Second Strike

CHAPTER 7

^{IRVING, TEXAS,}

^{AUGUST 14, 6:12 P.M. CDT}

Garin stepped out of the ice bath Luci had prepared for him, toweled himself off, and examined his face in the mirror. Other than a small welt on his cheek where Olsen had struck him, he was in pretty good shape. The cheek ached a bit, but the ice bath had done wonders for the rest of his body.

He put on a pair of linen trousers and opened the bathroom door. Luci had arrayed tubes and bottles of ointments and analgesics on the nightstands flanking the queen-size bed. She shook her head, pointing accusatorially at his pants.

“That will not do, mister. No. No way. Off with them.”

When Garin hesitated, she continued, “I can’t do much for your legs and glutes with those on. Don’t worry, I’ve seen the male form once or twice before.”

Garin disappeared into the bathroom and dutifully returned seconds later, a towel draped modestly around his waist. Luci rolled her eyes. “I never would’ve pegged you for the shy type.” Not with a body like that, she thought.

She waved him to the bed. “On your stomach first.”

Garin lay diagonally across the bed and Luci straddled his hips, applying lubricant to his shoulders and back, using her fingertips to define the individual muscles, expertly kneading them to drive out the lactic acid. If the man had a single fat cell on him, she couldn’t find it. It felt like she was kneading iron.

Luci felt featherlight astride Garin’s back and was quite adept at what she was doing. He’d eschewed rubdowns as a waste of time in the past, all the way back to his college football days. He submitted now partly to mollify Luci as well as to assuage his guilt for having deceived her. But this felt very good.

She massaged in silence for nearly ten minutes, then: “I saw you at Saint Francis of Assisi a couple of weeks ago,” Luci said, referring to a small church near the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia. “It was during the week, midafternoon. You were by yourself in one of the first pews. No Mass. No priest.”

She paused and continued kneading iron; then, with a genuine curiosity in her voice, she asked, “What were you doing there?”

“What were you doing there?”

“Come on, Tom. You make people pee their pants just by saying ‘hi.’ I mean, you have a look. Seeing you at a human sacrifice? Plausible. Church? Not so much.”

Garin shrugged and said nothing.

Luci slid down to straddle his thighs so she could work on his hips and buttocks. Still iron, molded and contoured.

“The ladies at the rec center have a pool going. Just pennies. They’re betting on what you do for a living. The winner tries to talk to you.”

No reaction.

“Want to help me win?”

“You’re already talking to me, Luci.”

She slid down to his ankles to work on his thighs and calves for a while. She had treated some of the Baltimore Ravens a few years back during an undergrad internship. Superb physiques and conditioning, yet nothing like this. This body looked and felt like it had done something serious.

“What do you do, Tom? I mean, seriously.”

“Not much of anything right now.”

“Then how did you pay for our travel and rooms?”

“General frugality.”

She slapped his side. “On your back.”

Garin rolled onto his back and Luci straddled his hips again, kneading his chest, shoulders, and arms. All bulges and veins and striations. She took her time with each trapezius, each deltoid, each biceps, each brachialis. Then the pectorals, where she scrutinized a four-inch scar over his heart. Something had been able to penetrate the iron.

She hunched over to take a closer look, her hair falling over her face and onto his chest. She traced the scar with her index finger.

“What’s this?”

“Nothing much.”

Luci snorted. Tom Lofton, inscrutable to a fault. Placing her palms flat on his chest, she leaned forward a bit more, examining his eyes with a hint of frustration. And a bit of something else.

Garin liked Luci’s eyes. They were big and intelligent, set deep in a bronze face. He liked her body, too. Fit and firm. He liked Luci.

“Ms. Saldana, you were at church on a weekday afternoon?”

“Just like you.” She smiled.

“I bet you went to Catholic school as a kid.”

“K through eight.”

“Then you know the imperative to avoid the near occasion of sin,” Garin said.

Luci stopped kneading, blinked several times, and grinned. Where did he keep that damn time machine?

Luci scooted off Garin onto the floor, still grinning.

Bemused, she stared at him for a second, then rubbed her hands together. “How about some dinner?”

“Sounds good. I could use a wheelbarrow of carbs right about now.”

“Take a shower. Get dressed. You want carbs? How about pasta? There’s a place down East Las Colinas.”

“I could use some turmeric and ginger.”

“I picked up both this morning. They’re in my room.”

“Marry me.”

Lofton disappeared into the bathroom to change, leaving a grinning Luci to ponder her situation. She was alone in a plush hotel room with the most dangerous-looking male in the Western Hemisphere, who nonetheless behaved with altar boy rectitude. She expected to feel disappointment, frustration. Instead she felt a sensation akin to elation, anticipation at the very least. This wasn’t a rejection. It was something closer to… respect, chivalry.

Luci’s eyes flitted about the room as she waited. The sliding mirrored door to the closet was open and she glanced inside. No clothes on the hangers. Only a pair of running shoes on the floor and a black gym bag on the overhead shelf. Spartan, like everything else she’d observed about Garin. Yet he’d flown them first class from Reagan National and booked two rooms for five nights in a luxury hotel.

Garin emerged a few minutes later. The linen pants were accompanied by a white linen shirt. He held his arms at his sides and raised his eyebrows.

Luci nodded in approval. “Nice. I should go back to my room to shower and change too.”

“You’re fine as you are, Luci.”

“Will only take a minute. It was hot out there and I’ve got analgesic all over me.”

“All right,” Garin said, nodding.

“You can wait for me in the room.” She cast a mischievous look. “I’ll keep the bathroom door locked to avoid ‘near occasions.’”

Garin smiled, an event that occurred with the frequency of a lunar eclipse. He followed her to the door and she opened it.

For Garin, the milliseconds slowed to seconds and the seconds to minutes. Standing in the hallway outside the door were two men dressed in sport coats with PB-6P9 handguns raised at eye level, suppressors attached.

With his left hand, Garin jerked Luci back into the room behind him as he crouched and thrust his right hand toward the pistol of the man to Garin’s right. He grasped the barrel just as the weapon discharged, striking the man to Garin’s left in the neck. Garin ripped the pistol from the grasp of the shooter on the right, then reversed its grip and fired two suppressed rounds into the assailant’s chest, followed by another just above the bridge of his nose. Without pausing, Garin pivoted to the man on the left, now lying on the hallway floor, and fired an insurance round into his forehead as well.

Elapsed time from door opening to dead shooters: a tick under four seconds. Speed, Garin always maintained, kills.

He quickly examined the hallway. Empty. He noticed something amiss with the bottom hemisphere of the surveillance camera affixed to the ceiling down the hall. The shooters had, thankfully, disabled it.

Garin secured both weapons in the process, then quickly dragged the bodies of the shooters to the emergency exit stairwell two rooms down, depositing both on the landing. When he returned to the room, Luci had staggered to her feet, her eyes wide with panic and bewilderment. Garin wrapped her in a brief bear hug and then held her at arm’s length, looking dead into her eyes.

“Grab every single thing that belongs to you here and in your room as fast as you can. Time to check out.”