Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(12)
Faith sighed with admiration before turning back to the oven. If she had a pictogram of Amy’s confidence and self-possession maybe she wouldn’t be entrenched in her current dilemma.
She opened the range door, backing off slightly to let the heat escape. Once the worst of it had dissipated, she leaned down, sticking a butter knife into a loaf of golden-brown zucchini bread. The utensil emerged with a smear of grainy, yellow-brown liquid.
As she straightened, the cuts on her shoulders and collarbone stung. It had been six days since Rawls had pulled her out from under the particle accelerator. While the cuts she’d inflicted on herself while shimmying beneath Big Ben hadn’t turned septic, as Rawls had so obviously feared, they weren’t healing quite as fast as normal. It had been the height of foolishness to refuse his ministrations during the van ride to Wolf’s Sierra Nevada home. She couldn’t afford to let the injuries become infected.
Her health was already compromised thanks to her twice-daily palmful of pills. It was the immunosuppressants’ job to prevent her body from rejecting her heart, which left her wide-open to infections. She knew better than to ignore a possible threat to her well-being. She should never have ignored Rawls’s offer to dress her wounds.
So what if the man’s mere presence brought on butterflies and goose bumps? So what if he plunged her limbic system into hyperdrive. She was a normal woman in the prime reproductive stage, with a fully functioning amygdala. Of course her hands would get all sweaty and her stomach tingly. The guy was gorgeous, after all. There was absolutely no reason to feel embarrassed about her reaction to him, or fear his awareness to said reaction.
“And you think they’ll be safer here?” Mackenzie snapped. “For Christ’s sake, use your head. We’re in a Goddamn war zone. At any moment—”
“I’m not bringing them here,” Amy interrupted with the same cool collection as before.
Faith shot a quick glance at her camp mates. The main lodge, which housed the kitchen and dining room as well as the command center, was an open-air design. One huge rectangular area separated into individual rooms by waist-high counters and the arrangement of furniture.
“Where are you taking them?” Zane cocked his head, his brilliant green eyes sharpening as he focused on Amy’s face.
There were pros and cons to the layout of the room. On the plus side, she had a front-row seat to every strategy session or informational briefing and would know the instant they located her kidnapped coworkers.
If they located her fellow scientists . . .
A wave of regret and horror seared her chest at the thought of her friends.
An image pushed into her mind, a memory—a short, wide hall, the smell of fireworks stinging the air . . . a limp body stretched across the gray-and-red linoleum . . . a rumpled, bloodstained peach skirt pushed high on plump thighs . . .
Faith shuddered, hurriedly shoving the memory aside. There was nothing she could do to help her friends. And wallowing in horrific memories served no purpose. It certainly didn’t benefit her coworkers. Or herself.
She had enough problems of her own. She needed to focus and concentrate on what she could do. What she needed to do. And right now she needed to slow her galloping heart rate and find a way to relax.
In the past, baking had provided the serenity her condition required, but being in such close proximity to the men with their loud, often argumentative voices . . . well, that wasn’t particularly calming at all. And she needed that blissful tranquility, needed the relaxation of baking.
Her donor heart had been damaged during harvest, leaving her with a bad case of ventricular tachycardia. Double-blind testing indicated that arrhythmia was often a result of stress. Baking relieved stress—at least for her. Ergo, her baking might hold the tachycardia at bay. For a while, at least. Until she could get her prescriptions filled.
“I haven’t decided where we’re going yet.” Amy turned toward Zane. “I’ll pay cash so I don’t leave a trail.”
Faith’s lips twisted. Well, at least she’d done something right after escaping the lab. She’d known better than to go home. And since the men after her could track her by her credit and debit purchases, she’d headed to the closest ATM and withdrawn her five-hundred-dollar daily limit on her debit card before bolting from the vicinity. Another ATM and a different debit card for another five hundred. She’d hit a third ATM for a cash advance on her credit card, and then another ATM for another cash advance. By the time her cards stopped working, she’d collected twenty-five hundred dollars. Enough to last her several weeks—if she remained frugal.
It was too bad all that money was sitting in the motel room, along with her medications. Assuming the desk clerk or one of the maids hadn’t absconded with her belongings. If she had a dram of Amy’s fortitude, she would have insisted that Commander Mackenzie swing by her motel and collect her meager possessions before hauling her off to the Sierra Nevadas.
Of course, back then she hadn’t been sure she could trust them—she still wasn’t sure she could trust them . . . at least not with everything. Besides, even if she had insisted they swing over to her motel to collect her belongings, those possessions would be ashes along with Wolf’s Sierra Nevada home now anyway.
Zane frowned and ran a palm over his short-cropped hair. “You could head to where my dad took my mom. It’s a secure location, manned by a team of ex-special forces turned survivalists—doomsday preppers. They’re hard-core fringe riders and conspiracy nuts, but you and the boys will be safe there.”