Page 39 of Baby One Last Time
“Next, let’s open a blank plan and Penn’s warehouse specs,” he said.
“Actually, I’d prefer to do that alone. I’ll learn better if I do it myself.”
I didn’t like how relieved he looked. “That makes sense. I’ll leave you to it.” He stood and moved toward the door. “I need to stretch my legs, so I’m going to go on a run. I’ll keep my cell phone on, so call if you need me.”
“Got it,” I said, but I didn’t know if he heard me because he was already halfway out the door. I couldn’t blame him. A long, hard five miles would be the perfect way to burn off the pent-up energy making me jittery.
Physical exercise wasn’t an option until I’d finished my work, so I immersed myself in a plan for the simplest warehouse layout, a single-story, one-room, high-ceilinged building with two entrances/exits, one in front and one in back. I studied the building dimensions, lighting fixtures, commonly used security systems, and nearby traffic patterns. I made allowances for unexpected foot traffic and potential involvement of civilians. I checked nearby flight patterns and the roof layout in the event of a helicopter extraction.
When I’d finished what I thought was a damn good draft, I checked it against Derek’s plan for the same building. I flagged three discrepancies. Two of his ideas were better, but I was confident that in the third case, mine lowered the risk of civilian injuries. I marked the differences and left both plans in a folder for Penn to check. I stood, stretched, and checked the wall clock, shocked to realize two hours had passed.
My mind was sharp and my normally tense shoulders were loose. Work was good for me. I needed to remember that the next time I planned something that might jeopardize my job. All that was left was to sign out of the tactical database and the secure computer, and then I could change into workout clothes and sneakers and fit in a run before dinner.
I leaned over the keyboard with every intention of shutting down the workstation. But my hands froze in place. I stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. With a few simple clicks, I could find the action-after reports of past missions. Not just my own reports, but those of my teammates and supervisors, too. Sliding back into my chair, I navigated through the system and found the folder in no time. It was locked, but it accepted my credentials. I stared at the screen as folder after folder shuffled into place in front of me. Every HEAT mission, searchable by mission name, date, team members, locations.
The date was the fasted way to pull up the Aussie Attaché mission. Clicking on it was not without risk. The system recorded every click for posterity. If anyone ever went looking, they’d uncover my transgressions. The information was need-to-know. Could I really make a case for that? Yes. Yes, I was sure I could. I wouldn’t move forward in my job until I understood the mistakes I’d made. That wasn’t safe. Not for me, not for my team.
I clicked open the summary report and skimmed it. As I read the long quote taken from my own hot wash debrief that had occurred minutes after everything went down, the last day of the mission came back to me in sharp relief. I could still smell the stale coffee in the conference room where the attaché had gotten the drop on me and bent me forward onto the table. He was quick, strong, and well-practiced at forcing himself on women from behind. I was quicker and well-practiced in my own skillset, which started with landing a spike heel in the top of his foot and a hammer fist into his groin.
While I moved in slow motion to get the upper hand, the conference door opened in real time. The Aussie went for the pistol hidden beneath his well-tailored suit and drew it on Henderson. I could have stopped him if I hadn’t had to elbow the attaché in the gut and drop to the floor to avoid the chokehold he tried to put on me. The pistol went off inches above me. I aimed my tranq gun and squeezed the trigger. The dart land dead-on in his throat.
He lurched and dropped to his knees, bringing us to eye level. His hand didn’t have the strength to squeeze the pistol trigger again, but I took umbrage with the fact he hadn’t dropped it and aimed my tranq gun at the exact spot where my hammer fist had connected seconds earlier. He fell face-first onto the thin carpeting stretched over hard floor, and I kicked the gun out of his hand. Palming it for good measure, I ran to Henderson and bent toward him. There was a flash of movement outside the open conference door. Donald, the attache’s underling and partner in crime, was making a break for it.
“Go!” Henderson said. He pressed his hand into his belly but I didn’t see any blood.
Wait.
I jumped back up a paragraph and re-read. I recognized every word up until Henderson’s utterance. My memory picked up again in the paragraph below that, where I described kicking off my heels and giving chase. I followed the underling into the stairwell and down two flights before dropping him with a tranq dart from ten feet away. I waited for the satisfying thwack of his head against the concrete landing, then dashed up the stairs two at a time and back down the hotel corridor to the conference room. Bond was already bent over Henderson. After that, it was Cleanup and my debriefs and long hours in the hospital. All of it was lodged firmly in my memory.
Everything except Henderson telling me to go.
Assuring me he was alive. Reminding me Donald was a lethal risk, not only because he was helping his boss smuggle designer drugs into the US, but also because he’d seen our faces. Curious, I pulled up the longer briefings I’d made in the days following the shooting. I didn’t find another mention of the detail. However, I did see it echoed in Henderson’s debrief, given just hours after he’d come out of surgery, and repeated in his statements in subsequent reports.
I hadn’t gone rogue or off-book, Henderson had. I hadn’t gotten him shot. I’d probably saved him from a kill shot to the heart or head by throwing the attaché off-balance. And I hadn’t coldly stepped over what might have been my partner’s dead body.
“Well, fuck me,” I said to the empty room.
I emergedfrom the team house into the brilliant orange and pink of a Miami sunset. I stood still for a moment and enjoyed it. As much as I longed for a good, old-fashioned Christmas snowstorm, I couldn’t deny there was some charm to a warm, clear-sky night. Perfect for a long run to work out the new perspective I had on my last months at HEAT before being sidelined.
I breathed in fresh evening air. Breathed out negativity. I’d figure out what my feelings were and then sort through them while I ran.
I trotted toward my bungalow to change into running clothes, then stopped short when I realized I wasn’t the only one enjoying nature’s show. Derek was at the opposite end of the courtyard. His back was to me, but from the height, hair color, and stance, it couldn’t be anyone else staring up at the blazing sky. He shifted his position and began pacing. The blue light of an earbud shone through his dark hair. He was talking on the phone.
It could have been anyone. One of his far-flung teams. X herself. But I knew it wasn’t. There was a tilt to his head and a hitch in his step he only showed when he was talking to his brother. And the concern etched all over his face told me the news wasn’t good.
I’d heard more about Chase’s lower-spine injury in the months Derek and I had spent together. Chase could spend months at a time leading a normal, active life. Then he’d bend down to tie his shoe or twist while dunking a basketball in his rec league, and he’d crumple to the ground in pain. Sometimes he’d end up in the hospital for a few days. Every time, he would be confined to a wheelchair for days to weeks. The unpredictability of it meant he could never take walking for granted or venture far from a medical facility.
“He’s the one who should have been in HEAT,” Derek had told me one rainy night in Jakarta as we lay on an animal skin rug in a quiet hotel. “I was good at sports, but before his accident, he was amazing. He played faster, harder, braver.”
“Fearless.”
“Yes.”
“A daredevil. The kind who would try to conquer a black diamond mountain the first day he got on a snowboard.”
“I see what you’re getting at,” Derek had said to me, “and I appreciate it. But it doesn’t matter whose fault the accident was.”
I knew trying to convince him he wasn’t to blame for Chas’s accident would have been pointless. Hell, his parents had been trying for the past sixteen years. So I’d bitten my tongue, resolved to be there for him and to listen, not shut him down.
