Designated Targets

As she waited for a porter to appear with her luggage at a very primitive LaGuardia Field, she swayed on her feet and fought to keep her eyes open. She could feel people looking at her. In her Armani jeans, Redback boots, and HotBodz thermopliable rain jacket, she was obviously Twenty-first. But then she thought, these guys are very obviously ’temp. They dressed differently, they looked different, they even moved differently. Part of it was obvious; sitting more primly, for example. Although she suspected that was partly a class thing. We must slouch around like a bunch of vulgar low-lifes by the standards of anyone with enough money to afford private air travel in 1942, she thought. But there was some subtle stuff, as well, a sort of stiffness and “blockiness,” and a way of swinging the arms and legs that was different from her time—perhaps the movement equivalent of saying cannot rather than can’t. She’d noted that even the basics set them apart, like how they got into a car. People here sat and then swung their legs in, rather than climbing in with their asses hanging out.

And of course, women moved in a more distinctly “feminine” way. They sometimes reminded her of the stylized way a drag queen of her time would move his hands and hold his head. To Julia, the handful of women disembarking from her flight or waiting for someone in the arrivals lounge all seemed artificial and blatantly coy. To them, she supposed, she must look like some sort of bull dyke from hell.

Man, she was too fucking tired. She patted the personal flexipad peeking out from under the bright yellow slicker. There was no local net for it to link to in New York, but Julia had been working on story files during the flight, so she hadn’t wanted to pack it away.

Plus, she thought, it was a lot safer on her hip than in her luggage. The black-market price of an Ericsson T4245 Flexipad was probably upward of two or three million bucks.

That’s why the first piece of hand luggage she’d unpacked was her trusty SIG Sauer, which she’d made a great play of openly fitting into her shoulder holster. That was at least one good thing about the 1940s. No airport security, or none that she recognized as such, anyway.

The terminal at LaGuardia—still known as New York Municipal Airport—was relatively quiet for an early evening. Her flight had disembarked, and its passengers were awaiting their baggage. A flight to the Bahamas was due out in forty minutes and one from Toronto was due in. But the place felt like a ghost town.

She was contemplating a limo run to her apartment, which was a little exciting because the interior designers should have finished the renovations by now, when her arms were pinned to her side from behind, and a sandpaper rough face pressed up against her cheek.

“Guess who!” Dan Black whispered into her ear. “Don’t hit me!” he added quickly, hopping away, just in case her reflexes got the better of her.

She jumped when he grabbed her. Her heart skipped forward a few beats, but she didn’t grab his nuts and try to rip them off, as she had last time. They were both learning. Dan, she noticed, had turned his body a little to the side, in order to avoid just such an attack.

“Hiya, sexy,” she said, beaming, her lethargy falling right away with a hot surge that started somewhere down in her thighs and ran right up through her stomach until she was sure her face was flushed bright red.

“Hello, darling,” Dan said, a tad more demurely.

Julia, however, grabbed him by the belt and wrenched him into her, keeping hold of the buckle while she slipped her other hand around to grab a butt cheek. She gave it a good squeeze as they kissed. “God, it’s good to see you,” she said.

As they parted slowly, both of her legs now firmly clamped around one of his, Dan patted her jacket where it covered the handgun. “You expecting trouble from your editor?”

“Girl can’t be too careful,” she said, smiling. “Get me home quickly, and you can take it off. Or you could leave it on, if you think you’d like that.”

“Julia. People could be listening.”

“Really? Well, that’s a little kinky, but if you want it that way . . .”

A porter appeared, carrying her bags. Two Antler suitcases, with retractable wheels and a telescoping handle, which he clearly thought of as the greatest invention he’d ever seen. And one medium-sized backpack in jungle camouflage, still carrying one large, faded bloodstain—about which he seemed less enthused.

She tipped him what felt like a ridiculously small amount and shouldered a smaller backpack full of electronic equipment: her carry-on luggage. Then he followed them out to the limo pool.

“I didn’t expect to see you at all, Dan,” she said. “It’s so nice of you to surprise me like this.”