“Absolutely not.” I shake my head. “You’re not going to babysit me every time I need to visit the latrine or take a shower.”
“Not negotiable,” Hawk replies, shaking his head.
“You don’t get to dictate my movements.”
“Reese.” The sound of my name in that deep, even tone sends a jolt through me. “I’m not dictating. I’m keeping you alive. That’s the job.”
“I’ve kept myself alive just fine for thirty-threeyears.”
He steps closer, voice dropping an octave. “Barely.”
The silence that follows is sharp. I open my mouth, then close it again, because he’s right. And that infuriates me more than anything. “Fine. Whatever. But if any of you try to follow meintothe latrine, Iwillstab you,” I huff eventually.
The hours drag on, and I keep catching Hawk watching me out of the corner of my eye as I finish setting up my workstation. Finally done, I straighten and stretch, rolling my sore shoulders. When I crane my neck to remove a kink, Hawk is at the entrance talking quietly with Damon. His voice is low and commanding, the same one that used to make me feel safe. And as much as I hate it, all I can think about is how much I used to like the sound of it vibrating against my skin.
When I glance up again, his eyes are still on me. They are dark, unreadable, and full of things left unsaid. Our gazes meet, and I force myself to tear mine away, because no matter how much of me wants to keep hating him, a bigger part of me wants to know what he’s hiding.
I’m halfway through my second cup of burnt-tasting instant coffee when I decide to finish it inside. The morning sun has broken over the horizon, and the temperature has quickly grown uncomfortable. There is no breeze, just a thick desert stillness that feels dry and heavy.
When I duck back into the tent, Reese is sliding from bed and tucking her laptop under her arm. She turns to face me, and her eyes are sharp and sleepless. She hasn’t said much since last night.Which is a blessing.I know her, and when that woman wants something, she could argue most men into submission. And from the look on her face, I’m seconds from entering into a debate with her.
“Morning, sunshine,” Jagger groans, stretching. After getting out of his cot, he roams the tent shirtless to make himself a coffee, despite her rule.I’m pretty sure he’s doing it just to piss her off.
“Would you please”—she throws a shirt at him—“put on a damn shirt.”
He laughsand lets out an over-exaggerated sigh as he pulls the T-shirt over his head. “So feisty before breakfast.”
“Both of you shut it,” I bark, my voice cutting through the tent. “Reese, I think it’s time you tell us what you saw and what has you in danger.”
She drops the laptop on the crate in the center of the room and opens it. “Proof,” she says flatly. “Of what I saw.”
The room stills, the four of us crowding around her to look at her computer. Reese takes a deep breath, steadying herself. “I met a woman a few days ago. She told me about her daughter who had disappeared. She lived in a village about fifty kilometers from here. I went to investigate.” The screen lights up with grainy photos—long-distance shots, but clear enough, men in desert camo with rifles slung over their shoulders. “And we found this.”
“And they fired on you?” Gunnar asks with a tinge of disbelief.
“Not when we got there,” she continues, flipping through the images. “I left my escort a?—”
“Reese,” I admonish, huffing.
“When I left my escort and snuck behind the barricade, I saw this.” Her fingers tremble as she works through the images. A few clicks later, she pulls up an image of a trail of blood leading into the street, followed by another of two men in uniform lugging a woman’s body. “Then they started firing… Well, first they tried to stop me. When I ran,thenthey started shooting.”
The images and her palpable fear hit like a round to the gut. There is no question, something was happening there.
“My escort was shot in the neck.” Her voice quivers before falling off. She doesn’t need to finish. We know most of the rest through Abby. “You want to know why I refuse to leave?That’swhy. Those bastards are covering something up, and I need to know what it is.”
“Are we sure they’re actually military? And not mercs?” Jagger asks, suddenly breaking the tense silence.
“I know what I saw,” she snaps.
“Those were government Humvees,” Gunnar adds, ever the realist.
He’s right.
The others exchange wary glances, and then, all at once, everyone’s looking at me. Because, whether I like it or not, I’m the one who decides what we do next. I scrub a hand over my jaw, staring at the images again.
“We go back,” Reese decides for me, before I can speak. “We check the village. You’ll see I’m not crazy, and we can find out what the hell is happening.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I tell her automatically.
