Beyond the Rules

by Doranna Durgin

  Kimmer grabbed a take-out lunch at the edge-of-town mom-and-pop diner, where the Watkins Glen racetrack inspired the decor inside and out. She barely looked at the take-out window attendant, paying more attention to her camera as she waited for her food. To judge by the battered exterior of her backpack, it had taken some hits. The camera lens cover had a slight crack, but the display on the back still functioned. She found a mighty nice image of Pigeon Man captured for posterity.

  Who the hell was he? Advance for the governor? Trouble in waiting, scoping out the site?

  Kimmer suddenly realized that the young woman at the window held out a soda and food, impatient in a way that meant she’d been waiting—and then, as Kimmer finally reached to take her order, those impatient eyes widened slightly. Huh. Whatever. Distracted, Kimmer took her food and pulled out onto the road, unwrapping her burger to eat with one hand as she drove. She headed back north along the lake, not bothering to savor the taste but knowing better than to head for Full Cry Winery without fuel on board. Owen expected her, though he wouldn’t greet her news with any glad cries. More likely a nice long discussion about discretion on the job even as he sent the photo out for identification.

  And to think Kimmer had hoped for a quiet afternoon at home. A little time for the flowers, a little time to nudge information out of Rio…the kind of information she could simply perceive in anyone else. But no matter how she’d learned to read the nuances of her lover’s expressions, it still wasn’t the same as using her knack. And lately she wondered if he wasn’t doing it on purpose—hiding himself. Hiding his concern for his sobo—because he felt she wouldn’t understand.

  But this afternoon wasn’t likely to offer any opportunities. Nor tomorrow. Perhaps the next day….

  Kimmer swung into the employee parking lot at Full Cry Winery, putting the car in Park, yanking the keys from the ignition and stepping out of the Miata in nearly the same motion. She took a moment to brush lunch crumbs away and slung the backpack over her shoulder, stepping out in strides long for her height.

  She rounded the corner of the main building and ran smack into a winery tour. She knew the guide as she knew most of the employees here, all part of her vague cover as a viniculturist. Her status as a Hunter agent hadn’t even been revealed to the local law until the incident with the propane tank. Yet another reason for Owen’s annoyance.

  “Kimmer!” said the guide, looking startled but swiftly shifting into tourism mode. “Um…this is one of our viniculture research experts, Kimmer Reed. Tough day wrestling with the vines, Kimmer?”

  Kimmer took a look at the tourists—a group of seven, with various expressions of startlement and one man with a leer he was trying to hide—and said blandly, “That graft with the Venus Flytrap just isn’t working out.” She gave them a smile and neatly sidestepped the group just in time to forestall the guide from asking for a few quick words about her work. “Enjoy the tour!”

  And they would, for it would end in the convincing ambiance of the tasting room, a refurbished area of the original barn that gleamed with tradition and good care. Whereas Kimmer was headed for the hidden technological wonders of the agency offices. The thumb print ID pad had to think about admitting her; she spat on her thumb and scrubbed it off on her pants, and that did the trick. She pushed her way through the other entrance tricks and then fairly jogged down the carpeted hall to Owen’s office. No need to go through his admin assistant in the adjoining office; Owen figured that anyone who made it this far was welcome to knock directly on his office door.

  So Kimmer knocked, knowing better than to barge in when the door was securely closed, and in a low voice she said, “Kimmer.”

  And then she waited. Impatient, shifting from foot to foot, indulging herself in a way she wouldn’t, were anyone there to watch. Finally Owen said, “All right,” and Kimmer entered the office with enough haste to betray herself.

  But she stopped short at Owen’s expression—an expression she’d already seen several times this afternoon. He said, as dryly as possible, “And here I was just reassuring Chief Harrison that none of my people had anything to do with the bizarre little disturbance in town not so long ago.”

  Kimmer dropped the backpack on the chair in which she wasn’t quite ready to sit, and finally looked down on herself. Smudged, dirty, bloody around her fingers. She ran a hand over her face, but felt no bruises.

  “No,” Owen said. “Look down. Look under.”

  Under—? Finally Kimmer realized the one spot to which she didn’t have easy visual access and pulled the snug shirt down and away from herself. Sure enough, there was a nice big rip, one that had followed the curve of her breast. That explained the tourist’s leer. She gave a little snort and said, “At least I wore a bra today.”

  “You’ll go out of here with something else on,” Owen said. “I don’t want anyone connecting you with the incident in town.”

  She decided not to tell him about the tour. “You’re assuming I did have something to do with it.”

  “Yes,” Owen said, no apologies there. “I am.”

  “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t start it.”

  “That,” said Owen, “is what I expect to hear from my three-year-old.” Kimmer winced and he waved it off. “Just tell me what happened.”

  She pulled the camera out and handed it to him. Owen connected it to his computer as she quickly summed up the encounter. “I don’t get it,” she concluded. “I can imagine someone coming out to heckle the governor tomorrow, but Pigeon Man is a lot more than a simple heckler. He risked a lot to get my camera.”

  “It sounds very much like he was trying to keep you from reporting back to anyone while he was at it.”

  “Well, he failed on both counts. And you owe me a camera.”

  “Another camera,” Owen murmured, saving the image to his hard drive and immediately starting the identification process by kicking it out to one of his tech folks. “I’ll have to fess up that you were involved in the ruckus downtown…but given what started it I think I can make a case it was for the best. Good work in spotting him. But try to avoid playing matador with cars, will you?”

  “The thing that bothers me,” Kimmer told him, ignoring the matador comment, “is that whole ‘more than a simple heckler’ thing. Whoever’s behind Pigeon Man might not be put off by our little encounter. And whoever it is might have someone else to send out tomorrow.”

  Owen nodded. “I’m going to pull a few more people into the situation. And I’d like you to get there first thing in the morning. For now, grab a scrub shirt, go home and get yourself a good night’s sleep.”

  Home.

  Home to a house with someone else in it, and looking forward to it. Kimmer hadn’t ever expected that day to come.

  Showered and powdered and lotioned with Lush’s Red Rooster citric and cinnamon, Kimmer pulled on an oversized T-shirt and curled up on the bed with a cotton throw over her shoulders, her attention focused on the photo album propped on her pillow.

  Rio hadn’t brought a great deal with him when he’d come. Some of his things were in storage in his brother’s boat garage, but mostly he just seemed to travel light. Socks, jeans, a variety of shirts that fit neatly into her walk-in closet, one suit that tailored well enough over his tall, strong frame to make any woman drool. A heating pad, though she’d had one. A bunch of ice packs. He’d left his weights because she had those, too, along with a membership in the small Watkins Glen health club. A batch of crossword puzzle books that quickly spread throughout the house, along with his thoughtfully gnawed pencil stubs.

  And this album. A photo album not created by any man’s hand. His mother, Kimmer assumed. It was one of those memory books with sparkly-pen captions written in a neat hand, fancy hand-scissored borders and loving touches of boyish stickers in the right places. Footballs. Frogs. Unlaced sneakers. Less of that as the pictures ranged from boyhood to the gangly young man who would ultimately fill out to be Rio, but no less care with the captions and the photo
placements.

  It wasn’t just Rio. In fact, it was rarely just Rio. The pictures were crowded with family members, and though Kimmer frequently recognized a young Carolyne, the others she could just guess. His brother, probably, with the same general cast of features but a more barrel-chested build. His sister, who looked a lot like Carolyne but had more refined features in her oval face. Others, aunts and uncles and cousins and who knows who, she just skimmed over, making no real effort to identify them. And then of course there was Rio’s sobo, an elderly lady who didn’t seem to change much over time. Her skin grew more translucent and her eyes slowly disappeared behind aging epicanthic folds, but they were set at an angle that reminded her of Rio’s eyes, and in her serene smiles Kimmer imagined she saw a hint of what lay behind Rio’s engaging grin.

  She returned to the front of the album, running her fingers along the edge of one of the first pictures, then giving in to impulse and lightly tracing her fingertips over the protected surface. A proud young woman and her child, sitting in a rocking chair and draped in baby blankets. Kimmer conjured up an image of the same picture, had it been taken in her household. A tired woman and her child, sitting in a rocking chair, the baby blanket ragged. The woman, her bruises showing at the edges of her short sleeves, murmured, “I never wanted to bring a girl into this world.” The same words she’d said to Kimmer as she grew older, more bruised and even more weary, trusting Kimmer to understand that she’d always known a girl would have to fight to survive in this family of hers and never considering what it would be like to hear those words as a very young girl.

  And later, here was a picture of the boys still in single-digit years, already showing their strength and their long legs. Rio and his brother proudly held their older sister aloft; she lay on her side with her head propped on her hand and utter confidence on her features while they grinned great big toothy grins, arms up overhead and hands carefully placed to keep her balanced.

  Kimmer could see herself in that same position. Four brothers, scrawny and triumphant, doing their best to keep their younger sister balanced overhead while she squirmed and fought. When they put her down it would be into a slop of mud or the cold river during winter or over the edge of the hayloft with very little on the floor below to break her fall.

  Oh, and this one was good…a family portrait. Predictably stilted pose, but their smiles were real enough, and something about the look in Rio’s eyes made Kimmer think he’d just pulled some sort of silliness on the photographer. He looked so young, even in his midteens; his beautiful bright wheat hair fell over his brow just as it did today, but the angles of his face were still forming—the basic structure present, but the lines not yet clean, not hardened into the masculine beauty she had first seen in a roadside gas station in rural Pennsylvania, back when she thought she could avoid meeting him altogether.

  Family portrait. At that age, no mother, just a blank spot. And there she’d be, edging away from her brothers while her father bestowed upon her a mighty frown. The only question in Kimmer’s mind was whether the picture would be snapped before or after her father reached for her.

  She put her head down on the pillow, fingers still tracing the edges of the pictures no longer within her line of sight, and tried to use what she’d seen in those pictures to imagine what it was like to be Rio and to be worried about his grandmother.

  Nope.

  Still couldn’t do it. Not for lack of trying. She could see it, as though viewing those emotions from a distance. She could almost reach out and pull those feelings toward her. But ultimately, she just closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  Rio hadn’t expected to find her here. He’d seen her car, knew she was home, but still hadn’t actually expected that to be the case.

  He’d been out driving. Thinking. Don’t come, they’d said. We need to keep things as simple as possible while we sort things out. The medication, the home nurse visits, the relearning of Sobo’s limitations and abilities.

  But he wanted to go. He wanted to go, now.

  Being good sucks.

  But being observant was useful, so when he’d come inside to none of the usual puttering noises Kimmer made while at home, he’d gone quiet and gone looking.

  Unlike Rio, Kimmer scarcely ever simply sank into a chair for reading or even helping with one of his crosswords. She’d offer suggestions, but she’d do it while she was working with the weights or cooking something decadent or refinishing furniture or…

  Perpetual motion machine. That was Kimmer on her own turf.

  But now she was still. Sleeping. Her mouth relaxed and lips just barely parted—and so much more appealing in its natural color than in the bright lipstick she’d used in her undercover persona when they’d met. She must have showered; the scent of cinnamon lingered in the room, and her dark curls, even this short, had the untamed look that meant she’d hadn’t brushed them out when they were wet. He took another step toward the bed, but still out of reach, for he’d come to appreciate more and more how ill-conceived it was to startle this woman. Sleeping or just distracted, she came back fighting first, asked questions later—and she kept herself in training and condition to do just that. Her very sweet little ass peeked out from an oversized T-shirt and the cotton throw in a bare-cheeked way that made him look twice.

  Hoo boy.

  And her legs—not long and runway-model lean, but at Kimmer’s height, legs didn’t often come in long. They did come perfectly proportioned, muscled even in repose—and were those bruises?

  Rio shifted, moving closer to the side of the bed instead of the end of it, taking advantage of the early evening light from the window. Yes. Bruises. Deep ones. He couldn’t make out the nature of them; couldn’t think of anything she might have been doing today that would have involved such scuffling. Ouch.

  What he could do was see that she’d been looking at the memory book his mother had made. He doubted Kimmer could recognize the touches that spoke of Sobo—the white space every bit as important as the photos, the photos never crowded on the page, the captions placed just so—but to Rio they were every bit as important as the memories the photos invoked.

  He didn’t have to guess what she’d been doing.

  Trying to understand.

  Just as he was trying to understand how she could so thoroughly cut the ties to her own family, never knowing whether her brothers had grown out of their cruelties, whether her father still lived, whether any of them ever regretted contributing to a life that had driven Kimmer away so young. Thinking of Hank, Rio made a face. The man had been frightened. Awkward. Out of his league and knowing it…and then embarrassed at the extent of his salvation at Kimmer’s hands.

  But he had a wife. He had children. Who knew how many other nieces or nephews Kimmer had by now? She hadn’t asked Hank and he hadn’t volunteered. Mostly he’d hidden out in front of the television, although he’d learned very quickly that casual demands for service or food had done little good. Kimmer had made the food easily available and left it at that.

  Rio had his own nightmares—betrayal, the death of friends, the agonizing injury that had ended his career and almost his life, the long recovery—but he wouldn’t want to be in Kimmer’s place.

  A sudden shift of light foretold sunset. Rio moved to the other side of the bed. Pulling off the thick cable sweater made some noise. He removed his watch and belt and let that make noise, too. Kimmer stirred by then, and he said softly, “It’s me.” She smiled and would have turned to him, still half-asleep in that relaxed way that let him know she understood perfectly well who it was, but he leaned over the bed and put a hand on her shoulder, and she settled. He ran that hand from shoulder down the curve of her back and into the dip of her waist, and let it come to rest on—yes, on that sweet little ass. Always good for a moment of appreciation. His body sighed happily, in complete agreement.

  Then he lifted the end of the cotton throw and slid in underneath, spooning up against Kimmer. She wasn’t slow to realize he came mostly d
ressed, still in a T-shirt over the loose-legged jeans he preferred. And it must have suited her on this particular night, for instead of turning over to undress him, she inched back against him, lifting her arm just enough so he could slide his hand in over her ribs, letting it come to rest quite comfortably over her just-right breast. The rest of him responded immediately but not with any intense urgency…just savoring the sweetness of lying there with as much of Kimmer as possible tucked up against as much of him as possible. Her head and its cinnamon-scented curls tucked in under his chin, but only after he’d kissed it. Thoughtfully. Very much aware that they’d had few of these quiet moments—that Kimmer allowed very few of them.

  Perpetual motion Kimmer, always keeping herself busy. Not, he thought, because she was so driven by her past. Aside from the days since Hank’s arrival, he’d seen little sign that it actively bothered her anymore. She’d come to some sort of peace with who she was on that very assignment on which she’d met him, enough peace to let someone in her life for the first time.

  Someone. Him.

  Now all they had to do was make it work.

  We’ll figure it out.

  We have to.

  Kimmer faced Governor Day stiff with bruises. The whole bouncing off a car trick hadn’t been her best thought-out ploy ever, but it had worked—and those on the governor’s team now had a clear photo of the man involved, even if he hadn’t yet been identified. Any minute now, the governor would arrive. The Hunter Agency would save the day and return to being nothing more than a benign local presence. Kimmer could go back to sorting out her life—to building something new for herself.

  Today she wore professional bland. Black tailored blazer, black slacks, black dress shoes comfortable enough for running. Her silk V-neck shirt came in deep forest-green, and no one had to know that she’d painted her toenails in something closer to lime—or that they matched her underwear. Her scent of the day had almost been mentholated muscle rub, but she’d opted for a more subtle ginger destiny powder. Unlike the others working security here, Kimmer had a tiny walkie-talkie in her pocket but no coil of wire up to her ear. Nothing nearly so obvious. She was Hunter’s secret weapon, and the coil of wire was really obvious.