“The admiral set up an emergency extraction point,” Thomas told her. “It’s not too far from here. In the morning, I’ll go over and check, see if anyone left a message for us, and leave them one—let them know we’re alive. I fully expect to find some kind of communication—maybe even a hidden SAT phone—but if not, I’ll check in again in the afternoon. Rinse and repeat, until we connect.”
“So, we should or shouldn’t worry about rationing the food?”
Thomas didn’t laugh at the ridiculousness of her question. He nodded, which was a clue that his proclaimed fully expect to find a message wasn’t quite as full an expectation as he was pretending. That was hard to believe—that her uncle wouldn’t pull out all stops to find her, and to find her fast...?
“I say we wake up and have a modest breakfast,” Thomas told her evenly, “and in the event that I don’t find a message from Uncle Navy, we’ll revisit this discussion about rationing. Sound good?”
Tash nodded. She headed for the bedroom and the blankets, but stopped and turned back to look at him. Even though she yearned for the safe feeling that came from sleeping with his arms around her again, the way they’d ended up back in last night’s blind, there was no reason for that to happen again. No matter how cold she still felt in the depths of her soul from being kidnapped and terrified that Thomas was going to die, the pod’s constant sixty degrees took freezing to death off their lists of potential threats. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll do something stupid. I mean, really stupid. I can’t guarantee complete non-stupidity, but I promise I’ll stay out of your bed.”
She’d surprised him with her bluntness—his deep brown eyes widening before he shook his head and laughed. “You know, I think you enjoy awkward,” he said.
Tasha laughed a little. Keeping things awkward was her only current option, because her past solution—putting a solid three thousand miles between them—wasn’t possible here. The awkwardness kept her from falling into a warm, lovely fantasyland in which hope sparked. There, she’d start believing that she could have a future with this man. But Thomas King didn’t love her. Not like that. The awkwardness shoved her face in it and forced her to remember. But the idea that she enjoyed it...? Not even close.
“It sure beats being dead,” she reminded them both, then went to fetch the blankets so that Thomas could get some sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Tuesday
Tasha stood in the part of Ted’s super-secret sex-pod that Thomas called the utility room, staring at the weapons locker. Similar to the lock on the door to the outside world, this lock had a keypad for an entry code.
Thomas had told her that he’d tried the same four-digit code that had gotten them through the door, but this lock wanted six digits.
Was it possible...?
She keyed in the same code, seven two two eight, and then, because over the past year she’d come to know Ted rather well, and creating a pattern was a very Ted-like thing to do, she entered another two two.
And the door clicked open.
She was on the verge of a wild dance of triumph when she realized the locker was empty. Shit.
But wait, there was a drawer down at the bottom, and she pulled it open. Ammo. Yes! Boxes of 7mm bullets, which matched the caliber of the hunting rifle Thomas had found on the body of the man who’d been killed up at the burned out lodge.
The hunting rifle she and Thomas had had an argument about just this morning, right before he’d left to check for messages at Uncle Alan’s prearranged extraction point.
Thomas (holding out the rifle): I’m leaving this with you.
Tash: What? Why? No.
Thomas: That was neither a question nor an invitation to debate.
Tash: How can you so seriously stand there, pretending to not know me?
Thomas: Natasha.
Tash: Ooh, you three-syllabled me. I’m in trouble now. But forget it, Lieutenant (she three-syllabled him back), because I know that you know that your military-officer-voice doesn’t even remotely scare me.
And thus, a debate had ensued, reviewing both the fact that she would be behind two (2) securely locked doors, and the fact that said rifle in question had only two (2) bullets to use, should the need to fire it arise. If any baddies—Ear Flaps or Onion Breath or Boots or even the traitorous SUV driver—managed to breach the entrance to this