The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(71)

Maia's style was different from my usual routine, but I found it easy to follow—smooth and logical. For her, tai chi had been an afterthought, something she learned to augment the harder Shaolin style she preferred. Despite that, her execution was humbling—the flow of her movements, the graceful stances, the fire and spirit that can't be

faked. She practiced as if her life depended on it, yet her face stayed perfectly serene, her eyes fixed at all times on an imaginary target.

We ended the form facing the water. I was drenched with sweat and a mosquito was floating around my eyes, but I felt good. I'd forgotten what it was like working with someone who was better than me, who made me push the limits.

We unfroze, but still didn't talk. I enjoyed the silence and chi— the feeling of breath and warmth and focus all concentrated in the centre of my body.

Maia wiped her forehead with her wrist. Her face glowed from the workout, a tiny trickle of sweat ran down her neck behind her ear, but she looked neither tired nor winded.

"Good morning," she said. "Sifu."

She smirked, gently kicked my shin with her bare toes. "You don't want me as a teacher. You're overextending your knees. You need to keep your elbows down."

"Yes, master."

"Push hands with me," she said. "And stop with the master shit. I could grow to like it."

We faced each other in cat stance, right hand to right hand, touching at the back of the wrists. We began with small movements— circling our hands, pushing gently on each other's wrist, trying to feel where the other person was going to move. Once that was established, anything was fair game.

Maia advanced a step and I retreated. We reversed. She tried to push me off balance and I stepped back, forcing her to come forward. We corrected positions, kept going. I waited for the next attack, sensed it coming, then withdrew before Maia's push, twisting to the side as Maia committed her weight forward. I pushed. She lost her footing, went over sideways, and landed hard on her hip against the concrete.

A strand of black hair from her ponytail stuck to the side of her cheek with sweat. She brushed it away. There was white cement dust on her thigh.

"Okay?" I asked.

She nodded. "I was too aggressive."

"Shaolin will do that to you."

She stood, dusted herself off.

This time we circled longer. Her fingers were delicate curls, her wrist warm. I should've kept my head clear, used my chi to sense what she was up to, but I happened to catch her eyes and was instantly hooked by them—warm and bright and amber. She smiled just before she pushed me onto my butt.

My teeth clacked. My spine felt like it had been sunk into the cement with a pile driver.

"Not fair," I said.

"Oh," she said. "Now we'll talk about what's fair."

She offered me a hand. I smiled, took her by the wrist and somersaulted backward, pulling her over me.

Someone else I might've hurt, throwing her facefirst toward the cement, but Maia turned the fall into an easy roll, took almost none of the impact, ended up facing me in a crouch.

"So that's the way you want to play?" she asked.

She came at me with a heel kick, which I ducked. I tried to sweep her leg off balance but she spun a 360 and got me in my gut with her other foot. I blocked a punch, then guarded for her next one. It was a feint. She caught me in the trap perfectly—grabbed my wrist as soon as I presented it and twisted herself under my arm, putting my wrist and elbow up between my shoulder blades in the same joint lock she'd used on Matthew Pena two days ago.

It hurt not a little bit.

"Okay," I told her. "You win this one."

She increased the pressure. "Say 'Maia kicked my ass.' "

"Maia kicked my ass."

"Say 'I was a dumbshit to ever leave her.' "

"Go ahead," I grimaced. "Break it."

She let me go, came around front and tried to hit me in the stomach, but the punch was easy to catch.

"Bastard," she said.

I held her fist until it relaxed. Her fingers laced with mine.

A man's voice said, "Damn, I hate to interrupt a good workout."

I hadn't heard him approach, but fifteen feet up the path stood Detective Vic Lopez, smiling his normal diabolic smile.

"What can we do for you, Detective?" Maia asked. "You come to apologize for wrongful arrest?"

Lopez laughed, but there was an edge to it as sharp as a broken bottle. "Maybe later, counsellor. In the meantime, you wouldn't happen to know where Garrett Navarre is this morning?"

Maia and I exchanged looks.

She said, "I assumed— He isn't inside?"

Then I realized Maia and I had both thought the same thing— that Garrett had simply gone to the outhouse. I looked up toward the house, noticed the obvious—that the Carmen Miranda wasn't parked there anymore.

"He's probably picking up breakfast tacos."

Lopez smiled. "I'm sure. You saw him last when?"

Maia told him about the concert. "We came back here, talked until maybe two A.M. He went to sleep on the sofa, right across from me. Why?"

"Two A.M." Lopez seemed to be calculating. "Oh, nothing, really. Just that we have a small problem I was hoping Garrett could help us with."