Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (29 page)

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then added something that I didn’t quite catch. Jaymie beside me stilled, blinking a few times to clear her vision. That woman definitely knew how to have a good time.

Blondie replied something that the background noise swallowed, but when Nate got up a moment later and followed her toward the side of the tent, I couldn’t help but frown. And I wasn’t the only one, judging from how Pia glared after her. She wasn’t too circumspect about voicing her opinion in one vile string of Serbian that made me do a spit-take that choked me up hard enough that Burns had to pound vigorously on my back to clear my airways again.
 

I barely got a glance from Pia, but Andrej looked quite amused. “Did she just call her a cum-gobbling whore?” I asked him, not quite sure I got the inflection right of that last term. Burns let out a guffaw that should have made heads turn all over, while Andrej shrugged.
 

“It’s hard to translate exactly,” he provided. “But close enough.”

“Why?” I asked, just as Martinez leaned forward to holler a rather emphatic, “How the fuck do you even understand that?”

I shrugged at him and took another sip, mostly to hide my grin. Maybe I should have been concerned, but I really wasn’t. Not after this afternoon. “They both curse a lot. I know that I still haven’t picked up enough Serbian to order more than a refill at the bar, but I’m getting pretty good with the vernacular.” Plus it came in handy if those three thought they could keep their talk between them just because they switched over from English. Nu-uh.

“Because that’s exactly what she is,” Pia said. I needed a few seconds to realize that she’d answered the question I’d asked before. Right.

Before I could investigate further, Jaymie did. “You all know Rita?” At my questioning look, she shrugged. “She’s what amounts to Chief of Security here. No one really wants the job so it’s been hers since she came here. Last fall, with one of the first groups.” She paused, considering. “Can’t say I like her, but she likes to ream us for not playing along with her training and watch regime. And while I definitely agree with calling her the c-word, she doesn’t really strike me as very promiscuous.”

Pia’s scoff was so out of the ordinary that I wondered if she had, after all, nipped on some booze behind our backs.

“That’s because most people are beneath her,” she stated. “You’d need rank and distinction for her to notice you. As things are now, you lack two marks for her to be interested in you.”

Now that was a fascinating tidbit. I hadn’t really tried to get a glimpse at Rita’s neck, but that sounded very much like the age-old “us versus them” debate—only now the vice versa of what I’d experienced the last weeks over.

Andrej cleared his throat. “And because she and Miller were a thing for a while.”

Pia glared at him for sharing that detail, but at least no one glanced cautiously in my direction. Probably because I couldn’t hold in a laugh that ended in a weird kind of wheeze when I tried to suppress it.

“Seriously?”

Pia’s nod was more of a jerk of her head. “At least that’s her version. I think he was bored when we were grounded at base for a week and there was nothing better to do. Sign of very poor taste, but he wised up once he realized she was getting friendly with others, too. But we were stuck with her for three more months, and she never got the memo that it was over.”

Andrej nodded, although he didn’t seem to agree with every aspect of her explanation. I figured I could have filled in the blanks had I wanted to, which I didn’t. It was obvious that “convenience” was the term that the Ice Queen mostly sneered at. What was way more interesting was the fact that she had never behaved that dismissive toward me. I was starting to get weird ideas about her actually liking me. That thought really warmed my cold, dead heart—and got me grinning like a fool again. Damn booze.

“Any chance you’ll dish about the details? About the mission, I mean,” I quickly amended when Burns snickered.

Pia and Andrej shared a look, but ended up shaking their heads. I sighed, my eyes drawn to the people in question. Oh, Rita’s body language screamed of welcome and promising things, but Nate looked, if anything, relaxed as he kept chatting with her, only leaning in not to have to shout over all the noise. I doubted that he was blind to her invitation, but he seemed quite happy trying to drive her insane with his ignorance. He was a master at that—as I could attest.

Burns leaning in drew my attention away from them for a second. Of course he was grinning widely, making me roll my eyes at him even before he spoke up.

“You’d be much more convincing in your claim that you’re not jealous if you didn’t scowl that much.”

Had I been scowling? Just to make sure, I reached up to my face. No, that felt exactly like the drunkenly insipid grin I was afraid I was sporting.

“Not jealous,” I stated, maybe with a little too much stress, but that booze was really starting to get to me. When I got a belligerent look back, I snorted. “Seriously. If he really wants to bone her, he’s free to do it. But he doesn’t look like he’s out for that.”

“That they have history doesn’t bother you?” Jaymie interjected on my other side.

I shrugged. “Maybe a little, but then there’s a reason why she’s history, and I’m present. And if the last year has taught me anything it's that there’s no reason in the entire world for me to fight some bitch over a guy.” Taking another sip, I sized Rita up. “I might punch her just for the fun of it, but not because I’m jealous.”

That got me some well-deserved laughter from all around, and, if I wasn’t completely mistaken, a nod of approval from Pia. That, if nothing else, made me guess that I had a shot at taking Rita down if it came to that; like no one else, the Ice Queen knew my hand-to-hand combat cred.
 

Or she just wanted to see someone else land me on my ass, which was entirely possible. Either way, I was in no condition to take anyone on now. I might as well get myself a refill and make the best of tonight.

I wasn’t the only one who kept glancing in Rita and Nate’s direction, I realized. In fact, almost everyone at the table was watching them. So none of us missed exactly the moment Nate shot her down, his eyes briefly flitting in my direction. And because I was already that kind of drunk, I waved right back, with the brightest smile I could muster, likely of the shit-eating range.
 

“Now that’s a scowl,” I commented on the look that crossed Rita’s face, laughing hard when I bumped a little too uncoordinatedly into Burns.
 

Jaymie snorted, inhaling half of her drink. When she stopped sputtering again, she grinned. “Women.”

My answer got cut short by Nate’s return, but sadly he just plunked down in his previous place, rather than bounce me on his knee or something. Probably for the best, or I might have suffocated from laughing. Rita followed him but remained standing, and the way she kept staring at me almost did the trick. How I managed to swallow my mirth and just grin up at her was beyond me. Control? Not really my thing tonight anymore. The dismissive snort she gave me almost undid me. Glancing down to Nate, she practically sneered.

“I really don’t get what you see in her.”

Just as I’d expected, Nate didn’t bother defending his choice. “Then let’s all be glad that you don’t have to, right?”

As much as his offhand remarks sometimes annoyed me, it felt good not to need any express confirmation of anything. The fact that I was pretty much making myself a hypocrite thinking that, considering how mad I’d been at him only hours ago, brought up another chuckle from deep inside my chest.

“Sweetie, I’m too awesome to put in mere words,” I hollered across the table.

“I’ll drink to that!” Burns shouted, raising his glass, and promptly got saluted by almost everyone around the table. Even Pia tipped her water bottle in my direction. Jaymie was laughing rather uncontrollably, needing my support to remain upright, and even Tamara relaxed as she grinned at me. Yeah, Burns was definitely on to something there.

I had to hand it to her, Rita didn’t dwell on becoming the center of our collective gaiety. She murmured one last parting remark to Nate, then left, pretending like there hadn’t been any competitive snarling involved. Maybe there hadn’t. Or maybe she’d decided on the spot that not even Nate was worth making an ass of herself. As much as I disliked her on principle, that was admirable. Then again, I had a certain feeling that this wouldn’t be the last I’d see of her, so who knew?

I didn’t, and I didn’t care. Instead I raised my glass, then got onto shaky feet when most of the guys had turned back to ignoring me. “I’d like to make a toast!” That got their attention quickly enough, so I went right on. “To all the people that should have been here with us tonight because they’re too awesome to have died!” For just a moment my breath hitched, but the alcohol coursing through my veins made it easy enough to breathe through the grief. “To those bastards who took the easy way out!”

“To the bastards!” Jason and Burns called out almost in unison, raising another round of laughs.

“Tonight we celebrate!” I shouted. “And tomorrow… Who gives a shit about tomorrow?”

A chorus of cheers answered me before I plunked back down on my ass.

Tonight? Tonight was for celebrating, like there was no tomorrow. And tomorrow? Tomorrow I’d probably wish that there hadn’t been a today. Who gave a shit? I certainly didn’t.

The next morning dawned bright and early, and as such things went, it was full of regrets.

Not that my mind was capable of that much assessment. One moment I was out cold. The next, my head was splitting and intense nausea gripped me, wrenching me right out of my blissfully comatose state. Pain stabbed my eyeballs, and I barely managed to roll over so when the contents of my stomach—liquid for the most part, thank fuck!—made a reappearance, I didn’t completely soil myself. It took me a few seconds of heaving—wet, then dry—to realize that I was lying on the hood of a car. Not my car, that much registered—but not much else.

Soft laughter filtered through the less than human sounds leaving me, and the spike of annoyance my mind was capable of let me know that it must have been Nate’s. I tried turning my head to look in his direction, but only managed to get my face out of that terrible sunshine before I slumped back down onto the cool metal below me. Cold, actually. I was cold, too. Slitting my eyes, I tried to find out why. Oh, right. I was still wearing that sleeveless shirt—and from what my legs felt like, only shorts. Nope, that would be my panties. The white ones that Nate had brought to the whorehouse for a change of clothes. Because he was an asshole. An asshole who was still chuckling, but at least he seemed to have stepped between me and the glaring sunshine now because my eyes hurt a lot less when I pried them open a second time.

“How are you feeling this fine morning?” he asked, sounding way too awake and chipper for his own good. Turning my head to look at him was too much effort, but next to part of the windshield of the car I was lying on I could see Taylor peel himself out of another car, followed by a cute Asian girl. She gave me a pitiful look before she blew Taylor a kiss and beat it. I closed my eyes again before I had to watch him scratch his balls for a moment longer.

“Hello?” Nate whispered from too damn close, giving me a start—that ended in another round of heaving. Sadly I missed his feet by some, but managed to hit the side of the fender head-on.
 

Well, this was embarrassing. I didn’t find it in me to care.

Martinez sauntered into my limited field of vision, giving me a concerned look before he grinned at Nate. “Don’t be such a bastard. It’s obvious that she’s not up to anything just yet.”

“That may be, but what kind of bastard would I be if I didn’t take care that she stays hydrated?”

I had exactly a moment to tense before ice-cold water hit me, enough to immediately drench my hair and wash my face clean. Some got into my mouth, too, making me sputter, but no more heaving followed. I blinked until I could see clearly again, Nate doing me the favor of stepping forward so I could glare at him without having to move much.

“I fucking hate you.”

His smile was a thing of true beauty as he replied.

“That wasn’t what you told me last night. Me, and everyone else, whether they wanted to know or not. Remember?”

Thinking was still hard, but at his words snippets of memories floated to the foreground of my scrambled mind.

“Kind of rings a bell,” I murmured, then closed my eyes again because this being awake shit? Not gonna happen right now, at all.

A gentle nudge on my shoulder jarred my body, prompting my stomach to do some more revolting. I swallowed convulsively and waited for the world to stop spinning again.

“Anything else you remember?” Nate asked.

I considered shaking my head, but that seemed like too violent a gesture. My right arm, splayed somewhere beside and behind me, gave a jerk, and it took me a moment to realize that I was trying to reach for my lower back. Just then Burns walked by the car, ignoring me in favor of peeling away the bandage high on his right arm, to check on something.

“Shit.”

Nate’s smile grew at my emphatic swearing.

“So you do remember.”

Nodding was still out of the question, so whispering it was.

“We all got tattoos. Matching ones.”

His smile widened. “And do you still remember—“

“The ‘Rape Stamp,’” I interrupted him, wincing when I’d spoken up too loudly. “That’s what I said mine was.”

I didn’t need to see Burns to know that he was grinning from where he’d stopped next to Nate. “Do you still know why?” Burns wanted to know.

Exhaling slowly, I forced myself into a moderately upright position, squinting when that put my head back into the sunshine.

“Because some asshole“—meaning Nate—“said I shouldn’t put it anywhere on my body where it’s easily visible. And to that I said I don’t want something as tacky as a tramp stamp because I can be classless all on my own, thank you very much.” Turning my face to Nate, I stared at him. “To which he said it would work best on my lower back because if someone were stupid enough to think I’m defenseless and got me in a compromising position, they wouldn’t see it, even when I reared up and ripped out their throat with my teeth. That’s why ‘Rape Stamp.’”