Out of Control (42 page)
He liked her too much. And wasn’t that the stupidest reason he’d ever come up with for not trying to get into a woman’s pants?
“How’d you manage to fall asleep?” he asked, mostly in an attempt to make himself stop thinking about sex and how amazing it would be to lose himself in Savannah’s body right now.
“I’m not sure.” She lifted her head slightly, putting her mouth even closer to his. “I just did it because I had to, you know?”
He did know. That was how he’d gotten through BUD/S training. By just doing it.
He could hear her waiting there in the darkness. He sensed her anticipation. Or maybe he was just imagining it. God, he didn’t know anymore. He either had to kiss her or push her away.
He wanted to do both—and neither.
Her stomach growled and he remembered the MREs. “Hey, are you hungry?”
“Yeah, I ate both of the power bars almost right after you left.”
No shit. Ken was sure she would have rationed them. He’d expected to find that she’d had exactly one-third of one of them—no more, no less. He gently disengaged himself from her arms and found one of the MREs in the darkness.
“I have no idea what this is,” he said as he opened the packet, “but it’s way better than bugs. Don’t squeeze it until you put the open end in your mouth.”
“What are you giving me?” she asked.
“The guys I followed had a camp a few dozen clicks from here,” he told her as he helped her guide the open end of the MRE packet to her mouth. Her lips connected with his finger, and he pulled his hand back, fast. “They had some extra supplies. U.S. issue MREs—Meals, Ready to Eat. It’s what we give our combat troops when they go off to fight. It’s pretty nasty. They must put it in a blender before packaging it. It’s got a soft consistency—like room temperature baby food. I think that’s so our troops can snarf it down quickly without choking while they’re under fire.”
“It’s wonderful,” Savannah said, almost reverently. “I love it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I invite you to dinner,” Ken said. “I’ll skip the expensive filet and get MREs instead.”
She stopped eating. “Is there going to be a next time?”
Bad topic to joke about, he realized too late. Her question was a tricky one. He tried to avoid answering it directly. “Let’s just get Stateside first, okay?”
“Why did you kiss me this morning?”
Ken laughed, surprised by her question. From the way she’d asked it was hard to tell if she was angry about it or not. It was gutsy of her to ask, though, he had to give her that much.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I temporarily lost my mind, I guess. I apologize.”
She was quiet for a moment, then, “Why were you gone so long?”
That one he could answer. “I followed those guys to a camp, right? They checked in with some guy with a beret who looked like he was in charge, had some chow, then the whole gang—there were about fifteen of ’em altogether—packed up and left. It was already late by then and I’d already gone pretty far, but I wanted to follow them, see where they were going. I trusted you to stay here, so I went for it.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know, but they’re not connected to the gun runners. I’m pretty sure about that. For one thing, their dress code is different. The guys in the helo all wore street clothes—flashy ones, too. Like they had money and they wanted people to know it from what they wore. These other dudes were decked out in BDUs—battle dress uniforms. Standard issue jungle print cammy gear. If I had to guess, I’d say these guys are revolutionaries. Maybe terrorists of some kind—although these days the line between the two tends to blur. Whoever Beret is, he’d have been far better off spending his money on training instead of uniforms. Clowns like that put on a uniform and think they’re unstoppable. Kind of like your little brother playing dress up.”
“I don’t have a little brother,” she said. “I’m an only child. Want some?”
It took him several bemused seconds to realize she was talking about the MRE. “No,” he said. “Thanks. It’s all yours.”
“So where did they go?”
Who? Oh, right. “I followed them to a river—it wasn’t our river, it was a different one, I’m pretty sure. There were three more soldiers there, guarding patrol boats and a helo outfitted with some pretty major artillery.”
“A helo,” Savannah said. “So maybe they are the same—”
“Nope. Different kind. The Puma we were in and the helo that’s been flying overhead looking for us are pretty close to state of the art. This was a dinosaur—it wouldn’t surprise me if it had been rebuilt from various parts left over from Vietnam.
“Beret issued some orders and climbed into the helo,” Kenny continued. “I don’t know what language he was speaking, but everyone but the three guys I first followed got into the boats and were outta there. It was kind of obvious from how glum my guys looked that they’d been ordered to stay behind until they completed their mission.”
She shifted in the darkness. “You think they’re looking for us—for me—too?”
“I think it’s possible they’ve heard about the missing money, yeah. A tango can do a lot of damage with a quarter of a million dollars. And maybe they think if they can get hold of you, they’ll get even more.”
“Tango?”
“It’s radiospeak for the letter t, which, in my business tends to stand for terrorist.”
“Terrorists and gun runners,” Savannah mused. “Is there some way we can sic them on each other? Use them to cancel each other out? You know, if they’re busy fighting each other, maybe we can sneak away without getting caught.”
Ken laughed. “You think like a SEAL.”
“I think like a coward who will never, ever again complain about the dullness of reading court transcripts day in and day out.”
He settled back on the ground, hands up behind his head. “Is that what you do, you know, as a lawyer?”
“Yeah. Lots of reading and writing,” she told him. “Not so much of the Perry Mason stuff. In fact, not any of that at all.”
“Really? I bet you’d be good at it.”
“What I’m good at,” her voice was as smooth as the darkness that surrounded him, “is finding other people’s stupid mistakes.”
Yeah, he could believe that.
“It’s amazing how often prosecutors and even judges cheat the rules,” she told him. “Our justice system only works if the rules are always followed and everyone—everyone—gets a fair trial every single time. I’ve got to believe in that completely in order to do my job because, trust me, some of these people I handle appeals for are the complete scum of the earth.”
Ken tried to make himself more comfortable on the hard ground. “Like, give me an example,” he said, curious as to whether he might fall into that particular subset.
“I did one appeal for a guy who was in jail for second-degree murder because he went target shooting when he was drunk. I’m talking completely tanked. He didn’t go far enough into the woods; turns out he was near a campsite, and a ten-year-old was struck by a bullet and killed. Well, his whole trial was riddled with errors. The judge didn’t read the correct instructions to the jury, the prosecutor included some information in his closing that was hearsay, and there was an incident in which the defendant fell and hit his head on the way into the courtroom and actually showed signs of concussion. He claims he was completely out of it, incompetent to stand trial, and yet it went on without him getting any medical attention, without him even being checked by a doctor. I had a whole list of reasons to appeal.
“And yet,” she continued, “even though we didn’t have a ballistics match because the bullet that killed the girl exited her body and was never recovered, we have testimony from forensics experts as to where the shooter was located when the girl was killed. And there was some extremely damaging proof in the form of shell casings found at that very spot—with my client’s fingerprints on ’em—that match the ones he used in his rifle.
“He claims he didn’t see anyone, didn’t know that anyone had been hurt, but God, he was guilty of manslaughter at the very least, and here I was about to get him a whole new trial. That little girl’s parents were going to have to go through hell all over again, and that really stank. But it would stink even more if we started slacking off on giving everyone a fair trial. Oh, you know, he doesn’t need a fair trial. It’s okay that he has a concussion and can’t even focus his eyes while he’s in the courtroom because he’s guilty, right? Wrong. Everyone gets a fair trial. It’s the only way the system can truly work.”
“Wow,” Ken said.
“Sorry. I sometimes get a little too . . . I don’t know. Passionate, I guess.”
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as too passionate,” he countered.
“Yes, there is.”
“Not in my book,” he said. “If you think otherwise, you’ve probably been hanging with the wrong people.”
He couldn’t see her, but he heard her smile in the darkness. “You’re a SEAL, Kenny. It makes sense that you don’t scare easily. But you should see the way people—men—run sometimes when I go off on a rant like that.”
“Really? They run? Because I was, like, getting really turned on.”
Savannah laughed. “You know, just when I start to forget, you remind me exactly how much of a jerk you are.”
Ken smiled at the sound of her laughter.
“You do that on purpose, don’t you?” she asked.
“Do what?” He played dumb.
“You probably got farther in life by playing the clown than you did from being a straight-A student. Am I right?”
“Savannah, Savannah, Savannah,” he said. “Do not even attempt to psychoanalyze me. I assure you, many a seasoned professional has been stumped and even driven to tears by the magic that is me.”
She laughed again, just as he’d hoped she would. She had the sexiest laugh. Low and husky. “You’re not so hard to figure out.”
“Terrific,” he said. “When we get back to the States, do me a favor and write up a report. I’ll bring it with me next time I go in for a psych eval. That’s kind of a mental health checkup that we all have to go through pretty regularly,” he added before she could ask.
“All right,” she said, around a yawn. “I will.”
“Maybe we should try to sleep,” he suggested. “I want to get moving as soon as it’s light in the morning.”
“I’m sorry. Here I am blabbing away. You must be exhausted.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m fine. I thought you were tired. But if you want to talk more—”
“I don’t.”
“Well,” Ken tried not to sound disappointed. “Okay. Good night then.”
“Good night.”
Truth be told, he was wired. And he couldn’t remember the last time he so desperately wanted sexual release. He actually ached from it. If he were alone . . . But he wasn’t. And he’d promised her he wouldn’t leave her, so he couldn’t even wait until she fell asleep again and then sneak off to . . . Ah, Christ. What was he doing even thinking about this? If she could read his mind, she’d be disgusted. He was disgusted with himself.
Doubly disgusted because she’d all but started this conversation by admitting how badly she’d wanted to sleep with him back in San Diego.
He’d managed to make her laugh—that was good—but he hadn’t moved the conversation to a place where he could ask if maybe she wasn’t still a little bit hot for him. Because if that was the case, he wouldn’t be taking advantage of her, would he? Not if she wanted him and he wanted her.
“Ken?” Savannah whispered.
“Yeah.” Please, Jesus, don’t let her ask him to hold her unless she wanted him to jump her, too.
“Will you . . .” She cleared her throat. “Would you mind very much if I asked you to, you know, just put your arms around me?”
Fuck. She only wanted his arms.
But why not give her what she wanted? He couldn’t want her any more than he already did. It wasn’t going to hurt him any worse than he was already hurting. “Sure,” he said, before he thought it all the way through.
Oh, shit. She was already coming over to him, feeling her way in the darkness. Her hand found his hip, and he nearly jumped a mile. “Whoa, Van! Time out, okay? Are you familiar with the effects of adrenaline on the male physi—”
Ken cut himself off as she curled up beside him, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, her legs not even touching him.
“Am I familiar with what?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Okay. This would work. As long as her hand didn’t drift lower. As long as she didn’t throw her leg across him in the night.
Oh, God, don’t think about that. Don’t think about how easy it might be to get her heated up while she was more than half asleep. Don’t think about pushing off her shorts and pulling her on top of him and . . .
“Good night,” Savannah said again, her voice right in his ear.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. Jesus, what a loser. Good night—okay?
He heard her move slightly in the darkness, felt the coolness of her knee against his thigh, and almost screamed. She shifted even more and he turned toward her desperately. “Savannah—”
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