Janie Crouch - Battle Tested

What good was it to run if the Watcher was just going to find her again? What good did it do to talk to people if any ties she made were just going to get them hurt?

And at what point would the Watcher stop toying with her and just finish her off? Rosalyn had no doubt her death was his endgame. She just didn’t know when or how.

Maybe she should just save him the trouble and do it herself. At least then she would have some measure of control.

She looked down the block toward the beach. She would go sit there. Think things through. Try to figure out a plan.

Even if that plan meant taking her own life. That had to be better than allowing innocent people to die because of her. Or living in constant fear with no end in sight.

She began walking toward the beach. She would sit on the sand, watch the sunset. Because damn it, if this was going to be her last day on earth—either by her own hand or the Watcher’s—she wanted to feel the sun on her face one last time.

Beyond that, she had no idea what to do.

Chapter Two

Steve Drackett, director of the Omega Sector Critical Response Division, was doing nothing. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

And even more so, he was doing nothing in a tiki-themed bar on the Florida Panhandle. In flip-flops.

He was damn certain that had never happened.

It was his first real vacation in ten years. After his wife died twelve years ago, there hadn’t been much point in them. Then he’d become director of the Critical Response Division of Omega—an elite law enforcement agency made up of the best agents the country had to offer—and there hadn’t been time.

But here he was on the Florida Panhandle, two days into a weeklong vacation for which his team had pitched in and gotten for him. Celebrating his twenty years of being in law enforcement.

And to provide him with a little R & R after he was almost blown up last month by a psychopath intent on burning everything and everyone around her.

Either way, he’d take it. Home in Colorado Springs could still be pretty cold, even in May. Pensacola was already edging toward hot. Thus the flip-flops.

Steve sat at the far end of the bar, back to the wall, where he had a nice view of both the baseball game on TV and the sunset over the ocean, along with an early-evening thundershower that was coming in, through the windows at the front of the bar. It also gave him direct line of sight of the entrance, probably not necessary here but an occupational hazard nonetheless.

The cold beer in his hands and an order of wings next to him on the bar had Steve just about remembering how to unwind. Nothing here demanded his attention. The bar was beginning to fill up but everyone seemed relaxed for the most part. The hum of voices, laughter, glasses clinking was enjoyable.

As someone whose job on most days was literally saving the world, the tiki bar was a nice change.

Then the woman walked through the door.

He glanced at her—as did just about every pair of male eyes in the bar—when she rushed in trying to get out of the sudden Florida storm. Another couple entered right behind her for the same reason, but Steve paid them little attention.

She was small. Maybe five-four to his six-one. Wavy black hair that fell well past her shoulders. Slender to the point of being too skinny. Mid-twenties.

Gorgeous.

Steve forced his eyes away, although his body stayed attuned to her.

She didn’t belong here—he had already summed that up in just a few moments. Not here in a tiki bar where the patrons were either on vacation or trying to just relax on a Sunday evening.

She wasn’t wearing some flirty skirt or shorts and tank top or any of the modes of dress that bespoke enjoying herself on a Florida beach in mid-May. Not that there was anything wrong with how she was dressed: khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. No flip-flops for this black-haired beauty, or any other type of sandals. Instead she wore athletic shoes. Plain. White.

Her bag was also too large for a casual outing or catching a couple of beers for an hour or two. And clutched too tightly to her.

This woman looked ready to run. From what or to what, Steve had no idea.

Steve had been out of active agent duty for the last ten years. His job now was behind a desk on most days. A big desk, an important one. But a desk nonetheless. He didn’t need to be an agent in the field to know the most important thing about the woman who’d just walked into the bar: she was trouble.

Since trouble was the very thing he was trying to get away from here in flip-flop Florida, Steve turned back to his beer and wings. Back to the game.

But as he finished his food, he found his eyes floating back to her.

She was obviously over twenty-one, so it was legal for her to be here. If she wanted to take off in a hurry—with her oversize tote-type bag—as long as she wasn’t doing anything illegal, it was her own business.

She didn’t want to buy a drink—he noticed that first. But as the storm lingered, then grew worse, she obviously knew she’d have to or else go back out in it. She ordered a soda.

She sat with her back to the wall.

She tried not to draw attention to herself in any way.

She was scared.

Steve finished one beer and started another. He flexed his flip-flop-enclosed toes.

Not his monkeys. Not his circus.

This woman was not his problem, but he still couldn’t stop glancing her way every once in a while. She barely moved. Unfortunately, Steve wasn’t the only one whose attention she had caught. Just about every guy in the place was aware of her presence.

At first men waited and watched. Was she meeting someone? A husband? Boyfriend? When it became obvious she wasn’t, they slowly began circling. Maybe not literally but definitely in their minds.

Then some began circling literally.

A couple of local boys who had been here since before Steve arrived—and had been tossing beers back the whole time—worked their nerve up to go sit next to the woman. She didn’t give much indication that she was interested, but that didn’t deter them.

Since the baseball game was over, someone turned on the jukebox and a few couples were dancing to some Jimmy Buffett song. One of the guys stood and asked the woman to dance but she shook her head no. He reached down and grabbed her hands and tried to pull her to a standing position, obviously thinking she was playing hard to get.

Steve could read her tension from all the way across the bar, but the guys talking to her obviously couldn’t.

He should leave now. He knew he should just walk away. The boys weren’t going to get too out of hand. As soon as the woman put them down hard, they would leave her alone.

She was trouble. He knew it. He should go.

He sighed as he put money on the bar for his meal and began to walk toward the woman and the two men who were now both trying to get her to dance. He hadn’t become the director of one of the most elite law enforcement groups in the country by walking away from trouble.

He stepped close to the first local guy, deliberately invading his space. The way the guy was invading the woman’s.

“Excuse me, fellas. The lady doesn’t want to dance.”

“How do you know?” The other guy snickered. “Are you her dad?”

The woman’s eyes—a beautiful shade of blue that stood out in sharp juxtaposition against her dark hair—flew to Steve’s. She winced in apology at the crack about his age.

Steve was probably fifteen years older than the woman. Not quite old enough to be her father, but probably too old to be anything else to her.

“No, not her father. Just someone old enough and sober enough to realize when a woman is uncomfortable.”

“She’s not—” The guy stopped and really looked at the woman then—the way she was clutching her bag, discomfiture clear on her face.