Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) by Sandra Marton

at thinking, how come you can’t get my name straight?”
    Hell. She had a right to be pissed off. He’d all but taken her head off, and it wasn’t her fault his damn leg was giving him trouble. Quickly, he turned away, picked up the rifle and slung it over his shoulder. Then he dug the coiled paracord out of the backpack, measured out an appropriate length and cut it off with his knife.
    “Sorry I barked at you,” he said briskly as he looped the canteens and the pot over the improvised carry strap, then hung it over his other shoulder. “But I want to get us organized before sunset.”
    “Is that as close as you can come to an apology, Lieutenant?”
    He swung toward her. “Do you ever give an inch?”
    “No,” she said, chin up, her hands on her hips. “Not if I can help it.”
    Amazing. She was bruised, battered, undoubtedly scared and hungry, and she was still ready to take on the world.
    “Okay. You want it to be an apology? It was an apology. Right now, I’m going to see if I can find us some water.”
    She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll go with you.”
    “It’ll be faster if I go alone.” The look on her face made him soften his tone. “I don’t want you to do any more walking tonight. You’ll be safe here and I’ll be back in five minutes, I promise.”
    She nodded, but she was nervous about being alone. He couldn’t blame her.
    Still, he couldn’t see taking her with him.
    She was holding up well—better, really, than he’d expected—but he’d just seen her assortment of bruises and bites. The more rest she got now, the better their chances of reaching the river ASAP tomorrow.
    The obvious choice was to leave her with a weapon, but handing over a pistol to someone who knew nothing about pistols would be incredibly dangerous.
    The knife, then. It was sharp, equally dangerous in untrained hands, but it was the preferable option.
    Quickly, he opened his belt, started to slip off the sheathed SOG-TAC…
    “Are you going to give that to me?”
    “Yes. Just keep it sheathed unless you absolutely—”
    “Leave me the pistol instead.”
    Tanner shook his head. “You don’t know the first thing about using—”
    “I know how to shoot.” She looked at the pistol on his hip, then at him. “It’s a SIG-SAUER, right?”
    He wondered if he looked as shocked as he felt.
    “One of my brothers-in-law owns a high-tech security company. His wife had some problems with a stalker a couple of years ago, and then, last winter, my brother, Matteo, and his fiancée…” Alessandra stopped in midsentence. “It’s too long a story to go into. Let’s just say that this past summer the men in our family taught all us women how to shoot.”
    She could shoot? This willowy blonde who led a life of ease knew her way around a gun? Tanner took the SIG-SAUER from its holster and handed it to her.
    “What’s the first thing you do when you get hold of a pistol you’ve never seen before?”
    She gave him a look that said he’d just insulted her intelligence. Then she slid back the magazine, popped it, checked for a chambered round, popped the magazine back in and sighted the gun, two-handed, at a distant tree. Her hands shook a little, but why wouldn’t they? The pistol damn near weighed what she did.
    “Shall I fire?”
    “No need,” he said, trying not to sound impressed.
    She lowered the pistol.
    “Satisfied that I know what I’m doing?”
    He nodded. She’d handled the thing like a pro.
    “Just be careful with it,” he said, because he had to say something.
    “I will.”
    He started towards the trees. Her voice called after him.
    “Hey. Lieutenant?”
    Sighing, he turned towards her. “Yeah?”
    “One apology deserves another, right? So, here’s mine. I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time. About the name thing, you know… It’s just that—that the relationship between the general and me is—is difficult to explain, and—and—” She paused. “Was it really your choice to come