He took up a ready stance behind Doris, who now affected a cop walk.
“Joey, is the camera ready?” Godiva asked, hopping out of the way. She reminded Jen of a spry little wren.
Joey Hu, the slim, elegant professor with tousled silvery-blond hair with whom Doris was now living happily, held Godiva’s cell camera up to frame the shot. He said agreeably, “I’ve got my finger poised over the button.”
“Okay, Jen!” Godiva began narrating a story. “You bend over the kidnap victim here, looming like a vulture, when you hear the cops coming. Bird! Stop laughing, and start working those bonds—awesome! Remember, you’re a tough senator from the streets, and you’re trying your best to rip free. Jen—you don’t want her getting loose, so you act like you’re going to conk her a good one. Doris! Bring up your weapon.”
Doris was a short, pear-shaped woman in her early sixties, but she’d been teaching drama to high school students for many years. Somehow her wide stance and tight shoulders said cop. She raised her arms, holding a pink plastic water pistol as if it was a heavy-caliber police weapon. “Pew! Pew! Pew!” she said.
Jen pretended her T-shirt was mithril, the magical silver armor the elves had worn in Lord of the Rings. She jolted slightly on each pew, as if the bullets bounced harmlessly off her.
“Great, Jen, perfect!” Godiva bellowed. “Now you deck the cop!”
Jen snapped off a showy roundhouse kick, tapping Doris’s jaw lightly.
Doris recoiled as if she’d been struck by a steel girder, spun away, and went splat!
“Awesome!” Godiva squawked. “Mikhail, your partner just got munched, and you—”
Before Mikhail could take a step, two figures shot past him and slammed into Jen—
Or tried to.
Years of martial arts training took over Jen’s muscles before her mind could catch up. She sidestepped to allow one attacker to pass by with barely an inch to spare, then whirled to avoid the second. The first skidded to a stop and came back at Jen, fists flying.
Jen had a millisecond to see the earnest face of a girl of sixteen or so, and pulled the lethal strike she’d been about to bring up from her hips. She turned her arm, blocked a punch, and dodged, causing the girl’s left-hand strike to flail uselessly along Jen’s back—
The second attacker—also a girl, with a cloud of dark hair—came at Jen with a flying side-kick that Jen barely fended off. She wasn’t about to hurt a couple of kids, unless they pulled a weapon, and even then she’d work to put them down on the ground . . .
“Cleo! Petra!” a man spoke commandingly.
Jen whipped around as the girls faded back. They left Jen facing a man taller than she was, wearing a loose white shirt over a dark T-shirt and dark jeans. He had his hands up, and closed the distance between them, snapping two fast feints, blocks, and punches—testing blows. He was very, very good. Startled,
she glanced up at his face, and caught a quick impression of black hair glinting with silver, and a craggy face lit by a flashing grin.
She had no idea who this guy was, but she knew two things: he was at least as good as she in martial arts, and like the expert he was, he’d instantly seen that this wasn’t a serious situation.
In other words, he was offering a challenge.
Mikhail had dropped back, she noticed distractedly, so she just . . . went with it. It felt so good to cut loose again, trusting her partner to know exactly how far to push. Her body hummed with energy for the first time since—
Since before her husband died.
Somewhere far in the distance, Jen was vaguely aware of Godiva crowing, “Keep that camera going! Jen, don’t stop—this is fan-hootin’-tastic!”
Jen couldn’t have stopped, not when she was having so much . . . fun.
This was far different from the elementary stop-and-start of the women’s self-defense classes she’d begun teaching again at her kung fu studio. Jen let years of trained habit take over, laughing under her breath when he landed a good one—with a touch as light as a breath—or when she got past his formidable guard and tapped him.
Time suspended. She was scarcely aware of sweat stinging her eyes and her breath coming hard, when the spell broke as Joey exclaimed, “Oh, no, the phone battery is in the red.”
Jen’s unknown partner stepped back, and she lowered the foot she’d been readying for a jumping side kick. When he brought his hands up, palm over fist for the formal, respectful bow to one’s opponent, old habit kicked in and she bowed as well.
“Hell’s bells,” Godiva crowed. “I hope all that got on the video. It’s all going straight into the book, that’s fer double-barreled damn sure!” She stopped and tipped back her nut-brown, vivid face as she looked up at the newcomer. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Nikos Demitros,” he said with a brief glance Jen’s way. Jen sensed that he was answering Godiva, but speaking to her. He spoke with some sort of accent. Greek?
“Godiva Hildago.” Godiva patted her chest. “You might be wondering what we’re doing here . . .” As she went on to explain that she was a mystery writer, and her friends acted out the scenes that she’d write up as the opening to a new mystery, Jen saw him glance her way again, and sensed some kind of question. He had black eyes that sparkled in the morning sun. Meeting that gaze felt . . . odd, as if that morning sun had come up right behind her. No, right inside her.