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"And I'll bet it works as a phone, too," Tara commented, watching March fall.
"Of course it does," he replied, offended.
"You are a weird weird man," she commented. "Well, that's two bad guys out of three. Got any other tricks up your sleeve?"
"You'll see," he said with bravado that was, amazingly, entirely unfaked. Being in the field was exactly
as exciting and as much fun as he imagined! "Let's go."
"Okay," she said, and kicked his legs out from under him, then jumped on top of him. A bullet smacked into the wall where his chest had been a fraction of a second earlier.
"I didn't know you cared," he said, staring into her greenish eyes.
"I'd just hate to see the hallway get all messed up," she said, flinching as a bullet whined overhead. "At least he's using a silencer. Otherwise we'd have tons of company up here."
"He's shooting at us?"
"Not everyone buys flowers." She snickered, then rolled over, pulling him into a sheltered corner of the hallway. "Don't worry, it won't take long. He doesn't like walking around with spare clips—says it
wrecks the line of his suit."
"So he's just gonna shoot blindly until it's empty?"
"Sure. He has no idea who's after him, so it's a relatively sound plan. Wouldn'tyou run?"
"I would not!"
"Fine, fine. Just stay down."
"You know, bad guys trying to blow my head off isn't as much fun as I thought it would be," Benjamin commented. "It's more stressful than anything else."
"Typical," Tara said. "Felony assault—it's all hype."
"Any bright ideas on how to get out of this?"
"Ben, I amso not the brains of this team. Besides, it's your fault we're even here."
"The hell! You're the one who wanted to steal the world."
"I didn't want to steal theworld, just a few key pieces of it, not that it's any of your business.You're the one who insisted we save humanity." Tara invested the phrase with heavy sarcasm. "Could there be a bigger waste of time? No? Ask the guys with the guns if you don't believe me."
"Fine. Anyway, we'd better get out of here before bullets start exploring our temporal lobes. This hallway isn't going to provide cover much longer."
"So? Think of something, gadget man." Tara stretched out her long, long legs and closed her eyes. "Let me know what you come up with."
He watched, dumbfounded, as she went to sleep. She could always do that. It was unbelievably aggravating.
He leaned over and shouted into her gorgeous, still face, "And I didnot get us into this!" In the distance, the firing pop of the silencer accentuated his statement.
"Did, too," Tara said without opening her eyes.
"Did not!"
"Don't you remember?"
As a matter of fact, he did. "Never mind that," he snapped. He counted another three shots, which added up to nine. "Hey, he's all done. We can storm the bridge, so to speak."
He started to get up, only to feel Tara grab his ankle—in her sleep, apparently—and pull him back down, just in time for another bullet to whine overhead. "Nine in the clip, one in the pipe," she said without opening her eyes.
"I knew that," he lied. Actually, he hardly ever messed around with guns. Dull, dull, dull. It was more fun to mess around with cell phones and car engines.
"Of course you did." She yawned and sat up. "Ready?"
"If you're all done catnapping."
"Don't knock it. I'm fresh as a daisy while you're just. . . well, never mind."
"Stay behind me," he ordered her. "I'll look out for you."
"Great. I'm sure I'll enjoy my early grave." But she waited for him to jump through the doorway over March's still unconscious frame, then followed.
Nine
The final confrontation was anticlimactic, to say the least.
Johanssen blinked at both of them and, as a terrified-looking physician cowered behind a counter, said, "What are you two doing here? And what in the world did you do to March?"
"We're here tostop you!" Dyson declared, and Tara rolled her eyes. Since she'd hooked up with Ben Dyson, it seemed that's what she did most of the time. "Just like we put a stop to March and his nefariousness!"
"I'm not really with him, Jo," she explained. "Well. I'mwith him, but notwith him with him."
"What, you've got a problem all of a sudden?" Johanssen was looking puzzled, thank goodness, as opposed to homicidal, which would have been very bad. She couldn't really blame him. They'd never
had to cross paths before. In a weird sort of way, she respected him. Well. She had until she found the body at the florist's. "Why? Why now?"
"Because you're a deceiver and you're going to hurt thousands of Americans!"
"Ben. Let. Me. Handle. This."
"Dr. Dyson, what do you think you're doing?" Johanssen was a deceptively mild looking man in his fifties, with dark eyes netted with wrinkles ("laugh lines," for someone who laughed), a medium build,
and tough, blocklike hands. His suit proclaimed "businessman." His hands said something else.
Ben shook his cell phone, which she suspected was currently lacking a charge, at Jo. "Stopping you, you foul fiend of—of—evil!"
"Foul fiend of evil?" Tara repeated.
"You got paid, right?" he asked, still sounding puzzled.
"Irrelevant!"
"Wh-what's going on?" the doc shivering behind Johanssen squeaked. He was a smallish man with watery blue eyes, a pale blond combover, and a neck so weirdly long he reminded her of a chicken. "Who are you people?"
"Never mind," Johanssen said absently. "I'll take care of it."
"I didn't sign on for any of this when I hired you," squeaky doc continued.
Tara rolled her eyes again. Civilians, swear to God. Sweat them a little, ramp up the pressure, and they spilled their guts.
"You hired him to steal my key card?"
"We didn't steal anything," Jo explained patiently. "We paid you."
"You paid me ... in subterfuge!"
Tara started to massage her temples. "God ... God ... God..."
"Well, you don't work for criminals," Jo said. "You're famous for your naive patriotism. So we had to
pay you in, er, subterfuge."
"I'm dying to know," Tara confessed. "How'd you make the paperwork look right?"
"My brother-in-law is a clerk for the CIA," Combover volunteered. Jo's mouth thinned, but he let the
doc babble on. "He showed me samples of POs and stuff."
"Did he know what you were going to do?" Dyson asked, appalled.
"Well... he wants to borrow the card for a weekend at work..."
Note to self: find brother-in-law and clean his clock.
"Look, Jo," Tara said, "I'm really sorry, but we're gonna have to get that card back. We just, um, can't
let you or this guy run around with it. So, uh, let's not have a problem, okay?"
"Sorry, Tara."
"You'rethe one who's going to be sorry," Dyson declared.
"I justsaid I was sorry," Jo snapped back.
"You don't know how sorry," Dyson sneered. "This gorgeous blonde to my left is deadly in the field."
"Awww," Tara said.Gorgeous? That's so sweet.
"Oh, I know," Jo said.
Dyson nodded, looking triumphant. "Her fiendish reputation precedes her, eh?"
"Actually," Tara confessed, "he's sort of my mentor."
"Yourwhat? "
"Taught her everything she knows," Jo boasted. "Practically raised her."
"Not everything," she said coolly. "For example, you didn't teach me to shoot my partner and leave him for dead while you ran off with the goods."
"Why would I teach youthat? Do I look like I want a head wound anytime in my future?"
"I have to say, I'm disappointed, Jo." And she was. In the old days, he'd never have left a body. If for
no other reason than it was messy. "Seriously."
"You're a child, Tara," he said, kindl
y enough. "You always were. You think you're bad, but at the
center you're softer than a marshmallow egg. It's why you'll never be great."
"Great like you?" she sneered.
"Good parting line," Dyson said. "Get him!"
"Well, just a minute."
"Why?" Ben asked. "What are you waiting for?"
"Look, the guy's got about a million black belts, okay? And who do you think taughtme how to fight?"
"Actually, I've never seen you fight," he pointed out, "but I'm assuming you know what you're doing."
"Did she say you killed someone?" Dr. Combover asked, finally catching up. "I didn't sign on for that! You were supposed to get the card, that's all, just get the card!"
"Collateral damage," Jo sniffed.
"We'll showyou collateral damage," Ben said. He stuck his hand in his pocket, withdrew the blackberry yogurt he'd grabbed earlier, and lobbed it, grenade-style, at Jo.
It splattered all over the floor, Jo's shoes, and his trouser legs. Tar a waited expectantly for Jo to melt or blow up or fall down unconscious, but nothing happened.
"You've ruined my suit," Jo commented, leaning down to brush purple puree off his pants.
"What's in it?" Tara breathed. "What's going to happen?"
"Nothing. It's just yogurt," Ben muttered to her.
"Nowyou tell me." She sighed, then waded in. Getting her ass kicked sideways by her mentor wasn't on her list for the day, but what the hell. She certainly couldn't let Ben take him on. Jo would eat him for lunch, spit out the bones, and bury them in some far-off field.
"Left leg!" Ben ordered, squinting.
Tara obligingly kicked out at Jo's left leg, and Jo obligingly moved, sweeping her blow aside. "Easier said than done," she said over her shoulder, and then her ears rang as Jo punched her head. Which she totally deserved; what had she been thinking, taking her eyes off the ball?
Everything went sort of blurry for a second, and there was a high-pitched whining sound, followed by
the more recognizable sound of Ben yelling, "You son of a bitch!"
"Don't," she managed, only to be knocked sprawling as he surged past her and jumped on Jo.
Jo went down—he was well trained, but Ben was a big guy—but rallied quickly by grabbing Ben's tie, doubtless meaning to strangle Ben to death (a compulsion she well understood). Instead he shrieked and let go of the tie and stared at the blood pouring down his hand.
"Ha!" Ben crowed. "Never touch the tie!" He punched Jo square in the face—Tara could hear the flat smacking sound of flesh hitting flesh—and let out a howl. "Arggh! That hurts!"
Jo turned his head to the side, spat out a tooth, then sneered, "You watch too many movies, Dr. Dyson." Then he didn't say anything, because there was a "bronnnnnnggggg!" as he was knocked unconscious with a microscope.
By Dr. Combover.
"He wasn't supposed to kill anybody," the doctor said dully, dropping the microscope on the counter. "I didn't—he wasn't supposed to do that."
Ben leaped to his feet. "Good work. We'll be sure to tell the police about your last-second change of heart."
"Yeah, we'll mention that right away," Tara said. "And what's with your tie? Your stupid, too-wide, brown tie?"
"It's lined with throwing stars," he explained. "I forged them out of titanium so they'll never—"
"Forget I asked. Why'd you do it?" she said to Combover, who, according to his ID, was Dr. Krendall. "You work here, right? We were told Jo was stealing a cure. Did you hire Jo and his team to steal it for you?"
"A ... cure? Stealing a cure? No ... no. I'm close, but... no. He might have told his men that, I don't know. It's . . . I'm stalled on my research," he said, staring at the floor. "Between my boss and the FDA and ...
I just know I could make some real progress if I could get into the other labs ... and Mr. Jones told me with this new card the computer wouldn't track me, nobody would know I was here or what I was doing . .. You have no idea how the FDA can slow you down..."
"Yeah, they're so pesky with their rules to guarantee safety," Dyson said, glaring. "There's a dead guy, and you're going to jail so your rep is in shreds, and any chance for a cure is stalled indefinitely, and for what?"
"For a cure," Combover said simply. "A cure is worth anything. Everything."
Tara didn't know about that; she wasn't the brains of this operation, for sure. But it sure seemed like an awful lot of waste. Ben was right... for what?
Ten
"That's it?" Ben was asking. "That's all? It's so ... so ..."
"Over?" Tara suggested.
"Shouldn't we at least wait until the police—"
"Pass."
"Oh. Well, all right. I guess they aren't going anywhere. How many handcuffs do you normally carry on your person, anyway?"
"That's for me to know," she said smugly, "and you to find out."
"You know, when you tried to take out Johanssen . .. your mentor ... to help me ... that was really great."
"Why'd you yell about his left leg?"
"I could see it was a badly mended break," he said, pointing to his blue eye.
"Oh. Creepy."
"Sort of the way I can see you're wearing a demi-cup bra," he said, grinning.
"I don't know what's worse, that you're ogling me with your fake contact lens or that you know the word 'demi-cup'." They were striding—not running, but not lingering, either—toward the west exit, when she suddenly grabbed his arm and hustled him into an empty hospital room. "Want to know what color it is?"
"Cherry red," he said without hesitation.
She gasped. "How'd you know that?"
"Trade secret."
She snapped the lock closed on the door, shrugged out of her lab coat, and pulled her shirt over her head. "Well, ding ding ding," she said. "You get the prize."
"What a day," he said dreamily, then grabbed her around the waist and kissed her until she was out of breath.
They found themselves on the (fortunately empty) bed, and for the first time all day Tara felt as if time wasn't her enemy, as though she could do as she pleased for as long as she liked. She got him out of his coat, got the tie off (very carefully; it was so sharp there was no visible blood on it), got the shirt off, and was fumbling for his belt buckle when he pushed the cups of her bra down and kissed her breasts. She forgot about his belt—and everything else—as he licked and sucked her nipples, as he ran his knuckles across the full undersides of her breasts, as he kissed her cleavage.
"You're so gorgeous," he said, raising his head to look her in the eye.
"Inside and out?" she teased.
He laughed and bent back to her cleavage, and she ran her fingers through his wild red hair. "This is nuts," she sighed. "The police are on the way, if they aren't already here."
"This hospital is huge," he said, his voice muffled. "It'll take them a while to get to us, if they even make it to this wing."
"And what about Katya?"
"She's having Cheez Nips in the bathroom; she's in heaven. I knew stopping by the snack machine on
the way out was going to pay off ..."
She whipped his belt out of the loops and sent it sailing across the room, then wriggled out of her pants and helped him out of his—
"These hospital blankets are scratchy," he complained.
—and rolled over until she was on top of him. He reached up and unlatched her bra, then sighed happily when her breasts bounced free. "What a day," he sighed again.
She trailed kisses down his neck, his chest—broad and furred with reddish brown hair—then inhaled his male musk and ran her tongue along the length of his throbbing penis. He groaned and tried to bury his hands in her hair—it was too short—and settled for fondling her earlobes instead.
She sucked his tip into her mouth and let her tongue play across its velvety head, marveling at the size
of him, the warmth, his good clean smell.
"Oh, God," he gasped. "Please don't stop. Ever."
&
nbsp; "For anything?" she teased, stripping off her panties and straddling him. He reached between her thighs and found her slippery, and she squirmed against his fingers as he stroked and teased.