The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  Jelly, on the other hand, looked barely old enough to be shaving. He was also the most likely to instigate the others by ragging on them, sitting back with a smile of satisfaction if he could get something started between the others. He bore watching. What was it about these guys that made her suspicious of cheerfulness, smiling, and low-key geniality? That was just wrong. This whole situation was wrong.

  Last was Voodoo, and he looked less pleased by her presence than even Levi. He’d had nothing to say to her, hadn’t given her any tips or encouragement, hadn’t interacted with her in any way. She might as well have been invisible to him. Too bad she hadn’t been invisible to the rest of them.

  “Drink all the water you can,” Snake advised. “It’ll keep you from getting so sore.”

  “Fat chance,” she muttered. “I won’t be able to move tomorrow.”

  “You will,” Levi said. “One way or the other. When we’re on a mission, we do whatever we have to do, no matter how it hurts or how we feel.”

  Great. She took that to mean she wouldn’t get a day off to heal and work out some of the inevitable soreness.

  “Soak in hot water,” Snake continued. “Then cold water, ice if you can stand it.”

  Her horrified look told them how she felt about that, because most of them chuckled—not Levi or Voodoo; they both looked even more grim.

  She drank more water, then capped the bottle and determinedly struggled to her feet. “It’s been great, guys—” Not. “But unless you want to continue killing me after dark, I need to get back to my group and go home.”

  “Good luck with that,” Levi said, tipping up his own water bottle. “They left over an hour ago.”

  What? Jina whirled—ouch—and in horror surveyed the empty training field. Even Baxter was gone. There were still some vehicles parked to the side, seven of them, which meant they belonged to the seven team members who had been getting their jollies by tormenting her.

  “I’ll take you home,” Jelly offered.

  “Don’t trust him,” Trapper promptly said. “He drives worse than a drunk eighty-year-old. I’ll take you.”

  Snake snorted. “Forget that. You’d take her home via New York and think it was funny. I can drop her off.”

  “I’ll do it,” Levi said, getting to his feet. His deep voice cut through the chuckles, stopping the discussion in its tracks. “I need to brief her on some things anyway.”

  That was that. There were no more offers, no joking. The boss had spoken, and while they didn’t hesitate to involve him in their rough joking around, when it came to GO-Team business, he was undisputed. “Let’s go,” he said, striding across the uneven ground to where the vehicles were parked. Resigned, Jina trudged in his wake.

  There were two types of vehicles, she noticed: three sports cars, and four four-wheel drive pickup trucks. She was hoping for one of the sports cars, figuring she could simply drop into the seat, but of course her luck wasn’t going to turn on a day that had been sucky from start to finish. He went straight to the truck that looked as if Darth Vader should be driving it. It was black, but not the shiny black of a normal paint. Instead it was matte, no shine to it. In fact, there was no shine anywhere on the truck, not an inch of chrome, not on the wheels, not on the rearview mirror or side mirrors, not even the door handles.

  “How do you find it in the dark?” she asked. “Tie a balloon to it?”

  “I’m good at finding things in the dark.” He didn’t crack a smile. “The doors are unlocked, get in.”

  Get in. Yeah, uh-huh. Already knowing what she would face, she opened the passenger door and stared inside. The floorboard was at least a foot higher than that of a normal truck, but on a normal day she’d have hoisted herself inside without much trouble. This, however, wasn’t a normal day. Every muscle in her body was quivering with fatigue, to the point that walking was an effort. And he didn’t even have running boards. The truck was as stripped down and no-frills as he was.

  He slid behind the wheel and sat there, watching her expressionlessly.

  Was this some kind of test? Was he expecting her to ask for help? Say she couldn’t get in his freaking Vadermobile?

  She started to do just that. Maybe she’d wash out; maybe all that was needed was for the team leader to nix her as an addition to his team. MacNamara had said that if any of them couldn’t handle the physical demands, they wouldn’t be fired. If not getting into Levi’s truck would also get her out of this physical torture, wouldn’t she be smart to jump at the chance?

  Except she couldn’t. Giving up wasn’t in her. No matter how tempting it was to take the easy way out, she had to give her best effort or know she’d been a quitter.

  Her best meant she mumbled a grumpy, “They must have been out of tanks when you went car shopping, so you settled for this,” as she gripped the armrest with her right hand and stretched to grab the sissy handle. She strained, lifting one foot, her arms trembling as she tried to pull herself up far enough that she could get one foot on the edge of the floorboard. Didn’t happen. Her biceps gave up the effort and with a grunt she dropped back to the ground.

  Darth Vader didn’t make a sound, just waited, his soulless dark gaze on her.

  She glanced over her shoulder. All six of the others were standing shoulder to shoulder, watching. Even if they offered help, she couldn’t accept, not that it mattered, because none of them looked as if they had any intention of offering. They weren’t her friends. She had to remember that. She was here because she’d been more or less forced on them; she suspected straws had been drawn, and Levi had gotten the short one.

  Short one. Hah! She cracked herself up.

  By God, she’d get in that truck if she had to stick a knife in all the tires and bring it down to her level. She enjoyed that mental image enough that she managed to put some extra effort into her next lift and heave—for all the good it did, because she still couldn’t manage to get her foot quite high enough.

  One toe, she thought grimly; she needed just one toe. She didn’t need her whole foot on the sill. She looked around, searching for a block, a bucket, a . . . rock, about as big as her fist, right beside the front tire as if God had placed it there to see if she’d yield to the temptation to throw it at her tormenters.

  “Hold on,” she said, stretching her leg under the door toward the tire and using her foot to drag the rock toward her.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “There’s a rock here. I need it.”

  “Don’t throw—”

  “I’m going to stand on it,” she said tersely. “Don’t be a moron.” Oops. She probably shouldn’t have called the boss a moron. “Sorry,” she tacked on, while thinking, Not sorry.

  He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, waiting.

  Okay, this was it. If the rock didn’t work, she doubted he’d hang around while she scouted for something else to stand on. She could bum a ride with one of the others, but damn it, this was a test. She might fail, but it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. She put her left foot on the rock and lifted herself a couple of precious inches. Gripping her handholds again, she mentally yelled at her quivering muscles to get their act together for just a few freaking seconds, bent her knee, and launched—well, kind of launched—herself upward at the same time as she pulled up for all she was worth.

  Her left arm gave up the effort, the weakling, but her right arm hung in there. She twisted, swung her right leg, and by God got her foot high enough to hang her toes on the doorsill. Her leg muscles quivered, her arm shook, and the bastard sat there watching her with that inscrutable expression as if he didn’t care whether she got in the truck or fell dead to the pavement, where he would undoubtedly run over her body as he left. She ground her teeth together, biting back her anger before she said something she might regret—though the “might” was just a faint possibility—and concentrated her puny store of remaining energy into boosting herself up using one arm and a tenuous connection with one foot.

  Okay,