Tricky Dog Gals by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

9

“They must hate us. This sucks!” Alex groaned as he walked by her position.

“Yup!” Bethany spared a brief glance over her shoulder toward where the meeting had begun. The four of them—Tanya, Olivia, and the French Minister with his wife—sat inside on a small group of chairs.

Not safely behind the bulwarks of the lovely French Embassy half a mile away.

Not secure inside the steel bars and the dour brick edifice of the Ukrainian Embassy directly across the street.

No, they were sitting together in a Starbucks. Close by the window. Corner location of M and 34th Streets Northwest, meaning maximum traffic exposure to the coffee shop. Also maximizing their protectees exposure to attack.

“Not ours to question why…” Alex strolled down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

“…ours just to make it happen safely,” Bethany finished one of Lieutenant Jurgen’s favorite phrases. Unless the protectees were doing something actively stupid, patrols were not allowed to amend the choices of foreign diplomats. They said, “We’re doing this.” Then it was Foreign Branch’s job to keep them safe while they did it. Sometimes that was easy, sometimes hard.

Starbucks should be safe, but that didn’t make it any easier to guarantee.

She watched the street: four lanes of stop-and-go traffic, two outer lanes of parking, busy sidewalks, tons of bicycles…and that was just M.

“They definitely hate us,” Alex said the next time he and Valentin passed.

They’d both scouted the interior, and now were staying in constant motion to cover both entrances. Alex had ducked across the street and borrowed one of the Ukrainian security guards. He was posted at the 34th Street side door to ask everyone to please use the main entrance. Almost everyone used the one on M Street anyway, so it wasn’t much of a burden.

That meant anyone entering the coffee shop had to pass at least one of their dogs, but it didn’t help her nerves much.

“So, Tricky Dog Gal, is it serious?” Alex asked as he walked by. She and Tricky Dog were manning the front door. He was doing slow sweeps along the sidewalk, and the traffic whenever it stopped for the red light or early morning congestion.

“Give me a break, Alex,” she said the next time he passed. “I met her about twenty hours ago.” It only felt serious.

“Took me about thirty seconds,” he pointed up at the second story of the Ukrainian Embassy then walked on by.

She waited and watched.

He slowed on his next passage long enough to complete a couple of sentences. “All I did was step into some Stalin-era office to meet the protectee for an escort detail. There she was. Drop-dead gorgeous, royally pissed at the world, and Valentin greeting her like a long-lost angel. Maybe it took me a whole minute, but God I loved her sass right from the get-go.”

“I love Olivia’s gentleness,” it just slipped out when he came by again.

“A Marine Corps captain?”

“You have no idea.”

“Hell, Bethany, I had no idea you preferred women. Don’t go looking for me to suddenly have a clue about anything.

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