I nodded affirmatively, "I'll do my best."
"I'm sure you will." Maria said, as she rose to her feet.
Almost as an afterthought or something that came out grudgingly she said, "May God help your mission to be a success." She started walking away then.
I watched her go. There was something different about her, but there was no time to think on what that might be. Speaking of time, I glanced at my watch, 15 seconds left.
Five seconds.
A red dot appeared on my chest and then tracked over to the top of my shoulder and stayed there. I fought to keep from grimacing, this was going to hurt!
Holding still on the park bench was about as hard to do as when I had been a boy and a not so good friend had told me that I had a bee on my back. He had told me to hold still, as he had approached me with a bat. It had hurt and I was never quite sure whether there had been a bee or not.
My body jerked, even as the echo of the shot sounded out a split second later. I was already moving the folder gripped tightly in my hand. Whoever they had out there was a good shot. The bullet had neatly grooved across the top of my shoulder leaving only enough blood loss to make the scene look convincing, but yes like my first experience with the mythical bee this one hurt too. The things I did for the sake of good.
Jane stamped the pile of books before her. They had barcodes, but she simply liked to stamp the due date on the white sticker on the back of the book. The smell of the ink pad, the press of the wooden stamp, life was about the simple pleasures.
She lifted some books off the pile before her to reveal one of the many adult romance books that the library was well-stocked with. Her eyes took in the risqué cover art that was entirely overdone.
The setting was that of a Victorian room with enough colorful tasseled pillows laying around not to mention silk streamers coming off the bedposts to outfit a sheik's harem room. The man of course was shirtless his skin the color of bronze and he was incredibly buff in the way men of the fictionalized Victorian age, who did no labor and considered anything requiring sweat beneath them must've been, Jane mused sarcastically to herself.
The woman of course was classically beautiful, smaller and feminine against the backdrop of her domineering male counterpart. Her period style dress complete with petticoats was dramatically torn off both shoulders and hanging down exposing much of her amazingly full chest in comparison to her otherwise slight looking frame.