Mr. Dark 3 (Tamed #3)(2)

While we trained hard, it wasn't all we did. After the bandages came off of our plastic surgeries, Mark and I spent the rest of the month going around South Korea, enjoying the local food and seeing the sights. We even rented a car to go from Seoul to Busan and around the countryside in between. We left South Korea and went into the Balkans, where Mark conducted most of my firearms training. In addition to being able to speak passable Croat, he was fluent in German, and could communicate with almost all of the people we met. He chose the Balkans not because of the language, but because he knew we could cross from one country to another through poorly watched and barely defended national borders. This allowed us to fly into Athens on one set of passports and then use others later to establish histories to our false identities.

Mark Snow no longer existed, but instead there was Marcus Smiley of Green Bay, Wisconsin. I was now Sophie Warbird, his girlfriend and a naturalized citizen originally from Canada. When I asked Mark about the similarity of our new names to our old identities, he nodded. "We've spent a very long time being called our old names. The fact is, while our family names could go away, we've spent too long being called 'Mark' and 'Sophie' to not slip up and ignore when someone says something to us, or to call each other those in public. The same with our signatures. The smaller the change, the easier it will be for us to adapt."

That day, I went one better than my goal, hitting seven of the ten swinging bottles. I actually hit eight, but Mark called it a non-fatal shot, as it just winged the bottle. "In a human, that would bleed like a stuck pig, but he wouldn't be out of action, and he'd recover," he explained. "A great day for you."

I smiled, a warm feeling in my chest at his compliment. It was something that I'd come to accept, the separation of Mark, my boyfriend and love of my life, and Mark the teacher and former contract killer. As a boyfriend, he was affectionate, warm, and kind. He would do all the little things that meant so much, and in terms of intimacy.... well, let's just say I'd lost weight due to more than just the Parkour running.

But Mark the teacher was different. It wasn't that he was cruel. It was just that he was all business. He didn't break me down, but he was a focused taskmaster. If I made a mistake, especially one that could have cost me my life, he made sure I knew in exact detail what I'd done wrong and how to do it right. We would then repeat it as many times as needed until I got the skill or the action down right.

For example, when he taught me how to shoot a pistol, he didn't start with a real pistol. Instead, we started with a BB gun, learning the different parts and how to aim and squeeze the trigger. From there we'd gone up to a .22 caliber round, his favorite training round because it was not only easy to get and cheap, but because it had a very small kick. Only after I could shoot the .22 properly did he move me up to a larger round. I particularly liked the 9mm, but we both knew that sometimes I wouldn't have a choice in what we might need to use.

He'd done the same for every weapon that I had learned how to use, going from small to larger. He'd even compensated for things like learning how to handle rifle kick by stifling any sort of recoil suppression device in the smaller rounds.

We shot in abandoned old buildings, and backwoods areas that nobody would come to bother us. Eastern Germany and Croatia were full of them, and we kept on the move often enough that no local police would get curious about us anyway. It was basic training, laying the foundations for a new life, and a vacation all rolled into one.

That night, we went back to the small inn where we were staying for a hearty dinner of what the locals called zagreba?ki odrezak, a veal steak that had ham and cheese stuffed inside before it was breaded and grilled. Absolutely delicious, and the glutton inside of me was well satiated. I looked at Mark, who was steadily working his way through his own, along with a bowl of the local polenta that the locals called zganci. "Is living this life going to mean I can eat like this every day and still lose weight?" I asked, patting my much firmer stomach. "This is amazing."

Mark chuckled and shook his head. "Sorry my love, but no. Eventually your body will adapt, and we'll be back to eating normally. However, we should be back in the States by then, so I wouldn't worry about it for now."

It was the only undecided part of our plan. While Mark and I both wanted to launch our two person war on organized crime in our city, the fact of the matter was, I wasn't ready. I may have already killed a man, but that was more due to chance than anything else. The longer we could stay out of the city, and me training, the better off we'd be later on. It wasn't that we were lacking for funds, Mark had millions stashed in various accounts along with a core seed of money that he had invested in stocks, bonds, and various companies through aliases, shell corporations, and numbered accounts.

After dinner, we went back to our room. Croatian inns are not the same as American ones. Our bed was rustic, with a handmade comforter on top that most likely had been made by the owner's wife or mother. It had beautiful patterns interwoven into it, and smelled like it had been stored in a cedar chest when it wasn't being used. The bed itself was soft and thick, suspended on a real rope frame that actually worked better than any metal springs or frame I'd ever had.

Mark pulled out our tablet and turned on our little satellite uplink system. The speed wasn't exactly good enough to stream high definition video, but we didn't use it for such. Instead, we used it for keeping track of Mark's financial packages, read news, and keep in touch with certain people via e-mail. Tabby Williams, my best friend who we had saved from the Confederation, sometimes e-mailed us information about goings on in the city that you couldn't get from the local television stations. She'd become a good little intelligence officer. I hated involving her, but once Tabby sets her mind to something, you might as well agree or you're wasting your breath. The rest of the time we just swapped stories, although we were careful not to give away too many details.