Night Is Mine (33 page)

Adams didn’t know. At least not until now.

“Doesn’t hurt if you don’t move,” Beale told him.

He reached up a pair of meaty paws.

She pulled down on his hair.

“Impasse?” he managed to croak out.

“Depends. Broken voice box?” She waved her free hand in front of his face.

“Or not?” He lunged up against the pull on his hair and caught her thumb in his teeth.

This was going to get ugly fast if she didn’t do something. Mark almost laughed when she began tickling his chin with her free fingers.

“Cootchy, cootchy, coo!”

He did join the laugh that ran around the circle of observers. He tried exchanging a friendly look with Steve but only received Arctic chill in exchange.

She let go of Adams’s hair and he released her thumb. They both rose to their feet and backed carefully apart as he rubbed his scalp and she checked the teeth marks that didn’t quite break skin.

“You fight dirty, Army.”

“Way I was taught, Blacksuit.”

“Ha!”

So, he liked the nickname and was going to tear her apart for it. Or, he hated the nickname and was going to tear her apart for it. Fun pair of choices. Everyone in the room circled up. Sending one of the President’s personal guards to the mat was about to earn her more than she’d probably bargained for.

Maybe Steve was a betting man.

They both spiraled slowly inward until, just beyond grapple range, he shifted his stance.

“Don’t fool that easy.” She continued her circle back around the other way.

He resumed his.

Mark was mesmerized by the moves. She had the speed and Adams the strength. Not that Adams was slow. But they both moved with nothing close to standardized martial-arts training. There was something else going on here.

Adams lunged. Nothing subtle. A lineman’s flying grapple hoping for the quarterback sack, down, and yardage.

She dove over him and pushed down hard on his shoulders as she went by. He plowed into the mat, she recovered with a quick roll. As did he.

“Tag, you’re it.”

No subtlety. He was angry and lunged for her again. He planted his right foot hard.

She dodged left, away from his body mass.

He dug and turned and almost got her.

She danced away.

And the bastard smiled. He’d played mad to throw her off.

Good tactic. Mark had used it a time or two himself.

“Tricky, tricky, Blacksuit. But not good enough to get lucky, sailor.” She offered a sassy, hip check to the air.

Beale sassy. He’d never seen that side of her before. Captain Emily Beale was always business. Even when she was cooking or shooting hoops with the guys, she never went female. She played as hard as a guy, and she played to win. What else didn’t he know about her?

Adams leered appropriately, playing the game. Circling again, Mark finally recognized his stance. More than martial-arts training. More than field experience. It wasn’t a stance. It was a lack of one.

“Street kid?” Emily asked.

Mark had barely spotted it, so how the hell had a girl from the D.C. elite?

***

Emily watched the irritation ripple across Adams’s face.

His nod was tight. A past he didn’t show. A past that whispered around the circle of his fellow agents. No one else had seen it.

She wouldn’t have either, except for her bunkmate in the twenty-six week Airborne course. Two women, two hundred men. Thirty-nine would graduate after a half year of testing and training, two were women.

Trisha O’Malley had grown up in Boston’s Southie. Trisha had no rhythm of martial arts. No timing from carefully studied and perfected moves. She had tricks that no combat instructor had ever taught, all learned the hard way on the streets. Trisha had volunteered Army to get a new life. Emily had West Pointed in. But they’d both volunteered two more times before meeting, Airborne and Special Forces.

Emily would never have survived the course, except for the wispy little Irishwoman. If a woman with so many disadvantages could face down so many miles, so many tests of stamina, courage, and the pig-headed determination to succeed, how could Emily quit? If Trisha could run a 10k after four days of no sleep or food, so could she. If Trisha could shoot four fifties in a row at the end of a run, so could she. If Trisha was unbeatable in the sparring ring, she’d learn how.

And she had. Many, many, many bruises later. Street fighters had no sense of timing. No sense of if this, then that. They did whatever worked whenever it worked. She’d learned. And once the two of them had taken down eleven of the squad who didn’t think women should be there to begin with.

The only class member Emily had never defeated was her friend.

Frank Adams moved as strangely on the sly as Trisha had. His feet never quite shifted where she expected. His weight adjustments as he circled made no match with the next motion. And she’d wager that she’d not get a moment’s hesitation again. That wasn’t a mistake he’d make twice.

He offered street fighter, fine. She shifted her own stance until it was Army manual, picture perfect.

Frank Adams paused. Didn’t know what to make of it.

A probing swipe, which she blocked hard enough to raise a black and blue mark on his forearm within the hour.

A blinding foot sweep. She sidestepped and countered with a foot stomp that landed where he’d been, but not where he went.

He moved back a step, puzzling. Good place for him to be, but she knew she couldn’t sustain it for long against a trained fighter.

She offered him a Taekwondo fighting stance, right down to the out-turned wrists.

He stopped, puzzling, and moved in. A blast of speed and power.

Pure luck. It was a variation on a trick Trisha had pounded into her brain after pounding it into her body. Emily had begged and begged until Trisha slowed it down enough for her to see it, learn it.

Adams’s triple attack was a distraction. The high kick, the low sweep, and the grapple were all fakes. Any one of them would hurt like mad if they connected, but any pro could dodge them. The secret was that the dodge spoiled the balance and set up the defender for a sharp elbow-shoulder double-strike.

Rather than dodging, Emily turned to let the high kick hit her shoulder. It rocked her hard. But because she hadn’t moved away, she managed to trap his foot. He’d have rolled into a backflip, or at least a somersault, but she didn’t let go.

She didn’t twist the foot; no need to break the man’s knee.

She didn’t pull on it so that he’d hop along after her with both hands free to pummel her.

She pressed down on his knee so that he couldn’t relieve the pressure when she shoved his foot away as hard as she could.

He landed backward in an uncontrolled crash with enough momentum to plow three of his fellow agents away from the mat’s edge, including Steve.

Mark just stood there watching her with his arms folded over his chest and a huge smile plastered across his face.

***

This time Frank Adams returned to the mat slowly, and Mark didn’t blame him. It took guts to face down Emily Beale; he wasn’t sure he’d want to try it. He’d seen her prove a hundred times that she was the fastest person in the room and he’d seen her prove it against trained Army in dirt circles.

But to watch her in action as the spotlight show, against a man who was among the best trained fighters on the planet… Frankly he wouldn’t want to go up against either of them.

And she was winning. That amazing, stunning, luscious slip of a woman had bested Adams two out of two so far.

This time Adams didn’t squat.

He didn’t circle.

No approach at all.

He moved into a reasonable, if unconventional fighting stance and raised a hand as if to dangle it out in front of her as a distraction.

She didn’t ignore it, but neither did she follow it. Her eyes were unfocused, aimed around his middle.

He dropped a hand and began tapping a foot on the mat.

She didn’t look down.

The next motion made no sense. A quick finger flick.

Mark wanted to shout a warning, but Steve shot an elbow hard enough to stop him. Mark blocked it easily, but it distracted him for the crucial moment.

Three agents leapt onto the mat.

She rammed an elbow straight back without even turning to see. She connected solidly with the first agent’s solar plexus. The attacker from behind dropped with a grunt. Two more came from the sides. She grabbed their wrists and spun. Sent them both stumbling unexpectedly into the crowd.

She used their momentum as a launch at Adams.

But he wasn’t there.

Mark spotted him standing off the edge of the mat. One step back.

She landed her dive and rolled up to crouch inches in front of him, a one-two strike on the verge of being unleashed to solar plexus and groin.

“Easy, Army. Easy.” Adams held up both hands and wisely took another step back.

“What was that signal?” Her voice tight and dangerous.

He glanced around the room, then pointed at the two youngest in the group. Then he paused a moment to glare at Mark.

“You guys didn’t hear this from me, and you,” he aimed a finger at Mark, “didn’t hear this at all. Training signal. For when someone is foolish enough to think they’re ready. Also, in the field, a really loud cry for additional assistance.”

“But I was ready.”

“But you were. Damn, Army. Where did you learn how to do that? You ain’t no street chick.”

Emily straightened slowly.

Mark could see by how she moved that she’d been really edged. That’s how she walked after combat, really nasty combat. He had the feeling he’d missed half of the nuances of the fight, no matter how closely he’d been watching. Like years ago, the first time he’d thought he was a hot-shit Army pilot freshly checked out in a new Apache Longbow. And then his uncle, General Edward Arnson, had taken him for a joyride in his Huey. Mark hadn’t even followed half of the subtleties of what his uncle made the old bird do, though he could now.

“You’ve heard of Green Platoon and Airborne School?”

Adams whistled low. “Six months with the Rangers? Not many women through there. Didn’t know any had been.”

Mark kept his whistle to himself. It had been in her file; he’d simply forgotten about it. Too bizarre.

“Four have graduated. Ever. My trainer was in my class.”

“Well,” he wiped his hands on his shorts. “Whoever he was, he was damn good.”

“Hey, Blacksuit?”

“Yep?”

“My trainer? She was a little bitty girl.” She measured a height with her hand barely up to her own shoulder. “And she coulda whipped your ass but good.”

Frank Adams grunted and didn’t look real happy about it.

“If it’s any consolation, she whipped mine every single time.”

It took a bit, but finally he grinned at her.

“You’re right. I do feel better. Come on.” He nodded toward the fridge of cold beverages. “I’m buying.”

Mark nodded in appreciation. Emily was so good that she’d turned a trouncing into friendship and respect.

They sat side-by-side on a bench near the first turn on the running track. Emily had waved Mark off to the side, partly because she knew Adams wanted a moment alone and partly because Adams had earned it.

But also, the intensity of Mark’s gaze had moved from his typical healthy, lustful leer toward ravenous. He’d applauded harder than anyone when Adams had bowed to her. He’d even slapped his painted-over Night Stalker’s tattoo and shot her a thumbs-up, almost making her blush.

And she needed him at a distance because the fight had wound her up as well. With the way her body felt, if they weren’t in the middle of Secret Service headquarters, she’d throw him down on the wrestling mat and taken all he could give and more. Regulations and missions be damned. She needed a cold shower, with ice in it.

But now it was she and Adams. In the quiet. No one near them. No one running at the moment. Most of the group were now out on the mat trying out the moves they’d seen her and Frank use. They looked like a bunch of flapping chickens with a rooster loose in the yard.

Over here on the bench, just Frank Adams, herself, and two half-empty bottles of orange juice.

“There are things you aren’t telling me, Army.”

“There’s a whole lot of things.”

“Don’t like that much.”

She took another slug of her juice and considered again. Black-in-black didn’t allow for doubts. Too much at stake, her own life not least among them.

“I know.” Her head ached worse than if he’d pinned her to the mat by her hair rather than the other way round. “I’m sorry,” was the best answer she had.

He rolled his bottle back and forth between his palms. Back and forth. Back and forth.