Under Pressure – Chapter 5

I took a couple of steps back the direction I had just come, listening intently. No further gun fire. In a gap through the trees I could see a thick, dark smudge curling up into the sky. I wanted to go back there and find out what was happening, but I knew from past experience that I was likely to cause more trouble, not prevent it.

Ranger was back there, in that chaos, injured, unarmed and outnumbered. I thought about that statement for a minute and made a rude noise to myself. Ranger. Unarmed. Not exactly. By now he had probably bent some twigs into a lethal assault weapon.

At least I hoped so.

But he had said fifteen minutes and I was sure those fifteen minutes were up. I took another hesitant half-step back toward the house.

And then I knew he was coming. I didn't hear him or see him – I felt him instead, like a pressure wave spread by an explosion. The slightest of sounds and then he was there, beside me, pulling me up and out with him, his arms clamped around me. As we ran along, my feet touched the ground once for every two or three times his did.

He laughed harshly in my ear. "You got farther than I thought you would before you rebelled."

I was already breathless and I wasn't the one doing the actual running "It wasn't rebellion. It was mutiny." I tried to look over his shoulder to see if anyone was behind us.

"Babe, they shoot mutineers."

"And you?"

"I can think of more suitable punishments for you." The fingers locked around my hip tightened. That might have been why I shivered.

"How many…" I was out of breath and I sucked in air. I tried again. "How.. "

"They're down three more..." He paused for breath as well. "Distance first, talk later."

It wasn't long before Ranger cut back the pace to his normal jog, which was still too fast for me, even though he was half-carrying me. My lungs were starting to burn, my breath coming in deep gasps, and I could feel the start of a huge burning stitch across my stomach and side.

He looked down at me and slowed to a quick walk, and loosened his grip on me. "Just a little longer." His voice was gentle, coaxing. All I could do was nod.

Finally we stopped in the shelter of a thick stand of pines at the base of a steep slope. I leaned against one of the trees while Ranger knelt and unwrapped the bundle, pulling out two water bottles. He opened both and handed one to me.

The water was lukewarm but tasted heavenly in my dry mouth. I gulped down most of the bottle and then watched Ranger as he took a couple of swallows of his water and then stretched, rolling out the stiffness in his back, neck and shoulders. He rubbed his temples. I was willing to bet he had a monster of a headache. His color was still a little off and he wasn't quite moving with his usual fluid grace.

"Rough night?"

My weak attempt at humor was rewarded with a surprised snort of laughter from Ranger. He smiled the full-wattage smile at me and was instantly transformed from the tired, somewhat battered-looking man he'd been a few seconds ago into his usual devastatingly handsome, indestructible self.

Indestructible. Not hardly.

"I heard gunfire."

He showed me a 9mm Beretta. "Ran across a sentry on my way out."

I didn't think he'd stay unarmed very long. "And the shotgun I heard?"

"The flare gun. Used it to create another diversion." His eyes had a little bit of sparkle.

"Are you enjoying this?"

He gave me a quick sideways look, one eyebrow slightly raised. "I took the power and phone out, but they probably have cells. Depending on how far we are from town, reinforcements will be here soon." He looked up the steep slope in front of us. "We need high ground, do a quick recon."

"You are enjoying this."

"Not until I get you somewhere safe. Let's go, we need to keep moving." He started up the slope ahead of me.

I pushed myself back upright and nodded, following. He reached the crest of the ridge and disappeared over the top. His voice floated back to me.

"Looks like our ticket out. Farmhouse. You wanna learn how to hotwire an old truck?"

"How hard is it?"

He laughed softly. "Big screwdriver. Two wires."

I stopped a moment on the ridge top, looking down at the quiet farmyard below. Ranger reached out and yanked me down into the leaves and dirt with him on the other side of the ridge.

"Too much of a target on a ridge top."

"I knew that." I brushed some of the leaves out of my hair. "I learned it in Girl Scouts. Got a merit badge in Backwoods Skulking."

He laughed softly. "Somehow I doubt you were a Girl Scout. But it's always good to see you work under pressure, Babe."

"Why would you want to see me work under pressure?"

"Under pressure is where you see what people are really like. No time to clean up who they are or what they do. Pressure shows you what a man fears most."

"What do you fear?"

I wasn't sure he was going to answer, and when he did it was with yet another cryptic comment, followed by a tight smile. "More than I used to."

"And what do you think I fear?"

The look he wore told me he had already thought about this, and his answer indicated he had thought about it at length. "You fear a thing and its opposite. You fear leaving the Burg and its familiarity, yet you fear staying in it. That's why you feel like your life is a trap. You're stuck in the circle of allowing someone else scare you into thinking you should behave a certain way and impulsively doing the opposite just to prove it wrong. Each time without thinking why."

I stared at him. How could he possibly know? I fretted over these things in the small hours of the night - except I never thought about it so clearly. I never let myself call it what it was. Fear.

"And you're afraid of me."

"No, I..."

His jaw clenched tight, his voice a grating, angry growl. "Don't lie to me." He drew in a long breath and smoothed out his angry lines. "When we're close, it's in your eyes, the set of your shoulders, the way you look at me. I don't like it."

I was angry and cranky, tired of this little romp in the woods and a little hurt by his on-target analysis. So I snarled back. "That didn't keep you from sleeping with me."

"No. But I learn from my mistakes." He turned and walked away, down the slope toward the farmhouse.

Under Pressure – Chapter 6

I woke up in the dark, my heart pounding, and I repeated my evening's mantra – you're okay now, you're in a safe house, Ranger is nearby. This was the fifth or sixth time I'd tried this exercise in futility. No sooner would I calm myself back down then I would fall back asleep and the nightmare would start up in exactly the same place.

I was locked in a small dark basement, on the earthen floor, handcuffed, all alone, a too-still large dark shape on the floor near me. I knew that Abruzzi, Ramirez and Brooks were coming for me. Abruzzi and Ramirez were going to torture me and Brooks was going to tell me how he and Abruzzi had killed Ranger and show me his dead body, there near me in the dark. There was nothing I could do to stop them. I felt spiders running over my bare legs. I heard steps in the hallway above, the turn of the doorknob . . . .

Shit! I had fallen asleep again. The first time I had the nightmare I had awakened screaming and Ranger and Hector had come rushing into the room, guns drawn. Ranger had sent Hector out of the room and then stayed with me for a few minutes, talking quietly to me about the office and familiar things, until I had drifted back to sleep.

I needed to stop dreaming this nightmare, I needed to get out of bed, I needed something, anything. Chocolate. A Vin Diesel movie. Indiana Jones would do, too. I got up, pulling on the thin cotton robe I'd found in the bathroom after my earlier shower, and walked to the door.

There was a light on in the room at the other end of the hallway and I could see other doors in the hallway. Across from me was the bathroom door and, to my right, an open door into a bedroom, moonlight spilling across the doorway. I walked to the doorway and peeked in.

He slept on his stomach, his right hand below his pillow and the other curled around the top. His breathing was deep, slow and even. He looked tired, dark circles under his eyes, but right now he also looked utterly relaxed and completely peaceful.

That peacefulness was what I was looking for to help me sleep and I took a step forward, pushing the door the rest of the way open.

He rose in one smooth movement, almost too fast to follow, his gun in his right hand, the safety already flipped off and his hands braced in a shooter's stance. In the gleam of the moonlight, his muscular naked body looked lean, lethal and entirely too sexy.

He froze as he saw me and blinked, finally coming completely awake.

"Shit," he said, sitting down on the bed and glancing over at the clock. He let his head fall backward on to the pillows, thumbing the safety of the gun back on as he did. "Shit."

"I need to talk to you." He sat up for a moment and looked at me, his eyes traveling slowly over my body and the tight, thin, robe, finally up to my face. He shook his head once.

He crawled under the sheets again and slid the gun back under the pillow. "Whatever this is about, it can wait until morning." He rolled back onto his stomach, turned away from me and closed his eyes.

"Right, you'll have more than one weapon in the morning."

"Babe, right now my weapons are a 9 mil, a serious headache and a hard-on. Not a combination that makes for a productive talk."

"Ranger, last night at right about this time I was sitting on a dirt floor with your head in my lap, hoping you weren't going to die." My voice was pitched higher than normal and I knew I sounded like a cranky, needy child. Which was about how I felt.

He opened his eyes and rolled over to look at me. Whatever he saw had him muttering under his breath in Spanish. He pushed up on his forearms, moved over to the edge of the bed and reached out one long arm to grab the hem of my robe and pull me down into the bed.

"Sleep here tonight, querida, if it makes you feel safer." His voice was gentle, as though he was speaking directly to that cranky child.

"You promise not to shoot me?" I sat down on the bed, sliding my feet beneath the sheets. He rolled back to the position he had been sleeping in.

I heard his muffled snort in the pillow. "I promise not to shoot you. For now."

We lay on our stomachs, facing away from each other. I scooted over until our backs touched and I could feel the direct heat of his body, his warmth flooding in, erasing the chill of the nightmare.

"Goodnight, Ranger."

" 'Night, Babe."