Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) (11 page)

“You know, I thought I would, but…” He heard her yawn. “On second thought, maybe not.”

“No. Me neither. That’s good.” He squatted down, hissed as he plucked the hot pot from the fire and set it on the ground. “That means we have this water for washing.”

“With what?”

Good question. He looked around, saw the T-shirt she’d exchanged for one of his.

“This okay?”

She nodded, and he dipped the shirt into the hot water, wrung it out and then dipped it in again before he offered it to her. She ran it over her face and throat, and made a little
mmm
sound at the welcome feel of it.

“What I’d give for a real bath,” she said as she gave the wet shirt back to him.

What he’d give to see her take a real bath or, better still, to take that bath with her, but he’d already thought about that before and if it had been a bad idea then, it was worse now.

Man, if he kept going like this, he was a dead man walking.

“Thanks,” he said, and scrubbed his hands and face hard, hoping he’d gotten off most of the camo paint.

“Warrior paint? Or military paint?”

He looked at her. “What?”

“I just wondered…” She blushed and shook her head. “Sorry.”

“The stripes, you mean?”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“You mean,” he said, deadpan, is it what they teach in Sneaking Through the Jungle 101? Or did I dance around a campfire first?”

Alessandra buried her face in her hands. “Oh God, I never should have…”

“It’s standard-issue military camouflage paint.” He grinned. “But now that I think about it, my great-great-great-grandfather probably would have approved.”

She took her hands from her face. “Are you making fun of me, Lieutenant?”

“He was a warrior. A war chief. He fought at Little Bighorn.”

“Really?” She folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t know as much as I should about American history, but I know about that. It must have been an amazing day for him and his people.”

Tanner nodded. The story had been passed from generation to generation. His own father had told it to him countless times. At first, he’d hung on every word. By the time he turned thirteen, he’d hated the tale. He’d started to see it as the one thing his old man could be proud of and it had happened more than one hundred years before.

Eventually, of course, his perception had changed…

“What was his name? Your great-great-grandfather?”

“You left out a ‘great.’ His name was Running Bear. But after Little Big Horn, the people called him
Akecheta
. Warrior.”

“And you’re named for him.”

Hell. Why had he told her all that? At least he could keep quiet about the rest, that the name had been given to him after he’d participated in a sacred Sun Dance.

“Something like that.”

She gave him a long, searching look.

“So, we both come from military families.”

This was a pointless conversation. Next thing, she’d want to exchange family photos. Tanner folded the empty MRE bags into small, neat squares and stowed them in his backpack.

“Time to get things moving,” he said briskly. “We want to be stowed away when all the light is gone.”

“But with one big difference. You spoke of your great-great-great-grandfather with pride. That’s not the way I feel about my father.”

Okay. The discussion still wasn’t over. There had to be a way to end it, some subtle way to change the topic.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know what the situation is between you but if it helps, you should know that your old man was very upset about you.”

“Why wouldn’t he be? We’re probably still some deep, dark secret.”

“We?”

“My brothers, my sister and me.”

“As I said, I don’t know anything about that, but—”

“My father, the general,” Alessandra said with forced lightness, “the guy with the four shiny stars and a bunch of medals, was a bigamist. He was married to our mother and to another woman at the same time.”

Tanner sat back on his heels. “Wow.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much how we see it, too.”

They fell silent. Tanner wanted to say something more intelligent than “wow,” but he couldn’t come up with anything. He knew what he was probably supposed to do. Ask her how such a thing had affected her, what did she feel, or at least offer a tidbit of personal information in exchange, but he wasn’t into navel-gazing, and he’d already told her more about himself than made sense.

He was a man who kept his thoughts and feelings private.

Women didn’t like that about him. More than one had called him removed. Remote. Cold.

Even Red had.

“You’re burning hot in bed, sugar,” she’d said, “but you’re an iceman everywhere else.”

Yeah, well, if that meant he didn’t talk about himself, so be it.

“Call of nature,” Alessandra said brightly as she rose to her feet.

He nodded. “Don’t go too far. And check for—”

“Critters. I know. I’ll be right back.”

He nodded again.

She was probably moving away to avoid his silence. So what? He was the silent type. Give away too much of yourself, you might as well paint a big red
X
on your forehead.

That had been the big lesson of his childhood, learned first when his mother went out the door one morning and left behind a note that said she needed something more in her life. Relearned when his old man dealt with it by losing himself in cheap whiskey until he wandered away one snowy night and died on the quiet plains.

After that, Tanner had been lost for a while.

The spirit, the memory of his long-dead great-great-great-grandfather, was what had saved him.

He’d already known all those stories and he’d written them off as overblown nonsense told by a man who’d had nothing but hand-me-down tales to live by.

But when he’d gotten in trouble one time too many after his father’s death, a tribal elder had confronted him.

“You have the blood of warriors in your veins,” the old man had said.

Tanner had laughed and said he had the blood of a drunk in his veins. The elder had grabbed him by the ear and told him he was a disgrace to the people and to his ancestors.

Then he’d sat him down and told him about his great-great-great-grandfather, told him the past his own father had omitted.

Turned out his great-great-great-grandfather had not always been a hero.

In his teens, he had been a boy who’d sought nothing but trouble.

“He was lost, the same as you,” the elder said. “His mother was dead. His father was a drunkard. He wallowed in self-pity. And then, because he had nothing better to do, he went on a vision quest. He was alone in the sacred hills for three days and nights, and when he returned, he pledged himself to the Sun Dance.”

“Don’t tell me,” Tanner had said sarcastically. “The vision quest and the Dance, a couple of stupid old customs, changed his life.”

“Only a man who questions without understanding that which he questions is stupid, Tanner,” the elder had said quietly.

Two months later, on his sixteenth birthday, Tanner figured he had nothing to lose.

He went up into the hills, alone. No food. No water.

At first, nothing happened. And then, on the third night, an animal came to him. It was a wolf, a sacred animal that symbolized freedom and courage, but the thing was, there were no longer wolves in the Black Hills.

A hallucination, maybe?

Whatever, the experience had left him a little shaken.

When he returned home, he pledged himself to the Dance.

And, when the time came, he danced. For four endless days and nights. He danced until he was bleeding, until he was exhausted, until the world was no longer real.

But he endured, unlike some of the men and boys who had begun the ceremony with him.

And after it was over, when he lay panting and almost delirious on the sacred ground, the elder had come to his side.

“From now on,” he’d said softly, “you will be known as Tanner Akecheta. Tanner the Warrior. Your great-great-great-grandfather’s spirit lives within you, young man. He would be proud to know you.”

It had been the turning point of Tanner’s life. Everything that came after—the academic achievements, his success on the football field, college, being selected first for the SEALs and then for STUD, had happened because of that vision, that dance, but he never talked about it or about his great-great-great-grandfather.

Why would he? It was all private, not to be shared and besides, who would want to hear these things? Only Chay, but he and Chay were like brothers.

He would certainly not talk about himself to a woman.

Except that was exactly what he’d just done.

He hadn’t told her a lot, but he’d told her more than he should have.

Tanner added wood to the fire.

Maybe it was the darkness closing in. Maybe it was the forced intimacy of a dangerous situation.

A muscle knotted in his jaw.

Or maybe it was just her. Alessandra. There was a complexity to her that baffled him.

Not that he was interested in her in any significant way. Well, sexually, sure. What man wouldn’t be? As for the rest… It was just that she was—that word again—
complex
. He’d always liked puzzles, and that was what she was. A puzzle. The way she stood up to him. The faint Italian accent that materialized whenever she came close to losing her temper.

The resiliency that had gotten her through being kidnapped and held captive by a pair of brutes.

He’d seen grown men sob as they fell into the arms of their rescuers.

Not this woman.

Still, there was a softness to her. Was what you saw on the outside a barrier against the world? If it was, who was the real woman behind that barrier?

What would a man find if he got past it?

And, Jesus, why was he wasting time and energy on cheap philosophizing? It was definitely time to secure their campsite, call it a night, get some much-needed sleep, she in the shelter, he out here by the fire…

She, still in the underbrush.

He got to his feet. He’d been foolish, letting her go off on her own. Snakes, spiders, God only knew what else might be out there, just waiting for dinner.

“Bellini? What’s taking so long?”

“
Dio!
If you have to ask me such a dumb question, Lieutenant…”

A sound, something like a deep, rusty bark, echoed through the jungle just as she stepped into the clearing.

She spun towards the wall of green behind her.

“Did you hear that?”

Better safe than sorry, Tanner thought, reaching for his rifle.

“Easy. It’s a jaguar, but he’s a long way off.”

Wide-eyed, she turned in a slow circle. What a wonderful irony, that the woman who wanted to turn cats into coats was terrified because one was in the area.

“How far?”

“It’s hard to tell. A quarter mile, half a mile, maybe. We’ll keep our eyes open, but the odds are good that if he should catch our scent, he’ll do his best to avoid—”

“I’d give anything for a glimpse of him!”

The words came out on a long, excited rush of breath. He looked at her. Hell. She was excited, not fearful.

“They’re not tame pussycats,” he said sharply. “They’re big. Smart. Cornered or frightened, they can be dangerous. And I can assure you that he isn’t interested in being on display for you or anyone else.”

“He’s probably just coming off a hunt,” she whispered. “Most people think they’re nocturnal, but they’re not. They’re crepuscular.”

She sounded like one of those programs on National Geographic.

“Crepuscular,” he repeated.

“Uh-huh. It means—”

“I know what it means. They hunt at dawn and dusk. I’m just surprised
you
know it.”

That stopped her.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Her tone bordered on the incredulous. Or maybe on mockery, which was even worse. “I’ve been studying jaguars for months. I spent days hiking the Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Sanctuary in Belize. I met with the director of the Belize Zoo. She knows more about jaguars than anybody. I went inside an enclosure with her and one of her cats, but I’ve never actually encountered one in the—”

“You went into a jaguar enclosure?”

“Well, into an enclosure within the enclosure. It’s hard to explain, but—”

“Damn right, it’s hard to explain. You did all that, and you want to turn them into coats?”

Tanner had never actually seen a person’s mouth drop open before.

“I want to do what?”

“Jesus! Never mind. It’s none of my—”

“Who told you that?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Was it my father?” She slapped her hands on her hips. “He always was an ass.”

“Look, this is a pointless discussion. My job is to get you home, not judge you.”

“Liar!”

He had turned away, ostensibly to lean the rifle against the tree again, but really to end a conversation that would get them nowhere. The sound of that word,
liar
, made him face her.

“Watch what you say to me, babe.”

“Do not ‘babe’ me, Lieutenant. And do
not
try to claim you haven’t been judging me. You have. All along.” Those big blue eyes narrowed. “You think I came to San Escobal to kill cats?”

“I just told you, I’m not—”

She covered the few feet between them and slapped her hands against his chest. Hard. He had seven, eight inches on her and at least seventy pounds, but she caught him off guard and he stumbled backwards.

His leg didn’t take the misstep well and he tried not to wince.

“Hey. Take it easy.”

“I work with The FURever Fund!”

“So?”

“Do you know anything about them? Anything at all?”

She gave him another shove, but this time he was ready for it and he grabbed her elbows and steadied her.

“Who you work with has nothing to do with me.”

“How about Defenders of Wildlife? The World Wildlife Fund? The Wildlife Conservation Society?” She glared at him, her eyes full of fire. “Ever hear of any of them, Lieutenant?”

Uh-oh. A slow-dawning reality was beginning to penetrate his brain.

“Maybe.”