My Fair Lady

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Twelve

"So how's she doing?" Tank asked me when he found me.  She was almost through day one of the three day test.  Four others had been slotted for a go on this month's try-outs, and from what I understood, she was faring well.  Not outstanding, but she wasn't being laughed at, either.  All in all, she was fooling the proctors intobelieving she was really vying for a spot at the Trenton RangeMan.  An idea I thought sounded better every time it was brought up.  I had no doubts I could change her attitude about working for me once she showed these guys just what she could do.  But all I gave Tank was a noncommital grunt.

I was pleased with Stephanie's scores from the first day.  But the coming two days of testing were only going to get harder.  Day one was devoted to technical skills—marksmanship, physical fitness, endurance, computer skill, investigative techniques, etc.—all tested in a pseudo-academic environment with no outside stresses.  And Stephanie had done as well as I'd expected her to.  They were very well in-line with typical Ranger applicants.  Which made me very happy.

I managed to refuse Tank access to the scores on the grounds that, since he himself was under eval (a fact which he grumbled about more than a few times before he'd capitulated), he shouldn't be seeing what or how any of the other participants were doing.  Which also had the added benefit for me of keeping the man who was betting against me in the dark. 

Day two included the kill house as well as sparring and take down maneuvers.  I had no doubt Steph would do very well on the last two, but the first I was slightly concerned about.  I'd gone through a kill house with her a few times at the General's base, but that had been her only experience.  To complete this course, she'd have to run it three times: twice with a partner and once on her own.  She'd be up against RangeMan employees with paintpall guns playing attacker, and she would have to 'kill' all of the attackers and none of the 'civilians,' which were also being played by RangeMan employees.  And the attackers were vicious.  After all, they were testing people who might be expected to guard their backs one day.

My eyes were glued to the screen as they picked numbers.  Her first partner would be Tank.  They grinned, and there was only a brief discussion between them.  The starting bell rang and they moved.  The evaluators watched with interest as the two of them demolished the team inside, both of them coming out clean without having hit any of the 'civilians' planted inside.  I grinned.  I should have known she'd pull it off.

A few other teams went before Steph was up again, this time with a former Marine who'd been out of the service for a half-dozen years installing residential security systems.  I could tell the guy was giving her a hard time from the get-go, probably telling her to stay out of his way and not do anything to affect his score.  He was motioning in a manner that clearly indicated he expected her to take maybe ten percent of the room.  Paintball gun in hand, Stephanie appeared to be holding her own, because the guy suddenly backed off, hands raised in a placating manner.  Steph nodded once, then took the left and went low. 

The bell rang and they were off.  I frowned as I watched them, both jerky and obviously ill-at-ease.  This time they didn't come out clean.  Steph had been hit by a blue splatter grazing her arm, and the Marine had a shot to the leg before they cleared the first room.  In the second, the Marine got a civilian.  And in the third, one of the hidden attackers got them both in the back when the Marine tried to do Steph's side without paying attention to his own.  The evaluators shook their heads. 

It was when Steph went in alone, though, that things got interesting.  I watched as she examined the outside of the "house" as she waited for the starting bell to ring.  When it did, she climbed up the side to a second floor window.  There was no point in airconditioning an unoccupied building, so all of the windows were open.  I searched the monitors to find the inside view of the room she'd chosen and found it was the room with most of the civilians and only one attacker acting as guard.  Steph managed to slip through the window silently enough that she wasn't heard, and snuck behind the attacker to 'slit' his throat with a chalk knife.  The attacker was obviously shocked when she 'killed' him, but fell to the floor without a word. 

Then she moved to the next room.  All of the attackers had their eyes trained on the door, and Steph took out all four of them before they realized what was going on.  She continued to move through the house backwards, taking them by surprise for the first few rooms until the sounds made the rest of the attackers suspicious enough to go looking.

All in all, Steph managed her solo round in more time than any of the others by at least twice as much, but was the only one able to make it through without a fatal wound.  I made a mental note for future attackers to be focused on more than just the front door.

I glanced at the evaluators out of the corner of my eye to see what they thought, only to catch one of them giving me an appraising look of his own.

"Interesting," he said, and the others nodded.  Of course, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.  "How do you know this lady again?"

"A friend of a colleague I owed a favor," I evaded with a semi-truth.  He nodded as if that told him something, and I worried we'd blown it, but he didn't say anything.

Next up was some sparring and take-down maneuvers.  Steph did very, very well in the sparring.  Of course, I'd expected no less since I'd spent the past half-year drilling her on all o fthe dirty tricks of the trade as I'd thrown her around the mat.  She'd had to pick something up, if only in self-defense, as I had not gone easy on her.

Tank—the only one who wasn't underestimating her—had been the only one to pin her.  He'd done this by flopping on her as soon as they'd started.  She'd retaliated by headbutting him, kneeing him in the groin, and jabbing his ribs with her elbow as he'd rolled off.  The evaluators had called the match off at this point.  In her other match-ups, she was vicious, and more than one of the guys had gotten a black eye or a split lip.  I was very pleased with her.  She didn't go for technical perfection or flashy showing off; she went for effective.  And she was very, very effective. 

Day 3 was reserved for the obstacle course.  I was never quite just how it had gotten this unofficial nick-name, since it was really more of a scavenger hunt than anything else, and the only obstacles invovled other RangeMan employees.  But maybe that was the point.

In this exercise, it was every man for themselves.  They were given a list of places they had to get a chit from without being caught.  They had one day, and had to make at least three of the five targets they'd been given, which included an office building, an apartment building, a restaurant, dry cleaners, and a house.  The chits were somewhere in each location inside of a metal cannister so they could recognize what they were searching for.  Stephanie wished everyone luck, shook hands with the evaluators and Tank and I, and then was gone as soon as she'd been given her list, and I watched and waited in the control room anxiously waiting to see what she would come up with.  I knew Tank would be the first done—he had the dual advantages of having lived in Miami and having been on the opposing side of this exercise before.  And one of the others was a Miami native before enlisting, so he would have a home field advantage.  But I didn't expect Steph to disappoint us. 

A few hours later, Tank had finished three, the others had attempted at least two, and Steph was nowhere to be seen.  The cameras monitoring the house suddenly went out.  I lifted an eyebrow in question to the evaluators, who frowned.  One of them radioed the guys stationed as the defenders at the house and had them check into it, only to find the power had gone out in the entire house. 

"None of the other houses on the block seem to be having power failure," one of the defenders radiod back after a few minutes.  If it was isolated, that probably meant it was part of the exercise.  I wondered which of the candidates had managed this.

I saw Tank slipping into the dry cleaners a few minutes later, so knew it hadn't been him.  Which left some promising new hires.

Tank was the first back, as I'd predicted.  He set his five chits on the table for the evaluators.  And, now finished with his eval, I had no excuse to keep him from the monitors with me and the three evaluators.  He raised an eyebrow, silently asknig how Steph was doing.  I shook my head.  She hadn't shown up yet.

Finally, finally, I saw Steph show up on the monitors.  The guys at the apartment building were all yelling out a window at a some kid who'd thrown a baseball into it, and she was inside.  I suddenly had doubts about the baseball being accidental.  She was quick.  Very quick.  She slipped in and relocked the door and was in the kitchen in seconds looking for the chits.  Luck was with her, since they were on the kitchen table.  She grabbed one, and I saw on the monitor one of the defenders heading her way.  Steph must have heard him, as she ducked into a closet and waited for him to pass.  Then she was out the door with noone the wiser that she'd ever been there.

"That girl had better get a move on," one of the evaluators said.  "She only has an hour left and this is the first time we've seen her."

"First time we've seen her," the second evaluator emphasized.

"You think she could have gotten past the defenders and the cameras?" the third asked, surprised.

"There was that blackout," the second said noncommitally.

"Oh?" Tank prompted.

"About an hour after you'd gone in, the house's power was cut," I said.  "Simple fix, but it took about twenty minutes."  I doubted that had been Steph, though.  I hadn't taught her anything about wiring. 

It was another twenty minutes before something caught my eyes.  People were running around the dry cleaners as the clothes line machine was running on what appeared to be high speed.  I watched the monitors carefully, keeping my eyes on the frame with the chits to see who it was.  Then she darted into the fray.  Stephanie.   One of the defenders hadn't gone to help, continuing his guard duty, and I wondered how she'd deal with that.  Then she was behind him with a stun gun to his neck and he was crumpled on the ground.  She grabbed her chit and fleeing in seconds.  I held back a sigh of relief.  She had two now, which was really quite good.  By the time they'd gotten the machine under control, Stephanie was long gone.

When she walked in not ten minutes later, we all looked at her in surprise.  She pulled out five chits and laid them in front of me.  Everybody stared at her in shock.

"How the hell'd you manage that?" one of the evaluators asked, summing up all of our thoughts.  She smiled slyly.

"Well, babe?" I asked her, looking from the chits to her. 

"I cut the power at the house; I knew you'd have cameras watching and they were most likely connected to the house's electric.  When you called them to check on it, they went out and I slipped in.  With the restaurant, I called them up, pretending to be a new restaurant supply company hoping to get their business, and got the schedule and companies that deliver to them.  Then it was an easy matter to bribe the linen delivery guys to loan me a uniform and let me go with them.  In the office building, I pretended to be a new hire with the cleaning service and got shown around to all of the offices they service.  You probably saw me at the dry cleaners, I slipped in from the roof and created a distraction by starting the machinery going in reverse.  And at the the apartment building I'm sure you saw me, too.  I paid a delivery service to deliver an empty box to the building, getting me in the back way with them.  Then I waited for a neighborhood kid to throw the baseball into the window and break it, and got in.  Once I was inside, it wasn't hard to get the chit and get out again."

"Where'd you get the cash for the bribes, babe?" I asked curiously.  As far as I knew, she didn't have much cash on her.  She smirked and patted my back pocket. 

"Hmm, well… You may have inadvertantly made a generous donation to my efforts," she said.  I raised an eyebrow.

"You picked my pocket?" I asked increduously; I certainly hadn't taught her that.

"Picked 'em clean," she admitted shamelessly.  I got out my wallet and, sure enough, all of the cash was gone.  The other guys quickly checked theirs and Tank and the evaluators found them in similar states. 

"I may owe some of you a drink," she shrugged.  "Well, except for you, Tank.  Who keeps only two dollars but three condoms in their wallet?  You didn't even have a twenty.  For that, I think you owe me a drink for wasting my efforts."  She shook her head in disgust.  Tank looked at her in shock for a second before letting out a roaring laugh and slinging his arm around her shoulder. 

"You got balls, girl," he said still laughing. 

We only had to wait another few minutes before the others all reported back in.  Two of them had three chits, one had only two chits, and the fourth had four chits.

"Thank you all for coming in," I said.  "We're going to review all of your results and we'll get back with you tomorrow."  Steph cocked an eyebrow at me, but left with the others.

"So," I said when the candidates were all gone.  "What do you guys think?  Any potential hirees?"

"The girl," the second evaluator said immediately.  Which started off a very interesting discussion on the relative merits of each of the candidates.  In the end, the recommendation of the evaluators was to hire Stephanie and three of the guys. 

When I went to her that night, I refused to tell her anything, just smiling at her.  But I did want to know where she'd picked up some of the skills she'd shown today.

"Where'd you learn to pick pockets, babe?" I asked curiously. 

"In college.  I had a no good cousin who I black mailed into teaching me when I found out what he was up to," she answered with a laugh. 

"And how to blackout a house?"

"I have an uncle who's an electrician.  I worked for him one summer," she said, sliding her hands around to my back.  "I didn't learn everything I know from you, after all.  Just most of it."  And she pinched my ass and sprinted away.  Which, of course, meant I had to chase her and return the favor. 

The next morning we spoke with them all individually, Steph last.  When we offered her the job at RangeMan Trenton, she looked to me with confusion in her eyes.

"Are you serious?" she asked me.  I nodded, watching the evaluators' expressions out of the corner of my eye. 

"Now for the best part," Tank said grinning.  "What do you think her background is?"  Tank, Steph and I watched them debate it curiously.

One of them insisted she'd received Rangers training.  Another thought SWAT. 

 "Too many things don't add up," the second one said—the one who'd been the most curious about her the entire time.  I felt Steph tense ever so slightly beside me; I had to force myself to relax, too.

"Oh?" I prompted.

"She doesn't think Army," he explained.  "Too creative.  Too sly.  Too many tricks  and not nearly direct enough.  I've never seen any Army man start the kill house through the second story window.  No, she's definitely not Rangers.  I'd guess CIA or one of the other intelligence agencies."

The others, thinking over his words for a moment, agreed.

Tank groaned. 

"You did it," he said.  "You really fucking did it.  Son of a bitch."

There was much pounding of backs as Tank and I congratulated each other.  The evaluators were obviously confused, and Tank explained.

"She was a fucking lingerie buyer," Tank said laughing.  "This bastard here and I had a bet going that he could get her up to specs in six months, and he actually managed it.  Son of a bitch."

"My bank is already expecting your transfer," I told him with a broad smile. 

"She's a civvie?" one of the evaluators asked, unable to comprehend it.

"Until about six months ago," Tank said again.  I looked to Steph to have her tell the story, but she wasn't sitting on the couch any more.  I looked around for a few minutes before I realized it.  She was gone.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

I spent the next week searching all of Miami for her, but she was gone.  Disappeared.  Completely off the grid.  I had no idea how she'd managed to get out of Miami without some sort of record of it, but I was sure she was gone. 

How could she do this? I wondered in confusion, completely taken aback by the fact that she'd left without a word.  Why would she go without even a word?  I refused to admit the hurt. 

After another few days in Miami—which were spent looking over the Miami office operations and were certainly not just putting off leaving in the hopes she would come back—I began the drive back up to Trenton.  I took a week at the South Carolina facility to make sure everything was closed up and ready for an extended vacancy.  There were no signs Steph had been back.  Not that I'd looked.

All in all, it was just over a month from the time Stephanie left me before I got back to Trenton.  I immediately hearad rumors that she'd been home and nobody had recognized her new look or her new attitude.  She'd taken in a few high bond skips, then cashed the checks and disappeared.  Nobody knew where she was.  Not that I'd asked.  If she was so ungrateful as to run off, I certainly didn't care where she was or what she was doing. 

Another week passed before I could admit that was a lie.  I made a surreptitious trip to the storage facility where we'd stashed her things, only to find everything emptied.  I wondered what she'd done with it, and where she was now.  Even if she was an unappreciative wretch.  That night I pulled up a few search programs and began to look for her in earnest, only to find out she really had fallen off the grid.  No electronic records of anything since she'd cashed her checks from the skips she'd brought in.  There were no records of her having flown back to Trenton or out of Trenton, no record of car rentals, train tickets, bus tickets, or ship fare.  There were no records of her purchasing anything at all.  Or working anywhere.  Or having existed at all in the past seven months, except for cashing the checks.  It made me want to pull my hair out.  I'd taught her all of these skills, and now it was coming back to bite me in the ass.

And I missed her.  I hadn't realized how ingrained she'd become to my life—how I'd grown so accustomed to her presence all the time.  Now without it, it felt odd, like there was something missing .  And when I realized there was nothing I could do to get it back, I'd spent quite a few hours in the gym with the bag.  Nobody had dared bother me.  When I finally threw in the towel, Tank told me that I'd managed to scare one of the new guys.  I made a note to have a spar with the pussy.

I went up to my apartment, deciding to shower and then get plastered to forget her for the night.  I was already stripping off my shirt on my way through the bedroom to my bathroom when I saw her.  Lounging on my bed, watching me with dark eyes as though she had every right to be there.  I froze, conflicted and unsure of what to do.

"Was the whole thing just some weird form of entertainment for you?" she asked.  "Was the whole time we spent together just because of the bet?  Were you just sleeping with me to, I don't know, pass the time and get me to do what you wanted?"

"No," I said, voice sharp and much gruffer than I'd expected. 

"Then why?" she demanded.

"Why what, babe," I asked tiredly.

"Why not tell me about the bet?  Why humiliate me with a pretend job offer and make me a joke?"

I blinked, taking in what she was saying and trying to figure out how it all could have gotten so fucked up.

"That's why you ran?" I asked.

"It hurt, Ranger.  I thought we… I thought you and I… and you turned me into a joke," she said.  "You hurt me.  I thought you really believed I could do it.  I thought we might have had a shot.  You hurt me, and I had to get out of there.  So yes, I ran."

"You were not a joke," I growled.

"Then why…"

"Tank and I bet on everything," I continued right over her.  "I'd agreed to train you before we made our bet.  As for not telling you, at first it didn't occur to me to tell you.  There was no reason for you to know.  Then when we were more, I decided not to tell you because I didn't want to put more pressure on you.  The job offer was real.  The evaluators put you at the top of the list for the potential hires.  Without my saying a word.  We were not making a joke of you.  We were celebrating your success and settling our bet.  And I thought we might be something, too.  But then you ran away."

We both stayed silent for a while after that.  Then I sighed, sitting on the bed and running a hand through my hair.  I winced at the soreness in my hand—I'd seriously overdone it with the bag today.  Stephanie reached out and took the hand, gently running her fingers over mine.  She hummed disapprovingly and got up.  I heard her rooting around in the kitchen before she came back with some ice packs.  Then she led me into the bathroom and made me sit on the counter and hold onto the ice packs.  I watached in amusement as she rummaged through my drawers and cabinets, looking for my first aid kit.  When she found it, she stood between my legs and began carefully—almost tenderly—ministering to my hands, cleaning the scrapes and cuts and working out some of the soreness.

"I'm sorry I left without talking to you," Steph said softly as she finished with my hands, taping uup the bandages. 

"I'm sorry I hurt you, babe," I murmered equally quietly.  She looked up at me, face already close to mine.  She slowly leaned in and brushed a soft kiss against my lips.  Then her arms circled my waist and she lay her head on my chest.  I wrapped my bandaged hands around her and held her close. 

"Can everything go back to how things were before Miami?" she asked.  I pulled her up to my lap, and she didn't protest, just shifted her arms so that one hand slid up to my neck as she rested her head on my shoulder.

"No," I murmered.  "But we can make it even better."

And it was.

The End