“Damned if I know,” Bash said, offering a reassuring smile of his own. “I guess we’ll see, right?”
“Right. So… good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Opening the truck door was easy enough, but when Bash exited the shelter of the cab, the wind struck him like a punch. He kept his face turned away from it as much as he could, but he still had to squint against the dust and grit swirling through the air. It was a struggle to close the door of the truck, and he heard Sean gasping and coughing behind him. But now time was short, and Bash wasn’t certain how long he could work in these conditions.
He’d gotten the truck within a few feet of the door into the block building, but while getting to his objective wasn’t an issue, it was more difficult to keep his feet than he had thought it would be. Clutching the flashlight in a death grip, he shone it at the door and reached for the lever that would open it.
Of course, it was locked.
He drew the guitar string from his pocket, but it was too difficult to manipulate it while his hands were covered, so he stuffed it back and stripped off his right glove. The wind caught it, and it swirled away into the darkness, lost forever. The wind-driven debris stung against his bare skin, but now Bash could feel what he was doing. Retrieving the metal string once more, he bent it double, and then got to work on the lock.
The conditions were far from ideal for lock-picking, and it was hard to manage the light and the string while trying to maintain his balance against the buffeting wind. He could feel sweat forming on his brow, making his abraded forehead sting, but he focussed on his task. He’d opened dozens of locks on missions, and hundreds in practice, but this had to be the most difficult situation he’d ever faced.
A powerful gust slammed him hard enough against the building to knock the breath out of him, and he remained there, flattened against the cold concrete and wondering if he’d finally bitten off more than he could chew. His teammates had often teased him about his ability to get himself into — and back out of — many sticky situations, and they’d wondered when he was finally going to run up against something he couldn’t handle.
It was likely to happen one day, he admitted, but it would not be this day.
When the wind slackened briefly, he pushed back and went to work with renewed determination. It took several minutes, but finally he felt the mechanism yield, and he grasped the handle and opened the door.
The wind caught it, yanking the handle from his hand and sending the door crashing back against the interior wall. Bash lifted the flashlight as the wind carried him into the building, and he glanced around the interior. He had a brief glimpse of a row of machinery before he was hit from behind, and he instinctively rolled with the blow, dodging to one side and coming back to his knees to find Sean standing just inside the door, staggering against the wind and reeling from the impact with Bash.
“Sorry!” Sean was shouting against the scream of the wind, and Bash nodded, reaching out to use the wall to help lever himself back upright.
“Door!” Bash shouted back, and Sean walked stiff-legged toward him, clutching one jug of water in each hand. He placed them next to the wall, and together, they wrestled the door closed.
The relative quiet that descended made Bash’s ears ring after the shriek of the wind. He stood with his back against the wall and yanked away the keffiyeh so he could catch his breath before slowly sliding down to the floor.
Sean was casting the beam of the flash onto the wall. He made a sound of satisfaction, and there was a flare of light as overhead fluorescents flickered to life.
“That wasn’t fun.” Sean sank down beside him with a sigh of relief. “I thought you were going to get blown off your feet, or else something was going to fly out of the storm and smash you flat.”
“I’m just as glad it didn’t happen.”
“So am I.”
Bash looked around the small space. It was no more than fifteen feet square, with walls of bare concrete block and a poured slab for a floor. Small pipes came through the wall on the right-hand side, passed through some kind of manifold with dials and gauges on the back wall, and exited to the left. There were a variety of handles and levers, and four small tanks lined up beneath the manifold. The lights were industrial fluorescent bars in the ceiling. Other than that, the only things in the room besides what they’d brought was a rusty metal tool box tucked into a corner.
Bash turned his head to find Sean looking at him instead of their surroundings. “What is it? Do I have dirt on my face?”
Sean frowned in concern. “Sand and blood, and your forehead is badly abraded.” He stood and moved to retrieve one jug of water. “I want to clean that up and make sure you don’t have anything embedded that might cause an infection.”
“I’ll be fine.” Bash knew he wasn’t badly hurt, but he also knew medics and their tendency to fuss over even minor injuries, so he held still as Sean knelt in front of him.
Sean tore off a part of his keffiyeh and wet it, and then he dabbed Bash’s forehead, his touch gentle and careful. This close, Bash could feel the overlap of their body heat, and Sean seemed aware of it too, from the way his gaze flicked to Bash’s lips.
“You mentioned Afghanistan. Are you a soldier? Special Forces, perhaps?” Sean asked, his voice husky.
The cool dampness felt good on Bash’s skin, but that didn’t account for the tingling awareness Bash felt wherever Sean’s fingers touched him. “Of a sort,” he said. There was an intimacy to the moment he didn’t want to break, even though answering Sean’s questions might be dangerous. “It’s… complicated.”
“More complicated than my life story?” Sean’s lips quirked in a wry smile as he continued washing the blood and sand from the abrasions. “Come on, mystery man. I’ve seen you do things I’ve only seen in action films. You pick locks, hot-wire cars, drive like a maniac, and fight like a ninja. As far as I can tell, you either don’t feel fear or you’ve got the best poker face I’ve ever seen,” he added, shifting closer until they were almost — but not quite — touching.
“I’ve been called a card shark before,” Bash admitted. He couldn’t seem to move his gaze from Sean’s lips; it would be so easy to lean forward and claim the kiss he’d been thinking about almost from the moment he’d first laid eyes on Sean. But a kiss might be even more dangerous than answering Sean’s questions. “Let’s just say I’ve had a lot of unusual training.”
“Translation: I’m not going to get any straight answers.” Sean rinsed out the bit of cloth and then washed the rest of Bash’s face with slow strokes that felt almost like caresses.
Bash smiled crookedly. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be frustrating.” He leaned closer. “That feels good.”
