Radclyffe - Oath of Honor
abandoned. The stab of loneliness was as frightening as it was
unexpected.
“You okay?” Cord said softly.
“What?” Evyn focused on Cord, read her concern. “Yeah. You
weren’t kidding about riptides. Freaking strong, and freaking cold.”
“The weather’s changing fast. We’re in for a blow. Maritime
reports say we’re looking at snow up and down the coast.”
“The water sure felt like it dropped twenty degrees.”
“In some parts of the current, it probably had—cold water pulled
up to the surface by changes in the wind and air pressure.” Cord
grimaced. “I’m really sorry I didn’t call off the exercise earlier.”
“Couldn’t be anticipated—or helped,” Evyn said, listening for
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the distant sound of the shower running. She really wanted to go back
and check on Wes. She wasn’t convinced Wes was as steady as she
claimed. When she’d finally located her, the powerful current had been
pulling Wes hard and fast out to sea. Wes had been spinning, sinking,
and she hadn’t been struggling. For a sickening, heart-stopping second,
she’d thought she was too late. She couldn’t remember ever being so
terrified.
“You want me to get your gear?” Cord asked. “You’re
shivering.”
“No.” Evyn ignored the chill spreading along her bones. “As soon
as I check with Gary, I’ll shower.”
Cord nodded. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Thanks, Cord.” Evyn turned away, pretending she hadn’t seen
the questions, or the concern, in Cord’s eyes. They’d gotten to be
friends over the years since she’d first met Cord during her water-
rescue certification. Back then, there’d been a tiny spark of interest, but
time and distance had made friendship more feasible, and she was glad
to have avoided the awkwardness that would have cropped up when
they had to work together. Besides, a friendship with no complications
was worth a lot more than a hot and heavy—and short-lived—affair.
That’s exactly what she should be looking for with Wes—a sound
professional friendship, but she couldn’t seem to get her head around
that. When she’d seen Wes disappear into the water, the only thing
she’d thought about was getting her to safety. She hadn’t thought
about the mission or protocol or the fact that they were in the middle
of an exercise to rescue the president. None of that had mattered, and
that was a big problem.
As if reading her thoughts, Gary walked up, set two gear bags
beside her, and said, “Stop beating yourself up. What happened out
there was an accident. You okay?”
“I’m okay.” Evyn leaned against the wall inside the entrance to
the rescue station. “Listen, you should get out of here if you’re going to
catch the flight home.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to be here a while. I need to check Wes over, and she
needs to at least get some sleep before she flies. I’ll rebook us on a flight
out in the morning.”
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“You want me to stay?”
“You don’t need to. Your wife will be happy if you make it home
tonight, and you’ll score with her for the next time you can’t get
home.”
Gary smiled. “Damn sensitive of you…and I appreciate it.” He
paused. “You did right out there, Evyn—start to finish. Stop second-
guessing yourself.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Gary. I wasn’t thinking about
anything at all—I just reacted. If I’d waited just a minute, she might
have come right back up to the surface, Cord would’ve thrown her a
lifeline, and we could’ve hauled her in. Then you and I could have
gotten the president into the chopper, just the way it reads in the
rulebook. Instead, I went over the side without a thought to POTUS.”
“Jesus, Evyn, it was a training exercise and we had a team member
overboard. I would’ve gone after her myself if you hadn’t already done
it.” “Would you? That’s not the protocol and you know it. Our
responsibility is first to the president, and then to the team. We took
Wes through the same scenario with the shooting sim, expecting her to
leave wounded agents on the ground.”
“Oh, come on.” Gary snorted. “Sure, there was an element of
uncertainty during that sim, but she knew somewhere in her mind those
agents weren’t really in danger of bleeding to death. That makes it a
whole lot easier than having someone get pulled into a riptide.”
“Maybe,” Evyn said, appreciating his efforts to make her feel
better but not buying the excuse. She’d broken protocol—instinctively
and against all her training.
“I’m telling you,” Gary said, “I would’ve done exactly what you
did.”“I didn’t do it consciously, Gary. I didn’t even register we were
in the middle of a training exercise. My instincts are supposed to be
different than that.”
“You know what—we can hash this all out when we debrief. Right
now you’re standing there blue as a Smurf, shivering all over. You need
to get in the shower. You can beat yourself up back in DC tomorrow.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Evyn said. Taking her anger at herself out on
Gary wasn’t fair. Not his fault she’d abandoned her training—it was
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Wes’s. Every time Wes Masters figured into anything, she totally went
off the rails.
“Forget it—it’s been a hell of a day.” Gary thumped her shoulder.
“Go shower, will you?”
“Yeah.” Evyn grabbed her go bag and Wes’s, and pushed off the
wall. “You better get started for the airport or you’re not going to make
it. Storm coming.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll get us checked into a hotel, call Tom, and bring him up
to speed.”
“Okay. But I want to see you when you get back to DC before we
debrief on this mission.”
“Why?”
“So I can make sure you don’t fall on your sword when it’s not
necessary.”
Evyn laughed. “Deal.”
She waved Gary toward the door and headed down the hall. She
wouldn’t fall on her sword, but she needed to get herself back on track.
She needed to do the job and forget about Wes going into the water,
forget about the panic that had hit her hard and filled her with terror
when she thought she’d lost her.
v
The locker room was unisex and small—a ten-by-ten-foot room
with three narrow gray lockers against one wall, a few open shelves for
gear and supplies above a bench opposite the lockers, a tiny closet with
a toilet in the corner, and another slightly bigger closet with a doorless
wooden shower stall. The water was still running in the shower when
Evyn walked in, and the single horizontal foot-high window above the
lockers was frosted with steam. She shed the canvas pants and hooded
sweatshirt she’d pulled on out on the patrol boat, dropped them next to
the bench, and grabbed a couple of white terry cloth towels from the
shelf. By the thinness of the material, they’d been washed a lot of times,
but they were clean and dry, and that was all she needed. The shower in
the other room turned off.
“Need a towel?” she called.
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“I got one, thanks,” Wes called back.
Evyn wrapped a towel around her torso and waited for Wes to
leave the shower. The already small room shrank further when Wes
walked in, her wheat-gold hair bronzed by the water, hugging her scalp
and fingering along her neck. Sparkling droplets beaded on her chest
and rained in thin rivulets over the muscles of her upper abdomen. Her
skin was goose bumped.
Evyn unfolded a towel and held it out. “You’re cold. Cover your
shoulders. You’ve got a pretty good bruise going there.”
“Thanks. Looks worse than it feels.” Wes rubbed her hair and
draped the towel around her neck. “There’s still plenty of hot water.”
“Good, I’m ready for it. Your bag is over there.” Evyn gestured
to the bags she’d left at the end of the row of lockers. “I’ll be out in a
second.”
She edged past Wes, a foot of space between them. Despite the
lingering cold that had taken up permanent residence in her bones, she
was anything but numb. Being close to Wes charged her muscles and
flooded her blood with heat and expectation. She tugged off the towel,
draped it over the side of the shower stall, and stepped inside, twisting
the hot tap all the way open. She added a little cold but kept the water as
close to steaming as she could stand, immersing her head, turning her
face into the spray, desperately hoping to purge the image of Wes’s body
outlined by the thin cotton towel. Strong shoulders, sculpted arms, the
swell of firm breasts, the stretch of abdomen and slight flare of thighs.
She shuddered and braced her arms against the smooth tile wall. She let
her head hang down while the heat beat against her neck and shoulders.
She stayed there until the water started to cool and then twisted the
taps closed. Briskly, she toweled her hair dry, finger-combed it, and
wrapped the last dry towel around her chest. She strode back into the
locker room, not looking in Wes’s direction, and quickly pulled on dry
jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. After donning thick wool socks and
kicking into her boots, she turned to Wes, who had stretched out on the
bench with an arm over her eyes. She might have been asleep.
Evyn smiled to herself. Wes was like every other first responder
she’d ever known—able to sleep anywhere, anytime, under any
conditions. She eased her emergency kit out of her go bag and crouched
next to the bench. “You asleep?”
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“No,” Wes said quietly. “Just enjoying being warm.”
“I know what you mean.” Evyn pulled out a blood-pressure cuff
and a stethoscope. “I want to check your BP.”
Wes moved to unbutton her cuff, and Evyn brushed her hand
aside. “I’ve got it.”
She unbuttoned Wes’s cuff and folded the sleeve up to her mid-
upper arm. Wes’s skin was lightly tanned, soft and smooth, the muscles
beneath firm and finely etched. She didn’t look at Wes’s face as she
wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around her biceps and checked her
pressure. “Ninety over sixty. Is that usual for you?”
“A little low,” Wes said, “but nothing worrisome.”
“Uh-huh.” Evyn wasn’t about to argue, but she wasn’t going to
let Wes self-diagnose, either. She checked her pulse. Sixty, slow and
steady, full and strong. Wes didn’t just look to be in good shape, she
was. “Do you run?”
“I row.”
“It shows.” Evyn pulled out a digital thermometer. “Put this under
your tongue.”
Wes moved her arm from over her eyes and turned her head to
look at Evyn. Her eyebrows rose slightly as she eyed the thermometer.
“I’m okay.”
Fatigue shadowed her eyes, darkening the green to nearly black.
Her lips were pale. She looked exhausted.
“Your vital signs are good, but you need fuel and rest.” Evyn
wagged the thermometer. “Under your tongue.”
Wes grinned wryly and opened her mouth.
Evyn slid the thermometer in, and Wes slowly closed her lips
around it. Her eyes held Evyn’s, and Evyn felt heat rush to her face. Her
thighs suddenly trembled, and she dropped onto her knees to steady
herself. Hell, she couldn’t even do something as simple as take Wes’s
temperature without starting to lose it. Well. She might be able to keep
her cool if she didn’t look at Wes’s mouth and imagine those moist,
sensuous lips closing around her. Wes put every one of her fantasies
to shame—and scared the hell out of her. She swallowed hard and
wondered if Wes could hear the tightness in her throat. Her heart nearly
froze when Wes’s hand moved toward her face.
Evyn stilled, feeling a little bit like a rabbit paralyzed at the sight
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of a predator drawing near. Wes’s fingers grazed her cheek, slid down
to her neck, and Evyn’s breath caught in her throat.
“You’ve got a bruise,” Wes murmured.
Evyn slipped the thermometer from between Wes’s lips and
pretended to stare at it. “Ninety-six. You’re too cold.”
“And your pulse is racing.” Wes’s fingertips rested over Evyn’s
carotid. “I bet if we took your blood pressure, it would be all over the
place. You need some rest too, Agent Daniels.”
Evyn wanted to move away from Wes’s touch. And she wanted
more of it. She wanted the fire streaming from Wes’s fingertips to
scorch through her, burning away fear and uncertainty and caution. She
wanted to explode. Her stomach trembled. She licked her suddenly dry
lips and eased away. “We both need a meal. Sit up, I want to check your
pressure while you’re upright. I’m not letting you walk out of here and
have you fall down halfway to the vehicle.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Wes said quietly, “but I’m not a
squid, you know.”
Evyn laughed. “I know. But I bet it’s been a long time since you’ve
had that kind of dunking.”
Sighing, Wes pushed upright. “True.” She closed her eyes. “And I
do have a little orthostatic hypotension.”
Instantly, Evyn forgot about everything except making sure Wes
was stable. She took her pressure again. “Seventy over fifty. You’re a
little dizzy, aren’t you?”
“Just a little.”
“Okay.” Evyn rose briskly. “We’re spending the night in Kitty
Hawk. You’re going to get some hot food into you and twelve hours’
sleep.”
Wes frowned. “I can sleep in DC. The trip back isn’t that long.”
“Sorry, I’m not taking a chance on you decompensating on an
airplane. Food, sleep, home tomorrow.”
“Should I ask who left you in charge?”
Wes sounded grumpy, which only proved she wasn’t at the top of
