He took my daughter from me once.
I won’t let him get away without giving her back.
5
Bitter Like Chocolate (Oliver)
Twenty Years Ago
There’s a first time for everything.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl this young drop a man that large without even breaking a sweat.
One quick jab of the flat of her hand to his neck, and he’s on the floor, throat-punched and gagging and grabbing at his windpipe. The Air Force colonel rolls on the ground so hard I can hear his shiny medals scratching the floor.
He’s incapacitated.
She’s pissed off.
I’m impressed.
I’m also reminded that any man with a brain had better never try to take credit for a very angry young lady’s accomplishments—especially when you’ve trained that very angry young lady to be a one-woman hit team.
Then set her loose to do her worst behind enemy lines, even if this particular mission required more stealth and finesse than brute violence.
Luckily, Agent Brin is one of those unique byproducts of our program who happens to be quite good at both.
From the dossier open across my lap, she’s almost frighteningly intelligent. Coldly in control of her emotions. Confident. Aggressive. Nearly impossible to knock down, and if you somehow manage…well, it’s your death warrant.
She’ll just get back up and make you regret it ten times over.
Her file is littered with ‘incidents.’
Like the numerous times she put other girls in her unit in the sick bay during training in the inaugural Nightjars program. Naturally, Galentron’s first test run at raising its own in-house army of spies and supersoldiers from cradle to grave had some kinks to work out.
It’s probably not surprising Brin was rewarded for being our strongest graduate.
It’s also probably not surprising that she’s one of the youngest agents we’ve ever put in the field, and within weeks she delivered the goods. The girl pulled off a stealth operation I don’t think most SEAL teams could’ve accomplished, allowing NATO to take out an entire Serbian tank division in a covert aerial strike before they even knew what hit them.
So when the puffed-up military aide here debriefing us decided to downplay her involvement…
Well, who am I to deny a lady the right to speak for herself?
She’s not what I was expecting from the file.
In the photo clipped to the pages she’s a stone-still, cold, blank-faced thing with a severe jaw and pointed chin. Her hair is cut in a sharp black line across her brow and clipped in an angled pageboy to frame her china doll face. A natural white streak cuts a splash in her bangs, over her left eyebrow.
In the photo, she’s hollow-eyed, a mannequin, an automaton. A killer robot of a person.
In real life, she’s vibrating with tense energy.
Agent Patty Brin.
Twenty-three years old.
A tall, wiry girl, though her thick, clunky, entirely punk combat boots add another two inches.
Pixie-like build honed to taut strength. All outlined by her tight-fitting black A-shirt, the curve of her hips accentuated by the snug grey combat pants slung low on her body.
In a word: she’s fucking beautiful.
Even here, in the debriefing room at Galentron headquarters, she’s got a tactical knife strapped to her thigh, and her hands seem to twitch with the need to reach for it.
I wonder who the hell approved that.
Or who just decided it was easier not to argue with her about it and let her traipse in here armed with the entire senior leadership in the room.
Not that she couldn’t be dropped with a single command word, if push came to shove.
That’s why Dr. Maximilian Ross is here, seated at the conference table with the executives who sign his paychecks. Possibly the creepiest Count Dracula fuck I’ve ever met, even if he’s good at controlling his subjects.
It just makes me wonder why the man whose sole purpose is to handle this hot-eyed young woman chose the seat farthest away from where she stands near the window, looking every inch like a panther who’s five seconds away from pouncing for its dinner.
My lips twitch slightly.
Maybe mega-creep Ross is afraid of his own creation. Amusing.
Me?
I just find it too charming how she can’t seem to stop rolling a piece of this round pink candy around her mouth, her little cherub lips now and then parting to give me a glimpse of the gleaming bright color sliding across her tongue.
It looks like this cheap stuff, some violet or magenta color, no doubt made with artificial dyes sure to leave your tongue stained for days. Hers damn near glows neon right now. At least she’s fully human in one respect.
But it’s like that bit of candy helps keep her calm.
Could it be a comfort object? A sugary security blanket of sorts?
I haven’t been fully briefed on the specifics of what they do to the girls in the Nightjars program to make them what they are. They were all orphans once, handpicked at the perfect age to rewrite what little they’d remember of their past lives.