of her men. “Thanks, John. I think he smashed every bone in my body when he fell on me.”
She took John’s outstretched hand, and allowed him to help her out from under the large body. Joie kicked the gun from the limp hand of the first man she’d shot, even as weakness overwhelmed her. She sat down abruptly as her legs turned to rubber. “Get the senator and Mrs. Goodvine to safety, John.” The wailing sirens were fading in and out. “Someone help that poor woman up.”
“We’ve got it, Joie,” one of the agents assured her. “We have the driver. How bad are you hurt? How many hits did you take? Give me your gun.”
Joie looked down at the gun in her hand and noted with surprise she was aiming it at the motionless attacker. “Thanks, Robert. I think I’ll just let you and John handle things for a while.”
“Is she all right?” She could hear the senator’s anxious voice. “Sanders? Are you hurt? I don’t want to just leave her there; where are you taking us?”
Joie tried to lift her arm to indicate she was fine, but her arm seemed heavy and uncooperative. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She just needed to be somewhere else, just for a short time while the medics fixed her up. It wasn’t the first time she’d taken a hit and she doubted it would be the last. She had certain instincts that had taken her to the top of her profession. It was very dangerous at the top.
Joie could blend in. Some of the men liked to call her the chameleon. She could look strikingly beautiful, plain, or just average. She could blend in with the tough crowd, the homeless, or the rich and glamorous. It was a valuable gift, and she used it willingly. She was called in for the difficult assignments, the ones where action was inevitable. Few others had her skill with knives or guns, and no one could disappear into a crowd the way she could.
She took herself out of her body, watched the frantic scene around her with interest for a few minutes. The others assigned to the senator and the Austrian agents had everything under control. She was being put into an ambulance and hustled away from the scene. More than anything, she detested hospitals. She’d seen too many of them and associated the smells with death. More than a few of her coworkers—her friends—had gone through hospital doors and had not ever left.
Joie didn’t know if she truly believed in astral projection, but she had been having out-of-body experiences from the time she was a toddler. She had perfected her craft over the years, directing herself to fly away and leave her physical body behind when she didn’t want to be where she was. It was a useful, exhilarating gift, and all too real. Sometimes too real. Many times the places she found herself in were far more intriguing than where she’d left her body and of course, the danger was always in not finding her way back.
She’d read numerous articles about astral projection and most seemed to happen to enlightened people, people of faith who believed in a higher, better realm. She was far more practical, dealing with the seamier side of life and finding her faith was in nature and the beauty of the wild, untouched places she sought out both on an astral plane and with her physical body when she had time off.
The smell of the hospital was overpowering, making her stomach lurch. People moved around her fast, poking needles into her, talking in low voices, cutting her shirt away. She didn’t take painkillers as a rule and tried to tell them, but no one listened to her. An oxygen mask was slapped over her face. What was the use in staying in a place she didn’t want to be when she could roam the world in her mind? Whether she was actually there or not mattered very little. It felt real when she journeyed out of her body. She took a deep breath of the oxygen and let go of her physical body.
She simply took herself away now, soaring free. She wanted to be outdoors, under the sky or beneath the earth in a world of subterranean beauty—it didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t within the walls of a hospital.
Joie felt weightless, free, skimming through the mountains she had studied so carefully. As she soared free, she planned