Close Quarters

by Lucy Monroe

  Gritting her teeth against the annoying reality that right now the only person with the answers she needed was Roman, Tanya turned back to him. “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’ll hike south toward Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa. I have contacts there who can get us transportation home. If I can get them to come across the border, we’ll arrange a meet. Otherwise, we’ll have to make our own way and connect with them in South Africa. As long as the kill order is in place, regular military or government channels aren’t safe.”

  “I’ve always wanted to see more of South Africa.” Though the idea of walking there was pretty daunting. She liked to camp as much as the next person, but this was serious travel without so much as a pack mule.

  Kadin smiled at her, his eyes warm with approval. Roman’s were filled with something else entirely and it wasn’t anything she wanted to acknowledge, so she turned away from him toward Fleur.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  Fleur shook her head and laughed in patent disbelief, but very little humor. “I’m not in danger of a sniper’s bullet.”

  “But they’ll come here, looking for me.” That’s what Roman and Ben were counting on, wasn’t it?

  “I’ll keep Fleur safe,” Ben promised with an expression that cheered Tanya despite the hellacious day she’d had.

  She met him square in the eye. “You better do right by her.”

  “I plan on it.”

  Fleur made a pfft sound, but Tanya saw the happiness glowing in the other woman’s eyes, regardless of the danger and the day’s revelations.

  “You keep her safe,” Fleur said to Roman, her expression devoid of all the warmth it had had a second ago.

  “That’s the plan.”

  Tanya wanted to ask why he was set on protecting her, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer, so she didn’t say anything at all.

  “Take a nap. You’ll need your energy tonight,” he said to her.

  She nodded and turned to leave the room, feeling that her entire life was on the verge of irrevocable change. And not for the better.

  They left the compound in the small hours of the morning, after the moon had set. Tanya had insisted on carrying her own light pack on her back, despite the now sore incision below her shoulder blade.

  Roman had grumbled, but in the end he had allowed it. He, Kadin and Neil carried bigger packs, and they were fully armed.

  The three men had blackened their faces, and then Kadin had helped her do hers. Roman had been watching the whole time, his expression one she couldn’t begin to read. And frankly, right now, she didn’t really want to.

  It was hard to believe how quietly the men moved, considering their size, and the amount of weapons they carried, not to mention their packs. They also never tripped, no matter how dark it was.

  She couldn’t say the same, but she never fell. Not once. Every time she tripped, Roman’s hand was there, steadying her. He’d directed Kadin to take the lead and Neil was somewhere behind them. She hadn’t actually seen them since they’d left the compound.

  She didn’t know how long they’d been walking when Roman handed her a water bottle. She drank just enough to rehydrate a little and then handed it back to him. He took a drink and then slid it into the net on the side of his pack without making a sound. He repeated the action at regular intervals. He seemed to know just when she needed hydration, but he also showed an uncanny sense for timing their bio breaks to just before she had to break down and ask. Twice he gave her half of an energy bar with her water, which she ate while walking.

  They walked until almost dawn when Kadin led them to a rock outcropping. Roman quietly told her that now was time for her bio break before bed. She didn’t demur, but went where he indicated, finding a spot where she would have relative privacy. She’d been camping with the traveling clinic too long to worry about someone hearing her pee on the ground, but visual confirmation was something else. The men had put up two tents and thrown a camouflage net over them by the time she returned to their resting spot. They’d used the natural long grasses to add to their concealment and she felt as safe as she considered was possible under the circumstances.

  Kadin climbed into one of the tents and Roman indicated with his hand she should get into the other. She didn’t know who was taking first watch, or where the others were sleeping, and she didn’t care. She was exhausted physically, emotionally and mentally. She simply had no reserves left to worry about the mundane. She wasn’t even sure she’d notice if an assassin walked right into camp and pointed a gun at her.

  More than ready for a break after the day’s revelations, having her security chip removed and their long trek, she dropped to her knees and climbed inside the tent. She didn’t worry about the black gunk on her face, the mild hunger pangs cramping her stomach or anything else for that matter. She just stripped off everything but her tank top and panties before lying down on the lightweight sleeping bag that had been spread out on the floor of the small pup tent. She was asleep a few seconds later. The sensation of warmth pressing along one side came some time later, but she was too out of it to even try to determine what that meant.

  She figured it out pretty darn quickly when she woke up, though. Roman was there, already awake and watching her.

  She glared, but she didn’t speak. She knew sound could carry and she wasn’t jeopardizing the men trying to save her life with a fit of pique. But when they got to a safe place? Roman Chernichenko was going down. How dare he think it was okay to sleep with her after everything he’d done? If he needed a place to bed down, he could have shared Kadin’s tent. It might have been a little crowded, but she was sure they’d done it before. They were super-soldiers, after all. Or something anyway.

  She was no longer convinced Roman was even in the Army as he told his family. But his duplicity with them wasn’t her problem. She had enough to deal with on her own.

  She grabbed her clothes and yanked them on, determined to be anywhere but in that confined space with the man who had shattered her heart. When she exited the tent, Neil was waiting with a whole energy bar and some water. She ate her breakfast and then took care of her morning ablutions while the others broke down and packed away the tents.

  It was still light out when they started walking this time. When they stopped that night, sometime after midnight, they had reached a small river, but she was not sure which one it was. Geography had never been her strong suit. If it wasn’t on the traveling clinic’s itinerary, there was little chance of her getting her bearings. And since all her itineraries had taken her north, this was completely unknown territory for her.

  Roman and Kadin agreed on a campsite in a stand of trees near another outcropping of rock about a hundred yards from the river. The men spoke quietly, but they did speak. Tanya hoped that meant they’d made it out of the compound without anyone following them. They had MRE rations and Tanya ate hers without complaint.

  “You used to bad food?” Neil asked her.

  She shrugged. “You don’t want to know some of the things I’ve eaten in my years in Africa. Offending the villagers when they open their homes and kitchens in hospitality isn’t an option.”

  Neil grinned. “I can just imagine. I’ve eaten a few bugs in my time.”

  “Bugs are better than grub worms.”

  “Don’t ruin my dinner,” Kadin whined.

  A small smile curved Tanya’s lips. “Don’t be a baby.”

  Kadin mock growled, while Neil said something scathing about his soldiering abilities. It was a well-earned light moment that ended, for her anyway, the moment she met Roman’s eyes.

  Her smile disappeared and she broke gazes with him immediately. Though not before she’d seen how taut his jaw went.

  Was he irritated she and the others were joking around?

  “Are you going to come back?” Kadin asked her.

  Tanya had been asking herself that very question on their long walk. There wasn’t much to do besides try to avoid fal
ling, or tripping, rather. Roman was just as adept that night at keeping her from falling as he had been the night before. And she’d even said thank you once. Go her.

  Not that she wanted to say anything else to him, but she wasn’t the asshole.

  The upshot, though, was that she’d had plenty of time to think. Too much time. Her mom would have called it brooding, and she might have been right. Tanya didn’t care what she called it. All she knew was that the shock she’d felt the day before when she’d learned Roman had used her sexual trust in him as a weapon had worn off. What was left behind was the constant throb of pain in her heart and lots of questions she didn’t have the answers for.

  Why her? How could he? Who had used her as an information mule? What a terrible label, but then being one wasn’t so great either. Was she coming back to Africa?

  “Tanya?” Kadin prompted.

  “Sorry, I spaced out there for a second.”

  “Are you?”

  What? Oh, coming back to Africa. “I don’t know.”

  Kadin nodded, like he understood and maybe he did. Something had led him from soldiering to joining whatever group Roman was with. Had he been disillusioned too?

  “How did you end up here anyway?” Neil asked.

  “I’m sure it was in my file.”

  “That you were in the Peace Corps, yeah. On a soil reclamation project, right?”

  “Yes. It was important work. It still is, but I saw a greater need.”

  “For medical workers,” Kadin said.

  “That’s right. There are medical schools in most of Africa’s countries, but the graduates often don’t stick around to practice here. I’ve read that the most costly export to the U.S. for Nigeria is medical doctors. That there are actually more Nigerian doctors in the state of Illinois than in the country of Nigeria. It’s crazy, right?”

  The two men made noises of assent, but Roman remained quiet. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was brooding. Probably he was planning how best to use other people to accomplish his goals.

  Right. She needed some sleep maybe.

  “Fleur trained in Nigeria, didn’t she?” Neil asked.

  “She did, but she stuck around, trying to make a difference.” In Africa, if not the country of Nigeria. But then Rwanda had been her homeland and that was the one place she had vowed never to return to.

  Kadin finished his energy bar and tucked the wrapper into his pack. “She has made a difference and so have you.”

  “Maybe, but as much as I love Africa, as important as the work we’re doing is, it might be time to go home.” She’d known that someday she would return to the States, just not when. After the phone call from her mom and learning she’d been used to transport military secrets, she couldn’t help feeling that maybe God or the universe, or her own subconscious was trying to tell her something. It was time to make a change.

  “The fact you still see America as your home says a lot about what you are doing in Africa,” Roman said, his tone strangely subdued.

  Tanya shrugged, but she wanted to ask what he meant.

  His lips twisted as if he knew she was biting back a question. “You came to help, not to make a life for yourself. There’s a difference.”

  “Yes, there is.” Not that Quinton had thought she could see that difference. He’d dumped her without even giving her the chance to try to make a life back home, to be part of that normal couple he was so certain he wanted.

  She could admit now that a big part of the reason she’d returned to Africa had been because she’d needed a purpose, something to keep her going. She’d been hurting so much from Quinton’s rejection, the EMT training and making plans to return had given her something to dull the pain. What would dull the pain of Roman’s betrayal, of learning she had been nothing but a disposable pawn to be used by people bent on stealing and selling her country’s secrets?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Beyond ready for some serious rest, Tanya stood up and went to where the sleep shelters had been pitched. She looked back at Roman. “Stay out of my tent.”

  “The closer I am to you, the safer I can keep you.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “It’s not your decision.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re an autocrat.”

  “If you say so.”

  “If someone has to sleep with me, then it can be Kadin.”

  Kadin made a sound that could have been a hastily smothered laugh, though what he found amusing about this situation, Tanya couldn’t begin to say. Neil whistled under his breath and then leaned back to watch, like it was a prize fight or something.

  Tanya frowned at him. “What?”

  “Nothing.” The man did not do innocent well. “Just relaxing.”

  Kadin muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Relaxing, my ass.”

  “Kadin, if you don’t want to sleep in my tent, I understand.” She hadn’t considered he’d be opposed to the idea. It wasn’t as if she was going to jump him.

  The idea of sex with anyone but Roman felt like trying to run with her shoes on the wrong feet. The idea of sex with Roman carried a whole host of emotions she’d rather not dig into, since not all of them were negative.

  And if that didn’t make her a world-class idiot, she wasn’t sure what would.

  “If that’s what you really want, it’s no problem,” Kadin said, giving Roman an indecipherable look.

  “That is not going to happen.” Roman’s voice cracked like a whip in the air between them.

  His reaction was a little over the top, in her opinion. That scowl probably scared terrorists, but she didn’t care.

  She wasn’t about to let him intimidate her. “It’s my tent, I say who goes in it.”

  “Actually, it’s my tent.”

  “Then I’ll sleep in the other one.”

  “No.”

  “Stop being so unreasonable.”

  “I’m not the one being unreasonable.”

  Oh, that so was not going to fly with her, not even if it had jumbo jet engines. She used one of the really coarse Ukrainian phrases she’d learned from Elle.

  His scowl went nuclear.

  She glared back. “Kadin is just as capable as you of protecting me in my sleep.”

  “No. He is not.”

  She shot a glance at Kadin, but the man did not seem offended by Roman’s arrogance. If it weren’t beyond the realm of probability, she would think he looked more than passing amused.

  “I don’t care if you are the top super-soldier here, I prefer to sleep with Kadin.” As the words left her mouth, she realized how they sounded. She just didn’t care.

  They knew what she meant.

  Both Neil and Kadin snickered anyway, but Roman looked ready to kill someone. Or at least how she thought a man would look just before doing grievous bodily harm. And the look wasn’t directed at her.

  She’d worry about his friends if she thought Roman had any intention of acting on his expression.

  “It’s my operation, I say who plays what role,” he gritted out, delivering each word with deliberate emphasis.

  “Like you assigned yourself the task of using sex to get information out of me?” Darn it. She did not want to get into this right now. Not in front of Neil and Kadin, but nothing could un-say the words. And part of her wanted the confrontation, no matter where they were or who was with them.

  “National security takes precedence over hurt feelings.”

  “Is that in your super-soldier manual?” she derided.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Your truth.”

  He shrugged, but he didn’t look as if he was feeling even sort of casual about their conversation. That was the only thing stopping her from screaming at him.

  “You could have just asked.”

  His expression said that had not been an option he had even considered. “I wasn’t one-hundred percent convinced you were not part of the
espionage.”

  She really hadn’t believed he could hurt her more than he already had, but she’d been wrong. Knowing that when he’d had sex with her, he’d still been unsure about whether or not she was guilty was every bit as devastating as discovering he’d had sex with her to find out information in the first place.

  “If our country’s security is in the hands of men like you, I’ve got to worry, because your instincts suck.” Going on the offensive felt a lot better than giving in to fresh pain.

  Both Kadin and Neil made more stifled sounds of amusement, but Roman just glared at them.

  He looked back at her, his expression an odd mix of things she didn’t want to believe. “I made the mistake of putting personal feelings ahead of the assignment once. I lost my best friend and two other good agents. I’ll never do that again.”

  “Bully for you.” She hated, absolutely hated, that his words had elicited understanding and sympathy. “You’re still not sleeping in my tent.”

  He surged to his feet and crossed the twenty feet between them before she even thought of reacting. He grabbed her arms, holding her in front of him. Though his grip wasn’t near anything tight enough to hurt, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “My team and I put our jobs on the line to keep you from getting killed. If I think it’s necessary to share your tent to keep you safe, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  She stared up at him, his insistence making her feel safe instead of angrier. What did that make her? She’d already opted into the world-class idiot’s club. What was left?

  “I can’t stand the thought of you touching me, even just to brush against me in sleep,” she admitted, tugging against his hold.

  He flinched, his jaw going tight. “I never hurt you in bed.”

  “But you did hurt me.”

  “You knew the sex couldn’t lead to anything more.”