Free Renegade with a Badge by Claire King

communications equipment?”
    Rafe didn’t spare her a look. “Nothing,” he said.
    Bobby smiled at her, though. “Satellite phones,” he explained casually. “Very expensive to replace.”
    “She knows enough,” Rafe snapped.
    Bobby shrugged. “I wasn’t the one who brought it up.”
    “Why do you need them? To communicate with your buyers?”
    Rafael grabbed her arm, led her to the edge of the clearing. His grip was unyielding, but he settled her gently onto the rock where she’d been sitting earlier. “Now is not the time for another moral lecture, princesa. Sit here and be quiet, while Bobby and I figure out how to not get all three of us killed in the next half hour.”
    Olivia put her hand on his wrist to keep him from walking away. “Why don’t you just leave? Walk out right now? I’m sure you could hitchhike down to La Paz.” She wanted to plead with him, but she knew he would only scoff at her desperation. “It’s only a couple hours south, and it’s a big enough town that Ernesto would have a hard time finding you there. Go. Get away from here.”
    He studied her hand for a moment, then looked up at her. “Why do you care whether he finds us or not?”
    Olivia gave him a dead-on stare. “I don’t care,” she said, almost truthfully. “I just want to go home, and I figure the easiest way to accomplish that is for you two to disappear.”
    “And what do we do with you?”
    “Leave me. They’ll find me eventually.”
    She let go of his wrist and eased off her sandals, as though that would settle the argument that she should be left behind. She began to weave her hair back into its customary braid, briskly and brutally detangling it with her nimble fingers.
    “We had to have left quite a trail last night,” she added.
    He looked down at her feet and flinched. He sat down next to her and, without a word, began pulling his own shoes off.
    She blinked at him. “What are you doing?”
    “My shoes are too big for you. They’ll rub a dozen more blisters into your skin if you wear them.” He yanked off his socks and shook them out. “Put these on under your sandals.”
    She stared at his socks. “You want me to wear your socks?”
    She looked horrified at the prospect. Rafe wanted desperately to hold that against her, but he wasn’t entirely sure he’d wear someone else’s damp, day-old socks willingly, either.
    “They’ll protect your feet inside your sandals,” he said briskly. He reached down to grab one of her feet, then thought better of it. He knew himself very well. As angry with her as he was, as crazy as he was beginning to think she was, he knew if he touched one sore, sad little toe, he’d be lost. He’d be blowing on her blisters and massaging her instep like a lovesick little idiot, until Cervantes walked right up and shot him in the head.
    And he’d probably die smiling.
    He tried to push the socks into her lap, but she recoiled.
    “I don’t want to wear your socks,” she insisted.
    “Just take the socks, Olivia,” Rafe said.
    She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want to.”
    Okay, now he was a little peeved. “Listen, princesa, I know you’ve probably never worn anything in your entire life not freshly laundered by half a dozen women wearing starched uniforms, but put on the damn socks or I’m going to put them on for you.”
    She set her teeth. “You know, you have the strangest idea of what my life is like. And I’m warning you about the princesa crack.”
    “You’re warning me.” Rafe bit the inside of his cheek for courage, then grabbed her left foot and began stuffing it into his sock. He tried not to linger over the small cuts, but found his thumb stroking them tenderly, anyway, as her foot disappeared into his too-big sock. “You are certainly brave for a—”
    “Don’t say it,” she snarled, and grabbed the other sock from his hand. She yanked it on her bare foot, certain she couldn’t take one more second of his gentle ministrations. The