More Than You Know
an excerpt

“Again!”

Reed nearly ducked as the Amazonion windrider launched herself at him in the training yard behind SOL’s main building. The instinctive move threw him off balance so that when he did what he was supposed to do--move the crash-test-dummy child out of harm’s way--Piper’s booted feet planted squarely between his shoulder blades and knocked him to the ground. Just like the first six times she’d attacked.

This time, though, he’d succeeded. The dummy stood a few feet away. Stood. Not sprawled, digging its metallic elbow into Reed’s ribs. Not tumbled, arms and legs aiming in completely unnatural positions. Not even sat in the dirt, the closest it had come to safety since they started.

“I did it!” He couldn’t help pointing, as if Piper couldn’t see the dummy.

“You half did it. You saved the kid from the initial assault, but you let yourself be taken out.”

Reed shoved his hair back off his face and briefly wondered if a haircut would make him look more or less like a real bodyguard. “Isn’t that part of the job? Take a bullet for the person you’re trying to protect?”

“Only if there’s no other choice, and you’re pretty damned sure the next one won’t be aimed in his direction, anyway. In this case, I had the leverage, the positioning, the speed. I could have had him in my arms and been halfway to my getaway vehicle before you got up. Which you’re way too slow at, anyway. Let’s go back to rolls for a while.”

Reed groaned. He already had bruises all over his body from throwing himself all over the damned place. He was really not cut out for this.