Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I had to figure out some way to secure Tanya while I got a fire going. Eventually, I untied her wrists, got her to wrap her arms around a massive oak tree and then retied her wrists so that she was left hugging it. As I collected wood, she scowled at me.
“Wish I had a camera,” I told her. “You look like the world’s grumpiest hippy.”
“Idi na hui!” she snapped. “Bol’shoy dolboyob!”
“Oh, I’m a dolboyob, now?” I muttered, raking through the grass for twigs. She winced at my pronunciation. “Is that better or worse than a gorilla?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. I began building the fire.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she told me. “Not enough air will get under the sticks.”
“I know what I’m doin’,” I said firmly. Truth was, I didn’t. I might have grown up in the country, but my idea of cooking outdoors involves a smoke pit and a rack of ribs, not trying to build a fun-size wigwam out of sticks with my sausage fingers. I messed with it for a few minutes and then glared at my sad, lopsided pyramid. How does Cal do this? Fuck it, that’ll do.
I reached into the breast pocket of my combat shirt and slid out my cigarette case. I don’t smoke, but it’s the one thing I never leave home without. It’s a flat steel box about the size of your hand, the corners rounded off so that it’ll slip easily into a pocket. One side is carved with the Stars and Stripes. It kept my granddaddy’s smokes dry when he was trudging through swamps in Vietnam, and then it kept the sand out of my dad’s smokes when he was rolling into Iraq in a tank. When my dad died, he left it to me and when I went off to Basic Training as a wet-behind-the-ears nineteen year-old, I took it with me. I kept my Zippo lighter and some torn-up paper for kindling in it, for times like these. And...it was stupid, but the inside of the lid was just the right size for a photo, and there was even a metal lip that would hold it in place. I had this dumb ass idea that one day, I’d meet a girl: not just a casual fuck, a real, hits-you-right-in-the-chest special someone, like in the movies, and I’d put her photo in there and I’d be able to pop it open and look at it, wherever I was in the world.
I was just a kid, okay? Don’t be too hard on me.
The case had kept my Zippo and kindling bone dry and I soon had a fire going. I threw on branches and when I could feel the heat blasting my face, I gradually started peeling off my soaking clothes, wringing them out and hanging them on trees close to the fire. First my black combat shirt with the sleeves torn off. Then my boots and socks and finally my pants. It was only as the clothes came off that I realized how cold I was, and how much worse the wet clothes had been making it. I crouched next to the fire in just my jockey shorts, feeling like a caveman, and let the heat soak into my chilled skin. Damn, that felt good. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get my clothes all the way dry, but I could at least get me dry and warm, and then I had some dry clothes in a waterproof bag in my pack. I’ve been caught in downpours enough times that I never go on an op without dry clothes.
Then I glanced up and saw Tanya, still hugging the tree. She was looking right at me but, as soon as I looked up, she looked away. A shiver ran down her body, her spine arching as sinuously as a cat’s.
“Cold?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said tightly. And shivered again.
I sighed, stood up and walked over to the tree. “Come on, come get warm.”
She stared at me, her expression unreadable. “Worried about me?”
It shouldn’t have been a difficult question. I always make sure my prisoners are okay. Even when they’re a two-hundred pound gang enforcer with a shaved head and a full-face tattoo, I don’t leave them sitting in the car in an Arizona heat wave while I take a leak, or take them on a six-hour road trip without a bottle of water and a bag of chips. But for some reason, I felt my face heating. “I got enough problems without you catching pneumonia,” I growled, and untied her wrists.
She stepped back from the tree and rolled her stiff shoulders. Her breasts lifted under her soaked vest top and I couldn’t stop myself staring. When I finally dragged my eyes away, she was looking at me. “What if I run?” she asked.