G:\Books\Mary Janice Davidson\The World Is Too Damned Big.pdb

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For everyone who wanted to be the star of their own movie.

(*) The World
Is
Too Darned Big

MaryJanice Davidson

Acknowledgments

Writing a novel is a lot like running a marathon. But the novella is more like a forty-yard dash: you've got to get your ass in gear right away. I love this shorter length and am grateful to Alex Kendall, of Red Sage Publishing, for being the first to give me the chance to show readers that I could dash reasonably well. And to Kate Duffy, of Brava, for letting me run wherever I want.

Prologue

"You know, bad guys trying to blow my head off isn't as much fun as I thought it would be," Benjamin commented. "It's more stressful than anything else."

"Typical," Tara said. "Felony assault--it's all hype."

"Any bright ideas on how to get out of this?"

"Ben, I am so not the brains of this team. Besides, it's your fault we're even here."

"The hell! You're the one who wanted to steal the world."

"I didn't want to steal the world, just a few key pieces of it, not that it's any of your business. You're the one who insisted we save humanity." Tara invested the phrase with heavy sarcasm. "Could there be a bigger waste of time? No? Ask the guy with the gun if you don't believe me."

"Fine. Anyway, we'd better get out of here before bullets start exploring our temporal lobes. This hallway isn't going to provide cover much longer."

"So? Think of something, gadget man." Tara stretched out her long, long legs and closed her eyes. "Let me know what you come up with."

He watched, dumbfounded, as she went to sleep. She could always do that. It was unbelievably aggravating.

He leaned over and shouted into her gorgeous, still face, "And I did not get us into this!" In the distance, the firing pop of the silencer accentuated his statement.

"Did, too," Tara said without opening her eyes.

"Did not!"

"Don't you remember?"

As a matter of fact, he did.

One

Earlier that day ...

Bored, Benjamin Dyson put the finishing touches on his Universal remote--a true Universal remote, thank you very much--one that would work on any television set in the world, provided it had been
built since 1992 . .. which was to say, 92.56% of them.

It also doubled as a cell phone.

Well, super. Another gadget, completed well before deadline. The rep from the CIA would be here any minute--or was this one for Honeywell? The Secret Service? It was getting hard to keep them all straight. He could look it up in the log, but frankly, didn't care enough. If he wasn't going to get to use the gadget du jour in the field, he didn't much care who did.

He yawned and scribbled an invoice, picking a number out of the air--seventeen hundred? Thirty-three hundred? What did he care? He had more money than he'd ever be able to spend. Not that the government was exactly known for paying Net 30. Or even Net 150. Well, it was his patriotic duty. He supposed.

He heard the car pull in and hit the garage door button clipped to his desk. The sun had come up just an hour or so ago, and the fresh-faced agent in the de rigueur unmarked sedan looked entirely too perky for this time of the day as he popped out of his car and practically trotted into the garage.

"Hey, Dr. Dyson! How you doing today?"

"Fine, Tom." Bored, Ben started to hand over the remote and the paperwork. After a moment's thought, he stuffed it all into a used grocery bag from Piggly Wiggly.

"Thanks for the phone call. My supervisor couldn't believe it. A week ahead of schedule!" Agent Tom Carradine shook his head admiringly. "Unreal! You're worth all of our lab weenies put together."

"Is that what I am?" he asked, amused. "A lab weenie?"

"Uh, no offense, Ben. Without you guys, we wouldn't last very long out in The World, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah." Ben yawned again.

"And I must say," Tom said, looking around, "this is the most sterile garage I have ever been in. You could eat off the floor in here."

"Thanks for the visual. Listen, see if you can get Accounts Payable to cough it up a little sooner this
time, willya?"

"Not my department," Tom said with irritating cheer. He smoothed back his shiny black hair--Tom needed to lay off the styling products--and clicked the remote at Ben in a friendly way. Behind him, inside the house, Ben could hear his television turning on. "Thanks again. Catch you later."

"Buh," he grunted, taking a swallow of his hot chocolate. He could see Tom was washing his hands of
the whole Accounts Payable situation--the typical action of anyone not in Accounts Payable--but was too filled with ennui to stop the process.

Tom trotted back to his sedan, and Ben watched him go, then hit the garage door switch until the street slid from sight.

Now what? Take a month off? The Cape was nice this time of year. He supposed he could think about Thanksgiving . . . His parents were still touring the state park system in their RV, but his sister and her new husband would be glad to have him over for dinner. That sounded nice and homey and traditional and ...

He yawned again.

For the millionth time, he thought about applying at one of the academies, or giving his guy at Langley
a call. Sure! He could go through the training patch and be in the field by springtime ... summer at the latest. He could ... could ...

Get his head blown off. He was thirty-four ... not exactly prime recruiting age for field agents. He had played it safe and stayed in the lab, and made himself indispensable, and rich. Now it was too late for adventures.

There is plenty of adventure to be had on the other end of a microscope, his physics teacher had been fond of saying. His physics teacher had been as round as he was tall and felt the worst thing to happen
to an invention was to have people use it. Dr. Thorson was all theory. Had a heart attack in his very
own lab, as a matter of fact. One supposed you could say he died with his boots on. Died with his slide rule in his pocket? Was that even--

For God's sake, he grumbled, dumping another packet of Swiss Miss into his mug. Stop complaining,
you morbid fuck! You've got a great life. A great, safe life. You get paid to tinker, to think shit up.

Right.

Damn right.

"Oh, fuck," he said, and rested his head on his forearms.

Two

How could he have let this happen? How could he become a supporting actor in someone else's movie? He'd always fantasized about being Bond, but the plain truth was, he wasn't Bond and never had been and never would be, and that was that, amen and forever. He was Q. He was... What had Tom called him? A lab weenie?

He heard a car pull up, one with a powerful engine under the hood--cripes, had they strapped a wild animal in there?-- and shrugged. Secret service? No, they didn't like the flashy cars. Private dick? No, they couldn't afford the flashy cars. Local law enforcement? No, they couldn't catch the flashy cars.
Field agent? Maybe. Whoever it was, he was officially on vacation.

As if in response to the garage door not going up, the car's engine roared, sounding exactly like a pissed-off Bengal in heat. Ben clapped his hands over his ears, then decided it would be easier to tell double-oh fuckhead face-to-face that he was on vacation. He hit the button to raise the door.

The engine cut off abruptly, and a door slammed shut. Then he saw a pair of shoes walk around and
wait by the door.

The left shoe--a red sneaker with black laces and a black skull and crossbones inked on the toe--started tapping impatiently as the door continued to rise, revealing black leggings, a hip-skimming cherry red baby tee--and what hips!--firm-looking, perfectly rounded breasts, a swanlike neck, sharp chin, Angelina Jolie lips (colored to match her T-shirt), tip-tilted nose (pierced with a tiny silver skull), greenish gray eyes, and close-cropped white-blond hair.

"Whoa," was the best he could do.

"Dr. Dyson," the vision said. She was tall--her head passed a bare six inches from the top of his garage door as she entered. "Make me wait a little longer next time."

"Okay. Nice mouse."

"Thank you." She stroked the rat, which was as long as her forearm and as white as freshly fallen snow. "It's a Norway Black."

"But it's white."

"Yes."

"Okay." He tried to stop staring at her. The rat didn't help. She was larger than life, and that voice! So husky and low, the woman made Kathleen Turner sound as though she was breathing helium. "What
can I do for you?" Please, please let it be something involving nudity and raspberries ...

"I need you to make something for me."

"Oh, I can't."

She arched blond brows. The rat sneered in his general direction. "You can't? That'll be a first. You're sort of famous, you know, in certain circles."

Now there was a nerve-wracking idea. "I mean, I'm on vacation."

"You're hanging out in your garage on vacation? Although, I have to say, this is the nicest, cleanest garage I've ever--"

"It's my lab," he snapped. "And yes."

"Terrific," she said, and stroked the rat some more, looking around. She strolled over to a wall of cell phones and almost touched one, then seemed to think better of it.

He was weirdly reminded of a Bond villain, and half expected her to say something like, "More tea,
Mr. Bond? Mwah -hah-hah!"

"So, thanks for stopping by and all, but, see, I'm on vacation now, and--"

"I guess I could stick my gun in your ear and ask again," she mused.

"I don't think the CIA would like that."

"CIA?"

"Well, maybe Honeywell. Halliburton. Hell's Angels. Somebody wouldn't like it. I'm almost positive.
And I don't work for the bad guys. Although, if I was going to break that rule, I sure would in your case. You're six feet tall, right?"

"Six-one," she said absently. "Dr. Dyson, you dope, you already work for the bad guys. Who did you think wanted the skeleton key card?"

"The CIA."

She raised her eyebrows at him again.

"Oh, fuck," he said. "But they had all the IDs. And the PO . It was even signed by their head buyer!"

"Oh, so they weren't sloppy bad guys."

"God dammit," he cursed.

"Anyway, I want one, too."

"One what?"

"I thought you were some kind of genius."

"Some kind of idiot is more like it," he muttered, and she laughed. It seemed to startle the rat, who froze in her arms. "Of course, this is assuming you're telling the truth about the good guys really being bad guys."

"Why would I lie about that?" she asked reasonably. "What do I get out of it?"

"How the hell should I know? And FYI, this is the most surreal conversation I've had this week."

"Yeah, well, it's not really working for me, either. Look, don't beat yourself up. I mean it--put that board down," she ordered. "With all the stuff you crank out, you were bound to trip up eventually."

"They fooled me. They fooled me. Me." He remembered the card well; an actual challenge, for a change, and good money, which he expected. The go-between had shown up about twenty minutes before Agent Tom. And he'd never suspected a thing.

"Take it easy," she said. "So, I take it you're not going to--"

"Dammit!"

"Well, crud. If you're not going to make me one, and if I'm not going to make you make me one, I guess I'll go steal it from the bad guys, then. See ya."

"Wait!" He was frantically digging through his desk, the file cabinets, the hidden compartment in the back of his mini-fridge. He grabbed a blackberry yogurt, peeked at the label, and stuffed it into his satchel. "I'm coming with you," he said over his shoulder. "They can get into any building in the world with that card."

"I thought you were on vacation."

"Well," he said, exasperated, "now I'm doing this."

"So they should be stopped before they wreak havoc?" she asked, sounding bored.

"They should be stopped because they tricked me. Me! I was top of my class at MIT!"

"I never would have guessed," she said, eyeing his tie, which was four inches wide at its broadest point. "So, you're tagging along--"

"Actually, I'm letting you tag along."

"Oh, please. And when you get this back, you'll give it to me?"

"Umm," he said, then darted out the garage door. "Come on, come on!"

She trudged after him. "I knew I should have gone back to bed when my semiauto jammed before breakfast."

"Can I drive?" He was circling her banana yellow convertible and caressing the leather seats.

"Forget it, Dr. Dork."

"It's Ben."

" Tara . Tara Marx."

"Of course it is," he said, and grinned at her. "Did anyone ever tell you, you're sort of like a Bond villain, except with great legs?"

"Christ," she muttered.

"Come to think of it, we should definitely take my car."

"Christ."

Three

Tara Marx tried to sneak looks at Dr. Dyson without being obvious. She couldn't believe it, but she'd let him talk her into taking his car. His dark green Dodge Neon. The geek-mobile. There was barely enough room for Katya, who was currently grooming herself in the backseat, never mind the two of them.

"I still don't understand why we couldn't take my Alfa Romeo."

"And I don't understand why the rat had to come with us."

"Don't talk about Katya like that. She's not 'the rat.' "

"Jeez, sorry, what is she, 'the duck'? Anyway, this baby is loaded with extras." Dyson actually patted the steering wheel, just in case she hadn't tumbled to what a gigantic geek he was. "You won't be sorry."

"I'm already sorry." She snuck another peek. It was the eyes; it wasn't her fault. Well, the eyes and the hair. The mussed dark red hair, which stood straight up as if he spent the day running his fingers through it. He needed a haircut; that's why he was so distracting and shaggy. She'd never seen hair that color before ... so dark a red it was like mahogany.

No, the eye. The vivid, whiskey-colored eye (the other one was blue). No, the stubble, blooming along his chin, that whole too-busy-to-shave thing was really sexy. No, the height, all rangy power--who would have thought a redheaded lab geek would have a swimmer's shoulders and a weight-lifter's legs?

She'd heard tales of the Dr. Dyson for years, and he certainly wasn't anything like she'd pictured him. Of course, you shouldn't put stock in stereotypes, but he was so far the opposite of one it was a joke, or a crime. He looked like an escapee from a Hunky Men of Love calendar, not a lab drone. And he'd been so outraged when she told him about Krueger & Co., he'd demanded he come with her. Most people would have called the cops. Or shrugged and gone back to work. Now she had a partner.

She did not play well with others.

"It's just," she tried again, "my car gets better gas mileage, among other things."

"Urn," he said, or something like it. He was stabbing buttons on the dashboard--turning on the air conditioner?-- and then the entire right-hand side of the windshield went opaque. Fortunately, his side stayed clear, or she would have been deeply, deeply concerned. Then the shield divided into grids and then resolved itself into a map. She could see two dots steadily moving and heard the light "ping-ping"
of a radar system.

"Excellent," she managed. Dr. Dyson was years ahead of American technology, which wasn't so impressive, but he was also years ahead of the Germans, which was. "That'll work."

"Gotcha," he muttered, and stomped on the accelerator.

"Easy, big guy," she said, which was nothing but the truth--she was big, and almost never ran into taller men, but he had three inches on her, easily. Maybe that was it. It was so weird--and nice--to be with a guy who had some height on her. "I want to get them, too, but getting a ticket will slow you down. And be a major inconvenience to me, not that you care."

"Um," he said. Then he elaborated. "This car can see every radar gun in a five-mile radius." He pressed
a button, and two orange blips appeared on the screen, far below their marked position. "We'll never get caught in a speed trap, if that's what you're worried about."

"That's not the only thing I'm worried about," she said under her breath, sneaking another peek. God,
she had to get laid. It was the only explanation for why she was sitting in the passenger's side--the passenger's side!--of a Dodge Neon, lusting after a lab puke. A tall, handsome, stubbly, stubborn,
antirat lab puke. "Where are we going?"

"After the bad guys," he responded, as if she was mildly retarded.

"I know that, Dyson. And then what?"

"Then, I take back what they tricked me out of."

"With what, the yogurt?" Maybe he'd run over them with his car. Dyson was built, sure, but those weren't field abs; that was a Bally's Swim and Fitness rack. Did he think March and Webber and Johanssen were going to hand it over if he asked nicely?

Well, fine. If rough stuff was coming up, she could handle it. Dyson was the brains; she'd be the muscle. Being able to quit The Biz would be infinitely easier if she got her hands on that card.

"They'll be sorry they ever showed me a fake Purchase Order," Dyson was yakking.

"You're acting like you didn't get paid."

"I did so get paid, and that's not the point. They lied. Like you said, everybody knows I don't make anything for the bad guys. They'll be sorry," he vowed again.

"Sure they will. How are we going to find them? Are you tracking them right now?"

"Uh-huh. I build STDs into all my gadgets."

"You infected all your gadgets with sexually transmitted diseases?"

"Grow up. Satellite Tracking Devices."

"Oh, really?"

"Well, sure."

"All of them."

"Umm."

"What an excellent way," she commented, "to get your head blown off. The first time anyone realizes you're tracking-"

"I've been doing this since high school--"

"Surprise, surprise."

"--and nobody's found one yet."

She smiled to herself.

"And now that I've told you," he joked, cutting the wheel to the right, "I'll have to kill you."

"That's probably best," she replied.

"Uh. I was only kidding."

"Then you're as dumb as you look." A rather large lie, but who cared? Lying was her best thing.

Well, second-best.

Four

"We've got them now," Ben chortled, turning into the parking lot. All right! The lair of the bad guys! Excellent, just excellent. They'd crash the den of evil and get his card back, and maybe bust a few bad guy skulls along the way. Yeah!

"Jenny's Flowers," Tara observed, reading the sign.

"The lair is a flower shop?"

"Maybe one of them has a girlfriend and wants to pick up a little something on the way home from thieving."

He snorted, which made Tara laugh again. "Cut that out, Dr. Dyson. It makes my stomach hurt."

"It's Ben. And it's not my fault you're an easy mark."

"Actually, I'm not. But speaking of easy marks, what's the plan?"

"What, you're asking me? You're the one with experience in this ... stuff." He was dying to ask the statuesque beauty just how much of a villain she was. Robbing banks via the Internet villain, or pistol whipping while relieving the elderly of their social security check villain? Because he could live with one, but not the other. "You know, this sort of thing."

"Before you ask--and what a clumsily phrased question it would be, I'm sure--I'm Switzerland ."

Yeah, probably. She certainly looked like she could come from Switzerland . She looked like a badass milkmaid. "Okay."

"So, sometimes I work for the good guys and sometimes I work for the bad guys, but mostly I work for myself--and try to keep my head down."

Oh, she was neutral like Switzerland . Right. Hmm, he was definitely a little off today. Usually . . .

"I'm usually much quicker," he told her, which was stupid, because it was way too late to try to make
a favorable first impression. "Honest."

"You could hardly be slower," was her heartless comment.

He was momentarily crushed, but quickly rallied. "You'll just have to take my word for it. So, do we
just charge in there and start knocking skulls?"

"Dr. Dyson. Have you ever been in a fist fight?"

"Well, there was this one time in graduate school... My lab partner was late for the wet lab and the prof said it would affect both our grades ... I got a little hot under the collar ..."

"So, no."

"I fell down the stairs once and got a black eye," he confessed. "Does that count?"

She was rubbing her forehead as though she'd gotten a sudden migraine. "Should've stayed in bed ... should've just stayed in bed ..."

"Let's not talk about you being in bed; it's distracting."

"Pig," she commented, rolling her eyes.

"All that's changed now," he declared. He opened his car door and jumped out. "I'm not Q anymore,
I'm James!"

"What?"

"For example, in my old life, I'd never have dared make that bed comment. But no longer!"

"What?"

"Never mind. Let's go kick some ass. They'll be sorry they messed with Benjamin Everett Dyson!"

"I'm sure they're shaking in their Doc Martens." Then, " Everett ?"

He ignored the slur on his mother's maiden name and stomped up to the door of the flower shop,
paused, then kicked it. It wheezed open a foot, then slowly shut.

"It's business hours," Tara pointed out. "They're open. See?" She eased the door open.

He darted inside, looking around wildly for a bad guy, any bad guy. "Everybody freeze!"

"For God's sake," Tara muttered, pushing past him.

"You," he said to the startled teenaged girl behind the counter. "Where is it?"

"Well, we have a special on roses. A baker's dozen for twenty-five ninety-nine."

"Don't play dumb," he sneered. "We know what you've been up to."

"For God's sake," Tara said again. "She's the front. She doesn't know anything."

"I am not," the girl said automatically. Then, "What's a front?" This was really good, because it saved Ben from having to ask the question and looking, well, stupid.

"This shop is a front. You're a front," Tara told her. "The guys you work for have to have some legitimate businesses to hide their money in."

"But I work for a woman. Katie Webber."

"Yeah, Webber bought this place as a present for his wife, but he didn't tell her he was gonna use it to launder money."

"How do you know all this?" Ben asked.

"There's a bad guy newsletter," she replied straight-faced.

"You guys are crazy," the girl declared.

Ben asked, "Why not a strip club or something a little more ... I dunno ... villainous?"

"Too much heat in the boob trade," Tara replied.

It was just fascinating how she knew all this cool stuff. Maybe there really was a newsletter. He had a million questions for her. Later. "Okay," he said to the kid behind the counter, who was looking increasingly freaked out, "did some guys come through here a while ago?"

"There's a back entrance," Tara said--okay, now it was getting downright spooky how she knew all this stuff. "This kid wouldn't have any idea if they were here or not, unless she went in the back and saw them."

"I'm not a kid," the girl corrected her. "I'm nineteen."

"How do you know all this?" Ben couldn't resist asking again.

"Every business establishment has a back door. Hello? Fire code?" She shook her head and looked at
him as if his nose had dropped off.

"Why didn't you say anything then?" he said, exasperated.

"You didn't give me a chance, Dr. Charge In Without Looking."

"Look, we're just gonna go in the back and look around," he told the kid.

"Maybe I should call the police," she said doubtfully.

Ben looked at Tara, who shrugged. "What? I don't know from the police. That's not really my area."

"Maybe you should call them," he said.

"Sure, go ahead and call. But if they get the card before we do, it'll sit in the evidence room for a year
and be called Exhibit A."

"Don't call the police," he told the girl.

"Look, are you guys going to buy roses or what?"

"That's a pretty good price," he said. "Sure, I'll take a bunch."

"Do you have Attention Deficit Disorder by any chance?" Tara asked. "You can tell me. I won't get mad or anything. I just want to know."

"Only since you showed up," he muttered, handing the kid two twenties.

Amazingly, Tara blushed . .. her pale cheeks bloomed with color, and her eyes seemed to get darker. "That's not true. Is it? Of course not. Is it?"

"Who do you think I'm buying the stupid flowers for?"

"So we're going to run after the bad guys while I lug around a dozen flowers?"

"A baker's dozen," the girl said brightly, wrapping them up.

"For God's sake." Tara tried to scowl, but couldn't help a small smile when the girl handed her the dark red flowers. "Can we get back on track now, do you think?"

"I'm just gonna go over here and clean up the cooler," the girl said, pointing to the large glass case in the front of the store. "So I wouldn't know if you guys went into the back or anything. I mean, I still think you're nuts, but you can't do much damage in the back, unless you're arsonists."

"Well, we're not. Thanks," Ben told her. "Maybe you should get another job."

"Are you kidding? This is part-time, but I get full-time bennies. Plus dental. My mom's plan doesn't even do that."

"How nice for you," Tara commented.

"Tell me! Good luck with... you know, whatever it is you're doing."

"Thanks," Ben said. "Good luck with your flowers. And your dental."

Five

Dr. Dyson was creeping ahead of her, which was silly because he was making as much noise as an elephant in the brush. Tara walked behind him, lugging the gorgeous, stupid roses.

"Okay," he whispered, "here's what we're going to--"

"Anybody home?" Tara asked loudly.

"Ack! Don't do that. Stay behind me," he ordered, clutching his cell phone. "I'll take out anybody who tries something."

"Sure you will." Tara could see the body, which looked exactly like a huddled bunch of bloody rags, beneath one of the tables on the west side of the room. "Thataway, Dr. Dyson."

"Ben, Ben, do I have to write it on my chin?"

"That could be fun," she commented.

"Hey," he said, spotting the body, "somebody's in trouble."

"Okay, you can go with that theory." Me, I'm thinking along the lines of good riddance.

Before she could stop him (sigh), he raced over to the body and flipped it on its back. An excellent way
to get shot in the face if the body wasn't really a body.

But this time, it was. Or damn near.

"It's Webber," she commented, surprised. The worst of them all, shot and left for dead. Wonders never ceased.

"Webber?" Ben whispered.

She decided to make a long story short. "Bad bad bad bad bad bad man."

The body opened its eyes, which were so bloodshot the whites weren't visible at all. Kaarl Webber tried to grin up at her, and failed.

"Marx," he wheezed.

"Kaarl," she said politely. Then, casting about for a way to continue the conversation (she sucked at
small talk), she added, "Head shot, huh?"

"Stupid."

"Bound to happen," she commented.

"Lie still," Dyson said, flipping his cell open and tapping buttons. "I'm calling for help."

Tara promptly kicked the phone out of his hand, and he watched in amazement as it skidded across the cement floor.

"Thanks," Webber wheezed.

"No problem," she replied.

"What the hell?" Dyson snapped.

They ignored him. In truth, she didn't feel terribly sorry for Webber, who liked to trade heroin for the nightly use of little boys, but it was pathetic to watch him cling so desperately to life. A head shot, a
chest shot, and it looked as if he'd been kneecapped, too. Not a nice way to die, and she wished he'd
get on with it.

"Stupid," he was gasping. "Never thought they'd have the nerve. Double-cross me."

"Try not to talk," Dyson begged.

"Where are they going?" she asked.

" Tara , what did I just say?"

"The Mayo," Webber whispered.

"Why?"

Ben said, "I think he wants us to take him to the Mayo Clinic, which frankly is an excellent idea given
the circumstances."

Webber ignored him. "Cure . . . for some kind of... cancer .. . steal... charge billions ... to give back ..."

"Sneaky," Tara said approvingly.

Webber didn't reply; he had died.

"He'll be avenged," Dyson vowed.

"For God's sake," Tara said. "This guy totally got what was coming to him." Hell, I was thinking of
doing him in myself.

"Nobody has this coming," Dyson said, examining the head wound. "Christ. How he hung on long
enough to have a conversation is a complete mystery."

Not really. Villains are really good at the whole cling-to-life-to-burn-ex-partners thing. "Yes, it's a
total mystery. Well, at least now we know what the bad guys are up to." She paused, then asked hopefully, "I suppose this is too much blood and gore for a fellow like you, so how about you take the
car and head back home and I'll--"

"Fuck that," Dyson said, which was startling, if kind of sexy. "We're going to the Mayo. Right now. I mean, as soon as I get my cell--there it is!"

"Of course we are," she said, watching him scoop up his phone from the far corner, then followed him out.

Six

"You realize it's about a two-hour drive to the Mayo. And it's kind of a big place. Like, university-campus big."

"I know," Ben replied, watching the tracking screen on the right side of the windshield. Yes, indeed, there they were, right where that poor shot fellow said they'd be. "We'll find them. Once we're on the highway, I can... there!" He popped the clutch, set the speedometer at just under ninety, and hit the cruise. Tara was momentarily pressed back into her seat, then recovered.

"And, naturally, crashing and dying isn't exactly a big worry."

"This car can see a collision coming a mile away--literally--and adjust accordingly."

"Of course it can. Soon everyone will have one. So, what's the plan when we get there? You can't
exactly march into the Mayo. Well, you can, but eventually someone will ask you what you want."

"Hit the glove compartment button."

She obliged, and he noticed for the first time how long and pretty her fingers were, tipped, oddly, with Martian Green glitter nail polish. An odd choice for a thief, someone who wanted to blend in. Of course, she couldn't exactly blend, not with her height and hair and outfit. What was really weird was, he liked her for it.

He heard a faint nibbling coming from the backseat and deduced the rat was chewing on the roses. Dammit.

The glove box opened, and he said, "Lift the lid of the larger box."

She did, extracting two ID cards, freshly laminated. "Whoa," she said, examining them.

"You'll have to stick the what-do-you-call-'ems on ... the clips. There's a box of them under your seat."

"Dr. Benjamin Dyson, Oncology. Dr. Jane Carlson, Oncology." Tara raised her eyebrows at him.
"Dr. Jane Carlson?"

"Well, I didn't want to use your real name."

She laughed, and stuck the clips on, then put her fake Mayo employee badge on. "What makes you
think Tara Marx is my real name?"

"Oh." Duh. "Right."

"How are we going to find the oncology department without asking a bunch of stupid questions?"

"I interned at the Mayo. Unless they've rearranged the entire building--always a possibility--I can find it. Besides, there's always the directories."

"You mean you're a doctor doctor?"

"Sure." She looked so surprised, it surprised him. "What?"

"A medical doctor?"

"Yeah. I got my MD a few years ago when I got bored. It didn't take very long."

"So you're an MD, and I heard you've got at least two PhDs ..."

He coughed modestly. It was refreshing to share this with a beautiful woman; usually such glorious creatures weren't impressed by his credentials. And he couldn't tell them what he really did for a living. All the drawbacks of being a field agent, none of the perks. "Three, actually. Physics, organic chemistry, and explosives technology."

"I am sooooo turned on right now."

"Really?" he asked eagerly.

"No. Not really."

His shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I figured. Well, listen, Tara --if that is your real name--"

"I just told you it wasn't."

"--we've got a long drive, and we'd better pass the time. So, what brings you to law breaking?"

"A broken home."

"Really?"

"No. Not really."

"Gonna be a long ride," he muttered.

"Not really," she said, yawning. She snuggled back into the car seat and closed her eyes. In another minute her head was leaning against the passenger side window, and she was breathing evenly.

" Tara ?"

No reply.

"Come on, nobody falls asleep that fast. Tara ?"

Nothing. She was out. Zonked.

"Well, shoot," he muttered, and inched the car up to ninety-five.

Seven

"Have a nice nap?"

"Lovely." She didn't expect someone like Ben Dyson to understand, when you were in the field you
slept whenever and wherever you could. Over the years she'd been able to train herself to fall asleep
at the snap of a pair of fingers ... sometimes quicker. Now she felt alert, refreshed, and horny. No, just alert and refreshed.

"Will it be all right in the car?" he whispered as they walked up the sidewalk. His breath tickled her ear, which should have been annoying, but was really quite pleasant.

" 'It' has a name. Katya . And she'll be fine. She can take care of herself, believe me. Also, she's not in
the car; she's in the pocket of my lab coat."

"What!" Dyson nearly tripped over a flower bed. He straightened and ran his fingers through his vibrant hair, making it stand up more crazily in all directions. She almost snickered. " Tara ! We're supposed to
be inconspicuous. And even under the best of circumstances, you don't exactly blend in.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she cried, stung. ' Tara , you have a skull and crossbones piercing your
left nostril.

"So? You're wearing a brown tie. And at least I remembered to put both my contacts in, blue eye."

"Leave the tie out of this. And the contacts." He paused outside, the door to the clinic, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, let's get it together."

"Yes, let's."

"Here we go."

"Thanks for stating the obvious again."

He glared at her, which almost made her laugh again, and held the door open. She swept past him, the hem of her lab coat flapping. It was actually a spare of his, and she'd had to roll the sleeves up. It smelled like him, too, a combination of Drakkar Noir cologne and clean cotton. She fought the urge to cuddle into it.

Memo to me: long past time to get laid. Once this is taken care of, take care of that.

She followed him to a set of elevators, and neither of them said a word as the car ascended several floors. At the appropriate floor, he grabbed her hand and walked out.

"How could they steal a cure for cancer?" Tara wondered aloud. "Like there aren't a ton of lab notes and computer files and stuff? They can't recreate it?"

"Maybe they're stupid bad guys," Dyson suggested.

"Well, they've stayed a step ahead of you pretty handily."

"Us," he said, glaring.

"Oh, sure."

"This way," he said, turning left down a corridor.

"How the hell are they even still in the hospital?" she asked. "They should have grabbed what they needed and gotten out."

"Do you know what the cure for cancer looks like? Could you pick it out of a laboratory filled with beakers and fridges and tables and drawers and notes?"

"No," she admitted, "but I had sex in high school. I've always got that to cling to."

"I hate you," he sighed.

"Probably shouldn't have tagged along, then," she said smugly.

They paused outside a closed door that was lettered ACUTE LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKEMIA (ALL). "What's that?" she asked.

"Cancer of white blood cells." He was squinting at the wooden door and fumbling in his back pocket. "There's three guys in there."

"How do you know that?"

"This contact," he said, tapping the eye socket beneath his blue eye, "sees in X-ray."

"Of course it does." Still, she was impressed in spite of herself. She'd never met a guy so smart and so dumb at the same time.

She put her hand in her own pocket, gave Katya a pat, then asked, "Do you want me to kick the door in?"

"God, no. I've got a spare key card."

"You've got what?" she asked, staring as he withdrew a silver card the size of her Visa. "All this time you've had a spare?" Her ringers itched to strangle him. To choke him and stroke him and pull his shirt off ... no, to slap the shit out of him and throw him out the window. "What the hell am I doing here, then?"

"Well," he said reasonably, "if you knew there was a spare skeleton card, you wouldn't have helped me."

"Damned right I wouldn't have helped you!"

"Shhhhhhh !"

She seized him by the collar and began to shake him back and forth. Ohhhh, the things she would do. Tendons would rip; muscles would tear. She'd wrap that stupid brown tie around his throat and choke him until his multicolored eyes bulged out. She'd ...

. . . kiss him back.

Somehow, during the attempted throttle, he'd gotten his arms around her and dodged her flying elbows and pulled her close. His mouth was moving over hers, and he smelled, oh, he smelled wonderful, and she was still clutching his collar, but now she was leaning into him, into his mouth, into the kiss, the amazing, unbelievable kiss. . . .

He pulled back. "Whoa. Sorry, Tara ."

" Huh?" she huhed.

"I mean, there's a time and place. It's just. . . I've wanted to do that since you marched into my garage.
I mean my lab. And are you a bad bad guy? I mean, you don't beat up old ladies, do you?"

She was having a little trouble following the conversation. "What? No. What?"

"Oh, good. Because we can work on the rest."

"What?"

"Well, let's get in there, then."

She grabbed his shoulder and spun him back, then planted one on his mouth for good measure. She'd
call the shots around here, thank you very much! If there was kissing, she'd be the kisser, not the kissee. Ooh, yeah, and now his hands were sliding up, caressing her back, and ...

"Holy shit, it's Tara Marx!"

. . . the bad guys had opened the door.

Eight

"I told you," Ben said, trying not to sound smug. Trying not to sound out of breath, too. "I told you: time and place."

"Hi, March," Tara said. "Webber sends his regards. Okay, not really."

The beefy black man who opened the door jerked his head at Ben. "Whatcha got L.F. here for?"

Ben blinked. "L.F.?"

"Er, Lovely Friend," Tara said.

"Oh, no!" he said, horrified. "It's Lab Freak, isn't it? Isn't it!"

"Uh, yeah. But it's like a compliment."

"We paid you," the man named March said. Rumbled, actually. He was a full head taller than Ben, and about twice as wide. He'd be frightening enough without the shoulder-length dreads. "What's the problem?"

"Um, you lied and didn't mention you're going to use my invention to screw over my country?"

"Yeah," Tara added.

"Oh, like you give a shit," March snapped at her. He was dressed in splendid bad guys' fashion--black suit, black shoes, black shirt, black tie, black tie clip.

"I've got my reasons."

"Yeah, yeah, don't cry about it again. 'One more big job and I'm out; one more payoff and I'm going straight.' Puke."

Ben turned to her, surprised. She looked, weirdly, embarrassed. "Really, Tara ? Good for you."

"Oh, shut up," she muttered. "You shut up, too, March. Are you gonna let us in, or do I have to kick your big butt up and down this corridor?"

"You're gonna have to kick my big butt up and down this corridor. And watch it with the weight comments," he added, wounded. "I've been working out."

"Fine," Tara said, and Ben almost gasped. Gorgeous, a great kisser, smelled like a meadow, and she was fearless, besides! What a woman! "It's on!"

"No, you don't," he said, grabbing her shoulder and thrusting her behind him. He whipped out his cell phone and pointed it at the enormous man in the doorway, a man so large he was actually turned sideways in order to fit. "Don't touch her or you'll be sorry."

March blinked. "What, you're gonna call your mama?" Then he said, "Eeaarrrgggghhhhh!" as an electric current shot from the phone into his chest. He twitched a few times like the world's largest bass, then collapsed in the doorway. They had to skip back to avoid being crushed.

"And I'll bet it works as a phone, too," Tara commented, watching March fall.

"Of course it does," he replied, offended.

"You are a weird weird man," she commented. "Well, that's two bad guys out of three. Got any other tricks up your sleeve?"

"You'll see," he said with bravado that was, amazingly, entirely unfaked. Being in the field was exactly
as exciting and as much fun as he imagined! "Let's go."

"Okay," she said, and kicked his legs out from under him, then jumped on top of him. A bullet smacked into the wall where his chest had been a fraction of a second earlier.

"I didn't know you cared," he said, staring into her greenish eyes.

"I'd just hate to see the hallway get all messed up," she said, flinching as a bullet whined overhead. "At least he's using a silencer. Otherwise we'd have tons of company up here."

"He's shooting at us?"

"Not everyone buys flowers." She snickered, then rolled over, pulling him into a sheltered corner of the hallway. "Don't worry, it won't take long. He doesn't like walking around with spare clips--says it
wrecks the line of his suit."

"So he's just gonna shoot blindly until it's empty?"

"Sure. He has no idea who's after him, so it's a relatively sound plan. Wouldn't you run?"

"I would not!"

"Fine, fine. Just stay down."

"You know, bad guys trying to blow my head off isn't as much fun as I thought it would be," Benjamin commented. "It's more stressful than anything else."

"Typical," Tara said. "Felony assault--it's all hype."

"Any bright ideas on how to get out of this?"

"Ben, I am so not the brains of this team. Besides, it's your fault we're even here."

"The hell! You're the one who wanted to steal the world."

"I didn't want to steal the world, just a few key pieces of it, not that it's any of your business. You're the one who insisted we save humanity." Tara invested the phrase with heavy sarcasm. "Could there be a bigger waste of time? No? Ask the guys with the guns if you don't believe me."

"Fine. Anyway, we'd better get out of here before bullets start exploring our temporal lobes. This hallway isn't going to provide cover much longer."

"So? Think of something, gadget man." Tara stretched out her long, long legs and closed her eyes. "Let me know what you come up with."

He watched, dumbfounded, as she went to sleep. She could always do that. It was unbelievably aggravating.

He leaned over and shouted into her gorgeous, still face, "And I did not get us into this!" In the distance, the firing pop of the silencer accentuated his statement.

"Did, too," Tara said without opening her eyes.

"Did not!"

"Don't you remember?"

As a matter of fact, he did. "Never mind that," he snapped. He counted another three shots, which added up to nine. "Hey, he's all done. We can storm the bridge, so to speak."

He started to get up, only to feel Tara grab his ankle--in her sleep, apparently--and pull him back down, just in time for another bullet to whine overhead. "Nine in the clip, one in the pipe," she said without opening her eyes.

"I knew that," he lied. Actually, he hardly ever messed around with guns. Dull, dull, dull. It was more fun to mess around with cell phones and car engines.

"Of course you did." She yawned and sat up. "Ready?"

"If you're all done catnapping."

"Don't knock it. I'm fresh as a daisy while you're just. . . well, never mind."

"Stay behind me," he ordered her. "I'll look out for you."

"Great. I'm sure I'll enjoy my early grave." But she waited for him to jump through the doorway over March's still unconscious frame, then followed.

Nine

The final confrontation was anticlimactic, to say the least.

Johanssen blinked at both of them and, as a terrified-looking physician cowered behind a counter, said, "What are you two doing here? And what in the world did you do to March?"

"We're here to stop you!" Dyson declared, and Tara rolled her eyes. Since she'd hooked up with Ben Dyson, it seemed that's what she did most of the time. "Just like we put a stop to March and his nefariousness!"

"I'm not really with him, Jo," she explained. "Well. I'm with him, but not with him with him."

"What, you've got a problem all of a sudden?" Johanssen was looking puzzled, thank goodness, as opposed to homicidal, which would have been very bad. She couldn't really blame him. They'd never
had to cross paths before. In a weird sort of way, she respected him. Well. She had until she found the body at the florist's. "Why? Why now?"

"Because you're a deceiver and you're going to hurt thousands of Americans!"

"Ben. Let. Me. Handle. This."

"Dr. Dyson, what do you think you're doing?" Johanssen was a deceptively mild looking man in his fifties, with dark eyes netted with wrinkles ("laugh lines," for someone who laughed), a medium build,
and tough, blocklike hands. His suit proclaimed "businessman." His hands said something else.

Ben shook his cell phone, which she suspected was currently lacking a charge, at Jo. "Stopping you, you foul fiend of--of--evil!"

"Foul fiend of evil?" Tara repeated.

"You got paid, right?" he asked, still sounding puzzled.

"Irrelevant!"

"Wh-what's going on?" the doc shivering behind Johanssen squeaked. He was a smallish man with watery blue eyes, a pale blond combover, and a neck so weirdly long he reminded her of a chicken. "Who are you people?"

"Never mind," Johanssen said absently. "I'll take care of it."

"I didn't sign on for any of this when I hired you," squeaky doc continued.

Tara rolled her eyes again. Civilians, swear to God. Sweat them a little, ramp up the pressure, and they spilled their guts.

"You hired him to steal my key card?"

"We didn't steal anything," Jo explained patiently. "We paid you."

"You paid me ... in subterfuge!"

Tara started to massage her temples. "God ... God ... God..."

"Well, you don't work for criminals," Jo said. "You're famous for your naive patriotism. So we had to
pay you in, er, subterfuge."

"I'm dying to know," Tara confessed. "How'd you make the paperwork look right?"

"My brother-in-law is a clerk for the CIA," Combover volunteered. Jo's mouth thinned, but he let the
doc babble on. "He showed me samples of POs and stuff."

"Did he know what you were going to do?" Dyson asked, appalled.

"Well... he wants to borrow the card for a weekend at work..."

Note to self: find brother-in-law and clean his clock.

"Look, Jo," Tara said, "I'm really sorry, but we're gonna have to get that card back. We just, um, can't
let you or this guy run around with it. So, uh, let's not have a problem, okay?"

"Sorry, Tara ."

" You're the one who's going to be sorry," Dyson declared.

"I just said I was sorry," Jo snapped back.

"You don't know how sorry," Dyson sneered. "This gorgeous blonde to my left is deadly in the field."

"Awww," Tara said. Gorgeous? That's so sweet.

"Oh, I know," Jo said.

Dyson nodded, looking triumphant. "Her fiendish reputation precedes her, eh?"

"Actually," Tara confessed, "he's sort of my mentor."

"Your what?"

"Taught her everything she knows," Jo boasted. "Practically raised her."

"Not everything," she said coolly. "For example, you didn't teach me to shoot my partner and leave him for dead while you ran off with the goods."

"Why would I teach you that? Do I look like I want a head wound anytime in my future?"

"I have to say, I'm disappointed, Jo." And she was. In the old days, he'd never have left a body. If for
no other reason than it was messy. "Seriously."

"You're a child, Tara," he said, kindly enough. "You always were. You think you're bad, but at the
center you're softer than a marshmallow egg. It's why you'll never be great."

"Great like you?" she sneered.

"Good parting line," Dyson said. "Get him!"

"Well, just a minute."

"Why?" Ben asked. "What are you waiting for?"

"Look, the guy's got about a million black belts, okay? And who do you think taught me how to fight?"

"Actually, I've never seen you fight," he pointed out, "but I'm assuming you know what you're doing."

"Did she say you killed someone?" Dr. Combover asked, finally catching up. "I didn't sign on for that! You were supposed to get the card, that's all, just get the card!"

"Collateral damage," Jo sniffed.

"We'll show you collateral damage," Ben said. He stuck his hand in his pocket, withdrew the blackberry yogurt he'd grabbed earlier, and lobbed it, grenade-style, at Jo.

It splattered all over the floor, Jo's shoes, and his trouser legs. Tar a waited expectantly for Jo to melt or blow up or fall down unconscious, but nothing happened.

"You've ruined my suit," Jo commented, leaning down to brush purple puree off his pants.

"What's in it?" Tara breathed. "What's going to happen?"

"Nothing. It's just yogurt," Ben muttered to her.

"Now you tell me." She sighed, then waded in. Getting her ass kicked sideways by her mentor wasn't on her list for the day, but what the hell. She certainly couldn't let Ben take him on. Jo would eat him for lunch, spit out the bones, and bury them in some far-off field.

"Left leg!" Ben ordered, squinting.

Tara obligingly kicked out at Jo's left leg, and Jo obligingly moved, sweeping her blow aside. "Easier said than done," she said over her shoulder, and then her ears rang as Jo punched her head. Which she totally deserved; what had she been thinking, taking her eyes off the ball?

Everything went sort of blurry for a second, and there was a high-pitched whining sound, followed by
the more recognizable sound of Ben yelling, "You son of a bitch!"

"Don't," she managed, only to be knocked sprawling as he surged past her and jumped on Jo.

Jo went down--he was well trained, but Ben was a big guy--but rallied quickly by grabbing Ben's tie, doubtless meaning to strangle Ben to death (a compulsion she well understood). Instead he shrieked and let go of the tie and stared at the blood pouring down his hand.

"Ha!" Ben crowed. "Never touch the tie!" He punched Jo square in the face-- Tara could hear the flat smacking sound of flesh hitting flesh--and let out a howl. "Arggh! That hurts!"

Jo turned his head to the side, spat out a tooth, then sneered, "You watch too many movies, Dr. Dyson." Then he didn't say anything, because there was a "bronnnnnnggggg!" as he was knocked unconscious with a microscope.

By Dr. Combover.

"He wasn't supposed to kill anybody," the doctor said dully, dropping the microscope on the counter. "I didn't--he wasn't supposed to do that."

Ben leaped to his feet. "Good work. We'll be sure to tell the police about your last-second change of heart."

"Yeah, we'll mention that right away," Tara said. "And what's with your tie? Your stupid, too-wide, brown tie?"

"It's lined with throwing stars," he explained. "I forged them out of titanium so they'll never--"

"Forget I asked. Why'd you do it?" she said to Combover, who, according to his ID, was Dr. Krendall. "You work here, right? We were told Jo was stealing a cure. Did you hire Jo and his team to steal it for you?"

"A ... cure? Stealing a cure? No ... no. I'm close, but... no. He might have told his men that, I don't know. It's . . . I'm stalled on my research," he said, staring at the floor. "Between my boss and the FDA and ...
I just know I could make some real progress if I could get into the other labs ... and Mr. Jones told me with this new card the computer wouldn't track me, nobody would know I was here or what I was doing . .. You have no idea how the FDA can slow you down..."

"Yeah, they're so pesky with their rules to guarantee safety," Dyson said, glaring. "There's a dead guy, and you're going to jail so your rep is in shreds, and any chance for a cure is stalled indefinitely, and for what?"

"For a cure," Combover said simply. "A cure is worth anything. Everything."

Tara didn't know about that; she wasn't the brains of this operation, for sure. But it sure seemed like an awful lot of waste. Ben was right... for what?

Ten

"That's it?" Ben was asking. "That's all? It's so ... so ..."

"Over?" Tara suggested.

"Shouldn't we at least wait until the police--"

"Pass."

"Oh. Well, all right. I guess they aren't going anywhere. How many handcuffs do you normally carry on your person, anyway?"

"That's for me to know," she said smugly, "and you to find out."

"You know, when you tried to take out Johanssen . .. your mentor ... to help me ... that was really great."

"Why'd you yell about his left leg?"

"I could see it was a badly mended break," he said, pointing to his blue eye.

"Oh. Creepy."

"Sort of the way I can see you're wearing a demi-cup bra," he said, grinning.

"I don't know what's worse, that you're ogling me with your fake contact lens or that you know the word 'demi-cup'." They were striding--not running, but not lingering, either--toward the west exit, when she suddenly grabbed his arm and hustled him into an empty hospital room. "Want to know what color it is?"

"Cherry red," he said without hesitation.

She gasped. "How'd you know that?"

"Trade secret."

She snapped the lock closed on the door, shrugged out of her lab coat, and pulled her shirt over her head. "Well, ding ding ding," she said. "You get the prize."

"What a day," he said dreamily, then grabbed her around the waist and kissed her until she was out of breath.

They found themselves on the (fortunately empty) bed, and for the first time all day Tara felt as if time wasn't her enemy, as though she could do as she pleased for as long as she liked. She got him out of his coat, got the tie off (very carefully; it was so sharp there was no visible blood on it), got the shirt off, and was fumbling for his belt buckle when he pushed the cups of her bra down and kissed her breasts. She forgot about his belt--and everything else--as he licked and sucked her nipples, as he ran his knuckles across the full undersides of her breasts, as he kissed her cleavage.

"You're so gorgeous," he said, raising his head to look her in the eye.

"Inside and out?" she teased.

He laughed and bent back to her cleavage, and she ran her fingers through his wild red hair. "This is nuts," she sighed. "The police are on the way, if they aren't already here."

"This hospital is huge," he said, his voice muffled. "It'll take them a while to get to us, if they even make it to this wing."

"And what about Katya?"

"She's having Cheez Nips in the bathroom; she's in heaven. I knew stopping by the snack machine on
the way out was going to pay off ..."

She whipped his belt out of the loops and sent it sailing across the room, then wriggled out of her pants and helped him out of his--

"These hospital blankets are scratchy," he complained.

--and rolled over until she was on top of him. He reached up and unlatched her bra, then sighed happily when her breasts bounced free. "What a day," he sighed again.

She trailed kisses down his neck, his chest--broad and furred with reddish brown hair--then inhaled his male musk and ran her tongue along the length of his throbbing penis. He groaned and tried to bury his hands in her hair--it was too short--and settled for fondling her earlobes instead.

She sucked his tip into her mouth and let her tongue play across its velvety head, marveling at the size
of him, the warmth, his good clean smell.

"Oh, God," he gasped. "Please don't stop. Ever."

"For anything?" she teased, stripping off her panties and straddling him. He reached between her thighs and found her slippery, and she squirmed against his fingers as he stroked and teased.

"By the way," he sighed as she lowered herself on top of him, "it really turned me on when you punched Dr. Krendall in the kidneys to get him to give us his brother-in-law's name."

"Thanks," she said, almost moaned, as she settled herself over him. Oh, Christ, that's what she needed, that's what was missing. She began to rock against him as he gripped her hips and thrust against her.

" Tara ...oh, God ... Tara . .."

She leaned down and nipped the side of his neck as he thrust faster; he reached between her legs and found her clit again and stroked it with the barest of butterfly strokes, and that delicate touch, coupled with the sweet size of him thrusting inside her, brought her to orgasm, made her close her eyes and
shiver with the glory of it.

"Come now," she said, almost pleaded, and he wrapped his strong arms around her and pumped against her, and obliged.

*  *  *

Later, in the gloom of the room, they reassembled their clothes and tried to get their breath back. Tara was having a hard time looking at Ben; she felt curiously shy. It wasn't like her at all to just jump some stranger's bones. Except Ben didn't feel like a stranger. And wasn't that odd? They'd known each other
... what? Five hours?

Trying to get her mind back on business, she peeked out the window but only had a view of the next building; she couldn't see any cop cars.

He came up behind her and dropped a kiss to her neck. She shivered and leaned back against him. It was odd. Very very odd. She should be anxious to be gone. But all she wanted was to go home with him and rent movies and make out on the couch and sleep late the next morning.

"Ready to sneak out of Dodge?" he teased. "The Damon parking ramp is a couple of buildings away."

"Sure."

"I'll get the rat."

She paused, then said, "Janet. My real name is Janet."

Now it was his turn to pause. He turned her around, kissed her softly, then said, "Thank you."

She had no reply; what else was there to say?

Eleven

Ben sighed, stretched, and rolled over to grope for her. What a day! What a night! After she'd insisted
on renting movies, she'd been unstoppable in the sack. Not that he had tons of sack experience. But still. She'd been something else. Now he'd make her breakfast--well, take her out for breakfast--and they could spend the day together, like two ordinary people in--

She was gone.

He sat bolt upright. "T--Janet?" he called, knowing it was useless; his house had the familiar feel of emptiness to it. "Janet?"

He rolled out of bed, jumped into a pair of cutoffs, and quickly searched the house. Nobody home but him. Even the rat was gone.

He couldn't believe it. The day they'd spent together had been amazing enough, but the night had been . .. well. .. magical. She'd been alternately urgent and tender, and he'd been more than happy to meet her needs. Afterward, drifting off with her head on his shoulder, he'd felt like the happiest man who'd ever escaped from a lab.

Well, she was . . . she was an independent woman. A free spirit. And they'd just met, after all. Maybe
she needed to, um, water her plants or whatever. It's not like they promised each other anything. It's not like he had something . . .

. . . something she wanted.

Oh, shit.

It took him forty seconds to ascertain that she had taken both key cards. He stormed up and down his lab, running his fingers through his hair, cursing himself for being ten kinds of a fool. He was an idiot!
Of course she didn't like him; of course she wasn't going to stay with someone like him. She wanted the key card, and she got exactly what she came for.

God, the things he'd said to her! "You're so beautiful; you're so wonderful." His face burned with anger and embarrassment. She'd played him like a real chump. And she'd been right to do it... He was a chump.

Dr. Ben Dyson, Chump.

Fuck.

Twelve

"Dr. Dyson, we're getting to be sort of friends, don'tcha think?"

Ben, who had just returned from the grocery store, put the nachos and Coke away. Bemused, he
watched Agent Tom Carradine shift his weight from one foot to another and case the place with his peripheral vision. "Friends? Well, uh . . ." You come over. You drop off a check. You take what I
made. You leave. A few months later, you come over again. Rinse. Repeat. "Sure. Okay."

"Well, we're just--I mean, my supervisor and I--we were talking and--is everything all right?"

"No."

"Oh." Tom blinked, then tried again. "I could maybe arrange for you to talk to someone if there's, you know, a problem."

"No."

"Okay." Tom switched tactics. Ben would have been amused if he wasn't so fucking depressed. "Listen, word's out, you know, small world and all, and we heard you did some great work a few weeks back. And my supervisor could talk to the DCI and maybe get you into the next class at Langley ."

How nice. Everything he ever wanted. Before he had a clue what he wanted. "No." He added, because
it seemed like the polite thing to do, "But thanks."

"Well, how about if we get you into DI? With your skills and background, no problem."

Directorate of Intelligence. Analyst. Solving puzzles all day. Yawn. "No thanks."

"Okay, well, you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"What do you want, Tom?"

Agent Carradine shrugged. "Just to see how you're doing."

"Oh. You don't need anything?"

"Just for you to get back on track. Everybody's noticed. You've been . . . off . . . for almost a month."

"Yeah, well. Thanks for checking in." Ben was almost-- but not quite--touched. He performed a necessary function, after all, and people were bound to notice when he didn't do it anymore. He didn't like to admit, not even to himself, but the heart had gone right out of him around the time Janet had gone out of his house, never to return. Janet probably wasn't her real name, either, he supposed. "I'll see you."

"Sure. You've got my card, right?"

"About a dozen of them."

"Well, give me a shout if you want to talk."

"Sure."

"Take 'er easy."

"Ummm."

Tom left. Ben stored the extra nachos on top of the fridge. He thought about having a Coke, then changed his mind. Instead, he wandered through his empty house. Something was a little off, but it was probably fallout from Tom's visit. It didn't mean--

He could see a light beneath his bathroom door.

Normally he would have dived into his lab and grabbed the gadget du jour and kicked the door open and had a helluva good time. Now he just pushed the door open with tented fingers.

Tara was sitting on the end of the tub, which was full, wearing his bathrobe. "Finally," she said by way
of greeting. "I didn't think that spook would ever leave."

He gaped at her.

"Sorry I'm late," she added. "I got held up at work. Okay, not really."

"How did you get--never mind." She had his key cards, after all, but he'd find out later how she'd avoided tripping any of the perimeter alarms. "W-what are you doing here?"

She crossed her legs and swung her left foot while she watched him. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Uh--no."

"I thought you were some kind of genius," she teased.

"Uh..."

"I had some things to take care of. Some accounts to close, some money to move, and I had to make
the Tara Marx ident disappear. And I had something of yours to give back."

It almost sounded like she... but that was ridiculous. "Did you forget something on your way out?" he asked politely.

She winced. "Okay, I totally had that coming. Look, I freaked out for a little bit, okay?"

"What'd you use my cards for?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"I never lie." She paused. "Okay, that was a lie. But I was all set to use them, to do one last job, and I just... I thought about your stupid fat tie and your dopey multicolored eyes and your messy hair, and I realized it was a bad thing, leaving, and I wanted to make it right."

He worked hard not to show anything on his face, and was pretty sure he succeeded. "Really. And it
took you a month to 'make it right.' "

"Be fair. I woke up that morning perfectly content with my old life, and by the end of the day I wanted something totally different. Well, I couldn't just drop everything and go into it overnight. I had people
to explain things to. I had some work to finish, and some things to--to give back. I didn't want you involved in any of that. And I knew if I told you--well, you know."

"Did you give back all your telephones?" he asked, still polite. "Is that why you didn't call even
one time?"

"I'll go," she said stiffly, standing.

"Dressed like that?"

"I'm sorry. I'm not used to people caring either way when I leave. I should have--never mind. I guess
it's too late. For what it's worth, I guess I went about this all wrong."

She tried to move past him, and he took her (carefully!) by the arms. "I'm just surprised, is all. I was
sort of getting used to you being gone," he lied. "And frankly, not knowing where the rat is, is freaking
me out."

She smiled a little. "Katya, for God's sake. And she's in your other bathroom, taking a nap in the tub."

"The empty tub, one hopes."

"Look, Ben, enough about the rat."

"Katya," he corrected her.

"Right, right. Can I stay, or what?"

"You want to stay?" he asked carefully.

"No, I ran out of rent money."

"Really?"

"No." She smiled. "Not really."

"If you stay, that means you're going to stay."

"Like, what, a golden retriever?"

"I mean it, Janet. If you stay, it means I don't wake up alone and you're here for good and we're
Dr. and Mrs. Dyson."

"And I make banana bread while you design gadgets for the FBI?"

"If you've got a thing for banana bread, fine, go crazy." She had popped open the first button of his
shirt and was nibbling on the hollow of his throat, which made it difficult to remember what he was
trying to say. "I just thought. . . um ... we could be ... ah ... a team. Because I, um, love you."

"Great minds think alike," she murmured, popping open more buttons. "I don't love you at all, but
you've got a nice house and I'm tired of being a nomad. Okay, not really. Ahhhh, there are the shoulders
I remember. Dr. Dyson, has anyone ever told you, you have a fabulous body?"

"Tom never mentioned it," he said. He untied the belt of her--his--robe and spread it open. "Umm. Speaking of fabulous ..." He leaned forward and kissed her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him for a minute, then whispered, "I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"No, I was an asshole."

"Umm."

"I'll fix it," she vowed, "if it takes twenty years."

"That's a deal, Janet." He pushed the robe off her shoulders and stepped into her, forcing her to back up until she was sitting on the tub. He knelt, pushed her knees wider and kissed her inner thighs, then inhaled her sweet musk and spread her lower lips apart with his tongue. He licked and sucked and felt himself grow painfully hard as her moans did to him what her taste did, as she gripped the sides of the tub and thrust her hips against his face. He sucked her clit into his mouth and teased it with his tongue until she was almost sobbing his name.

"Get over here," she said when he backed off. "Right now."

He had suddenly grown an extra five fingers, because getting his belt loose and his pants down had become nearly impossible. He finally staggered toward her, kicking free of his pants and fumbling for
his boxers when her hand darted inside the fly vent and she seized him.

"Watch this," she said, standing and sounding as if she'd just run a marathon. "This is where being tall really comes in handy." Then she went up on her toes, and he slid inside her as if they had been designed for each other. "Oh, God. That's so nice. Don't stop."

"Right," he panted. "Because I was planning to do just that."

"Shut up and fuck me, Dr. Dyson."

"Call me Ben."

"Shut up and--oh! Oh, God, I'm going to--to--" She writhed against him, and thank goodness, because that about did it for him, he came so hard he saw black dots in front of his eyes. His knees bucked and she let out a little shriek as they fell backward into the tub.

Wriggling and squirming, they both surfaced. "Thank God you've got one of those big onts," she gasped.

"Why, thank you."

"Don't be an ass," she said, but she laughed as she tried to struggle free of his embrace. "God, there's water everywhere. We're gonna need fifty mops."

"Later."

"Well ... I am feeling a little dirty ..."

"Me, too," he sighed, and kissed her again and groped for the bar of soap.

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