Say It Again

by Bybee, Catherine

  “You will break up in pairs. First, ones with ones, twos with twos. Then I will pair you with new partners.”

  One of the male students, a good six foot three whose neck size alone suggested he spent more hours in the gym than Richter demanded, said something under his breath to his friend standing beside him.

  Sasha shook her head and the other student laughed.

  “Would you like to share what you find so funny, Mr. Braum?”

  Mr. Braum, or Thick Neck, as Sasha saw him, lost his smile. “No, Ms. Denenberg.”

  “Please, I insist.”

  It was never a good thing to be singled out in Ms. Denenberg’s presence unless you were being asked to repeat a skill you’d mastered for the class.

  “I-I was ah . . . wondering how some of the girls in here could even reach my neck.”

  That had the defensive backs of the girls standing taller.

  “That didn’t seem like a funny comment. Are you sure that’s what you said?”

  Sasha laughed and the students parted to reveal her presence.

  The instructor narrowed her eyes briefly, and then smiled.

  Sasha stepped forward. “What he said was, most of the girls here couldn’t reach his dick, let alone his neck.”

  A murmur went up.

  Ms. Denenberg lifted a hand in the air, pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “Now that sounds like something you would say, Mr. Braum. Thank you so much for clarifying, Miss Budanov.”

  The murmur grew.

  Ms. Denenberg took two steps toward them.

  Mr. Braum stiffened. He was in his early twenties, maybe even just nineteen. Sasha almost felt sorry for him.

  Almost.

  “Miss Budanov, will you be so kind as to show Mr. Braum just how quickly a woman can get to both his dick and his neck, so he’s assured I’m not wasting his time?”

  Now Sasha did feel sorry for him.

  The class took a collective step back.

  Mr. Braum lost his smile when Sasha found hers.

  One second she was tossing her ponytail over her shoulder as she pretended to walk past the unsuspecting student, the next her heel purposely missed a direct hit to the kid’s groin, but struck close enough to send shockwaves down his legs, and her arm caught the back of his neck. Before he could figure out where she even was, let alone how to counter, Sasha had flipped him onto his shoulder and the ball of her booted foot sat on his windpipe.

  Ms. Denenberg moved to stand beside her, both of them looking down at the cocky kid. “Any questions, Mr. Braum?”

  He pulled in a deep breath. “No, ma’am.”

  Sasha released her boot and reached down to give him assistance to his feet. He hesitated, as if he wasn’t going to accept her help, and Ms. Denenberg narrowed her eyes.

  His cold hand met Sasha’s wrist. He squeezed it a little too hard.

  In that moment, she hoped there was at least one female student in the class that would kick the cocky out of him before graduation.

  Chapter Three

  “We’re drinking beer in a pub, you have to call me Brigitte.”

  Sasha sat across from Ms. Denenberg . . . Brigitte, with what the Germans considered a small portion of a local brew. Like wine in Italy, the Germans explored flavors of beer with fervor.

  “It pushes against everything Richter taught me.”

  Brigitte tilted her glass to her lips. “Titles, class, and rank of the person are necessary in a school and your employment. Nowhere else. One of the many problems with societies everywhere is when a CEO thinks he’s better than the waiter.”

  Sasha saw the wisdom in that.

  The bar they occupied was only a few miles from the school. Sasha had passed by it on occasion when leaving the school in her senior year. Most of her rebellious drinking had taken place on campus. Being spotted in the bar would have been much more likely. And having determined that many of the staff at Richter were known in the local place, Sasha was right to have stayed away.

  “I wonder how long it will take before I no longer feel as if I’m sneaking into the faculty’s lounge.”

  Brigitte smiled. “It took me about a month.”

  Sasha paused. “You were a student at Richter?”

  “I was.”

  “How come I didn’t know that?”

  “It’s our policy that students have no knowledge of the instructor’s life outside of Richter. Our past, or families . . . nothing. It’s safer that way.”

  The word safe had Sasha hesitating. “I’m safe now?”

  “You came back. Very few students ever return to Richter.”

  Sasha sipped her beer. “You mean students don’t want to return to a school that is half education, half prison, and half military training? I’m shocked.” Her condescending tone made it clear she wasn’t.

  “There is one too many halves in there.”

  “The military and education I understood. The prison aspect escapes me.”

  Brigitte pushed a strand of her dishwater blonde hair behind her ear. “Even a whisper of a military boarding school as diverse as Richter, inside the borders of Germany after the Cold War, would be a lot for the general public to swallow. Having our students spending their evenings in places like this, talking and carrying on, would not be received well. You know the demographics of our students. It’s for everyone’s safety that the doors are locked at night.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Although I wouldn’t mind a little easing up on some of the rules.”

  “Maybe things will with time.”

  Brigitte tilted her head to the side. “Why did you come back?”

  Sasha felt the eyes of someone on her and glanced around the pub with the slightest of movements. “Because Richter was something more for me than most. It was my home. I know I wasn’t the only orphan in attendance, I’m sure others have come back in the past.”

  Only Brigitte didn’t confirm Sasha’s thoughts.

  Heat moved up the back of her neck.

  She didn’t turn around. Instead, Sasha leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Someone behind me is watching.”

  Brigitte picked up her beer and used the movement to distract where her eyes went.

  Instead of being alarmed, she grinned. “A very fine specimen.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Brigitte laughed. “Not everyone looking wants to hurt you. It appears he might want to do naughty things to you, but I doubt harm is his goal.”

  Her shoulders relaxed and Sasha felt a genuine smile on her lips. “I’m sitting in a bar, drinking . . . and apparently picking up men, with Ms. Denenberg.”

  “You pick up the men. Testosterone is not my flavor.”

  Sasha knew her expression matched her surprise. “I had no idea.”

  “Few ever do. I like to keep it that way.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Understood.”

  Brigitte pushed her chair back. “I’ll be back.”

  The moment she left, Sasha felt those standing hairs on her neck dance.

  The secret man who was staring revealed himself as he slid into the chair Brigitte had vacated.

  The casual smile Sasha had found the moment she stepped into the bar became one cloaked in caution. It didn’t say hello, it didn’t say go away . . . it was simply there.

  “Hallo,” he greeted her with an attempt to sound like he was German.

  Sasha said nothing and stared. Broad in the shoulders, taller than most men . . . the stubble on his chin was either a poor attempt at looking European or TSA confiscated his razor before he boarded the plane.

  He licked his full lips, and not in a lecherous kind of way, but one filled with nerves.

  She liked her men nervous.

  “Please tell me you speak English,” he said after a moment of silence.

  Sasha narrowed her eyes.

  “French?”

  Oh, please.

  “You’re American.”

  Those nerves she saw danglin
g off his skin now turned to confidence. “Thank God. Yes, I’m American.”

  “And I speak English. Can I help you with something, Mr. American?” She let her Russian accent hold r’s a little longer.

  He opened his mouth to speak, closed it . . . opened it again. Those nerves returned. “Everything running through my head right now sounds like a glossed-over pickup line. So, I’ll just ask if I can buy you a drink.”

  Sasha looked at the beer she’d hardly touched, back to him. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “AJ. What’s yours?” His smile trickled up to his eyes and put an unfamiliar flutter deep in her gut.

  She leaned forward. “I’m here with a friend, AJ. Which you obviously know, since you’ve been watching us since we walked in the door.”

  “You’re hard to miss.” It should have sounded like a line. It didn’t. AJ turned his eyes to something behind her. “Your friend is coming back.”

  “Then you should move along.”

  “One drink.”

  He was tempting . . . she’d give him that.

  “I’m away less than five minutes and my seat is taken.”

  AJ stood from Brigitte’s chair and pulled it out. “Sorry, I, ah . . .”

  Brigitte cut him off with a grin. “Yes, I’m sure you were, ah . . .”

  Sasha swallowed back her smile.

  He looked between the two of them, his eyes narrowed. “Maybe next time?” he asked her.

  She took a breath. “Perhaps.”

  That’s all he needed, his head bobbing with a nod as he walked away.

  “He looks thick in all the right places,” Brigitte said, her eyes lingering on the man’s back. “If you’re into that sort of thing.”

  “I never play where I eat,” Sasha told her.

  “Probably a smart move. Unless he’s here on holiday . . .”

  Sasha laughed, glanced over her shoulder, and admired AJ’s backside from across the room.

  Perhaps . . .

  AJ positioned himself at a table by the only window facing the parking lot and waited. He’d seen the blonde in the bar before.

  Sex on a Stick . . . not so much.

  He went through his mental database of accents and had a hard time placing hers. A mixture of German, American . . . Russian. Maybe those were the three languages she spoke. It never ceased to amaze him how many people in Europe spoke more languages than he had socks in a drawer.

  He was damn sure she’d caught the attention of every heterosexual man in the bar the second she walked through the door. She wore confidence like a cloak with her purposeful strides and pulled back shoulders. The woman was stunning and she knew it, and not in a teenage cheerleader look at me kind of way. But one born of comfort in her own skin.

  AJ observed a few other qualities the woman had quietly displayed. She’d scanned the room when she walked in before making her way to a table with her friend. Both women positioned their chairs so neither of them had her back to the front door. She didn’t carry a purse or a cell phone. The purse, he got . . . the cell phone? Yeah, that’s what stumped him. He didn’t know an able-bodied adult that didn’t have access to the whole world in their back pocket.

  Or maybe she didn’t want the outside world to have access to her?

  The most important thing he noticed about the woman, who conveniently didn’t reveal her name, was her companion. A woman he had no chance of getting to know socially without a heterosexual woman by her side.

  It appeared that after a week in Germany, his luck was starting to change.

  AJ waited until the women were done with their single drink before watching them leave.

  Denenberg left in her compact car while the sex kitten jumped on the back of a motorcycle and kicked it over with a purr that befitted her.

  AJ didn’t wait. He dropped several euros on the table and followed.

  Following someone on a motorcycle had proved difficult in the past, but with so few roads to travel out where they were and a pretty good idea of where she was going, AJ gave her a head start and slowly made his way behind her. A small amount of traffic offered him some disguise. The fact that the sun had set aided him in his effort to go unnoticed.

  Denenberg took a predictable turn down the road he knew led to her flat.

  A lift in his chest filled him with a ray of hope when Sex Kitten stayed on the road leading to Richter.

  Maybe he should bug off now and follow her again on another night from a different starting point.

  Memories of his sister’s smile kept him moving forward.

  AJ peered out at the nearly deserted road and eased off the gas.

  Sex Kitten didn’t bother with a directional when she turned on one of the last twists in the road that would take her to the school.

  He should just drive past.

  Only as the turn drew closer, he knew he couldn’t.

  He rounded the corner and his heart skipped several beats.

  No taillights. None. Not hers. Not anyone else’s.

  There was at least a mile between this point and the turnoff to the school.

  “Where the hell did you go?” he asked himself as he sped up.

  He made it four hundred yards before his windshield was flooded by a single spotlight in the middle of the road.

  AJ slammed on the brakes and swerved. His tiny rental car pitched to the opposite side of the road to avoid whoever was in his lane.

  Once his car stopped, he jumped from his seat and outside the vehicle. “Jesus!”

  She stood there, legs spread two feet apart, her high-heeled boots lifting her three more inches toward the sky. Her helmet dangled from her fingertips.

  “I could have killed you!”

  “Why are you following me?” A don’t fuck with me voice replaced the smoky purr from the pub.

  AJ shuffled his feet.

  He was fucked.

  His palms itched.

  “You’re from Richter.”

  Crickets filled the air in the dark space between them.

  His statement was met with deadly silence. A weapon to intimidate.

  It worked.

  Instead of saying anything, she lifted the helmet above her head.

  He sprang forward, hands in the air. “Wait!”

  Her helmet took a defensive position in front of her, one of her hands lifted in the air. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

  AJ jolted to a stop. “Please, I just need to talk to you.”

  She shifted and lifted her helmet again.

  He took another step.

  Her eyes shot toward his.

  “It’s about my sister. She used to be a student at Richter. Last month she was found facedown on the banks of a river. Execution-style murder.” AJ wasn’t sure if he was getting anywhere, but the woman facing him wasn’t walking away.

  “No one at the school will answer my questions. Amelia was an analyst for the UN. Dead from three bullets is not how she should have left this world.” Just reciting how his sister was found made his heart ache and his fists clench.

  Something passed over the woman’s eyes. Hesitation, concern . . . AJ wasn’t sure which.

  “Go to your embassy.” She lifted her helmet again.

  “It didn’t happen here.” He lifted a hand down the deserted street. “She was murdered in Washington, DC. The authorities have nothing. Not one lead. Three weeks ago I found a connection to Richter.”

  Sex Kitten narrowed her eyes. “What kind of connection?”

  “One of her classmates died when someone shot holes in her tires while going around a curved road on the side of a cliff six weeks ago.”

  “Sounds like a coincidence, not a connection. People make enemies.”

  “Not my sister. Everyone liked her. Are you faculty at Richter?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “A visitor?” Richter didn’t entertain visitors. They didn’t let him past the gates without an escort to and from the headmistress’s office.

 
; She kept silent.

  “Alumni?”

  No emotion, not one speck of light, shifted on her face, but he was fairly certain he’d hit her association to the school.

  “Two young women a half a world apart murdered within the same month. Both went to this school. A place I know damn well doesn’t just teach reading and writing. Amelia knew better than to mess with anyone that would kill. Like anyone from Richter.” He ran a hand through his hair before dropping his palm to the stubble on his chin.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, but I can’t—”

  “No,” AJ almost yelled, emotion choking in the back of his throat. “You can help. Maybe you don’t want to. But don’t tell me you can’t.” He took a couple of steps closer.

  She stiffened.

  With slow movements, AJ reached for his wallet. “I’m just getting a card,” he told her as he carefully did just that.

  The woman in front of him held her ground, like a cat watching a circling dog.

  AJ approached with his card dangling from his fingertips. “Lodovica wouldn’t talk to me outside of offering her condolences. The police have zero leads. Her name was Amelia Hofmann.” He waved the card. “Take it.”

  She hesitated.

  “Do you have siblings?”

  She didn’t answer, but something flashed on her face.

  His heart sped in his chest. “If they suddenly ended up dead, wouldn’t you want to know why? I didn’t protect her.”

  Catwoman lifted her gloved hand and took the card.

  For the first time in weeks, his voice grew husky with emotion. “I’ll be back at the pub tomorrow night.”

  “I make no promises,” she told him before tucking her head into her helmet and swinging one leg over the bike.

  Two seconds later the night air roared with her engine and all the sounds of wildlife stopped.

  Chapter Four

  Hofmann, Amelia Hofmann.

  Not only did Sasha know the name, she could picture the girl. Pixie short hair with lips many women paid for. Stocky. Amelia Hofmann wasn’t a thin girl, and it showed in her efforts in the obstacle courses Richter put them through every week. Amelia was only a year younger than Sasha, and the memory of her stuck out because Sasha would often push her to move faster and train harder. She wouldn’t say they had been friends, but they hadn’t been enemies.