Night Moves

gone by his school and explained to him that her job was going to keep her from his class in the evenings, he'd offered to meet her for private sessions, and it turned out he was an early riser.

She'd laughed at that. 'Ah. One of those people who run around throwing open windows, breathing deep the air, and smiling at the sunrise?'

'God, no,' he'd said. 'Just a slave to my internal clock. I'm a wren, been that way all my life. Up at four, to bed by nine or ten, no help for it. I have learned to make the best of it. I usually get my workout done in the morning, though. Not a lot else one can do when most of the rest of the world is still beddy-bye.'

'Well, in that case, I'd love to train with you.'

'There's a decent gym in your hotel,' he'd said. 'Save you a taxi ride to the school.'

'And cost you one,' she'd said.

'Not really. I have a car. And it's not all that far from where I live. I have a flat in Knightsbridge.'

'Knightsbridge? That's a pretty nice area, isn't it? We drove through there. By Hyde Park?'

He looked embarrassed. 'Yes, well, my parents got a bit of an inheritance from my grandfather on my mother's side, and they have a small family business that does all right.'

As she headed for the hotel's gym through the quiet and empty hall, Toni grinned to herself. Before the computers had gone south, she'd checked out the real estate in the area called Knightsbridge. Flats went for the equivalent of half a million U.S. dollars. Houses started around three million and went up. There was a four-bedroom semidetached house — what they called a double condo in the States — for seven million. And offers had been made on most of the listings already.

Apparently the Stewart family business was doing all right indeed.

Carl was waiting in the gym, which was in itself interesting, since you supposedly needed an electronic keycard to be admitted. Toni inserted her own card into the lock and went through the heavy glass doors. They were the only two people there.

'Good morning,' he said. He seemed too awake and cheerful for this hour.

'Morning.'

He was warming up and stretching, and she joined him. The gym had several weight-stack machines, a stair-stepper, an elliptical walker, and a treadmill, all of which were equipped with the latest VR interfaces. There was an aerobics area in front of a mirrored wall opposite, a twelve-by-twelve-foot square. No mats, but the carpet was padded enough, and there was more than enough room for two people to practice silat.

Ten minutes later, they were ready to begin. 'Shall we do djurus for a few minutes?' he asked.

She nodded. That was how she always began her practice. The short dances were the basis for everything else. All of the combat moves could be found in the djurus, if you knew how to look.

For a long time, Toni had practiced the Bukti dances, the eight basic and slimmed-down djurus, before she began the Serak moves; lately, however, she had been skipping straight ahead to the parent art. Bukti Negara was still used in a lot of places as a kind of test, to see if a student was serious about training. If, after a couple of years practicing the simpler stuff, a student was still hanging around, then she could be introduced to the more complex and demanding forms. Serak, so the story went, had been invented by a man of the same name in Indonesia. Serak, or Sera, also known as Ba Pak — The Wise — was Javanese and had been a formidable fighter, despite having only one arm and a clubfoot. That the man could function at all was noteworthy; that he had developed a martial art that made him equal or better as a fighter against other trained men who had all their limbs was truly amazing.

After ten minutes of djurus, Carl stopped. 'Want to work some combinations?'

'Sure.'

Once again, Toni thrilled to the knowledge that Carl was a superior player. None of her attacks and counterattacks got through. He blocked them effortlessly, it seemed to her, always keeping the centerline. She had to work hard to keep his second and third series of counterpunches and kicks from landing, especially the sneaky rising punch, a strike that wanted to come under a high-line defense but over the low-line block. She managed to stop him from connecting solidly with her, but he brushed her chest once, and another time tapped her on the chin. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough for her to realize he could have tagged her if he'd wanted.

This was great. Just what she needed.

He was showing her a take-down he liked, they were pressed together, her groin against his thigh, his right hand on her butt, levering for a hip sweep, when she caught a glimpse of somebody watching them from the hall. She didn't have time to look as Carl completed the throw, taking out her leg and dropping her to the carpet, following up with a kick and punch.

When she got to her feet, the watcher in the hall was gone. Probably a bellboy delivering somebody's breakfast.

'Again?' Carl asked.

'Yes.' She grinned. This was really great.

She stepped in with a punch.

Alex felt a sour pain in his belly, a churning, twisted feeling. He had felt it before and he knew it for what it was: jealousy. He had watched them together in the workout room, Toni and the English silat instructor, seen them glued together, the man's hand on her ass. Yeah, sure, it was part of the deal, he knew enough of the art to know that, but still it bothered him as he hurried down the hall toward their room. She hadn't seen him, and he didn't want her to know he'd been there. Normally, he'd have been asleep at this hour, but he'd woken up as she shut the door on her way out and couldn't drift back off. So he'd gotten up, thrown on some clothes, and gone to watch them work out. Maybe he could learn something, he'd figured.

Yeah, right. He'd learned how to feel up somebody's butt.

He knew he was being unreasonable. It wasn't the man's hands on Toni that bothered him as much as how much she was obviously enjoying herself. Probably it was just the silat, being able to work out with a guy as good as Stewart was. Probably. But he couldn't get rid of a nagging worry: What if it was more? He and Toni hadn't been getting along that well in the last couple of weeks, that business about not sending her on assignment and all. Maybe she was interested in the big Englishman in some way other than as a sparring partner?

Yeah, okay, she said she loved him. But Michaels's ex-wife had said that, too. Her reasons for the divorce had to do with his career, with him being gone all the time, not there for her or their daughter, but she had once loved him and now she didn't. Maybe she even hated him, after he punched out her new boyfriend.

He reached his room, carded the lock, stepped inside.

He didn't need this, no way, no how, not given the other crap falling from the sky right now. Why couldn't life be simple? Why was it that every time things seemed to be rolling along smoothly, something always popped up in the road ahead, puncturing tires, sending his happy trip skidding and slewing off the pavement?

And why did it always have to be so damned emotional?

The way he'd been raised, a man didn't walk around with his heart on his sleeve, whining and blubbering about his problems. His father had been career Army, and Michaels had never once seen the old man cry, not even when his dog had been run over. The old man hadn't had a lot of deep conversations with his son, but one of the deepest had been about what men did and did not do: You took a hit, you sucked it up and you kept going. You never let anybody know they'd gotten to you. If it's killing you, you smile. That keeps your enemy off balance.

As an educated man raised in a society where emotions other than laughter or anger were now okay for men, Michaels knew he didn't need to hold himself so tight, that it was no sin to feel things, but those old tapes from his childhood were hard to get past. Knowing it was okay to let go intellectually was not the same as being able to actually do it.

It wasn't just his career that had killed his marriage. That don't-show-emotions lesson had been part of the problem with his ex-wife, he knew. And now it seemed to be part of the problem with Toni.

What to do about it?

He shook his head. He couldn't deal with this now. He had a job, a nut with some magical computer gear