Yet When the Other Doth Far Roam

Chapter One

Jane Rebecca Buchanan Barnes, so named to appease both grandmothers and her father's bizarre obsession with the 15th President, stood at the back of the theater and scanned the crowd for the third time. The flickering light from the screen gave her just enough to make out the backs of people's heads and, with a sinking feeling of half-despair and half-resignation, she searched in vain for a particular blond head she already knew she wasn't going to find.

Dread fell over her, quickly solidifying into what she referred to as the "Steve Rogers Effect." She'd taken her eyes off him for five seconds and he'd promptly gone and done something stupid. Again.

She spun on her heel and pushed out of the theater and into the cold, and somewhat stagnant air, of Brooklyn. She headed toward the alley that ran alongside the building with the air of a bloodhound locked on a scent and let out a sigh of heartfelt despair as she picked up the telltale sound of a fight.

Insofar as a massive idiot beating up on a guy half his size could be called a fight.

She rounded the corner just in time to see the guy's fist smash into Steve's face with enough force to spin him completely around and send him crashing to the ground like a broken rag doll.

Rebecca's gut clenched and she sucked in a harsh gasp at how hard her best friend hit the ground, and how still he stayed after. Fear washed over her, along with a near blinding rage that had her almost literally seeing red.

She grabbed the brute's shoulder and spun him around to face her. He raised his fist, but she was prepared for it. No one willing to beat up on a guy half his size was going to give a rat's ass about hitting a woman.

She ducked under his haphazard swing and came up inside his guard, if it could even be called that. Before he could process, she snapped the heel of her hand into his jaw, stepped back and put all her weight into a kick straight into what her mother liked to call the family jewels.

Just moments earlier she'd been bemoaning the fact that her new military uniform required her to wear heels. She now thought perhaps they weren't so bad after all as she watched all the color drain from the brute's face as he slowly sagged to his knees.

She kept part of her attention on Steve as she waited for the jerk to recover and felt a rush of relief at the sight of him slowly struggling to his feet.

Guess she wasn't going to get arrested for homicide today after all.

"Get out of here," she ordered the brute as he slowly got to his own feet. She recognized the glazed, drunken look in his eyes, the same her old man used to have right before he decided knocking her mother around was a good idea.

Rebecca stood as straight as possible, once again thanking the heels for the extra couple inches they gave her, and tried to emulate the expression her mother had worn the day she'd finally thrown her husband out the door and told him to never come back.

The guy muttered something under his breath but staggered away, his awkward walk probably brought on by more than just the alcohol she could smell on his breath.

Rebecca didn't let her relief show on her face. Fights were a simple fact of life when it came to being around Steve Rogers. He had a singular knack for finding trouble, and she'd suffered more than a few cuts and bruises from a lifetime of pulling him out of whatever scrape he'd thrown himself into headfirst.

Even so, she doubted her new superiors would have been impressed had she shown up to ship out sporting a shiny black eye.

She shifted her attention to Steve, confident the bully wasn't going to change his mind and return. He was fully on his feet and the knots in her stomach loosened at the steadiness in his stance and the clear look in his eyes. He had blood on the side of his lip, and his clothing was mussed, but he didn't appear to have suffered any lasting injuries.