Short Fuse: Elite Operators, Book 2 by Rebecca Crowley Read Free Book Online

table as he poured a glass of orange juice. “I knocked on your door but you didn’t answer.”
    “I must’ve been in the shower.” Having unbelievably inappropriate thoughts about you. “I went for a run.”
    “Then I guess you win the prize for virtue,” she teased, and he almost choked on the juice. He set the glass down and busied himself with the food, barely seeing what he heaped on the plate.
    “How far did you run?” Alex asked as he took the opposite seat.
    “Out to the northwestern corner and back.”
    The finance manager blinked. “But that’s, like, five miles each way.”
    Warren shrugged. He hadn’t meant to brag.
    Nicola looked up from her breakfast. “See anything interesting?”
    “I wanted to check out the informal settlement on the other side of the fence. I think you should have a look, too.”
    “Be careful out there,” Alex warned. “A lot of people were displaced by the fighting during the coup, and plenty of them seem to have found their way here, looking for work where there is none. We’ve had a couple of problems with theft and illegal mining. Poverty breeds desperation, and desperate people are dangerous.”
    “And it’s my job to identify and implement programs to alleviate the poverty that breeds that desperation,” she replied congenially. She turned back to him. “Was there anything that stuck out on first glance? Lots of kids, maybe, or obviously bad sanitation?”
    “Not exactly.” He hesitated, not wanting to alarm her—then decided that wasn’t giving her enough credit. She knew what she was doing. “There were two men, and they didn’t look like—”
    “Here are these lazy okes , still munching down their breakfast.” Roger burst through the door from the office wearing coveralls with Nel stitched in white thread on the left front pocket. “I’ve been in and out of that mine twice this morning and you’re still hanging around drinking coffee.”
    Alex straightened in his seat. “Actually, Warren already ran—”
    “If you two want to see this operation in action, you need to come along now,” Roger plowed ahead. “One of the load trucks needs to come up for repair and since these morons can’t even turn it on without instructions, it’ll probably take the whole afternoon to get the thing on the elevator.”
    Nicola met Warren’s eyes with the promise they’d talk later, then stood from the table. “We’re ready.”

Chapter Five
    “You’re not claustrophobic, right? No panic attacks, anxiety disorders?”
    Nicola had to smother her smirk as Warren met Roger’s patronizing tone with a cool smile.
    “I disarm bombs for a living. I think I can manage an elevator into a tunnel.”
    “We’ll see.” Roger snatched a spare folded boiler suit from the bin in the corner of the locker room and tossed it to Warren. “Not sure we have anything that’ll fit a stringy oke like you. This’ll have to do.”
    He turned to her, rheumy eyes wandering southward. She held up her gym bag. “Don’t worry, I brought my own.”
    Roger grunted his disappointment. “We only have the one changing room. Not enough female visitors to justify two. Of course, you’re welcome to use my office if you want privacy.”
    She imagined hidden cameras with motion detectors. “I’m sure Warren will be gracious enough to turn his back while I change.”
    It was supposed to be a joke, but the way Roger’s expression darkened and Warren’s ears flushed suggested she might have misjudged. The site manager huffed out of the room with a barked admonishment to meet him by the shaft entrance in ten minutes.
    She and Warren stared at each other across the single bench.
    “I can wait outside until you’re done,” he offered, those quicksilver eyes refusing to meet hers.
    “It’s fine,” she insisted more breezily than she felt. “It’ll take two minutes, and then I can help you with your safety gear. Just, you know, don’t look.”
    “I wouldn’t.” But he