Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
She laughed, just as he hoped she would. “I presume letting it go means I don’t get to bring it up later.”
“Exactly. Clean slate every single time.” He held the door for her.
“I see. I’m slightly worried about that term, ‘every single time.’ Does that mean there are going to be a lot of times you screw up?”
“I’m afraid so. I don’t have a lot of experience in the relationship department so sadly for you, I’m going to blow it. On the other hand, you don’t have a lot of experience either, so you might not even notice when I screw up. At least I’m hoping for that.”
She looked around the room. “You finished the dishes.”
He gave her a tentative grin. “Thought it best to let you cool off. I’ve seen Cayenne when she’s pissed. She’s very creative with silk.”
“I think I’m going to like Cayenne.”
“Trap shocked the holy hell out of me when he said she was pregnant. I know for a fact she’s been on two missions with him and held her own. She didn’t look pregnant when I left to come here. She probably would have had the baby in the forest, and then killed and wrapped an entire army of enemies with a newborn in a front pack.”
Her mouth twitched. “How do you know what a front pack is?”
He tried to look serious. “I read.”
“You saw it in a picture, didn’t you?”
“Pepper bought one, so she would have her arms free to work with the three little vipers,” he admitted. “Don’t ever tell her I called her daughters that.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots. “Let’s darken this room so we can sleep.” Every muscle in his body hurt. He didn’t tell her that, because, like him, she had to have some illusions to make their little fantasy work for as long as possible. He did note it for Trap, glancing at the time. “I want to look you over for rashes, and I need to examine your lymph nodes as well.”
“It’s easy to get rashes here, especially when I was lying in the grass.”
Alarm skittered through him. “Shylah?” He waited until she turned around, her hand on the screen ready to pull it down to darken the room. “Do you have a rash somewhere?”
She shrugged. “I was lying in the grass when you raced toward the river. I’d been there for some time. Of course I have a rash. It’s like your headache, no big deal.”
Now his heart was pounding in earnest. “Come here.” He pointed to a spot right in front of him, between his thighs.
Shylah pulled a second shade and then stepped back, toward the window. “It’s really nothing.”
“If it’s nothing then you shouldn’t have any problems letting me look at it.”
“It’s on my stomach. My shirt must have pulled up while I was lying on the ground watching the village.”
“Come here,” he reiterated, this time using his commander’s voice. He didn’t pull rank even within the unit, but he could. “Shylah, right now.” He was going to examine her lymph nodes first. He had to know she was safe.
10
Walking out of the forest into the clearing with the morning light surrounding them gave Draden a feeling of déjà vu. He was absolutely exhausted, having spent the night killing as many of the enemy as possible. The entire time he had tried not to worry about Shylah. He’d examined her before they went to sleep and she had a rash that had spread up her tummy to just under her breasts and then down below her navel. Worse, he’d detected several swollen lymph nodes. He told himself that didn’t mean anything. Lymph nodes could swell for a variety of reasons, stress being one of them.
The ranks of the Milisi Separatis Sumatra were becoming very depleted. He and Shylah had worked as a team to annihilate the enemy, taking out as many as possible. She hadn’t hesitated once. He didn’t want either of them to unintentionally expose the villagers to the virus, so he had deliberately taken out the MSS guards and scouts outside the village. Members of the terrorist cell were still hunting for the two of them, spreading out into the forest, this time in greater numbers, making it even easier to do more damage. By morning, Draden was certain the Indonesian soldiers could infiltrate the village now to make certain the inhabitants were safe from the terrorists.
They were both tired, but when he mentioned it, she had simply responded that it was to be expected. “I want to talk to Whitney,” he said as they approached the remote lab.
Shylah had bent down to touch the delicate trip line running across the ground in front of the stairs. The sun coming up shone on the web, revealing the lines stretching across the stairs and around each window. There was a neat burrow situated to one side of the stairs, as if a funnel-web spider resided there. Insects walked across the trip line alerting the spider to prey. In this case, those lines would serve as a warning if the remote lab had been penetrated.