Water Proof
By Shannon Page and Chaz Brenchley

Of course Karen was the best woman for the job. That went without saying. In fact, if Melanie had claimed it, Karen would certainly have argued her own case. In front of Grant, if necessary. Karen wasn’t afraid of Grant. Not one little bit.

But that wasn’t how it had gone down. Instead, Melanie had taken it upon herself to get the chains and the knife and the reinforced table, had secured the warehouse and the whiskey, had even lured the man from his downtown hotel at midnight and dismissed his driver. Okay, fine, carry on.

Then, without batting a false eyelash, Melanie had handed the knife to Karen.

Who had not hesitated, not at all. No. She was competent, well prepared and—what was the word—unflappable. She was unflappable, yes. Not susceptible to flap. Which meant handling what came, whatever came, however unexpected or unrehearsed.

Like the knife. That was unexpected.

Not to mention unpleasant.

Afterward, while they were cleaning up—rinsing hairs and blood off the blade, hosing down the table, picking stray gobbets of offal off of each other’s clothes—Karen struggled with her emotions. It took her a while to even figure out what was bothering her, exactly. Melanie had handled the situation flawlessly, all the way through to the end there. And putting an end to it had properly been Karen’s task; she was senior, after all. It was just . . . well, there was something more than insidious, inappropriately dominant about the way Mel had slapped the knife into Karen’s hand and stood back, hands on hips, that sly show-me grin on her face.
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