“I understand where you’re coming from, Whit.” Brecken stood and rounded his desk, walking over to the wet bar to pour each of us a finger of whiskey. After handing me a glass, he leaned against his desk and took a sip of his drink. “But we both know you need some time to get your head together before you’re ready to get back out in the field.”
I hated admitting he was right, but I’d be lying my ass off if I tried convincing him that I was fine. Scrubbing my free hand down my face, I sighed. “Two weeks?”
“Maybe longer.” Brecken shrugged. “Whatever it takes, man. We both know when shit like this messes with your head, it can be unpredictable.”
I took a gulp of the whiskey, enjoying the burn as it went down. This wasn’t the first time I’d been shot, but I was struggling more than I had before. The physical recovery hadn’t been easy since the bullet I’d taken had lacerated my spleen andcaused massive internal bleeding. If Devon hadn’t gotten me to the hospital as quickly as he had, I probably wouldn’t have made it.
However much I wanted to argue with Brecken’s decision, I knew he’d made the call with my well-being in mind. And as much as I hated to admit it, I couldn’t fault his logic. Getting away from the job was probably exactly what I needed to get my head screwed on straight again—if I could come up with something to do other than twiddle my thumbs. “I’m sure it’ll be more than enough time. After a couple of days of R&R alone at my place, I’ll probably be bored out of my skull.”
“Go home for a visit. Your mother was beside herself when I called to let her know you’d been shot.”
It was a great suggestion. She hadn’t been much better when I’d dropped her off at the airport a few days after I’d been discharged from the hospital. And every time she called me since then—which was twice a day when we used to talk once or twice a week—she made the same joke about checking to make sure I was still alive. Only it fell flat because I knew she wasn’t really kidding. “Can I take one of the jets?”
“Hell no.” He laughed and shook his head. “It’s going to be hard enough to get by without you for two weeks. We don’t need to be down a plane, too.”
Fuck.I hated flying commercial.
2
VICTORIA
There wasn’t much I loved more than a long, hot shower in the morning. Except maybe my daily chai latte. Unfortunately, this was the last time I would have access to either of my addictions for several weeks. As such, I lingered over both, enjoying them to the fullest. Then I indulged in the luxury of ordering room service for breakfast since none of the pastries in the coffee shop in the hotel lobby had captured my interest when I’d ventured down to grab my tea.
After I stuffed my face with French toast and eggs, I grabbed my cell phone to call my dad, who answered in the middle of the first ring. “Morning, Tori. You packed up and ready to head into the wild?”
“Just about.”
“Getting a late start?”
I glanced at the clock on the bedside table and laughed. “Not really, Dad. It’s not even seven o’clock here yet.”
My dad wasn’t impressed by my answer. “But the sun’s already up, right?”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“You better get a move on, girl,” he urged. “There’s only so many hours of daylight, and you’ll want to get to your campsite before dark.”
“I wanted to enjoy my last morning in civilization before I headed onto the mountain,” I explained as I set my empty mug on the table.
“How are you going to do without your creature comforts?”
My dad’s light-hearted teasing was fair, especially considering my reaction the first time he took me camping. But I’d changed a lot from the eleven-year-old girl I’d been back then, even though he often treated me like I was still that young. “I’ll be fine, Dad.”
“Your sat phone is fully charged?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes because he was too perceptive. He couldn’t see me, but he’d somehow hear my physical reaction in my voice. “Yup, I plugged the phone in last night even though it was fully charged already.”
“Did you check to make sure it’s holding a charge?”
I stretched out my legs and propped my feet on the chair on the other side of the table. “Of course.”
“And you have a backup battery charger?”
As a twenty-five-year-old woman, I didn’t have to answer my dad’s questions. I was an adult and didn’t need his permission to do stuff anymore. But I knew his interrogations came from a good place. He worried about me running into trouble whenever I went on a wilderness shoot by myself. I couldn’t blame him for being worried about me being out on the mountain alone since he spent several weeks missing in action as the sole survivor of a helicopter crash behind enemy lines when I was only six months old.
He hated the idea of me going off on my own, but the kind of photos I liked to take were almost impossible to get if I traveled with someone else. Most of my time was spent sitting in one spotwaiting for the perfect shot, and not many people had that kind of patience. My days were long, too. It wasn’t unusual for me to spend ten hours in a blind waiting for my prey to appear, only to have to do it all over again the next day because I lost the lighting before they revealed themselves. “A small one that’ll do in a pinch.”
He reacted exactly how I expected. “Skimping on battery power when the sat phone could be your lifeline isn’t smart, Tori.”
