Page 69 of Shielding Instinct

Yeah, Petra’s gut told her not to wait. Pulling her phone out, Petra quickly tapped a message.

Petra:Hey, Avery, are you available for a phone call?

The phone rang a minute later.

“Hey there,” Avery’s voice was bright and chatty, which didn’t jive with the survival state Petra had been swimming through for the last two days. “What did you do today? Lay out with a pineapple drink and soak in some sun?”

“Sun happened. Drinks did not. Have I got stories to tell you when I get home.” Petra worked hard to lighten her tone so she didn’t worry her friend.

“Stories plural?” Avery’s voice turned sing-songy. “Do any of them happen to include a certain handsome operator named Hawkeye?”

“In ways big and small, yes, he was along for the ride. Before I get too distracted, I’m calling you for an important reason. I brought up Holly Smokes' name in a conversation I had today.”

“Mmmkay.”

“There was this woman, Jenny Johnson, who reads Holly’s books. And it turns out Jenny also goes all over the world doing adventure races. I thought it’s such a small world at that level of racing that they might know each other."

“Were they in the same races? I’m having dinner with Holly this week. It would be fun to put them together.”

“I can look in a minute and text you. “

“Holly is really Beth McNight.”

“Yup. I remember. She said she doesn’t want her kids to know she writes SEAL-populated reverse harems with whips and butt plugs. But I think she races under Holly, so she can use the images for social media, right? I’ll look for both names.”

Petra started to think that a combination of her job and the events she’d just lived through might have clouded her thoughts.

Before she disparaged this woman’s name and warned Holly off, maybe she should do a little more investigating.

“Fun fact,” Avery said, “while men can, on average, run faster than women in shorter runs. Women are faster when they run ultra-long distances.”

“Which would be how far?” Petra asked.

“In my book? Anything over five miles seems excessive. I’m going to make this up. I think it’s at the fifty-mile mark or around there.”

“Just making facts up, tossing them out there for me to gobble up?”

“I know how you like to snack on a good factoid. But go back and check me. There’s a website with women’s adventure races and times. Just put it in a search engine.”

“Okay, Avery, let me do a little searching around. I’ll text you anything I find. Have a good evening.”

“Petra?”

“Mmm?”

“That was why you called?” Avery asked.

“There’s a lot going on. I think I called prematurely,” Petra said with a sigh. “I need to clear my head.”

“I get that. Call me when you figure it out.”

Petra glanced around the part of the emergency department she could see, and her nurse was nowhere around. Petra’s cuts were so minor compared to the injuries that were coming in. From the codes that were ringing out, near drownings, heart attacks, burns, and broken limbs were taking up everyone’s attention. And Petra wanted that. She wanted to slide into the triage in such a way that she was merely the minor inconvenience of a scrawled signature.

She leaned back and looked out the window.

The Cerberus men stood in a circle, hands on hips, dogs sleeping or resting in the center.

Then she looked down at her phone, feeling like she was about to open a kettle of worms.

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