Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

Quinlan simply reached out and wrapped his hand around the man’s thin neck forcing him against the wall with enough strength that, if he’d wanted to, he probably could have lifted the dweeb off his feet. “Fix her,” she heard him say.

He reached for the door and this time Sabrina dug deep, breathing oxygen all the way into her stomach.

“I didn’t say it!” She shouted it so loud the words echoed off the gym walls.

Quinlan stopped, then walked through the door without looking back. The dweeb turned out to be a doctor. The first thing he’d offered was a shot to kill the pain, but she refused.

The pain was important, she wasn’t sure why, but she knew that it was.

Later that night there was a soft knock on the door.

“It’s open.” It had been left open for the nurse who had been in and out a few times to check on her.

Sabrina wasn’t all that surprised when she saw who it was. She knew Quinlan would come eventually. She was sitting up in bed watching TV. Her hand was casted, her ankle was casted, her face was a bruised mess and her ribs hurt when she breathed too deep.

For a moment they just looked at each other. She saw that his eye was now completely swollen shut and the skin under both eyes was almost black.

“Are you here to say you’re sorry?” she asked. But she knew he wasn’t.

“No. It was a lesson. I was the one ordered to teach it.”

Quinlan walked over to the bed and gazed down at her. Almost instinctively, he reached out with his hand to brush the bruise along her cheek, but she turned her head at the last second so his fingers wouldn’t make contact. She wasn’t ready for him to touch her yet.

Eventually, she would get over that. Maybe Quinlan didn’t understand the other thing that had happened in the gym today, but she did. Before he’d been her mentor. Her idol in a lot of ways. But the hero worship was gone now. What was left in its place was raw. So raw she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. Not yet. But someday she would. She wondered if he would, too.

“What was the lesson?” she wanted to know.

“There were two actually. The first one is obvious.”

“Learning how to fight through pain,” Sabrina easily answered.

“Fighting through it, accepting it, tolerating it. Some people freeze at the first hint of extreme pain. They can’t work beyond it. It’s not uncommon. Sometimes the mind shuts down in an attempt to cope.”

“Yes, but I’m a woman.”

His brow furrowed in obvious confusion.

“Women have been known to labor for days to give birth. Makes me think that our bodies are naturally designed to take pain. At least when we know there’s a reason for it.”

His head tilted marginally to the left in acknowledgement.

“And the other lesson? You said there were two.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“It’s okay. I think I’ve got that one figured out, too. Trust no one. Isn’t that CIA credo?”

He sighed deeply and folded his arms over his chest.

“You’re one mean and nasty badass. Want to sign my cast?”

That seemed to startle him. She guessed he was expecting rage and howling. Accusations and maybe even a little spitting. She imagined he came to see her because, even though he wouldn’t admit it, he did feel guilty and as part of his punishment he would stand fast against her fury.

But she wasn’t angry. Not at him. She’d learned something about herself in that gym. Something she hadn’t known before. She’d been suffering for a long time. Quinlan had just brought it to the surface. And in doing so had cleansed her.

“This is just the beginning. Isn’t it?” she surmised.

He took the magic marker she’d held out to him and drew the letter Q on top of the cast just under her toes.

“Yes, it is,” he answered honestly.

“I can take it,” she promised.

His eyes met hers and she saw uncertainty. She didn’t blame him. Until today she hadn’t known what she was capable of.

Now she did.

Present

“You’re not sleeping.”

There was a revelation, Sabrina thought. It could have been because the sun had officially risen and while the heavy curtain kept most of the sunlight out of the room it couldn’t disguise the fact that it was day.

But that wasn’t her problem.

It could have been because for the past twenty minutes she’d been trying to not think about the man in bed with her and instead, had been trying to come up with a plan to avoid the goons while still managing to acquire the location of Arnold’s computer.

In the end, she decided she could always provide Kahsan with a false address, but she couldn’t disregard the idea that if she had a chance at Arnold’s code, maybe, just maybe, she might be able to break it. Quickly. Then she would have had Kahsan assassinated and given the CIA back their missing terrorists.

Forget getting her job back. There had to be some kind of promotion in that for her.

“You’re breathing too loud,” she told him as an answer.

“You should sleep now while we have the chance,” Quinlan said in reply.

“So should you. Curious that you can’t, either, isn’t it?”

Abruptly, he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair-a telltale sign of frustration for him.

“Want to talk about it?” Sabrina prodded. She turned on her side toward him, her cheek resting in her palm. It was almost funny to watch his face go slightly pale at the suggestion. “Come on, why not just admit it? You can’t sleep next to me because you can’t help but remember the last time. Although I don’t recall either of us doing a whole lot of sleeping on that occasion.”

“I’m not the one with the endless memory.”

“Yes, but some things are unforgettable,” she teased.

“Drop it, Bri.”

She chuckled softly and was somewhat amazed at herself that she was able to make jokes about an event that had so radically changed her life. No, she corrected herself. It wasn’t making love to him that had changed everything. It was the day after that had rocked her world. But that event seemed very long ago. And the hurt that usually accompanied the memories had been dulled to a soft ache. Maybe it was another sign that she was growing up.

“Okay,” she offered. “But for the record I’m not the one getting edgy.”

“I am not edgy,” he said through clenched teeth.

She let that go, but decided that since they weren’t going to get any sleep he might as well answer a few questions that had popped into her mind. “So you divorced the first wife,” she stated. “Was there a number two?”

She could tell that he didn’t see the point in refusing to answer. “No.”

“Me, either. I mean no husband.”

“I know.”

Sabrina nodded. “I guess that would have been in the report. It makes me curious, though, how long has the CIA been checking up on me?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Don’t assume it was anything…personal.”

“Heaven forbid.”

He scowled slightly. Then said, “You were…you are…important to the program, Sabrina. Despite the fact that you left-”

“Was fired,” she corrected him.

“While your skills make you valuable, they also make you potentially dangerous.”

“I get it,” she muttered. “We’re back to me being a terrorist.”

He rolled off the bed in a fluid movement, evidently preferring to stand while they talked. “It wasn’t necessarily about that. You could have been kidnapped. Forced to work against your will.”

That made her laugh. “Have you ever known me to be forced to do anything against my will?”

He smiled faintly. “No. Still, there were concerns. You were routinely monitored.”