It was Only on Stun! Ch. 03

For those of you new to this world, I suggest starting with "One Way To Stay out of Jail" though it's not necessary.

Enjoy all.

Chapter 3: Staying with the Girlfriend

Inna Petraro never believed her life could be so interesting. Her stepfather had been a low level Hollywood agent who had spent his life in entertainment law, and she had been an ever-present accomplice, aiding and abetting him so much that she also went into the field, expecting a relatively dull existence.

However, when she was eighteen years old and at her stepfather's side on set, she encountered a young man who was her height, but appeared to be taller because of how he held himself. His hair had been mildly singed from a recent stunt, makeup people were touching up a fake bloody gash across his temple, and his face was covered in real mud. One eye was brown, and the other was a brilliant blue she could make out from a city block away.

As one of the makeup women tried to put a brown colored contact into his eye, she deliberately held onto him to "steady" herself, feeling him up as she did so. He was either too oblivious or too polite to notice.

The newcomer briefly excused herself and headed straight for Sean, knowing he was the stuntman—it was obvious...he was in the same "condition" as the romantic lead, and definitely wasn't the star. Ryan bent down for a moment, collecting two handguns that looked big enough to take down an airliner, and rose again, finding her only feet away and on approach. He smiled and nodded, politely acknowledging her.

"Hi. I'm Inna Petraro."

He cocked his head slightly, grinned uncontrollably, and casually stacked one gun on top of the other as he offered his hand. "Sean Ryan." He paused, checked his hand. "Don't worry, it's the only part of me still clean."

She smiled and took his hand. "What stunt have you been up to?"

He shrugged. "I'm supposed to empty both of these"—he raised the guns—"into the bad guy as I leap from an exploding armored train, roll to my feet and run through a mine field. Might I ask why someone as pretty as you are found her way onto a stage like this during a school night?"

She smiled. "It is Friday."

He blinked. "Really? Wow, they've really been pushing me on this one. You've got the time?"

"It's four o'clock. Don't you have a watch?"

Shook his head. "Not allowed; our hero is supposed to have smashed his watch after using it as makeshift brass knuckles against the sidekick's face—the villain's sidekick, anyway." He sighed. "Wow, I could use a good, stiff water." There was a click in his ear from the earpiece. "Sorry, gotta go. I'll see you later, Ms. Petraro."

She knew it would have been the start of at least a nice friendship, but she had no idea that he would develop into the once and future boyfriend. Their relationship had survived a lot—his career, long nights as he helped her with mandatory credits in physics and chemistry, the odd art course (the history of musical soundtrack in film), and even his time in the new career of body guarding, her law school, a nonexistent sex life—and it was still going.

Despite his odd sense of humor...

"Are you sure you just didn't use this as an excuse to get me over to New York for a few months?" Ryan asked as Inna walked with him out of the sports center and across the main lawn, , his arm respectfully on the small of her back. The buildings were all very modern, gray or white stone with sharp angles and circles thrown in for good measure, looking like government construction.

"It had crossed my mind," she said in her normal, measured speech that was amazingly endearing, each word carefully considered. Her first language wasn't English, but Russian, and her second was Italian, so both were reflected in her speech only insofar as she thought before she spoke so she was sure the meaning was accurate.

If only I did that every once in awhile.

"I am also concerned about Mira," Inna continued. "She does not think she is important enough to waste bullets on."

Ryan sighed. "I've never heard of someone so modest she's going to die from it."

They walked in silence for a while, walking past the grass, through the walkway connecting the two science buildings, and back outside again, pondering the thought.

Sean smiled suddenly, wrapped his arm around Inna's waist and drew her to him, kissing her on the temple. "So, how've you been?"

"Aside from someone wanting to murder a client?" she replied. "I've been good. I like New York better than LA—it's quieter. No riots, lower crime rate, and, sometimes, people even smile and say thank you."

Ryan laughed. "Sounds like the way I left it."

Inna smiled. "And who were you here with then?"

"Sarah Ann Miller."

Petraro thought for a moment, trying to remember when her boyfriend was in New York with the star of Fluffy, the Demon Slayer. "That was last year, wasn't it? When you stopped by in July?"

He chuckled. "I was waiting until I could tell the story with a straight face. You see, she takes tae kwon do as a hobby, and she also grew up in New York. So, when the bad guys came after her, well, she sort of cleaned the floor with all of them herself."

They had a good laugh all the way to the parking lot. Sean reluctantly let go so she could walk to the other side of her SUV. "I'm glad I don't have to call a taxi."

Petraro unlocked the door and gave him a look through the tinted glass of the large, lumbering vehicle. "Why didn't you just call me instead?"

"I wanted to be a surprise."

"A taxi from Long Island to Staten Island is an expensive surprise."

They both loaded themselves into the vehicle and he gave her a mischievous grin. "Well, if I caught you in the act of cheating on me, it would be worth it. After all, if you wanted to break up with me, I want to know as soon as possible so I can move on to less fallow pastures."

Inna hit him on the arm, then started the engine. "Be careful, mister, or else you're going to be riding home tied across the hood. What do you plan to do now?"

"Two or three days checking out the landscape, then back to LA to meet with Mitch."

Inna raised her brows and pulled out of the lot. "Mitchell's still alive?" she said in mock surprise. "I'm not sure what is going to kill him first: your job or his age."

Ryan waved it away. "Nonsense, he's only been working in special effects since World War Two," he joked.

However, he wasn't certain it was a joke—Mitchell Scholl might have been in silent films for all Ryan knew. Since Mitch had been laid off, he'd worked for Ryan as a technical advisor, supplier, and mechanic, walking off with whatever film prop he could get his hands on. When Hollywood stopped using real guns on movie sets in place of a variety of cap gun, Mitch had twisted every arm he could to get as many various old, real guns as possible. Since then, Scholl had come to know the entire LA branch office of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms by first name—if only because his son, the head of the local ATF, invited him over—and has constantly brought coffee to the ATF agents on permanent stakeout outside of his home.

"Maybe you should ask if he knew Jasper Maskelyne," Inna said with a straight face as she pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main ring road into the woods that hid Rockycreek from the outside world.

Sean sighed. She enjoyed teasing him with the miscellaneous information from her history minor; he could never come up with the same type of teasing with his knowledge of chemicals, explosives and weaponry—none of which made for very pleasant dinner conversation or pillow talk. Surprisingly, the only real times pillows were involved were with pillow fights, sleep, or her putting antiseptic on the hard to reach spots after he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. They'd mutually sworn off sex after the third time Murphy's Law for Mating interrupted them, once with a beeper, a phone, and a bullet, in that order.

"And who is Jasper Maskelyne?" he asked, humoring her.

"He is the magician the army hired to perform tricks like on Mission Impossible: he hid the Suez Canal from bombers behind a curtain of light, disguised tanks as trucks so the Nazis could be outflanked in the desert, and so on."

Ryan nodded. "Ah, someone Mitch can relate to, the sneaky bastard." He gazed out into the woods of Rockycreek and wondered how anyone found their way around without disappearing into the woods, never to be seen again. He'd bet there were entire class years of students lying out there, among the trees, turning into fertilizer like some Suffolk County body farm waiting to be discovered by Pat Cornwell.

"I am going to LA to meet with Mira," she grinned as she made the next turn in the maze of the barren wood. "We can at least be sure you won't scare her. as long as I'm around. She might have heard about that one time you...how shall we say...held a most unwilling informant over the edge of a building for a half an hour."

"Just a matter of cajoling him."

Inna made yet another turn, otherwise she would have spared him a sarcastic glance. "The time you blew up your client's house so you could get him away?"

"I merely set it on fire."

"What about 'accidentally' shooting the one who hired you so the guys after him thought he was dead?"

"Now that was for his own good, in the long run....Besides, his kidney was already a mess from all of that alcohol; he only would've gotten a few more weeks out of it anyway. Overall, I've been rather light on the death toll and the property damage."

"I do not think there's been one assignment in which you have not hurt someone."

He waved it away. "Bad guys don't count. They asked for it."

"That attitude alone might scare her. Sean, realize that she came from a place where that attitude is far too common. Tone it down when you meet her, okay?"

He sighed and leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed. "I hope you're not equating me with the Balkan monsters."

"No, but it could be all too easy for her to."

"Then I'll just have to explain it clearly enough to make even the densest of peoples understand."

Inna raised an eyebrow as she made yet another turn around even more barren trees. "Before or after she sees the amount of weaponry you've had Mitchell put in place?"

"Come on, Inna, you know I only bring that stuff out when the detail goes beyond hand-to-hand. You make it sound as though I enjoy gutting people in my spare time. Do I detect disdain for my work?"

"No, it is just that she's from the same part of Europe as Momma."

Sean groaned. "That woman has to be put through paranoia treatment."

"Just remember Eastern Europe hasn't had a pleasant history." Inna smiled. "She's almost definitely heard how colorful you are."

He smiled. "Isn't that a pleasant way of saying I'm an off-the-wall-whacko?"

"But who else would you send against people who spawned Milosovic? Captain Kirk?"

Sean thought a moment. "Does that make me Spock or McCoy?"

Without a blink, she said, "Worf."

"I didn't know I looked like the dog-faced boy."

"I would not want you thinking that I liked you for your looks."