Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,29

you can do, about finding out if you have enough grit and backbone—and common sense—to survive what you’ll be facing every single day.”

She felt her temper heat and struggled to keep it controlled. “I survived the academy. I can survive whatever is out there.”

Burke studied her for a long time. “Let’s find out.”

* * *

* * *

Not having a service weapon of her own, she had accepted Captain Burke’s when he offered to let her use it. He’d made no comment about that except to say that he didn’t think she would have a problem acquiring a weapon in Bennett and it probably was best not to have one with her on the train.

After the shooting range, Burke drove her to a gym where Officers Karl Kowalski and Michael Debany tested her hand-to-hand and self-defense skills. It wasn’t textbook academy. Some of the moves they threw at her were down and dirty, the kind of moves a person used to survive. They didn’t spare her from getting bruises, but she sensed that they weren’t trying to inflict an injury that would prevent her from taking the job.

“You’ll do,” Kowalski said after one of her moves ended with Debany landing on the mat. “You have any questions?”

“Is there anyplace where I can take a shower or at least wash up a bit?” she asked. The place didn’t say it was a men’s-only gym; it just didn’t make any accommodation for women—not in terms of locker rooms, showers, or toilets.

Kowalski grinned. “Captain took care of that.” He waved a hand toward the locker room. “Ladies first.”

“Well, after me,” Debany said. He walked into the locker room, then came back out in a minute. “Clear.”

When they’d gone in to change into workout clothes, Kowalski had waved her to a different aisle of lockers while he and Debany changed in the next one over. They had stuffed her daypack into a locker with Debany’s things and didn’t explain why. They didn’t have to. She’d seen the look on the men’s faces who had waited to go in—and she’d seen them slide a look at Captain Burke, who seemed to be paying no attention but, most likely, could give someone an accurate description of every man who was there. If her clothes had been by themselves in a guest locker, she might have found them torn—or fouled. But none of the men who had come in after them would touch a cop’s locker, no matter what they thought of her presence. It was equally clear, at least to her, that no one on the right side of sanity messed with Douglas Burke.

She took a quick shower, then dressed in clean underclothes, a tank top, and a shirt that she tucked into her good pair of jeans. She pulled her hair back in a low ponytail and went out to wait with Captain Burke while Kowalski and Debany showered.

As they walked back to the car, with Burke in the lead, Debany said, “My sister lives in Bennett now. She can give you the skinny about the town and everyone she’s met.”

“You have any questions for us?” Kowalski asked again, slowing down and keeping an eye on his captain.

Dozens. But there was one she’d like answered before she got on that train. Jana pulled out a slip of paper from the back pocket of her jeans. Then she hesitated.

“I’m not like the rest of the people who applied for jobs in Bennett, am I?” she asked.

Kowalski shook his head. “Everyone else was Simple Life or Intuit.”

“Intuit?” She’d heard stories about people who could “sense” things, but she’d had the impression from things she’d overheard at the academy that most cops thought that people who claimed to have feelings about things were just grifters who cheated gullible people out of money or goods.

“Intuit communities are usually tucked away in the wild country and aren’t human controlled,” Debany said. “But a few of those communities have been hiding in plain sight for years. Like Ferryman’s Landing on Great Island.”

“What about towns in the Finger Lakes?” she asked.

“Ever heard anyone at the academy refer to a town as a woo-woo community?” Kowalski asked in turn.

“Yes.”

“Odds are good the place is an Intuit town.”

Was she being foolish to trust these men? She’d trusted a few fellow cadets when she’d first arrived at the academy, thinking their overture of friendship had been real. That had been a harsh lesson, the first of many. But now, what did she have to lose? “I