Page 39 of The Woman Left Behind

“Aw, c’mon, Ace, it’s just a dance.”

“I’ve seen you dance, you damn octopus. She stays where she is.”

“Damn right,” Trapper added, smiling his calm, sniper smile. “Go dance with your own trainee.”

There was some good-natured griping back and forth, but the guy left smiling. They were generally a good bunch of guys, all the teams, she thought. They hadn’t been recruited because they were criminals or didn’t play well with others, they were recruited because of their abilities and how they functioned within the team framework.

Another drink appeared in front of her. Her fries were salty, and the drink was welcome.

Somewhere around eight-thirty, her phone buzzed in her jeans pocket. She pulled it out, blinked until the name and number came into focus, and announced, “It’s my mom!”

She swiped the phone and happily said, “Hi, Mom!”

There was a pause, and her mother said, “Hi, honey. Where are you? There’s a lot of noise.”

“A bar. I finished training today, and the guys are getting me drunk.”

There was a symphony of groans and rolling eyes around her, and she blinked at them in surprise. She lowered the phone a bit. “What?”

Deftly Levi snagged the phone away from her, heaved a sigh, and put it to his ear. “Mrs. Modell? I’m Levi Butcher, Ba—uh, Jina’s boss. She’s safe. The whole group is here.” He listened a minute. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll personally guarantee her safety.”

“Hah, that’s a joke!” Jina muttered. “You tried to kill me today.”

“Shhh!” came from several big men.

“Don’t shush me. I want to talk to my mom.” She scowled at them.

Voodoo popped a fry into his mouth. “Let this be a lesson,” he commented. “She’s a lightweight.”

She leaned around Levi to shoot him the bird. Levi slapped her hand down and continued talking to her mom. “Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. She’s had a drink and a half. We fed her first, but—you got that right. Yes, ma’am. I’ll have her call you when she’s safely home. I’ll send you a text right now. Good night, ma’am.”

He pulled his own phone out, his face grim, and looked at the contact info on Jina’s phone while he thumbed in a text.

“What’re you doing?” she demanded, grabbing for her phone. “Give me that. I want to talk to my mom.”

“She’s already hung up. As for what I’m doing—” He shook his head. “I just texted your mother my contact info, because she’s holding me personally responsible if anything happens to you.”

There was dead silence around the table, then Snake said, “That’s a first.”

Twelve

Her mother called first thing in the morning—reallyfirst thing, meaning five-thirty. It wasn’t even daylight yet. With the hours of daylight so short now, Jina had barely rolled out of bed and hadn’t made it to the kitchen for the first cup of coffee. “Hi, Mom,” she said around a yawn. “You’re up early.”

“Thank goodness you sound all right,” her mother said grimly. “Your daddy and I were prepared to be called to D.C. to identify your body.”

“Oh.” She yawned again. “I won’t say there was nothing to be worried about, because I guess if I was a mother I’d have been worried, too.” Even half asleep, Jina was too smart to dismiss her mother’s concerns. The woman had eyes in the back of her head, spies everywhere, and a built-in lie detector somewhere in her belly, close to her uterus.

“Well—” Momentarily taken aback, her mother rallied. “That wasnota great situation for you to be in.”

“I had seven companions, two of whom are married, and their wives—”

“Oh, thank goodness,” her mother said fervently, not letting Jina finish her sentence, which had been that the wives had given their okay. “Because it sounded like all men.”

Jina didn’t correct the assumption that the wives had been there, because she wasn’t that sleepy or that stupid. Thinking back, she remembered seeing a number of women in the bar, so she didn’t have to lie. “Not even close. Anyway, I’m the first one to finish training, so they took me out to celebrate. Kind of. Hamburger and fries, nothing fancy.”

“And alcohol.”

“And alcohol. I had one and a half lemon drop martinis.”

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