Sam looked at her best friend. Today Slick was nothing like she’d been when she’d gone off to Europe on her last modeling job. The gauntness was gone, her skin had a healthy glow to it. She’d put on twenty pounds, and she looked good. She even slouched, something she’d never done in the past. She was in such good shape, not just physically but mentally as well, that it was mind-boggling. If a supermodel aced the physical training the Academy demanded, why couldn’t the three Rainford wives do the same thing? Maybe it wasn’t such a cockamamie idea after all.

A washout, a wannabe. Did she want to go through the rest of her life with those tags hanging over her head? No, she did not. She also didn’t want to go through the rest of her life being known as a number cruncher or a bean counter. But did she want to tell her children and her grandchildren she’d been a mercenary. But that’s okay, kiddies, I did it for the good guys. I was just being a good American.

“If we go along with this and actually start to lead that secret life, we’ll never meet anyone, never get married and have kids. We’ll be old maids. We’ll be like that ship with no home port. You know what I’m talking about, the one that sailed day and night and could never claim a home. We have to think about that, Slick. There won’t be any children or grandchildren to tell our story to.”

Slick ran her fingers through her hair. “I love this kitchen, Sam. It’s easy to see you put a lot of work and thought into it. I know you’d miss it terribly, and we’d be crazy if we agreed to do this, but I still think we should. The guy said no one has wimped out. Maybe we aren’t the rejects the FBI said we were. Maybe he’s right, and we were trained wrong. Maybe, just maybe, some of those agents teaching us were right and the FBI doesn’t really want women agents. I bet they have a secret quota just to keep it all on the up and up. And we both know those sensitivity classes sucked. Remember that second class where one of the guys pinched your ass after the class was over. They had no respect for women. None at all.”

“All right, all right, you talked me into it,” Sam said. “I have such a headache. I don’t know when I ever drank as much as I drank last night. Never, that’s when. Should we go talk to him or what? He said ten minutes. Are the ten minutes up yet?”

“I wasn’t looking at the clock, Sam. Let’s just sit here and wait. Do female plumbers really make six figures a year?”