Hard Beat(15)

The men controlling the strings are actually testing me. Making sure I’m not a liability because I refused to take the time off they requested. I believe sabbatical was the term they used. Well, f*ck that.

Do they really think strapping me with some damn rookie and having to teach her the ropes is going to prove my stability? That it will keep me out of the trouble that they obviously believe I caused when everything went down with Stella? And if that’s the case, they’re contradicting themselves by saying I’m f*cked up in a sense but meanwhile putting me in charge of teaching a newbie the minefield of reporting out here on what feels like the fringes of civilization.

Damn, it’s like they’re not sure what they want from me. They won’t let me go to CNN because they’re afraid to lose me and my reputation, but at the same time they think I’m about as stable as a fault line.

Yes, what happened to Stella and everything else that went with it messed with my head. She was my best friend, for f*ck’s sake. If it didn’t affect me, then they should be worried. But just because I’m having a hard time with it doesn’t mean I can’t do my job effectively.

I went through their circus hoops to get back here. I retrained in all of the protocol I first did what feels like a hundred years ago when I started this career: captive training courses, first aid certification, ethics classes. I did them and then some. Even went to the f*cking shrink they asked me to see so she could ask me the same question ten different ways from Sunday to just get the same answer I gave the first time.

Well f*ck them. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on weighted down with all their asinine reasons for treating me this way. I’ll prove each and every one of them wrong. I’ll take this babysitting job and still get the best goddamn story out there. Break it first. Prove to them that I’ve still got my mojo.

Decision made. I can play the corporate bullshit game with the best of them. Now I just have to wrap my head around chasing after a woman I’d much rather let run out the damn door. She’s sassy and haughty and she was a one-night stand, but damn it to hell, I’m a man with needs.

I just don’t want one of them to be her.

“This is utterly f*cking ridiculous,” I mutter under my breath as I stride down the hallway to try to find the rookie.

I look in the obvious places first and can’t find her. I’m about to walk up to the front desk of the lounge area of the hotel to ask if anyone knows where Beaux’s room is so I can lay down the parameters of this partnership, when something catches my eye across the street from the hotel.

“Fucking hell, woman,” I growl as I shove the entry doors open. The heat hits me like I’m in the center of a furnace, but I don’t give it any reaction because in a few weeks’ time I won’t even notice it. Still, I grumble, pissed that I instantly feel protective of her. While I might try to shrug it off as being a good person, somehow I know it’s more than that.

I’m playing right into corporate’s hand by rushing out to rescue their new golden girl from making a huge mistake and getting into a car that looks like a cab but isn’t one. The difference between the creeps here and the ones back in the States is that the ones here have ten times less regard for women. I know firsthand. I’ve reported on some scenes that made me sick to my stomach.

A sketchy-looking local has his hand on her upper biceps, and he’s gesturing wildly over whatever he’s arguing with her about. And the only thing I see is that she keeps trying to shrug out of his grasp, and he just holds on. I can’t hear enough of the verbal exchange between the two of them to know what it’s about, but rather can hear the frustrated pitch of Beaux’s voice as she argues with him.

I all but run toward the yellowish taxicab with nothing more than a broken sandwich-board-type sign on the top of it. “Do not get in the car, Beaux!” I command as I come around the back of the car, causing her head to whip over to me in surprise.

“I’ll get in the damn car if I want to!” she snaps at me, hands already on her hips and posture stiff. “Who the hell do you think you are? First, you insult me and my work upstairs, and then you chase me across the street and tell me what to do? Dream on, *.”

The man she was talking to slinks around the hood of the car, far from inconspicuous, but shady nonetheless. “Everyone knows not to get in the cabs here if they’re not —”

“I wasn’t getting in the damn cab! I didn’t come in here blind and wet behind the ears, so back the f*ck off. You got me pissed off enough that I wasn’t thinking, and I ran outside without my hijab,” she says referring to the head scarf most women wear here. Her voice is a mixture of contrition and anger because I caught her making a mistake after I got her so flustered that she f*cked up.

“Without thinking. Hmm. Guess that’s something a rookie does. Oh wait, you’re not a rookie, though, are you?” I hold her stare as I goad her, while the sun’s heat feels as if it’s burning through my clothes and straight into my skin.

She lifts her chin in defiance, a nonverbal f*ck you that makes me respect her and dislike her all at the same time. The tough-girl routine is fine and dandy stateside, but out in this crude Wild West of a place, it can end up getting you killed.

“So where were you going in this cab that isn’t really a cab, rook?” I ask the question to get a reaction, see if she’s lying to me, and her quick intake of air and widening of the eyes is the one I was hoping she wasn’t going to give me. She was really going to get in the damn car with this guy. Unf*ckingbelievable.