Shieldmaiden 3

The purring ride had its way with her. Lexa leaned her head against the glass and let her drowsiness war with her demons—the storms still raging. Her jet lag won out and she slept through the long drive, coming awake to a kaleidoscope of green streaked with brown. The redwood forests outside the city.

It made her dizzy. She looked around the interior of the car. All that gunmetal-gray resin and beige leather with faux-wood finish. Maybe real wood. Who knew? They could charge extra for that. Her eyes traced the blaring green LED lights of the clock radio, then found the GPS. It was the most colorful thing there, the real world made into a cartoon map. Simple and clean. Must be nice to live there.

She looked out the window and saw him lying on the ground, bleeding from the hole she’d put in his sternum. The bullet had chipped his spine, the coroner would say later. He wasn’t going anywhere. He just laid there, chanting “There is no God but God—Muhammed is the Messenger of God.” Like it was a cheer he was trying to memorize.

There was plenty to pay attention to, with all the screaming, with the sirens coming closer, with helicopters starting to fill the sky, but the audacity of it narrowed Lexa’s focus to that one little patch of reality. Who was he to call on God? He’d killed fistfuls of people, meant to kill dozens more… all of them had a claim on God. Not him.

He wanted to see God, she’d help him look.

“There is no God but God—Muhammed is the Messenger of God—”

“Shut up,” Lexa told him, bringing the gun in line with his face.

The car stopped, the jolt slapping her fully into the present. After a moment, she got her breathing under control. Came out of the car. Murphy was already outside, sneaking a cigarette. He noticed her; she wasn’t trying not to be noticed.

“I was going to wake you, but you look so cute when you’re sleeping.”

“I don’t, but I can understand how you could be attracted to a woman when she isn’t looking at you.”

Murphy sucked some cancer into his lungs before replying it, so his words came out gray. “You woke up on the wrong side of the Corvette this morning.”

“Is there a right side?”

The quote-unquote cottage reminded Lexa of the Mark Twain stump by way of one of those manors influencers lived in while extoling the benefits of clean country living. A rustic log cabin, only two stories tall with a Lambo in the garage.

It did look nice: some apex predator of the woods all around, the fern-strewn ground surrounding it with shades of green like remnants of a shattered emerald. Trees growing so close to it that you could reach out and pluck a pine needle from an open window.

Well, there were worse places to do bodyguard work. But it’d be a bitch to secure. Something had already made it through the perimeter: a deer was nibbling on something between the stilts of the balconied second-story patio. Weathered steps, like hammered driftwood, led up to the landing. It looked like where the Brawny Man took his dates.

Mist hung, low and inconsistent, on the forest floor, like snow that hadn’t decided if it wanted to be there or not. It faded from view as their footsteps disturbed it, revealing a column of stepping stones leading through the peat to the cottage-cabin-manor’s porch. A pair of bushes grew unfettered to either side of the door. They reached fronds out over the doorframe like they thought it needed a screen door.

Shouldering them aside, Lexa knocked on the door. The sound rebounded, echoed off into the endless woods, dwarfed by the stillness it was trying to jostle.

Murphy pressed the doorbell. It was one of those new ones from Amazon for people who worried about polite home invaders that rang the bell before doing rape-murder.

Lexa straightened her tie. She whistled at Murphy. He did the same, with a sour look at her. Casual Friday hadn’t penetrated into the agency and neither was it gospel at Kane Security, but though Murphy had put on all three pieces of his suit, she could tell he longed for a Hawaiian shirt.

No one answered the door and Lexa heard no indication of movement from inside. She knocked again, then breathed through her nose, trying to meditate when all she knew of Zen was cross-indexed with motorcycle maintenance.

She’d done protection details before, in Anomalous Operations. Those were business. Sometimes, little more than search and destroy missions with bait. Instead of going to the target, let them come to you. Other times, genuine escorts. Take an asset, make sure it didn’t get dead. But it was all chess pieces. If the Agency said this asset had run its course, no good money after bad, that was it. Disengage and fade. Nice knowing you, buddy.

It never bothered Lexa. She didn’t let it bother her. It was gamesmanship, that was all. Mourning an asset that didn’t have any more use was like feeling bad that you took a hill from the enemy, then retreated from it. War wasn’t about hills, it was about objectives.

Assets could be smart, though. Just smart enough to be useful; maybe not smart enough to stay useful. They’d tell Lexa about their kids, girls they were going to marry—one, a book she hoped to finish. Ingratiating themselves to her.

Only Lexa didn’t let them. She knew how she got. Growing up, having to be pulled off a schoolyard bully because he’d laid a hand on one of her little brothers. If someone was in her tribe, that was that. And this bodyguard work… living with someone, shadowing them, getting to know them… it was a lot closer to being in the tribe than it was to Anomalous Ops.

It made Lexa wonder how she could be cold and impersonal when she was being paid not to be cold and impersonal. Anomalous Ops might pay her to treat an asset like a piece of meat, but she doubted Clarke’s mother would sign up for that payment plan. So she wasn’t working security. She had two jobs now. Bodyguard and… service worker.

Still no answer at the front door: “She knew we were coming, right? She didn’t pop off to Starbucks for a foam vanilla latte?”

Murphy squared his shoulders defensively. “First off, e-mails were sent, texts were texted.”

“You didn’t add her on Snapchat?” Lexa teased.

Murphy rolled his eyes. “Second, it’s Seattle. No one drinks Starbucks.”

“Starbucks started in Seattle.”

“Exactly. ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown’…”

“Don’t quote scripture when there isn’t a fire extinguisher handy.”

Murphy pounded on the door. “Police! Open up!”

“Impersonating an officer is a crime, you know.”

“Like that’s what they’ll get me on.”

The door finally swung open. With all the mist in the air and drizzle evident in the shady gloss that covered everything, it was no surprise that rusty hinges squeaked, snipping off their conversation. Lexa’s eyes flew to the open doorway and her heart went into overdrive. Like she was going into battle.

Clarke was one of those women who had been blessed with a perfect body and had the discipline to keep it despite there being a McDonald’s on every corner. Or maybe she just forgot to eat, the same way she forgot to brush her hair.

Her eyes were faintly blue—Lexa had to squint to tell they weren’t green or even hazel, and she immediately chided herself for the effort. She wore no make-up. Her blonde hair was thick, luxuriant. She’d be a terror with a hairdresser and some eyeshadow behind her. An inviting little mouth—thin lips that seemed just enough for a kiss—neatly nestled cheekbones in a round face with a statement of a chin, sweet nose, and those eyes… eyeshadow, some lipstick, and a comb through her hair, she’d have any guy she wanted. A thought Lexa refused to carry any further.

She wore a ratty pink bathrobe (a bathrobe with character, her socially conscious little sister’s voice whispered in her ear, support women) over a graphic tee with the Abbey Road album cover on the front. Lexa was still no-commenting on all allegations of blondie’s attractiveness, but she would say that Lennon and Harrison had never looked so good.

And for bottoms, she had a pair of Hello Kitty panties and a Band-Aid over what Lexa took to be an accident incurred shaving her legs. Because she most definitely shaved her legs. Lexa couldn’t imagine finding a single hair on them, even if they were wrapped all around—

“You’re not cops,” Clarke said firmly, looking them up and down. “Well, he’s not a cop…”

She was looking at Murphy now and Lexa wanted to grab her by the chin; ‘no, keep looking at me.’ She settled for speaking, which thankfully took Clarke’s eyes off Murphy (which meant Lexa didn’t have to kill Murphy)

“We’re not cops,” Lexa explained. “We’re—”

“Mormons,” Clarke interrupted. “Yeah.”

“Mormons,” Murphy repeated dubiously. “You don’t buy me as a cop, but you do think I’m a Mormon?”

“Cops turn people away, but I’m pretty sure the Mormons have to take everyone.”

Lexa stifled a laugh.

“Look,” Clarke continued. “I’m really busy and I don’t have time for this right now, so fine, I convert or whatever, just leave me alone.” She started to close the door. “Hail Mormon God.”

Lexa shoved her foot into the door. She was wearing slingbacks from Payless—her job interview shoes—but she made a mental note to switch to goth-kid boots at the earliest opportunity. This didn’t seem like a job she’d be able to do in heels.

“Hey. Dolly Parton. We’re your fucking bodyguards. Let us in already.”

Clarke’s eyes lit up. “Oooh. Those bodyguards! Oh shit, I was supposed to clean up, I lost track of time. Can you give me like one minute? Thanks. And move your foot please, I have to close the door or the thing beeps.”

“We can wait inside,” Lexa tried to argue, but Clarke gave her such a fierce look that she drew her foot back.

“It beeps!” Lexa reiterated, and shut the door again.

Lexa and Murphy traded a look.

“You think she’s really going to clean up?” Murphy asked.

“She sounded sincere.”

Murphy shrugged like it made no difference to him. He reached into the pocket he’d put his cigarettes in. “You calling her Dolly Parton, that an insult?”

“It was… mildly disparaging.”

“Because who doesn’t like Dolly Parton? She’s a generational talent, she seems very nice—” With a cigarette planted in his mouth, Murphy paused before lighting it to make a cupping gesture below his collarbone. “And, you know…” He went back to lighting his cigarette.

“Give me one of those.”

“It’s menthol.”

“Just give it.”