CHAPTER 7
The gravel along the C&O Canal towpath crunched beneath Brenna’s Nikes in a satisfying cadence.
It was six a.m. on a cool blue morning, and she was verging on elation.
Motion, at last! Not breathing hard, she was in a groove.
It had been difficult, at first, working through the stiffness and the impact of every jarring step on her bruises.
But she had reached for it and broken through.
Coping with physical discomfort was a constant in her life.
On a typical assignment, she shouldered twenty-some pounds of gear, then moved it fast, over uneven terrain, often under fire.
At nearly six feet, she was hardly a fragile woman, but she routinely worked at the extreme limits of her physical strength and under duress.
Her feet kept up the steady pat-pat-pat until her watch beeped. Damn. Time to turn around. She was meeting Grace Alcott at her office at eight to sign the contract. She turned back.
At home, she took a luxuriously-long hot shower and stepped out of her claw-footed bathtub, still invigorated from the run.
Picking through a closet-full of long-forgotten clothes, she impulsively pulled out a silky navy blue wrap dress.
It would feel delicious, she decided, a welcome change from the heavy fabrics she normally wore for protection.
It was a luxury to live in a peaceful city.
She should take advantage of it while she could.
Slipping it over her hips, cool and soft, she checked herself in the mirror.
It still worked. The cut was timeless, simplicity itself, accentuating her body without overtly calling attention to it.
Adding hosiery, modest pumps, and a navy jacket with a gold lapel pin, she grabbed her leather organizer and left the house.
Grace had worked late for the third night in a row, slept through her alarm, and rousted herself from her tangled sheets with scarcely enough time to shower, dress, and stop by Starbucks on the way to work.
Hands loaded with her briefcase, coffee, and files from Mildred, she toed her office door open, unburdened herself at her desk, then sat, praying that Brenna Rease would be late.
Just five minutes. That’s all she wanted.
A chance to have some java and organize her thoughts before that force majeure arrived.
She pried the lid off her cup and lifted the steaming brew to her mouth.
Unannounced, Brenna Rease stepped into her open doorway.
Grace took one look at her and inhaled the coffee.
Mercy. She was wearing a silky dress that draped perfectly over her breasts and hips.
She leapt to her feet, coughing, unsure whether to rescue her burning mouth, her suit, or her dignity.
Dignity, she decided. She straightened, smoothing her blouse, and stared at Brenna again.
Her sunlight-in-the-pines gaze dropped. “Your cup is tipping, Alcott.”
Grace looked down. Ayuh. The coffee was dribbling through her fingers.
Brenna studied her, expressionless.
Holding her dripping fingers away from her good suit, Grace grabbed the wad of paper napkins off her desk. “Uh… why don’t you have a seat? I’ll ask Mildred to get you coffee.”
“No. No coffee.”
“Perrier? Juice?” She asked, wiping her fingers.
“I’d rather get down to business.” Brenna finally walked in.
Grace retrieved the thick file from her desk and settled herself toward one end of the sofa, thinking she would lay it out on the coffee table and Brenna could look over her shoulder as she explained the paperwork.
Showing none of the stiffness Grace had noticed during their first visit, Brenna took the wing chair across from her instead. Back straight, wrists resting on the arms of the seat, her brows rose as her gaze landed on the stack of documents. Lifting her eyes to Grace, Brenna sat back.
“All of these documents together will comprise the terms of our agreement,” Grace said, unclipping the first set of contracts in the stack, and sliding one copy across the table, along with a pen.
Brenna made no move to take them.
“I thought you might want to sign as we go.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I want to hear them first, Alcott.”
“Er… hear?”
“Yes. I want you to read them to me. All the clauses, all the documents, before I sign.”
“But that’s—” Grace stammered. “Surely—”
“Let’s hear it, Alcott. Word by word. From you.”
Grace read for nearly two hours, clause after interminable clause, document after document, adding comments where she thought they might clarify.
These were the standards of the profession, documents she had always accepted as the way of doing business.
These were the disclaimers, the limitations, the waivers of corporate liability upon which all transactions rested.
But they were more than that, and she began to regret having included every contract in her arsenal.
Read aloud, they were excessive and self-serving.
Sam would be pissed as hell if this fell through.
She paused, sipped cold coffee, and picked up the last two sheets. “I hereby grant irrevocable right to forever use my name, face, likeness, appearance, voice, actions, activities, career, and experiences in perpetuity throughout the world in any medium now in existence or...”
Brenna shifted in the wing chair. “I’m taking the pictures, Alcott, not appearing in them. Why the Personal Release?”
“We’re paying for your name, Ms. Rease. We intend to promote it—and your likeness. To that end, we’ve also asked you to commit to attend the corporate sponsors’ premiere at the Kennedy Center this Fall.”
“In other words, I’m a product.” Her voice was tight.
“No,” Grace said. “The program is the product. You’re the attachment.” Without the Rease name, she didn’t say, she was Brand X.
“Is there anything else?”
Grace set the last pages on the table and sat back. “Yes. I’ve decided I’m going with you. I’m writing the piece myself.”
Brenna’s gaze sharpened. “What happened to Garrett?”
“He’ll help me with the research.”
“I work alone.”
Grace replied softly but firmly. “I appreciate that it may be your usual style, Ms. Rease, but this project requires you to work with me.” She would not negotiate the point. This was for Aya. She was going if it was the last thing she did. And, going into a war zone, it could well be.
Brenna jumped up and strode to the window, anger shimmering through her like heat on a desert highway.
The hell with you, she wanted to say. The hell with your endless contracts.
In Europe, she’d settled deals bigger than this with a telephone call.
Whatever she was personally, professionally she was impeccable.
She was used to working with people who trusted her, and Grace Alcott clearly did not.
It came down to character, Brenna realized.
Her character. Here in the ’States, she had a bad reputation.
Neither her years abroad nor the work she had done since her departure had erased the notoriety she had brought on herself.
If she was eventually going to work stateside, she had to rebuild from scratch—less than scratch.
For now, that meant accepting this mountain of paper and the mistrust it represented.
Galling as it was, she would do it. Nothing was going to stand between her and this story.
Without it, she had no eventual way home.
She turned, leaned her bottom against the window frame and crossed her arms, skewering Grace with a direct look. “What do you think?” she finally asked. “Is it worth it? I risk my life, and you pay me if I live to deliver?”
Grace drew back, shocked.
Apparently, she’d been so busy building paper walls around herself, she’d lost sight of the fact that she might be sending Brenna to her death.
“I— I can’t decide that for you.”
Brenna strode across the room and stopped in front of her, forcing her to look up.
“Alright,” she said. “You’ve given me your terms. Now mine. And you don’t need to put this in writing, Alcott. No matter what you’ve heard, no matter what you think you know about me, understand this: I am not reckless. I do not court death. Everything I do—everything—is calculated.
I am alive because I am ruthless about my survival. If your inexperience gets in the way of my safety, I will turn my back on you and walk away.”
Grace stared at her, stunned.
“Now. Do you still want to sign?”
She hesitated, then pushed the contracts forward.
Brenna attacked the documents with bold black signatures. In Kav?ak, none of this means anything.
When she finished, she tossed down the pen. “Have Mildred send me copies,” she said, and left without another word.