Why he cared so much about impressing Bacon, he didn’t really want to examine. And it wasn’t just him—he wanted to show all of them that he could meet the challenge at hand, even if that challenge was being human cargo.
“Ninety seconds,” Wizard called out. “Haul ass.”
“Hooyah!” Briggs yelled at his team. The next obstacle involved swinging tires, which the team maneuvered around by passing Spencer over the top of the tires, high above the ground. He’d never had a fear of heights before, and he wasn’t about to start now, but still... He had to admit he was a little rattled, and not just from all the jostling around.
“You’re doing great,” one of the smaller recruits told him as he passed Spencer over to the next in line.
I’m doing nothing, Spencer thought, but he supposed that was the point. He was helping by doing nothing, staying quiet and out of the way.
“Mr. Bryant delivered, Chief,” Briggs reported as they dropped back to the ground, coming in under the time allotted. His trio of handlers gently set him upright.
Wizard came over and inspected Spencer like he genuinely was looking for out-of-place dust, checking the splint before removing it, finally saying, “Good work.” After dismissing the recruits, he said to Spencer, “Not as easy as it seems, huh?”
“No,” Spencer admitted. “It’s hard to not want to get in there and help, but I do get the point, so thank you.”
“Anytime.” Wizard jogged back to the recruits, getting the teams set with large weighted dummies, leaving Spencer to walk back over to where Bacon was standing at the edge of the course, frown on his face.
“So how was it?” Bacon asked, looking over Spencer critically, like maybe he thought Spencer would be shaken up enough to want to call off this embedding business.
“Humbling. Sucked not doing any of the work. But I’m still up for this if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You did good.” Bacon gave a sharp nod. “I gotta say, I thought you’d try to take over but you let him and his team do their jobs.”
Bacon’s attention shifted to the grinder, where the recruit teams were racing against each other. But Spencer’s attention stayed on Bacon. He was such a contradiction. Warm and joking with his friends, cold as ice with him, passionate about his job, yet guarded. Spencer was here to get the story he’d promised his editors, but he couldn’t help but wonder about the enigmatic Bacon, what his personal story was.
You’ve got a job to do, he reminded himself. He had no time for mental detours—his focus had to be on the assignment, not any personal curiosity about the cranky petty officer.
Chapter Three
“Remember. The call to go wheels up could come at any time,” Bacon reminded Bryant before watching him drive away in a nifty BMW.
Either writing paid far better than Bacon had thought or the guy came from money. Not that he needed to get curious about Bryant’s background or the ex-husband he’d mentioned or anything like that.
Bacon rolled his shoulders as he turned back from the gate. He’d seldom been happier to see the base gates close. Man, it had been a long day. And it wasn’t done yet. Friday night, with none of them sure if they’d ship out before next week, so of course everyone wanted to go get a beer.
And if Bryant thought he was getting invited out with the rest of the team... Well, that wasn’t happening. Hanging with him all day had been bad enough.
He’d warned Bryant not to get too comfortable back at his hotel room—the notice to deploy often came in the middle of the night, and the higher-ups were certainly acting like it would be soon, senior chief lecturing guys to not get wasted or make stupid decisions as they’d been dismissed.
As he walked from the gate to the barracks, he tried not think about how damn distracting Bryant was proving to be. It wasn’t just that he was hot as fuck—Bacon worked around hot people all the time. But he was nice. Like relentlessly charming, even when Bacon had been a dick to him most of the morning. He’d been a tremendously good sport about the training exercise, not at all what Bacon had expected. He’d figured Bryant would argue with the recruits, try to take charge, end up hurting himself or one of them in the process, but he’d shown remarkable restraint and trust, and Bacon had been impressed.
They’d watched the recruits do several passes through the grinder, and Bryant had asked smart, savvy questions. And therein was the problem—if Bacon wasn’t careful, he was actually going to enjoy this assignment, which was a risk. He couldn’t let his guard down around the reporter. There was too much he couldn’t share.
“Bacon! Ready to go?” Curly popped his head out of his room as Bacon passed by. “Come on, man. Get changed.”