Page 19 of Swerve
“Walking with your shoulders hunched.” The answer comes from the thirteen-year old girl who still thinks her mom hung the moon. Mia noticed it earlier, the way she rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder, smiled whenever she looked at her and said something.She recognized her own jealousy. Knew it made her a not very nice person.
“Excellent, Addison,” the instructor said.
“Someone give me another example.”
“Looking like you don’t know where you’re going,” Mia said.
“Good, Mia,” he said, giving her a look of approval. “Confidence in your walk. How about awareness of your surroundings?”
Several murmurs of agreement went up.
“All right then, are we starting to see that there’s an entire picture here that we need to affect? I’m going to teach you some lifesaving moves here today. But I’m hoping the most important thing I teach you is how to take yourself out of the potential victim category altogether. Are you with me?”
It would prove to be the one lesson in her entire education of life that Mia would eventually wish she had paid better attention to.
Knox
“Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.”
—Alfred Lord Tennyson
HE’D BEEN WARNED it was a hazard of the profession.
Apathy.
Burnout.
Indifference.
Watching the sun rise from the balcony of a downtown, D.C. condominium on his forty-first birthday, herecognizes himself as theclichéhe is. Apathetic. Burned-out. Indifferent Metropolitan police detective.
Shirtless, he notes the chill in the early May air, but he isn’t sure what happened to that particular item of clothinglast night and doesn’t relish the thought of groping around the darkened apartment looking for it. Then again, he can hardly leave without it.
The sliding glass door behind him slips open, and he looks over his shoulder to see Senator Tom Hagan’s wife holding out his shirt with an indulgent smile on her face.
“Missing something?” she asks, walking over to join him at the rail.
He takes the shirt from her, slips it on, but before he can button it, she slides a hand up his chest and says, “Or I could just warm you up.”
He studies her almost too-perfect face for a moment, searching for an answer that won’t offend. “Gotta get to work,” he says with a deliberate infusion of regret.
“But it’s your birthday,” she says, slipping her hands around his neck and pressing her silk-covered breasts against him.
Had he told her as much last night? He supposes so because there’s no other way she could know. “Still have to work,” he says.
She tips her head to the side, a pout replacing her smile. “Can’t you be late?”
“Duty calls.”
She gives him a long look, as if considering whether he’s being truthful or not. “I actually knew who you were before we met last night,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“There was an event a few months ago. That dinner at Senator Donovan’s. You were working security. I wanted to know who you were. So I asked.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Did you ask your husband?”
She laughs a short laugh. “Hardly. Senator Donovan’s wife, Alicia, gave me the lowdown. Let’s see if I can recall. Born to parents who were both doctors. Friends in high school called you the ‘caretaker’ because you were always defending the underdogs. You went to VMI and originally intended to go to med school, but opted forSEALmentoring sessions at theUnited States Merchant Marine Academy instead. Which led you to later take a commission in the Navy where you would head for California for SEAL training. And that’s how you ended up in Afghanistan fighting in the Global War on Terrorism.”
