Such a level of fitness brought with it a certain don’t-screw-with-me vibe that stopped most fights before they started — and garnered him stacks upon stacks of cocktail napkins with women’s phone numbers.
A bright scar, the size and shape of a football, stood out against the tan skin of the ribs on his right side. His blue board shorts covered a corresponding scar on his buttock and thigh, all from a long-forgotten Russian land mine near Mazar-i-Sharif. The mine put him in the hospital, but it had turned his interpreter into a red mist. Bowen thought about that good man each time he saw the scar in the mirror. Few people ever even noticed the scar at first, focusing instead on the full head of silver hair on a seemingly healthy man in his early thirties.
Garcia looked up when he approached and nodded him over with a wide smile that could have stopped a charging buffalo in its tracks. Bowen imagined she’d hooked Jericho Quinn with much the same look.
“Hey there,” she said, as he stepped into the cool water. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Though the water park was relatively crowded, the moms and kids that made up the bulk of the patrons were much more interested in the high-octane slides and wave pools than a simple whirlpool tub. Ronnie shared the ten-by-fifteen pool with only a couple of pimple-faced teenage boys who lounged along the wall opposite her, willing themselves to look ten years older. They cast expectant glances every few moments, just waiting for her to stand up so they could get a better look at her. The boys stared at Bowen with dagger eyes when he encroached on their territory, but cowered when he came closer — small dogs, brave only when safely behind their screen doors.
Bowen gave the boys a polite nod. He remembered all too well the mind-numbing rush of hormones he would have felt at their age in the pool with someone with the curves of Veronica Garcia. Pushing through the waist-deep water until he was beside her, he slid down the cool tile wall with his shoulders against the concrete lip of the pool.
Garcia rolled solid shoulders as if she was trying to relax. Bowen, whose army shrink had told him after the nonsense in Afghanistan that he should use his artistic talent to work though his issues, watched this woman and told himself he was thinking only of what fine art the lines of her body would produce. His artist’s eye picked up the slight unevenness in her collarbones — a car wreck, maybe. She had a tiny mole on the lobe of her left ear — something he would certainly highlight if he were drawing her face.
He blinked to clear his thoughts, covering with a smile. “How have you been?” he asked.
She glanced back and forth, dark eyes scanning the crowds. The last six inches of her black hair pooled in the water around her neck, mopping bronze shoulders when she moved.
“I’m good,” she said, her voice detached, distant. She scooted closer so her thigh brushed his under the water.
Bowen knew it was just so their conversation would be more private, but it still made him catch his breath. He hid it with a cough, he hoped.
“Did anyone try to follow you?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said honestly. It hadn’t really occurred to him to look for a tail, but he was pretty sure he would have noticed one had it existed.
“Okay,” Garcia said, lips pursed as if mulling over one last time how much she wanted to tell him. “I need your help,” she finally said, “but I have to warn you again. It could get you in a lot of trouble.”
“Trouble is my middle name.” Bowen smiled, hoping to tamp down the drama.
“It’s ‘danger,’ Mango.” She smiled. “Danger is your middle name.”
“Are you sure?” Bowen said. “Because I get in a hell of a lot of trouble.” He leaned back, draping his arms along the pool deck. They were close enough it was impossible to avoid touching one another and his fingers brushed the moist skin of her shoulders. “Anyway, I’m used to it. Trouble, I mean.” He coughed, clearing his thoughts. “So, what can I help you with?”
Garcia leaned in close and let her head tilt sideways. Her damp hair slid across his arm. “Are you familiar with the IDTF?”
Bowen gave a thoughtful nod. “Who isn’t?” he said. Mention of that agency alone was enough to sour anything positive about sitting in a hot tub with a beautiful woman. “President Drake’s new department of Internal Defense. Rooting out the bad apples in government and safeguarding the freedoms of all Americans… if you believe their press.” He turned to look her in the eye. “Which, as far as I can see, no one in the government does.”
“Well,” Garcia said, eyes still flicking nervously around the crowded water park. “A couple of their goons did a black bag job on my house. The bastards even put a camera in my bathroom.”
“Yeah,” Bowen chuckled. “I saw that. It’s already up on the Internet at Ronnieshowers.com.”
She slammed a sharp elbow into his ribs. “Shut up.”
“I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t joke. That’s a bad deal.”
“Anyway…” Garcia’s chastening glare faded slowly. “They followed me to a gas station, so I knocked one of them out with a two-by-four and broke the other guy’s leg with his car door—”
Bowen sat up straighter. Grimacing, he showed her the flat of his open hand. “I don’t think you should tell me stuff like that.”
“If you’re going to help me, there are things you need to know.”
“My drill sergeant used to tell us that some things are nice to know and some are nuts to know. Any alleged assaults against federal agents…” Bowen shook his head. “That’s just nuts for us to talk about.”
“Gus.” She ignored him, big eyes blinking as she gazed across the water. “If you knew half the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t even bother to read me my rights before you carted me off to the electric chair. Jericho trusts you, so I trust you. I may as well come clean and confess. If you have to arrest me, so be it.” She glanced at him from downcast lashes, watching for a reaction. “Did you hear they got Virginia Ross last night?”
Bowen gave her a slow nod as if he was still making up his mind on what to do. “It was all over the news,” he said.
“I’ll bet.” Garcia quit talking as a blond man in his late twenties walked down the steps to enter the whirlpool. He was alone, in good shape, with a couple of scars on his right shoulder that looked like shrapnel wounds. Conventional wisdom said that if an IDTF agent had war wounds, they were likely to be in the back from running away or getting shot by his own guys.
Garcia stood up, unwilling to take any chances. “Let’s swim,” she said.
Water ran in silver rivulets down her body, following the swells and dips of her skin. Bowen had drawn dozens of different women and wasn’t the type to be easily overwhelmed by a girl in a bathing suit, but Veronica Garcia’s purple one-piece made it hard for him to swallow. It was as modest as humanly possible on a body like hers, but no wet fabric capable of being sewn into clothing was truly able to contain the parts of her that needed containing.
Rather than walk to the steps at the other end of the whirlpool, Garcia put both hands on the concrete and pressed herself up, bringing one knee and then her entire body onto the pool deck in one smooth motion. It would have been easy for her to look like a wallowing seal, but she pulled it off like a dancer. Standing, she reached back to adjust the seat of her swimming suit, and then tilted her head to wring the water from her hair. Her movements carried an innocent allure that Bowen suspected she wasn’t even aware she possessed.
The new guy in the pool followed her with his eyes, but that was likely a function of watching her curves try to escape the bathing suit rather than any thought of seeing her arrested. Bowen’s Montana-born grandfather would have described her body as a litter of puppies trying to squirm their way out of a gunnysack.