dangerous turn her life was taking, and whether or not she could go through with this. Maybe she should walk away now, given that her heart wasn’t in this. She could walk into Axel MacNamara’s office and tell him she couldn’t do it, let him fire her, and collect unemployment while she looked for another job.

  She didn’t have to stay in the D.C. area. She could always go home, to south Georgia. Her family was there, she’d have support, and she could slip back into the lazy stream of life there as if she’d never hit the banks running in her haste to establish herself as an independent adult.

  But she’d left because she wanted to test herself, and she’d stumbled into a damn interesting job. She was well paid, and even more, she looked forward to going in to work every day. That was worth a lot.

  Quit?

  How could she make herself quit? How could she stop trying?

  A sane person would quit. A sane person wouldn’t sit there listening to her boss telling her that everyone else on his team was worth more than she was.

  This was proof positive that she wasn’t sane, because instead of telling him she quit, she said, “Do you have a tracker on my car, or do you need to know where we met the van this morning?” Because he hadn’t asked, and if he was taking her to the office building he was wrong; this morning they’d been directed to meet up at a different parking lot some distance away.

  “I put the tracker on last night,” he said tersely.

  To her silent astonishment and fury, he wasn’t lying.

  Three

  She was the most stubborn little shit he’d ever seen, Levi thought dispassionately as he silently watched her almost fall out of his truck, then limp over to her car. He had to fight for the dispassion, which irritated him to hell and back. Everything about this situation irritated him to hell and back.

  If it worked, Mac’s idea was a damn good one—if it worked. Taking raw amateurs and training them to the point where they wouldn’t be a liability was a tall order but not an impossible one. Taking a raw amateur woman who obviously didn’t want to be there and bringing her up to snuff verged on the damn near impossible, so of course Mac had given her to him.

  He and the guys had talked it over last night, decided then that if they were going to be saddled with her, they needed to be the ones overseeing her training and the sooner the better, and he’d cleared it with Mac. Then they’d watched her for a while, before approaching, to get an idea of what they were dealing with. Some guy had shoved her, causing her to lose ground in the run, but she’d caught up with him and tripped him. “Good,” Boom had grunted. “Saves me from kicking his ass at the end of the day.”

  Levi grunted in return. He wouldn’t have kicked the guy’s ass, but he was glad she’d taken up for herself. The team couldn’t function if they had to deal with a crybaby. But Boom was married and had a couple of kids, the youngest a three-year-old little girl. As the father of a daughter he’d since gone bat-shit crazy, swearing he was going to lock her in a convent when she was six, and he’d geld any dick swinger who got anywhere near her.

  “We can’t protect her,” Levi said evenly. “She has to pull her own weight, or this won’t work.”

  “I know, damn it, but—”

  “No buts. No taking up for her. We have to see what she’s made of.”

  And they had. What she was made of was bullheaded stubbornness, mixed with cussedness and a total inability to keep her mouth shut. She’d glared at them, cursed all their villages, called down the ten plagues of Egypt on them—and tried her damnedest to do everything they’d told her to do. She’d gone splat more times than he could count, eaten dirt, plowed headfirst into a mud puddle, blistered her hands and probably her feet, and not once had she asked for help.

  Several times today he’d had to stop himself from catching her when he saw she was going to fall, even if “catching her” would have meant grabbing her by the ponytail. Instead he’d let her splat, hoping she’d say, “I quit,” but she never had. She’d muttered, she’d cussed both under and over her breath, she’d called them sadists and
told them numerous times how much she hated them all, but each and every time she’d gotten to her feet and kept at it.

  How in hell was she still moving? She wasn’t anywhere near being in shape. But she’d set her jaw in an obstinate look he and his guys had quickly become familiar with and kept on plugging. Jelly had made a comment about maybe trying his luck with her, and Levi had had to shut him down fast.

  “You don’t fuck with teammates,” he’d said flatly. “That’s the best way I know of to mess up the team. She’s off-limits to all of us. If you’re thinking about her that way, shut it down now.”

  Too damn bad he had to include himself in that order. But he, more than any of the others, had to stick to that rule. Doing anything else would tear the team apart and considering their lives all depended on teamwork, he’d do what he had to do.

  All the single guys had looked disappointed, except for Voodoo, who hadn’t warmed to her at all, but he was such a surly bastard he didn’t like himself most of the time so he didn’t count.

  Levi felt surly about the situation himself, above and beyond having an amateur inserted into their tight-knit group. All of the GO-Teams were tight-knit; they had to be, to get the job done and survive. It was too damn bad she appealed to him, not so much in how she looked—though she was pretty enough, not flashy except for maybe her eyes, which were really blue but with a yellow ring around the pupil. She had boobs and a butt, but not much of them. She had a lot of dark brown hair, shiny like a little kid’s until she got coated in dust. What appealed to him most was that attitude and mouthiness, when common sense should have told her to button her lip. She hadn’t, and he liked that.

  Didn’t matter. She was off-limits. He’d cut her no more slack than he did the others, and if she couldn’t do the job . . . well, then, that changed the rules of the game.