As if reading her thoughts, Gary walked up, set two gear bags beside her, and said, “Stop beating yourself up. What happened out there was an accident. You okay?”

“I’m okay.” Evyn leaned against the wall inside the entrance to the rescue station. “Listen, you should get out of here if you’re going to catch the flight home.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to be here a while. I need to check Wes over, and she needs to at least get some sleep before she flies. I’ll rebook us on a flight out in the morning.”

“You want me to stay?”

“You don’t need to. Your wife will be happy if you make it home tonight, and you’ll score with her for the next time you can’t get home.”

Gary smiled. “Damn sensitive of you…and I appreciate it.” He paused. “You did right out there, Evyn—start to finish. Stop second-guessing yourself.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Gary. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all—I just reacted. If I’d waited just a minute, she might have come right back up to the surface, Cord would’ve thrown her a lifeline, and we could’ve hauled her in. Then you and I could have gotten the president into the chopper, just the way it reads in the rulebook. Instead, I went over the side without a thought to POTUS.”

“Jesus, Evyn, it was a training exercise and we had a team member overboard. I would’ve gone after her myself if you hadn’t already done it.”

“Would you? That’s not the protocol and you know it. Our responsibility is first to the president, and then to the team. We took Wes through the same scenario with the shooting sim, expecting her to leave wounded agents on the ground.”

“Oh, come on.” Gary snorted. “Sure, there was an element of uncertainty during that sim, but she knew somewhere in her mind those agents weren’t really in danger of bleeding to death. That makes it a whole lot easier than having someone get pulled into a riptide.”

“Maybe,” Evyn said, appreciating his efforts to make her feel better but not buying the excuse. She’d broken protocol—instinctively and against all her training.

“I’m telling you,” Gary said, “I would’ve done exactly what you did.”

“I didn’t do it consciously, Gary. I didn’t even register we were in the middle of a training exercise. My instincts are supposed to be different than that.”

“You know what—we can hash this all out when we debrief. Right now you’re standing there blue as a Smurf, shivering all over. You need to get in the shower. You can beat yourself up back in DC tomorrow.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Evyn said. Taking her anger at herself out on Gary wasn’t fair. Not his fault she’d abandoned her training—it was Wes’s. Every time Wes Masters figured into anything, she totally went off the rails.

“Forget it—it’s been a hell of a day.” Gary thumped her shoulder. “Go shower, will you?”

“Yeah.” Evyn grabbed her go bag and Wes’s, and pushed off the wall. “You better get started for the airport or you’re not going to make it. Storm coming.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll get us checked into a hotel, call Tom, and bring him up to speed.”

“Okay. But I want to see you when you get back to DC before we debrief on this mission.”

“Why?”

“So I can make sure you don’t fall on your sword when it’s not necessary.”

Evyn laughed. “Deal.”

She waved Gary toward the door and headed down the hall. She wouldn’t fall on her sword, but she needed to get herself back on track. She needed to do the job and forget about Wes going into the water, forget about the panic that had hit her hard and filled her with terror when she thought she’d lost her.

*

The locker room was unisex and small—a ten-by-ten-foot room with three narrow gray lockers against one wall, a few open shelves for gear and supplies above a bench opposite the lockers, a tiny closet with a toilet in the corner, and another slightly bigger closet with a doorless wooden shower stall. The water was still running in the shower when Evyn walked in, and the single horizontal foot-high window above the lockers was frosted with steam. She shed the canvas pants and hooded sweatshirt she’d pulled on out on the patrol boat, dropped them next to the bench, and grabbed a couple of white terry cloth towels from the shelf. By the thinness of the material, they’d been washed a lot of times, but they were clean and dry, and that was all she needed. The shower in the other room turned off.

“Need a towel?” she called.

“I got one, thanks,” Wes called back.

Evyn wrapped a towel around her torso and waited for Wes to leave the shower. The already small room shrank further when Wes walked in, her wheat-gold hair bronzed by the water, hugging her scalp and fingering along her neck. Sparkling droplets beaded on her chest and rained in thin rivulets over the muscles of her upper abdomen. Her skin was goose bumped.

Evyn unfolded a towel and held it out. “You’re cold. Cover your shoulders. You’ve got a pretty good bruise going there.”

“Thanks. Looks worse than it feels.” Wes rubbed her hair and draped the towel around her neck. “There’s still plenty of hot water.”

“Good, I’m ready for it. Your bag is over there.” Evyn gestured to the bags she’d left at the end of the row of lockers. “I’ll be out in a second.”

She edged past Wes, a foot of space between them. Despite the lingering cold that had taken up permanent residence in her bones, she was anything but numb. Being close to Wes charged her muscles and flooded her blood with heat and expectation. She tugged off the towel, draped it over the side of the shower stall, and stepped inside, twisting the hot tap all the way open. She added a little cold but kept the water as close to steaming as she could stand, immersing her head, turning her face into the spray, desperately hoping to purge the image of Wes’s body outlined by the thin cotton towel. Strong shoulders, sculpted arms, the swell of firm breasts, the stretch of abdomen and slight flare of thighs. She shuddered and braced her arms against the smooth tile wall. She let her head hang down while the heat beat against her neck and shoulders. She stayed there until the water started to cool and then twisted the taps closed. Briskly, she toweled her hair dry, finger-combed it, and wrapped the last dry towel around her chest. She strode back into the locker room, not looking in Wes’s direction, and quickly pulled on dry jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. After donning thick wool socks and kicking into her boots, she turned to Wes, who had stretched out on the bench with an arm over her eyes. She might have been asleep.

Evyn smiled to herself. Wes was like every other first responder she’d ever known—able to sleep anywhere, anytime, under any conditions. She eased her emergency kit out of her go bag and crouched next to the bench. “You asleep?”

“No,” Wes said quietly. “Just enjoying being warm.”

“I know what you mean.” Evyn pulled out a blood-pressure cuff and a stethoscope. “I want to check your BP.”

Wes moved to unbutton her cuff, and Evyn brushed her hand aside. “I’ve got it.”

She unbuttoned Wes’s cuff and folded the sleeve up to her mid-upper arm. Wes’s skin was lightly tanned, soft and smooth, the muscles beneath firm and finely etched. She didn’t look at Wes’s face as she wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around her biceps and checked her pressure. “Ninety over sixty. Is that usual for you?”

“A little low,” Wes said, “but nothing worrisome.”

“Uh-huh.” Evyn wasn’t about to argue, but she wasn’t going to let Wes self-diagnose, either. She checked her pulse. Sixty, slow and steady, full and strong. Wes didn’t just look to be in good shape, she was. “Do you run?”

“I row.”

“It shows.” Evyn pulled out a digital thermometer. “Put this under your tongue.”

Wes moved her arm from over her eyes and turned her head to look at Evyn. Her eyebrows rose slightly as she eyed the thermometer. “I’m okay.”

Fatigue shadowed her eyes, darkening the green to nearly black. Her lips were pale. She looked exhausted.

“Your vital signs are good, but you need fuel and rest.” Evyn wagged the thermometer. “Under your tongue.”

Wes grinned wryly and opened her mouth.

Evyn slid the thermometer in, and Wes slowly closed her lips around it. Her eyes held Evyn’s, and Evyn felt heat rush to her face. Her thighs suddenly trembled, and she dropped onto her knees to steady herself. Hell, she couldn’t even do something as simple as take Wes’s temperature without starting to lose it. Well. She might be able to keep her cool if she didn’t look at Wes’s mouth and imagine those moist, sensuous lips closing around her. Wes put every one of her fantasies to shame—and scared the hell out of her. She swallowed hard and wondered if Wes could hear the tightness in her throat. Her heart nearly froze when Wes’s hand moved toward her face.

Evyn stilled, feeling a little bit like a rabbit paralyzed at the sight of a predator drawing near. Wes’s fingers grazed her cheek, slid down to her neck, and Evyn’s breath caught in her throat.

“You’ve got a bruise,” Wes murmured.

Evyn slipped the thermometer from between Wes’s lips and pretended to stare at it. “Ninety-six. You’re too cold.”

“And your pulse is racing.” Wes’s fingertips rested over Evyn’s carotid. “I bet if we took your blood pressure, it would be all over the place. You need some rest too, Agent Daniels.”

Evyn wanted to move away from Wes’s touch. And she wanted more of it. She wanted the fire streaming from Wes’s fingertips to scorch through her, burning away fear and uncertainty and caution. She wanted to explode. Her stomach trembled. She licked her suddenly dry lips and eased away. “We both need a meal. Sit up, I want to check your pressure while you’re upright. I’m not letting you walk out of here and have you fall down halfway to the vehicle.”