A couple of girls invite me to join them, but I politely shrug them off, looking instead for Miranda.
I don’t find her.
And I don’t find Moore.
Instead of staying at the bonfire, I head back through the darkness toward the building where I bunked last night.
The door is unlocked. I flip on the lights in the bedroom and find everything as I left it last night. Only the bed has been made.
Suddenly a toilet flushes down the hall. I leap up and turn out the light. Then I hear footsteps coming toward the room.
I press myself behind the door, waiting to see who is coming and whether they are a threat to me.
A figure comes into the room and pauses, sensing something is wrong.
I can’t see her in the dark, but I don’t have to. I smell her.
Miranda.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“You don’t sound happy to see me,” she says.
“You said you’d meet me at the bonfire.”
“I changed my mind. Too many people out there.”
“So you came to my room?”
“It’s not like I could call you and let you know I was stopping by,” she says. “Actually, I could have called you because you have a phone.”
I hear the teasing tone in her voice as she reminds me of what happened last night in the forest.
“What if someone saw you come in?” I say. “I’m not sure your father would be happy.”
“You shouldn’t be thinking about him right now.”
“He’s all I’m thinking about.”
“All?” she says, and she flips on the light.
She’s wearing a bath towel cinched tight above her breasts, her hair wet against her shoulders. I look down and see her legs, long and bare beneath the towel.
“Maybe not all,” I say.
She walks toward me, her face coming close to mine, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“Do you know what would happen if my father found out I was here?” she says.
“I’m guessing it would involve Sergeant Burch and a shotgun escort out of camp.”
She nods. “And you’d be lucky compared to me.”
“Well, that sounds like a good reason for you to leave.”
“To me it sounds like a good reason to stay.”
“How do you figure?” I say.
“There’s nothing more exciting than breaking the rules,” she says. “Didn’t you feel it at the water treatment plant tonight?”
She puts a hand on my chest, one finger lightly moving against my T-shirt. Her breathing is heavy. I feel my body stir, the heat building in my groin.
“Besides,” she says, “we have nothing to hide from each other. We already know each other’s secrets.”
My body tenses beneath her touch, and I step back.
“What secrets?” I say, preparing to take action against her if need be.
“I know about your phone, and you know about mine. So we’re evenly matched. Did you ever learn about the Cold War doctrine called MAD? Mutually assured destruction. As long as we both have the same weapon, we’re safe.”
She drops the towel and faces me. Her breasts are firm, nipples hard in the cool air of the room.
“I see you’ve got different weapons than me,” I say with a grin.
“You never got the birds-and-bees speech?”
“It’s been a while. I might need a refresher course.”
“I can help you with that,” she says. “You just need to put your arms around me.”
I step in and we kiss, a long kiss, our tongues playing against each other.
“I asked if you had a girlfriend before,” she says when we come up for air.
“Are you asking again?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she says.
“My answer hasn’t changed,” I say. “No girlfriend.”
“You hesitated when you answered. Which means there was someone, wasn’t there?”
Miranda is very perceptive. I like that about her, but it reminds me that I need to be cautious.
“There was someone.”
“Someone special?”
“Very special. And very over,” I say, wanting to change the subject. “How about you? What’s your status?”
“Single and available,” she says. “And missing my shirt.”
“I noticed that.”
I glance down and see she’s wearing tiny black lace panties.
I say, “I think your jeans might be missing, too.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. But I’m surprised you don’t have a boyfriend here.”
“It’s not like I have a lot of choices.”
“What do you mean? The camp is full of guys your age.”
“Guys so beholden to my dad that they wouldn’t dare do anything that might upset him.”
“Why do you think I’m different?”
“I know you’re different,” she says. “You’re not afraid of anything. Including my dad.”
She pulls my T-shirt over my head.
“Now we both have our shirts off,” I say.
“Isn’t that a coincidence,” she says.
Her hand runs across my chest, tracing the muscles there. She stops when she comes to the knife scar on my pec, probing the hard flesh.
“What is this?” she says.
“I got burned when I was a kid,” I say. “I barely remember it.”
“No more talking,” she says and steps in to kiss me.
“Wait,” I say, gently pushing her back.
It’s possible that sleeping with Miranda would bring us closer, thereby giving me access to Moore. It’s possible, too, that it would complicate things, creating emotion and attachment where it is unnecessary, maybe even alienating Moore.
I can’t tell Miranda any of that. But I step away from her.
“Why are you stopping?” she says.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be here tomorrow. Your father could change his mind and ask me to leave, my parents could call and—”
“We don’t know if any of us will be here,” she says, interrupting me. “Sometimes you have to take a chance.”
“Carpe diem,” I say.
“Verum est,” she says. She runs her hand softly down my cheek. “But if you did stay—”
She pauses.
“What?”
“It could be like this every night. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“You, naked every night? It would be a change of pace, I’ll say that much.”
“You’re such a guy,” she says.
I grin.
“I didn’t mean just sex,” she says. She takes my face in her hands and brings it close to hers. “I meant us every night.”
Us.
There’s something powerful about the word. I let it wash over me, then feel some relief when it passes.
The mission is everything. And I have work to do.
“What are you thinking about, Daniel?”
“I’m thinking we’d better send you back to your room before something happens.”
“Maybe I want it to happen.”
“There’s no rush,” I say.
She opens her mouth like she’s going to contradict me, then she stops herself.
“You’re right,” she says. “There’s no rush.”
She dresses quickly. I want to stop her half a dozen times, but I don’t.
When she’s done, she pecks me on the cheek and slips out the door.
It hurts to watch her go. Not in my head. Someplace else, someplace deeper.
Closer to my heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I CLOSE MY EYES FOR A WHILE AFTER THAT, BUT I DON’T SLEEP.
I lie in bed thinking about Miranda, the things she’s shared with me since I’ve come to the camp, her dreams of the future, the way she’s torn between duty to her father and the life she wants to live.
I think about it for a while, and then I let it go.