John Ringo: Cally's War

“You picked a good spot. Better view of the Zurich bench from here. Okay if I join you?”

“Be my guest.” He gestured to her almost empty glass. “Guinness?” Definitely natural skin. The soft musk of her perfume was almost painful.

She smiled and nodded absently, eyes glued to the tank.

He caught a waiter’s attention and gestured at her glass. A moment later a fresh Guinness arrived. He pressed the price of the drink and a healthy tip into the waiter’s hand immediately, leaving the boy no excuse to linger over the woman Worth hoped he would be taking home.

“Thanks.” She took a sip of the fresh glass of stout and licked the foam off her upper lip.

“So are you a big Zurich fan?” he asked.

“Nah. Toronto.” She grinned. “Well, okay, and whoever’s playing Montreal.”

A slightly sick twinge bit into the pit of his stomach. Same team as mine. Too convenient? Or is it just the warning from the Tir’s office making me paranoid?

The broadcast broke for a commercial. Some things even technology couldn’t change. A pair of small, black-and-white still holos in one corner of the tank depicted a sixtyish man with a cane and a slightly older woman in a wheelchair. The main section of the tank showed the same pair, in full color and motion, healthy and fit and looking about twenty, in tailored BDU’s and each sporting a brand-new grav-gun, walking through a waving field of wheat hand in hand.

“Tired of being old?” A cool but somehow friendly female voice asked, “Dead-end jobs taking the romance out of your relationship? The Epetar Group is looking for aggressively minded human colonists to join a multirace world reclamation expedition. Age and health no barrier, standard contract…”

“Damn juvs.” One of the other patrons threw a beer nut through the holo-projection.

“Hi, I’m Sarah Johnson.” The blonde had turned to Worth and was offering her hand. Her grip was warm and firm.

“Jude Harris. Nice to meet another Toronto fan.” He smiled, fighting the urge to linger over her hand.

“Oh? Well then you’ve got excellent taste in teams. What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m a corporate troubleshooter. Basically, I travel a lot,” he said.

“That sounds like an interesting job. Trouble ever shoot back?” she teased.

“Not if I do it right.” His grin tightened. “So, what do you do, Sarah?”

“I’m a legal secretary.” She grimaced. “Not very exciting, but it pays the bills. You said you travel? It’s got to be great to, you know, get to go places.” She looked up at him and took another sip of her stout.

“Just one hotel after another. Whups, game’s back.” His eyes focused on one soft hand wrapped around her pint glass. “Nice nails for a secretary.”

“What?” She looked down at her immaculately manicured hand as if trying to figure out what he meant. “Oh yeah, the typing thing. Nobody has to type much anymore. They mostly want you to talk clearly. And you’ve gotta organize stuff and be good with details. That kind of thing.”

“But still, there has to be some?” He took her hand in one of his own, meeting her eyes and holding them as he gently kissed her fingers.

“Well, a little.” She smiled. “There’s kind of a knack to hitting the keys just right so that your nails go in the spaces between the keys.” She suddenly pulled her hand clear and pointed into the tank. “Did you see that? Shinsecki just sticked Schmidt right in the face! God, look at his nose, ohmigosh, the refs are going to have trouble breaking that one up.” She clapped her hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide at the spatters of blood on the ice between the two combatants.

“Yeah, looks like he broke his nose. That’s gotta hurt,” he said. They watched the fight, the other players circling like sharks while the referees waded in trying to pull the two apart, one getting a probably inadvertent elbow in the face for his troubles.

“My God, the things we do for a little excitement, right?” She shuddered and gulped her drink.

“I dunno,” Worth shrugged, turning towards her. “I enjoy the game, but I really watch it more for the strategy and the competition. The fights, I guess that’s part of the darker side of human nature that’s in all of us, really.”

“You think so?” She tilted her head up at him, taking another drink. “I think that’s more of a guy thing, the aggression thing. I think—” She flushed a bit, taking another fast gulp. “I think there’s something just a little bit submissive, deep down, in almost every woman. I mean, I don’t want some guy to drag me around by the hair or to spend the rest of my life washing his socks and underwear, but I think most women prefer a guy who can, you know, kinda take charge. And I think that men are, well, like that.” She shrugged. “Like I said, a guy thing.”

“That’s very… perceptive of you.” He looked at her intently, holding her eyes. “I’ll bet you’re very good with people.” He could see the pulse at her throat beating rapidly. She licked her lips and was oddly still, as if frozen by the tension between them. He leaned over and claimed a slow, tantalizing kiss, pulling back when he realized his hand was tangled in her hair at the nape of her neck, his jeans were awkwardly tight, and they were still in a very public place. For his preferred games, public wouldn’t do at all. Besides, there was the warning from his control. She could be a very pretty piece of bait. Either way, if he had anything to say about it he was going to have one hell of a time making sure.

In the tank, the game had restarted after the referees finally got Schmidt and Shinsecki separated and sent Shinsecki to the penalty box. Zurich was clearly in a mood to take out their indignation on the ice. Montreal was now down by six and beginning to show signs of being rattled by the humiliation.

He noticed her glass was getting low and ordered her another drink, and spent most of the rest of the game teasing her thigh with one hand under the bar. By the time Montreal was down by nine he was starting to get bored with the slaughter and interested in more personal pleasures.

“Got a question.” He leaned over and breathed against her ear. “You said you liked a man to take charge? I’m going out the front door. Don’t follow. There’s a back exit between the restrooms. It says an alarm will go off, but it won’t. If you really meant what you said, wait five minutes and then leave the bar, come out the back door and I’ll be waiting. You want me to take charge?”

She nodded rapidly. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

“Okay, then that’s what you do. You do that, and I will.” He walked out of the bar without looking back, hoping she was tipsy enough and horny enough to do as he’d asked. He wanted her, bad, but he hadn’t lived this long by being seen leaving bars with his victims. The night air smelled crisp as he walked past a couple of other bars to the parking lot, the crispness underlain by the almost imperceptibly faint tinges of stale urine, vomit, and sex that always linger in the streets outside popular establishments dedicated to the nightlife. The adrenaline rush was hitting his system and he wondered, as he always did, whether he had set the hook and played the line in just right. Would she come to him, or would she get away?

The timing was perfect. Just as he got the car pulled up to the curb in back, hidden from view on one side by the bar, on another by the large dumpster out back, she came tottering out the small back door. Another plus for him, the light was burned out back here, and he only saw her by the scattered illumination from his own headlights as she stumbled slightly, on a bit of loose gravel maybe, and opened the passenger side door.