Page 20 of Lethal Game

“Dr. Perry?”

Sophia turned at the sound of the female voice behind her.

Lieutenant Jones came all the way into the bathroom and let the door swing shut. “You okay?” Jones, a lab tech who often worked with Sophia, came over to the counter and washed her hands in a sink.

Sophia laughed without any humor. “The last day or so has been more interesting than I would like.”

“Ah.” Jones nodded sagely. “I’ve had one or three of those. Anything I can do to help?”

She chuckled, but she could hear the pain in it herself. “Got a pair of steel-toed boots I could borrow?”

Jones’s half grin dissolved. “Someone need his ass kicked?”

“Yup.” Connor’s face, his teeth bared when he’d told her he taught offense, not defense, appeared in her head. That fire burned away some of the ice crowding her lungs. “But I’m working on it.”

“Let me know if you need any backup.”

“I will, thanks.” She was going back out there and she was going to walk through that food court with her head up.

She left the bathroom to find Connor outside the door, leaning against the wall. Wonderful. Not. She didn’t want to need him for anything, yet seeing him waiting for her got rid of the last of the ice.

“Are you lost?” she asked him.

“No, I just thought I’d wait for you.”

“Bodyguarding already?”

He shrugged. “Why wait?”

There wasn’t much she could say to that.

They walked back to the lab building, passing the two checkpoints without talking. They could have been two strangers walking together except for the slight tension in his shoulders and the way he walked half a step behind her.

It made her want to tell him to stop with the secret service routine, but it was part of his job and she had to get used to it. She wasn’t going to admit she kind of liked it to anyone, including herself.

Inside the office’s entry there was an eight-foot empty space in front of Eugene’s desk. Connor looked around and nodded. “Yeah, this will do.” He looked at her. “Have you ever tried Tai Chi before?”

“No, but I’ve seen it in passing on TV and sometimes people did it in the park at one of the hospitals I spent time in.”

“Good, no bad habits to unlearn.” He smiled. “First, there’s more than one kind of Tai Chi. I’m not going to go into the history of it or all the details, but what I’m going to teach you is a form of Tai Chi that’s used for meditation and improving health. It’s one of the simpler versions that’s relatively easy to remember.”

“Okay.” So far so good.

“What I want you to focus on is your breathing. It should come from deep in your diaphragm, balanced and not rushing. Okay?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to demonstrate how you start and then the first form. Just watch the first time.”

He stood in front of her, his knees slightly bent, shoulders relaxed and face calm. When he moved it was as if she were watching water flow through the air. His movements were graceful, fluid, and unhurried.

It was almost a dance.

When he stopped, a disappointed “oh” spilled out of her mouth. She could have watched him for hours and been content.

He blinked, met her gaze and smiled. “It hits a lot of people like that when they see it for the first time up close. Ready to begin?”

She nodded, afraid that if she spoke out loud she’d reveal how eager she was to learn.

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