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After all the
trouble it had caused her, she’d be tormented the system was still in place and
affecting her eldest son.
    “Ready?” Xander flung open the door with a gleam in his eye.
    “Bring it on.”
    “Let’s do it.” Xander jogged over to the far side of the
room and perched on a metal bench to untie his shoelaces. Then he crossed over
to a cabinet and threw it open. He pulled out some headgear and large,
rectangular pads with straps on the back. Adam headed for the locker room to
pull on his sweats and cup. He knew Xander would go full contact. No sense in
getting injured. Though at the moment, getting a few groin kicks seemed as good
excuse as any to avoid kicking off the next generation of Program soldiers.
Even if he agreed to reproduce, there was no guarantee his kid would sign on to
the Program at age eighteen. There was always a choice, unless Shep planned on
removing that too.
    Xander joined him in the locker room and lifted a faded Jane’s
Addiction t-shirt over his head and dropped it where he stood. Then he pulled
on a plain black t-shirt. “Let’s go.” He gestured with his head toward the door
then headed out.

Chapter Two
     
    “You’re right, Steve, it was unprofessional and
irresponsible,” Loren said for what felt like the millionth time that morning.
If he was going to fire her, she wished he’d go ahead and do it already rather
than force her to listen to his harsh, repetitive lecture. She struggled not to
yawn, but she’d been up all night fighting an edgy restlessness alternating
with peaks of arousal.
    “If you had only stayed until the party ended,” her boss
said, and now Loren fully understood his anger. They’d been scooped. Big-time.
By several party guests with cell phones. If they were keeping score, it’d be
bloggers—one, credentialed journalists—zero. Well he couldn’t possibly be
angrier with her than she was at herself. If only she had stayed, she’d have
had a great view of the kidnapped birthday boy from her stance in the back of the
room. Maybe she could have even stopped the kidnapping and saved the parents
from heartbreak and the terror they had to be feeling now.
    “I did see something,” she said yet again.
    “You saw nothing. Two guys walking out to the balcony.”
Steve finally calmed enough to collapse into his chair. “That proves nothing.
They probably just went out for a smoke.”
    “Really? Two male guests, one with a possible blood-stained
shirt, strolled outside arm in arm? That doesn’t strike you as odd?” She
quailed under the exasperated look he threw her and knew she was grasping at
straws. She’d messed up and was going to have to pedal harder and faster to
prove herself once again as worthy of writing for the paper. If only she could
shake off the weird antsy feeling she’d carried since her dance last night.
    “No odder than a Washington Post journalist leaving
five minutes before the guest of honor is kidnapped.”
    Finally she stood. “Steve, I’ve apologized and I’ll keep
apologizing, but now time’s a-wasting. Do you want me to go clean my desk out?
Because I will, but I’d prefer to go back to my desk and get to work.”
    She and Steve held a staring contest for another few seconds
before her boss sighed and shrugged in defeat. “Fine. Go find Derrick. I’ve
assigned him the Christenson kidnapping. See if he needs an assist.”
    “Thanks,” she said with a conciliatory smile. “I promise you
won’t regret it.”
    She strode back to her desk to delay finding Derrick until
she could catch her breath and find her composure. She pretended to check email
until a pair of manicured male hands settled onto her shoulders in a mockery of
a massage. She craned her neck to see Derrick Bloom, top Post reporter
standing behind her. They weren’t the hands she wanted on her. There was no
comparison between last night’s dance partner’s strong hands on her waist and
Derrick’s almost effeminate hands.
    “What are you