Learning to Stand (37 page)

“
Yes, in Prague.”

Alex stood to slip off her filthy pants. He
helped her out of her body armor then slipped a plastic bag over
her ace bandage cast.

“
He always said he’d marry
my wife some day,” John said. “Did you say yes?”

“
Not a chance.”

“
God, you’re so bruised.
You’ve been beaten, blown up TWICE, two surgeries and in jail this
week. Alex, you need to be in hospital.”

“
I can’t shower with you in
the hospital.” Alex smiled the crooked smile she knew ignited
him.

“
Brutal use of the
smile.”

John stripped off his clothing then led her
to their shower. She was adjusting the water when she noticed his
clear interest. She raised an interested eyebrow and he
laughed.

“
Without his trousers, a
gentleman struggles for polite,” John said.

Alex laughed.

“
I was thinking.” John
pulled her toward him then kissed her lips.

“
Yes?”

“
There’s still a lot of fun
stuff we could do without having intercourse,” he said.

“
What did you have in
mind?”

“
A little Catholic school
‘touch mine; I’ll touch yours’ game. Surely you and Zack were quite
adept at the sport.”

Alex stiffened. She shifted away from him to
get a wash cloth and some Samantha purchased special bath wash.
Humming to herself, she began to scrub the dirt, stress and trauma
from her.

“
Hey!” John almost yelled to
get her attention. “What happened?”

“
What do you mean?” she
asked.

“
We were right here.” He
moved close to her. “Kissing, skin to skin, close. Then wham,
you’re inside yourself.”

“
I was… washing up,” she
said.

“
Uh huh,” John said. “What
did I say?”

“
It’s ...” Unable to finish
the statement, Alex continued scrubbing.

“
Catholic school
games?”

Alex shook her head.

“
I already know about you
and Zack,” John said. “So what’s the problem?”

“
What do you know about me
and Zack?” she snarled at him.

“
Well… I mean he and
you...”

Alex scowled at him. Turning away, she began
washing her hair with one hand.

“
This is not going like I
planned,” John said. Grabbing her shoulders, he turned her around
to him. “Stop. Please stop. I haven’t seen you in days. We’ve had
such an awful week. Please. I love you. I thought we’d share a
laugh and you could get some rest.”

Alex sighed. She closed her eyes then
nodded. When she opened them, John was kneeling holding her right
hand. She watched him kiss her hand.

“
I’ve missed you so much
this week. I simply cannot bear it if you shut me out.”

She nodded.

“
You’re still wearing your
ring.” He touched the sparkling diamond band. “Did you miss me at
all?”

“
Only every moment,” she
said. “I haven’t signed my reup papers. Sitting on my lovely cot in
the palatial Air Force jail, I decided I’d rather be a rich
surgeon’s wife.”

“
That’s very nice.”
Standing, John hugged her. “You say the most wonderful
lies.”

“
I’m dead
serious.”

“
You’d go barking mad in
about three days,” he said. “Nail appointments, shopping for the
perfect thing to wear, managing the help, and...”

She kissed him quiet.

“
I love you as you are,” he
said. “Crazy life and all.”

“
You say the nicest things,”
she said. “You were going to show me Catholic games?”

“
Yes. At my Catholic school,
we didn’t want the sin of fornication on our record. But we were
frisky little buggers.”

“
We know you
were.”

“
That’s definitely true. We
played these games. Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

“
We’re a tiny bit past show
and tell. Plus, we...” Alex pointed to John then herself. “We are
married. No sin here.”

“
Thank God.” He kissed
her.

“
What happens
next?”

“
I’ll show you,” he said. He
put her hand on him.

“
You know, I’ve done this
before,” she said.

“
I would think
so.”

“
With you.”

“
Ah yes, that’s true as
well.”

“
What about your
part?”

“
I’m so glad you asked,” he
said.

His surgeon trained hands began to work on
her soft sensitive areas. With her nipple in his mouth, her heat
and passion began to rise. She was very close when, pressed against
the shower wall, he caught her mouth with his. Together, they
reached explosive release. They had to hold each other up against
the tile.

“
Wow,” Alex said. “Is it
always this… powerful?”

“
No love, that was quite
special.” He kissed her nose. “I see stars.”

“
I wonder why.”

“
It’s been a few days.
You’ve been under an enormous strain. I almost died of boredom in
my class. You’ve been ill. I’ve been worried.” John kissed her
lips. “Complaining?”

“
I think we should try
again,” she said.

“
Oh love, you have to rest,”
he said. “You’ve people to interview, work to be done
and...”

He grabbed a bar of soap to begin cleaning
up. Within moments, they were kissing.

“
Alexandra, my love, we
can’t. We...”

They were off again.

FFFFFF

One hour later
Sunday night
March 30 – 9:00 P.M.MDT

Denver, CO

After making certain Alex was sound asleep,
John wandered downstairs to the kitchen. He found Cian, Eoin and
James baking cookies, drinking Guinness, and laughing.

“
Is she asleep?” Cian asked
in Ulster Gaelic.

John nodded his thanks to Eoin when he gave
him a Guinness.

“
We made the yanks leave,”
Cian said. “They went... Where did they go?”

“
Shooting range,” James
continued in Ulster Gaelic. “They think they will win a special
prize or something while Alex is asleep.”

“
Max went?” John asked in
Ulster Gaelic.

“
They don’t think much of
the Maxwell,” Eoin said.

Cian, Eoin and John laughed.

“
Why is that funny?” James
asked.

“
Max is every bit as good as
Alex. It’s a joke between them. There’s no file on Max Hargreaves.
He’s underestimated.”

“
He likes that,” Cian
said.

“
What?” James
asked.

“
Being underestimated,” John
replied.

“
Here’s an interesting
fact,” Eoin said. “Johnny, did you know that your brother, James
here, sells magazine adverts like our Alex? My guess is he works
for the British branch of the same company.”

Cian and John laughed.

“
I never said Alex and I
worked for the same company,” James said.

Cian, Eoin and John laughed.

“
Our Alex tells the
civilians
that she
sells magazine adverts. You sell magazine adverts that means...”
Eoin said.

“
You’re in Her Majesty’s
Secret Intelligence Service,” Cian said.

“
Holy crap, Jimmy, you work
for SIS!” John clapped his older brother on the back.

“
Thank you for not saying
MI-6,” James said. “And... I sell magazine adverts… like
Alex.”

The men laughed at him.

“
At least, I’m not some IRA
hoodlum.” James taunted Cian and Eoin.

Like alter boys, Eoin and Cian opened their
mouths as if they were shocked. Their blue eyes sparkled with
innocent indignation.

“
We’re washed clean in the
Belfast agreement, brother,” Cian said.

“
We told you we’re bakers,”
Eoin said.

James looked at John. John nodded his
head.

“
You’re CLEAN?!? Cian Kelly
and his best mate, Eoin Mac Kinney, are clean?” James exclaimed.
“You know clean means: no bombs, no extortion, no under the table
operations, no cigarette sales over the borders, no...”

“
We are self respecting
business owners,” Cian said. “We paid US taxes last year. All nice
and legal. Eoin even has a soon-to-be wife.”

“
Eoin? A wife?” James fell
on the floor in exaggerated shock.

“
That boy always had a flair
for the dramatic,” Cian said.

“
Where’s Maggie?” John
asked.

“
She’s asleep in her crate,
Johnny,” Cian said. “She’s worn out from all the romping
around.”

“
Did she get
dinner?”

“
Who’s Maggie?” James
asked.

“
She likes you to feed her,”
Cian said.

“
She won’t eat from us,”
Eoin said. “We tried.”

John nodded and began getting Maggie’s food
together.

“
Who is Maggie!?” James
asked again.

John went into the shared living room and
opened Maggie’s crate. Maggie came bounding out of her crate to say
hello to everyone.

“
Wait, that’s an English
Springer,” James said.

“
Johnny named her Maggie,”
Eoin said.

“
After PM
Thatcher?”

“
You catch on fast,” Cian
said.

James began laughing. Eoin joined in and
Cian couldn’t hold out.

“
It’s a good name,” John
defended his choice.

“
Do you boss her around?”
James asked between chortles.

“
Nah,” John set Maggie’s
food down. “She’s only a puppy. She’ll have to be trained up a
bit.”

“
Let me guess the attack
word is...”

“
Get those damned Kellys!”
Cian and John said in unison.

James spit his beer over the kitchen floor.
Eoin clapped James’s back as he coughed up the rest of the beer.
Cian threw James a towel to clean up the mess.

Eoin retrieved the last tray of lemon drop
cookies from the oven. The brothers and their friend laughed, ate
cookies, drank beer, and played with Maggie the rest of the
night.

As if by design, the men returned from the
shooting range at the same time Raz’s ambulance pulled up to the
house. While John signed the necessary papers, the men helped carry
Raz down to his basement room. A flustered Samantha showed up about
a half hour later, and everyone settled in for the night.

F

CHAPTER THIRTY-One

Twelve hours later

Monday mid-morning

March 31 – 10:05 P.M. MDT
Denver, CO

Alex sighed.

Back to Joiner.

Back to work. Secure in her basement office,
Alex spent the morning with the quiet solace brought by a map of a
section of North Korea. Joseph had decided they needed a better
work environment. The men spent the morning setting up the carriage
house. Alex had to smile at their work. The carriage house was
clean, furnished, and ready for action.

Her desk was located on the second floor
between Matthew and Joseph’s desks. Raz’s desk sat collecting dust
in front of her. She heard the laughter and conversation of the men
hard at work around the carriage house.

Right now, she was waiting for the arrival
of her key witnesses. Bobby Lopez and his daughter, Beth Ann, had
been interviewed by the Texas Rangers. Their report told her
everything she already knew. Tristan Joiner had come to live with
them last fall. He was a good kid, blah, blah, blah.

She’d checked on Tristan this morning. He
and the other children were malnourished, beaten and more puzzling,
suffering from Mercury poisoning. They were alive, if only barely,
in a secure hospital in Texas.

Alex blocked the mothers from seeing their
children. Until she had satisfactory answers, the children would
remain safe and secure. The last thing she wanted was to release
the surviving boys only to have them held hostage again.

“
Krystal Jo Joiner is here,
sir.” Larry stuck his head in the door. “She’s been escorted to the
bedroom with the table in it. Downstairs.”

“
Thank you, Sergeant,” Alex
said.

“
Oh and sir?” Larry asked.
“She’s pissed off.”

“
So noted, Sergeant,”
Matthew said.

Krystal Jo Joiner was her other key witness.
Why weren’t her male Joiner children held hostage? She was so
indignant during her interview with the Texas Rangers that they
didn’t get much out of her.

“
You coming Joseph?” Alex
asked.

“
No, I need to work on the
Weasel’s file,” Joseph said. “I’m compiling the information you
received from the Weasel with the Joiner information. I meeting
with James in about an hour to go over the information SIS has on
the Boy Scout.”

“
Troy?”

“
He’s made headway on the
Fey bank account. He said it should be ready by this
afternoon.”

“
Good,” Alex nodded.
“Vince?”

“
He’s working with the Texas
Rangers on the bombs in the Mariscal Mine. They aren’t sure how the
bombs were ignited.”