Handling Things (working title) by CE Dalton

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Chapter 2

Beth got back in time for her two 'problem children' to show up on the same day. They were her first trainees, she'd had them since she graduated to handling her own people. "Hey, Al, Celia. Let me drop stuff in my office and make a report then I'll come help you both." They nodded, going to the gym. She went upstairs to the head office, finding the team's general manager up there. "She's on a monitoring bracelet. We have the system here to read her location. It doesn't have an alarm but she had to list where her nearest grocery store and all that is."

She handed over the judicial order. "We have to fax the judge a form each time she has to travel, with all the pertinent details like the itinerary. It's not bad and I've filled them out for one of our other trainees who was on probation. The trial won't be anytime in six months. She's down talking to one of our therapists right now about all this. Her lawyer suggested that it'd be a good idea and I agreed it might help her work through the grief since she's not married or anything like that."

"That's fine," Hank agreed. "The owner was a bit iffy but when I told him what happened he said she should've stabbed him more times." He stood up. "I'll go talk to her. We want to support her without making the team look bad."

"Then I'd get Samantha into rehab," she said. "The guards reported she's shown up drunk two other times. Thankfully without trying to kill them this time."

"I've tried."

"I can find you a nice one."

He smiled. "We'll see." He patted her on the arm. "She's good," he told the head of the center.

"She is. We're all looking forward to her finishing her degree so she can take care of more of our people." Hank left and he looked at her. "You good to work today?"

"I am. Al and Celia are in so I'll go help them for now." She smiled. "I talked to her as well. She's...she's healing but it's not going to be fast."

"I didn't figure it would be. Go." Beth nodded, heading down to the range. Al was a competitive shooter. He wasn't real tall but his dirty blond hair done in a floppy, casual haircut made him look younger than his thirtyish age. Celia was now an ice skater, formerly a rhythmic gymnast but a severe shoulder injury had made her change as a teenager. Al was cracking jokes as he checked over his weapons when she found them.

Beth looked at the targets and got him more, then more shells. He was doing the long course today. "How was your week?"

"Better," he admitted. "The ex is no longer nagging me about things." Beth smiled. "How's the new girl?"

"Healing. Barely but healing."

"I'd have beaten him to death with my hands," Celia said. "No stabbing needed."

Al nodded. "Definitely, even if I hadn't taken judo when I was younger." He lined up his first shot and fired. "Someone screwed with my scope."

"Want me to get the fingerprint powder or do you think it was the armory guy?"

"It was in my locker," he said. She got the fingerprinting kit. This sort of thing didn't come up all that often but athletes were a jealous bunch at times. She took them to security test against their people and trainees. One popped up. She carried the printout up there.

He checked other things. "She did a fantastic job," Al muttered. "But that explains why she quit nagging for a while."

"Want me to have a note put into her file?" Beth asked. "Keep her away from your stuff? How did she get into your locker anyway?"

"I don't know," he said, looking at her. "It was my equipment locker and that only works with my passcard."

"I'll find out." She went back down to security to handle that. Security had traced her back to a problem Beth had been fighting for a few years now. "Not them," she muttered, calling the boss. "I'm in security. Need you down here, Bell." She hung up and stared at the picture of the guy who had picked up Al's ex-wife. "Damn." The head of the center walked in with the head of their legal department. She got out of the way. "Al's ex-wife messed with his competition rifle," she said. "That one picked her up last week."

"Who is that?" the head of legal asked.

She looked at him. "You know how the Middle East hardly ever has female athletes?" He nodded. "They're more than happy to 'adopt' ones that marry into their better families in certain sports."

The head of security pulled up the file. "We've seen a few others they've tried to coerce. Always virgins, always young, always in non-strenuous sports."

"I've always been too busy to date," Beth quipped bitterly. "I fenced very well in the junior classes." The head of the center groaned, shaking his head. She looked at him. "It could be worse. Remember last year when one tried to kidnap me?"

"Unfortunately. Have you gotten anything else from them?"

"The quarterly letter of 'please come marry one of us' from that family who wanted to sponsor me into being a working wife." She looked at the head lawyer. "It's always a family that's related to the ruler's family or one of the higher priests in their version of religion. They'd bring honor to the country by marrying one of us. As far as anyone can tell, it's a small group of them but the general public wouldn't exactly mind."

He patted her on the back. "You shouldn't have to worry about that."

"I shouldn't but I still haven't gotten into much dating. Between Major Bill and all the hours I put in here, plus the few classes I've been able to take, I have no social life to even attempt something meaningless."

"Hopefully we can make sure they don't try again. I'll send out an all staff memo. Go tell her ex-husband?"

"Yup." She left, going back up to the shooting range. "Bad luck, Al. Your ex picked up a sugar daddy from the UAE." He paused, staring at her. She nodded. "So I'm probably going to be getting *another* letter." She grimaced. "Or worse but I'm hoping just a letter."

He stood up straight, staring down at her. She was only five-six. He was just over six foot. "She's with the people who want you to come prove they can have women who do olympic sports?" She nodded with a grimace.

"Don't they only want young virgins?" Celia asked.

"Yup, but hey, I have no life," Beth quipped with a smile. "Major Bill made sure of it when he adopted me." They both groaned. "Exactly." She huffed. "The head of security knows too. So does Director Bell. We'll be fine."

Al nodded. "Then why screw with my rifle's scope?"

"Um, the ex thing?" Beth guessed.

"Or she thought you'd be protecting the young one," Celia said with a shrug. Al nodded that was probably true. They both stared at her. "We need to make you ineligible for their attention."

"Hasn't happened even on the few times I've been loose and easy on a date," Beth said dryly. "Maybe when I finally get to college. Then there's college guys and college parties and college beer if I get a bit freaked out." Major Bill walked in. He was older, he was built hard, and he was slowly going bald, but you could tell he cared about her by the expression in his blue eyes. "I'm fine."

"You are not. Don't lie to me, Beth." He patted her on the shoulder. "We're finding out who he is."

"We have two agents who train here," she said. "And one State Department guy who runs marathons."

"Good point. Al, you all right?"

"I'm good and if they come up to her while I'm there, I'm going to prove I used to compete in judo."

"Not like I haven't been taking taekwondo for years," Beth said. "I'll probably be fine even if they show up. It won't be like when we had to deal with them kidnaping me and me fighting back to the point of killing one of the guards, and nearly an official who proclaimed I had wanted to be there."

Bill stared at her. "Don't remind me they tried to kidnap you last year." She rolled her eyes. "I'm going to set you up with a nice guy."

"The last one you tried to set me up with was a skank," she said dryly. "Who smoked a lot of weed." He winced. "Considering he got three calls during dinner from his various girlfriends, as he called them, I doubt that was going to happen. I'll pick up some guy in the club first." She walked over to the score sheet. "Al, want me to get someone in to fix your scope or can you?"

"I can. I don't like these new scopes anyway. I'd rather go back to my old one."

She shrugged. "You're usually accurate without one."

"I know. But using the new one means my sponsor doesn't get mad," he said.

"Have them recalibrate it," Celia said. "They need to anyway. You've been millimeters off the center most shots."

"I know. It's frustrating." He took off the scope to tinker with. Beth got him all the tools and supplies he'd need, laying them out for him. "Thanks, Beth."

"Welcome, Al. Celia, did you have rink time or gym time today?" she asked, checking something on her phone. "Alamanda has the rink right now." She looked up.

Celia snorted. "She will not make it anywhere with how weak her jumps are."

"That's what practice is for," Bill reminded her. She smirked but strolled off to get ready for her own practice. He looked at Beth. "No going out for dinner anytime soon."

"I'm going with my soccer player when she has to go back for her hearing."

"That's fine. I'm sure you'd protect each other." He patted her on the shoulder before leaving.

She looked at Al. "Need anything else?"

"No, go have fun in your office. Play a game for once," he said with a grin.

"Not likely. I have gym time tonight so I have to get some last minute details down." She smiled before walking out, heading up to her office. She ran into Linda, the head of the soccer team she handled. "What's up, Linda?"

"There's guys who take people for sports?"

"They *encourage* them to marry into good families. That way *their* girls don't have to play sports but they still get some good credit for having women playing sports. It's not unheard of. Some of the pro soccer teams do the same thing to woo people. They hold great introduction parties thinking that they'll find someone nice there to at least date, which will tie them to their country. In this case, the UAE and a few other in that region only want young women, who happen to be pure by their standards. Nothing in a rigorous sport, like soccer, but where I used to fence...." She shrugged. "It's seen as a coup by a good, higher ranking family and it means that they steal someone from a more popular team. I've been fighting with people who wanted me to switch countries since I was fifteen and won the junior national championship in fencing."

"Why don't you compete now?"

"There's only two spots on the national team," Beth said. "Those two spots have been held by the same people for years. The judges are biased toward them and last year caused a stink when they sent one to the world games even though she had lost her qualifying match." Linda winced. "A lot of that is politics. Where I work here, they're expecting that I'm going to just do this and don't *really* want to compete. I wouldn't mind going for fencing but unless one of them falls out, there's not going to be spots for years. I'm actually ranked fifth in the country for fencing." She smiled. "Be thankful team sports hit politics a lot less."

"I am. Are you going with her?"

"I am. I told her I would if she wanted me to. Did it get shifted?"

"No. She's worried about the preliminary hearing."

"The judge could toss it out. She was clearly under extreme emotional stress. From what I've seen, no one out there really wants to have her in jail for that. Not one person has stepped up and said 'send her to the clink' but a lot of people have said 'I would've hit him more'." She grinned. "We'll handle it." Linda nodded. "If she wanted someone else, that's fine."

"No, a few of us are going to support her but she hasn't asked."

"Okay. Let me know and I'll make reservations for you guys." Linda handed over the list. "I'll have the reservations posted later." Linda smiled and went back to the gym. Beth settled behind her desk to make the reservations for everyone. She took them down to the changing room to post on the bulletin board then went back up to the office to finish up her usual work for the day. Including changing Al's ex-wife's membership status to banned for tampering with Al's rig. That was definitely against the rules and she knew that. She had gotten warned over it in the past during their divorce. They hadn't had a bad one but she had been trying everyone's patience to get them on her side instead of his. It happened and they all knew that so almost no one had taken the bait. She liked their little family of athletes here at the center.

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Handling Things (working title) by CE Dalton [Reviews - 0] Chapter or Story Table of Contents - Text Size + Chapter 2 Beth got back in time for her two 'problem children' to show up on the same day. They were her first trainees, she'd had them since she graduated to handling her own people. "Hey, Al, Celia. Let me drop stuff in my office and make a report then I'll come help you both." They nodded, going to the gym. She went upstairs to the head office, finding the team's general manager up there. "She's on a monitoring bracelet. We have the system here to read her location. It doesn't have an alarm but she had to list where her nearest grocery store and all that is." She handed over the judicial order. "We have to fax the judge a form each time she has to travel, with all the pertinent details like the itinerary. It's not bad and I've filled them out for one of our other trainees who was on probation. The trial won't be anytime in six months. She's down talking to one of our therapists right now about all this. Her lawyer suggested that it'd be a good idea and I agreed it might help her work through the grief since she's not married or anything like that." "That's fine," Hank agreed. "The owner was a bit iffy but when I told him what happened he said she should've stabbed him more times." He stood up. "I'll go talk to her. We want to support her without making the team look bad." "Then I'd get Samantha into rehab," she said. "The guards reported she's shown up drunk two other times. Thankfully without trying to kill them this time." "I've tried." "I can find you a nice one." He smiled. "We'll see." He patted her on the arm. "She's good," he told the head of the center. "She is. We're all looking forward to her finishing her degree so she can take care of more of our people." Hank left and he looked at her. "You good to work today?" "I am. Al and Celia are in so I'll go help them for now." She smiled. "I talked to her as well. She's...she's healing but it's not going to be fast." "I didn't figure it would be. Go." Beth nodded, heading down to the range. Al was a competitive shooter. He wasn't real tall but his dirty blond hair done in a floppy, casual haircut made him look younger than his thirtyish age. Celia was now an ice skater, formerly a rhythmic gymnast but a severe shoulder injury had made her change as a teenager. Al was cracking jokes as he checked over his weapons when she found them. Beth looked at the targets and got him more, then more shells. He was doing the long course today. "How was your week?" "Better," he admitted. "The ex is no longer nagging me about things." Beth smiled. "How's the new girl?" "Healing. Barely but healing." "I'd have beaten him to death with my hands," Celia said. "No stabbing needed." Al nodded. "Definitely, even if I hadn't taken judo when I was younger." He lined up his first shot and fired. "Someone screwed with my scope." "Want me to get the fingerprint powder or do you think it was the armory guy?" "It was in my locker," he said. She got the fingerprinting kit. This sort of thing didn't come up all that often but athletes were a jealous bunch at times. She took them to security test against their people and trainees. One popped up. She carried the printout up there. He checked other things. "She did a fantastic job," Al muttered. "But that explains why she quit nagging for a while." "Want me to have a note put into her file?" Beth asked. "Keep her away from your stuff? How did she get into your locker anyway?" "I don't know," he said, looking at her. "It was my equipment locker and that only works with my passcard." "I'll find out." She went back down to security to handle that. Security had traced her back to a problem Beth had been fighting for a few years now. "Not them," she muttered, calling the boss. "I'm in security. Need you down here, Bell." She hung up and stared at the picture of the guy who had picked up Al's ex-wife. "Damn." The head of the center walked in with the head of their legal department. She got out of the way. "Al's ex-wife messed with his competition rifle," she said. "That one picked her up last week." "Who is that?" the head of legal asked. She looked at him. "You know how the Middle East hardly ever has female athletes?" He nodded. "They're more than happy to 'adopt' ones that marry into their better families in certain sports." The head of security pulled up the file. "We've seen a few others they've tried to coerce. Always virgins, always young, always in non-strenuous sports." "I've always been too busy to date," Beth quipped bitterly. "I fenced very well in the junior classes." The head of the center groaned, shaking his head. She looked at him. "It could be worse. Remember last year when one tried to kidnap me?" "Unfortunately. Have you gotten anything else from them?" "The quarterly letter of 'please come marry one of us' from that family who wanted to sponsor me into being a working wife." She looked at the head lawyer. "It's always a family that's related to the ruler's family or one of the higher priests in their version of religion. They'd bring honor to the country by marrying one of us. As far as anyone can tell, it's a small group of them but the general public wouldn't exactly mind." He patted her on the back. "You shouldn't have to worry about that." "I shouldn't but I still haven't gotten into much dating. Between Major Bill and all the hours I put in here, plus the few classes I've been able to take, I have no social life to even attempt something meaningless." "Hopefully we can make sure they don't try again. I'll send out an all staff memo. Go tell her ex-husband?" "Yup." She left, going back up to the shooting range. "Bad luck, Al. Your ex picked up a sugar daddy from the UAE." He paused, staring at her. She nodded. "So I'm probably going to be getting another letter." She grimaced. "Or worse but I'm hoping just a letter." He stood up straight, staring down at her. She was only five-six. He was just over six foot. "She's with the people who want you to come prove they can have women who do olympic sports?" She nodded with a grimace. "Don't they only want young virgins?" Celia asked. "Yup, but hey, I have no life," Beth quipped with a smile. "Major Bill made sure of it when he adopted me." They both groaned. "Exactly." She huffed. "The head of security knows too. So does Director Bell. We'll be fine." Al nodded. "Then why screw with my rifle's scope?" "Um, the ex thing?" Beth guessed. "Or she thought you'd be protecting the young one," Celia said with a shrug. Al nodded that was probably true. They both stared at her. "We need to make you ineligible for their attention." "Hasn't happened even on the few times I've been loose and easy on a date," Beth said dryly. "Maybe when I finally get to college. Then there's college guys and college parties and college beer if I get a bit freaked out." Major Bill walked in. He was older, he was built hard, and he was slowly going bald, but you could tell he cared about her by the expression in his blue eyes. "I'm fine." "You are not. Don't lie to me, Beth." He patted her on the shoulder. "We're finding out who he is." "We have two agents who train here," she said. "And one State Department guy who runs marathons." "Good point. Al, you all right?" "I'm good and if they come up to her while I'm there, I'm going to prove I used to compete in judo." "Not like I haven't been taking taekwondo for years," Beth said. "I'll probably be fine even if they show up. It won't be like when we had to deal with them kidnaping me and me fighting back to the point of killing one of the guards, and nearly an official who proclaimed I had wanted to be there." Bill stared at her. "Don't remind me they tried to kidnap you last year." She rolled her eyes. "I'm going to set you up with a nice guy." "The last one you tried to set me up with was a skank," she said dryly. "Who smoked a lot of weed." He winced. "Considering he got three calls during dinner from his various girlfriends, as he called them, I doubt that was going to happen. I'll pick up some guy in the club first." She walked over to the score sheet. "Al, want me to get someone in to fix your scope or can you?" "I can. I don't like these new scopes anyway. I'd rather go back to my old one." She shrugged. "You're usually accurate without one." "I know. But using the new one means my sponsor doesn't get mad," he said. "Have them recalibrate it," Celia said. "They need to anyway. You've been millimeters off the center most shots." "I know. It's frustrating." He took off the scope to tinker with. Beth got him all the tools and supplies he'd need, laying them out for him. "Thanks, Beth." "Welcome, Al. Celia, did you have rink time or gym time today?" she asked, checking something on her phone. "Alamanda has the rink right now." She looked up. Celia snorted. "She will not make it anywhere with how weak her jumps are." "That's what practice is for," Bill reminded her. She smirked but strolled off to get ready for her own practice. He looked at Beth. "No going out for dinner anytime soon." "I'm going with my soccer player when she has to go back for her hearing." "That's fine. I'm sure you'd protect each other." He patted her on the shoulder before leaving. She looked at Al. "Need anything else?" "No, go have fun in your office. Play a game for once," he said with a grin. "Not likely. I have gym time tonight so I have to get some last minute details down." She smiled before walking out, heading up to her office. She ran into Linda, the head of the soccer team she handled. "What's up, Linda?" "There's guys who take people for sports?" "They encourage them to marry into good families. That way their girls don't have to play sports but they still get some good credit for having women playing sports. It's not unheard of. Some of the pro soccer teams do the same thing to woo people. They hold great introduction parties thinking that they'll find someone nice there to at least date, which will tie them to their country. In this case, the UAE and a few other in that region only want young women, who happen to be pure by their standards. Nothing in a rigorous sport, like soccer, but where I used to fence...." She shrugged. "It's seen as a coup by a good, higher ranking family and it means that they steal someone from a more popular team. I've been fighting with people who wanted me to switch countries since I was fifteen and won the junior national championship in fencing." "Why don't you compete now?" "There's only two spots on the national team," Beth said. "Those two spots have been held by the same people for years. The judges are biased toward them and last year caused a stink when they sent one to the world games even though she had lost her qualifying match." Linda winced. "A lot of that is politics. Where I work here, they're expecting that I'm going to just do this and don't really want to compete. I wouldn't mind going for fencing but unless one of them falls out, there's not going to be spots for years. I'm actually ranked fifth in the country for fencing." She smiled. "Be thankful team sports hit politics a lot less." "I am. Are you going with her?" "I am. I told her I would if she wanted me to. Did it get shifted?" "No. She's worried about the preliminary hearing." "The judge could toss it out. She was clearly under extreme emotional stress. From what I've seen, no one out there really wants to have her in jail for that. Not one person has stepped up and said 'send her to the clink' but a lot of people have said 'I would've hit him more'." She grinned. "We'll handle it." Linda nodded. "If she wanted someone else, that's fine." "No, a few of us are going to support her but she hasn't asked." "Okay. Let me know and I'll make reservations for you guys." Linda handed over the list. "I'll have the reservations posted later." Linda smiled and went back to the gym. Beth settled behind her desk to make the reservations for everyone. She took them down to the changing room to post on the bulletin board then went back up to the office to finish up her usual work for the day. Including changing Al's ex-wife's membership status to banned for tampering with Al's rig. That was definitely against the rules and she knew that. She had gotten warned over it in the past during their divorce. They hadn't had a bad one but she had been trying everyone's patience to get them on her side instead of his. It happened and they all knew that so almost no one had taken the bait. She liked their little family of athletes here at the center. Previous Next You must login (register) to review.

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