Free Hard Knocks by Zoe Sharp

Schmitt, what conclusions do you draw from this?” he managed to grit out from between them.
     
    Elsa closed her folder and shrugged. “That the bodyguards were careless and that they totally underestimated the level of threat to their client,” she said at last.
     
    Gilby took a breath as though he was fighting to control a temper that was rising like fire. He won, but I was sitting close enough to see the cost of that victory manifest itself in the tremor of a tiny muscle at the side of his jaw.
     
    He nodded, jerky. “Very good, Frau Schmitt,” he bit out. His narrowed gaze swept across the rest of us, just in case we were thinking of making any smart remarks. “Class dismissed!”
     
    He stalked out of the room with the instructors following him in a wave. I looked round and saw that most of the students were staring blankly at each other. Like me, they knew something was going on, but they had no idea what.
     
    “Well, Elsa my darlin’, I don’t know what it is that you’ve said that should upset the Major so much,” Declan remarked as he got to his feet, “but I don’t think he’ll be round to bring you a cup of tea and a biscuit first thing tomorrow morning, that’s for sure.”
     

Five
     
    On Day Two the four of us thought we’d spike our instructors’ guns by setting our alarm clocks half an hour earlier than the six o’clock they’d told us would be our wake-up call. We should have known that wasn’t the way things were going to work.
     
    Todd came barging in at 5 am anyway, just like yesterday.
     
    When Elsa sleepily protested we had been told we had another hour in bed, he launched into a screaming fit that any drill sergeant I’ve ever come across would have stood back and admired. As he ranted, flecks of spit sprayed from his lips like a nobbled racehorse. We scrambled out of our beds and fled into our running gear before he had a full-blown embolism.
     
    As we hustled down the stairs I wondered briefly if Declan was right and Todd’s reaction did have anything to do with Elsa’s lecture of the day before.
     
    Physical training this morning involved our usual merry little five kilometre jog, followed by twenty minutes of sprints and press-ups. Todd only finally called a halt when one of the most unfit actually threw up. I think he’d been waiting for that as some kind of signal.
     
    “If that’s what makes him let up on us, remind me to puke after about ten minutes tomorrow morning,” Jan said wearily as we hauled ourselves, groaning, up the staircase and headed for the showers. It might just have been the floor creaking as we traipsed along the corridors to our dormitory, but I wouldn’t have sworn to it.
     
    A few minutes later I was standing under water as hot as I could bear it. As I let the stinging spray pummel the back of my neck I recalled my brief phone conversation with Sean the night before. He’d asked if I was getting on OK, coping with the regime. I was beginning to think that even my cautious yes might have been over optimistic.
     
    I’d hesitated over ringing him so soon, as though I didn’t have enough to say to justify the call. His tone when he picked up seemed a little distant, and I’m not just talking about him being half a continent away.
     
    I greeted him coolly and realised I could hear the same restraint in my own voice.
     
    Still, when I’d filled him in on Gilby’s reaction to Elsa’s report on the Heidi Krauss kidnap, he’d seemed interested enough in that.
     
    “I’ll get Madeleine onto it straight away,” he’d said. “I should have something for you the next time you call.”
     
    “I didn’t know if it was relevant, but the way they clammed up, you never know.” I’d shrugged, feeling oddly pleased.
     
    “No,” he’d said, “if there’s anything you think I should know, then call me. I need to talk to you regularly, Charlie. I need to know you’re OK, that nothing’s happened to you.”
     
    My heart jumped,