Erica Orloff: The Golden Girl

She inhaled deeply through her nostrils. Belly breathing would show him she was tired, which she sure as heck was. But she wasn’t about to let Jimmy Valentine know. This was day two of training, and she was determined to take him down.

Get him off guard, she told herself. When she’d trained with her father’s Black Ops guys they constantly stressed that hand-to-hand combat was as much a mental game as a physical game.

She suddenly dropped to the floor, slid in close to Jimmy, and with one vicious and fast side-sweep of her long leg, flattened him. Before he could grab her, she’d rolled three times, was up on her feet, and drew her gun—which was unloaded for practice.

“Freeze!”

Jimmy Valentine stared up at the ceiling. She thought she’d really hurt him and dashed over to him.

“You okay?”

He smiled a huge grin, ran his hands through his thick black hair and sat up. “My leg hurts like a son of a bitch, but I’m more than okay. Honey, you are going to surprise a helluva lot of people. Most especially, some bad guys.”

“You think?”

“Look, some of the women who are undercover, they’re gorgeous. Who am I kidding? They’re all knockouts—Vanessa Dawson? She’s a goddess. And they’re smart, sophisticated. And they can shoot, now that they’ve been trained. They all have talent. But you have it inbred in you. I read your file. Your father being paranoid about kidnapping and all.”

“Yeah. I was already training in my teens, and then got more intense training when I went off to college.”

“That’s the key. They got you when you were young. It’s like second nature. Great drop to the floor. I wasn’t expecting it.”

He lifted the leg of his black tracksuit. “I’m gonna have a terrific bruise. Good for sympathy from Linda.”

“What does she think of your job?”

He shrugged. “As long as I’m safe and come home to my girls at night, she’s cool with it. I have two daughters—Mia and Sienna. Apples of my eye.”

“Let’s try that choke-hold routine again.”

“They warned me about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The amazing type-A competitive streak. You’re so driven, they say your blood is type A.”

“Oh, aren’t we clever.”

“Always, Park Avenue Princess, always,” he said, his brown eyes making clear he meant it affectionately.

Jimmy finally stood and said, “You’re sure you want to go another round?”

She nodded.

The choke hold involved him facing her and placing his hands around her neck—he didn’t apply much pressure, but enough that she had to be cautious to fight panic. Then her move was to jam her forearms up between his two arms and force his arms outward with as strong a motion as she could. The fact that Jimmy’s forearms were the size of her thighs made things tricky.

They each readied their stance, and Jimmy pretended to choke her.

Maddie fought against the tide of panic. It’s a mental game, she told herself, just like staring down the piranhas who wanted to force the sale of Pruitt’s hotel holdings last year.

In an instant, she flashed back to the masked intruder reaching for her throat. Fear mixed with anger, and she brought her arms up in a swift motion and slammed them against the inner forearms of Jimmy. He grunted, but released her neck, and she took four steps back and pulled her weapon.

“Freeze!”

“Thumbs up! You fight like a champ.”

“Thanks.” She beamed. He was right. She couldn’t help it, but she was competitive to a fault, and knowing she was better than most filled her with pride. Like being valedictorian of her elite private high school—only better. She liked knowing she was trained to do combat. It stirred something inside her.

After she finished with Jimmy, she was brought to the dressing room, which had an adjoining medical room with a massage table and whirlpool spa and other delights for sore muscles. She had no time for a rubdown, though. She showered and changed and was brought to a briefing room. There, she met with Troy Carter, who was assigned to be her handler.

“Hi, Madison,” he said, reaching out and giving her a firm handshake.

“Hi.” She smiled and sized him up—just as she was sure he had. She had noticed the two-way mirrors in the training room when she and Jimmy had been fighting.

Troy Carter was, like Jimmy, tall and extremely well built. Whereas Jimmy’s Italian good looks and New York accent made him seem like an “ordinary guy,” Troy looked former military to Madison. He had close-cropped hair, a soft wheat color, and gray eyes, and his jaw was square. He wore khakis and a golf shirt. His bearing though, his posture, was anything but relaxed. He stood ramrod straight, and she noticed how his eyes moved from one corner of the room to the other, as if he was always on his guard, assessing his surroundings. They were completely safe in the conference room, she knew, but she guessed that because of his background, he had ingrained habits.

“Sit down,” he said, sweeping his hand to a chair.

“Thanks.” She sat and watched as he opened a case file and sat down to her left—even seated he was stiff.

“After your attack, we sped everything up, Madison. Ordinarily, we’d still be training a month from now, but if your life is in jeopardy, we surmise you’re not the only one. On the one hand, we’re extremely fortunate. You had a background, frankly, we’d kill for, if you’ll pardon the expression. Harvard, MBA from Wharton, multiple languages, fluency especially in French, given your mother’s from Paris. And then this little oddity of having been trained by Frank Killian and his boys.”

“You know Frank?”

Troy looked up at her. “There’s no one in this business who doesn’t. But only someone like your father could afford him. Most people only hire Frank and his people to guard them—he’s had teams guarding everyone from Shaq to Brad Pitt after his separation, to a few Middle Eastern members of various royal families. The former Shah of Iran’s family. But your father is nothing if not controlling.”

Madison smiled and nodded.

“For your father, it wasn’t enough to have guards. He wanted you to be able to handle any situation that might arise. To keep your wits about you. My understanding is they even put you through three different mock-kidnapping scenarios, and you came through them all with flying colors.”

“You’re certainly thorough.”

“That’s my job.” He shifted some papers around. “Anyway, Madison, because of this acceleration, I’m going to be with you pretty closely, just to be sure you’re ready. In fact, as of Wednesday, I’ll be working at Pruitt & Pruitt in the management-training program—real-estate division, of course. You’ll be seeing quite a lot of me as an assistant.”

“How did you manage that? I mean, Claire was just…well, this is the weekend and this is all, as you said, lightning fast.”

“We’ve been planning this for some time, actually, just hadn’t counted on you being part of it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Madison, I’m about to tell you a few things that are going to be really startling, so brace yourself.”

“I don’t know how it could be worse than the last couple of days.”

“Madison,” he sighed, “Claire was working with us already.”

“What? She’s not a Gotham Rose—wasn’t a Gotham Rose.”

“I didn’t mean that. My fault for not being more clear. I meant she was working with the FBI. She was a whistle-blower, Madison. She was gathering evidence that Pruitt & Pruitt was money laundering for the mob. More specifically, that Pruitt & Pruitt was laundering vast amounts of drug money and that the mob was investing in some of your holdings. We even wondered if it might have ties with the Duke.”