She waves a hand. “Details.” She leans back in the chair, stretching, arms over her head, shirt riding up just enough to flash a strip of skin above the waistband of her shorts.
My brain short-circuits for half a second.
Focus, Hayes.
“We’re at an impasse,” she announces. “We’ve followed every thread we can from here. We’ve mapped every node. Until we get a fresh data packet from Arrow, we’re treading water.”
“Treading water is better than drowning,” I say.
“Spoken like someone who’s never treaded water for more than ten minutes.” She scrunches her nose. “I get wrinkly.”
“You get impatient,” I say. “That’s different.”
“Same vibe.” She swivels in the chair to face me fully, bare foot hooking the table leg. “We need to do something else. My brain’s buzzing.”
“You want to run more drills?” I offer. “We could go over the entry points again, run scenarios. Mentally map exit routes if someone comes up that drive?—”
“Knight.”
I shut up.
She gives me a look that’s half fond, half exasperated. “You’re already running a thousand scenarios,” she says. “I can see it from over here. I meantmedoing something before I start rearranging canned goods by color just to feel alive.”
I snort. “I’m sure Ranger would appreciate the chaos.”
“No, this is like… constructive chaos,” she says. Then her eyes light up. “Ooh. We could train more.”
“We trained yesterday.”
“And? You think bad guys are going to give me a day off?” She stands, motioning toward the small open space we’d clearedyesterday. “Come on. I want to drill until my muscles remember before my brain does.”
I open my mouth to say we should rest. Then I remember the way she reversed my holds yesterday. The satisfaction on her face when she dropped me, the light that came into her eyes when her body did what she’d trained it to do.
Control is rare for her in this mess.
Training gives some back.
“Okay,” I say. “But we go slow. No overextending. You tweak something out here, there’s no urgent care.”
She salutes with two fingers. “Yes, Dad.”
“I’m never telling you serious things again,” I mutter, setting my mug down and stepping into the makeshift “mat.”
She pads over, bare feet silent on the worn rug. Up close, she smells like toothpaste and coffee and my t-shirt. “Partner?” she asks, light but with that steady line under it.
Always.
“Partner,” I say.
We start with the basics she showed me yesterday.
I grab her wrist; she circles out.
She grabs my arm; I practice breaking the hold like she taught me.
We move into the rear grabs again, the choke releases. She corrects my stance, taps my knee when my weight’s wrong, pushes my shoulders until my posture is better.
“Again,” she says, brow furrowed in focus.
