Baltimore, Thursday Evening, Right Before Sunset

[spin_kick_snap]

Things that really plucked Kathy's last nerve: 1) turning around and seeing a giant mountain of luggage behind her at the gym when she was perfectly well-adjusted, thank you, and 2) turning around and seeing a trail of mooks trussed like the Thanksgiving turkey behind her on patrol the night before when she was perfectly capable of handling herself, thank you. Never mind that she hadn't noticed at least three of them on her tail--in fact, that just made it even more annoying You know what made someone feel even more resentful? Knowing that she should be feeling grateful instead. Ugh! Not that she had any idea who this 'mysterious benefactor' was--the brief glimpses she'd caught of him showed that he was too tall to be Eliot and too compact to be Mr. Hardison. Which meant that Eliot had farmed this...this...this baby-sitting job off on someone else, because he couldn't be bothered.

So, yeah. She'd gone to sleep fulminating over that and woke up with a duffel bag at the foot of her bed that said Never going to be good enough and you know what? Kathy was just done. The baggage had only gotten worse throughout the day until Kathy had shoved her gi into a backpack and lit out for Baltimore after lunch. Anything to be away from that stupid island for the rest of the day. And, hey, maybe that would make it a lot ha.rder for her obnoxious shadow to find her, too.

Honestly, could today get any worse?

[For them that know who they are, please! NFB]

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[spin_kick_snap]

"I understand," Kathy said, bringing her hands out of her pockets to examine them. Her knuckles were red and bloody, the skin split from where she'd cut it on the last guy's teeth. "I should probably wrap my hands anyway. They're going to swell and bruise if I don't."

What? She was just a totally normal teenage girl doing totally normal teenage girl things. Like beating down bad guys in back alleys.

[vdistinctive]

"Wrap them and ice them," Shelley suggested. "Got plenty of cold packs on hand. Always do when it's a Spencer job."

"Shaddup." Eliot found a stool and grabbed a seat under one of the brighter lights. "Can we get on with this, please?"

He didn't think things were perfectly fine between him and Kathy just yet. He did, for the first time since last Monday, have the feeling that they could be.