The Woman Left Behind

by Linda Howard

  Ten minutes after Levi’s call, she gingerly made her way downstairs. She couldn’t flex her toes because of the bandaging, so she had to go down sideways, like a toddler, clinging to the banister for balance. The car Mac had sent pulled to the curb just as she went outside, and the driver, a burly guy in dress pants and a polo shirt, gave her a perturbed look. “I was coming up to get you,” he said.

  “How? Wheelchairs don’t work on stairs,” she pointed out.

  “My orders were to carry you.”

  Carry her? She must have looked as appalled as she felt, because he mumbled something about not knowing she could walk yet. She hobbled around the car and got in the passenger seat and hoped he wasn’t chatty.

  He wasn’t, though she could feel him giving her occasional glances as if he was trying to size her up. When they reached headquarters, he jumped out and got the wheelchair from the trunk, unfolded it, held it steady while she transferred from the car to the seat. She already felt tired; despite her dislike of the chair, she was happy not to be walking the distance required.

  He pushed her along the sidewalk, up the handicap ramp, into the building where the air-conditioning was already cranked up to maximum, as if trying to get a head start on the day’s heat. Headquarters interior was very humdrum, deliberately so. Anyone who entered the building by accident would see a drab lobby, a single receptionist who would kindly direct them away and who would be holding a pistol under her desk, pointing at them. The door leading back to the business part of the building was armored and accessed only by a facial recognition program and a key card.

  Beyond that, the hallways seemed to have been designed by a drunk troll, though she knew they were deliberately laid out for defense. Finding her way around, when she’d first been hired, had been a challenge. After a while she hadn’t noticed the mazelike layout and navigated the building without any problem. Now she saw things with different eyes and recognized the effectiveness of the design.

  Every time they met someone in the hallway, whoever it was stepped to the side and stopped to stare at her. Jina began to feel uncomfortable. Was it the wheelchair? Then they met a woman she recognized from her days in Communications, though she couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Whoever it was stopped and said, “Jina!” Grabbing both of Jina’s hands she said, “I admire you so much. When we heard what you did—running for hours like that . . . well, I couldn’t have done it. That was amazing.”

  “Ah . . . thank you,” Jina finally managed. So that was it. Should she tell them she hadn’t done anything heroic or amazing, that she’d been operating on blind desperation and the will to survive? In the end she let it go, because doing otherwise would take too much effort and she didn’t care enough.

  He wheeled her to one of the secure conference rooms. Mac was there, looking as impatient and ill-tempered as always. Levi was also there, and three others, two men and a woman, who she took to be intelligence analysts.

  “I have her,” Levi said, taking control of the wheelchair from the driver he’d sent.

  “Sure thing.”

  Levi pushed the chair up to the conference table, then poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of her. She murmured a thanks and was sincere about it—the coffee, anyway.

  No one introduced the three strangers, which didn’t matter to her. She’d likely never see them again, anyway. Mac paced around, scowling. “Okay, we know this mission was in the crapper from the get-go. Ace has been debriefed. What happened on your end?”

  “The kid, Mamoon, came in and watched me while I was operating the drone. I picked up a thermal signature, zoomed in on it. I thought he was amazed, interested, but now I know he was alarmed because he knew I would see the men who were waiting to ambush the team. He left, and a few minutes later I heard a voice outside, probably at the truck we were supposed to use to exfil. Whoever it was, Mamoon was talking to him. They were trying to be quiet, probably thought I couldn’t hear them.”

  “Did you understand what they were saying?”

  “No. I don’t speak Arabic. Even if I did, the words weren’t distinct. I could hear just enough to know there was someone with Mamoon.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I flew the drone ahead of the team’s position, looking for the thermal signature of the informant. Instead I saw a group of signatures, I’m guessing about fifteen. I didn’t have time to count them. I immediately alerted the team to the ambush, then the truck exploded and I was knocked . . . not unconscious, but dazed. I could see two people picking their way through the ruin, toward me. I destroyed the laptop, per instructions, and managed to work my way outside through a hole in the wall.”

  “Why didn’t you contact the team to let them know your location, that you were alive?”

  Ah. There it was, the question she’d hoped they wouldn’t ask, because that was what she most didn’t want to discuss, or even remember. “My throat mic was damaged,” she said steadily. “I could hear what they were saying, but I couldn’t respond.”

  She could feel Levi’s hooded gaze on her, fierce and intense. He hadn’t known that, hadn’t known that she could hear him. She couldn’t say that he’d made the wrong decision; looking at it unemotionally, she knew he’d made the correct one, the only one he could with the information he had. Unfortunately, though her head knew he was right, her heart couldn’t join in the applause.

  Mac said, “You didn’t have your comm headset with you when you reached the secondary exfil point.” It was an accusation, as if he thought she might be lying.

  She hadn’t known that, hadn’t thought about it. “I fell a lot, running in the dark. It must have been torn off. Deduct it from my pay.” The last was said with a coldness she hadn’t known she could muster.

  Levi must have thought Mac was capable of doing just that, because he said sharply, “It was damaged anyway. Forget about the inventory.”

  Mac gave them both an intensely annoyed look, but he didn’t argue.

  The debriefing continued. How odd that so much could be compressed into so few words. If anything, telling them about it made everything feel even more unreal, made her feel even more distant from events.

  The analysts grilled her for over an hour, going over details, asking for her impressions, what she thought could have happened. Why did she think the truck had been exploded? Was it possible there had been more than one person outside with Mamoon? Why hadn’t they simply come in and shot her?

  “My guess is the only way they could make enough noise to warn the others was to set off an explosion.”

  And, “Possible, but I heard only the one other voice.”

  And, “I’d taken my weapon out of my holster, had it lying beside the laptop. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t be an easy kill, and a shot inside the ruin might not have been loud enough to serve as a warning, so they opted for the warning explosion first, then came in to take care of me. I don’t know. Parts of it just seemed like poor planning.”

  Mac interrupted at that point. “Part of it seems damned Machiavellian. A team was sent to the Syrian interior because of the informant’s supposed intel about Graeme Burger. That’s a hard place to get into, a hard place to get out of. It looks as if the purpose of the whole plan was to bait a team into a hostile environment and eliminate the entire team.”

  “More likely the informant was captured, interrogated, and that was the best plan that could be put together on very little time,” the woman analyst said. “I agree with Ms. Modell. Parts of it are either poorly planned or poorly executed, or both.”

  “Or there was no real informant to begin with.” Mac scowled. “The intel we could put together on him was thin. Everything about Graeme Burger is thin, a hint here and there. But then he pulled that disappearing act, and—” He stopped, rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, as if he’d been up all night. “From my perspective, it looks as if a deliberate attempt was made to eliminate an entire team, a team that had been focusing on Burger.” He said abruptly, “All righ
t, that’s it. You’re through for now, Modell. You can go.”

  She wasn’t cleared to hear any further intel that might be discussed, so she wasn’t surprised. She started to wheel herself away from the table, but Levi took control of the wheelchair and pushed her out of the room, down the hall.

  I can do it. She thought it, but didn’t say it. If she could run the equivalent of a marathon at night, without water, and with bleeding feet, she could damn well handle a wheelchair. For the first time she felt a flicker of emotion, and it was anger.

  She didn’t want the anger, didn’t want to feel anything. She pushed it away and sat silently as he wheeled her back to where her taciturn driver waited.

  “Thanks, Terrell. Take care of her. I owe you.”

  “No problem,” Terrell the driver said, though from the exchange Jina figured his job wasn’t driving.

  Terrell drove her home, where she refused his somewhat awkward determination to carry her upstairs, and made it under her own steam. Carry her in? What the hell had Levi been smoking?

  Late that afternoon, Ailani called. “Hi, you,” she said warmly. “Do you feel up to some company?”

  “Sure,” Jina said, though she really didn’t. A pain pill—the last one she’d take, she had decided—had eased the pain in her feet and made her feel dull and drowsy.

  “I’ve been cooking today, trying out new recipes. I’ll bring you a few meals to put in the freezer, just heat them when you get hungry instead of making do with a sandwich. See you in an hour!”

  It wasn’t just Ailani who came, though; Snake was with her, though they were kidless. “We hired a babysitter for the hellions,” he explained. He was holding a cardboard box, which freed Ailani to give her a big hug. He hefted the box. “Food. I wanted some of it and Ailani said no, so I want you to think of me every time you eat.”

  “I won’t,” she assured him. “You can find your own food.”

  She slowly made her way to the kitchen and stowed the meals in the freezer compartment of her refrigerator. If her fridge had been mostly empty, the freezer was worse, containing only a half-eaten carton of ice cream and three Popsicles. Normally she had a frozen pizza or a microwave dinner in there, but Terisa had been right about her food situation being pitiful. “These look great,” she said, and meant it. She felt the stirring of an appetite. “Have the two of you had dinner yet? We can order in a pizza or—”

  “Already handled that,” Snake said. “The other guys are bringing food. If you don’t feel up to having all of us around, say so, because otherwise we’re taking over.”

  What she felt was taken aback, and, no, she didn’t want a bunch of people around, but she didn’t say so. Sending them away after they brought food would require a level of rudeness she couldn’t muster. “As long as no one expects great conversation from me,” she said. “I took my last pain pill a little while ago, so I’m a tad fuzzy.”

  “Your last one? I can get you some more,” Snake said, frowning at her.

  “No, I have more, I meant that’s the last one I’m going to take. I can’t drive while I’m taking them.”

  “You don’t have to drive. One of us can take you anywhere you need to go. If you’re in pain, take the damn pills.”

  “Maybe at night, so I can sleep,” she said, though she had no intention of doing so.

  One by one the guys showed up, all of them bringing something: doughnuts, a bakery pie, chips and dip. Boom and Terisa also arrived sans kids, so evidently they’d all agreed not to overtax her with little people running around, climbing on her, and maybe stepping on her feet. Levi was last to arrive, laden with four large pizzas. Jina hadn’t been particularly hungry, but the smell of the pizzas made her mouth water.

  She could handle being around Levi more easily when there was a crowd. After all, she’d spent the last year trying to mostly ignore him, except on team matters. She hadn’t succeeded, but she’d tried. Ignoring meant not paying attention to him, and no matter what she was always acutely aware of his presence. That held true now; she could mostly keep her focus on the others, but he was like a big, bright thermal signature on Tweety’s infrared camera, front and center in her awareness.

  “I checked for an update on the guys,” Levi said when they were all crammed into her small living room. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone, so Jelly and Snake had settled on the floor, with Snake leaning against Ailani’s legs. Somehow Levi had ended up sitting closest to Jina, though at least she was in a chair by herself instead of on the couch. Everyone’s attention turned to him. “Voodoo is better, they may get him up on his feet tomorrow. Crutch is still critical, but holding his own.” His mouth was a grim line. He knew, they all knew, that the likelihood of either of them being able to return was very slim, and that was if Crutch survived at all.

  Jina was braced for a rehash of the mission, but perhaps because of Terisa’s and Ailani’s presence the men avoided the subject. Whatever the reason, she was glad for it. Other than for debriefing, she hadn’t deliberately thought about any of it. That didn’t mean she could avoid thinking about it, but she didn’t go out of her way to relive it. Once had been enough.

  She was mostly quiet while everyone else talked, but gradually she realized that despite her initial reluctance, she was grateful they were there. The team had been a huge part of her life for the past year, almost completely taking her over, and abruptly being cut off from them had felt . . . wrong. She’d halfway expected them to carry on as if she’d never been assigned to them, out of sight out of mind, but instead they were making an effort to keep her included. After all, her wounds were relatively minor; they expected her to rejoin them after her feet healed.

  The only problem was, she didn’t know if she could.

  Twenty-Three

  Over the next week, she was pretty much house bound, but there was no need to go anywhere. The guys were dropping food by every day. Terisa or Ailani called every day to check on her, see if she needed anything other than food. Levi was mostly keeping his distance, unless someone else was there, which suited her fine. She needed the solitude to get settled back into herself.

  Gradually the sense of disconnect faded, except with Levi.

  He’d left her behind.

  If he hadn’t kissed her—but he had.

  If he hadn’t protected her and made her feel wanted even when they couldn’t be together—but he had.

  Despite everything, she’d felt as if someday the status quo would change and they’d be together, that no matter how frustrating and hurtful it was to put barriers in place between them there would come a time when the barriers weren’t needed. Now, she couldn’t let herself believe that he felt the same at all, because he’d left her. The attraction that had so consumed her must not have been as strong for him. She tried to put herself in the same position, and couldn’t imagine that she would ever leave him behind, not knowing for certain whether he was dead or not.

  Maybe she was wrong about that. She’d never had to make that decision. That was the problem; because she didn’t know, her heart couldn’t accept what he’d done.

  The days rocked on, became a week, two weeks.

  She healed. Her feet weren’t in pretty shape, but the swelling was down and she needed only bandaging around her heels and over her toes. Flip flops were out, because she couldn’t get the thong between her toes, but she could tolerate the mule style of bedroom slippers, which Ailani thought of and brought to her so she wouldn’t have to wear the moose head slippers. Jina thought she might be recovering, mentally, because she was amused at the idea that, if any of the guys had injured their feet in the same way she had, they’d be wearing fuzzy mules, too.

  For the most part, though, she wasn’t amused. She watched TV. She read. She puttered around doing small chores, getting her kitchen organized, doing some online shopping for a new bedspread and shams. She’d devoted herself to GO-Team stuff for over a year now, and she wanted to do feminine stuff, get back the part of herself that had
been put on the back burner while she dealt with the intensity of training and being a part of the team.

  The daily updates said Crutch was finally improving, enough to be moved out of critical care. Voodoo was transferred to Walter Reed, and in another couple of weeks he was scheduled to begin therapy.

  She could drive now, so she visited him almost every day. So did the rest of the team, but they were back to the normal training schedule and came at the end of the day; she didn’t run into them at the hospital. Because of training her contact with them now was mostly texts, asking if she needed anything, but given that she could drive again she was handling everything herself.

  She graduated from bandages to Band-Aids, and was able to walk normally. She tried on her sneakers every day to see if she could tolerate them, and one day she could. She was mostly back to normal—whatever normal was.

  The day she was released to resume training, Jina knew she couldn’t stay in stasis any longer. Getting herself back to top level would be an effort.

  If she wanted to get back to top level.

  That was the sticking point, the idea that circled around and around her brain, night and day. She’d never quit on anything. If she’d been a quitter, she wouldn’t have made it out of the desert alive. Nevertheless, the idea of rejoining the team almost made her sick.

  She cared about them all; she did. When it came down to it, even though she knew they’d had no choice other than to take care of Crutch and Voodoo, try to save their lives, even though she understood they’d thought she was dead, in the end she couldn’t get past the fact that they’d left her behind. Reason be damned, emotion was trumping reason. She didn’t want it to, she wanted to close the door on yesterday and face forward again, but she couldn’t.

  If it were just the rest of the team, she could do it. Levi . . . Levi was the one she couldn’t come to grips with. Her thoughts circled endlessly around the subject, and she couldn’t force herself past it. She was the least important member of his team, and in the end he’d proven it to her. She was desolate inside, knocked down, hollowed out with despair. Levi had left her behind.