by Rachel Grant
“Wait till you see me really mad.”
“Sweetheart, my career wouldn’t survive that.” He pointed to the various guns on the counter. “Better to take out your anger on helpless targets instead of this helpless soldier.”
She picked up each weapon and made the shot. Sometimes it took her a few tries, but she knew exactly how to dial in, adjust, and find the target. No matter how ridiculous the shot—golf ball on a post at twenty-five yards, then again at fifty—she nailed it in five shots or less. He put a Q-Tip at twenty-five, and she got it in one. He was tempted to put a Peanut M&M at a hundred to see if she’d blow the hell out of it too.
Dammit. He wanted to be inside this woman.
My woman.
Which was a screwed-up thought in so many ways.
She picked up an AK-47. “I’m comfortable with the 9mm I was issued. Why bother practicing with these?”
“I want to be sure you’re prepared for anything. AKs are the weapon of choice for militants.” It was his own private hell that each bull’s-eye ratcheted up his desire another notch.
“It’s been quiet. There hasn’t been a peep from Desta since Wednesday. This is probably a waste of time,” she said.
“You had better plans for the day than going shooting with a hot Special Forces operator?” he asked.
“Oh, is Cal coming?”
He laughed. This was okay. They could joke. It would relieve tension that wasn’t going to be jettisoned any other way. He grinned and lifted his shirt, showing off his abs. “Are you forgetting about this? I’ve seen what this does to you.”
She shrugged. “Eh. I’ve been hanging out with cut marines all week.”
Behind him, he heard Cal laugh. “You’re losing your touch, Pax. I’d have gone with something more subtle.”
Pax smiled at Cal but stiffened when he saw who accompanied him. “That’s because you don’t have the abs for it.”
Cal flashed a wide grin. “What I lack in abs I make up for elsewhere.”
Morgan choked on a laugh as she set the Kalash on the table, then greeted Cal with a hug. He introduced her to the other members of their A-Team.
Tension crawled up Pax’s spine when Bastian the bastard took her hand in both of his. Things hadn’t been the same since Yemen. It would be just like Bastian to pursue Morgan simply because Pax wanted but couldn’t have her.
The caveman reared his head again. Mine, the brute repeated, all mine.
Except she wasn’t and couldn’t be.
Cal asked about her survey, and she answered with animation that confirmed Pax’s assessment a week ago: Morgan loved her job. “You guys should come out to the survey area this week.”
“We’re busy training a team of locals,” Cal said.
“Bring them. Odds are, they’ll end up protecting cultural heritage sites at some point. Providing protection from looters is one of the primary expenses of the Djiboutian military.”
“You can show them what to look for, talk about what they’d need to know?” Bastian asked.
“Sure.”
“What do you think, Pax?” Cal asked.
“Couldn’t hurt. Run it by the XO.”
Cal nodded, then he caught Pax’s pointed look and moved down to the far end of the range, taking the others with him. Pax didn’t like the way Bastian’s gaze lingered on Morgan before he followed Cal down the firing line. That he’d overheard Pax flirting with Morgan was like blood in the water to a shark.
She shot the crap out of another target, and Pax figured it was time to pack up and go back. After he dropped her at her CLU, he made good on his word and jacked off in the shower while imagining her gorgeous body entwined with his.
Morgan was eager for the coming workday like a kid on Christmas morning. She didn’t know if the other Green Berets and their trainees would show up at the site, but that was only a contributing factor to her excitement. Today, she’d have Pax at her side all day. It wasn’t good how happy this thought made her, considering they’d never be more than bodyguard and guarded body. But still the feeling was there, and she was energized by it.
She met Pax at the Humvee. Sanchez was there as well, but the other marine had returned to his previous assignment. She slid into her usual spot in the backseat.
“Dr. Adler, why don’t you bring me up-to-date on the project?” Pax said.
She met his gaze in the rearview mirror and read his silent message not to correct his use of her name. She nodded in acknowledgment. They needed barriers, and names were a starting point. After all, she’d insisted on calling Savannah the nickname Savvy to break down a barrier and bring them to the same level. She and Pax needed to go in the other direction. She would try to think of him as Blanchard, no different from Sanchez, who had told her his first name but she’d forgotten it from lack of use.
“We’ve been surveying the alternate APE and have found several sites and a few isolated artifacts. Nothing like Linus, though.”
“How long will the rest of the survey take?”
“Two weeks—three at most. It’s a long corridor, and this country is rich in prehistory.”
“And poor in everything else,” Sanchez commented, his gaze on a cluster of children who were picking over a debris pile on the side of the road.
Pax rode the lip of the dirt track as he gave way for a truck loaded with camels heading in the opposite direction. Portions of her project area would only be accessible by camel. She’d been assured the Djiboutian government would provide them when the time came, but with the US military’s involvement, she was no longer certain exactly who would provide the camels.
The concept made her smile. She was involved in some serious camel trading. But then, one of the nicer things about having a US-supplied security detail was that some of the project logistics could be passed to them, leaving her to focus on the job. So that made Pax her camel trader.
Ibrahim and Mouktar were already at the project area when they arrived. They set off to work, nothing different in spite of Pax’s—or rather, Sergeant Blanchard’s—presence on the team. He’d slipped into the role of security chief with ease, the quiet professional promised in glossy Army recruitment brochures.
Damn. All she had to do was look at Pax, and she was flooded with want.
The day was relentlessly hot, as usual. At eleven a.m. Mouktar and Ibrahim took their customary break from the heat that would last until one p.m. The men usually napped in the shade of a pop-up canopy, while Morgan settled into a low beach chair and fleshed out her notes from the morning’s work.
Between the canopy, chair, and sun, it was just like being at the beach, except for the excessive lack of water. Really, it was shocking anyone survived in this country now, let alone through the millennia, as lack of water had been a problem for tens of thousands of years.
Yet she’d found a site this morning that had all the earmarks of being only five thousand years old, which didn’t make sense for this area. It was baffling how humans could adapt even without the most basic resource.
Pax dropped down, taking a seat beside her on the hard, rocky ground. She smiled at him distractedly as she placed a dot on her field map, marking the location of an isolated artifact. “There’s another chair in the back of the Humvee if you want it,” she murmured, keeping her focus on the map.
“It’s unwise to get too comfortable.”
She nodded. That had been their first mistake—they’d gotten too comfortable with each other. It had opened dangerous doors that they now needed to keep firmly shut.
A warm breeze rattled the canopy cover, negating the refuge of shade. Sweat gathered where her back met the chair; she leaned forward to release the heat.
He picked up her water bottle and held it out to her. “Drink, Dr. Adler.”
She took the bottle and nearly drained it. It was impossible to carry enough water for an entire day of fieldwork, but they had several gallons in the Humvee.
“What are you working on?” Pax asked.
“I thought you said this area was loaded with freshwater lakes two million years ago. Isn’t that why Linus survived?”
“Two or three million years ago, sure. But the stuff we’re finding today looks recent. Too recent for this kind of occupation. We’re talking five to seven thousand years, tops. Meaning people lived here long after the water was gone.”
“So? People live here now.”
She thought back to the children by the road. “Sure, people survive here, but no crops are grown in Djibouti, so much of that survival involves living off refuse from the port operation. Plus, there’s infrastructure—they import much of what they need. Including, when the desalinization plant is constructed, water.”
She glanced up along the narrow corridor that was her project area. “I don’t know if you heard—I received an email from the natural resources minister a few days ago. China is fast-tracking the Eritrean desalinization plant build. They’re hoping my survey will also clear the pipeline route. They want two for the price of one environmental compliance—pipeline and railroad—and offered me a big bonus if I finish my survey in less than a week.”
“Will you?”
“It’s impossible. I’d have to lie and sign off on large sections. Maybe if Desta hadn’t scared off half my crew, but now, no.” She frowned. “I know what the pipeline means. Potable water will run right through this corridor. It’ll change the living standards of all Djiboutians. But it’s going to take a year to build. They can wait another two weeks for an ethical report.” She shook her head. “If China had their way, my survey wouldn’t happen at all.”
“China has their own agenda when it comes to Djibouti, and it’s not to be benevolent water suppliers,” Pax said. “They’re looking for a proxy war, and when all is said and done, they’ll swoop in and take the territory. That’s why we need Camp Citron. A bigger base means a bigger presence. Less maneuvering room for China.”
She nodded. “Is it wrong that I want Djibouti to have the water pipeline, even though China is picking up the tab?”
“It’s never wrong to want thirsty children to have water, or starving children to have food. I just wish we were building the plant, and that it was here in Djibouti, not Eritrea.” Pax sifted his fingers through the dry dirt. “But US taxpayers would never foot that bill. Not when we’ve got our own water problems in California and on the Navajo reservation. So China gains a foothold.”
He rose to his feet. “But back to the site you found this morning. You’re saying it was impossible for people to live here five thousand years ago?”
“Not impossible for individuals and small groups. They could survive with a nomadic lifestyle, but the site we found today has the earmarks of being a village—meaning longer-term occupation by a larger group of people. Even if occupation was seasonal, it doesn’t make sense given the lack of water. One of the basic tenets of archaeology is if you want to find a site, look next to the water source.”
“And you’re certain there wasn’t water here five thousand years ago?”
“I’m not a geologist, so I really couldn’t say, but Andre Broussard, the geologist I mentioned before, he came through here months ago.” She took a long drink of precious water before continuing. “Broussard sent me his in-progress findings, to keep me up-to-date as the contract was being finalized. He sent the results of auger samples he’d taken across the entire route. The blue pin flags we’ve been seeing along the route are his—marking where he took core samples.
“About two weeks before I arrived, he sent me an email—really excited about something, but light on details. Then a few days later, he sent me what amounted to ‘never mind.’ When I found Linus, I emailed him, wondering if that’s what he’d been excited about, because there was a blue pin flag near the butchered bones. I thought maybe I was wrong about the age of the fossils, that maybe he’d done some tests I should know about. My email bounced, so I tried to call him—but his phone was disconnected. Charles Lemaire promised to contact him for me, but with everything that’s gone on, I forgot to follow up.”
“Broussard lives in Paris, right?”
“Yes. As far as I know, that’s where he is now.”
“We can check in with the minister after work if you’d like.”
She frowned at the map. “That might be a good idea.” She rose from her seat, studying the contour lines. “It’s just…the shovel probes Mouktar dug today—the deposits looked like alluvium. But I can’t fathom how river silt could be here. Broussard’s geologic report indicated the last time water flowed through this valley was two hundred thousand years ago. Alluvium should be long gone.”
She left the shade of the canopy to return to the site. She wanted to see the smooth, round gravel Mouktar had pulled from a meter below the surface.
She knelt by the open probe hole. The diameter of a shovel head, it was a quick window into the past. So much of this country was rock. So little soil. So little water. But occasionally, they got lucky and had softer soils to dig through.
A hat was pressed on her head. “You forgot your hat,” Pax said. “A bad idea with your fair skin.”
She glanced sideways to give him a smile. The hard planes of his face grew more handsome every time she looked. She turned back to the ground, feeling as blinded from looking at him as she was by the sun. “Thanks.” She frowned at the puzzle of the river gravel. “It’s entirely possible these pebbles are anomalous.”
She picked up the shovel Mouktar had left by the hole and crossed to one of Broussard’s blue pin flags. She pulled out the flag and started to dig, removing the loose dirt Broussard had augured out months before.
His auger had gone several meters deeper than Mouktar’s shovel probe, but mixed with the backfilled soil, she found the same river gravel. He’d encountered the gravel too, but she couldn’t be certain at what depth.
Again, it could be an anomaly. It could well be what the geologist had been excited about, but then came to nothing.
Pax brought her a new water bottle as she backfilled the auger hole. “Thanks,” she said again. “You take good care of me.”
“Somebody has to. You get so focused on your work you’re blind to everything else.”
Except him. She was aware of Pax on a cellular level, but it wouldn’t do to tell him that. Instead, she drank a large gulp of water and splashed a little on her face to cool down.
“You were the same way when shooting yesterday.”
She touched the pistol holstered to her hip. “It’s how I dial in, I guess.”
“You loved target shooting, didn’t you?”
“Maybe… Probably. Yes.”
He smiled. “But you quit. To spite your dad, you gave up something you loved.”
“Eighteen isn’t the most logical of ages. I also became a vegan to piss him off.”
He raised a skeptical brow. “You had a club sandwich with cheese and extra bacon for lunch.”
“True.” She grinned. “But my dad hasn’t seen me eat meat or dairy for thirteen years.”
“Stubborn.”
“I resemble that remark.” They were dangerously close to sharing a moment. She turned back to the pit and ran her foot over the top to even out the overfill. She planted Broussard’s pin flag back in the center. “Can I use the sat phone to call the minister? I’d like to get in touch with Broussard, and I’d rather not wait until after work.”
“Sure,” Pax said.
Her project budget hadn’t afforded a satellite phone. Given that cell coverage dropped off dramatically outside the city, it was a definite bonus that the US military had provided one to her security detail.
The minister answered immediately. When she asked if he’d been able to locate Broussard, the cheer in the man’s voice dimmed. “Can you come to my office after work today?”
/> She relayed the question to Pax, who nodded. She set up the meeting and disconnected, unsettled by the man’s caginess. After handing the phone back to Pax, she glanced at her watch. “Another hour until break’s over.”
“I’m going to scout the survey area up ahead. Stay here with Sanchez.”
She nodded and settled back in her chair under the canopy, her gaze on Pax as he disappeared downslope.
Sex had been taken out of the equation, but did that mean enjoying his company was off-limits too? Was friendship not allowed?
Somehow, she thought so. Because friendship would only lead to frustrated desire.
Pax’s Special Forces team arrived with the trainees in the late afternoon as the day cooled from one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit to a chill one hundred.
Upon their arrival, Morgan asked Ibrahim and Mouktar to give the locals the tour. She stood back with Pax while the men spoke in French and Arabic. Ibrahim was more animated than Pax had seen the man, clearly proud of the work he was doing, the contribution he was making.
“Is he an archaeologist?” Pax asked her.
“He is now,” she said with a grin. She watched the group of men, her face showing her pride. “He didn’t know anything about archaeology two months ago. The culture minister hired him, Mouktar, and the three who left, to work as laborers. They were chosen because their English is better than my French—my Arabic is nonexistent—and they were willing to dig and clear acacia in the hot sun. They’re good. Smart. And they know this land far better than I ever could. Finding sites is more about knowing the landform than anything else. I just taught them the key signs to look for. And they’ve been reading up—I gave them e-book readers loaded with reference materials when they first started. I hope they’ll stay on with the Cultural Resources Department when this project is over.”
“This could be a career for them?” Pax asked, realizing their jobs were similar. He was teaching locals how to be soldiers. She was teaching them how to be archaeologists. Djibouti needed both.
When the tour of the survey area was complete and his Special Forces team left with their busload of trainees, he took Morgan to the minister’s office as arranged. Sanchez guarded the front entrance, and Pax stood sentry inside the man’s office.
