by Fiona Quinn
“Are you just jogging or are you going for the full body workout?” Lula asked. “I need to know what to put on.”
Christen tipped her head to the side.
“Go big or go home,” Lula raised her eyebrows with a conspiratorial wriggle.
Christen smiled and smacked Lula’s high-five. Hehehe, they were about to give the boys a taste of girl power.
“Why don’t you get settled and changed,” Blaze said. “Gator and I will be waiting outside of your suites when you’re ready to run.”
Christen caught Blaze’s gaze. Not “meet you in the lobby.” Her dad had probably told them how much she hated having a shadow. She smiled. “Only if you think you can keep up.”
Chapter Seventeen
Christen
Thursday, Singapore
Okay, I’ll admit it, Christen told herself as she ran in place to warm up her muscles then used her stretches to take in the view of the others getting themselves ready to go. He’s revving my motors. Hard. The close protection team was off limits. Way off limits. A buff security guard was the reason why her dad’s wife number four was shaken from the family tree so quickly. It happens. Look. Don’t touch, was Christen’s mantra. Though she as aware that refrain was gross objectification. Disgusting. Petty. But he was so darned cute. All those thoughts about how close she’d like his protection to be, took Christen by surprise. She was around alpha males on a daily basis, she appreciated their hard bodies and intelligence for what they were – tools to get the job done. Stop thinking tools! Gah!
Christen turned deliberately and bent over to put her hands on the ground, tucking her nose against her knees, breathing in a steady five count. The problem with Gator was he touched on all her buttons. He seemed comfortable with his southern-style gentleman’s manners – holding the doors and saying, “yes ma’am” with that drawl of his. His voice was soft and warm and reminded her of a summer night on the back porch in the woods, listening to tree frogs. He had sort of a baby face, he probably looked a lot younger than he was. It was the freckles across his nose. It was his ready smile and the warmth in his eyes. Brown. Deep, soft, velvety brown with a twinkle of laughter.
On base, Christen had an “absolutely, no!” policy when it came to dating military men. It could just make things awkward if the relationship didn’t work out. And when lives were on the line, there was no room for awkward. She dated civilians back in Kentucky, but it had been several months since she’d had her “Well, I’m off! Have a happy life” conversation with Paul. Paul was okay. But more of a place-holder kind of guy. Her hormones must be racing now, because this was the first time she was around men that might be available for a nice conversation over dinner and a tumble for dessert.
On second thought, nah. Neither Gator nor Blaze had an “available” feel to them. She imagined they were both married with babies. Rings weren’t a good way to tell. Operators almost never wore their wedding rings on assignment. In a sticky situation, it might give the bad guy leverage. Off limits, Christen. This doesn’t feel like a mission. But this is indeed a mission and not a swim in the dating pool.
Christen stood, then lunged to the side to stretch her inner thigh muscles. Muscles. Such nice muscles. She tried to be circumspect in her ogling. Gator was dressed in running shorts and a tank top both of which displayed his hard, chiseled muscles. The functional kind that the men on the teams built and none of those stupid stage-muscles that were built for ego’s sake.
Christen shifted her feet into warrior pose. Gator stretched too. An Adonis in running shoes. She caught the tiniest peek at his wash-board abs and a goody trail as he lifted his arms over his head and leaned back. Christen was appalled at the thoughts running through her head. Objectification. She hated it when men looked at her like she was a snack cake on a plate, yet here she was licking her lips like Pavlov’s dog.
Darned hormones!
I don’t want to have sex with him, she tried to talk herself down. That was a lie. She did want to have sex with him. It had been a freaking long time since she’d had sex. Okay, she didn’t just want to have sex with him. She wanted to get to know him, and see why he had such a sweet look in those chocolate brown eyes of his. She wanted to hear his story. She wanted to go on a date. She wanted to be a couple. She wanted…
Christen stood up, startled at the route her mind had just wandered and at the speed. She’d gone from scolding herself about the hypocrisy of objectification to –
“Hey.” Lula sidled up beside her. “Have you been practicing your parkour?” Lula was jogging in place, keeping her heart rate up. “I’ve been here before on business, and about a kilometer, kilometer-and-a-half up the road there’s a park with some great obstacles. Then another couple of blocks beyond that there’s a series of buildings that are great tests for climbing. Good roofs. I’d say medium risk on the leaps between buildings with a soft landing on the far side. You game?”
“Yup, let’s do this. Lead on.” Christen was relieved. Parkour was so much better than going for a run. Running, Christen would have continued her inner dialogue. Running, she’d be panting next to Gator’s hot sweaty body, and she’d have to yell at herself about how misaligned her thoughts were to her ethic. Christen wasn’t in the mood to have her ethics challenged. It was already a challenge to be here on this “mission” when she should be in the air with her unit. Parkour, unlike jogging, required the same kind of intense concentration that flying her Little Bird needed. And that’s what she wanted. Distraction. Meditative focus.
Lula swatted Christen’s butt, and they took off at their beginning pace. Johnna joined them. They were in tight formation with the same gait. Blaze quickly took the seven o’clock position and Gator was at two o’clock. His head on a swivel, his eyes traveled across the roof tops and windows. He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t just a pretty face. He had the demeanor of a man who’d been to war and was on orange alert, ready and able to jump to red in the blink of an eye. A man of valor.
Nope.
Not going there.
Christen picked up the pace racing hard for the green space up ahead. She lifted her arms and did a gymnastic’s run of flips, cartwheels, and rolls across the grass. As she righted herself she turned to find Lula planting her feet and coming back to standing.
“Whoop!” Lula yelled and off they flew. All thoughts of Johnna and their security were left behind.
Lula and Christen had been gymnastics buddies since middle school. They’d both gone to Nationals to compete. In their sophomore year, they’d both had a radical growth spurt and a change of direction. For Christen, it was her new-found love of flying planes. For Lula, it was the decision that she wanted to experience more than gymnastics which sucked all her time. They both loved their sport, they just needed to shift it a bit.
They joined a parkour gym, and it had served Christen well. Parkour was a French training discipline that was built on running military obstacle courses. The goal was to get from Point A to Point B in a complex environment in the most efficient way possible. No assistive equipment. If there was a building in the way, you climbed it without ropes. If you needed to get across the roof, you leapt it – no ladders. It was part martial art, part gymnastics routine, part hard core military exercise, and Christen loved it. Swinging, hanging, vaulting – it was all stuff she did on the mats in her gym. It built flexibility, strength, and stamina. And it took some courage as well as trust in one’s ability to get the job done. She credited parkour for placing her at the top in boot camp. Shock and awe, baby! And she was sure it had a lot to do with her making it into the Night Stalkers with her physical and mental abilities and her focused concentration.
Blaze was on the road with Johnna while Lula and she raced and jumped, flipped, and dove over the terrain. Gator ran beside them. He wasn’t even panting. A little sweaty. A big old grin on his face. As she and Lula over/undered, Gator mostly overed. At six feet plus, he couldn’t get his body where she and Lula could. He wasn’t doing the gymnas
tics – the handstand pushups on the short columns—he just hurdled the obstacles and kept his head on a swivel as if this was how he went out to protect his clients every day.
They quickly came to the end of the park space. Lula lifter her chin toward a court where the balconies jutted out from either side. Christen went first, running full tilt toward the wall, planting her foot and pushing off to twist and grab at the railing on the other side of the alley, yanking her legs up like a frog.
“Hey, now!” she heard Gator calling.
Her feet on the edge of the balcony she pressed into her heels and threw herself up and out to the next, then the next, then over to the roof. Christen waited up top for Lula to reach her. They high-fived, as they caught their breath.
Lula peeked over the edge. “Studdly McStud Muffin has his hands on his hips, and he’s looking a bit pissed and a bit impressed.”
“Cut the crap, Lula. You can’t be angry at men who say shit about a woman’s looks and then turn around and give as well as you get.”
“True, but just because I think he’s a demi-god doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate his other qualities. He’s a good athlete.”
“He’s a professional. How about we treat him like one?” Christen asked, miffed.
“Uh-huh. I get the picture.” She gave Christen a broad wink. “He’s all yours.”
“He’s a professional. And so am I. Here on assignment. Doing my thing and getting back to my unit. The sooner the better.”
“Okay, let’s get moving then. There’s a series of three roofs. Up. Down. Down. And that will put us back on a second-floor roof. Follow along the outside of that third building, on the stone embellishment to the far side, and there’s another down roof. Let’s meet up there.”
After Christen nodded, Lula took off at a run, planted her foot on the roof line, vaulted, tucked and rolled, extended and was up and running again. Christen followed after her. By the time they’d reached the last roof, she was thoroughly winded. Lula had her back to the chimney and was gasping for breath. “I’m getting old.”
Christen plunked down beside her. “You’re not getting old. That would have wiped us out at any age.”
“I think I tore something in my back. I need a massage.”
Christen hammer-fisted her thigh muscles to stop their quivering. “Is this the kind of thing you get to do with your new gig?” she asked Lula. “Play Spiderwoman?”
“Not at all. This is what I do for fun and exercise and just in case I need to pull some ninja disappearing skills from my bag of tricks. What I do for a living is make friends.”
“Like—what do they call them—like a honey pot?”
“Honey pots have sex to gain access to secrets. I’ve never taken things that far before, so no. I think you’d be good at what I do. If there ever comes a time when you need a change of pace, I want you to let me know.”
“I’d be moving from one man’s world to another. Ground breaking can be back breaking,” Christen said.
“True. But you’d be surprised. Women, in my opinion, are genetically structured for my kind of work.”
Christen raised a brow.
“I was at a friend’s house last week, a non-industry friend mind you. And her husband comes in and confronts her with a shoe box. Brand new shoes in it. He rips off the lid, holds them up. ‘Louboutins?’ Venom in his words. This was going to be war. But she just says ‘psh, I wish.’ And she pulls them out of his hands and tucks them back in their box. ‘I got these from some street hawker peddling knockoffs for twenty bucks. They’ll probably give me horrendous blisters, but you said I couldn’t have real shoes.”
“They were Louboutins?”
“Hell yeah, they were Louboutins. She’d just bought them that morning and paid full price.”
“Your friend is a good liar, then. How do you trust her?”
“I don’t challenge her on the price of shoes, for one. Look, I’m just pointing out that women have more synapses in their brains, more memory banks, better applied imaginations.”
“Wow, that’s a broad paint brush you’re painting with.”
“The head of Mossad—Israel’s intelligence agency—was talking about women agents just last week. He was praising the women agents, setting them apart as having a clear advantage in secret warfare because of our ability to multi-task, whereas men’s brains compartmentalize and have them doing one thing at a time. That’s science. He said that we’re also better at role playing and that we’re better at regulating our egos, so we can accomplish a goal.”
“Okay,” Christen stretched her legs out flat despite the pebbles on the roof and folded over into a stretch. “I don’t disagree.”
“And then women also have a special gift for deciphering situations, which makes sense in the whole ‘cavewoman trying to protect the children while Og is off beating up mastodons’ scenario. The Mossad director also said that tests show women are superior to men in spatial awareness, understanding territory, and navigation. Which probably makes us better at parkour since we understand how we fit into a space. Probably why you can fly so fast at such low altitudes.” Lula rubbed her lower back. “But, again, that’s the cavewoman survivalist in us – we had to know where to go to gather, and how to get back to the cave.”
“Willingness to stop and ask directions instead of ego saying I can handle it; I’ll figure it out?”
“Bingo.” Lula tapped her nose.
“Speaking of which, I wonder what Gator did after we climbed our way up the wall.”
“He’s probably kicking rocks.”
“You don’t think he’s trying to get up here?” Christen asked.
“He stepped out a few paces and watched us get onto this roof. I waved at him when I was on the side of the building shuffle-footing over here. He had his hands on his hips, staring up at me.”
Christen sat back up. “Okay. He knows we’re here.”
“Yup. Just waiting for us to come back down.”
“I’m assuming you’ve had no honey-pot rolls with fat men and bad breath. Tell me, do you get to drive backwards at a hundred miles an hour using only your rear mirrors?”
“You’re making assumptions about my employer. But no. I’ve trained to do it. I’ve never had to. You have all the technical skillsets in place to do my kind of work. My job, though, is about people skills. Like I said, I make friends for a living. I figure out their motivations, their vulnerabilities. I think of myself as a nurturer. Just like any good mother, I train my assets, and I look out for their security. I mean, these folks aren’t, as a rule, the sharpest tools in the tool box. I have to make sure they don’t stupid themselves into an early grave. Not good for them. Not good for me. I’d have to find new assets to take their place, and that’s time consuming. I really like what I’m doing. Do you like what you’re doing?”
“I hate what I’m doing. I love being a Night Stalker.”
“Ah, I see what you did there. We’ll have you back on your base in a few days.” She came up to a squat with her hands on her low back. “How’d you get the callsign D-Day?”
Christen shot her an incredulous look. “It’s my birthday.”
“Sorry I didn’t put two and two together. I like it. It’s pretty darned cool.”
Christen followed Lula’s gaze as she focused on the horizon where the sky and the water exchanged a shade of blue.
“I get what you’re saying about wanting to be back with your unit.” Lula said. “We pulled you out of your element. I’m sorry. I do get it. I like my job. I like my life. I wouldn’t change a thing.” She glanced at Christen. “I’d be pissed if anyone got in my way. You go, girl.”
“Every day, in every way.” Christen was getting antsy. She imagined that Gator wasn’t too pleased not having eyes on them. She stood and brushed the gravel off her butt. She moved over to the edge. There he was, arms crossed over his chest, eyes scanning the roof. She waved and pointed a finger toward their exit route. He lifted a hand in response.
>
Christen looked over at the edge and planned her descent then walked to the far side of the building. “See you below,” she said. Pushing hard off the balls of her feet, Christen did the powerful driving run that she’d learned for her mat routines. Sucking in a lungful, she held it as she sprang into the air, tucked and rolled, came horizontal and corkscrewed until she saw the ground. She dropped her hands to spring end over end dispelling energy so when she finally stopped, she wouldn’t hurt herself. When she landed at the top of the hill, she tucked and summersaulted down until her feet hit against Gator’s track shoe.
He reached a hand down to pull her to her feet, but the momentum of forward movement along with the sudden unexpected tug, sprang her body upward. The air she’d trapped in her lungs was expelled in one big woosh. She flung her hands over her head as she gasped to fill her lungs again. Gator easily trapped her against his body with his other arm. And there they were, eye to eye. Her sweaty, panting body pressed against his. Her feet dangling in the air. Her eyes widened at the shock of the sensations racing through her. Tumbling. Falling hard. She wanted to fight the feelings but her ability to choose an outcome was ebbing. It was like being caught in a riptide. She was quickly exhausting the energy to fight this. Whatever this was.
Gator’s eyes twinkled with laughter. “Woo-whee, ma’am, that was some kinda fierce.” He gently lowered her until her feet were on solid ground, and then held her until she was steady. Which took a good while.
Chapter Eighteen
Christen
Thursday, Singapore
Their security had gone off to change for their next destination. They’d be guarding the women over on the beach – this was at Johnna’s insistence; the beach part, not the security force part. As far as Christen could tell, Johnna wanted to use this opportunity to convince Gator and Blaze that the women were what they said they were, three chicks on a vacation.