The Enemy Within (Daughters of the People Series Book 3) by Lucy Varna Read Free Book Online

Drew?”
    His shoulders
relaxed as his gaze lifted and a smile tugged at his mouth. “In the Army. We
went through, ah, training together.”
    “Training.” She
took another bite, waited for him to elaborate. “What kind of training?”
    “Can’t say.” His
grin grew a fraction. “Classified.”
    “Honestly,
Bobby.”
    “You’re so fun
to tease.” He held up his hands at her impatient look. “Ok, ok. We went through
OTC together.”
    She inhaled
sharply and said in a harsh whisper, “Delta Force?”
    “Mmm. Pretty
much everything after that really is classified.”
    “But the Delta
Force, Bobby? That’s so dangerous.”
    His expression
hardened. “I enlisted for the danger, Indi.”
    No, he’d
enlisted to escape what had happened between them and the Army had taken him in
like the lost soul he’d been. A wave of guilt flooded through her, dimming her
pleasure of the day. He could’ve been killed or, worse, captured and tortured,
all because she’d been too cowardly to handle his heart properly. “I can’t
believe your mother allowed that.”
    “I was sixteen.
Didn’t give her a say in the matter.”
    “You weren’t
sixteen when you were selected for OTC.”
    “No, I was a
little older.” His grin returned, though his eyes held a dangerous glint. “And
thanks to your training, Maetyrm, I had an interesting enough skill set to
attract the right kind of attention.”
    “So you slew
them with your mad grammar skills, huh.”
    “That wasn’t the
only thing you taught, and you weren’t the only teacher I had.”
    Her appetite
fled abruptly and she pushed her basket away. Every Daughter and Son went
through rigorous training from an early age. Martial arts, gymnastics, outdoor
survival, weapons training, and a host of academic skills that placed them well
above their mortal human peers in myriad ways. Many wound up in the armed
forces or worked as mercenaries precisely because of the intensive training
they’d received as children. “How did you make it into the Army at such a young
age?”
    “How do you
think?” he retorted. “Every teenager in Tellowee knows who to go to if they
need an ID.”
    She’d used such
services herself over the years, each time she needed to alter her identification
to reflect her apparent age, which hadn’t changed in nearly a century and a
half. “So you paid someone to fake a birth certificate and school records,” she
guessed.
    “Something like
that.” He nudged her basket again, inching it closer to her. “You need to eat.
We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
    “I’m not
hungry.”
    “Eat anyway.”
    “Bobby.” She
rubbed her suddenly damp palms over her thighs. Everything he’d been through
since the moment she’d fled from him had been her fault. Every day under the
Army’s thumb, every day in a backwater hell, surrounded by people who would as
soon kill him as spit on him. All of that because of her. “I’m sorry.”
    “Why?”
    “You know why.”
She took a deep breath, tried to exhale the guilt and worry tangled up with her
nerves. “You joined the Army because of me, because I pushed you away.”
    “I joined the
Army because I wanted to be there.” He speared her with a flinty gaze. “Don’t ever
try to own that again. Being there was my choice. If I hadn’t liked it, I
wouldn’t have kept re-upping.”
    She sat back in
her chair, nonplussed.
    “Seriously.
You’re not to blame for what I did.” He switched chairs, taking the one beside
her. “Here, guess I’m gonna have to feed you, since you won’t feed yourself.”
    “You’ll do no
such thing,” she said, though she smiled and ate her lunch, as he’d no doubt intended
her to.
    Their
conversation drifted to other things, to Indigo’s relief. How Hiro, Drew, and Bobby
had schemed and plotted and finally opened their business together two years
before, after they’d gotten out of the Army. About her travels during the last
decade, mostly from one archaeological dig to