“Oh,Jesus!” Her use of her favorite word pissed him off all over again. “You don’t have to be sorry formyfreaking knees! What youshouldbe sorry for is your bullshit acceptance of some deluded belief that just because you’re a girl you can’t win this thing!”
She countered his loud-and-angry with a voice that was super calm and in control. “I’m a woman, not a girl.”
“Yeah, no,sorry,” he said. “How did you say it?” He spoke in an obnoxiously bad imitation of a high-pitched little girl’s voice, complete with an Elmer Fudd-like speech impediment. “A wittle girl like me will never win a game against all those big stwong boys. Wealistically. I’m just too weak and dumb. I mean, come on.” Back to his real voice. “What the hell wasthat…? You know what you don’t have? You don’t have upper body strength. Big deal. You have a giant brain and legs that can run forever—”
“And a companion who just admitted he’s in constant pain—which I already knew. I could tell just from looking at your face,” she said, but her voice was still calm, contained. “That was me, doing what Ithoughta team leader was supposed to do—be aware of my teammate’s limitations. Because I also know that you’re lying, and your kneeswillhurt worse after walking five miles. I saidwecouldn’t win this thing, but if I were alone, trust me, I would already be running.”
“Then run,” he said. “I’ll keep up.”
“No,” she said. “But I will let you sit here in the dark. Flashlight’s going on,” she warned as she stood up. “Move into the road. I’m going to run out about a mile, and then I’ll come back. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes.”
Jim stood, too. “Yeah, I can’t let you do that. There’s really only one unbreakable rule for this particular exercise. Separation of team leader and instructor is that one giant no-can-do.”
Ashley stared at him in disbelief.
He shrugged and hit her with her favorite word. “Sorry.”
It was then, with diabolical timing, that thunder clapped almost directly overhead, and the skies opened up in a deluge.
CHAPTER SIX
“You told me to take the flashlight,” Ashley shouted at Jim over the roar of the rain as he pulled her closer to the main trunk of the banyan tree. “You tried to talk me into leaving you here! And now that’snot an option…?”
The branches overhead helped only a little, and she had to close her eyes because the rain was streaming down her face. Without a hat, it was like standing in the bathtub with her face aimed up at the shower head.
“It was actually a good idea,” he shouted back. “I wanted to see if you’d do it. And since you didn’t want to, I didn’t have to shut it down. Until you did, and then I did. Shut you down. Because yeah, we’ve gotta stay together. We can definitely run—Icankeep up.”
Ashley opened her eyes to look at him and had to use her hands to shield her face from the rain. “You’re serious.”
He was still holding the flashlight and it made his eyes look very blue. “Yeah. Navy SEAL…?”
It was then, as their gazes were locked with the rain pouring down around them and on top of them that Ashley realized… She may not have had a map, but she had aNavy SEAL.
“What would you do?” she asked him. “If you were in charge.”
“First, it’s called command,if I were in command.”
“That,” she said. “What would you do?”
He was silent but only for a few seconds before he said, “I’d take inventory.”
“Inventory?” she repeated.
“Yeah, you know, what do I have, what do you have…?” he said. “I’d also do an inventory of the team members’ skill sets. You’re a runner, that’s great, but alas, right now I’m an anti-runner, with my knees. But okay, whatelseare you good at? Arguing a court case—not gonna do us a helluva lot of good out here…”
“What areyourskill sets?” Ashley asked him. “An ability to pull an extra baseball cap out of your ass during a thunderstorm would be awesome.”
Jim laughed. “Okay, soyou’reway funnier than I thought.”
“What,” she repeated as pleasantly as she could, “are your skills sets?”
“Are you sure that’s the question you want to start with?” he countered.
Ashley rewound their conversation just a bit and… “What are you carrying in your pockets or… wherever… that could help us? I have the GPS tracker thing that’ll let them find us, and basically my clothes and underwear, although right now I’m desperately wishing I took the time to put on a bra. You have… a flashlight… What else?”
His gaze had flickered down to her chest atbra, but her arms were crossed because the rain was chilling. And also because her shirt and PJ top were both white and probably transparent while soaking wet.
“Here,” he said, shrugging out of it. “Take my over-shirt.”
