Chapter 6
“What are you doing? Sabrina. This is weak. You don’t work for the FBI. Sloppy. Very sloppy.”
She raised her arm again in an attacking motion that Quinlan easily deflected.
“You’re too slow. And you’re too predictable.”
It was times like these that she believed she truly hated him. She knew he could feel her trying harder to move faster. She also knew that he was well aware of what it cost her physically. The greater her momentum during the attack, the more painful it was when she made contact.
For five months, she’d been fighting him every day as part of her training. Her arms were nothing more than a patchwork of bruises held together by skin. When she showed him her initial bruises after the first day, he’d shrugged and told her to get used to it. That was a harbinger of things to come-both the pain and his attitude toward her suffering. But still she kept coming back for more.
She supposed she might have considered quitting, if it wasn’t for the fact that she felt as if she was exactly where she belonged. Never had she felt so satisfied with her life. So productive. So sure she was on the right path finally. At Harvard they had only wanted to test her, but here she was part of the process. It was an exhilarating difference.
No, the bruises didn’t hurt as much as leaving would. Not even close. Sabrina bet Quinlan knew that.
Alternating between left and right jabs, she thought she could take the focus off her now throbbing arms by mixing it up with a roundhouse kick. Her leg circled over her body in a smooth arch, which he blocked easily with his knee.
Oh yeah, she definitely hated him.
“You looked down at your knee before you raised your leg. That was a mistake. Why?”
She was panting now and struggling to keep up her speed. Seamlessly, he switched from defense to offense, changing the position of his attack until she was forced to take several steps back to avoid the onslaught of quick, perfectly executed punches that were coming dangerously close to her face.
“I asked you a question, Sabrina,” he pushed.
And she knew that giving him an answer was important. It was part of the training. The purpose was to work her mind as well as her body. If she was going to be a field operative, fighting was something she was going to have to learn to put on autopilot in order to free her mind to evaluate the situation around her. Her mind was capable of doing that. Her body, however, was not.
To distract him she shifted back to an offensive stance. Her arms followed a series of coordinated moves she’d committed to memory. Learning those moves had been simple. After reading a manual once, she knew where her hands were supposed to be, how straight her back needed to be, and how her feet should be situated on the ground before each strike. It was getting her body to perform what her brain already knew, that was the trick.
She was getting better, though. She knew that, despite Quinlan’s harsh commentary. He must have sensed it or seen it in her execution. Because now he wanted more from her than just a fight. He wanted her to stop thinking about the fight so she could concentrate on other things. She got the point, but as soon as she stopped focusing on where her forearm needed to be to protect her head, he struck.
It was a particularly heavy blow to the side of her head. Graciously, he gave her a second to shake it off. Sabrina didn’t have to be told that the enemy would never be so kind. It was Quinlan’s subtle way of telling her that she failed. The more obvious way would have been to actually hit her again.
“Answer me,” he insisted between breaths, referring to his previous question.
Now that they stopped maneuvers, it was easy to answer him. “Two problems resulted by switching the attack to my leg. I signaled my intent by looking down and I took my eyes off my opponent,” she panted.
Rubbing her forearm across her head, she tried to remove some of the sweat that was raining down her face. Dressed only in a sports bra and loose cotton pants, she didn’t have a whole lot of options. There were towels on the bench, but they were off the mat, and she couldn’t leave the mat until he told her she could leave. That was a rule. He had at least a score of them. He was a rules freak. But she was getting used to it. It was part of his method.
Next time, Sabrina promised herself, she wouldn’t look at her leg. Next time she would plant her bare foot against his cheek and smile when it happened. Lifting her head, she took a moment to study him. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and the same loose cotton pants she wore, only his were black. His shirt was hardly damp. Under the arms only. And he was breathing steadily but not deeply. As if he was barely exerting himself.
The bastard.
Then he nodded his head. Just once. It was a silent communication between the two of them that she’d come to understand. It meant he was satisfied she’d learned the lesson and wouldn’t repeat the mistake.
To date, she’d never made the same mistake twice. Over a hundred of them once, but never one twice. She believed it was one of the reasons that he was still around, still working with her when he probably should have been back on active duty. But she didn’t know that for sure.
“Why are you still here?” The question popped out before she could stop herself. She hadn’t wanted to ask, because she knew it wasn’t likely that he would answer. More than that, she didn’t want him to think that it mattered to her.
“I’m sorry?”
“How come you’re still here? At Langley. With me. Why aren’t you off saving the world? That is what you do, isn’t it?”
“I work for the United States government. I do what it asks,” he explained simply. “Right now it’s asking me to do this.”
And it wasn’t his fault if she’d let him become more than that to her. Which she had. Quinlan was much more to her than an evil trainer inflicting physical punishment. More than a teacher and a rule maker. In a very short time, he’d become her center.
Because he got her.
Nobody ever got her before. Not her mother before she took off, or her father, who could never deal with the fact that she was smarter than him. She hadn’t had a whole lot of friends because she’d been labeled weird, almost from the start. And she’d never met a teacher who hadn’t hated her on sight. Of course that could have had more to do with her condescending attitude than her gift.
Quinlan was different. He didn’t treat her as if she was strange. He expected her to be as smart as she was. Insisted upon it. Nobody had ever done that before. Nobody had ever pushed her to see how far she could go. At least nobody who she ever respected. He made her believe there was a reason why she was the way she was. And that she had an obligation, a duty, to use her capabilities to their fullest extent.
“Again,” he said, ignoring her protest about not being an assignment. He moved into position and fixed his eyes on hers.
For a quick second her breath caught in her throat. It had been happening lately whenever he looked a little too deep, or stared at her a little too long. As if he was seeing something inside of her that she didn’t even know was there.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t hate it, but she definitely didn’t like it. It made her…edgy.
“Breathe,” he instructed.
Since she’d been holding it in, the reminder proved to be beneficial. He’d taught her to use the opportunities during a fight to inhale deeply whenever she could. Oxygen meant life. Always.
Sabrina straightened her back to what she knew was textbook-perfect posture. And like a textbook, she executed the move with exact precision. It was never her technique, but rather her speed and often her lack of commitment that made the strike so easy to deflect.
“Still sloppy. And too slow.” Her palm glanced off his shoulder and she cursed. It was purely to be mean, she decided, that he felt obliged to add, “And you hit like a girl.”
