“Listen, Doc.” Marino cracked his knuckles. “I really gotta smoke. You going to let me or do I have to go outside?”
“Outside,” Lucy said, jabbing her thumb toward the door and looking meaner than I knew she felt.
“And what if I fall into a snowdrift, you little runt?” he said.
“It’s four inches deep out there. The only drift you’re going to fall into is the one in your mind.”
“Tomorrow we’ll go out on the beach and shoot cans,” he said. “Now and then you need someone to give you a little humility, Special Agent Lucy.”
“You most certainly will not be shooting anything on this beach,” I said to both of them.
“I guess we could let Pete open the window and blow smoke out,” Lucy said. “But it just shows you how addicted you are.”
“As long as you smoke fast,” I said to him. “This house is cold enough as it is.”
The window was stubborn, but no more so than Marino, who managed to get it open after a violent struggle. Moving his chair nearby, he lit up and blew smoke out the screen.
Lucy and I placed silverware and napkins in the living room, deciding it would be cozier to eat in front of the fire than in Dr. Mant’s kitchen or cramped, drafty dining room.
“You haven’t even told me how you’re doing,” I said to my niece as she started working on the fire.
“I’m doing great.”
Sparks swarmed up the chimney’s sooty throat as she shoved more wood inside, and veins stood out in her hands, muscles flexing in her back. Her gifts were in computer science and, most recently, robotics, which she had studied at MIT. They were areas of expertise that had made her very attractive to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, but the expectation of her was cerebral, not physical. No woman had ever passed HRT’s punishing requirements, and I worried that she was not going to accept her limits.
“How much are you working out?” I asked her.
She closed the screen and sat on the hearth, looking at me. “A lot.”
“If your body fat gets much lower, you won’t be healthy.
“I’m very healthy and actually have too much body fat.”
“If you’re getting anorexic, I’m not going to have my head in the sand about it, Lucy. I know that eating disorders kill. I’ve seen their victims.”
“I don’t have an eating disorder.”
I came over and sat next to her, the fire warming our backs.
“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.”
” Good.”
“Listen”-I patted her leg-“you’ve been assigned to HRT as their technical consultant.
It has never been anyone’s assumption that you will fast-rope out of helicopters and run four-minute miles with the men.”
She looked over at me with flashing eyes. “You’re one to talk about limitations. I don’t see that you’ve ever let your gender hold you back.”
“I absolutely know my limitations,” I disagreed. “And I work around them with my mind. That is how I have survived.”
“Look,” she said with feeling, “I’m tired of programming computers and robots, and then every time something big goes down-like the bombing in Oklahoma City-the guys head off to Andrews Air Force Base and I get left.
Or even if I go with them, they lock me in some little room somewhere like I’m nothing but a nerd. I’m not a goddamn nerd. I don’t want to be a latchkey agent.”
Her eyes were suddenly bright with tears and she averted them from me. “I can run any obstacle course they put me on. I can rappel, sniper-shoot and scuba-dive. More important, I can take it when they act like assholes. You know, not all of them are exactly happy to have me around.”
I had no doubt of that. Lucy had always been an extremely polarizing human being, because she was brilliant and could be so difficult. She was also beautiful in a sharpfeatured, strong way, and I frankly wondered how she survived at all on a special forces team of fifty men, not one of whom she would ever date.
“How is Janet?” I asked.