Poe Read Free Page B

age, but he still showed up every day, and was more than willing to train Alex whenever she asked.
    “Speed bag,” he said the moment she walked in. “Fifteen minutes. Then crunches. Five hundred.”
    His German accent was still thick after all these years in the States. He was a refugee of the Cold War, a promising East German weightlifter who’d escaped through one of the tunnels under the Berlin Wall, something he almost never talked about.
    “Ancient history,” he’d say, if anyone brought it up.
    Alex was the only exception. In her he seemed to see some sort of kindred spirit, and had given her a glimpse of what his life had once been and how terrified he was the night he snuck into the West.
    “You have not known fear,” he told her, “until you’ve been alone in the dark and either freedom or death is only a few footsteps away.”
    Alex had never argued the point.
    Just hearing about it was frightening enough.
    Changing into her workout clothes, she wrapped her hands in tape, and headed out to the bag. Within the first few seconds, she could feel her tension begin to drain away. This was exactly what she needed, something to get her blood moving again. Push out the toxins and soak in the fresh oxygen.
    Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. The rhythm slow at first, then speeding up to her normal pace. Sweat beaded along her hairline and down her jaw as the knot in her stomach started to loosen.
    This was good. Really good.
    Emerick let her know when the fifteen minutes were up by clapping his hands twice and saying, “Crunches.”
    She hit the bag one last time, then moved over to the floor and began torturing her abdomen. She had counted to two hundred twenty-one, grunting with each crunch, when the buzzer at the far end of the room went off.
    Someone had entered the lobby.
    Emerick, who had been sweeping the area around the boxing ring as Alex worked, leaned his broom against the ropes and went to see who it was.
    Alex passed crunch number three sixteen when Emerick came back inside, accompanied by two other men. She assumed they were clients, and didn’t pay them any attention.
    Three thirty-five. Three thirty-six. Three thirty-seven. Three thirty-eight.
    “Alex?”
    Three thirty-nine.
    She slowed slightly on three forty, and looked over.
    “Someone here to see you,” Emerick said.
    She shifted her gaze to the man standing next to him.
    Jason McElroy.
    Son of a bitch.
    The suit was dark blue today and he was carrying a briefcase, but he wasn’t wearing a tie, maybe in deference to his surroundings. He took a few steps toward her, his buddy remaining back by the door to the lobby.
    “Good morning, Ms. Poe.”
    Ignoring him, Alex picked up her pace again. Three forty-one. Three forty-two. Three forty-three.
    She kept going, right through four hundred and all the way up to five, before she finally stopped. Lying back on the mat, she allowed herself to catch her breath, then hopped to her feet.
    “Okay, what next?” she asked Emerick.
    He thought for a moment. “Medicine ball.”
    With a nod, she moved over to where they kept the heavy, oversized ball, picked it up, and acknowledged McElroy’s presence for the first time. “You catch.”
    He blinked at her. “What?”
    “I throw. You catch.”
    “Uh, okay.”
    As McElroy turned to set his briefcase down, Alex tossed the ball. Sensing the movement, he swung his arms around and up just in time to catch it before it slammed into his hip.
    Alex motioned with her fingers. “Come on. Throw it back.”
    McElroy tested the heft of the ball, and heaved it in her direction. In a single, continuous motion, Alex caught it and sent it back.
    “I was hoping we might have that chat now,” he said.
    She nodded at the ball. “Keep it going.”
    As he threw it back, he said, “I realize you’ve been contacted by others from my organization in the past.”
    Alex made another smooth catch and return. Catching it again, McElroy grunted under his breath. “I