Sure enough, as they ate, Damon quizzed her. Although she answered correctly, Ravyn couldn’t work up any enthusiasm. Some of the fruit and vegetables they ate, she recognized from the dinner table at the facility. A lump lodged in her throat as she remembered how Jason liked to put sugar on the pink fruit she held in her hand. That Pyle poured ketchup on cooked lanurr roots. The team had supplemented the supplies they’d brought from Earth with local plants. Their availability would play a role in the final determination whether or not to colonize the planet.
Ravyn guessed Jarved Nine would not be colonized. She doubted the Western Alliance had ever been serious about that. Not with the Old City giving testimony of alien civilization. More likely the CAT team had been sent to check out the planet for the teams the military would send. With another war on the horizon, finding alien technology increased in importance. For various reasons, neither side had invested enough resources in their militaries, but if the alliance discovered advanced weaponry and did some reverse engineering, they had the advantage without spending much money.
Even if the Alliance had been sincere, no one would be willing to come here now. Something about mass murder tended to put settlers off. She swallowed hard and clenched her hand until fruit juice started to drip from her fingers to the ground.
Desperate to get her mind off the deaths, she looked at Damon, studying him. Nothing except his size had registered until today. He wore his dark hair short. That was no surprise given his military affiliation, but he did wear it longer on top than regulations allowed. He had his eyes closed, concealing his alert gaze, but she could picture his moss green irises easily. With a little concentration she could even recall the gold flecks that made her think he had a wicked sense of humor. Someday, maybe there would even be something to laugh about again.
Unwilling to explore that maudlin thought, she moved on in her study of Captain Damon Brody. Ravyn knew it was cliché to use the word
chiseled
in relation to a person, but that description immediately came to mind when she considered his jaw. He had no stubble and she found that mildly surprising. Most men didn’t bother to have their facial hair permanently removed.
His full lips tilted up slightly at the corners. She could almost feel his mouth on hers. A shudder made her aware of just how long she’d been staring, and she quickly checked to make sure Damon wasn’t watching her watch him. His eyes remained closed and she sighed in relief. It would be too embarrassing to be caught gawking. Still, she couldn’t quite tear her gaze from his face. Even the slash of dirt across one high cheekbone added to his allure.
That smudge reminded her of where they were and she forced herself to stop ogling Damon. She looked down at the hands in her lap. Her fingers were dirty and sticky, her nails caked with dried mud. Rubbing did nothing to eliminate the grime, but she wasn’t going to ask for water to clean up. Jarved Nine was full of fresh water, and at some point, they’d run into a huge pool of it. Then she could wash her hands, her body, and she grimaced, her clothes. It was alarming in a way to have nothing but the clothes on your back and what you carried in your pockets. To know she couldn’t run to the storeroom to get what she needed.
Ravyn fought back the rising panic.
Why did she do that to herself? Didn’t she have enough to worry about without letting her imagination scare her?
“Are you okay?”
Damon’s voice cut into her thoughts and she took a deep breath, clearing her mind before she dared to look up. “I’m okay,” she told him and even managed to sound convincing. She couldn’t let him know of her cowardice.
“We need to get going.”
Ravyn shoved herself to her feet. She couldn’t move as gracefully as Damon, but she didn’t hurt right now either.
They started walking and she was grateful not to be leading the way. Her sense of direction had deserted her. Damon, however, strode with the assurance of someone who knew his precise location.
They walked through the mercifully brief afternoon thundershowers and they kept walking until twilight. When Damon finally called a halt for the night Ravyn let out a silent sigh of relief. She was tired. Bone tired. She wanted nothing more than to collapse on the ground as she had the night before, but refused to allow herself the indulgence. No way could she continue to allow Damon to shoulder the entire burden.
With care for her aching muscles, Ravyn slipped the vest from her body and let it slide to the ground. She felt cooler, lighter without that extra weight covering her torso. Her pants remained damp from the rain and she plucked the material away from her right thigh with a grimace. When she roused herself from her discomfort Ravyn noticed that Damon had started setting the perimeter monitors again. She watched him for a moment but figured her inexperience would be a detriment to their security. There was something she could do, though.
“Damon, I’m going to hunt us up some dinner.”
He straightened in a hurry and scowled at her. For a minute, she felt sure he’d tell her to stay put. Then he seemed to reconsider and said, “Just make sure you stay close.”
“I will,” Ravyn promised.
At first she tried to stay within sight of him, but she couldn’t find anything edible. She paused and decided remaining within hearing distance would comply with his orders. But as soon as she could no longer see Damon, she felt the panic begin to rise. Her heart pounded; her breathing became fast and shallow, her vision blurred. Ravyn stopped and forced herself to take deep breaths. Nothing indicated danger nearby so why did she react this way?
The answer came with a suddenness that almost jolted her. The last time she had been separated from the others, everyone else had died. When Damon had become separated from his men, they had died. Now she was separated from Damon.
“Okay, Ravyn,” she whispered to herself, “get the food collected. The longer you dawdle, the greater the risk.”
After taking a few more deep breaths, she looked around. This time her vision cleared enough to spot the purple fruit of the kahloo tree. Not only edible, but delicious. But the thought of moving twenty meters farther from camp paralyzed her.
It would take a while for the adrenaline to quit flowing, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t function through the fear.
You did what you had to do.
Ravyn knew that. How many times had she heard someone in her family say those very words? She had to get to the kahloo tree. Even though her legs shook, she took the first step. By the time she reached the tree, her entire body trembled. Ravyn wanted to wrap her arms around the trunk and sink to the ground until the spasms passed, but she knew that wasn’t an option. Damon would come after her before too much longer and she didn’t want him to see her lost in terror.
Wiping sweat born of fear from her brow, Ravyn reached up for the nearest kahloo fruit. She had to blink several times to clear her eyes enough to see it was undamaged by insects or animals. She had nothing to carry the fruit back to camp with so Ravyn untucked her shirt, and holding on to the tail with one hand, loaded their dinner in the concave depression the material made. When there was no more room, she turned to go back.
She froze. She didn’t know which direction to head.
The panic bubbled up again, but she beat it back. People got into trouble by giving in to fear. She knew she wasn’t far from camp and if she didn’t return, Damon would look for her. Ravyn calmed herself and listened intently. The captain moved quietly at all times, but he wasn’t completely soundless. She hoped to hear some rustle, some clue as to his direction. The idea of having to be rescued mere meters from where they were spending the night was too humiliating to contemplate.
Alex would rip her up one side and down the other for being so careless. She knew Damon wouldn’t be so harsh with her. He didn’t realize she knew any more than what the CAT teams were taught, but he wouldn’t let her go off alone again. And he would begin to view her not only as incapable of helping, but as a liability.
The idea of being regarded as an even bigger burden than she already was allowed Ravyn to push aside the hysteria and think. The ground, while not wet, wasn’t all that dry either. There should be some kind of sign that she passed through. It only took a minute or two of studying the area around her before she spotted a slight impression from her boot. The relief she felt nearly overwhelmed her, but she ignored that too. Sometimes she had to look quite far before she spotted a footprint or a crushed plant, but she always managed to find some sign of which direction to take.
Ravyn was so intent on searching for the next marker, she almost didn’t realize when she was within sight of Damon again. Almost. It was as if a sixth sense told her he was near. She could feel the tingling on the back of her neck, and when she looked over, there he was. He glanced behind him at the same time and their eyes met. “I’m almost done,” he said. “Step carefully.”
Ravyn nodded, but was afraid to say a word. She wasn’t sure her voice wouldn’t give her away. Even if it was only a slight wobble, Damon would pick up on it and question her. No way was she going to admit how helpless she had felt.
It took him only minutes to finish the job, but in that time, she managed to compose herself. He sat beside her, picked up one of the pieces of fruit she had collected and sliced it in half with his knife. He handed one section to her and took the other for himself. Ravyn accepted the juicy purple fruit without hesitation, but the dirt on her hands made her want to cringe. She knew better than to ask for water to wash up though. Water might be plentiful on Jarved Nine, but they weren’t camped next to it now and there was no point wasting their drinking supply.
“Damon,” she said, after finishing her third half of kahloo fruit, “I need a bath. I know we’re not exactly on a pleasure trip, but what are the chances of cleaning up?” Despite it being more dark than light at this time of the evening, Ravyn didn’t miss the brief glitter of heat in his eyes. He tamped it down almost immediately, and they both ignored it.
“We need to refill the canteens tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll be able to wash your face and hands then, but I don’t want to take the time for a full-scale bath. Not until we’re farther away from the facility.”
Ravyn nodded. “Okay. I wish I had clean clothes though.”
He smirked, but said neutrally enough. “I do too.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
Narrowing her eyes, Ravyn scowled at him, but he remained quiet. Out of the blue, a conversation she’d had with Alex when she’d been thirteen came to mind. She’d demanded to know why women weren’t in Spec Ops and Alex had told her because they’d always want baths and clean clothes. Her head snapped up.
“Leave it to a woman to want to be clean in the jungle,” she said to him. They weren’t exactly in the jungle, but the sentiment was the same. If that wasn’t what he was thinking word for word, she bet it was damn close.
“What?”
“That’s what you find so funny, isn’t it?”
Damon shrugged, but Ravyn knew she had her answer.
“Tell me, is this attitude trained into you Spec Ops types or do they recruit men who already have Neanderthal mindsets?”
“Ravyn, I know you’re scared and want to release some of the tension, but I’m not going to argue with you.”
“I hate that reasonable tone,” she groused, but without much heat. She loathed that he had discovered her motives before she had realized them herself.
“Do you want more?” he asked, gesturing with the knife to the fruit.
“No, I’m full.” It was an effort to keep the sulkiness out of her voice.
“Then go to sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
The thought of sitting up to spite him rolled through her head, but Ravyn was smart enough to know the only person she would hurt would be herself. And she was tired. Tired to her soul, tired in a way she could never remember being tired.
Damon had arranged two piles of leaves a long arm’s length apart. Insulation, she realized, from the damp ground. Picking one, she lay down, closed her eyes and tried to find a comfortable position. She could feel Damon’s gaze on her for a moment, felt when he shifted it away. Closing him out of her mind, Ravyn pictured clear water and clean clothes.
She let her thoughts drift into the blackness of sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ravyn stood in the sub-basement, staring at her equipment. There was a problem. She turned, looking for her tools, but they weren’t there. Brow furrowed in thought, she shifted to study the comm base system again and gasped. It was smashed. What was going on here? Even with tools, Ravyn realized she couldn’t fix this. She wondered if Damon knew what was going on. Her frown deepened as she realized he wasn’t nearby. She didn’t want to leave the room, but she did anyway. She had to find him.
She was on the stairs to the main level when fear hit her. The urge to retreat was strong, but there was nothing except an endless void behind her. She couldn’t stay in that nothingness. It would consume her. Ravyn didn’t wait for the door to slide completely open. As soon as she could fit, she squeezed through.
A deep sense of foreboding weighed her down. She could see nothing but shadowy shapes in the meager light, hear nothing but the blood pounding in her veins and her rapid breathing. Terror squeezed every cell in her body. She needed Damon.
The evil felt closer, and like the coward she knew herself to be, she ran from it. The dark left her disoriented and she slowed down, stopped. Indecision rose, adding to the wild-eyed terror. At she stood, torn about what to do, a sinister laugh echoed through the building.
Glancing over her shoulder, she broke into a trot, running until she reached the common room. She expected to find help.
But she didn’t. It was as eerily empty as the rest of the building. Ravyn stumbled, losing her balance, and fell before she could catch herself. She didn’t know why anyone was sleeping on the floor, but she rolled off, prepared to apologize.