"Sorry to startle you," Kai said. "I'd not expected to see anyone else here this early in the morning." He glanced out over the misty green ,valley where he'd just run. "They've got a beautiful exercise course set up here, but you couldn't tell that from the number of people using it."
He took a half-step forward and saw her drift back easily. He pointed at the tan canvas bag near her end of the bench. "Could you toss the bag to me? I'd like my towel."
Her reserve broke as she lofted the bag to Kai. "How well did you do?"
Kai frowned. "Pardon?"
She smiled and Kai instantly decided he liked that very much. "Your shirt... it's from the Twenty-fifty New Avalon Myriameter Run. How well did you do?"
Kai pulled a white towel from his bag and mopped his face. "Uh, I finished in the fifties."
She lifted her other leg to the bench and began to stretch. "Was that place or time?" Her question came without challenge or skepticism and that pleased Kai.
She's not yet decided if I am a liar or a fellow runner whom she can trust."Place. My time was 43:35. I should have done better, but I died late in the race."
She laughed easily. "Heartbreak Hill!"
Kai matched her laugh with his own. "You know it? I mean you've run in the race?"
Her black hair whipped back and forth as she shook her head. "No, not the race, just the course. I'm not much for competition." She straightened up. "That hill is a killer. It may only be a kilometer and a half back through Davion Peace Park to the finish line, but it might as well be a light year after that hill."
Kai hung his towel around his neck and raised one of his legs to the bench. A droplet of sweat rolled off his nose as he bent forward to stretch out his hamstring. "You're right. The hill is death itself. Still, running through the park, I got a lift from the Silver Eagle memorial."
"How is that?" She shuddered visibly. "That statue is so horrible. That dog's all torn up and obviously in pain. Just as obviously the panther is going to kill it. I found it depressing." Her face screwed itself tight with distaste. "It's so violent I don't see why it's in the Peace Park."
Kai shifted legs and bent forward until the muscle in the back of his other thigh almost screamed. I remember when my Uncle Dan took me to the park and explained how the dog represented the Kell Hounds rescuing Melissa Steiner from a Kurita trap. Patrick Kell sacrificed himself to make sure his cousin Melissa could escape. The statue deserves to be in the Peace Park because people need to remember that great sacrifice is necessary for great gain.
Kai looked over at her. "I understand your point, but I differ with it. I think the child the hound is protecting—and the rope rising into the sky symbolizing the child's imminent rescue—makes it a hopeful display." He refrained from bragging about his family's connection with the statue. "In the race, I felt as torn up as the dog looks, but I pushed myself because I knew it wouldn't kill me and because I felt I owed myself the best finish I could muster."
"And I see your point." She stripped off the sweatshirt revealing the body suit's clinging tank-top. The muscles in her bare arms were well-defined and her flat stomach and smallish breasts marked her as a dedicated runner. She tossed the garment down on the bench. "Is it safe here?"
Shifting around, Kai leaned into the bench to stretch out his Achilles tendon and the muscles of his right calf. "Do you mean for you or the shirt?"
She gave him a half-grin. "The shirt. I may be just off the DropShip, but I can take care of myself."
Kai chuckled lightly. "The shirt should be fine. Skondia's criminal element would consider it beneath them. Since this world's penal colony is located on that silvery moon over there, and the ambient temperature is zero degrees Centigrade, they go for the big stuff. An NAIS sweatshirt isn't worth it."
She followed his line of sight to a small silver ball hovering between two jagged mountain peaks near the horizon. "Escaping from there requires more than carving a laser pistol from a block of sodium tallowate." She turned back to Kai. "What do they call it?"
Kai met her gaze squarely. "The crims call it the Last Mistress, but the locals just call it Justice."
She frowned. "That's cold ..."
Kai laughed. "No pun intended."
She shook her head emphatically. "No, no pun." She watched him for a moment, then nodded approvingly. "Not many people stretch out like they should after exercise. It's a good thing you're doing."
He nodded. "I don't want to be a tightened-up old man."
She frowned sympathetically. "Is there a family tendency toward that sort of thing? I mean, how are your grandfathers?"
Kai kept the smile on his face, but his mind was racing over his nearest ancestors. Grandpa Allard is fine. I know it's a common story that he has a rare, untreatable form of Alzheimer's Disease, but that's so no one will try to kidnap him and pump information out of him. His years in the Ministry of Intelligence Information and Operations would make him a valuable resource to enemy intelligence agencies. But my mother's father, he was nuts for years before he finally died. After hearing all the things he did, and seeing what Romano Liao—I still can't warm to the idea of her as my aunt—has done to bedevil my mother, I can only hope I take after the Allard side of the family.
"One is dead, but neither had real problems. I just don't want to leave anything up to chance." He wiped his face again with the towel, then stuffed it into his bag. "Well, enjoy your run. Five klicks out, you'll hit a downhill stretch that looks inviting, but save something. Beyond it is a slope that makes Heartbreak Hill look like a speed-bump."
Suspicion crept into her voice. "And after that?"
'The hill's big brother."
"Thanks for the warning," she tossed back over her shoulder as she headed off along the running trail.
Kai watched until her head sank out of sight, then smacked the palm of his right hand against his forehead. Idiot. She said she was just off a DropShip. She's probably not had time to make many friends and you don't have a date for the Marshal's reception tonight.
He glanced at her crumpled t-shirt and wished he had pencil and paper to leave a message with it. Slightly angry with himself, Kai started back up the road to the Military Compound and the small house he shared with another Leftenant in the Guards. He stopped at the crest of the hill and searched vainly for a view of her. Then he abandoned his vantage point and retreated home, silently berating himself for not even getting her name.
* * *
"Blake's Blood, Kai!" Dressed only in a towel wrapped around his narrow waist, Bevan Pelosi pounded his fist against the door jamb. Steam still drifted from the shower stall beyond him, but his deep voice suffered no competition from the faucet's constant dripping. "How could you let such a woman get away?"
Kai shot his tow-headed housemate a daggered glance. "This is me we're talking about, Bevan, not you. I do not have your vast experience with women. Give me an opportunity and I just screw it up."
Bevan's hair hung in wet ringlets over his forehead but did not hide his frown. "I was thinking about this girl in the shower ..."
"Hence the smile on your face," Kai quipped. "And the flush of your skin ..."
"Wise guy!" Bevan made a face. "Why the hell didn't you just come back here and write a note, then drive back down to the park and leave it? You could've used my aircar. You know where I keep the keys."
Kai turned from the mirror and raised an eyebrow. "My dear friend, I actually thought of that this morning." Kai glanced at a waste receptacle by his desk. "I would have done exactly as you suggest except that your guestfrom last evening had already taken the keys so she could go out and buy all those things she put into that omelet this morning."