Page 70 of Over the Edge

Trevor met her as she walked back toward him in the falling darkness. “What gear did you bring with you?” he asked neutrally.

Apparently, he was willing to declare a truce for now. Fair enough. If he was willing to wait to chew her out for stowing away, she could wait to have it out with him for leaving without saying goodbye to her.

Equally neutrally, she answered, “I have a full kit, minus a rifle and ammo.”

“How did you pull that off?”

“Cal sent my kit in the trunk full of dresses. Didn’t it occur to you that it was awfully heavy for a few party gowns?”

“Sonofagun.”

She smiled a little at his chagrin. It was rare that anyone pulled one over on Trevor Westbrook.

“Do you have your own tent?” he asked.

“No. But it’s not like we haven’t shared one before.”

“Mansur won’t stand for that,” Trevor warned.

“He’s scared spitless of us. He won’t say a word,” she predicted.

“You underestimate the power of his beliefs. He’ll say something.”

He turned out to be right. Mansur was having no part of her sharing Trevor’s tent. In the end, Mansur slept across the seat of the truck cab, she slept in the back of the Range Rover, and Trevor slept in the low-profile military tent he’d purchased in Karaken.

As Trevor closed her into the Range Rover with an alarm set on her watch for four hours hence, he murmured, “Beware of Mansur.”

“Why?”

“Just don’t be lulled into a false sense of security around him. He’ll kill either or both of us if he can.”

She stared at Trevor, startled. Had she been lulled so much by Mansur’s fear

she’d missed the fact that he had potential to be dangerous? She trusted Trevor’s instincts implicitly. If he was wary of Mansur, she would absolutely follow suit.

Trevor waited until she locked the doors from inside before he retreated into the darkness. He wouldn’t be so cranky about her having stowed away a few hours from now when he got to sleep the rest of the night and she took over the watch for him.

Four hours later, a rhythmic vibration against her left wrist woke her up. She shed the blanket and shivered immediately. This would definitely be a walking watch rotation.

Except when she piled out of the back of the vehicle, she spied Trevor sitting beside a small combat fire. He’d dug a shallow pit and built the fire in the bottom, disguising the flames from distant eyes. He’d gathered a big enough pile of wood to last all the way through her shift on the watch, too.

The night around them was cold and crystalline. It felt as if it would shatter if she disturbed its silence. Trevor gestured to the big log he sat on, and she sank down beside him.

He spoke in a hush, as if he felt the brittle quality of the night as well. “Okay. True confession time. Why did you stow away in the truck?”

“Cal gave me orders to bring you and Kenny back alive. You’d made it clear you didn’t want me to go along with you, so it wasn’t a big surprise when you tried to sneak away.”

“I didn’t expect you to find out. Did Gohar tell you?”

“Mansur did. He bragged about how eager you were to get away from me and that he would be the one who came back to claim me.”

“Bastard,” Trevor muttered.

“He sounded as if he might try to kill you. If I hadn’t already been planning to go with you, I would have had to come after he talked all that smack about you.”

“Thanks.”

She shrugged. “You’d have done the same for me.”

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