The Exfiltrator by Garner Simmons (read after txt) 📗

us back,” he said with a reassuring glance at the girl.  “Any luck finding workers?”

“No problema.” The old man answered.  “Arrange for four men… as many days as we need starting first thing tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. Let’s go.” Unlocking the Land Rover, he helped Gorka load the boxes in back then climbed behind the wheel.  At the same time, Ella opened the passenger door and got into the front seat.  Still eating, Gorka got in back.

Corbett slipped the key into the ignition.   The Rover roared to life.  Pulling a tight U-turn, they were headed back toward the camp as Ella noticed the cut on his arm.

“You’re bleeding…” she said, staring at his arm.

“Just a scratch,” he said, ignoring his bruised ribs and the contusion on his left arm where he had deflected the pipe. “Caught it on a fence near the clinic.  Nothing serious,” he lied.  He momentarily fantasized about a hot bath and a deep massage then put them out of his mind.

“You’ll find a first aid kit in the glove box,” he said.  “There should be some alcohol and bandages.”

Opening the glove box, she located the kit and began to tend to the gash in his forearm as he continued to drive.  Ignoring the bite of the disinfectant, he attempted to focus on the road ahead as she worked quickly and efficiently cleaning and binding his wound.

“Impressive,” he said flexing his right hand.  “Good as new.”

“Nothing to it,” she smiled.  “Maybe you should be more careful.”

“Yes, mother,” he replied only to immediately regret the slightly sarcastic tone of his words.  “Sorry,” he added. “What I really meant to say was thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said dryly, forcing a smile while inwardly cringing at the thought.  Mother…?  Really?  Was that what she sounded like?  Well, next time, he could damn well take care of himself.  The last thing she wanted to be was anyone’s mother.

The road climbed into the mountains. They drove in silence for several miles.

“Sorry about what happened back there.  At the clinic, I mean. Walking in on you like that,” Ella said awkwardly at last. “I didn’t realize…”  She hesitated, uncertain how to finish the sentence.

Corbett said nothing.  In the backseat, Gorka released a long slow belch then closed his eyes.  Soon he softly began to snore.

 “We knew each other at Oxford,” he said at last. “Her brother and I were friends.”

“Really?” she said, making an effort to keep from sounding overly interested.  “Small world.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.  “Smaller than you think.”  The memory of Jon Alesander’s face momentarily flooded his mind.  Ella said nothing.

As the silence between them lengthened once more, Corbett found himself thinking of Amaia.  Accepting the unreliability of memory, he allowed his mind to retrace the history of their affair as he drove.  To love Amaia was to hate her in equal measure.  They had driven each other crazy.  Despite being acutely aware of what they were doing to each other, he had been unable to stop himself.  She had clearly been an addiction he had never been able to kick.

What had started as an infatuation at Oxford continued after she had taken a medical residency at University College Hospital, London.  He would study all week then inevitably bum a ride or borrow a car to go down to see her on weekends.  Fridays had been the cruelest.  After weekdays spent fantasizing about the smell of her hair, the touch of her skin, the curve of her breasts – their weekends would almost immediately run right off the rails.  Raw, uninhibited, sexually charged moments would abruptly disintegrate into acrimonious recriminations over some insignificant detail of their lives.  The color of her scarf.  The choice of a dessert.  A disagreement over some fictional character’s motivation in a stage play she’d taken him to.  By Saturday night they would no longer be speaking.  Sunday would begin with rapprochement and end in savage lovemaking.   A week later, the cycle would start again.

It was an unhealthy and destructive pattern that was doomed from the beginning.  And, if he were being brutally honest with himself, he had been as guilty as she had.  Seen in that light, introducing her to Tariq was possibly the sanest thing he had ever done.  So why couldn’t he simply put it behind him?

Without warning, in the distance ahead, the sound of police sirens could be heard coming fast.  Seconds later, a pair of green and white Nissan Patrol GRs bearing Guardia Civil markings flew by, their blue lights strobing.

“Police…?” Ella said.

“Must be trouble in town,” Corbett offered without elaborating.  “Good we got of there early.”  The memory of the fight near the clinic and the two men he had had to kill brought him back to the present.  Fortunately for him, given the Basque hatred of Spanish police, he knew the villagers would have little to say about what had happened today.  As for the one who got away, the same one who had tried to steal his laptop at the airport, he would have to let Reed know.

He reflexively touched the bandage on his right forearm.

“How’s it feel?” she asked.

“What…?”

“The cut.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Whatever you say.  Of course, you’d know more about that than I would.”

“About what”

“Job prospects for one-armed archeologists,” she said with a disarming smile.

Glancing at her, he shook his head and almost laughed. “Are you being sarcastic…?” he asked with a smile.

“Me…?” she answered, feigning innocence.  “What would ever make you think something like that?”  She watched his face, pleased that she had managed to jar him out of his darker mood.

“You should laugh more often,” she said.

“I’ll work on it,” he replied.  He studied her out of the corner of his eye.  There was something about her.  He wondered again if she was flirting with him.  Or was he over-reading it?  The truth was, he