“I’ll be back.” Before she could ask more questions, he retraced his steps, found a large palm frond and brushed away all traces of their steps while working his way back to the boat.
There was no movement at sea. A faint skein of pink unraveled across the horizon and shimmered over the gray water.
Dawn coming.
Even before he reached the companionway, Max had his questions ready. “How did you get outside?”
She stared at him, exhausted but defiant. “I found a tunnel. Truman acted strange and ran off, so I thought I’d look for some water. Where did you go?”
“I was getting supplies.”
Never tell the truth when a lie will do.
She winced, cupping her right ankle. “Who are you really working for—what branch of the military?” She stood up awkwardly. “Not that I really care. All I want is for you to take me to that radio.” She glared at him and jabbed one finger at his chest. “I’m tired and I’m sore and I want to go somewhere—anywhere—that has running water and hot coffee. Your business is your business.”
Her weight shifted to her right foot as she glowered at him, only inches away, and Max was pulled into the scent cloud of her spilled perfume, faint but still disturbing to his heightened senses. Heat rose from her body, her female chemistry conspiring to distract him, even without direct contact. He picked up stress and fear along with an edgy restlessness that held the scent code of sexual desire.
The combination was like a sucker punch to his gut. He’d never felt a connection so strong before, and that made Max distinctly uneasy.
“Well?” Her face was pale and strained. “When do we leave?”
“After you explain what happened to Truman.”
“How should I know? It started after he brought me the canteen and I hurt my arm—come to think of it, how did he know to bring the canteen? Did you train him to do that?” She frowned. “My friend’s dogs are smart but I don’t think they’re that smart.” She cradled her arm a little, as if it hurt. Then she turned, looking a little unsteady. “I don’t feel so good.” She shook her head, swaying.
“Have you drunk any water?”
“Not th-thirsty. I was at first, but Dutch was weak, so I gave him my water. I was afraid we might run out.” She was shivering, her body stiff. “That was all the water we had and I didn’t know when the heck you would come back.”
“So you haven’t had any water at all since I left?”
“I told you, no. Well, one sip right before I hit my arm and Truman acted strange.” She blinked at him, looking almost drunk. “How did you get to be so strong? I bet you eat raw eggs and chlorella powder, don’t you? And you probably do about a th-thousand sit-ups every day.” She took a ragged breath. “Why do I feel—”
She swayed and Max caught her with one arm. “You’re dehydrated. Sit down on the bed.”
For once she didn’t argue, sinking awkwardly onto the tattered mattress. “Dehydrated? No way. I’m just tired.” Her body shook and she clamped her arms over her knees. “A little stiff, too.”
“That’s from salt depletion, electrolyte imbalance and dehydration.” Max dug in an interior pocket of his field vest and found a salt tablet. “Swallow this,” he said flatly. “Then finish off the water in that canteen.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not a doctor.”
“Stop talking so you can take this.”
She studied the white tablet suspiciously. “What is it?”
“Salt. No more questions.”
She was shaking now, her arms locked at her waist, and Max started to be worried, even though he didn’t know what kind of rational person gave up all their water to someone else. Self-preservation was primal behavior.
Miki took the pill he held out, slid it around slowly on her tongue and grimaced. “Disgusting.”
“I didn’t say it would taste good.” He held out his canteen. “Drink some more water.”
She took a sip, then closed her eyes, gripped the canteen and pulled it closer, sucking greedily until every drop was gone. After that she ran her tongue around the opening.
Something about the way her mouth hugged the metal rim, searching for every bit of moisture, made muscles clench all along Max’s body, right down to his groin. He couldn’t fight a wave of hot images detailing other things she could do with that full, soft mouth. “I think you got all of it,” he said gruffly.
“I want more.” She pushed the canteen against his chest, frowning. “Now.”
Opening his vest, Max took out a reserve canteen. This time when she drank, he looked away. Watching her mouth was making him painfully hard.
She finished drinking, sighed in satisfaction and wiped her mouth with two fingers, then pushed the canteen back at his chest. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not a complete jerk. But you should have left us more water. Truman needed some, too.” She looked around the dusty room. “Where did he go?”
“He’s up on deck.”
She nodded a little sadly. “I missed him. He looked…strange, so hostile. It all happened so fast.” She sighed, stabbing her fingers through her hair. “I don’t think I did anything wrong. Most dogs like me.”
There was something wistful in her voice that made Max frown. Her hair had dried in unruly waves, probably because she kept running her fingers through it every two minutes, and the chunky edges suited the strength of her face. But the real problem was he couldn’t keep his eyes away from her mouth, soft and full, the color of raspberries just on the verge of ripeness.
Hell, he was doing it again. Why did he keep thinking about kissing her?
“I’m going to call Truman down here,” he said curtly. “I need to see how he reacts.”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “But if he bites me, I’m going to sue you.” She was still shaky, her arms tense.
“Maybe you should lie down,” Max said, touching her arm.
Miki’s eyes flashed to his gloves. “Do you wear those things all the time?”
“Yes.” When Max tried to urge her to lie down, she winced.
“Hey, watch it.” She frowned as she rubbed her arm gingerly. “No need to get violent.”
“Something wrong with your arm?”
“It’s been bothering me the last few weeks ever since a jerk bumped me at the Java Express back home. First the creep spills a full caramel macchiato all over my arm, then he vanishes. No apology or anything.” She rolled her shoulder carefully and winced again. “My arm’s been bothering me ever since.”
“Did you see a doctor?”
Miki shrugged. “He said it was a second-degree burn. Everything healed up except for an ugly scar, but it keeps bothering me.”
Max felt a tickle of uneasiness. “Bothering you how?”
“Itching sometimes. Throbbing and burning other times.” She passed her hand through her hair again and he watched, fascinated by the colors and textures. There was a whole realm of reckless life in that one simple movement, and Max had a sudden feeling that trying to pin this woman down would be like trying to catch sunlight in his hands.
“Why are you asking all these questions?” She rubbed her forehead. “I want more water.”
“After you tell me about the jerk with the coffee.”
Her eyes looked unfocused. Max knew she was still feeling the effects of dehydration. Now was the best time to question her, while her guard was down. He wanted every detail of Truman’s behavior.
“The jerk in the Java Express, you mean? What’s to tell? He was about 170 pounds. Short build. Dark tan, red hair going gray. He had a small mole above his left eyebrow.”
“You saw all that?” Max frowned. “How? It couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds.”
“Ten. I’m a photographer, remember.” There was a note of pride in her voice. “If I can’t see, I can’t work. We see when we’re kids, but time goes by and life starts creeping in. First the colors go, then the imagination. Pretty soon you’re seventeen and you can’t notice things
anymore. At least not the things that matter.” She sounded wistful when she said the last part, and Max found himself wondering why.
“Something happened to you, didn’t it? You want to tell me about it?”
She looked away, shrugging. “It’s history. I never do the past. No point.” Her voice was firm, cutting off that line of discussion, which left him more curious than ever.
As he leaned down, he caught the hint of her perfume and the faint citrus scent of shampoo. Ignoring a warm nudge of desire, he raised her sleeve. “You’re bleeding.”
“I told you, I bumped that spot on my arm.”
Max pulled out a sterile wipe and cleaned away some of the blood.
Miki flinched and gave a sharp yelp. “Watch out.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I felt some kind of jolt, almost like you hit a nerve.”
Max knew he hadn’t come close to any nerves. “Let me take a look.”
She didn’t move, looking tense and still wary, and he wondered if she had any idea how vulnerable she appeared to him.
“Look, Miki, I need to check you out. If something’s wrong, I’ll know it.”
“I told you, the burn is completely healed.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You could have torn something open during your fall.” He dropped his medical kit on the empty cot. “Sit.”
“Do you always snap out orders to everyone?”
“Mostly, yes.”
“Then you must not have many friends.” She didn’t sound snide, merely curious. “What do your girlfriends have to say about that bad habit of yours?”
“Girlfriends? How many do you think I have?” he said grimly.
“Quite a few. You don’t look like the type to settle down. Definitely not the type for celibacy.” She studied him gravely. “Nope, no monogamy for you, not even serial monogamy. You’re definitely a play-the-field, go-for-the-action kind of a guy.”
Max shook his head, irritated at her assessment and wishing it hadn’t been so accurate. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“So tell me.” Her face was intent. “Married, divorced, what?”
“Neither.”
“Not ever?”
“No.” He didn’t know why he answered her. He never discussed his personal life.
“Steady relationship?”
Max shook his head.
“Bingo. Mr. Play-the-Field, just like I said. Bet you’ve got a woman in every port.”
“Stop trying to sidetrack me. I need to see your arm,” he said gruffly. “And my private life is none of your damned business.”
“Touchy, touchy.” Stiffly she held out her arm, but instead of taking off her shirt, she merely pulled up one sleeve and kept the rest of the cloth clutched to her chest.
She didn’t trust him, Max noted.
That was fine, because he didn’t trust her, either. He was still distracted by her perfume. Even worse, there was an irritating whine in his ears when he sat beside her. Was there a fly somewhere in the cabin?
Ignoring the whine, he pulled up her sleeve and studied her bare arm. The wound was right where she’d said, stretching from her elbow toward her shoulder. The scar had faded to pale silver, and there was no sign that anything had torn open.
“Well?” She sat stiffly, her body angled away from him. “Is it the burn or something else? Maybe there was something in the water. Jellyfish can sting, can’t they?”
“Trust me, you’d know a jellyfish sting,” Max said grimly. He’d had a few nasty encounters on prior missions in the Pacific, and the memory was still unpleasant. “Stop squirming.” He shone his light on the scar, looking for recent cuts or trauma, but he saw only a little blood where she’d scraped her arm. “Make a fist and show me where it hurts.”
“It hurts near the old scar, just like I told you.” She did the restless hand thing again with her hair, and Max felt his eyes drifting over the bright tangles, then down to her soft mouth. He wasn’t used to being around women during a mission. Hell, he wasn’t used to being around women, period. After he’d joined Foxfire, his free time was almost nil, and any limited female companionship had been arranged by Ryker’s people. It was simple sex, hot and fast, a means for physical release. And his body was reminding him that it had been too long since he’d had even that kind of encounter.
“Stop moving,” he muttered. “Is the pain above or below the scar? Right or left?” The whine in his head had grown to a buzz, but Max could find no source. Could this be some kind of delayed chemical reaction to fuel contamination from the crashed plane?
“I can’t tell. The pain comes and goes, but it’s gotten worse in the last few hours.”
“Touch the closest spot where you can remember having pain.” Max knelt beside her, watching her arm flex as she traced the right side of the scar.
A wave of dizziness hit him. He steadied himself with one hand on the edge of the cot beside her leg.
“Don’t you ever take them off?”
He ignored her question, waiting for the dizziness to fade. He’d had a physical a few days before he’d deployed, but his newest chip was a prototype. Possibly some kind of malfunction. Just great.
“Are you listening to me? You look really weird, Max.”
He definitely felt weird. “I always wear the gloves,” he said tightly.
“Even during…you know.”
He smiled thinly. “When I eat?”
“Actually, I meant when you—”
“I know what you meant.”
Of course he knew what she meant. Even the scientists back at the Foxfire base had wanted to see how his tactile sensitivity would affect his sexual encounters. Lloyd Ryker, Foxfire’s head, had gone so far as suggesting that Max keep a detailed journal of his reactions. According to Ryker, knowledge of a woman’s body chemistry during her peak arousal of sex could have some tactical use for covert operatives.
Max considered himself as loyal as it got, but he had ignored that particular order. His skills were too new—and occasionally too unpredictable—for him to guarantee their value during sexual encounters.
But it was hard not to wonder what full body contact, including his hands, would be like. He had never taken off his gloves with a woman in intimacy, not since a Foxfire surgeon had slipped a tiny electrode into his brain and linked his tactile sense with his sense of smell. There had been more procedures after that, each one amplifying his abilities. It had taken weeks for him to learn how to identify the complex chemical formulas picked up through his skin.
But now the identification process had become second nature. He had accepted the personal restrictions because they protected him and made him a better soldier. Going back simply wasn’t an option.
The dull throb centered behind his right ear. Probably stress, he told himself. If not, he’d put it down as a chip malfunction. For that Ryker would give the science team hell when Max got back.
As far as he knew, he was the only Foxfire member using the third-generation tactile chip. It was too new to have any record of failure rates yet.
He recalled the single wrong note he had picked up when he’d first carried Miki to the bunker. Something had drifted among those faint chemical layers of seawater and engine fuel, but it continued to elude him, even though he was trained to recognize everything from mouthwash to nuclear waste. He should have recognized whatever he’d picked up on her skin, but he couldn’t.
As Max stood up, fresh pain dug at his eyes. He would get some air, clear his head and then call Truman down.
Something circled his wrist. He frowned when he saw Miki’s fingers tighten against his gloves.
“This isn’t leather,” she whispered. “It’s too soft, too thin. What is this stuff?”
A manmade fiber that had taken ten years to perfect in the Foxfire labs, Max thought. The exact components were still highly classified.
Her voice echoed a little and he realized his hearing was affected now, too. He looked at her fingers, stro
ng and pale against his glove, and he thought about the brush of her skin everywhere. He wanted to touch her and taste her while she was lost in passion. Hell, there was no point in pretending she hadn’t gotten under his skin.
But he wasn’t going to do a damned thing about it, Max swore. He pulled away, his expression masked. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
“For Truman.” He watched her face for signs of tension or evasiveness, but he saw neither. She just nodded calmly.
“You should make sure that he’s completely recovered.” She sat up quickly, looking pale. “What if he’s collapsed again? Wait, I’m going with you,” she said firmly. “Then we have to check on Dutch.”
“You’re too weak to go anywhere.”
She took a deep breath and stood up slowly. “Not anymore. I’ll be fine.” She crossed the cabin, her face determined. “What are you waiting for? I want to check on Truman.”
Max opened the rusty door. Instantly the Lab appeared in the companionway, ears high. He circled warily, then shot forward, sniffing Miki’s arm. Very carefully he pressed his nose to her elbow, licking her scar.
She didn’t move. A frown worked down her forehead. “He’s doing it again.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s smelling my hand like he did before. Now my arm. Why?”
Before Max could answer, Truman turned in a tight circle, sat down and sank into a prone position. His head rested on his front paws as he stared intently at Miki.
Max didn’t move.
Foxfire’s canine prodigy would take this position for only one reason. He had just picked up a scent signature for Enrique Cruz, the man who had stolen the government’s newest billion-dollar weapon guidance system.
That meant Blondie here was up to her neck in deep shit.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH TRUMAN?” Her voice was low and a little hoarse. “Why did he lie down suddenly like that?”
Max kept his face blank. “Probably tired.”
“I don’t think so. I think he was trained to do that.” She stared at the dog. “My friend’s dogs do things like that all the time, especially the little one.” She moved, her hands restless. “I don’t like any of this and my arm hurts. So why are you really here?”
Code Name: Blondie Page 9
