by Diane Kelly
“I’ll work on it.”
Nick wore a pair of loose knee-length basketball shorts, a sleeveless Mavericks jersey, and running shoes. Like me, he’d brought a towel and a water bottle, geared up to tackle the MMA class. He rounded up his frisky pet, put her back in the house, and the two of us climbed into my car.
We sang along to the latest country hits as we drove to the martial arts studio, Nick doing his best falsetto to match Martina McBride’s voice as she belted out her hit “My Baby Loves Me.”
I sang along, too, adding commentary during the instrumental section: “I should have Alicia add this song to her wedding play list.”
“Heck, yeah,” Nick agreed.
We pulled into the lot of the strip center, took a space near the entrance to the studio, and gathered up our things to head inside. While I’d expected to find a group of people dressed in the standard white martial arts uniform, what I found instead was a bunch of beefcake in shorts, many of them shirtless, several sporting black boxing gloves. Only one woman stood among them, and she stood at least five foot eleven, her black hair shaved in a buzz cut a la Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road. The place reeked of sweat, the sound waves filled with grunts as men grappled on the mats and the bap-bap-bap of punches thrown against a heavy bag by a guy with six-pack abs and apparent anger issues.
“Yikes,” I muttered under my breath.
The woman cut a glance my way. “Yeah?”
“We’re here for the free introductory lesson,” I said. “I signed us up online.” Is it too late to back out?
A man with a shaved chest and head stepped up next to her and the two unabashedly looked Nick and me over. The guy snickered and tightened the wrist closure on his boxing glove. “You sure you’re up to this?”
Nick stiffened next to me. He might be more than ready, but I wasn’t. Still, after Flo Cash calling me a pipsqueak and her advertisers refusing to cooperate with me, I was tired of being bullied. No way was I backing down, even if they had to wheel me out of this studio on a gurney.
“We’re federal law enforcement agents,” I said with far more bravado than I felt. “We’re up to it and then some.”
The man and woman exchanged glances and smirks.
“Federal agents, huh?” The woman gestured to a shelf against the wall. “Grab some pads. We’ll see what you’re made of.”
“Don’t you need to teach us a few moves first?” I asked. “Maybe some blocking maneuvers? The proper fighting stance?” I’d picked up a bit of jargon while perusing the martial arts sites.
“We’ll get to that,” the woman said. “We need to get an idea of your agility and reaction speed first. See where you’re starting from.”
As Nick and I slid the pads onto our arms, I cut a look his way. “It was nice knowing you,” I said under my breath so the others wouldn’t hear. “Be sure to put some daisies on my grave once in a while.”
“You can handle her,” Nick whispered back. “I don’t doubt you for a second.”
“Are you crazy?” I angled my head to indicate the woman, who’d taken the brief respite while we put on the pads to engage in mortal combat with a man who stood six foot three and weighed 240 pounds if he weighed an ounce. “She’s got nine inches and fifty pounds on me. She’ll kill me.”
“You’re quick,” Nick said. “Crafty, too.”
I wish I had his confidence. At the moment all I had was an anxiety-induced urge to toss my cookies.
The shaved guy motioned for Nick to step over to the mat. “Let’s go, James Bond.”
Nick stepped over and positioned himself directly in front of the behemoth, instinctively offsetting his legs and bending his knees for more stability, no doubt muscle memory from his days going head-to-head with the opposing team on the football field. He’d barely raised his padded arm to his chest before the man erupted in a series of kicks, spins, and punches, landing them with such incredible force and frequency it was a wonder Nick managed to stay upright despite his linebacker experience. The guy landed a solid kick with his right foot. Thwap! Two rapid punches. Bap-bap! Another kick, this one preceded by a hop. Thop!
When the guy threw the next punch, he aimed not for the pad but for Nick’s face. Surely that wasn’t an acceptable move to make against an untrained novice. Wasn’t there some sort of code of conduct for this sport? Fortunately, Nick’s reflexives kicked in right away and he managed not only to raise the pad in time but also to deflect the punch to the side. Ha! Take that, jerk.
“Not bad,” the guy said, raising his gloved fists to bump knuckles congenially with Nick. How men could be at each other’s throats one minute and bros the next was beyond me.
“You’re up, ponytail,” the woman said, giving my hair a flick to set my ponytail swinging.
Once again my intestines tangled inside me. If she was going to kill me, I hoped she’d do it fast.
I raised the pad high in front of me, instinctively protecting my head. A person could go on after suffering cracked ribs or a broken leg, but a head injury might mean the end of life as I knew it.
I peeked at the woman over the top edge of the pad. Her upper lip quirked in a sneer and a glint of determination flashed in her eyes. She threw a punch. Bap!
Good. I’d managed to get the pad up in time to protect myself from the blow. Still, there had been quite a bit of strength behind the hit. We might just be practicing here, but this woman wasn’t holding back.
She spun and threw a kick in my direction. Again, I somehow managed to get the pad into place in time to protect myself, though the impact had me stumbling backward toward the wall. Before I could recover, Pow! She punched the pad so hard that my hand flew backward and I ended up hitting myself in the mouth. My lip split, blood trickling over my teeth and tongue, the copper taste and smell flooding my senses.
“Hey!” Nick called, stepping toward us. “Stop! Tara’s bleeding.”
But my wound only seemed to fuel this woman’s bloodlust. Before Nick could reach her, she’d kicked at me again, the force slamming me back against the wall, my elbows taking the brunt of the impact, my head hitting the painted cinder blocks a split second later with with a brain-rattling conk. Pinpoints of light danced around the periphery of my vision like tiny fairies. The next thing I knew, she grabbed my wrists and pinned them to the wall next to my shoulders, using her legs and body to full immobilize me. I was stuck flat to the surface like a human pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game.
She laughed, the sound as evil and nasty as they come. Her face was only inches from mine and coming closer. I could see the dark hairs like parentheses framing her upper lip and count the pores on her nose. One. Two. Three. She put her sweaty forehead to mine, pinning my skull against the wall, too. “Not so tough now, are you, Miss Federal Agent?”
The smart thing to do would have been to cry, Uncle! But my mental faculties had been not only shaken by the blow but also fully taken over at that point by my sense of survival. Having two older brothers who’d lived to torment me when we were young had taught me a few things, made me scrappy. Nick was right. I was indeed crafty.
The only thing I could move at that point was my mouth. Just as Daffodil had licked me earlier in the evening, I whipped out my tongue and swiped it over the woman’s cheek, the copper taste of my blood now replaced by the salty taste of her sweat. Disgusting, no doubt, but effective. She cried out and backed away, wiping my bloody saliva from her cheek and giving me the opening I sought. With a primal cry, I pounced, catching her off guard, shoving her with all my might. Now it was she who was stumbling backward. And I’d give her no quarter.
I hooked a foot behind her ankle, angled my body, and rammed my shoulder into her chest. She lost her footing and fell back, her ass meeting the mat with an inglorious fwump. I teetered for an instant, momentum threatening to take me down with her, but windmilling my arms managed to keep me upright. When I regained my balance, I threw victorious fists in the air. “Yes-s-s!”
“Wow!” called t
he man who’d been working the heavy bag. “You took her down. Hell must’ve froze over.” He gave me a respectful nod while the other men murmured in surprise. Looked like I was the first to put this brutal bitch in her place.
Hell might have frozen over, but a fiery fury raged in the woman’s eyes. When she sprang from the mat to come after me, the hairless guy grabbed her and held her back. “That’s enough.”
“This is bullshit.” Nick jerked his head to indicate the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
He wouldn’t have to ask me twice. Casting the woman one last look that said, You got what you deserved, I ripped open the door and stormed out into the lot.
Once we were seated in my car, Nick turned to me. “I knew you’d show her up.”
“But at what price?” I said, putting a finger to my throbbing, oozing lip. “Alicia’s wedding is only a couple weeks away. A bridesmaid with a fat lip isn’t going to look good in the pictures.” I owed it to my friend not to look like a street brawler in her wedding photos.
I lowered my sun visor and examined my lip in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but I had to admit I was proud of myself. I’d bested an MMA instructor and had a red badge of courage to prove it. Something must be seriously wrong with me to think such a thing, huh?
“Jack Smirnoff can’t be any tougher than that woman,” Nick said. “He better watch out for Tara Holloway.” Nick cast me that chipped-tooth grin of his, the one that made me feel soft and squishy and special. “Now let’s get you to the doc so he can take a look at that lip.”
chapter eleven
Cyberflirt
Twenty minutes later, I sat on a paper-covered examination table in a room at a minor emergency clinic. Dr. Ajay Maju had treated me for a variety of injuries over the years, including burns, accidental exposure to pepper spray, and a puncture wound inflicted during a cockfight. That’s a story for another time. But suffice it to say that my job as a special agent had taken quite a toll on me physically.
What had begun as a doctor-patient relationship between me and Ajay quickly evolved into a more personal connection when I’d brought DEA Agent Christina Marquez with me to the clinic after inadvertently scorching my skin and hair. Christina and I had been working together to bust a drug-dealing ice-cream man. Ajay had taken one look at my partner and scheduled a personal appointment with her for dinner. The two had been dating ever since and, just recently, he’d put a ring on her finger. Yep, my friends were dropping like flies, saying sayonara to the single life. Pretty soon, I’d be the last one standing, a spinster. At least I’d be able to say neener-neener when my friends complained about their boring sex lives or their husbands leaving their dirty socks on the floor.
Ajay felt around the back of my skull and shined a small beam of intense light into my eyes. “Why were you hitting yourself?”
It was the same stupid question my brothers had asked when, as kids, they’d grab my arm and manipulate it so I’d end up repeatedly slapping myself in the face.
“I didn’t hit myself on purpose,” I snapped. “A woman at the mixed martial arts studio punched the pad I was holding really hard.” Too hard, given that I was a novice. She’d been out to prove herself. If she was trying to prove what a nasty bitch she could be, she’d done a good job.
Ajay turned off the light and looked to Nick. “So Tara and this other woman were going at it?”
“Yep,” Nick replied. “Major catfight.”
“Was it as hot as it sounds?” Ajay asked.
“You know it.”
Nick might be joking now, but I’d seen the look of concern in his eyes as we’d left the studio. He’d been worried.
Ajay slid the light into the pocket of his white lab coat and returned his attention to me. “Your pupils look normal, so I don’t think the head injury caused any real damage. I can feel a lump coming up, though. I’ll have the nurse get you an ice pack for it.”
“What about her lip?” Nick asked. “I can’t survive too long without a kiss.” He shot me a wink.
Ajay put a gloved finger to my tender lip. “That’s a pretty nasty split, but it’s not jagged and it doesn’t extend to the surrounding flesh. No need for stitches. Those types of injuries tend to heal up on their own. But ice can help ease the pain and swelling there, too.”
He reached over to the intercom and buzzed the nurse. “Bring a couple of ice packs to exam room three, please.”
Her voice came back over the speaker. “On my way.”
While we waited for the ice packs, he instructed me to open my mouth so he could check my teeth. “None of them feel loose.”
Thank goodness. I was much too old for a visit from the tooth fairy.
There was a quick knock at the door and the nurse entered, carrying the ice packs. Ajay used medical tape to secure one in place on the back of my head, while I simply held the other to my lip.
When the doctor finished, he pronounced me, “Good to go.” As I stood, the paper crinkling with my movements, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pineapple Dum Dum. “A sucker for a sucker punch.”
“Gee, thanks.” I snatched the candy from his hand.
“See you at the wedding!” he called after me. “Save me a dance!”
* * *
Friday morning, I woke bruised and sore. The knot on the back of my head was now the size of a walnut and my lip, though no longer bleeding, continuing to throb. But the pain wouldn’t slow me down. If anything, it solidified my resolve to nail Jack Smirnoff. It was his fault my head was misshapen and my lip was puffy. His fault my elbows were black-and-blue. I’m going to get that jackass if it’s the last thing I do.
When I arrived at the office, I headed straight to Josh’s office. “Got any news for me? Did you find Jack Smirnoff’s new head shots online?”
He reached over to a paper on his desk and pushed it toward me. “His photo popped up on a site that’s offering one of those free preview weeks.”
I grabbed the page from the desk and flopped down in a chair to look it over. The document was a printout from the dating site PerfectCouple.com. Included in the profile was the more recent head shot taken at Goode Photographic Arts, as well as a teaser snippet of details from his profile, which identified him only by his alleged initials, M.W. The excerpt noted that he was “a health-care professional looking to make a fresh start.” These limited details were intended to be enough to pique the interest of potential subscribers, without providing enough information for them to identify the guy and locate him elsewhere online for free. To get full details about him or anyone else listed at PerfectCouple.com, the Web site advised that a paid subscription would be necessary.
When I finished reading over the paperwork, I looked up at my coworker. “Thanks for tracking him down, Josh. You are a tech god.”
“Feel free to leave sacrifices on my altar.”
I fished through my purse until I found half a roll of fruit-flavored Life Savers and placed them on his desk. Not exactly a slaughtered lamb, but sufficient for my purposes. Besides, the coating of lint the candy had accumulated while in the bottom of my purse resembled wool.
I left Josh’s digs and headed straight down the hall to the office of Hana Kim, a Korean-American agent who ranked second only to Nick when it came to batting averages on the Tax Maniacs. I put my knuckles to her door frame. Rap-rap.
Hana looked up from her desk, where she’d been transferring numbers from a stack of invoices to a spreadsheet. “Tara. Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” I replied, stepping inside. “You busy?”
She cut her eyes to the stack of files towering on her desk. “Little bit.”
I supposed it had been a dumb question. The IRS Criminal Investigations office ran lean and mean. Good thing we agents were hard workers. Still, as busy as each of us was, we tried to help one another out when we could. We knew the shoe could be on the other foot at any time. “Want to help me hook a catfisher?”
“A catfisher?” She leaned back i
n her chair and folded her hands on her well-toned stomach. “You’ve got my attention.”
I perched on the edge of a wing chair and gave her a quick rundown. “This guy ripped off at least three women for a couple grand each. Found them on dating sites, took them out for dinner, and fed them a bunch of BS about a dead wife, a deadbeat stepson, and an estate tied up in probate court. He gave his victims bogus checks to cash. They all thought their banks wouldn’t cash them if they weren’t legitimate.”
Hana sighed. “Another thug exploiting a common misconception. Someone should do a public service announcement.”
Too bad Flo Cash and I weren’t on good terms. Her financial show would be the perfect venue to inform the public about how to avoid theses types of scams.
“Josh helped me track him down,” I continued. “The guy’s got a new alias, but he’s up to his old tricks. I figured if you and I both try to land dates with him, that could speed things up, maybe help us get more evidence.” I handed her the printout. “This is him. What do you think?”
She ran her gaze over the page. “So this guy will take me out for a free dinner and I get to bust him afterward? Sounds fun. Sign me up.”
“Great. Thanks, Hana.” I took the printouts back from her. “Can you shoot me a photo of yourself? I’ll need it to set up your online profile.”
She pulled out her phone and thumbed through her photos. “What do you think of this one? It was taken at my cousin’s baby shower.”
She held out her phone and I eyed the screen. Hana appeared in a pale-blue blouse, her black hair tossed back, a broad smile on her face. She looked cute, approachable, and easygoing. Totally unlike the homicidal hellion who stepped up to bat at our softball games.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Now I just need to know what name you’d like to go by and what job and interests you’d like your alter ego to have.”
She looked up in thought before frowning. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine myself as anyone else. I’m not exactly creative.”
Good thing. Creativity and an accounting degree could be a felonious combination. Just ask those guys from Enron.