Strictly Need to Know

by MB Austin

  “Oh. And how do you know that I haven’t? Been a dancer.”

  “I’ve read your file. You’ve worked as a lifeguard, a teaching assistant, and a professor. You have not cha-cha-ed for cash. Though I’d guess you social dance quite well.”

  Rose ignored the flattery. “I have a file? Like, an FBI file? Just for being related?”

  Maji smiled ruefully. “Yeah, you probably do. But that’s not it. Angelo makes his own.”

  Rose let that sink in, finding it made her angrier than the thought of government surveillance. “Well, I think it would only be fair for me to see yours, then.”

  “Mine belongs to the Army. They don’t release personnel files.” Maji straightened up and resumed scanning the outdoors.

  Irritated at being dismissed, Rose asked, “Would they explain why you have one name at home, and another in uniform?”

  Maji’s face hardened. “Yep.”

  “I’m sorry—I can’t seem to resist overstepping. It’s just…I had really wanted to get to know you.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up.” Maji sighed. “Look, when a person who might receive special treatment, or threatening attention, signs up, the Army can at its discretion let them serve under a different name.”

  “Oh. Like the heir to a fortune, or something. Or a senator’s daughter. I see.”

  Maji broke a smile at last, complete with a dimple. “Well, I’m not rich or powerful. But it was nice to have some privacy after Fallujah. Complete with the Photoshopping.”

  “Really? I thought Angelo said surgery. Or Frank did.”

  “I was pretty banged up. But if you look at the photos of me in the dojo, you’d recognize me, not that woman in all the media shots. So no need to feel sorry for me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Well, she’s more conventionally pretty than I am.”

  Rose laid a hand on Maji’s thigh, getting an inquiring look in response. “Conventional is overrated. Whoever she is, she’s got nothing on you, chula.”

  Maji’s blush was so gratifying, Rose stopped while she was ahead.

  Chapter Seven

  A Mercedes coupe pulled in behind the town car on the drive into the Benedetti estate. Maji recognized Angelo driving.

  The large sedate sedan and the sporty smaller car lined up in front of the three-car garage. Frank pulled two bags of groceries from his trunk and started for the house.

  Angelo pulled an oversized paper shopping bag from the coupe. “Got some toys in the city,” he said to Maji.

  Maji ignored him and called out, “Frank! Hold up.” When he stopped and turned, she instructed, “Put those down, then go in first to confirm.”

  Frank nodded. “Right.” He set the bags down by Rose and headed for the front door.

  “Who trained him?” Maji asked Angelo.

  “You think there’s a school for Mafia bodymen?” He let out that annoying bark of a laugh. “But he does take instruction well, and I told him you’re in charge of security down here. So have at it.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  A minute later, Frank rejoined them. “All clear.”

  “We’ll be right in,” Maji said to Rose and Frank, and waited with Angelo, leaning on the Mercedes’s trunk, until the front door closed behind them. Then she turned on him. “You drove to Manhattan and back by yourself?”

  “Had to meet with Sander on his turf. No danger to me. They want to partner, remember?”

  Maji spoke through her teeth. “Or they could have just taken what you had to show and tell, killed you, and dumped you. Because you had no backup.” She sighed. “Rose would have been safe at the dojo. I could have gone with you.”

  “Hey, no harm, no foul. And the sitdown is set for Saturday, so we’re all good.”

  She stood down a notch. “You need me for that?”

  “Nah. Can’t risk surveillance, and girlfriends aren’t welcome in the boys’ club. I’d love to have you in line of sight, though. Just for insurance.”

  “Let’s plan it in, then.”

  “I will. You know how to sail, right?”

  They unpacked the pile of small boxes Angelo had dumped out onto the spare desk in his basement office. He laid out two pendants on chains, a large watch, three sets of earbuds with transmitter packs, a charm bracelet, and a cell phone.

  Maji scanned the offerings. “No gun?”

  “Don’t sound so optimistic. It’s on order, with your carry permit.”

  In response, she just picked up one earbud and fitted it snugly out of sight in her right ear. “Transmitter?”

  Angelo handed her an ungainly looking watch. “His and hers,” he said, showing off the matching one on his wrist.

  Maji slipped it on, then listened while he showed her the transmit and listen-only options. “I can figure out the stopwatch and alarm clock on my own.”

  “It’s got a tracker, too,” he said. “And it’s waterproof to a hundred meters.”

  “Great. I’ll try not to drown too far offshore, then.”

  He chuffed at her dark humor. “What do you think for Rose, necklace or bracelet?”

  The bracelet was too cutesy for Rose, but a better-disguised device, resembling actual jewelry. The pendant, in contrast, looked like a high-tech fob on a heavy nylon cord. “Let her decide. By now she’ll need to have some say over something,” Maji noted. “Even a little thing, like this.”

  “You’re not still fuzzy around her, are you?”

  “My judgment’s crystal clear, asshole. I just remember what I was like under protection.”

  Angelo snorted. “You were a teenager, Ri. And hell on wheels, from the sound of it.” He got only a hard stare in return for the verbal poke. “Rose is a full-grown woman. As you may have noticed.”

  “Yeah. So let’s respect that.”

  They brought Rose the choices. Not surprisingly, she took the pendant. “Should I take this off at the dojo or in the pool?”

  Although it was waterproof, and durable, Maji nodded. Being able to remove it sometimes would add to Rose’s sense of control. So she added, “If we get separated, it could be vital. But you can take it off in low-risk spaces where you’ve got help nearby.”

  “Dojo, pool.” Rose’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Shower?”

  “I’ll have the door.”

  “Like you do at bedtime?”

  Maji felt herself blush. “No, on the outside of the door.”

  “Just where exactly you taking night watch?” Angelo asked.

  “Inside, floor. She sleeps with the window open.” Maji fixed him with a level gaze, daring him to suggest they lock the windows down. The place was enough of a prison as it was.

  Angelo went over the entire house with them, confirming how the doors and windows were alarmed and how to cancel the alert if it was tripped accidentally. A moment after the test, Frank appeared, breathing hard.

  “Just testing,” Angelo said by way of apology. To the women he added, “There’s a monitor at Frank’s, and one in my office.”

  “You want I should start dinner?” Frank asked, apparently not fussed at all to have run over for nothing.

  “Thanks. ’Bout an hour, for us.”

  They used the time to run Rose through evacuation plans, including where to meet outdoors if they had to flee the house and became separated. Maji demonstrated how to climb out Rose’s bedroom window and reach the ground using the reinforced downspout and a series of brackets hidden in the English ivy. Finally, Angelo had Rose draw a map of the house and lock it in her mind’s eye.

  At nine p.m., Angelo came upstairs and found Rose and Maji in the living room, Rose stretched out on the couch with a book and Maji in an armchair with headphones and her laptop, silently mouthing words toward the screen. She clicked the keyboard when she saw him, and removed the headphones.

  “Italian?” he guessed.

  She shook her head. “Russian.”

  Rose recalled that Maji had had an Italian textbook open at the dojo, durin
g one of the sessions where she had watched the self-defense instruction from a distance. She glanced out the window and noticed the dark blue sky had turned to black. “Bedtime already?” she asked her cousin.

  He shook his head slowly. “Time for a drill. You can sleep when the adrenaline wears off.”

  Rose’s stomach clenched, and she looked at Maji, who was laying her computer and headphones aside. “What kind of drill?”

  “Just an exercise to put in your body what your brain already knows about the house.” Maji gave Angelo an annoyed look before continuing. “Think of it like a fire drill. Just practice.”

  “I wanted to run it when you were asleep, but Ri told me to fuck off,” Angelo told her, letting his suppressed grin escape at last. “Let’s go.”

  They turned off all the lights in the house and switched off the security lights outdoors as well. Standing in the kitchen, Rose could barely make out the unlit pool outside in the hint of moonlight. She heard Angelo from the doorway to the dining room. “Walk to the front door. Don’t open it.”

  She found her way there cautiously, touching the doorjamb and walls lightly as she passed, managing not to bark a shin on the entryway table. Easy enough. She took a breath, and let it out slowly. “Next?”

  “Through the dining room, down to Angelo’s desk,” came Maji’s voice from a few feet away.

  Rose gasped, and nearly swore. “Fine.” She found her way through the dining room, into the kitchen again, and to the top of the basement stairs. The inky darkness below gave her pause. “Ang?”

  “Come on down,” he said, his voice carrying from below. She wondered how he had gotten there before her without a sound. And also where in the dark Maji might be. She swallowed, and walked down cautiously, feeling the coolness of the basement as she descended. In her mind’s eye, she saw where she knew the desk should be and felt her way to it.

  “Nice job,” Angelo said and took her hand. He placed it on his shoulder and added, “Now, follow me back up.”

  They walked swiftly back to the kitchen, into the entry hall, and up the stairs to her bedroom.

  She heard Maji’s voice from over by the window and made out a dark shape there. “Almost done now. Ang? Give us sixty.”

  Angelo detached Rose’s hand from his shoulder and slipped away. Maji’s voice came again. “This one is an actual fire drill. Lie down, and when the alarm sounds, crawl down the hall and out the back door by the pool.”

  Rose found her bed and stretched out, just in time for the first piercing shrills of the fire alarm to sound. Her pulse skyrocketed, and she rolled off the bed onto the floor, oriented herself toward the door, and crawled rapidly toward it. She paused to feel for heat, wondered at herself, and turned the knob. She paused at the top of the stairs and tried to think through the noise that relentlessly assaulted her ears and nerves. Head first, or feet first? She chose to lead with her feet, skittering down with her arms under her torso. At the bottom she dropped into a crouch and ran through the living room into the kitchen and out the back door.

  Angelo stood in the moonlight by the pool, one eye on his watch. “Good time.” Inside the house, the alarm stopped abruptly, leaving a palpable quiet behind.

  “Thanks,” she panted, hands on her hips. “Are we done?”

  “Yeah. You can go to bed anytime. You want a glass of wine or something?”

  The kitchen door shushed open and clicked shut. Rose glanced at Maji’s form in the shadows. “No,” she told him. “Water, and a towel.” Rose stripped off her top and started to shuck her shorts without waiting for his reply.

  As she prepared to dive in, she heard Angelo say to Maji, “I’ll go fetch. You’re on watch.”

  Maji watched Rose rest in the back of the town car, her head back and her eyes closed. Thursday’s training had been physically intense, and Rose had started the day looking tired. Maybe they should have skipped the house drills last night, given how short a time Rose had left in town. But better to waste training than skip it and need it later. In Peru, even.

  Not that they could teach Rose that much before her flight out on Monday. But for only her second day in a dojo, Rose picked up the basics remarkably well. Maybe Sunday Maji could show her some advanced moves. You just want an excuse to get close.

  Maji had hung back at the dojo. So Bubbles had stuck by Rose, offering encouragement and a supportive touch now and then, drawing a smile from Rose with her warmth. The more distance Maji kept, the harder Bubbles worked to make Rose feel at home. La Bubbles probably thought Maji was being a jerk. Who could blame her?

  Frank looked into the rearview mirror and caught Maji’s eye. “Ang had me pick up a bunch of stuff today. I feel like Santa.”

  Maji thought of the gun on order and wondered what else there might be. “Well, keep out of chimneys, Frank. If you don’t get stuck, somebody’ll shoot you at the bottom.”

  He laughed, but Rose only winced.

  “You okay?” Maji asked softly.

  Rose did not open her eyes. “Just tired.”

  An hour later, Rose slipped on her swimsuit and tried to pull her hair back into a ponytail. It wasn’t long enough anymore. She ran her hands through the curls, uncertain how she felt about the new crop. Angelo said it gave her a gamine look, but was that a good thing? Angelo’s ideals of feminine beauty seemed to have been set from watching movie classics with Grandpa Stephano. She wondered if Ang had made Maji sit through his favorites, on some base in Iraq during their downtime. Before the I-am-not-your-girlfriend lecture, she would have asked.

  As she reached the top of the stairs, Rose saw Maji at their base, ready to head up. In running shorts and a T-shirt now plastered to her front with sweat. They looked each other over, awkwardly.

  “Swimming laps?” Maji asked.

  Rose turned to the hall closet and grabbed a towel to cover her self-awareness. “Every day—I’m addicted.” She turned back around, a spare towel in hand. “Why don’t you join me, this time?”

  Maji blinked twice, and Rose almost felt guilty about her skinny-dip the night before. “No suit.” Oh, the mischievous glint in those eyes. “I better send Frank for one. What’s in style these days?”

  “You want Brooklyn, Long Island, or tasteful?”

  Maji laughed and started up the stairs, pausing at the halfway point landing. “Not what Angelo would order up. Something that stays on.”

  “I’ll give Frank instructions for you,” Rose offered, smiling conspiratorially.

  As Rose reached the landing, Maji added, “I’ll be out as soon as I wash the funk off me.”

  Rose stood close to her for a few breaths, inhaling the scent of clean sweat and something extra, something indefinably Maji. “Not the word I’d use,” she said softly. She quickly padded down the remaining steps, before she could get herself into real trouble.

  By the time Rose came up for air, the household had migrated outdoors. Angelo, still in Dockers and a crisp button-down shirt, set up his laptop on the patio table, a gin and tonic close at hand. Maji took the chaise next to him, an advanced Italian course book on her lap and headphones over both ears. Frank came out and fired up the grill. Maji sniffed and looked at Angelo, who raised an eyebrow. She shrugged and went back to her book.

  Maji closed the book and let the sounds of the language fill her head as she gazed across the pool. Rose stroked smoothly through the water, clearly at home there. Angelo touched Maji’s shoulder, drawing her attention. He smirked and motioned for her to wipe her mouth. Maji responded with a bit of Italian not found in the course book, along with a suitably rude gesture.

  She had just opened the book again when Angelo leaped up and dashed to the edge of the pool. Maji tore the headphones off and was by his side in an instant. She saw that Rose’s face was twisted in pain as she clung to the side of the pool.

  “It’s just a cramp. I’ll be fine,” she gasped.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Angelo replied. “Can you get to this end?”

  As Rose worked her
way gingerly to the pool’s end, Maji waded in and wedged one shoulder under her arm, supporting her up the underwater stairway. She helped Rose to a chaise lounge. Angelo laid the chair flat and ordered his cousin to lie down, ignoring her protests. He motioned Maji to Rose’s feet, and rolled his sleeves up, going to work on her shoulders.

  “Whadda ya doing in that place, beating her up?” Angelo asked over her head.

  “Eff you,” Maji retorted. “We’ve done basic falls, escapes, a few throws, and some parkour warm-ups. Nothing heavy.”

  Rose flinched as Maji dug into her calf, and the two stopped bickering momentarily.

  “You don’t have to actually train her, you know,” Angelo pointed out. “She only has to go where you do, not do what you do.”

  Maji held his gaze. “Thought you wanted her to be able to take care of herself.”

  If Angelo had a comeback, it was lost to Frank’s arrival. “I got us steaks. Now, I know Rose likes it medium, Angie’s a rare—how you want yours, Ri?”

  “I’ll just have a salad, thanks.”

  “You off red meat?” Angelo queried.

  “Uh-huh,” Maji replied casually. “Since September.”

  A look passed between them, and Angelo nodded twice, slowly, then turned toward Frank. “Put that halibut on for her.” He stood and looked down at Maji. “Lemme grab you a towel. You’re dripping on the patient.”

  Maji reached over to Angelo’s table and grabbed his drink, handing it to Rose. “Lime juice,” she said by way of explanation. “Electrolytes.”

  Rose sipped through the straw, and made a puzzled face. “This has no gin. But I could swear he smells like it.”

  “Surprise,” Maji said. “Roll over. Please.”

  Maji’s hands worked their way down Rose’s spine, searching out the knots along it that caused her flinches. Finding a particularly bad one in the right side curve of the low back, she instructed, “Just breathe.” As Rose took a deep, slow breath, Maji placed two fingers on the troublesome spot and two on the back of Rose’s right knee, and held them simultaneously. Rose cried out.