ha. You try getting dumped into a fifty-degree swimming pool and then driving fifteen miles in some trash heap of a car that doesn’t have a working heater.” She clenched her teeth against the pain.
Jake smiled as he turned down the heat. “Someday we’ll have to tell her about BUD/S Training, huh, Mitch?”
Mitch was completely focused on cleaning her arm. “If you can’t handle cold, don’t become a SEAL.”
“A major portion of Hell Week—the fifth week of SEAL training—is spent freezing your butt off,” Jake told her. “You get wet early on and stay wet for the entire week.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that.” Zoe closed her eyes. Damn, whatever Mitch was doing hurt like hell. “I read in some magazine article about Hell Week that you guys pee on yourselves to stay warm while you’re in the water.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jake snorted. “That’s what reporters find important. That we pee on ourselves. Forget about the hours and hours of training we go through, the endurance tests, the underwater demolition, the HALO training. That’s not half as interesting as peeing on ourselves. Jeez.”
Zoe sensed more than felt Jake sit down beside her. But she opened her eyes when he took her other hand.
“Squeeze,” he told her. “And keep your eyes open. If you close your eyes and shut everything else out, it’s just you and the pain. And that’s never good.”
“I’m really sorry,” Mitch murmured. “You must’ve landed on this arm pretty hard to get this stuff embedded so deeply.”
Zoe took a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. Jake’s eyes were so blue and so steady. She held his gaze as if it were a lifeline.
“What happened at this party?” he asked. “Keep talking.”
“I arrived a little after noon,” she told him, gripping his hand more tightly and biting back the urge to shriek as Mitch probed particularly deeply. “Everyone was drinking pretty hard. Mostly just beer. But about five people went into the house, and when they came out, it was pretty obvious they’d done a few lines of cocaine. Hal Francke was one of them. This other guy, Wayne, Monica’s boyfriend—God, what a jerk! He’s one of those former high-school football-star types—he used to be big man on campus, but now he’s just big and fat and mean. He went inside, too. A few different times.”
She squeezed Jake’s hand harder. “Ow. Ow, ow, ow!”
And just like that, the pain let up.
“Got it.” Mitch was done. He was perspiring nearly as much as she was, his eyes filled with apology and an echo of her pain.
“I just have to put some antibacterial ointment on it and bandage it up. The other one looks clean.”
Zoe tried to hide that she was shaking. “Well, that was fun. Thanks so much.”
“So how’d this happen?” Jake asked. She had to give him credit. He was obviously trying really hard not to look as if he wanted to go out and hunt down Monica’s boyfriend, Wayne.
The stupid thing was, she liked it. She liked the idea of this man being her hero. God knows there was a point this afternoon where she would have been plenty thrilled to see Jake parachuting down from the sky, coming to save the day.
She wasn’t used to working in a team, like the SEALs. In her job, she often had herself, and only herself, to rely on.
She gently pulled her hand free from his grasp. “I went further out in the back of the yard,” she told him as Mitch bandaged her arm, “looking for Monica. There was a path that led down to a stream, and some of the party had moved in that direction. I was getting ready to leave—I wanted to tell her I was taking off. But she must’ve been inside the house—everyone else who’d gone down to the stream was gone, too. Except for Wayne, who’d followed me. Like I said, he was on something nasty, and he got a little rough.” It was an understatement, and she could tell from his eyes that he knew it. “But it was no big deal,” she continued. “I handled it, I handled him.”
She was stretching the truth pretty thin there. Because it had been a big deal. Zoe could still feel the man’s hands on her breasts, still smell the alcohol on his putrid breath. He’d been a behemoth of a man, and when he’d tackled her, when the weight of his body had crushed her against the grass and gravel, for one awful moment she’d been afraid he’d actually be able to overpower her.
It was an awful feeling, that helplessness.
But he was stoned and stupid, and she’d used her brain and her ability to aim with a solid knee kick and she’d gotten away.
Hal Francke had been with a group of men by the pool, and they, too, had had far too much to drink. Zoe had picked up her towel and her bag, extremely shaken and ready to leave without even saying goodbye to the hostess, when one of the men grabbed her and tossed her into the pool.
Hal had jumped in after her, rescuing her even though she damn well hadn’t wanted or needed it. He’d put his hands all over her as he pulled her to the side of the pool. It had taken every ounce of restraint she had not to kick him in the family jewels, as well.
The water had been freezing. Her towel and clothes had been soaked.
Hal had thought that was funny as hell. He’d invited her to dinner, invited her to stay at his fishing cabin for the rest of the weekend, subtly insinuated that he’d all but pay her to have sex with him. She’d told him she’d consider the waitressing job, thanks, but that she’d have to get back to him.
And then, elbows stinging and dripping wet, Zoe had gotten the hell out of there.
“It was no big deal,” she said again. She was lying.
And Jake knew she was lying. But he didn’t press her for more details.
“As far as what the locals think about the CRO—” she continued with her report “—most of the people at the party don’t know anything about them. All they know is the old Frosty Cakes factory’s finally been sold, and that the people who bought it mostly keep to themselves. They wish it had been bought by someone wanting to get back into production—they’d hoped for more jobs in this area. They know about the electric fence around the compound, but not much about the rest of Vincent’s high-tech security system. And that’s about it.”
“That’s it for me, too,” Mitch said, finishing bandaging her arm. He held on to her hand several moments longer than he had to. “Again, I’m sorry I hurt you, Zoe.”
“It’s all right.” She smiled at him. “I forgive you.”
Mitch’s eyes were warm as he packed up his medical kit. “Good.”
Jake cleared his throat.
Mitch stood up. “If you don’t need me any further, Admiral …”
“Thanks, Mitch. I’ll be along in just a minute.”
Zoe watched the lieutenant let himself out, then glanced at Jake, wondering what he could possibly have to say to her that needed privacy. Why lose the chaperone now?
“Are
