“We have a room,” Cal said, stepping back, reluctantly letting Mitch out of his arms. “And I guess I can wait until we get back there.” He headed for the coffeemaker and started filling mugs while Mitch retrieved and washed the knife and finished making the sandwiches.
When everything was ready, they headed up on deck, to take food and coffee to Natalie and to sit and enjoy the fresh air. There really was something different, cleaner about the air out here. It made the air on the land seem stale. Out here you didn’t come across a sudden stench of decay when you turned a corner. Out here you could believe the world was what it had always been. Still clean, still beautiful.
In the two years Cal had wandered that terrible landscape, he’d become used to it. Now that he saw it again after having a respite from it, he understood what a foul hell he’d allowed himself to become accustomed to.
The rig and its group was where he belonged now. Him and Mitch being the only men was odd, but hell, these women had everything covered, and Cal didn’t need any other man but Mitch. He looked at Mitch, who was solemnly munching his sandwich between sips of coffee. There was some deep hurt in him that Cal had to find out. And Cal had his own secrets. He wanted to learn to trust someone enough to tell him those secrets. If anyone could be that man, it was Mitch Kennedy.
“How long until dark?” Mitch asked suddenly.
“Plenty of time,” Natalie said. “We’ll be back.”
“Right.” His frown grew deeper. Cal moved from where he was sitting to sit by Mitch, pressed close to him. He spoke right into his ear so the girls couldn’t hear.
“They’ll be fine. Bren’s got it handled. And you did great today. We got what we came for, and we’re all coming back alive and in one piece.”
Mitch glanced at him, looking a bit puzzled, but smiled. Cal knew why he was here. Because Mitch needed more than a lover. He was a leader, with all the burdens and loneliness of command. A man like that needed a companion to tell him he was doing it right, or wrong. To ease the burden and the loneliness. To be someone he could show his face to without the mask. Cal didn’t know if he was strong enough or worthy to be that for Mitch, but he intended to try.
Chapter Fourteen
The sun was low over the water as they approached the rig. Some lights showed aboard.
“Slow ahead,” Mitch ordered. Cal was steering, and he throttled back. The engine noise diminished. The three women were all on the prow of the boat, their weapons ready. Mitch raised binoculars to check things out.
“No strange boats,” he said, seeing nothing suspicious moored by the rig. “I’m going to signal.” They had a Morse lamp they’d swiped months ago while on an earlier trip to the dockyard. Bren had taught him Morse code, rapping him on the knuckles with a ruler when he got an answer wrong. She favored the older methods of education.
“Signaling back,” he said. “Using the right codes.” Of course, one of their people could be forced into using the right code if someone had her at gunpoint. Or had one of the kids at gunpoint.
“Gotta be in range of the walkies now,” Cal said. Mitch nodded and raised his.
“
Cora
calling the rig,” he said. “
Cora
calling the rig. Come in please.”
“Aren’t you supposed to say ‘over’?” Cal asked.
“You watch too many movies.
Cora
calling the rig. Do you read?”
“You’ve got a very deep voice for a girl called Cora.” Bren’s voice, a bit tinny on the walkie’s small speaker. But it made Mitch and Cal both grin with delight. Mitch had rarely been so glad to hear her.
“Bren. Everything okay?”
“Peachy,” Bren said. “You missed all the hard work, of course, off on your day trip. Have fun?”
“Yes, we met lots of interesting new friends and shot them.” He was light-headed with relief and couldn’t help making ridiculous jokes. She hadn’t used any of the duress codes that only a few people aboard knew. Mitch could dare to believe that things were okay. “We’re two minutes away. Get the coffee on.”
He broke the connection. Cal grinned at him and said, “Welcome home.”
Thirty minutes later, they and the crates were safely on board the rig. The
Cora
had been hoisted up out of the water on the winch they used to keep it safe from attackers. Bren turned from supervising that and came over to the shore party. She hugged the girls and then Mitch, slapping him on the back.
“Nice work, big guy. The doc’s already cooing over the goodies like it’s Christmas morning.”
Mitch hugged back, a little longer than a casual backslapping welcome. All his tension was gone now that he knew everyone was safe and well. She was filthy and tired looking, though. Must have been working all day on clearing up the damage. She smiled at him as she pulled away, squeezed his hand, and then gave Cal his turn. That was a shorter hug—they were still not close friends, though glad to see each other safe.
“We’re done on the cleanup for the day,” Bren said. “Let’s get washed up and eat.” She slapped Mitch’s back again. “See you in the mess in thirty minutes?”
* * * *
Mitch and Cal took turns in their small bathroom. When Mitch came out after his shower, he found Cal, changed into fresh clothes, dragging his cot across the floor toward Mitch’s.
“What’s going on?” Mitch asked, toweling his hair dry. Cal looked at him, and Mitch was gratified by the flush and the wide eyes at the sight of Mitch with only a towel around his waist. If they had more time… Later.
“It’s silly to keep going back and forth,” Cal said. “I’m putting the cots together. That okay with you?”
So they would be sleeping together. Not just having sex for comfort and relief, they’d be…partners. Lovers? What had brought this on with Cal? Up until now, he’d seemed to want to keep casual, be fuck buddies. Maybe Mitch was reading too much into it. Maybe Cal was simply being practical. It made sense to tie their cots together and make themselves a double bed. It didn’t mean he was proposing marriage.
“Yes, that’s fine with me.” Mitch liked to sleep with someone beside him. In the two years since this all started he’d missed having a bed partner as much as he’d missed a sex partner.
While Mitch dressed, Cal fixed the frames of the two cots together, using plastic ties that were like the disposable handcuffs Mitch had used a few times as a cop. He’d never liked them. But they held the cots together nicely, and the combined frame was a lot less likely to tip over as long as they didn’t roll too far to one side of it.
“I’ll figure something out with the mattresses tomorrow,” Cal said. “Or we’ll just end up falling down the gap in the middle.” He finished making the cots up, frowning about the arrangements in a rather attractive way. Concentrating hard. Mitch liked to see their sleeping arrangements taken so seriously.
“All done?” Mitch asked when Cal stood at last. A shame. Watching him bending and stretching had been enjoyable.
“What I wouldn’t give for a super king with a big, thick mattress,” Cal said.
“Me too. But what’s important about a bed is who you’re sharing it with.”
Cal looked at him and smiled. “I don’t suppose you want to try it out?”
“Not now. We’re expected for dinner.” He chuckled. He made it sound like a dinner party they were going to. Well, it might well be a bit of a celebration after their success today. “Shall we go, honey?”
Cal looked startled, then grinned back at the teasing. “Sure, sweetie.”
The mood in the mess hall was lively, but Mitch sat with Cal and Bren since he had a few questions and plans to make.
“So there was no sign of Ethan?” Mitch asked.
“Nothing all day,” Bren said.
“What if he comes tonight?” Cal said.
“He won’t,” Mitch said. “If he was going to come right back, he’d either have come last night, when we were still reeling from the night before, or he’d have come today while we were away.”
“That’s pure speculation,” Cal said.
“Sounds good to me,” Bren said. “Tactically sound.”
“Bren, you were a mechanic, not a general,” Cal said. She flicked his ear, looking annoyed. “Sorry. But come on, we can’t know what his plans are.”
“I didn’t say he won’t be back,” Bren said. “Just not right away. If he had more boats, he’d have used them in the first attack. So he’s been put off for a while. But he’ll be back.”
“And we’re going to have to make another supply run,” Mitch said. “Not just an emergency one.”
“Yeah,” Bren said. “I’ve been talking to the doc. What you’ve brought her is great, but she still needs replacement equipment. And if she’s going to do any more work on the vaccine, she needs a…” Bren frowned. “I think she said fluorescent microscope? Anyway, something specialist, and for that, we’re going to have to raid a hospital or a university.”
“And that means going into a city.” Mitch grimaced. The cities were nightmares. “When?”
“No urgency,” Bren said. “We need to get this place fixed up again first. Then we’ll organize an expedition. There’s a council meeting set for tomorrow, so we’ll discuss it all then. Meanwhile, if you fine gentlemen will excuse me, I’m going to take a little walk on deck.” She drank the last of her coffee and left, stopping and collecting Inez on the way. The two of them walked out arm in arm.
Cal turned back from staring at them.
“They’re—”
“Maybe,” Mitch said. “They’re close, and they share a room. What they do in there I don’t speculate.”
“I thought she liked guys.”
“You might have noticed there’s a shortage of those around here. People make do.”
“If that’s true, shouldn’t you be situationally bisexual by now?” Cal asked. “Unless you are and you just haven’t told me yet.”
“I’m not.” Mitch smiled, rather enjoying teasing Cal a bit. “Though not for want of opportunity.”
“Oh, I’m sure the women throw themselves at you.”
“They have.” And he’d always tried to let them down gently. “As for Bren and the rest of them, I think women are generally more flexible that way.”
“Some people say that all women are bisexual,” Cal said. “Or at least a lot more of them than men.”
“Could be. You done eating?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, then. Let’s top up our coffee and go and enjoy our double bed.”
* * * *
They didn’t make the most of the bed in quite the way Cal was hoping. He sat down on it, his back up against the wall, but to his surprise Mitch lay down with his head on Cal’s legs. Okay. The night was young; there was no hurry.
“Hell of a day,” Cal said, stroking Mitch’s hair. “You need to talk?”
“You don’t want to hear me whining.”
“It’s okay,” Cal said. “Just talk.”
Mitch was silent for a long moment, then spoke quietly. “You know what the hardest thing about today was? Leaving this place unprotected.”
“It wasn’t unprotected.” Shit, this man carried the whole weight of the world on his shoulders. “Bren and the troops were here. If Ethan had come back, they’d have handed him his ass the way they did the night before. You don’t have to be here for that. You’ve trained them.”
“I just can’t stand the thought of it,” Mitch said, voice strained. “After all these months keeping them safe, that they might fall into the hands of men again.”
“Again?”
“A lot of them had been held captive by men at some point, or guys had at least tried to…to enslave them.” Cal raised an eyebrow at the word, but he didn’t dispute it. “They’d either escaped when we met them, or we had to rescue them by force. You can’t imagine how traumatized some of them were. Inez, she didn’t speak for six months. The only person she really trusts is Bren. She still flinches if I get too near her.”
“I’ve noticed that too. Poor kid.” She was young too, not even twenty by the look of her. “But she’s got Bren now.”
“You might say Bren’s got
her
,” Mitch said, smiling.
“Huh?”
“Do you know what happened with Bren and Ethan?”
“Yeah,” Cal said. “I’ve been told. He attacked her, knocked her out. Was going to rape or abduct her.”
“Inez stopped him. She caught him in the act and went for him ‘like a banshee.’ His words.”
Cal stared, finding it hard to imagine.
“She practically gouged his eyes out. It was pretty damn impressive,” Mitch said. “Since then she’s never been far from Bren.”
“And was it after that she started talking again?”
“No. It’s not that simple,” Mitch said. “It still took a long time. Even now she mostly only talks to Bren and to the doc. She’s still recovering. But she won’t go in the shelter during raids. She has to be near Bren.”
Cal remembered her being one of the non-coms handing out ammo during the raid. Did she feel safer doing that than hiding in the shelter, just because she was near Bren?
“I guess she’s tougher than she looks,” Cal said. Maybe she’d be ready to become one of the soldiers one day. “With you and Bren and everyone looking out for her, she’ll be fine. They all will.”
“The thought of not keeping them all safe… If I failed…”
“You see it as your duty, don’t you?” Cal asked. “When I asked you if you were a cop, you said, ‘I am.’ Like you still are.”
“I never resigned, and nobody ever fired me. I still have my badge. I’m still a cop. I’m
their
cop. It’s the only way I can stay sane, Cal. It’s the only thing that gives me a purpose. What I’m doing now, it’s what I’ve always done, what was always at the heart of my job—protecting women and children from men. That’s what being a cop is about.”
Cal frowned. “I don’t think I agree with that. I think your job was mostly about protecting the property of rich people from everyone else. That’s what society and law enforcement is about.”
“And you think society didn’t view women and children as a kind of property?”
Cal rubbed his eyes. “That’s a bit heavy for me.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I told you to talk.” He laid an arm across Mitch’s chest, rested a hand on his shoulder. “But it sounds like a bleak view of life. You talk as if all men are monsters. I don’t think I’m a monster.” No angel maybe, but no monster. “I’ve never raped anybody or beat anyone up. I know you aren’t a monster.”