Ricochet (21 page)

“The brand might be,” he said. “But not the concept. What are you looking at?”

“Wikipedia.”

He chuckled. “Honey,
I’m
your Wikipedia on explosives.”

She rolled her eyes and jotted more notes about the compound.

“Why not acetyln?” Jax asked.

Rachel jotted that name down too. Lord, she was going to get a serious crash course in explosives in the next week.

“Acetyln produces percussion,” Nathan said. “Percussion kills. If we don’t need it, we shouldn’t use it. With this...” he tapped the plans where he’d scribbled some notes, “you’ll get a lot of movie flash-bang. Now,” he moved his finger to the bridge’s metal canopy. “This portion will be rigged with shaped charges that will cut through the metal and another combo pack of Tannerite and gasoline that will send it flying with another fireball.”

“Slow down,” Rachel muttered, writing down all this new language.

“I got this, Rach. Don’t worry about it.” To Jax Nathan said, “Everything will be timed down to the millisecond. But I don’t want to start planning that level of detail until I know you’re on board.”

Jax nodded. “I’m there. And I think Josh will be, too.”

“Hello,” she said. “I’m the one managing this. Could you slow the train so I can jump on board too?”

Nathan grinned at her, and those pretty eyes of his sparkled, setting off fireworks in her belly.

“Josh is going to want to know,” Jax said, pulling Nathan’s gaze back, “how you’re going to limit debris from ricocheting off the rock outcroppings on the ground.”

“Handling ricochet is one of my specialties.”

“Be careful,” Rachel said, voice heavy with sarcasm, “you’re starting to sound like an expert in everything.”

“Everything explosive maybe,” Nathan said. “But don’t ask me to give you a grilled vegetable recipe.”

He’d obviously been listening her conversations with Josh the night before when she’d believed him totally absorbed in the planning process with the guys. She narrowed her eyes at him, but only got that annoyingly adorable grin before he returned his attention to Jax with a plan for using something called Geotex to limit contact between the bridge debris and the rocks below, as well as protect the buildings of the ranch.

“Do you spell that the way it sounds?” she asked, “Geotex?”

“Rach,” he said. “I got this.”

She dropped her pencil and leaned her head into one hand before she met his eyes. “Well, you’d better figure out a way of making sure I get it too, because I’m going to have to find and purchase all these materials for you.”

“I’ll make sure,” he said, voice low, “you get everything you need.”

Heat melted through her lower body, and irritation flared. She so didn’t need this.

Jax didn’t seem to notice the innuendo. He opened the door to a small box hanging on the wall and grabbed two of the many sets of keys stored there. “Sounds great. Now we just need to get it all in writing after you see the bridge. I’ll bring the trailers up from the storage area and start loading. Rachel, finish up whatever you’re working on so you and Ryker can get out of here.”

Ryker extended his hand. “Toss me a set. I’ll bring one up.”

They were chatting about the sequence action plan as they left the trailer and totted down the stairs, their voices fading along with their footsteps as they headed down the hill. And Rachel was left with a shitload of work to get done before she left and absolutely no ability to concentrate.

She pulled up the human resources program on her computer and opened payroll. Then glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen and thought about everything she needed to take care of before she left, and her shoulders tightened.

She opened the ledger where she kept track of everyone’s hours, and her ears perked at the sound of an engine climbing the grade, followed by the crunch of gravel beneath tires. The storage parking lot was a mile down the hill. That couldn’t be Jax and Nathan, and since the crew was shooting a night scene later, she hadn’t anticipated seeing anyone before noon.

But footsteps on the stairs brought her head up just as the trailer door opened. Troy stepped in with a scowl.

“Hey,” she said, straightening. “What are you doing here?”

“Rach, we need to talk.”

She dropped her hands on her desk. “Oh, God, Troy. This big brother thing has really gone too far.”

He braced his hands on cocked hips and gave her the I’m-not-leaving-until-we-talk scowl.

“Fine, fine.” It wasn’t like she was getting anything done anyway. “When everyone is bitching about their paycheck, I’m sending them to you.”

She pushed back from her desk and walked to the couch, then plopped down in the corner where Ryker had been sitting earlier. She shifted sideways and bent one foot underneath her. Troy sat next to her, elbows on knees, palms flat against each other in front of his mouth.

When he didn’t say anything and his scowl remained, Rachel said, “What’s going on with you? I’ve never seen you like this.”

He pulled his hands back to speak but didn’t look at her. “That’s because I’ve never been in this situation.”

“What situation?”

“Having my best friend all hot for another best friend.”

“Troy,” she softened her voice. “Nothing’s happening between Ryker and me. Besides, you’ve seen me handle myself with men around here for six months. I can hold my own just fine. And I should bust the overwhelming myth around here that I’m a one man type of girl, because
serious
is not on my interest list at the moment.” But her curiosity got the best of her. “What’s got you so concerned?”

He heaved a breath and closed his eyes. “Can I be honest with you Rach?”

She reached out and curved her fingers around his muscled forearm. “Always.”

“I have a trust with Ryker I can’t break,” he said. “It wouldn’t be right. But it’s not right to sit by and watch you get hurt because I know he’s not going to come out and tell you himself, either.”

He’s married.
It was the first thing that fluttered into her mind. She managed to hold herself together and calmly said. “Okay.”

“Ryker...is a good man.” Troy glanced at her then, meeting her gaze with determination. “A really good man. Honorable, loyal, dedicated, honest...”

Her stomach tightened. “But...”

“He’s...” Troy let out a breath and turned away again, but not before the anguish showed on his face, “in a bad place—emotionally, mentally. He’s seen...bad stuff. Hellacious stuff. He’s lost a lot of good friends. Eventually, that gets to a person. Changes a person. And right now, he’s struggling.”

“You can’t be saying he’s not stable, because I know you would never have recommended him for this job—“

“No, no. He’s completely capable of pulling this off. I mean, he’s in a bad place—emotionally, mentally. He’s seen bad stuff. He’s lost a lot of good friends. Eventually, that gets to a person. He’s broken—on the inside. He’s hurting in a place that can’t always be healed. He’s damaged in a way that sometimes makes him hurt other people without meaning to.”

A chill expanded in Rachel’s belly, while the sting of fear burned in her chest.

He turned his head and met her eyes. “I don’t want you pulled into that web, because here’s the truth about you, Rach. You may not be interested in serious, but you care. You care about everyone and everything. It’s in your genetic makeup. And even if you were to hookup with a guy for a night, or two, or whatever, you’d still care.”

Troy stood, shoved his hands into his pockets met her eyes. Christ, he looked ten years older than he should. Worried. Wrung out. Pained.

“I know you’re a big girl, Rach. I know you can make your own choices. But I want you to make informed choices. Know that Ry is really good at getting women right where he wants them. I’ve watched him do it our whole lives. And he hasn’t changed. He’s been doing it with a different woman every night for the last month in New Orleans.

“The Army is his life. It’s all he knows, and it’s what he loves. It’s as much the air he breathes as Renegades is mine. Without it, he would spiral into self-destruction. He’s going back to Afghanistan, Rach, and he’s not coming back. Not for at least two years. That’s his pattern. And it might not be my place to say, but I think you deserve better.”

Rachel exhaled, but that didn’t help the knot in her gut. There was something else going on with Troy, she’d known him long enough to see he was being eaten on the inside, too, and it wasn’t jealousy. There had never been any attraction between she and Troy. They’d been like brother and sister from the start. But it was pretty clear Nathan’s presence had sparked something painful for Troy.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said, then added a tentative, “I’m always here for you, too, if you need to talk or...anything. You know I love you, right?”

A smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. I guess you’re pretty okay too.” He started toward the door. “Get back to work. I need a fucking paycheck. I ain’t got no sugar mama like Chamberlin and Lawson.”

“You weren’t lyin’. You are one hell of a little hiker.”

Ryker paused in the shade of another bridge pillar, the last one he and Rachel needed to inspect before they headed back down for the day. But, truthfully, he wasn’t in any hurry to leave Rachel or the gorgeous landscape.

He swung his pack off his shoulder and let it drop on the dirt trail. He was tired today after his second night with very little sleep—he only wished it had been for the same reason as the first. And he’d spent the whole drive here searching for some way to convince Rachel to change her mind about him.

But he sucked at this shit. He’d always been the one wanting less. Now he wanted more, none of which he could have—not only because Rachel was denying it, but because of who he was. And who he wasn’t.

Pulling the T-shirt he’d stripped off a couple of hours ago from his waistband, he wiped sweat off his face and thought about putting it back on. He’d already be sporting a sunburn tomorrow, despite the base tan scorched into him by the Afghan sun and the sweat-proof, fifty-SPF sunscreen he’d applied before starting out. But every time he caught Rachel’s eyes sliding over his chest or back, with the same spark from their first night glimmering, he decided to risk the discomfort.

He sucked in a deep lungful of the crisp fresh country air, just tinged with salt from the ocean a mile or so out, and soaked in every curve of the rolling green hills, every artfully scattered cluster of oak trees. When he turned, he found Rachel taking the final steps up the steep grade.

He stuffed his shirt away and extended his hand. She took it, leveraging herself the last three feet to the plateau at his side. Wincing, panting, she planted her hands on her knees and looked up at him. “I believe I failed to mention…that the last time I backpacked…was about eight years ago…”

He grinned. She hadn’t complained once. Not once in six damn hours of hiking this steep, rocky, sometimes slippery terrain. She had scrapes on her arms, legs, and hands, and dirt covered almost every inch of her, including streaks on her face he wasn’t mentioning because they were just too damned adorable to wipe off.

She had her hair in a ponytail, threaded through a baseball cap, and now pulled her sunglasses off, placing them above the brim of her cap before searching for water in her bag. Her tank top showed the movement of toned arm and shoulder muscles beneath smooth skin, and tight ab muscles beneath the fitted cotton. Her shorts weren’t exactly ass-hugging short, but they certainly left those luscious thighs of hers fully exposed for Ryker’s visual enjoyment.

“Well, you fooled me.” He pulled a ground cloth from his pack and laid it out. “Rest a while. I’ll call out measurements to you. Won’t take long.”

“This is the last pillar, right?”

Unfortunately
. “Yep.”

“Thank God.” She stumbled to the tarp, dropped her pack, and plopped on her butt. “Oh wow,” she breathed. “Every view just keeps getting better.”

Ryker took out his own water from his pack and glanced at her as she looked up at the monolith of a bridge above them.

“This sucker is ginormous,” she said, then laughed. “How many times have I said that today?”

He didn’t know. He couldn’t pull his gaze away from the pulse in her neck. Couldn’t stop thinking about that last time they’d had sex in the hotel room, when she’d been spread across his lap, her head thrown back just like that, sweat shining on her skin the way it did now, and his cock driving deep, deep,
deep
into her heat—

“I’m just glad you’re a Wikipedia on explosions.” Her words cut into his thoughts, and he uncapped his water, downing half the bottle. A crisp breeze pushed cotton-ball clouds across a turquoise sky and ruffled the new grasses on the hillside. The navy-blue Pacific Ocean sparkled in the distance.

“That’s the ranch, right?” Her voice drew his gaze, and he found her looking into a smooth valley with groupings of silver-roofed deep-red buildings.

“Yep.”

She squinted up at the bridge, then back down at the ranch, and Ryker read the concern on her face.

“We’re wrapping it with Geotex,” he said.

“You never told me what Geotex is.”