added.
He glanced at the Bureau SUV and shook his head. “Maybe we could tell them it was a vulture. You know, they sometimes fly into car windshields.”
“No,” she replied grimly. “It’s always better to tell them the truth. Even when it’s painful.”
“Guess you’re right.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”
“Hey. We all have talents. I think mine is to trip over my own feet at any given dangerous moment.”
“The SAC is going to be upset,” he remarked.
“I don’t doubt it,” she replied.
* * *
In fact, the Special Agent in Charge was eloquent about her failure to secure the fugitive. He also wondered aloud, rhetorically, how any firearms instructor ever got drunk enough to pass her in the academy. She kept quiet, figuring that anything she said would only make matters worse.
He didn’t take her badge. He did, however, assign her as an aide to another agent who was redoing files in the basement of the building. It was clerical work, for which she wasn’t even trained. And from that point, her career as an FBI agent started going drastically downhill.
She’d always had problems with balance. She thought that her training would help her compensate for it, but she’d been wrong. She seemed to be a complete failure as an FBI agent. Her superior obviously thought so.
He did give her a second chance, months later. He sent her to interrogate a man who’d confessed to kidnapping an underage girl for immoral purposes. Meadow’s questions, which she’d formulated beforehand, irritated him to the point of physical violence. He’d attacked Meadow, who was totally unprepared for what amounted to a beating. She’d fought, and screamed, to no avail. It had taken a jailer to extricate the man’s hands from her throat. Of course, that added another charge to the bevy he was already facing: assault on a federal officer.
But Meadow reacted very badly to the incident. It had never occurred to her that a perpetrator might attack her physically. She’d learned to shoot a gun, she’d learned self-defense, hand-to-hand, all the ways in the world to protect herself. But when she’d come up against an unarmed but violent criminal, she’d almost been killed. Her training wasn’t enough. She’d felt such fear that she couldn’t function. That had been the beginning of the end. Both she and the Bureau had decided that she was in the wrong profession. They’d been very nice about it, but she’d lost her job.
And Dal Blake thought she was a manly woman, a real hell-raiser. It was funny. She was the exact opposite. Half the time she couldn’t even remember to do up the buttons on her coat right.
She sighed as she thought about Dal. She’d had a crush on him in high school. He was almost ten years older than she was and considered her a child. Her one attempt to catch his eye had ended in disaster . . .
* * *
She’d come to visit her father during Christmas holidays—much against her mother’s wishes. It was her senior year of high school. She’d graduate in the spring. She knew that she was too young to appeal to a man Dal’s age, but she was infatuated with him, fascinated by him.
He came by to see her father often because they were both active members in the local cattlemen’s association. So one night when she knew he was coming over, Meadow dressed to the hilt in her Sunday best. It was a low-cut red sheath dress, very Christmassy and festive. It had long sleeves and side slits. It was much too old for Meadow, but her father loved her, so he let her pick it out and he paid for it.
Meadow walked into the room while Dal and her father were talking and sat down in a chair nearby, with a book in her hands. She tried to look sexy and appealing. She had on too much makeup, but she hadn’t noticed that. The magazines all said that makeup emphasized your best features. Meadow didn’t have many best features. Her straight nose and bow mouth were sort of appealing, and she had pretty light green eyes. She used masses of eyeliner and mascara and way too much rouge. Her best feature was her long, thick, beautiful blond hair. She wore it down that night.
Her father gave her a pleading look, which she ignored. She smiled at Dal with what she hoped was sophistication.
He gave her a dark-eyed glare.
The expression on his face washed away all her self-confidence. She flushed and pretended to