Edge of Reason (EDGE Security Series Book 2) (8 page)

Rhys waited ahead of her, watching her tunnel. She glared as much as she could while holding her breath like a puffer fish. She didn’t need his help.

He grinned and let some air bubbles out before turning and swimming like a freaking fish to the other end. She was a decent swimmer, but Rhys was something else entirely. She pulled through the water as hard as she could, but he was at least three body lengths ahead of her before she reached the end.
 

She pulled herself up and out, dragging in a huge breath while still moving toward the final obstacle. A fifteen-foot rope net.
 

Rhys was halfway up. She ran and leapt as high as she could, the ropes slipping a little in her wet hands, but she held firm. She used her upper body as much as her lower, pushing herself hard. Her panting breaths competed with her heartbeat thundering in her ears. Everything burned—her arms, her legs, her lungs.
 

She couldn’t seem to gain on Rhys, but he wasn’t pulling ahead. He looked back at one point and his eyes widened.
 

That’s right
, she thought.
I’m almost on you.

His hand touched the bar at the top and in an incredible athletic feat he pulled himself up and swung over. His eyes tracked her for a second before he started his descent.
 

Showoff.

She reached the top bar and pulled herself up with both hands and swung her legs over. She didn’t use her legs on the way down, hoping to gain some time. It was a bit dangerous because it was trickier, but she’d done it before. She dropped from rung to rung, making up time on Rhys. He was almost at the bottom.

“Gotta touch the wall,” she called out.

 
He dropped the last few feet and sprinted to the wall.

She let go. It was about eight feet and her knees complained, but she didn’t listen and leapt after him. He slapped the far wall a mere second before she did.

They both stood there panting, hands on hips, grinning with the adrenaline rush of the race.

“Damn,” Rhys said. “I haven’t had that much fun in a long time.”

Cat snorted. “Well, be prepared for some more.”

“More?”

Cat’s grin widened. “Now that you’re familiar with the Beast, it’s time to do it again.”

Rhys pulled off his wet t-shirt. “Are you sure you want to go up against me again?”

Cat swallowed and pulled her eyes away from Rhys’s sculpted chest.
Keep it professional.

“Anytime, Lucky,” she said. “But that’s not the objective this time around.”

He frowned, but she turned away and led him back to the start line. This way, she didn’t have to see the water drip down the muscles of his chest—muscles that begged for her hands to caress them.
 

“This time we work as a team,” she said. Behind the start line against the wall was a mini fridge. She bent and snagged two water bottles from it.

“A team?”

She turned and his gaze snapped up to hers from where it had been…eyeing her ass? He’d said that night how much he loved it.

Professional, Cat!

She nodded and tossed him a water bottle. “We do it together, carrying that.” She pointed behind her to a weighted stretcher lying against the wall. Six feet long, it only weighed a hundred pounds, not the actual weight of a person if someone had been strapped to it, but it served its purpose in the Beast.

He twisted the lid off the bottle and gulped down some water. She did the same. He was watching her again when she looked up.
 

“What?” she said, arching an eyebrow. Did he not think she could handle her end?

He shook his head a little without breaking eye contact. “It’s just…I never knew you were so tough.”

She opened her mouth to defend herself and he held up his hands. “Wait. I mean I knew you were in special operations. Hell, you saved our asses that time in Afghanistan, but still… You almost beat me.”
 

“If you weren’t such a fish, I would have.”

“We’ve all got our strengths.” He crossed his arms, his biceps flexing. Cat took a step back, away from temptation, and toward the stretcher hanging on the wall.
 

“What’s yours?” he asked.

She heaved the stretcher off the wall and carried it over to him. “What?”

“What’s your strength? It’s the question you asked me before. What’s your specialty? What do you bring to the team?”

“You can’t guess?” She couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. “I’m a demolitions expert. I like to blow shit up.”

They did the Beast three more times carrying the stretcher. With each run-through, Rhys’s admiration of the woman working beside him grew. She never gave up, pushed them both hard, and asked just as much of herself as she did of him—if not more. He could see why her other team members respected her.
 

They both carried the stretcher back to the wall, breathing hard.
 

“Is it the water you don’t like?” he asked. “Or the tunnel?”

She blew out a breath and shook her head. “Both. Was it that obvious?”
 

“Not really,” he said. And it hadn’t been, but those first couple of runs he’d been watching her closely to see if she could keep up with him.
 
Now he knew she could, but he’d seen a hesitation in her each time they’d approached the tunnel.

“It’s why I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that threw you off. Claustrophobic?”

“Nothing so extreme. I just…” She shrugged. “I hate small, dark spaces filled with water.”

“So does everyone,” he said. “It seems like more.”

She didn’t say anything. In a normal situation he’d drop it, but they were going to be on a team together. He had to know everything, to trust her implicitly. “I need to know,” he said.

She expelled a deep breath. “You’re right. It was a mission that almost went sideways. A car chase at night that ended in us going over a bridge.”
 

“What happened?”

Her hands fisted while she stared at a spot over his shoulder. He ached to hold her in his arms, but knew a stupid move like that would end with him in traction. Instead, he waited.
 

“I think I went unconscious when we hit the water. I woke up in the dark. We were fully submerged already. Icy water covered my legs and stole my breath. It climbed rapidly. My partner, who’d been driving, didn’t answer me.”

Her breathing picked up. Rhys pressed his arms to his sides so he wouldn’t touch her.

“He had a heartbeat. I had to get us out of there. I used my gun to break the window. Freezing water poured in with massive pressure. There was no pushing past it. It felt like a death sentence sitting there, waiting for the water to fill the car past the broken window so we could swim out.”

Her eyes met his and he saw the nightmare in them.
 

“I’d made a stupid mistake,” she whispered. “I’d forgotten to get his seatbelt off before the water came in. I couldn’t undo it. My hands were numb from the cold.” She shook her head.

“Hell,” he muttered and he reached for her, wrapping her tight in his arms, surprised when she didn’t protest. She just rested her head on his shoulder and shivered. He stroked her hair and gave her the comfort she sought. He tried hard not to think about her lithe body against his and just focused on being what she needed—a shoulder to lean on, if only for a moment.

 
“What happened?” he asked gently when she stopped shivering.

“I managed to get him out,” she said. “Barely. I was so close to leaving him behind. We almost didn’t make it even after I got him out of the car. The current was strong. It pulled us back under more than once.” She lifted her head and he lost himself in her striking blue eyes, but it didn’t surprise him that this woman had been able to rescue her partner.
 

“Thank you,” she said, stepping back out of his arms. “It was a dark moment that still gives me nightmares.”

He nodded solemnly. “I know about nightmares.” Anyone in special ops had seen and done things that chased them in their dreams. It was a consequence of what they did. “I’m surprised that tunnel doesn’t have more of an effect on you.”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I spent hours going through the Beast, and sitting at the bottom of the pool in the dark.”

“So you’re a woman who likes to torture herself.”

She grabbed a towel from the table beside the fridge and threw it at his head. “Dry off, sailor. We’ve got a full day planned.”

He used the towel on his hair and noticed how she averted her gaze from his chest. He smiled. Nice to know that she was as affected by him as he was by her. But now wasn’t the time to explore that. They were teammates. He had to put aside his memories of their night together. He could do that.
 

He hoped.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Cat ran excess water from her short hair. The water darkened it to a golden color that made her blue eyes brilliant against her lightly tanned skin. Water dripped down her neck and a drop ran down over her collarbone and toward…

“Lafayette?”
 

Shit. His gaze snapped to hers and he thankfully saw a twinkle there. “Yes?”

“I asked if you have full clearance yet?”

He nodded. They’d given it to him on his first day, and they already had his fingerprints on file from the last time he’d been to E.D.G.E.
 

“Good. Meet me on level B4 in an hour. That should be enough time to clean up and have breakfast.”

“What’s on B4?”

“The range.” She smiled, and the look of mischief in her eyes made those inappropriate thoughts hard not to think. It was the same look she’d gotten when she’d first approached him in the elevator so long ago. “I’m going to put you through your paces.”
 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and almost growled with desire.
 

No. He had to get it together. They were just teammates. He could do this.

Cat sat at her desk at the end of the day going over reports. At a knock on her door, she glanced up. “Dani, when’d you get back?”

“Last night,” Dani said. She walked into the office, her t-shirt declaring ‘What the Frak?’ and her dark hair swept up in a ponytail.
 

“Success?”

“Close,” Dani said, flopping down into a chair. “We’ve got most of the Rusakov trafficking contacts rounded up, but there’s still more to be found.”

Cat nodded and then grinned. “Been in any shootouts lately?”

“Hell, no!” Dani said. “I’m staying right where I’m supposed to, in front of my laptop.”

“Yeah, right,” Cat said with a snort. “You couldn’t follow a rule if you tried.”

“And you, my friend, follow them too closely.” Dani stood up. “Come on, you’re coming for dinner tonight.”

“I’ve got reports,” Cat said. After the Beast, she’d spent the morning on the range with Rhys. In the afternoon, she’d shown him some of the explosives she’d designed in the lab. They’d had fun, blowing things up together—in fact, she’d never had so much fun with a man before. He made her laugh, and that had made her linger longer than she should have, but now she was behind on her paperwork.

“We all have reports,” Dani said.
 

She sighed, knowing Dani wouldn’t give up. Cat hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time, and she treasured her friendship with Dani. Besides, maybe she’d have some advice on how to keep it professional with Rhys.
 

“Fine,” she said. “Let me finish these up and I’ll meet you at your place. What are we ordering tonight?”

“We’re cooking,” Dani said.

“Seriously?” Cat shook her head. “I’m not sure I can handle another experiment. I barely survived the indigestion from the last one.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Dani laughed and left the office before Cat could reply.

An hour later, Cat felt she’d caught up enough to head to her friend’s place. She took her E.D.G.E. military-encrypted phone and shoved it into her pocket. She didn’t need to change since she’d dressed casually today, in jeans and a light sweater.
 

The drive to Dani’s apartment took only minutes, since rush-hour traffic had eased. When she stepped off the elevator onto Dani’s floor, the scent of chicken, onions, and hot peppers surrounded her. Her stomach was growling by the time she knocked on the door.
 

Jake answered. “We almost ate without you.”

“I can’t believe what I’m smelling,” Cat said, shrugging out of her leather jacket. “Which one of you is creating that divine smell?”

“I am,” Rhys said.
 

He stood in Dani’s small kitchen, a dish towel tucked into the waist of his low-slung jeans, stirring a large pot on the stove.
 

Surprise immobilized her for a moment. She hadn’t expected to see him so soon after the tests of today, but she obviously hadn’t realized the extent of his friendship with Jake. She’d wanted to keep their relationship purely business for her own peace of mind, but many of the E.D.G.E operators were friends and hung out together outside of work. There was no reason she and Rhys couldn’t do that, as well.

Only the fact that you keep lusting after him
, her inner voice taunted.

Well, she wouldn’t anymore. They were teammates now. She wouldn’t let anything interfere with that.

Her inner voice laughed.
 

So she cursed it and smiled at Rhys. A friendly, professional smile. “What are you making?”

“Gumbo.”
 

“Gumbo? I’ve heard of it, but never had it.”

“Well then, chère,” he said, letting his accent thicken. “You’re in for a treat. Chicken and andouille sausage gumbo is pure N’Awlins dee-light.” He waved his hand toward a tray holding a short golden loaf resting on the countertop. “And cornbread, of course.”

She inhaled the delicious scents and her stomach growled again. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“My grandmother,” Rhys said, looking back at the gumbo he stirred.

Cat sensed a story there, but didn’t pursue it since Dani called out from the living room. “I just can’t get it, Rhys. Come show me again.”