Out of Control (33 page)
Plenty of people around the world ate bugs and insects for protein. As a SEAL, Ken had eaten more than his share in the past. Some people enjoyed what he thought of as the clam-and-oyster effect—eating something that was still alive. He personally preferred not to eat things that wiggled, particularly if, like tonight, he wasn’t in a hurry to get moving again.
He’d found a fine collection of edibles under a fallen tree trunk—it wasn’t really enough to feed them both, but then again, he doubted Savannah would be joining him.
He popped one into his mouth. “Some of ’em have a nasty aftertaste, but this one isn’t half bad,” he told Savannah.
She just looked at him expressionlessly. It was actually pretty amazing that she managed to completely hide her revulsion and shock, especially knowing how freaked out she got by bugs.
“If you don’t eat,” Ken told her, “we’re going to have to slow down even more tomorrow.”
Savannah shook her head and laughed. It was a pissed off kind of laugh. “What’s the response you’re looking for from me here, Kenny?” she asked. “Am I supposed to faint? Or maybe start to cry?”
She picked up a particularly plump-looking slug. “I bet this tastes a lot like escargot. It could probably use some butter, but what can you do?”
She ate it. She freaking ate it. Now he was the one gaping in amazement. He managed to get his mouth shut.
“You hate bugs,” he said inanely.
“I would also hate cows if they were an inch long and tried to crawl up my pants leg,” she told him. “But that wouldn’t keep me from enjoying a nice steak.”
Ken laughed. Well, what do you know?
“When I was little,” she told him, “Uncle Alex used to take me to these exotic little ethnic restaurants in New York City, where they served God knows what. We tried it all. I was probably eating bugs years before you were, back when I was five. Then, after my mother made us move to Atlanta, he started sending me chocolate-covered grasshoppers. I didn’t particularly like those—I’m not a big fan of the crunchy ones—but I used to eat ’em—I still do—to annoy Priscilla.”
Priscilla was her mother.
She was silent for a moment, no doubt thinking about the fact that her uncle wouldn’t be sending her anything anymore.
But before he could think of anything remotely comforting to say, she shook herself out of it and pulled herself back into the here and now.
“I was thinking about the shirt thing,” she told him as she helped herself to another slug, washed it down with some coconut milk. “How about we cut these pants you’re letting me wear into shorts, use the legs to make a couple of sacks to carry the dynamite? That’ll free up your undershirt. I can wear that, and you can have this shirt back—it’s thicker and it has sleeves. It’ll keep you from getting more rope burns.”
It wasn’t a half-bad plan. Except, “I was going to dig you in here, get you settled for the night, then do some scouting. Roam around this part of the jungle. See if I can find where that boat came from, maybe snag some supplies and a few more clothes to wear.”
“Snag?” she said, her eyes widening. “You mean steal?”
Oh, Jesus.
“I’d leave money in return,” he told her, “but that could lead the bad guys with the big weapons right to this part of the jungle. I mean, imagine if you were living out here, and your extra shirt disappears and there’s a hundred dollars American in its place. Aren’t you going to talk to about it? Pretty loudly, too?”
She definitely saw his point, but she still wasn’t happy.
“Look, if it really bothers you, we can make sure we send money or food or clothes or whatever we take back to this island after we’re safe.”
“How about if you leave behind Indonesian money?” she asked.
That’s right. He’d forgotten she had a wallet full of the local currency. Still . . . “Don’t forget the thank you note with the smiley face,” he said. “We better leave one of those, too.”
She didn’t back down. “What if you steal—not snag, Kenny, steal—someone’s extra shirt, and it turns out that bad guys with big guns are after them, too? What if they need that shirt more than we do?”
She was back to calling him Kenny all the time, damn it. As if she didn’t particularly care that it annoyed him.
So he wouldn’t let it annoy him.
Except, God damn, it annoyed him.
And then, like an anvil from the sky, the last of the light vanished and darkness fell.
“Oh, my God,” Savannah breathed. “You weren’t kidding.”
“Freaky, huh?” he said. The devil in him wanted to sit absolutely still and be completely silent—let her think he was gone. See how long it took her to panic. But even he wasn’t enough of an asshole to do that to her.
“I can’t even tell which way is up.” Her voice shook.
“Are you claustrophobic?” he asked. Gee, maybe if she was, he’d have to sleep with her holding on to him, to help her ground herself. That would be too bad, wouldn’t it?
She laughed nervously. “I never thought so before, but something tells me I will be after tonight.”
He could hear her moving toward him, felt her touch his leg. She sat next to him, close enough so that she could hold onto his ankle.
He reached down and took her hand, pulled her so that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, leaning back against the trunk of a fallen tree, touching at the hips as well.
“Please,” she whispered, holding tightly to his hand, “don’t go anywhere tonight.”
Ah, crap. “Savannah, you’ve got to trust me to find my way back here. I can move around much faster without you—I’m not saying that to insult you or anything, so—”
“No,” she said, “I know it’s true. It’s just—”
“I’ll get you settled, take a short nap myself, then take a few hours and find the quickest route out of here. It’ll be a big advantage in the morning.”
She was silent, and he knew she truly didn’t want him to leave her alone—and that she probably wasn’t going to say another word about it.
“Ah, Christ,” Ken said as it started to rain again. It was the rain forest, after all. This one was less furious than the cloudbursts they’d endured throughout the day, but probably wouldn’t be over as quickly, either. Son of a bitch.
Savannah was so tense next to him, he could almost feel his own shoulders tightening in sympathy. Clearly she wasn’t looking forward to a night spent trying to sleep in mud puddles with snakes and bugs. But she didn’t say a word.
“How come you never complain about anything?” he asked. “Are you some kind of Zen master or something?”
She exhaled a laugh at that. “What’s the point of complaining? It just makes the people around you feel bad, too. Besides, if I ever feel really awful and pathetic, I just . . . think about my grandmother.”
“What, did she beat you with a big stick every time you whined?” Ken asked.
Another nervous burst of laughter. Man, she was unbelievably tense. Still, she was talking to him. That was a good sign that her head wasn’t going to explode. Yet.
“No, she was a special agent for the FBI and the OSS—she started working for them during World War Two. The Nazis thought she was one of them, but she wasn’t. She was a what-do-you-call-it. A double agent.”
No shit?
“If she had been found out,” Savannah continued, “they would have killed her—killed all of her mother’s—my great-grandmother’s—family still living in Germany. She took risks I can’t even imagine, and spent every day of her life for years looking over her shoulder. These past few days are the closest I’ve ever come to knowing what she must’ve lived through. I think about her and suddenly I don’t have too much to complain about, you know?”
Yeah, he did know. “I bitch and moan all the time.” Ken felt humbled. “You must think I’m a real jerk.”
“Yes, well, I think you’re a jerk but not because you complain all the time. I actually haven’t noticed that. Probably because your other jerkishnesses are so prominent.”
“Ha ha,” he said. “Very funny.”
“She’s still alive,” Savannah told him. “My grandmother.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, she’s in her eighties and she just wrote a book—an autobiography. Of course, it made the Times list when it first came out. She doesn’t do anything halfway.”
“That’s the book you’ve got in your bag,” he realized.
“Yeah. I’ve been carrying it around for months because I haven’t read it yet. I feel like I should, but I already know the story so well. Family legend, you know? I grew up hearing about her. And, well, nothing like inducing feelings of inadequacy. I haven’t been able to crack the book. I mean, imagine if you were Wonder Woman’s granddaughter, except you had no superpowers. Oh yeah, and you were skinny and kind of squinty, too.”
“You’re not squinty.” He knew the moment the words left his lips that it was the wrong thing to say.
“Gee, thanks, Ken.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” She was quiet for a moment. “If Alex really is dead . . .” She sat in silence for several long beats before going on. “It’s not going to kill her—sometimes I think she’s immortal—but it’s really going to hurt. I think much more than if it was my father who died. There’s a lot that’s been left unsaid between Rose—my grandmother—and Alex.”
Ken sat there in the darkness, letting her voice flow over him, kind of like the warm rain.
“I always told him that he should just invite himself to her apartment, go into her living room, and just say it. ‘Hello, Mother. I’m gay.’ Did he really think she would stop loving him? Her own son?”
“I don’t know,” Ken said. “This isn’t a problem I’ve ever had to deal with, so . . .”
“What’s your family like?” she asked.
Oh, no. No, he so didn’t want to go there.
“You said your father died a while ago, right? But your mother’s still alive?”
Shit, she had a good memory. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s still living in New Haven. You know, there’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“About the money, right?” she asked.
“Not exactly. But now that you mention it . . .”
“My father owns seventeen different companies. No, eighteen now. Everything from manufacturing plumbing supplies to high tech. I own stock in practically all of them.”
“So you’re like . . .”
“Obscenely rich?” Savannah laughed, but it wasn’t because she thought it was funny. That little disparaging laugh was, interestingly enough, the closest he’d ever heard her come to complaining. “An heiress? You bet. Like me any better now?”
“No.”
She laughed again, more genuinely this time, as she squeezed his hand. “I actually believe you.”
“Money’s just not that important to me,” Ken told her. “I mean, it’s nice to be able to pay your bills on time, but . . . if you’re not doing what you love to do, what good is it, you know?”
Savannah was silent—he could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. “But . . . this is what you love to do, right? What we’re doing right now? Sitting in the mud, getting rained on. Eating bugs? Crashing around in the jungle?” She started to laugh.
“I don’t crash,” he said, wounded. “I slink.”
She laughed even harder—just on the verge of hysterical. “Either way, you are one seriously sick man.”
Jules turned to look at her as he pulled their rental car up in front of Sam Starrett’s house.
“No,” Alyssa said. “I am not waiting in the car.”
This sucked. She had no excuse not to be here. WildCard Karmody’s friend John Nilsson was out of town on a training op, and his CO, Lt. Comdr. Tom Paoletti, was in a meeting until late this afternoon. Tom could see her at 1630, maybe a few minutes earlier, if she didn’t mind showing up and waiting. In between now and then, there was nothing to do except find and talk to Sam Starrett.
Sam and Nils and WildCard were like the Three Musketeers or maybe the Three Stooges of Team Sixteen—she wasn’t sure which exactly, although she suspected it was the latter. If anyone knew what WildCard Karmody was up to, it would be Sam. Or Nils. But Nils wasn’t around to interview. Just her luck.
Jules sighed. “Look, sweetie—”
“Don’t fucking sweetie me, Cassidy,” she snapped, then closed her eyes. “God, I’m sorry. I’m just . . .”
Jules put the car into park and turned it off. “A little tense, huh?”
“Yeah.” She looked out the window. Sam’s truck wasn’t in the drive. Instead, there was a white minivan. No way on earth would Texas-born and -raised Sam Starrett drive a minivan, let alone one that was white. “I don’t think he’s home.”
Jules nodded, opening the car door. “Let me go find out.”
Alyssa opened her door, too. “We’ll go find out.”
“Have you met her before?” Jules asked as they went up the neatly kept path. The house was tiny, but it—and the postage-stamp-sized yard—were immaculately kept.
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