CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Marschall did. “Eyes on me!” he barked. “Our newest potential trainee does not need to be gawked at as if she is some kind of freak! Back to the course.” He clapped his hands loudly and pointed where he wanted them to go.
They hurried off. Marschall turned back to Reynolds. “I want her to train with us. I’ve never seen such natural talent.”
Reynolds scoffed. “Seriously? I’m sure I could do that just as fast as she did.”
Marschall looked him up and down. “Yeah… no.”
Reynolds’ mouth dropped open. Then he looked mad.
He kicked off his shoes and hurried over to the wall.
“Stay up there, honey,” he yelled to Nadine, then launched himself onto the wall.
“Oof.” He hit the wall hard and was off to an immediate slow start.
Marschall and I watched him, our arms crossed over our chests.
“You think your friend is going to be any good at this?” Marschall asked me.
“No. But then I would’ve said the same about Nadine. And look at her.”
He glanced up and saw her doing a little victory dance on the very top of the rock wall. He went pale. “Ma’am… Nadine!” he barked out.
She went still and her eyes widened.
“Sit down!”
She sat down.
Reynolds hadn’t made a lot of progress. “I probably just need to take my socks off,” he called out. “She went up barefoot.” He balanced precariously as he took one sock off and then the other. “That’ll do it,” he said confidently.
That did not, in fact, do it.
Reynolds continued to struggle. “This is straight up and down! There’s virtually no incline at all,” he complained.
He slowly picked his way through the course, climbing at the pace of a sloth.
“I’m not waiting on you any longer. I’m getting cold up here,” Nadine complained. She looked over the side of the wall. The other side was a rappel wall. She tossed a leg over, grabbed a rope and started down.
“No! No, no, no,” Marschall yelled, running full speed to the other side to try to stop her. “You don’t have a harness!”
I ran, too, afraid I was going to see Nadine flat on the ground, spread out like a starfish. Instead, by the time I got there, she was dusting off her designer dress and standing looking back up at the wall.
Marschall gawked at her. “You’ve never done a rappel wall before?”
“No.” She held out her hands with her palms showing. They were bright red and looked a little scratched up. “I don’t like that side very much. It hurt my hands. And,” she held up one bare foot, “I got a blister,” she finished dramatically.
Marschall smiled. “Welcome to St. James Security. You just passed your entrance exam.”
She stared at him. “Seriously? I could be a security agent like Byron?”
“Well,” he hedged, “Byron’s the best I’ve ever trained. By the end of his training, I felt like he was training me,” he laughed.
I shook my head, smiling.
“But you could definitely become a very good St. James Security agent,” Marschall continued.
She stared at me. “Oh my God. I want to do it.”
My eyes widened. “Nadine are you serious?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“I thought you liked real estate.” I leaned in. “And you don’t really have to work, you know.”
“But you’re moving the headquarters to West Bay, right?”
Marschall’s head jerked around to look at me. “What?”
I held up my hands. “I’m still in discussions with Dad about it. Why don’t you come to dinner, and we can all talk about it?”
Marschall nodded, looking concerned.
“You wouldn’t have to move,” I assured him quietly.
He looked relieved. “Good. My kids are happy at their schools, and my wife has an established practice.”
His wife had been a high-powered attorney in DC. After she had kids, she wanted a slower pace and started her own practice in nearby Woodbridge.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Nadine said, putting her hand on Marschall’s forearm. “I just thought Byron might need trained agents from West Bay.” She looked at me. “We could be work buddies!”
I grinned. “That we could.”
“Little help, please,” a weak voice called from the rock wall.
We all hurried over to see that Reynolds was only halfway up the wall and seemed to have given up completely.
“I gotcha,” I climbed up, let him put his arms around my neck, and carried him down on my back.
“Please don’t tell anyone about this…” Reynolds started as I set him down.
“Oh, I’m telling everyone. I’m going to go on local TV shows and tell everyone that I beat your ass on a super elite training course,” Nadine crowed.
“Ma’am… Nadine, this is a top-secret course. You can’t tell anyone what you’ve done here today.”
“Seriously?” She threw her hands in the air. “I beat him at something physical, and I can’t even tell anyone?”
“If you become a St. James Security agent with me, everyone will know you went through a really tough training regimen.”
She got a gleam in her eye. “I’m totally going to do it.”
Reynolds looked concerned. “I don’t know… it’s dangerous.”
“But Byron will be with me. We’ll be partners, right?”
“Well, now, I’m not so sure about that part.
I have a lot of talking to do with my dad about the structure of the headquarters.
We’ll talk about it for sure, though,” I said, when I saw she was looking disappointed.
“You just think about whether this is something you really want to do. You’re a really good real estate agent. ”
Nadine had a serious look on her face, and I could tell she was really contemplating it. Reynolds could, too, and it was obviously freaking him out, though he was trying to be supportive.
“You know,” he said when we got loaded back in the ATV, “I’m pretty sure my suit was holding me back on that wall. I mean, I know I took the jacket off, but the pants and shirt…”
“Yeah, my dress wasn’t awkward at all,” Nadine said and winked at me.
Reynolds smiled for a minute then looked at her sharply when he realized she was being sarcastic. His phone buzzed in his suit pocket. “Hey, Leo, what’s up?”
“Put him on speaker,” Nadine said.
Reynolds did.
“Where the hell have y’all been? I’ve been calling for, like, two hours!” Leo was clearly stressed.
We exchanged looks. “What’s going on, Leo?” I asked.
He sighed as if relieved to have finally gotten us. “A couple of really big things. First off, Skeeter isn’t dead.”
We all exclaimed and freaked out for a while until he cut through the noise.
“Listen to me!” He waited for us to get quiet. “He’s sent threatening texts to Jess.”
“Oh God.” Nadine went totally pale.
“Jess came to Carmen and begged to go into the auction that is tonight.”
“What?” I bellowed. There was no way in hell she was going in that goddamn auction.
“Yeah, well, nice of you to be upset now after you already broke her heart,” Leo snarked.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“She heard you talking to Carmen. She knows you’re in love with her and want to be with her.”
“No! Shit, she must not have heard the whole conversation. I ended it by telling Carmen I would always love her but not in the same way I love Jess.”
“Oh, yeah. She totally missed that. I did, too.”
“You were listening, too?” I asked.
“That’s not the important part. Anyway, Carmen has let her go on thinking that y’all are together now. Jess wants to go into the auction to get some money, let her mom get through with treatment, and then she wants the both of them to get out of town.”
“No!” Nadine’s hands balled into fists. “I just found out I had a sister. I’m not losing her now.”
“Well, you better get back here for the auction. Enzo is going to bid on her, supposedly it will be fake, but, well, you know Enzo. But he will be able to protect her from Skeeter. Nobody’s dumb enough to take her from Enzo Salazar.”
“Except me,” I said grimly. “That’s not happening. He will not win her in that auction. We’ll be flying out as soon as I can get a plane.”
“I thought you might say that,” Leo said. “I also told Carmen you might be pissed at her, Nadine.”
“I kind of am! You tell her that I’m going to be a St. Clair Security agent so she should fear my wrath!”
I had to roll my lips inward to keep from laughing. She had dropped her voice several octaves and tried to growl them out to sound scary. She’d sounded like a Muppet instead.
I could tell both Reynolds and Marschall were also trying to hold it together.
“Okay, Leo. Thanks for the heads up. We’ll be home as soon as possible,” Reynolds ended the call. “Let’s go eat and then get out of here.”
“We’re going to have that discussion about headquarters at dinner, right?” Marschall asked.
We were going to have to table that discussion for now.
I had to go get my girl.