Close Pursuit. Cindy Dees

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СКАЧАТЬ crazy if she stopped to think about it. And which was why Katie was trying hard not to stop and think about it. Her brothers did this kind of stuff all the time, and everything always turned out fine. How tough could it be? She’d spent most of her adult life insisting to all of them that she could do the same sorts of wild things they did. And getting laughed at for saying it or, worse, patted on the head like some kind of cute puppy. This was her chance to prove she was the real deal once and for all.

      Her confidence temporarily bolstered, she joined Alex on the steep slope above their little hideaway. She stumbled on rolling gravel, and his hand shot out to grab her elbow and steady her. As always, her pulse leaped at the contact. Surely he knew how totally hot he was. If he did, he didn’t give any hint of it as he let go of her arm and turned his attention back to hiding their tent. She gathered up an armful of scrawny, dead weeds and scattered them across the canvas surface.

      “Too much,” he said critically. “The tonal value of the tent’s green contrasts too much with the dead grass. It draws the eye to the tent.” He slid gracefully down to the edge of the tent roof and removed most of the plant material.

      “And when did you become an expert on the tonal values of tent canvas?” she asked tartly. Not that she doubted for a second that he was correct. In the few days she’d known him, he’d surprised her multiple times with the esoteric tidbits he knew. Her brother had warned her that Alex Peters was brilliant. As in off-the-charts-genius brilliant. But in her experience, intellect and common sense were two entirely separate things.

      Alex stared at Katie warily. He did that a lot—look at her as if he thought she was about to leap on him and tear his shirt off or something. Not that it hadn’t crossed her mind. He was pretty gorgeous in a dark, tortured kind of way. That combination of dark hair and light eyes was surprisingly sexy.

      He answered her question laconically, “They made me take an art class my last year as an undergrad at Harvard.”

      “How old were you then? Twelve?”

      “I didn’t start college until I was thirteen,” he replied absently, obviously already focused on something else entirely.

      Her brother had told her Alex graduated from Harvard at sixteen with a degree in mathematics. Master’s in statistics and probability from MIT at seventeen, and well into PhD work in cryptography there before the wheels had come off his life. Maddeningly, her brother hadn’t said a word about what that meant. Just that the wheels had come off.

      At thirteen, she’d been trying to convince her parents to let her wear makeup and her brothers to quit calling her Baby Butt. As she recalled, she’d developed an abiding hatred of math that year, too, compliments of pre-algebra. Thankfully, her degree in early elementary education only required basic mathematics.

      The sun slid quickly behind the looming mountains, and day became night in minutes. The temperature dropped nearly as precipitously. The two of them retreated into the tent to huddle near the propane heater.

      “You’re sure they’ll come?” she asked Alex over a pouch of freeze-dried beef stew reconstituted with water warmed on the top of the heater.

      “D.U. put the word out,” he answered. “They’ll come.”

      Doctors Unlimited was a low-profile international aid organization that sent medical personnel into the most remote and dangerous corners of the planet. Katie still didn’t know a whole lot more than that about the group, even after she’d gotten the call from her brother that it needed her help. Mike was military intelligence, although he couldn’t officially admit it. But everyone in the family knew he’d been a SEAL and probably still worked with the teams as an intel analyst.

      She’d half suspected this trip was some sort of undercover SEAL op until she’d met Alex, who no way, no how was a SEAL. It wasn’t just that he ran to the lean and elegant rather than stupidly buff. He was more...cosmopolitan...than she associated with most of the guys on the teams. He was James Bond, not Rambo.

      And then, of course, there was the whole bit about his actually delivering babies out here. She didn’t doubt SEALs could deliver babies—Lord knew, they could do just about everything else—but she couldn’t see one successfully posing as an obstetrician for weeks or months on end. Although, how Alex had gone from mathematician to physician during the black hole of time her brother wouldn’t speak of was a mystery to her.

      “This area looks completely deserted,” she announced.

      He shrugged. “You saw the same maps I did. Karshan’s a good-sized village, and it’s less than a mile up the river from us.”

      “How will word spread that we’re here? And to whom?”

      “Women gossip faster than the internet,” he murmured absently.

      She’d already lost him again. His gaze was fixed on the heavy boxes of medical equipment they’d carried up there from the Land Rover, which was hidden under a brush pile down by the river at the bottom of the narrow, steep valley. Emphasis on steep. Her legs and back were going to kill her tomorrow.

      She bloody well hoped they didn’t have to move this camp anytime soon. Their first two camps had been in caves in much more accessible locations than this mountainous crevasse. Twice Alex had woken her up with an urgent warning that the rebels were coming, and it had been relatively easy to throw their gear in the Land Rover and bug out.

      At this time of year, Zaghastan, high in a remote region of the Hindu Kush, was as barren and lifeless as the moon with vast stretches of gray granite mountains and wind-scoured valleys. She huddled deeper into her high-tech mountain climber’s coat as a burst of frigid air rustled the canvas overhead. “Feels like snow,” she commented.

      “Humidity’s under ten percent. Any snow will fall as virga.”

      “And what is virga?” she asked with the long-suffering patience she’d learned working with kindergarteners.

      “Precipitation that falls from clouds but evaporates prior to reaching the ground. Although technically snow is a solid, so the correct term in this case would be sublimation and not evaporation, of course.”

      “Of course,” she echoed drily. Being with this guy was like traveling with an encyclopedia. And he had about as many emotions as one. Either that, or Alex Peters was freakishly, inhumanly self-disciplined. Either way, she felt completely inadequate in his presence. As for her, she let everything she felt and thought hang right out there for everyone to see. It was so much easier that way. No secrets. No surprises. No head games.

      Still, there was one thing she knew that he didn’t—the local language. The natives of this region spoke an ancient tribal tongue not used anywhere else on earth—except in a small community of Zaghastani expatriates living in Pittsburgh. She’d learned it during her three-year stint there with Teachers Across America, educating their children.

      It turned out she had a gift for languages. Absorbed them like a sponge. That, and the rules of hospitality in Zaghastani culture dictated that teachers be invited into parents’ homes. She’d picked up the dialect like candy. It had helped her teach the kids English.

      “Storm’s blowing in,” Alex observed.

      She huddled closer to the tiny heat source, and her knee accidentally bumped his. He drew his leg away fractionally, and her fantasies about him were dashed yet again. Clearly, he didn’t think she was in his league. Either that or he was gay.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ