“Can I try some combinations?” she asked.

“Not yet.” Clive shook his head. “Get the basics down first.” He watched her assault the heavy bag. “You’ve got good discipline, Taz. Is that a geemo thing? Are all of them like you?” He scratched one ear. “Mr. Lindberg’s been on the lookout for ages, but you’re the first one I ever met.”

“I don’t know.” She thought of her wild, rambunctious cousins in Huatulco. “No, I don’t think so.”

“What in the world made you decide to take up boxing?”

“Guy killed my brother in the ring.” She concentrated on driving her knee into the bag like a steady, blurred piston. “Guy was a—a GMO, like me. I wanted to fight him.”

“Did you win?”

“Uh-huh.”

He patted her back. “Good girl.”

For the rest of the morning, Clive concentrated on working one-on-one with Pilar. That afternoon, Rogers led them on another run. He skipped the obstacle course in favor of setting up a regimen of strength training.

“We’re going to build up your upper-body strength,” he told Pilar with grim determination. “You’re going to get over that goddamn wall or die trying.”

“Don’t remind me.”

The second day was worse than the first. By the time their afternoon training session ended, Pilar could barely move. She hobbled back to their room and collapsed on the bed.

Loup winced. “Want me to give you a back rub?”

“No.” Pilar closed her eyes. “I don’t want anyone touching me. Not even you. I don’t want my clothes touching me.”

“Hot bath? It’ll help.”

“Yeah, okay.”

She emerged from the bath moving marginally less stiffly and sat gingerly on the bed. “You’re not even sore, are you?”

Loup shrugged in apology.

Pilar sighed. “Baby… don’t take this wrong. I know how hard you’ve worked. But right now we’re trying to do the same thing and it’s kinda killing me. And I know you want to help, but you can’t. You’re the opposite of helping.”

“I’m sorry,” she offered.

“I know, I know. It’s not your fault.” Pilar was silent a moment. “Loup, I’m scared, okay? I don’t like it here. Addie’s nice and Clive’s okay, but no one really wants me here. And I don’t know if I can do it.”

“We don’t have to—”

“I know, I know!” Pilar interrupted her. “But the thing is, it’s perfect for you, isn’t it? It’s exactly the kind of thing you were born to do.”

Loup didn’t answer.

“Magnus was right,” Pilar said. “I don’t want to hold you back. Maybe it was stupid to think we could work as a team.”

“I don’t want to do it without you,” Loup said steadily. “Pilar, you’re the only person in the world outside of Santa Olivia that I’m absolutely, positively sure I trust with my whole heart. And I need that. You and Tommy, Father Ramon and Sister Martha, all the Santitos, you taught me that much. You don’t have to be a secret agent bodyguard. All you have to do is get through this training.”

Pilar gave her a reluctant glance. “What happens if I really can’t, Loup? I don’t want you to give it up for me.”

“Not your choice.” Loup shook her head. “Anyway, you asked me to give up the fight, and I didn’t. I owe you one.”

“Yeah, but that was different. I’d be keeping you from something good, not something that would get you thrown into prison. And I think… I think I’d have a hard time living with myself if I did that to you.” Pilar stared at the ceiling, coming to a decision. “Okay. I’ll keep trying. But I think I kinda need to pretend you don’t exist for a while if I’m gonna get through this.” She yawned. “That asshole Rogers says I oughta see a big difference in a couple of weeks.”

Loup blinked, confused. “So… you want to pretend I don’t exist for a couple of weeks?”

“Okay, that’s not exactly right, but kind of. Just to keep myself from feeling all jealous and inadequate like that fucking Sabine.” She gave Loup a pleading look. “I know it sounds weird, but I think it’ll help.”

“Okay,” Loup agreed without really getting it. “I’ll talk to Addie about getting a room of my own until then.”

“No, don’t do that. I still want you here.”

“Pilar, you’re not making any sense!”

“I know.” She flopped backward onto the bed. “Just humor me, okay?”

“I guess.”

For the next two weeks, they lived in an odd coexistence. In the gym and on the trail, Pilar ignored Loup altogether, concentrating on her trainers’ instructions. The rest of the time, she only mostly ignored her.

It hurt, an unfortunate reminder of the year that had followed Tommy’s death, a year in which Pilar had refused to talk to her, a year of grief, confusion, and bewilderment in which Loup hadn’t understood that Pilar’s rejection was born of a fear of losing her.

At least this time, she understood, and understood that if Pilar failed at this, it would change things between them. That thought evoked a sensation of nothingness that told her it was an outcome to fear.

“Are the two of you not speaking?” Adelaide asked Loup after the third silent meal she and Pilar spent together. “You seemed so very fond!”

“No, we’re okay, I think. She’s pretending I don’t exist for a while.”

“Whatever for?”

“Because this is really hard for her and she doesn’t want to be jealous of me.”

“Hmm.” Adelaide looked doubtful. “That almost makes sense.”

“But not quite, right?”

“Well.” She laid a hand on Loup’s shoulder, then withdrew it. “If it gets her through it, I suppose it does.”

By the end of the first week, Clive let Loup throw whatever combinations she wanted on the heavy bag. She experimented, mixing punches and kicks with elbow and knee strikes. He gave her a lesson on how to fall and taught her a few basic throws, then let her practice with Ben Rogers while he focused on working with Pilar.

“Ah, shite!” Rogers grunted as he hit the mat. “Not so hard.”

“Sorry. I’m learning.”

He sat up and rubbed the small of his back. “Clive oughta be working with you. No one takes a fall like Clive.”

“He’s working with Pilar.”

“Yeah, what’s the story there? We’re supposed to go all out busting our bollocks to get your sweetheart through this, and you’re not even talking?”

“She’s concentrating,” Loup informed him.

“She’s trying hard, that’s for sure,” he admitted grudgingly.

Pilar did better on her second attempt at the obstacle course. She made it almost all the way across the monkey bars and didn’t fall off the balance beam, but she chickened out on the drop and failed to clear the pit, though not by much. It was the steep assault wall at the end that was the worst.

“You’ll get it,” Rogers assured her. “You’ve got five weeks to go.”

“Ow,” Loup said that night in their room when Pilar undressed. She had serious bruises blossoming on both shins. “Poor you!”

“It’s the fucking pit,” Pilar said briefly. “I hit the edge.”

It was hard to resist the urge to encourage her. “Pilar, if you can handle falling into the pit, you can handle the ladder drop.”

“I didn’t fall into the pit on purpose.” Pilar shot a glare her way. “And don’t talk to me. Not yet.”

“Okay, okay.” Loup picked up her travel book and started reading.

On the second week, Clive eased up on the ferocity of his training and began interspersing their sessions with lectures.

“Bear in mind that everything I’m teaching you is a last resort, girlies,” he said to them. “You’ve got to know it and be prepared to use it, but your business is to protect the client. You want to learn to spot trouble and head it off in advance. If you can’t, your first move is to extract the client. Get ’em the fuck out of there. If you can’t do that, try to control the situation. Keep a cool head, keep it from escalating. Understand?”

They nodded.

“Nine times out of ten, you can talk someone out of whatever piece of dumbwittery they’re contemplating. But that tenth time…” He raised a finger. “You’ve got to be prepared. And no half measures. What you start, you finish.”

“What about, like, assassins and stuff?” Loup asked.

Clive smiled a little. “You’re not likely to be guarding heads of state, sweetheart. Or at least not as part of a team specializing in counterterrorism. You’re a novelty act—for show, for bragging rights.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed.

“Don’t worry. If you get through this first six weeks, I’ll still teach you the basics of threat assessment. Just don’t think you’re going to be running around shouting ‘He’s got a gun!’ and tackling bad guys. More likely you’ll be fending off some puffed-up pop star’s groupies or attending a meeting with some Japanese corporate mogul who wants to show the world he can afford to hire the one and only.”

“Sitting the babies,” Loup murmured.

The corners of Pilar’s mouth twitched.

“What’s that?” Clive asked. “Oh, babysitting. Too right.”

The routine—and Pilar’s silence toward Loup—continued mostly unbroken for another week. Clive decided Pilar had made enough progress to spend some time working the bag on her own, and spent some time with Loup on throws and locks and what he called come-along grips.