FBI Damsel: Foreign Affairs

Eight: Keep 'em hooked

Mitch raced to Valerie’s side, tossing his gun to the side as he did so. “Are you all right? I thought I missed and hit you for a second there.”

“No, I’m fine!” she insisted. He helped her up, leaving the older officer to tend to his much younger partner. Mitch was never a great shot, but he managed to hit his target right in the chest. It had missed Valerie by no more than an inch and a half.

“I know I should’ve taken a little more time to aim, but I didn’t think there was much time because his hand was over yours and you couldn’t reach your gun and neither could the officer, here, and there was hardly time to waste and I thought we were all going to blow up if I didn’t -“

Valerie raised her hand, silence the geek. “Mitch, hush. You’re fine. You did the job well enough. Beckerly is knocked out enough that we can all walk away from this fairly unscathed.”

They both looked at him, bleeding on the floor.

“He doesn’t count,” she said, rolling her eyes. A small voice made them pause, until Mitch remembered he had been on the phone.

“Oh, Victoria! Victoria? Baby, you still there? What? No, no we didn’t get shot, I shot... No, Valerie’s fine... Yeah... what? No, I shot the- NO! The bomb obviously didn’t go off or I wouldn’t be talking to you would, I? I had the phone in my hand while I shot... sorry, I didn’t realize it would be so loud. I had to make a split-second decision and I chose to save my partner’s life!”

Valerie shook her head as he went on and on, rubbing her neck and shoulder where Beckerly had a tight grip on her only a minute ago. She shivered, hoping she never had to experience anything like that ever again. Andrea was so brave to go through what she did last year with Barb and them kidnapping and torturing her. Speaking of Andrea, she wondered how her best friend was doing.

(Somewhere off the coast of London)

Andrea laughed at another one of Luca’s stupid jokes. She was getting sick of constantly having to play the role of the dumb, young gold-digging newlywed ‘Holly’. Every one of his jokes - or what he called jokes, anyway, were nothing more than him ripping on dumb blondes and fat or ugly or poor people. Acting was a lot more difficult than she anticipated it to be. Luckily her ‘character’ was stupid, so all she had to do was be the exact opposite of what she normally was. Luca opened his mouth, prepared with another ‘joke’.

To avoid yet another fake laugh that was getting harder to force, she pretended to spot something swimming in the water. “Ooh, Isabel look at that fish!”

She stepped up to the edge of the yacht they were on and smiled politely. “It’s a, how do you say it in English? Ah, yes, it is a dolphin.”

Andrea nodded. “You’re really good with your languages, you know that? How’d you get so clever and smart?”

She shrugged. “L-erm, Marcos, and I have spent a lot of time in many places. The best way to learn is to immerse yourself in the culture and language.”

“I wish I could do that...” She stared dreamily out into the ocean. It was an honest dream; to be able to travel and study other countries and their cultures from their perspective, rather than whatever they say in a book. But she knew that Heath would never agree to that. Not with their jobs and the baby. Maybe years from now, after their kids have grown and they’ve retired from the FBI.

“Traveling is not as much fun as you think,” Patricia muttered, leaning over the railing.

“It’s got to be so expensive, too,” Andrea added, watching the criminal’s face.