Chapter 26
My first self-defense session with Agent Mallory, and she was fifteen minutes late. I'd hit the treadmill, stretched, lifted weights... and tried to accept the fact that she'd stood me up. Finally, I headed out the door, gear in tow.
Mallory blocked my exit, like she'd been standing behind the door the whole time. "Let's get started." She kicked away the blue rubber mats I'd used to stretch, then set her hands on her hips and looked at me in the mirror. "Why me?"
Answering her did not come easily, mostly because lying didn't come naturally. "Because you're a woman, and you've braved this world of criminals longer than I have."
"Alrighty. You want to lie to me..." She peeled off her jacket and shirt down to her sports bra. Her muscular arms and shoulders as well as the six-pack-abs reminded me she was still half Conan. "First thing you need to know is how to take a hit."
"Next," I said, recalling the force of Roy's fist in my belly and Troy backhanding me on the streets of New York. That took the sheen off her grin.
"You think you've taken hits, sister, but they were all unexpected. You need to expect a blow. Anticipate it. Appreciate it. A good hit is like great sex."
I rolled my eyes. "Your love life must require a lot of therapy."
She closed the distance. "You asked me train you. You expecting me to baby you?"
"Of course not."
"Then shut up and buck up."
Which armed forces promoted her to drill sergeant? "Fine. What do you want me to—"
Whack. She'd struck my cheek open-handed, bending me sideways to my knees.
"Remember the part where I said shut? That was your first mistake. You can't pay attention to your opponent with your mouth flapping."
My skin went cold-numb at first, then began to buzz with heat and pain as the nerves came back to life. The hit was less a slap than a strike. With a sledgehammer. Maybe she and Roy had been separated at birth.
My jaw slacked. "When's the part where I get to return the favor?"
"If you think you can."
I swallowed my pain. I've been bombed, choked, shot at, and raped. Mallory can't hurt me. Much. I raised my head, though the throbbing in my brain began made me rise slower than I'd wished. She hovered, slapping at her biceps like a pro wrestler. If I tried to hit her, she'd block me. I stepped toward her anyway, chin high, not caring that she was breaking federal laws and Bureau rules and general social propriety. We both knew none of those niceties were going to protect me from Goliath or Stone.
"Second of all," she continued, "the men don't look at you, don't talk to you for a reason. If you hadn't noticed at the lodge, your boyfriend pissed a distinct line of territory around you. Small gestures, subtle eye signals count. Get it now?" She narrowed her sights on my face.
"Loud and clear, Sir."
Whack. She struck me a second time.
The force of the blow still pushed me sideways, but I regained my stance faster. This time, I'd seen the hit coming. Subtle eye signals indeed. She was as subtle as a fart in a church.
My head was ready to explode, but if she was looking for me to fold, I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. I remember the time dad slapped me six times in a row till I raised my arm and stopped him. That was the day I ran away and hid under a parked van till the house went dark, then I slipped back into my room. That was the first time I'd defended myself, the day I learned being alone was much safer. And the last time he ever hit me.
