The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  Columbus sailed the ocean blue,

  With nothing but a compass

  And an astrolabe or two.

  She even sang it for them, though the tune wasn’t noteworthy.

  The other guys were outright laughing now, but Levi’s expression said he didn’t find either her song or her reasoning very funny. “You need a stinkin’ compass when there’s no cell service, or when you have to take the battery out of your phone so you can’t be tracked.”

  “What will I be doing that I need a compass?” That was the main point, and one that alarmed her.

  “Never can tell,” Trapper put in. “We never know where we might get sent. We all have one.”

  Okay, there was that. It just felt discordant; what she would be doing with the team was high tech, so suddenly being forced to rely on a compass to get her to wherever she was supposed to be likely meant that everything had gone to hell in a handbasket—a situation she hoped never happened. She wasn’t equipped to handle hell, whether it was in a handbasket or not.

  “You’re going to learn how to navigate by a compass,” Levi said, telling her what she’d already surmised. “Then I go into the woods, call in the coordinates, and you have to find me.”

  She looked up at him, resigned. “Oh, freakin’ joy,” she muttered. “If I don’t find you, do you stay lost?”

  “No, but you crap out of training.”

  Well, losing him had been worth a shot.

  She hadn’t used a compass in years. She opened the case and examined the one in her hand. This was a serious piece of work, not something bought from Walmart. It had 360 degrees on the rotating bezel, a declination arrow, meridian lines—the whole deal.

  “Have you ever used one before?” Levi asked, his tone resigned, as if he hoped for nothing more than total ignorance.

  “Of course. I was in Girl Scouts.” That was a lie. But her brothers had both been in Boy Scouts, and they had thought it was great fun to take her into the woods, give her the coordinates for home, then run off and leave her. At least they’d taken the time to teach her some about how to navigate by compass, though what had really saved her bacon a time or two was her own sense of direction, which was pretty damn great.

  Another of those cool looks from him. “There wasn’t anything about Girl Scouts in your file.”

  “Why would there be? I listed all my technological training, not my childhood extracurriculars.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your application.”

  Oh. He meant file. Duh. Of course all the trainees had been investigated; she should have thought of that. Rather than trying to continue bullshitting her way through the conversation, she shrugged and got down to business. “You have a map?”

  He pulled one out of the cargo pocket on his right thigh and handed it over. She examined the map; it was a detailed topographical map, with all the necessary declination and longitude/latitude markings. “Give me a refresher,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  He got on one knee, to her right, and she did likewise, resting the map on her right thigh. A good compass did more than just point toward magnetic north, which wasn’t true north anyway. With the compass and a good map, she should be able to find her way to any particular point.

  Levi gave her terse directions, leaning closer and watching sharply as she followed his instructions. He was so close that her shoulder was pressed against his rib cage. She could actually feel his heartbeat, strong and slow and steady.

  Just like that, an avalanche of information overwhelmed her senses: the smell of sweat and dirt and man; the musk of his skin mixed with gunpowder from the live-fire exercises they’d run through earlier; the heat of his body, scalding her skin more than the prickling heat of the sun. It was somehow too much, too intimate, that she could feel his heartbeat. For a second she felt dizzy from the overload, then she took a deep, quiet breath and pushed all that away so she could concentrate on what he was saying.

  He had her plot a course to something she could actually see, which was the main training course, a good half mile away. Some of what her brothers had taught her came back, and that was an easy test anyway, so she nailed it.

  “Maybe you were a Girl Scout,” he commented, narrowing his eyes as he glanced up at the sun.

  “I lied,” she said nonchalantly. “My brothers were in the Scouts, and they taught me.”

  He rubbed between his eyebrows, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Plot another one.”

  He could have skimped on the instruction, made it more difficult for her to successfully do the task, but he didn’t. Jina was still sharply aware of how much he didn’t want her there—he made that plain every day, in a hundred ways both large and small—but she couldn’t accuse him of undercutting her with inadequate training. Taking it easy on her would have been the fastest, easiest way to get rid of her, but he hadn’t taken it. She had to admit to a grudging respect for the strength of character he revealed every time he barked at her to go faster, run longer, to dig for resolve and second wind. If she crapped out of training, as he put it, the fault wouldn’t be his.

  While she was working out a new course, he and Boom had a quiet side conference, maybe deciding whether or not they’d bother looking for her if she got lost.

  He checked her results and nodded. “Okay, let’s do this. You have a time limit,” he added, glancing at the watch on his left wrist. “You have to find me in time for us to walk out before dark. If you’re slow, we’ll keep repeating the exercise until you get it right.”

  “Tonight?” she asked in horror, because the afternoon was already half over and she didn’t like the idea of running around in the woods at night. That was a good way to break something, not to mention woods equaled snakes, and in the darkness she might step on one. No way would she ever admit it to them, but she was also a little night wary. She could sleep in the dark now, but growing up she’d needed a night-light, and she’d endured endless teasing about being a scaredy-cat. She knew she’d have a flashlight, but still.

  He seemed to be reaching for patience. “No, not at night.” Then he looked thoughtful. “Not now, anyway. We might do a night exercise later.”

  She should have kept her mouth shut.

  One of the instructors drove up in a utility vehicle. Levi swung aboard, and she turned her back to him as they left. “Is there more water?” she asked the guys as she went over to the big cooler that was usually kept packed with water and ice. Normally the cooler was replenished about every hour, but according to the schedule they should be almost finished with all the PT so maybe it hadn’t been.

  There was still plenty, though; she drank another bottle while she was standing there, because the heat and humidity sucked the moisture right out of her. Some days she felt as if she couldn’t physically drink enough water. She began scrounging around for something to put the extra bottles in, and Snake tossed her a small canvas bag that smelled like six-month sweat and man funk. It also looked as if it had never been washed. She didn’t care. She’d gotten used to grungy men.

  While she was waiting for Levi’s location coordinates to come in, she sat with the compass and map and worked out some more plot courses.

  Voodoo said snidely, “Don’t forget to take a flashlight.”

  Meaning he didn’t think she could locate Levi and get back before dark. She shrugged and said, “Good idea.” If he thought he could get under her skin, he’d have to do better than that.

  As the minutes ticked past, she got more and more worried. The farther away Levi chose to be, obviously the longer it would take her to get there and for them to get out, and sunset was getting closer and closer. He wouldn’t sabotage her like that, would he?

  As soon as she had the thought, both her phone and Boom’s dinged with an incoming text: Levi’s coordinates.

  Her instinct was to hurry, but she pushed that away; being accurate was most important right now. She took the topo map and found his location, then double-checked. She studied the map, then