Barking Up the Wrong Lead - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Charlotte Woods was kicking my ass.

“C’mon Goode,” she said.  She didn’t even sound tired.  How was it possible that she didn’t sound tired?  “You wanna fight with the big boys, you better be ready to lose with the big boys.”

My arms felt like rubber.  My legs were jelly.  Each and every one of my breaths echoed throughout the P&E barn.  My body was rotting from the inside out, twisting and turning in all the wrong ways as I leaned up against the wall.  My stomach was burning and bubbling—squeezing tighter and tighter until finally my dinner was on my shoes (and let’s just say that Chef Louis’ filet mignon tastes way better going down than it does coming back up).

“Let’s go, Goode,” Woods said again, refusing to retreat from her offensive stance.  “Right back to it.”

“I need a break.”

“No you don’t.”

I hurled again, but this time there was nothing left to throw up.  “I need.  a break.”

“I should make you clean that up,” she replied, ignoring me once again.

“Please.”  I’m not one to beg.  It doesn’t become me.  But I would have done anything right then to get her to stop.

“Get up, Goode.”

Fine.  She wanted me to get up?  I’d get up.  A second wind busted through me.  Another short-lived flame in my aching body.  I swung at her, only to be caught.  Then kicked at her, only to be blocked.  “Ah, see?” she said.  “I told you there was still some fire left in you.”

But then my legs gave out and I fell to my knees, chocking and hacking and desperate for a complete breath.  “I can’t,” I heaved.  “I can’t.”

Woods didn’t show a single sign of sympathy.  “There were six agents behind that glass—two of them were Bex’s superiors,” she said.  “You’re lucky this is all you’re getting.”

So, apparently, physically assaulting an MI6 agent (whether you meant to or not) is punishable not only by a strike on your personnel file and a strict letter of reprehension from the head of MI6, but also by a stern lecture from your headmistress and a month’s worth of detention with the teacher who was supervising you at the time of the incident.  In my case, that meant a month’s worth of one-on-one time with my CoveOps teacher.

It had only been six days since the London trip and I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive another three weeks of detention with Charlotte Woods.  It was, in my completely unexaggerated opinion, the worst kind of hell that anyone could ever experience ever.

It had been a brutal combination of brush passes and cleaning the sublevels and hand-to-hand combat—a lot of hand-to-hand combat.  And I don’t know if you know this or not, but Woods can hit.  Hard.  After six days, I was surprised any part of my body was functional anymore.

Still, I preferred the fights to being alone, so I guess there wasn’t much to complain about. 

At least when I was with Woods, I didn’t have to be with my dad.  I hadn’t seen him in days, which was fine.  I didn’t want to see him.  Not really.  It felt strange being angry with him.  I mean, don’t get me wrong—it’s totally not the first time that Dad and I have butted heads.  Grandma always said that I get my temper from my father, after all.  But normally I couldn’t hold a grudge.  Not against him anyways.  When your dad flies off to the far corners of the globe every other week, you don’t want some stupid argument to influence your last words to each other.