At least Cal was there, unless he'd been taken out in the first minute - and that wasn't likely. That damn ghost had a sixth sense about survival. The entire team had learned to pay acute attention to him, because time after time he would do something that looked senseless in that exact second but five seconds later had either saved his life or put him in a much stronger strategic position. If Cal jumped, the entire team jumped with him. And when it came to moving covertly from point A to point B, Creed had never seen anyone better. Cal would get the survivors rounded up, organized, and in the safest position possible; then he would come looking for the stranded and the wounded.
Neenah was taking too long. "What are you doing?" he asked sharply, barely containing his urge to follow and drag her into the kitchen.
"Changing clothes" came her equally sharp reply. His eyebrows lifted a little. The nun had a temper. For some reason, that seemed a tad kinky; he liked it. Creed knew himself well enough to realize he'd never be able to tolerate a doormat.
"Just get the clothes and bring them into the kitchen to change. Don't leave yourself vulnerable any longer than necessary."
"I can't change in front of you!"
"Neenah." He took a deep breath, managed to inject patience into his tone. "It's dark. I can't see anything. And even if I could... so what?"
"So what?"
"Yeah, so what. I plan to get you naked pretty soon, anyway."
Okay, so he had the finesse of a gorilla. If she exploded in his face, he'd know right now that he was wasting his time.
She didn't explode. Instead she went very, very quiet, as if she were even holding her breath. The pause went on so long despair began to rise in his throat. Then came the unmistakable sounds of her crawling toward him.
His heart almost seized, literally almost stopped beating.
He'd lied about not being able to see. At first, before his vision adjusted, he hadn't been able to see shit, but now he could dimly make out the shapes of doorways and windows, the darker bulk of furniture. If he could see, then she could see - so she knew exactly how much he was seeing. No detail, of course, but definitely the pale length of bare leg. She already had her shirt on, but she was dragging her jeans and shoes and coat with her. Maybe she had on underwear, maybe she didn't. He fought the urge to slide his hand over her ass to find out. He fought the even stronger urge to roll her onto her back and make a place for himself between those bare legs. If ever there'd been a bad time, this was it, but for once his libido didn't want to listen to his training.
She crawled past him into the kitchen, and in the darkness he made out the whiteness of panties in front of him, which solved the question of underwear or no underwear. He was following before he realized it, as if drawn by a magnet. Any red-blooded man would follow a woman's panty-clad ass crawling in front of him, he thought, and once again he fought the urge to pounce. Get her to safety first, pounce later.
In the kitchen, she sat on the floor and pulled on socks, then her jeans and shoes. Her shirt was light-colored, but there was no help for that now because he sure as hell wasn't sending her back to change; she'd be wearing her coat anyway.
"Flashlight?" he asked, wondering if she'd forgotten.
"I put it in my coat pocket." She pulled the flashlight out and passed it to him.
He stifled a sigh as his big hand closed around the slender tube; it wasn't much larger than a penlight. He couldn't use it until they were safe, of course, but lights this size were basically made for a single task directly in front of the holder, not for helping them safely make their way across rough ground. Still, any light at all was better than none.
"All right, let's slip out the back door and get away from here."
Teague's two-way crackled to life, a taint voice coming from the radio speaker.
"Hawk, this is Owl. Hawk, this is Owl."
Owl was Blake, manning the farthest firing position. Teague moved away from Goss and Toxtel, taking care to remain behind cover. Those people on the other side of the stream had rifles, and he hadn't forgotten it for a minute. He had the volume on the two-way turned down because noise carried at night; he sure as hell didn't want to pinpoint his position for some lucky shot. With a large outcropping of rock securely between him and the community, he thumbed the "talk" button to reply. "This is Hawk. Go ahead."
"Hawk, that guy you had Billy follow? I've sort of kept an eye on him, just in case you needed to know where he was. He went in that two-story building, third on the right - "
That was the feed store, Teague thought, pulling up his mental layout of the place. The place closed at five pm, so what was Creed doing there? Not that it mattered; he was just curious. "Yeah, what about it?"
"He stayed just a few minutes; then he came out and walked down to this first house on the right. Never came out, at least not before you started the dance. I've been pretty busy since then, but I've still tried to keep a lookout for him and I haven't seen anything move. I put a few rounds in the place, maybe I got him."
"Maybe. Thanks for the info. Keep putting rounds into those houses, and anything you see moving." Teague clipped the radio onto his belt again, then worked his way back to his position near
Goss. Going prone on the ground for the most stable firing platform, he lifted his weapon and put the scope on the house in question.
Carefully he panned the infrared scope from left to right, looking for a telltale heat signature. The house itself glowed from its interior heat, making it more difficult to differentiate body heat - more difficult, but not impossible. Blake might be optimistic that he'd gotten a round in Creed, but Teague wasn't of that opinion. Creed would have hit the floor before the shooting ever started, and immediately sought the most cover available.