Page 19 of The Angel and the Agent

“Super. Your boyfriend’s a saint, and I rank up there with Zippo the Clown.”

She laughed harder. “Stop it. You’re going to make me tinkle.”

“Amelia, I’ve been on submarines with sailors whose language could peel the skin off an armadillo, so when you say ‘tinkle’ in normal conversation, it’s the oddest and most adorable thing ever.”

“You can thank my mom for that. She was very choosy about how we were allowed to talk at home. She called bad language ‘talking blue.’ I still have no idea what that means, but anytime we encountered someone cursing in public, she would literally take our hands and steer us around them announcing, ‘Let’s walk this way, girls, they’re talking blue.’”

“I love that. I can picture little you and little Maggie all wide-eyed at some foulmouthed street person,” he said.

“Yes, but what you don’t realize is how extensive her barred vocabulary ran. In addition to curse words, we weren’t allowed to say anything she considered crude. To this day, I have never once uttered the word f-a-r-t.”

“Are you joking?”

“I just spelled it, and you think I’m joking.”

He closed his eyes, smiling. “You’re like the antidote to military life.”

“Wait, you mean to tell me that people in the military actually say the word f-a-r-t?” she asked.

“And sometimes darn,” he added, and she gasped.

“Somewhere my mother is crying, and she doesn’t know why. You should have seen her when Johnny went through the phasewhere he didn’t know curse words were bad. Kids at school would tell him things to say, so he’d come home and blurt them at dinner. My dad almost had to Heimlich my mom four times that year.”

“Little punks,” Ethan groused. Having met Johnny, he’d do serious damage to anyone who tried to hurt or take advantage of him.

“Maggie took care of them,” Amelia said.

Ethan laughed. “Maggie? Sweet, sugar-loving Maggie?”

“Clearly, you’ve never seen her angry.”

“What did she do?”

“She was an office aid, so she slipped a paper into the announcements and had them called to the science lab. When they got there, she’d taped a note stating that the principal wanted to meet with them and it was serious so they’d better sit down and shut up. Then she taped a note on the outside of the door saying someone had thrown up and everyone should stay away until the janitor could get to it. It was Friday, and our janitor had Fridays off because he came in Saturdays and did a big clean. Anyway, our science lab could be padlocked from the outside because it had so much expensive equipment and chemicals in it. So she locked them in. Everyone went home. This was before cellphones were ubiquitous in school, so they had no way to make contact. They weren’t found until almost midnight, after their parents raised the alarm and someone finally figured it out and tracked them down.”

“Geez,” Ethan said, laughing. “Did she get in trouble?”

“She got suspended, but only for one day because the principal liked her and the kids were jerks. And they never bothered Johnny again.”

“I have new respect for your sister,” he said.

“She looks sweet and cuddly, but don’t underestimate her.”

Ethan nodded, agreeing for reasons she couldn’t know. The first time he’d gone shooting with Maggie and Ridge remained one of life’s more shocking events. The woman could probably shoot an ant off a dime, given the opportunity.Feeling bad about yourself as a trained operative, huh?Ridge had asked when the afternoon was over.And as a man,Ethan had added.

They talked for a long time, until it grew so chilly she began chafing her hands up and down her arms for warmth, until Ethan began surreptitiously checking his watch and calculating how few hours sleep he’d get before work.

“We can go,” Amelia said, the third time she saw him sneak a glance at his wrist.

“I’m sorry. If I didn’t have work tomorrow…” he let the thought trail off and grimaced. “I really am an old man now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amelia said, stifling a yawn. “Maybe I’m getting old, too.”

He held out his hand to her, and she took it, allowing him to help her up. They had been talking so long her legs were numb and night had fully fallen. The moon was a speck, barely providing enough light to line their path. Amelia turned to Ethan to say something, but the words stuck. His face was rigid, tense, expectant.

“What…” she began but he let go her hand and turned, facing a man who had come up fast behind them. Amelia hadn’t even heard him approach until it was too late. Ethan, however, was prepared. The man’s hand barely had time to emerge from his coat pocket before Ethan grabbed it, twisted it behind the man’s back, and shoved him face first against one of the graffiti-strewn cliff walls. He frisked the man, spreading his feet apart with one leg.

“What are you doing, man, I was just out for a walk. I wasn’t doing nothing,” the man said, breathing hard as Ethan squeezed the air out of his lungs. His words confused Amelia. As far asshe could tell, the man had done nothing wrong except walk too close to them. Did Ethan have some kind of hair trigger that could be set off by someone invading his personal space?

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