Between Ghosts by Garrett Leigh

Author:Garrett Leigh [Leigh, Garrett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2015-12-16T23:00:00+00:00

Nat hadn’t been kidding when he said they were in for a heavy few days. Charlie-3 and Echo-4 went out every night, chasing down the cell who’d attacked the palace, and by day, they all—Connor included—pitched in with the clean-up operation.

It didn’t leave time for much else. Connor spent his nights on the roof, watching the horizon for any sign of the team’s safe return, while he tapped away on his laptop, one of his few surviving possessions from the palace raid. Everything else had been lost to the rubble, something that didn’t bother him as much as it did the rest of the team.

“We don’t go home much, mate,” Bobs had said. “So we carry what matters on our backs.”

His words had touched Connor, and got him thinking about how little he truly knew about life beyond this war for these men. Christ, he didn’t even know if Nat had a home.

You know he can fuck, though . . .

Heat stirred in Connor’s veins. He pushed it back. His encounter with Nat in what had turned out to be Uday Hussein’s disused recording studio, was a little surreal now. After, Nat had disappeared to be briefed on the follow-up action while Connor had watched eight coffins being loaded for transport. It appeared to be all in a day’s work for most souls in the palace, but he’d felt each loss of life like a punch in the gut. It seemed so pointless.

Connor shut his laptop and slid on his stomach to the edge of the roof. It was two in the morning, but he wouldn’t have guessed it from the flurry of activity below. Since the raid, the palace had been more abuzz than ever.

A helicopter roared up above. Connor tracked it until it disappeared into the inky sky, wondering if Nat was on board. The team had been cagey about their movements the last few nights, but Connor had caught a few furtive whispers of stealthy night drops deep into insurgent territory. How the team found their way back, he wasn’t sure. He just knew that he looked up at some point every morning to find Nat watching him, smirking, like he was remembering everything Connor would never forget.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re hot as fuck when you’re pissed off?”

Ha. It had been a long time since anyone had told him he was hot as fuck at all.

“Bird-watching again?”

Connor jumped and jerked around to find Nat behind him, his grin weary, but as devilish as ever. “How did you get up here without me seeing you?”

“Up the stairs, you melon.”

“The stairs? You mean I’ve been risking my neck shimmying up the wall all this time for no reason?”

Nat’s grin widened. “Nah. Getting to crawl up behind you and ogle your arse is reason enough.”

Connor matched Nat’s smile with a heartfelt one of his own. He loved this playful side of Nat, so rarely seen in the harsh reality of life in Basra. Moments like these were stolen and precious, and Connor banked every one of them in the fast-growing “Nat” part of his soul.

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