Chapter 11
1311 Words
Chapter 11
Beatrice: 1988
The key, people,” Beat stood at the front of the training center lecture room. “The key is learning to act accurately and quickly on incomplete information.” Two dozen agent-wannabes slumped in their seats, well past exhaustion. The room was a double-wide trailer, shabby from a hundred training classes and thousands of post-action analyses. The Georgia heat was so concentrated in here that she was surprised the plastic carpet didn’t melt.
“Most of you pre-judged the roles. Make no assumptions. Ever!” She put a slide up on the screen. “Lynette Alice ‘Squeaky’ Fromme assassination attempt on President Ford during which no shots were fired.” Click-clack of the advancing slide. “Sarah Jane Moore repeated the attempt seventeen days later, actually firing her weapon and wounding a nearby taxi driver.” Click-clack. “Mark David Chapman who had John Lennon sign an album, then gunned him down six hours later.” Click-clack. “Two months after that John Hinckley, Jr. succeeded in seriously wounding President Reagan in an effort to impress Jodi Foster who he was stalking. She was eighteen at the time.”
Beatrice click-clacked through another dozen slides, all types of would-be and successful assassins operating on U.S. soil, and not a one looked demented or stereotypically terrorist. The slide projector clicking and the hum of the air conditioner that failed to fight back the heat or the body odor of the twenty men and four women struggling to stay awake in their chairs, were the only other sounds in the room.
“Only one of you recognized the driver was the target of the scenario.” There was no need to point out who, the three paintball stains across Frank’s chest had dried dark red on his shirt and were there for all to see.
“However,” Beatrice pointed out before he could start to be too pleased with himself. “He made the false assumption that the companions of the person-of-interest would think him important enough to keep alive. Instead, they decided to sacrifice him to keep him from being questioned, which was the stated top criteria of the exercise. Most of you were killed by the simulated car bomb, he was killed by three bullets to the chest, and critical information on a terrorist plot was lost with the driver’s death in all cases. Never assume.”
She waited in silence, staring at the room in general and carefully not looking at Frank’s hurt expression. That he’d gotten the highest score from observers by a factor of two was beside the point, and one she wouldn’t be mentioning. She’d also be keeping silent about Frank being the only trainee to take her down, even briefly.
She didn’t invite questions, that wasn’t the point. She wanted to drive, to “beat” the point home. Damn him. That nickname had already begun to run through the other trainers. It was better than her childhood nickname of Beebee, for Beatrice Belfour, but not much. She’d had to pound that one into the ground throughout grade school, but the more she attempted to bury “Beat” the more often it cropped up. She had a nasty feeling this one was going to run through the agency.
“Dismissed. Get clean and get some sleep.” After three months of FLETC they knew that they wouldn’t have time to catch up on sleep. Drills at odd hours, functioning on high alert for days in crisis situations, learning to fight through the time when hallucinations from lack of sleep set in.
She waited until they were all gone, then shut down the projector and the lights.
He was waiting for her in the midnight shadows, leaning back against one of the trees of the low forest cultured for use in these scenarios.
Of course, he was. As she’d known he’d be.
She stood under the small yellow porch light of the double-wide, four steel steps to the ground.
He didn’t move, leaving the choice to her.
Her boyfriend in college had not understood her sophomore-year turn from art, originally chosen to piss off her parents, to criminology, chosen to please herself.
Once she’d signed up for agent training, she only seemed to attract the men who were interested in proving they could out-wrestle a Secret Service agent. None of their egos had taken kindly to her definitive proof that none of them could.
Frank Adams was the first man in a long time who hadn’t seen her as a target, something to conquer. Instead he waited and watched as her blood burned in the hot Georgia night and her pulse raced.
She was barely conscious of the steps she descended or the rough ground she crossed until they stood just inches apart under the trees. The night air scented by the tiny white flowers of the glorybower tree, punch strong but with a sweetness as soft as a truly fine gelato on a hot summer night. The blooms looked like stars lost from the sky and scattered over the dark green leaves, the only light in the darkness.
“Last time you socked me in the gut,” his voice was a gentle rumble in the shadows.
She had.
“Good punch by the way.” He slid his hands around her waist.
“Thanks,” she wrapped her own around his neck.
He nuzzled her hair, “Even hot and sweaty you smell amazing.”
She let herself lean her cheek against his chest and breathe him in. “So do you.”
He scooped her up into his arms as if she were a feather. “Now’s the time to say it if you’re going to.”
She kept her mouth shut, her arms around his neck, and her cheek on his chest.
He waited three heartbeats that she could feel and hear in his chest, then he strode into the woods until she wondered how he navigated at all. Even the tiny five-petal flowers faded away, though not their glorious scent that wrapped about them like a protective shawl.
He didn’t set her down to kiss her, but simply kept her cradled against him. His mouth impossibly soft, his arms incredibly strong.
Beatrice had fought against everything in her life: her nicknames, her parents, the system, even the training rules. In Frank’s arms, there was no need to fight at all. His kiss was everything she hadn’t expected from the man she’d swept off the street three months ago. It was soft, playful, and included a smile when they finally moaned in unison.
He set her on her feet and leaned her back against a tree. He pinned her there with his lips, with the gentle brushstrokes of those big hands. He knelt before her and feasted on her body, and all she could do was hold on. When at last he had her n***d against the tree, she guided him over her. A willing lover, one who made her feel things she hadn’t felt before.
Not just the amazing rocketing sensations firing through her body in unprecedented waves of heat and pleasure. Not simply desired either. He made her feel needed. Important. As if being here with her was the only thing he cared about in the world.
When he had shed his own clothes and leaned n***d upon her, skin-to-skin, she didn’t go wild as she’d thought she’d might, ravenous for his touch and smell. Instead a peace settled over her as she traced her hands over his beautiful chest, invisible in the darkness, but still beautiful.
“Been thinking about this, haven’t you?” she whispered when he reached down to his pants and pulled out some protection with a soft crackle of foil.
“Since the moment you pulled that damn g*n on me.”
“A g*n turns you on?” She teased his pecs with her tongue.
“No.” His groan rippled against her lips. “A g*n makes my balls shrivel in fear.”
She laughed and rested her forehead against his sternum as he stroked his hands up and down her back.
“But the woman who was wielding it turned me on since before I even heard her name.”
“Damn you,” her soft curse was lost against his lips as he lifted her by cupping his strong hands into a seat as she wrapped her legs about his hips.
He leaned her back against the tree and took her, one of the most incredible experiences of her twenty-three years.
“You feel even better than my car.”
His chuckle was deep and rippled along her chest.
“Damn high praise that.”
- Writer
