by Selma Wolfe
“Everybody works for me,” Rick said. He raised his hands, palm up. “C’mon, I have the money to order anyone around.”
For a loud room, the space around them seemed oddly quiet all of a sudden.
Iseul clapped a hand over her face.
“Oh, Rick,” the other woman mumbled into her palm.
“Excuse me,” Hope hissed, and stomped through the crowd in Boran’s wake. But of course she had no idea where he’d gone, no idea where his mark was, and for a second she was so angry that she barely even cared.
She was distantly aware of Javier trailing at her heels. That recognition, more than anything else, made Hope pause for a second to collect herself. She needed to be an example, or something, a fine job that she was making of it so far.
“That was quite the scene, even from a distance,” a familiar voice said by her shoulder. Hope sighed without venom.
“Not the time, Trinity.”
“I think the handsome man wants to be your friend,” Trinity said with a wicked grin. Imagining it through her eyes, Hope could almost see Boran as the secret agent character that the other woman clearly thought of him as. Of course - Trinity just thought that Rick was jealous. She didn’t know what a complete dick he was.
“I don’t want a friend,” Hope said, just this side of testy, and almost honest at this very second.
“I think he wants to know you in the Biblical manner,” Javier piped up, looking excited to have something to add.
Hope glared at him. “I don’t want to know him at all,” she said.
Javier nodded wisely. “That’s what they all say.”
“Really?” Hope cracked her knuckles and grinned at him, all teeth and utterly devoid of humor. “Is it? When exactly is that what they say?”
“That is what women say when, uh, they have no interest at all in a man and don’t actually say no when they mean yes and I have total respect for that and I’m just going to be over there now. Doing that thing,” Javier babbled, and then fairly sprinted off to the other side of the ballroom.
Trinity cackled.
“I worry about him,” Hope confessed softly, trying not to think about Rick, trying to let the anger recede.
Trinity still looked amused, though she leaned closer to take in the confidence. “That one looks like he’ll grow up alright.”
“Does he?” Hope turned to watch Javier only just avoid stumbling around the edge of an elegant champagne table, all powerful limbs that he could barely control. “Do any of us?”
“Getting a little maudlin there, honey,” Trinity commented. She darted her hand out to squeeze Hope’s. It had been a long time since anyone - well, anyone but Rick - had felt comfortable enough around her to do that. “I mean, I suppose you can think of things that way. But isn’t it just as easy to think that we’ll all be okay, too?”
Hope didn’t know what to say to that. It did sound easy. It sounded too easy, actually. If she let herself think like that, what else might she start thinking?
She was a bodyguard, not a philosopher, and she didn’t know what to think about any of this. Hope took advantage of her own mental confusion and exhaled a long sigh, letting the anger bleed out of her. It wouldn’t help. She had a job to do, and this, this was exactly why you didn’t get involved with the client.
If she had been someone else, she wouldn’t have heard Boran’s careful footsteps above the din of the party. But as it was, when a huge hand settled over her shoulder Hope was unsurprised.
She turned to look at Boran, shifting his hand off her skin in the movement. It wasn’t strange somehow for Rick’s familiar cool fingers to rest against the thin material of the dress and to cross the large bare patches of skin it exposed. But it was so much more of her exposed than she was used to, and anyone else’s touch felt wrong. Boran’s touch felt wrong.
Off to the side Trinity looked conflicted but faded into the background with the crowd, one of her dark hands urging Javier along firmly after her. Javier looked surprised, but went, like a lost sheep being herded.
“You doing okay, Lasser?” Boran asked, his forehead bunched up in concern and his bushy eyebrows scrunched over his eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but things with your client seem… uh…”
“Yeah?” Without thinking Hope shifted back into her normal posture, feet spread wide to take her weight evenly and her hands hanging loosely by her sides. They stood there at the edge of the ballroom, mirror opposites, both catching each other’s eye and then glancing away to keep watch on their charges.
“Close,” Boran said, which made Hope glance at him again, off schedule, because that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. She had thought she’d hear “tense”, or maybe, “uncomfortable”.
Her heart sped up and beat uncomfortably fast in her thinly clothed chest. “What do you mean?” Hope asked, trying to sound bored.
Boran looked sympathetic, which was so much worse than if he’d looked annoyed. “You know what I mean,” he said, voice horrifyingly kind. “I saw the way you looked at each other. It’s easy to get attached when it’s someone like that, but we can’t afford it. Taking things personally is no way to operate.”
She had to bite back a sharp retort, but Hope knew that Boran was right. Beyond Boran’s shaggy head of hair, Rick looked strained and worried, his head bent over a champagne flute, flicking unhappy glances her way but not moving to interrupt her conversation. “I know,” Hope said quietly. “It’s not… This isn’t…”
Boran took his eyes off his client long enough to walk around beside her and bump her shoulder with his own. It was familiar and comforting in a way that reminded her of deep laughter and the scent of desert sand stirred up by Jeeps. Familiar in the way that a past life could be familiar; comforting in a way that maybe Hope had left farther behind than she’d realized until now.
“Do what you have to,” Boran said with a nod, and disappeared from her side.
Hope did what she always did when faced with a problem - filled her time with work. She stayed several unobtrusive steps behind Rick at all times. She shadowed his footsteps as he shook hands and exchanged friendly words with one rich, important person after another. It reminded her that this was still an option; that this had never actually stopped being an option. She was still just as good at this as she had been at the start.
Trinity, Iseul, and Javier all wandered casually by and for some reason found something else to do.
From the beginning, Rick kept turning around to look for her. It took a while, but eventually Hope let his gaze search her out. She caught the exact moment he saw her; watched a breath of air rush out of his lungs and his shoulders slump in sudden relief. It shouldn’t have warmed her, and she shouldn’t have been used enough to the sensation to recognize it, but there they were. Hope wasn’t in the business of denial.
Without hesitation Rick made his way over to her. The expression on his face was a ghost of his usual good humor and amusement at life, but he always had a smile for her. And that warmed her too, though Hope kept her face solemn.
“Been hiding from me?” Rick asked, sounding resigned.
She shook her head. “Not hiding, just… thinking.”
The edge of Rick’s mouth tugged up ruefully. Up close all of his sharp, clean lines seemed to blur and fade into something less perfect and more human. A thread was loose on his suit; his hair was ruffled at the front from where he must have scrubbed a hand over his face. There were smile lines crinkled into the corners of his eyes, and Hope wanted to reach out and trace them with her fingertips.
“That rarely works out well for me,” Rick said, his voice a low hum under the dull roar of the ballroom.
Hope crooked an eyebrow at him. “You want me to stop thinking?”
“Never,” he said, low and surprisingly earnest. Rick brought up a big hand to rub at the back of his neck and stared at her with his dark eyes. Hope wondered if she’d ever met anyone else who managed to live with so few masks. The money had to he
lp, but she was sure that part of it was just Rick and his open heart. She felt a sudden and shockingly fierce urge to protect him from anything that would make him take his heart off his sleeve.
“Alright, well, in any case, I have something to tell you.” Hope suddenly remembered Iseul’s impromptu lesson and shifted her feet closer together. It seemed to close the distance between them just a little more, though she hadn’t meant to.
“Yeah?” Rick reached out and his hand hovered over her bare shoulder for a moment before running it down the outside of her arm, just barely skimming her skin. His touch burned. She wanted more.
“I quit,” Hope said, her voice sure and strong, more confident in this one statement than she’d ever been in her own words before.
Rick blinked, surprise shuttering behind his eyes. He opened his mouth. Hope’s heart rose up to meet his words.
At the front of the ballroom an explosion crashed through the double doors.
CHAPTER TEN
There was a moment of shocked silence before the ballroom exploded into pandemonium. I never can catch a break, Hope thought with something close to resigned amusement, while the majority of her mind occupied itself trying to figure out if that was the noise of a bomb or of gunshots. It was remarkably difficult to tell the difference in close quarters, even if you had experience with the damned things.
“Do you think that perhaps your resignation can wait?” Rick inquired politely. It was admittedly impressive that he was able to accomplish this and still sound casual about it while Hope was bodily dragging him underneath a table.
“Let’s consider it officially on hold,” Hope said grimly. She crouched down behind the table and stared out over the crumbs and scattered plates. “Stay here; if you move, there will be violence, and it will come from me.”
Without taking her eyes off the door - there was a lot of dust, low visibility, and still lots of people flailing and running in no one clear direction - Hope yanked her sleek little black purse off its thin chain and dumped out its contents on the floor.
Rick spluttered quietly. “Do most women keep arsenals in their purses?” he whispered.
Hope felt blindly along the floor. After a moment of consideration she flicked her flat knife open and pushed it over to Rick, handle-first.
“Oh, definitely,” she told him as she picked up a small gun and cocked it with practiced hands.
“Should that be hot?” Rick asked. Hope had to bite down a laugh.
“You should be quiet,” she chided. She clicked the safety off, her hands perfectly steady.
The haze of smoke started to clear from the front of the room. Hope forced her eyes to unfocus; after a moment she picked out the pattern of slow movement as a few shadowy figures wove their way between tables.
Heading straight for them. Of course.
Hope ducked down and stared into Rick’s eyes, very close and very bright. The adrenaline made things look different, more vivid, so that she noticed every sharp line of his face, the slightly olive tone of his skin. She knew unquestioningly that in forty years she would be able to recall the precise shade of gray of his tuxedo, and the melting brown of his eyes.
“Incoming,” she told him, and he nodded. Rick pulled the flat knife off the ground, fumbling with it a little, but wholly game.
“What now?” he murmured.
Hope jerked her head to indicate the mirrors. Rick made a face, which meant that he understood what she meant.
It only took Hope a second to yank off the strappy stilettos. Then the two of them were moving, winding their way between chairs and under tables. Luckily the room was still loud with the sounds of panic and scuffing feet, and though Hope listened intently for any sharp cries or cut-off screams, none came.
If she hadn’t been in love with Rick before, this might have done it all on its own. The journey from the middle of the floor to the back doors they’d entered through seemed to take forever, but Rick never stopped or questioned her.
The mirrors she’d installed were their saviors. Hope blessed them over and over as they made their way to the back of the room. Using the mirrors she managed to keep them away from the three men advancing slowly, clearly hunting for Rick. Hope spared a thought for her friends - new and old - but her old friends could take care of themselves, and her new ones weren’t likely to be in much danger.
Not after Hope’s next move.
The last table was a good four yards from the door. Hope stopped and turned to Rick, who looked at her questioningly. In the mirror the three men swept closer and closer, unaware of how near they were to their target. She breathed in deeply and let the air go.
“I’m going to stand and you’re going to run,” Hope said in the quietest voice she could manage. Rick’s forehead scrunched up in denial. She raised a hand off the ground. “They’re not going to shoot. If they’d wanted you dead they could have killed you before. So listen - run to the lab, don’t stop for anyone. I’ll meet you there. The sooner you get through those doors, the sooner I can follow you. Got it?”
For a moment Hope thought that Rick was going to argue or at least kiss her. But the indecision in his face smoothed out into resolve; he gave her a sharp nod and gathered his legs underneath himself.
“Ready?” he breathed. Hope grinned.
Rick’s hand shoved off the table and his footsteps echoed in Hope’s ears; she jumped to her feet and off to the side, drawing the eye of the hunters, who seemed to turn toward her in slow motion.
“What’s up?” Hope shouted, which was perhaps not the cleverest thing she could have said, but in real life your witty comebacks mattered a lot less than getting the right reaction at the right moment.
Even if you are very well trained, there are certain instinctive reactions that just make sense, and thus are almost impossible to beat down. Though the three men had caught the sharp movement of Rick taking off toward the door, all three of them snapped their heads around to look at Hope when she shouted for their attention.
It was only a second or two. It was enough time for Hope to see that two of the men were of roughly medium height and one was on the short side, all of them with weather-beaten features and sun-bleached hair. It was enough time for Rick to slip through the doors and for them to thud closed after him.
“Stop!” The short man in front commanded in a harsh, accented voice. Hope blinked and then drew her gun - as in turned out, in unison with the three men. The scattered screams and footsteps in the ballroom went suddenly quiet.
“I don’t think so,” Hope said, her voice as steady as her grip on the gun.
The man inclined his head. “A pity,” he said. He didn’t sound particularly regretful. If she hadn’t been listening she wouldn’t have noticed it, but Hope’s trained ears picked up the soft click of the safety being pushed off on his gun.
In a smooth motion Hope drew her gun upward and took one sure shot.
The gunshot cracked across the ballroom, somebody gave a cut-off shriek, a mirror shattered, and hundreds of tiny pieces of glass rained down over the ballroom.
Hope turned on her heel and took off running for the door. She slammed into the double doors and sprinted down the hallway as fast as she could. There was no time for relief about the fact that the bad guys hadn’t recovered their wits enough to shoot a bullet into her back. She grabbed fistfuls of her long flowing skirt, hiked it high over her thighs, and bolted up a flight of stairs.
All of the scared-rabbit instincts lurking in Hope’s brain screamed at her to stop and hide, to listen for footsteps stampeding after her, to wait until they passed by. Just like every other similar time, it was a very real temptation.
But that was a good way to get killed. Sitting around and waiting very rarely did much but give the baddies a chance to find you. Just like every other time, Hope’s training and better instincts won out. The truth was that it didn’t matter whether or not they were coming after her, not right now, not if she could get far enough away. She needed to draw t
hem out in this direction, away from Rick’s lab, before she could get there herself.
Well, the three men were pretty close on her heels, and being quiet was really damn hard barefoot in a dress. At this point if she could lose them she’d be doing pretty swell.
Now at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, Hope lengthened her stride and ran down the hallway, letting the thick carpet absorb the noise of her footfalls. She strained her ears and though she heard shouts and heavy footsteps not too far behind her, they didn’t seem to be coming much closer. Hope forced herself to sacrifice some speed for silence; she dropped down to a jog and moved back down another flight of stairs on quiet cat feet.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs she crouched down beneath the banister, forced her breathing quiet, and listened for all she was worth. Yes, she could still hear those men, but they were at the opposite end of the hall and if she wasn’t mistaken…
A small smile curved over her lips as the stairway vibrated next to her leg. Excellent. They had figured out her path well enough to be headed up the stairs; not well enough to be still at her heels.
Hope got to her feet and trotted down the hall, still cautious and swinging her head from side to side to make sure there were no unpleasant surprises lurking around the corridor. She half expected to see more men in black crouched in the corners. But the hallway was silent and still except for her shadow flitting along the wall.
Outside of her room Hope paused just a second to yank the chain of her necklace over her head. She fitted the key in the lock and blessed the high front neckline of this dress; nobody would have any cause to think of the two keys hung around her neck.
She slipped in the door, locked it behind her just for good measure, and rapped on the door between her and Rick’s room. “It’s me,” she said in a low voice.
Before she could do more than hold up the second key, the door was yanked open from the other end and Rick’s bright, anxious eyes stared out at her. His hair was a riot standing on end like he’d dragged his fingers through it over and over during the wait. Hope had to fight down the wave of happiness that threatened to swamp her good sense.