Burn (5 page)

She sat in the lobby and watched the five o’clock
Strength and Conditioning class. The instructor’s wild blond curls and dimpled smile seemed to make it easier
for his students to follow his commands, which
directed them to do things that looked more like torture than exercise. One of his students, a statuesque
African-American woman with a long black ponytail,
chatted at her neighbors, mindless of the fact that they
pointedly ignored her or answered her with red-faced
grimaces.

“Zae!” the instructor called sharply, interrupting his
own count of the punches his students executed. “Cut
the jibber-jabber!”

“Yes, sensai,” Zae responded with a clean thrust of her
right fist, her punches still in rhythm with those of her
classmates. Seemingly aware of the eyes on her, Zae
peeped over her shoulder and found their owner in the
lobby. “Hey, sweetie!” she cried over the fight cries of
Chip’s students. “You made it!”

“
Drop and give me twenty Marine squats, Zae,” Chip
ordered. “I must not be working you hard enough if
you’ve got the energy to socialize this late in my class.”

With a roll of her eyes and a saucy flip of her ponytail, Zae moved to one of the bamboo walls and stood
with her back to it. Her hands on her waist, she lowered
herself on her left leg, her right extended before her, until
her backside nearly rested on her left heel. Biting her
lower lip, she raised herself and then switched legs, lowering herself with her right leg. The exercise took incredible strength and balance, and Zae performed the reps
without touching the wall. She completed her punish
ment just as Chip dismissed the class.

“Not bad for an old broad,” Chip told her as the
other students bowed to him before filing out of the studio.

“You’re not my sensai once we hit the parking lot,”
Zae warned, a wicked twinkle in her black eyes. “I’ll show
you what an old broad can do, kid.”

“I’d hate to be the attacker who ever tried to take you
on.” Chip chuckled. “He wouldn’t know what hit him.”

“A hundred and forty pounds of pure African-
American wildcat,” Zae stated. “A hundred and thirty-nine if I take off my earrings.”

Clutching at her lower back with one hand, Zae
bowed to Chip and then limped into the lobby.

“So you signed up,” Zae said, greeting Sheng Li’s newest student with a brief hug. “Good. You’ll like it
here. Let me show you where the locker room is.”

Zae led the way, still limping.

“Are you okay?”

Zae cast a sly glance toward the studio before drop
ping the limp. “I’m fine. I just wanted Chip to feel bad
for giving me the squats, the little punk.”

“You weren’t supposed to be talking in class.”

“Who are you?” Zae asked, pitching her voice higher.
“The dojo monitor? Honey, please.” She smirked and
swung open the locker room door.

“Are the lockers assigned, or—”

“Shh!” Zae hissed sharply, stopping before they rounded a tall stand of black lockers. She crouched
slightly, leaning forward to get her left ear as close as pos
sible to the voices coming from the other side.

“I’ve got spaces open at Witness Protection, Fugitive, and CI,” said the first voice, a low soprano with a nasal
quality.

“What’s ‘CI’? . . .econd, deeper female voice asked.
“Confidential informant,” another voice provided.
“What would a confidential informant be doing in
Webster Groves?” asked someone else.

“Gian used to be in the Marines,” the first voice said
quietly. “He was Special Forces. Who knows what kind
of people he’s connected to. Maybe the new girl was sent
here by the government to spy on him.”

“Gian was awarded a Purple Heart,” someone said.
“You make it sound like he’s G. Gordon Liddy.”

“He could be, we don’t know. Same as we don’t know
anything about his new student.”

“I’ll put five bucks on Witness Protection. She seems
like the type.”

“How so?” asked a new voice.

“She comes into the library every week and checks
out a dozen books. She reads everything—mysteries, self-
help, essays, the classics—but she seems to like romance
best. And she
always
returns her books on time.”

“So that makes her a criminal in hiding?”

“No. It’s just that she seems to make a point not to be
noticed. She’s seen me every week since she moved here
last year, but she never says more than hi and thank you.”

“It’s her name that gets me,” said a new voice. “When
she came into the bank to open an account, I was like, ‘What kind of name is Cinder White?’ It sounds totally
made up.”

The women laughed, and Zae moved into view from
her listening post. But before she could speak, Cinder
herself quieted the women. “When I was born, my eyes
were so dark that my mother thought they looked like
cinders. That’s where my name comes from. Is there any
thing else you’d like to know about me?”

Most of the women guiltily looked anywhere other than at Cinder as they collected their belongings and
scattered, but one of them opened her mouth to speak. A
scathing look from Zae made her close it.

“I’d better get home,” the soprano, a tall, thin woman
who resembled a stork in her blindingly white
gi
, said
uncomfortably. She curled a sheet of paper in her hand.
“Gotta make dinner for the kids.”

“Yeah, us, too,” another woman said, slinging her
gym bag over her shoulder.

“
Y’all oughta be ashamed of yourselves, betting on
somebody like that,” Zae chastised.

The stork halted in her tracks and slowly turned. “I
got your text message before class, Zae. I put you down for East Coast escapee, just like you wanted.”

“Uh, thanks, Carole.” A blush rose in Zae’s cheeks, deepening her warm brown complexion. “See you at car
pool tomorrow morning.”

Alone in the locker room, Cinder crossed her arms
over her chest. She glared at Zae.

“We showed them,” Zae said proudly, clapping
Cinder on the shoulder. “Let’s get your stuff put away.
You don’t want to be late for your first lesson.”

* * *

“Can I get that for you, Mrs. Gale?” Gian tugged
open the front door. With a hand at Adelaide Gale’s back,
he tried to speed her exit from Sheng Li. “Is your hus
band here?”

“Oh, Louie went across the street for a cup of coffee
while I was in class,” the elderly woman said. “He’s trying to conserve gas. He didn’t want to drive me here, drive home, come to pick me up again, and then drive home again. He’s so sensible, my Lou—”

“Well, as long as he’s here for you,” Gian interrupted.
“I’ll see you next Tuesday, Mrs. Gale.”

Before Gian could close the door behind her, she
turned. “I won’t be in class next week, Gianni,” she
started, touching a craggy index finger to her chin.

“
We’re having a potluck at the church to celebrate
Reverend Mason’s retirement. I’m going to make banana
split cake, the one I brought for Chip’s birthday, you
remember? Everyone likes it so much that—”

“Mrs. Gale,” Gian snapped louder than he meant to,
startling her. “I’ve got a lesson now. I don’t mean to be
rude, but . . .”

“I understand,” she sighed. “I sometimes forget what
it feels like to be young and in a hurry.”

A pang of guilt stabbed at Gian, but he ignored it. At
eighty-nine, Mrs. Dale was his oldest student. She had
been one of the first to sign up for his taekwondo class
eight years ago, when he’d first opened Sheng Li. Mrs.
Gale had progressed no further than a yellow belt, but
she always showed up on time and ready to work, which
Gian respected. But right now he was so anxious to start
his private lesson that he was ready to grab the old lady
and toss her like a javelin across the street.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. G.,” Gian said, forcing himself to mean it. “I hope you have a good time at your potluck,
and I’ll tell Chip that you’ll be absent next week.”

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Gale smiled. “Have a good
lesson.”

Gian closed the door and, after a cursory bow to the
main studio, he trotted across it, down the corridor, and
into his office. He paused a second to straighten his
gi
before he opened the door of the private studio.

He bowed, his eyes never leaving his new student. She
had been sitting cross-legged in the center of the mat, but
she stood when he approached her. She bowed to him exactly as he’d shown her the day before. She straight
ened, giving Gian a full view of her in her bright new
gi
.

The stark white cotton contrasted beautifully with
the dark richness of her skin. The fit was perfect, and she
wore it correctly—the Sheng Li emblem was sewn on the
left side, the left side of the jacket overlapped the right,
and the drawstrings assuring that the garment would stay
closed had been tightly tied. Her belt, the
obi
, was the
only problem.

She had followed the other rules of the dojo, which
were posted in the locker room, so she wore no jewelry,
cosmetics or polish on her fingers or toes. She had come
to him unadorned, and so lovely that—

He cleared his throat, stroking his chin to make sure
that he wasn’t drooling. It was heavy lifting, but he forced
himself to remember that she hadn’t come to him, not in
the way he’d been thinking. She’d come to learn, to work,
and it was best he never lose sight of that.

Standing in front of her, Gian saw that she was more
apprehensive than she had appeared the day before. The pulse at the base of her throat fluttered, and her rate of
breathing seemed too rapid. “Are you okay?”

“Just a little nervous.” She wiped her palms on the
sides of her
gi
. “I saw part of the five o’clock class. Karate
looks a little tougher than I thought it would be.”

“Do you know what karate is?”

“Is that a trick question?”

He shook his head. “I just want to know what your
idea of karate is.”

“It’s a style of fighting.”

H
e reached for the loop in her white
obi
. Light and
quick as a forest creature, she moved out of reach. “I’m
sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes for a second. “I didn’t
mean to do that. I didn’t want to do that.”

“It’s okay, forget about it.” But it wasn’t okay, not for
him. Her reaction tugged at something inside him, some
thing that wanted to close her in his arms and press her
to his heart. He took a step toward her and went for the
loop again. “Who taught you how to tie your
obi
?”

“Azalea Richardson.” She held her arms slightly up
and out of the way while Gian unknotted her belt and
unwound it from her waist.

Gian’s eyebrows shot toward the skylight. “Zae
Richardson’s fighting skills are excellent, but she isn’t
exactly a model student. I want you to come to me
looking like a warrior prepared to fight, not a present
ready to be unwrapped.”

“She’s the one who recommended you to me.”

He stooped a little to wrap the belt around her waist,
starting at the front. His cheek was so close to her face,
he felt the radiant warmth of her skin on his. “I’ll have to
figure out some sort of finder’s fee for her then. Maybe
I’ll overlook it the next time she starts doing chorus line
kicks when I’m running the class through ax kicks.”