Page 4 of The Woman Left Behind

She wanted a weapon, any weapon. Lacking that, she straightened her shoulders, narrowed her eyes, and glared belligerently around, waiting for them to speak. So far all they’d done was smother her with their closeness, choke her with the thick miasma of sweat and testosterone.

There were seven of them, one of her. She was already exhausted by Baxter’s wretched running. Even if she could break free, any one of them could chase her down...ifshe ran.

She wasn’t running. No way would they make her run.

The biggest one spoke, in a dark, rough voice that sounded as if he gargled with rocks.

“We hear you’re our girl.”

Two

Jina’s gaze darted around at all of them, though she was too on edge for her to really see their faces or focus on anything other than that they were big, and they had her surrounded.Don’t show fear,she thought; they might attack. No, wait, that was dogs. Regardless, she knew she needed to be cool about this. Instinct also told her not to get pissy about being called a girl; a successful battle was about timing, and this wasn’t the time, not on the first meeting and with them looming around her, probably a little hostile and already doubting she could do the job. Instead she said, “Then I guess you’re my boys.”

The big dude stared down at her. “Babe,” he said, his tone faintly astonished. They all looked taken aback by her voice, which, yeah, was deep and smoky, a little raspy, and way sexier than her appearance. She’d dealt with that raspy voice her whole life; even when she’d been a little kid, people on the telephone had thought they were talking to an adult.

Another guy said, “I think you just named her.”

What? No! Alarm shot through her. She knew what they meant. They all had nicknames, and she didn’t want to be a “Babe,” either human or pig. She wanted a cool nickname, a kick-ass nickname, something that would make people think twice about messing with her. “Babe” practically invited messing.

“Not Babe. I don’t like Babe,” she said. “I like Grenade, or Mankiller, something like that.”

A round of snickers greeted that. “Sorry, you don’t get to choose,” the big dude said.

“No one will take me seriously.”

“We don’t anyway,” he replied coolly.

How was that for smacking her in the face with the unvarnished truth? She couldn’t even disagree with them, considering the circumstances. “Maybe you don’t now, but you will,” she said, and scowled at him to show she meant it.

They laughed, all of them except the big dude. He didn’t look as if he had much of a sense of humor—not that she’d been joking, but still.

“We’d better, since our lives will depend on you being able to do your job.” Big Dude looked impassively down at her. “That’s why we’re taking over your training. It’s already set up.”

Uh-uh. No. No way; they’d kill her. They were way out of her league. She wanted to run in the middle of the pack of FNGs, she didn’t want to humiliate herself by demonstrating all that she couldn’t do to a group as superbly trained as these guys were. Maybe in six months she’d be ready to join them for more training. She waved in the vague direction where she thought the others had gone. “No, I need to stay with my group. I’m not ready for your level, honest.”

“We know that,” the smallest guy said, small being a relative term because he was still a six-footer. His face was so dirty she likely wouldn’t recognize him after he washed, but he had blue eyes and what looked like two small round scars in the middle of his forehead. “But we’ll bring you up to speed faster than Baxter will, because he has to focus on everyone and we’ll be focusing just on you.”

A dread deeper than the Grand Canyon seized her. She swallowed hard, and said, “My cup runneth over.”

“You have no idea,” Big Dude said and crooked his finger at her. “C’mon, let’s get started.”

Oh. Hell.

Six hours later, Jina lay flat on the ground staring up at the blue sky and thinking breaking a bone would be preferable to this. Maybe she could manage that, fall off or over something, break one or both her legs, get a concussion—anything to get her out of this hell. She didn’t like being dirty and sweaty, but every inch of her was covered with grime. She didn’t like physically pushing herself to the point of puking, but she’d done that twice already, puking in front of her new teammates. Unfortunately, puking hadn’t earned her any sympathy from her tormentors; instead, the blue-eyed one—his nickname was Snake—had said, “We’ve all been there,” and the big dude, who was Ace himself, had said, “Get up and get your ass in gear.”

Asshole.

Theyallwere assholes, but he was the biggest one, literally and figuratively. He was also the boss asshole, and something about the look in his eyes, as if he fully expected her to bail out and she’d have to scrape the bottom of the bucket to get as low as his opinion of her, kept her from bailing no matter how much she wanted to. She got her ass up and got it in gear. It was a gear that barely ground along, but she was moving, even when she’d have sworn she couldn’t.

A bottle of water gripped in a big, grimy hand appeared in front of her eyes, and a drop of condensation dripped off the bottle onto her face. “Hydrate,” Ace ordered, and she managed to move one aching arm enough to take the bottle from him, though how she was going to drink while lying flat on her back was another question entirely. Maybe just pouring it over her face would let her suck in an ounce or so.

No, not going to work. Puking in front of them was bad enough; she would damn well sit up and drink her water.

Groaning, she rolled to the side and got her left elbow braced under her, then heaved herself into a semierect position. More painful effort got her sitting up, though her body was unhappy about it. She twisted the cap off the water bottle and tilted it up to drink. She’d already learned not to guzzle, so after two sips she lowered the bottle and glared at Ace. “I hate you,” she said grimly. “I hate all of you. You’re bullies and sadists. You probably kick puppies for a hobby. You scare little kids at Christmas instead of Halloween. All of you,” she said again, in case he thought she was railing against him in particular, though as team leader he was the worst of the bunch.

Snake dropped to the ground beside her. “Now, don’t be like that,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll have you in the best shape of your life. You’ll be able to run and swim for miles—”

“I don’t want to run and swim,” she interrupted. “I want to not hurt when I breathe. I don’t like dirt under my fingernails, andlook!” She held out her hand; all her nails were not only dirty, most of them were also broken and jagged. Not that she kept her nails fashion-model long, because long nails got in the way on the computer keyboard, so she could deal with the broken nails. Dirt—no. Just no.

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