Page 25 of I Dream of Danger
It was the faintest of sounds, but Nick woke up instantly, fully awake. He knew that sound—his life was lived by the cadence of that sound. Elle was sprawled all over him, soft and light, smelling of woman and sex.
The cell’s ring had a Pavlovian effect on everyone in the Rangers—every single man sprang to his cell made of a black, non-reflective matte material, and it was rare that their duty phone wasn’t picked up a second later. One second went by, two, three, four…
No doubt at the other end a bot was clocking the time to response, and someone would mention it once he got back to base. But jumping would wake Elle up and he simply couldn’t do it. She was so deeply asleep it was like she was in a coma. Nothing moved, not even her eyes under the lids.
Rangers were taught to move like ghosts, imperceptibly, without making a sound. So now he used that skill to disentangle himself from the sleeping arms of a beautiful woman, rather than floating in the dark toward a kill.
In an instant, she was clutching a pillow and he was standing naked by the bed, looking down at his display. The words were barely readable. Displays had two modes—nearly dark if a light could betray their position and bright enough to act as a flashlight. The default mode was dark and he left it like that. He could read the text words in dark mode well enough.
Wheels up oh dark hundred. Majestic.
Shit. There’d been talk of this op, not a training mission, coming up. The brass had been waiting for intel from an exfiltrated agent and apparently they’d gotten it. No one knew where yet, but that was standard—need to know. They’d find out in the plane where they were headed. The only clue they’d have was the gear assigned. Cold weather gear or hot weather gear. That would give latitude. Longitude? Who the fuck knew?
All Nick knew was he had to get out of here fast and he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay right here, with Elle. Fuck her and feed her and watch roses bloom in her cheeks, that’s what he wanted.
He stared down for just a second. She was on her side, one slim arm outside the covers, face in profile, deeply asleep. There was only the dim light of a quarter moon riding high in the sky, but he didn’t need light. She was imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He knew, without seeing her clearly, that her skin wasn’t that shockingly white color she’d had at the funeral. He knew the lines of her face had moved into their natural set—smiling. When he saw her at the funeral, he didn’t need for her to tell him smiling hadn’t been a common occurrence in her life.
It was there in her face.
He wanted to stay and make her smile and laugh and make her eat until she put the pounds back on, and he wanted her to feel as beautiful as she was by making love to her as often as his stamina would let him.
That’s what he wanted. But wanting and having were two entirely different things.
What he had was a duty to get to base in time to be briefed and gear up. If they were wheels up at midnight, he had to get there by six tonight, and it was a fourteen-hour car trip. He’d just have to push it.
He also had two things to do before signing in.
Nick dressed quietly. Quiet was what Rangers did. They were shooters, they were snipers, they were one with the night. Their clothes were dark. They carried nothing that could shine or jingle.
When he was dressed, he spent long minutes looking down at Elle, wrestling with himself. There’d been a new rule instituted the year before after a Ranger let slip to his girlfriend that he was going on mission to Venezuela. The airhead had posted it on her Facebook page and the team was wiped out half an hour after landing.
New rule—only wives could know of deployments and they couldn’t know when or where. Wives had had to sign an oath that they wouldn’t disclose any intel at all, ever. Girlfriends had to be kept absolutely in the dark.
Giving girlfriends intel wasn’t a felony, it was a felony subject to court-martial. So what Nick was contemplating was something very, very serious and he had to reason it through.
Giving Elle any info whatsoever was wrong, against regulations, dangerous even.
But…he couldn’t disappear on her. Just couldn’t. It simply wasn’t in him. She cared for him deeply, even after he’d disappeared on her and left her alone with a sick father. Every inch of her skin, her mouth, her sex—they told him she cared. No one else cared for him, not in the whole wide world. He was respected in the military, but he had no close friends, and God knows, he didn’t have any girlfriends who cared. Just fuck buddies who forgot him the second he walked out the door.
He couldn’t leave her without a word, but leaving her word could get him court-martialed.
The battle inside him was fierce but brief. Army vs. Elle. Elle won.
He took an envelope he found on top of her dresser and wrote Pixie, be back as soon as I can on the back and placed it on the pillow next to her, fully aware that he was committing a felony. Downstairs he stopped by the Judge’s desk in his study and memorized her bank account number and the undertaker’s phone number. He could do the rest on the road.
His last mission had lasted four days. With any luck at all, this one would be short too. Rangers weren’t the ones they sent in to get intel. They were the ones sent in to shoot the hell out of a place and get out fast.
They always got a couple days down time on return from an op. So he’d come back here and he and Elle would talk. Work something out, though he had no idea what. But now that Elle was back in his life there was no question of leaving her again.
In five minutes on his cell, he paid the undertaker’s bill—even though the fucker was a mercenary son of a bitch and had overcharged Elle for everything. As soon as he had time, he’d transfer what was in his bank account to Elle. The next thing could be done on the way down to base. Shouldn’t take more than a quarter of an hour. As soon as it was opening time, he’d stop at the first supermarket he saw.
Man, the thought of her not having food in the house was fucking painful. He’d had to work to hide his wince when he saw her cupboards.
Well, those days were over. He was in her life now and she wouldn’t go through that ever again.
Nick slipped out the door, quietly closed the front door behind him, not wanting to leave, knowing he had to.
He’d left once and he had to do it again.
