The Woman Left Behind Read online

  Then, the next day, the weather gods smiled on her. Rain didn’t stop them from training, it just made the training more physically miserable. Oddly enough, it gave her the courage to take that first jump off the tower, because she figured the ground was muddy enough to give her some cushion. Looking up, the tower didn’t seem that high; looking down was a whole different perspective. Even in harness, knowing she was hooked to safety ropes, her stomach was knotted up. But this wasn’t much different from zip lining, and she’d done that a bunch of times. Well, the first part, the stepping off into thin air and trusting your harness, that was like zip lining; the landing and learning how to hit and roll was something new. Twice she face-planted in the mud, much to the guys’ amusement; even Voodoo laughed out loud. “So glad I can make y’all happy,” she snarled as she picked herself up the second time.

  “We’ve all done exactly the same thing,” Jelly said cheerfully. “You’re doing good.”

  The rain was still coming down when she went to the swing-landing training, but at least for that she was under a roof. The concept behind swing landing was that she was pulled from side to side, mimicking wind, and she had to learn how to guide a parachute under those conditions. Zip lining, zip lining, she chanted to herself as they ran her through the exercise again and again. She was safe; her harness was connected to ropes, she wasn’t going to fall; she might land wrong and break a bone, but that was true of zip lining, too, so she handled the swing-landing training just fine.

  That left only actually jumping. Out of a plane. From a couple of miles up. Oh shit.

  But, thank God, the rain didn’t let up, and the weather system that produced the rain added some healthy wind gusts to the mix. Levi made the call to postpone the last phase of jump training, and Jina lurched from one panic-inducing scenario to another: the taco bar at her place. The food, and the lack of space, were the least of her problems.

  A date. She needed a date. She was a woman, she knew the wives would be more friendly to her if she had a man of her own on the scene, so they’d know she wasn’t poaching on husbands. And that wasn’t all; she needed some protection so Levi—

  She shut that thought down before it could form. Some paths weren’t meant to be traveled, and some ideas were better left alone. Discretion wasn’t her strongest point, but her survival instinct was nice and healthy.

  Date, date . . . who to ask? She hadn’t had a date since—damn, she didn’t remember, but definitely not since she’d started training to join Levi’s team. She and Donnelly had never managed—Donnelly. Of course. How obvious could it be?

  Her own guys had so effectively separated her from the herd that she seldom saw any of her fellow trainees these days, outside the computer-training sessions with the drones. For all she knew, Donnelly had landed in a relationship since the last time they’d tried to get together for a movie. As soon as she was headed home, she pulled up his cell number in her contacts list.

  “Hey, Babe, what’s up?”

  Jina curled her lip at her heartily disliked nickname, but got straight to business. “Hey. Listen, are you seeing anyone now?”

  “Not really. Who has the time?”

  Amen to that. “Good. If I throw together a taco bar this weekend”—oh shit, the time had slipped away and the weekend was on top of her now—“tomorrow, actually, for my guys and their wives and girlfriends so we can get to know each other, would you be available as my date?”

  “Sure. That’s assuming neither of us breaks something between now and then.”

  “Always. Okay, that’s set.” She told him the time, gave him the address.

  “Got it. By the way, congrats.”

  “Yeah? For what?” She couldn’t think of anything she’d done that warranted congratulations.

  “Word is you’re starting jump training.”

  Just like that, the bottom dropped out of her stomach again. Why would he congratulate her on her impending death? “Oh. That. Yeah, kind of.” Kind of, in that she’d completed two-thirds of it and the only thing left was actually jumping.

  “I heard the teams don’t jump very often.”

  Lord, please, let that be true. “I hope not.”

  “It’s the last phase of training, right? After that, you’ll be mission active.”

  Jina’s eyes widened. “Really?” Mission active. No one had told her that. Maybe they thought she knew, maybe it was common knowledge among the other trainees. Same deal as before, her contact with them was limited, and when they were together, they were all so intensely focused on what they were doing then that there hadn’t been much conversation. Or maybe Levi hadn’t told her because he hoped if she didn’t know she wouldn’t have the motivation to try harder. She couldn’t stop herself from circling back to the truth that no matter how hard she tried or what she accomplished, he still didn’t now, and never would, want her on his team. The knowledge was acid in her veins.

  She couldn’t let herself dwell on it, she had to get in the right mind-set, focus on the right outcome. The jump training was do or die. This was it, the last hurdle. No pressure, right?

  “I’m not looking forward to it,” Donnelly continued, “but at least I have a couple more weeks before I reach that stage. You’re ahead of the rest of us.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah, smart-ass,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re damn good with computer games and you know it.”

  “But so are you, and all of the others, otherwise we wouldn’t have been targeted. Uh—picked.”

  He laughed. “I hear you. I signed on for a nice inside, sitting-down job, and instead I got this. But I’m never bored.”

  Who had time to be bored? “That’s for sure. Listen, thanks for bailing me out.” She started to say bye and end the call, but a detail popped into her head. “Wait. What’s your first name?” She’d have to know in order to make introductions; how would it look if she was barely acquainted with her own date?

  He snorted. “Now I know for certain why we never managed a date.”

  She supposed that was true enough. If she’d been truly interested in him, she’d have made time somehow—and she’d have found out his first name.

  “It’s Brian,” he said.

  “Bye, Brian.”

  Throwing together even an informal group thing took a lot of planning. Even with the jump hanging over her head like a sword, she’d made lists: a grocery list, a list of who she was inviting, a list of cleaning chores that needed to be done. She needed extra seating, some music, maybe a movie to stream, and something to keep the kids occupied. She put all her lists on a clipboard and carried it around with her, putting check marks beside each item as she took care of it, or each name as she asked each team member.

  They all said yes, even Voodoo, which surprised the hell out of her. He barely glanced at her as he muttered a brief, “Sure,” but it wasn’t as if she wanted to have a conversation with him, so she was okay with that. She checked off his name.

  “Are you bringing a date?”

  “Probably not.”

  Big surprise there. She wondered how hard up a woman would have to be to go out with someone that surly. Still, she wasn’t going to play favorites and not invite him. He was part of the team.

  She left Levi for last. She hated being a coward about it, but she had to gear herself up for any encounter with him. He was too everything that made her uncomfortable: too grim, too intense, too big, too . . . just too. And he made her feel insignificant, nervous, jumpy, insecure—all the things she wasn’t. No, she had to be honest with herself: he didn’t make her feel that way, it was something in herself that was susceptible to whatever it was about him. Her weakness, her problem.

  Finally she ran out of time and couldn’t put it off any longer; everything was set up, the other guys were all coming, so he’d likely already heard about it and might be wondering why she hadn’t invited him, kind of the way she felt about not being included in their social things. Uh-huh,