Page 36 of Edge of Danger

She subsided against her seat. Well, rats. That sucked. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she offered in a small voice.

“My decision. My problem.”

His stoic attitude made her frown. “You don’t have to suffer the consequences entirely alone, you know. I’m here for you.”

“What? You’ll send me brownies in jail?” he snapped. “I didn’t take you for the sort who bakes.”

She didn’t try to talk with him anymore. Chances were the data she’d collected would be extremely valuable in understanding what exactly had been going on in that lab. She’d managed to copy what looked like the lab notes for the past few months. And to have snagged actual tissue samples, in the form of those dead mice, was a major coup. But she didn’t bother trying to explain all of that to Mr. Grumpy Pants.

Ian seemed determined to anticipate the worst. Far be it from her to correct his negativity. If he wanted to heap all the responsibility on his own shoulders, so be it. Except even as she thought that, an urge to help him, to protect him from harm, startled her.

Once they crossed the border, they would be marginally safer. Marginally being the operative word.

The road passed out of the bush and onto wide-open savannah that stretched away to the edge of forever. The sky was a gigantic dome overhead, stained with oranges, roses, and lavenders as the sun slid beyond the far horizon. This continentwas so grand, it rather overwhelmed a person, sometimes. This was one of those moments when it awed her.

More importantly, this region marked their return to North Sudan. She breathed mental sigh of relief.

“God, Africa’s big,” she said in a hush. “Sometimes I forget just how big.”

The Dark Continent lived up to its name as night fell quickly. The sky faded to purple, then navy, then velvety black. She was surprised when Ian continued to leave the headlights off, however, driving only by the scant starlight starting to twinkle overhead. Must be more of his aversion to drawing attention to their presence.

“Please tell me you know this road,” she said nervously.

He looked surprised. “Oh. Yeah. I drove it all the time when I was working with…an American contractor…down on the border.”

Contractor, her foot. He’d been working with mercenaries. Probably hired to observe the informal war raging along the disputed border, or maybe to smuggle supplies and/or people one direction or the other, or maybe he’d been ordered to tip the scales in the conflict by helping one side or the other.

Guys like Ian were assigned to “watch” and “observe” but not to interfere or, heaven forbid, get caught participating in the wet work and black ops run by civilian mercenaries.

They drove for a good hour across that gigantic plain, and then the road passed into light forest interrupted by plentiful tilled fields. Ian turned on the headlights and proceeded more normally toward the north.

Abruptly, he broke the silence. “When we get back to civilization, we need to follow the money. It always comes back to that. Someone’s got to pay for the bullets, bombs and bad guys.”

“And bacteria, while we’re alliterating B’s,” she added.

One corner of his mouth turned up sardonically. He leaned toward her, and her pulse spiked like crazy in spite of her resolve to let what had happened in Khartoum stay in Khartoum. After the epic sex they’d shared, she would’ve thought she would be used to his nearness by now. But apparently not.

He reached behind her seat with his free hand and emerged with a two-liter water bottle. “It’s the only one I’ve got left, but we can share it.” If it was a peace offering, or at least a truce offering, she took it gratefully, murmuring her thanks as she lifted the bottle out of his hand.

Greedily, she guzzled her half of the bottle of tepid water and passed the rest to him. She watched, enthralled as the muscles of his throat worked with each swallow he took. There was nothing boyish about him. He was all man, muscular and in his prime.

“How old are you?” she asked.

He looked over at her startled, tossed the empty plastic bottle over his shoulder, and replied, “Thirty-four. You?”

“Twenty-five.”

“What’s a baby like you doing out in the field?”

“How old were you when you went on your first Special Ops assignment?” she demanded.

“Nineteen. But I was a SEAL and dumber than dirt. I had a team to save me from my lack of age and experience.”

She shrugged, her point made. They drove for a while more in silence, thankfully a little less tense than before. Ian followed crappy little dirt tracks generally north and east across North Sudan.

“How’d you get into this line of work?” he asked her.

“I kind of fell into it. My dad raised me and my brother by himself. He was a Marine. If you met him, you’d know how I ended up here.”

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