Chapter 3-3
969 Words
Beatrice pressed the button that brought the elevator down, but didn’t say a word. She stayed quiet to let Frank stew in his own juices. He stalked into the elevator like a grizzly bear who’d just crawled out of its den and found no food anywhere. Seriously grumpy. She keyed in the lock code to take them up to the seventh floor.
“You like being right.” Frank didn’t make it a question and he didn’t waste time asking her where they were going.
Beatrice had to grant that the kid had the patience to figure out that he’d find that out soon enough. And also enough smarts to know that she wasn’t likely to tell him before then.
“Damn straight!” She loved the feeling. “Being right is fun. It’s one of my favorite things. And if I were blond and could sing, I’d be Julie Andrews.”
His look told her that his education in movies needed some serious fixing up.
For the life of her she couldn’t figure out why she so enjoyed messing with this kid.
Kid. He was seven inches taller than she was with a workout chest big enough that he made the elevator feel small. Nor had she missed how fine a form he had when he’d turned away from her. That she’d even noticed was interesting in itself, but she absolutely wasn’t going to think about that.
The door opened and they stepped into the inner building’s lower entrance foyer, the one which lay seven stories above the front-entrance street-level signs for brokerages and banks that filled the bulk of 7 World Trade Center, New York, New York.
Frank grunted when he saw the sign above the desk. But no more than that. Steel letters on dark wood: United States Secret Service. She remembered the feeling the first time she’d seen this sign, as if the world had just become a great deal more serious. Of course that had been on her new recruit tour, she’d known what building she was in. She gauged Frank’s reaction. “Adapts rapidly to changing situations,” was added to her initial assessment.
He eyed her sideways for a moment, then nodded to himself as if she finally made sense in his world. Of course a Secret Service agent would outsmart a simple carjacking scheme.
She’d spent the last year training in driving, weapons, investigations, research, and a dozen other skills. She’d also been trained in unarmed combat and wanted to see how Frank Adams did. It was stupid to take on an unknown street fighter twice her size, which made it just her style.
She signed in at the desk and signaled one of the guys to come out and pat Frank down, which he submitted to but clearly didn’t like.
“Escort him through. Find him some sweats.” She glanced down. His feet were as big as the rest of him and there probably weren’t any loaners that size. “Barefoot is fine.”
She turned and headed into the women’s locker room to change. She considered handing him to someone else for testing, which is exactly why she didn’t. Her instructors were always telling her she was much too impulsive, too quick to leap into the fray. But one of the old-timers, one who actually used to ride on President Ford’s protection detail, the only PPD agent she’d met so far, told her never to stop doing that. From then on she ignored all instructions to back off and had graduated top of her class. Maybe it was part of some test to see if she’d comply. She hadn’t.
She wandered into the gym. They told her it was nothing as nice as the one in D.C., but it worked fine for her. A row of weight machines down one side and a gray foam mat that covered the rest of the floor. She knew from experience that it wasn’t as soft as it looked.
When Frank arrived, he looked amazing. The black t-shirt with large white U.S.S.S. stretched tight across his chest and showed actual six-pack abs. Black gym shorts revealed legs that rippled with muscle. She could feel the heat rising through her body, so she turned away and led him onto an open corner of the mat.
He tried to turn so that it was his back facing the wall, rather than hers, but she didn’t let him. It left him watching the other agents over his shoulder, keeping an eye on them. There were only a couple working out. Things were quiet on July Fourth night, these few were probably just killing time before their shift started. She knew one of them well enough to wave, but that was all.
She herself was glad of the reason to be missing the party at her parents. That was the main reason she’d been cruising up to Columbia to check on a posted summer class schedule she could have just as easily called on tomorrow.
“Hit me.”
Frank goggled at her so she repeated herself.
“Ladies first,” he replied.
She shot a rabbit punch at his sternum without hesitating. She’d thought to drop him as a lesson, but her fist mostly bounced off a tight gut, though the breath did whoosh out of him. He’d also managed to twist enough to make it a partially glancing blow.
Beatrice went for another punch and Frank, predictably, went for the block.
But she didn’t land the punch, instead she went low and swept his leg.
On his way down, he was fast enough to snag a hand behind her leg and take her down as well. She landed on top of him and almost got the nerve pinch on his hand, but he was strong enough to wrench free, despite the pain that must have caused.
They pushed off each other and rolled to their feet.
“Damn,” Frank shifted lightly on his feet circling.
Now he was going to be predictable and gripe about surprise attacks.
“You smell wonderful.”
It flustered her enough that when he went for the takedown, she landed hard on her back before she could recover.
Frank knocked the air right out of her.
- Writer
