Chapter 2

She had the coldest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

Almost clear, the color of the frozen heart of a glacier.

They were flashing in quiet fury as she attacked. I could feel ice crystals on my heart as her voice cut and sliced with a surgeon’s certainty. There was no trace of love or human affection in that voice.

She couldn’t even see me as I stood back in the darkened hall. Not that she ever really did. I was practically invisible to her even at the best of times. And I was so rarely home from boarding school, or from ‘vacations’ – really forced networking visits with the other thoroughbred offspring – that I honestly wasn’t sure she would recognize me on sight if we ran into each other on the street. Not that she’d ever deign to be simply walking down the street.

Her victim stood stolidly, as if the words she spat were utterly meaninglessness, despite their gravity. He would never touch her again. There would be no other children. There would be no spare to the heir. No spare to me. I was doomed to be The Reinhardt.

Father blinked his expressionless eyes once, the only movement in his carved – stone face. “Fine. She’ll do.”

That was as close to emotion as I’d ever seen from Father. Practically an outburst of rage and fury for him.

And that was what was expected of me.

I’d been raised the scion of the greatest financial merger ever conducted. The Reinhardt had married the Shining Daughter of New York.

The Reinhardt. It sounded positively medieval. And it was. The head of the Reinhardt merchant family was never referred to by his first name. Just as Das Reinhardt. And that tradition had held even as the merchants became bankers who became venture capitalists. That merchant house had turned into a domain so large that nobody was certain where – or even if – it ended.

I’d been raised from birth to be at the helm of this vast enterprise. Private schools, tutors, the elite boarding schools of Europe. Mathematics, Economics, and Statistics were hammered into me as soon as I could read the words.

Tae Kwon Do had started at 5 years old. To teach me self-discipline, reflex thinking and prepare me the less obvious, but equally brutal fights of the financial world.

From the beginning, my life and my classroom instruction was designed to prepare me to become a corporate lawyer. In this world, financiers and economists could be bought by the handful.

Lawyers were problematic, like Machiavelli’s mercenaries: a bad one could ruin you and a good one could prove too ambitious. But they were necessary, so The Reinhardt Apparent would train in law. To watch over the lawyers.

So my future was mapped out practically from birth.

And I hated it.

I had no idea what I wanted, but it wasn’t this.

A life of nearly absolute privilege and power. A life with no meaning at all.

Raised by servants who changed out constantly. Ignored by Mother. Who became Evelyn to me when I inadvertently learned what a mother was supposed to be like. She’d never earned that title.

I almost never saw Father; The Reinhardt was far too busy to bother with his only offspring. I suspected that he really wanted a son, but when he gave Evelyn a disease contracted from one of his many ‘assistants’ that possibility ended. She hardly cared about the affairs; after all, she had her yoga instructor and masseuse. It was his carelessness that turned her indifference to active disgust.

And I’d seen the corrosive influence of money at that level. It ruined everything. Everyone. Trust was impossible. Love even less so.

So at thirteen, standing in the teak paneled hall outside the study, I learned that my dream of possibly escaping my fate was shattered.

Oh, I rebelled in small ways. I eventually managed to lose my virginity to a Norwegian ski instructor. And found a birth control pill pack on my bathroom sink the next day. I couldn’t find the instructor again.

Every small rebellion was neatly countered, or ignored. Prep school led to college, which led to the elite law school. My future loomed like an iceberg.

Every bit as scheduled by Them.

I did well – I was The Reinhardt-to-be. My early schooling and discipline paid off as expected.

I studied hard. Research, Logic, Law. Top of my class in all of it. Of course.

But I kept fighting it. Secretly looking for a way out.

I’d almost caved during Law school. I’d met a guy; he was funny, clever, smart, and managed to push all my buttons just so. I confided in him about my distaste for the life I was headed into. He listened to me and seemed to be completely understanding. He pondered whether I would be able to make that life into something I would love, despite everything. And he sounded so damn reasonable and clever. And he turned out to be working for The Reinhardt. I never did find out if they sent him or simply turned him after we became involved.

That was when I realized that I could never trust anyone. Anyone might be working for Them, and even if they started out with the best of intentions, eventually, the money would corrode their souls, just as it did everyone.

So I kept sharpening my skills and working to be the best.

I turned out to be best of all at acting. Pretending to give in. I played along, looking for an escape route somewhere to take shelter, somewhere their money wouldn’t have power.

When I graduated Law school, I told Them that I needed to pass the Bar in New York, where the world of finance was centered, and then I would need several months, maybe a year and a half, to prepare to step up to the position they were holding for me. As expected, I passed the bar on my first try. They were in no hurry and suspected nothing.

I moved into an apartment and practiced not having money. And promptly learned I didn’t know anything about living unsupported. I ruined half my clothes figuring out how to do laundry. And cooking? I lost 10 pounds in the first month.

And in that first month I decided I needed to do something to fill my days while I looked for my escape. A flyer in the lobby caught my eye. LPN Classes.

And like everything else, I was damn good at it. It was a great way to learn about normal people. And learn to be normal. More than anything, I found I enjoyed it. I was finishing up my last practicals – like mini internships in different hospitals - when I found my escape.

A shootout downtown had netted two killed and three wounded. Most were gang members, but one of the wounded was an FBI Special Agent. Brought to our hospital.

To badly paraphrase Hans Gruber; I was looking for a miracle and found the FBI.

The almost incorruptible FBI.

I submitted an application immediately. And waited patiently for it to process. I never seriously considered they might reject me. I’d never failed at anything. And I drove myself relentlessly to be ready for the fitness tests, took lessons at gun ranges with every conceivable type of firearm. One of the instructors I hired with The Reinhardt’s money was retired from the FBI, another was former Delta Force.

By the time my Academy class rolled around, I was as ready as humanly possible.

The other students were typical over achievers, full of attitude and drive. The top of their classes; the football stars and volleyball players, the cheerleaders and a few from the chess club. But they weren’t thoroughbreds and we didn’t mesh smoothly at first.

I tried, I honestly tried to fit in, be one of the pack. It went wrong on the third day. I don’t know if it was something I did or said wrong, but someone learned something. I heard whispers of “Rich Bitch” and found myself isolated. Maybe they thought I’d get lonely and drop out.

Fuck them. They had no idea what loneliness was. I’d grown up lonelier than they could dream. That isolation lasted for weeks.

Their attitude changed after our first sparring match in our fourth week. The instructor had watched us closely. He recognized my style. And my ability.

I stand 5’’3” if I stretch up a little. So when we matched up, he put me against the biggest, strongest guy in the class. And winked at me.

That match lasted 23 seconds. My second match was almost a full minute.

By the next day my nickname had changed from Rich Bitch to Danger Mouse.

And I got grudging respect. I was included, if not loved.

It was the warmest feeling I’d ever had. Six weeks of being part of a team.

At graduation, I discovered my deception had failed. A hand carved rose wood box was delivered to my room. With a bottle of 1928 Krug Champagne. That had to be Evelyn, for appearances sake, of course.

The Reinhardt had never given a gift in his life.

I went home to face the music before taking my place in California.

It was not a pleasant meeting. The Reinhardt was silently furious, Evelyn coldly so. And I had a $20,000 hangover and an empty bottle in my luggage.

Suffice to say, by the end of the 15 minute discussion, I was disowned.

I wordlessly left the study, rounded up my unpacked luggage, and walked out.

Whatever fantasies I had about being a Special Agent evaporated quickly. At first, it was endless rounds of paperwork and meetings. But it was somehow more real that way. I was good at paperwork, planning, putting the pieces together.

It was several months before I was included in any real operations beyond the usual low level cases entrusted to junior agents. And it was entirely because of blind luck and my own awful cooking.

I was passed a message that one of the principles in one of my cases was being picked up. I was passed a time and an address and I headed out.

Funny thing about case numbers. Get one digit wrong and everything cascades from there. Wrong agents get sent to the wrong places.

So when I showed up and found the Hostage Rescue Team command van sitting silently at the edge of a neighborhood I knew wasn’t right for the harmless embezzler I was building a case against, I put on my apologetic junior agent face and went to give them the bad news. The wrong agent had been sent.

The inside of the van was electric; cold faced agents in armor looking at floor schematics and heatedly discussing plans, back up plans and back up plans to those plans. The whole scene put me in mind of wolves preparing for the kill.

I spent a lot of my evenings watching Discovery Channel.

I looked around for anyone at all I recognized. Nobody. I waited quietly, expecting some to ask me what I was doing, then I’d give them the bad news.

Finally, the bald guy who seemed to be the hub of the activity zeroed in on me with no warning.

“Who the Holy Fuck are you?”

I tried to explain, but he cut me off with a furious exasperation.

“Sweet Jesus save me. Does your momma know you’re here? And does she know you had to cross the street to get here?”

Amusement raced through the room. But I noticed one older agent with a steel grey crew cut sitting laconically on a map table looking at me expectantly. Probably waiting for me to cry.

The Reinhardt in me surged. “Yes Asshole, she sent me to drag you back to the nursing home for your Geritol and your nightly enema.”

The bald man turned into a red beacon of anger. But before he could say anything, the grey crew cut spoke.

“Dave, wait.”

“Dave” turned and looked at him.

“Mike?”

Crewcut looked at me “Turn around”

Something in his voice convinced me to do it without asking why.

“What do you weigh?”

“115”

“Maybe on a good day. Your clothes are loose, I bet you’re around a buck five right now.”

That was probably true. My cooking hadn’t improved much. I was eating a lot of salads. Mostly because I either undercooked or carbonized everything else.

I nodded.

He eyed me critically. “She’d fit through the window with that skinny ass. We could go for the dream option.”

Whatever the dream option was, Dave was hesitant.

“She’s not HRT, if this goes wrong we’ll be grabbing our ankles for the Director.”

Mike smiled, a grim smile. “Nothing will go wrong. This is Danger Mouse. Jorge at the Academy told me about her, economy size kick ass in a fun size package.”

To me “Aren’t you?”

I straightened up. Whatever this was I wasn’t going to miss it. “That’s me.”

Nobody was willing to argue with Mike.

The target was a known pedophile who was believed to have kidnapped a two year old from a park in in a nearby town. He’d been communicating across the internet with another man – in Britain somewhere - and telling him how he had her in his basement. And he’d said outright that before anyone could have her back, he’d kill her.

The only possible outside access to the basement was a tiny window that used to be a coal shoot.

The dream option was to have an agent in the basement to protect the little girl when the HRT came in the front door. But the window was far too small for any of the door kickers. Too small for most adults.

Except maybe an underfed Danger Mouse.

I soon found myself squeezing through the tiny opening. And dropping into the pitch black of the basement with a tiny flashlight and a compact .45 that Mike insisted I swap out for the Bureau standard .40 caliber.

Mike was certain the Bureau standard wasn’t powerful enough to absolutely ensure a first shot kill.

So armed, I searched the darkness.

It smelled of mildew, damp rock and dust. Even with the flashlight, the dark pushed in like a black velvet blindfold.

I found her huddled under a blanket in the corner across from the stairs. I reached for her, to tell her I was here, to whisper that she was safe. I gently rolled her to face me, holding the flashlight just so.

She had the coldest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

Clouded over, pale, almost white. Unblinking, unseeing. Like ceramic. Fine blue porcelain.

Her head lolled unnaturally as I shifted her, exposing the cord - a black bootlace maybe - cutting into her neck.

I don’t know how long I crouched over her, motionless.

I know what the official report says, but time had stopped as I stared at her broken doll form with her broken doll face. And those blind, porcelain eyes.

A sound called me back to the basement tomb. And a dim yellow light kicked on overhead, near the creaking wooden stairs. I turned toward the stairs, straightening up.

At first, he didn’t see me in the gloom. He stood on the bottom step, a wood handled hammer loosely held in one hand. His pale blonde hair back lit in a halo by the brighter light from above. Then he saw me, silently standing, gun leveled at him. His eyes lingered on the badge at my belt for a moment and he let the hammer slip from his grip, then stepped carefully away from it, hands raised.

I knew there was something I was supposed to say, the prelude to his arrest, his trial, his incarceration.

It just wouldn’t come.

Then his gaze drifted to the crumpled form in the corner. And he smiled, perfect white teeth just visible to me.

I can’t remember pulling the trigger, but I saw the shock in his eyes as he realized he was going to die.

I try so hard to remember that look when my nightmares come. I treasure it.

The HRT hit the door upstairs a fraction of a second later. They came on relentlessly as the sound of my shots echoed and died. Moving down the stairs like a machine, a single coherent beast with blinding arc- light eyes and gun oil tainted breath. A black Kevlar-scaled dragon.

A killing machine with nothing to kill.

Curt calls of “clear!” snapped back and forth through the house.

The HRT leader’s helmet came off as he scanned the basement. It was Mike. He took the whole scene in with one careful scan. He could see the whole story as if he’d been standing there when it happened. I stood, convicted by my own actions, waiting for him to demand an explanation. An explanation I didn’t have. It was obvious he knew everything.

His right foot reached out and slid the hammer next to the dead man’s hand.

He looked me dead in the eye. Quietly. “We heard you identify yourself and order him to drop the weapon. He advanced with weapon in hand and you fired twice for effect.”

He glanced down at the dead monster at the bottom of the stairs. Then looked back up at me. “Stick to the script.”

Nobody ever questioned the reports. I could see Mike’s hand in it.

I never felt a hint of guilt.

The mandatory psychiatric counseling sessions dug deep into my feelings over the shooting but they never asked the real question.

My dreams were haunted, over and over, by the cold blue porcelain eyes of a child.

But I was the favored daughter now. A month after the mandatory post-shooting cooling off period was over, I was selected for special training for covert assignments.

I’d never seen training like it. Terribly realistic. Viciously effective. The pressure was unrelenting, exhaustion so complete I didn’t dream at all. We were given psychological exams every week.

I’d been raised to be the Reinhardt Apparent, and nobody was mentally tougher than I. But even for me it was a seemingly endless series of challenges. Sleepless nights in all kinds of weather and terrain, constant interrogations, round after round of close combat training. None of it even remotely like the normal step by step, safety first standard training.

I reveled in it with teeth barèd. Even if they were bloody occasionally.

The last test was devastating. They’d pulled the biggest fear from my evaluation and loaded it into the rape scenario.

When I was twelve I was caught in a riptide. My weakness against that overwhelming power was addressed again and again in my evals. As was my helplessness in the face of my parents choices. A synchronicity of fears the psych evals picked up on. And those fears were weaponized against me.

When the rape scenario began, I was taken down by overwhelming strength. My opponent had been chosen for his sheer power and briefed thoroughly on how to take me feel helpless. How to be the riptide.

It was terrifying. But I had an ace in the hole. The riptide was an old, fading, fear. My nightmares were dominated by cold blue eyes. I could at least fight the riptide.

And I did.

My opponent had a boxer’s chest, a wrestler’s abs and the pain threshold of a battle tank. He’d taken my best kicks, and still knocked me on my ass. He was injured; he had several broken ribs and his groin had to hurt like hell. But he was on his feet, hands in the classic hammer – and – knife of a Shotokan expert. Standard, bullet-headed, old school Japanese karate. Solid, powerful, and heavy on the sweeps. As my hip reminded me.

I was done. I couldn’t really fight on this hip injury. And he knew it. I could see the dearly bought respect in his eyes, but he began to move implacably to my weak side.

But that wasn’t my biggest concern. I’d seen something earlier in those eyes when he had me pinned. Against all logic we’d connected over the realization that we were players in an insane scenario. That it was all a game. And for a fraction of a second, I’d felt more real human warmth than I’d felt my whole life.

That precious moment cost him the injured groin and snapped ribs. But it had cost me more. We’d connected in a way that scared me more than the fear that this scenario might actually allow real rape. I could still fight that. I might lose, would probably lose, but I could, and would, struggle to the end.

But that connection felt too ... something ... to fight. I’d kept men and women at arm’s reach all my adult life. Who knew who my relentless parents might send? Professionals – convincing, perfect, people who could make anyone’s heart skip a beat. Or they would simply buy anyone I connected with. Their kind of money could buy so much. Despite everything, I wasn’t convinced Father and Evelyn had given up on making me The Reinhardt. At the end of the scenario, when he carried me to the infirmary, the magnetism was overwhelming. I caught myself starting to nestle into him, and just managed to turn it into a neck stretch. He’d given me his shirt in a gesture of chivalry, so my arm rested on the bare skin and muscle of those shoulders.

We bantered a bit while waiting for the doctor.

The connection just got stronger. Some kind of indisputable chemistry, way more than just lust. If there’d have been a door on the room, I’d have broken the Rules in a big way. A few more minutes and I’d have stopped caring about the door.

The doctor arrived just in time.

After I got my crutches and started off, I looked back and saw him watching me. Part of me wanted to go back give him my real name. Part of me wanted to flee as fast and as far as possible.

I kept his shirt and slept in it. I didn’t even wash it for a month. That should have been disgusting.

But it wasn’t.

He was far away, far enough for me to allow myself a tiny fantasy or two of a normal life. The dots of our blood mixed on the shirt were a symbol of something that could have been.

Maybe. In a different world.

I ended up washing the shirt in Hot to set the blood. I’d learned the hard way about that.

It’d be two more years before I saw him again.

In those two years, I proved myself over and over.

I wanted to be the best agent ever born – I had the upbringing, the ability and the ambition to pull it off.

And chasing those cases helped keep my own demons down. Those dreams of porcelain blue eyes became fewer and fewer, but never went away, and always woke me with a hard cold hand gripping my heart.

I worked hard. And I had support.

I knew Mike had given me the nod – which carried tremendous weight. I ended up assigned to Headquarters.

I mostly worked organized crime; it’s not as sexy as Counter Terrorism, but because of narcotics, the work is endless.

But it wasn’t all drugs. I spent six weeks working as a waitress in a San Angelo bar when I helped take down one of the largest cattle rustling rings in history. We cooperated with the Texas Rangers to do it.

They’re a great organization. But Cattle Rustling? Texas? Rangers?

Um, well. Yeah, Howdy.

Some smart ass stuck a dime store cowboy hat on my cubicle wall. But I have the real thing, along with a pair of sparkly boots, jeans, a western shirt and a bandana at my apartment. I kept my waitress uniform.