Free Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) by Kathryn Johnson

Bull an excuse for failing her. Failure meant the end of her agreement with Red Sands, and no search-and-rescue team for her mother.
    “One day is all I have with her?” said Derek, the young personal-defense instructor. He scratched his blond brush-cut and stared in disbelief at Bull after the TI brusquely explained her accelerated education. “You’re kidding, right?”
    Bull smirked. “Just see if you can keep her alive in a one-on-one.” He gave Mercy a disparaging head-to-toe scan. “They gang up on her, she’s dead meat anyway.”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she muttered.
    “Just being realistic, Princess.” Bull watched Derek move away from them to collect gear. To her surprise, the TI’s metallic gaze softened as he turned back to face her. “You still can tell the bastards to fuck themselves, you know.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Red Sands. Whatever they want you to do can’t be worth risking your life. And don’t for a minute think that’s not what they’ll expect.” His tone was dead serious, all the macho bullshit gone. He very nearly sounded sympathetic. “Just tell them to take their offer and stick it. You’re not interested. Walk away. It’s pretty obvious you don’t want to be here.”
    She looked at him, more shaken by this uncharacteristic show of concern than by his harassment and defeatist attitude.
    “I can’t.” She met his gaze. “I won’t.”
    He stared at her for a moment then nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s too bad then. Cause you ain’t got an icicle’s chance in August, sweetheart.” He swung around on his boot heels and stomped away.
    Mercy stood in the middle of the gym, watching her classmates slam each other down on padded fight mats. They looked like they’d been practicing for months. She felt chilled to her core, truly and thoroughly terrified. She had seen her demise in Bull’s eyes. Was she destined to lose?
    Suddenly she became aware of Derek speaking to her. “The goal is to not get yourself killed. No heroics. No dazzling kung-fu stuff. Got that?”
    “Got it,” she said fiercely, to mask the tremor in her voice. She blinked away the heat that presaged tears. She wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t! “Stay alive. Any other brilliant tips?”
    “Don’t be a wise ass!” Bull shouted from the bleachers.
    “Sorry,” she mumbled to the trainer.
    Derek shrugged. “No big deal. Let’s just see what you can do.”
    He demonstrated a couple of simple moves she could use to defend herself—all involving use of her attacker’s body weight and momentum. These she already knew, the senator having enrolled her in a self-defense course when she was a teenager. Derek added to the basics with a creative choreography of eye pokes, groin jabs, and instep gouges, intended to even up the odds between her and a stronger assailant, and buy her time.
    “Your main objective,” he told her, “is to escape in one piece. Break free and run like hell. Even an experienced agent won’t pit herself against a trained assassin unless forced to it.” He hesitated, studying her for a moment before going on. “I heard about the incident with that Russian ape in Georgetown. Your instincts must be good. I understand you’re pretty fast too.”
    “I do better in water than on land.”
    Competitive swimming had given her a powerful stroke and more upper body strength than many women. Derek said she could use that to her advantage and showed her a few extra maneuvers.
    Out of breath, muscles pinging and burning from a week that had pushed her body to its limit, she glared across the gymnasium at Bull, sending him a message: I’m not dead yet! And I’m not a quitter.

 
     
     
                                              8
     
    “You know how to reach me. Call me, mi amor .” Exasperated, Sebastian Hidalgo slapped the cheap burner phone down on the desktop. He’d use it for only one more day before trashing it, hoping