"Dallas Hoe-Down"

Not cheerleader material.  FBI Special Agent Dawna Shepherd had always known that about herself.  A former basketball star at the University of Texas, she’d wanted to play the game, not rally the fans.  Now, in her tenth day in Dallas working undercover as a newly-hired medical equipment sales rep, she’d learned she wasn’t cut out to sell, either.  She had the wrong temperament.  Her jaws ached from maintaining a pleasing expression rarely required by the Bureau.  And her manufactured zeal was fading faster than her smile.

Pale winter sunshine poured through the glass window-wall, warming the room.  Dawna stifled a yawn and glanced at the petite brunette sitting to her left.  Like the other six women in Dawna’s group of new recruits at Nacere Health Management Systems, Whitney Stone was a former cheerleader.  Most recently she’d been doing back flips and handsprings for the Dallas Cowboys fans.  Now she stared raptly at the speaker, as if she heard destiny calling.  Maybe she did.  She was the ideal candidate for a career in medical sales.

After all, there are 90,000 drug and medical equipment sales reps out in the field, all trying to reach the same doctors to make their pitches.  Former cheerleaders have a superb track record when it comes to making it through the office door.  They rely on exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm--packaged with good looks and a winning personality.  The skills most useful in medical sales are ones learned from the sidelines of college sports.

Dawna’s glanced flicked to the man sitting on her right.  A recent SMU grad, Roc Jefferson had broken all school records for the hurdles.  Sunlight glinted off his smooth black scalp and he winked at her before his dark eyes slid back toward the speaker.  A real charmer--and a brilliant salesman.  Attractive sports stars ran second only to cheerleaders in the sales arena, which was the reason why Dawna—and the four men in her group—had been hired.  The other athletes, however, showed a flair for selling that was contrary to Dawna’s law enforcement mindset.

Dawna forced herself to tune back into the speaker.  She felt her little gray cells turning bone-white, they were so clean.  She’d been brain-washed before, but neither the Lady Longhorn basketball coaching staff nor a long string of FBI experts was a match for this outfit.  The parade of marketing people had repeated the corporate message in a relentless drumbeat:  Nacere’s medical equipment was the best in the industry, Nacere’s experience in the use of ambulatory devices was unparalleled in the world, and Nacere’s approach to home health care management was a boon to all mankind.

Horse pucky.  Dawna knew it.  But she had to struggle to keep the facts she’d memorized about Nacere from bleaching away.  She suspected that when the other 11 less-resistant new hires opened their mouths to describe the products, the only words coming out would be those of the sales pitch.  The indoctrination was that good.

The mastermind responsible stood in front of her.  Kyle Forrester, Nacere’s marketing czar, was exhorting the class to tell him the ten reasons why their infusion pump was superior to the one manufactured by the closest competitor.

An energetic 37-year-old, the former linebacker for Texas A&M had removed his jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves on his salmon-colored dress shirt, the casual look nicely displaying a hard-muscled torso.  He looked good from the rear, too, his fine backside enhanced by the two-inch heels on his eminently touchable ostrich-skin cowboy boots.  Forrester’s well-toned body was topped by tousled curly hair that matched his dark brown eyes.

He was an altogether pleasing sight, aromatically enhanced by his cologne.  The exotic odor hinted at rareness and expense.  The scents emanating from Dawna’s fellow trainees seemed cheap by comparison.

Did anyone besides Dawna realize how poorly they measured up to the speaker?  She peeked again at Whitney.  The woman seemed perkily unaware that her Giorgio was failing her.  A discreet cough on Dawna’s right drew her gaze to Roc.  Roc and Dawna had agreed to keep each other cool during the fevered pitching.  A friend, he was reminding her to look attentive.

Dawna squared her shoulders, straightened her long, trousered legs, and locked on to the lovely Forrester.  That Kyle.  What a heart-breaker.  Literally.

The heart he’d broken most recently belonged to Dawna’s sister, Crystal Gayle Allison, who spent the last three and a half months of her pregnancy with Nacere’s infusion device strapped to her thigh, pumping terbutaline through her body to prevent her from going into labor too soon.  After eight years trying to have a baby naturally, Crystal and her husband had resorted to in vitro fertilization.  She was desperate to take her twins full term.

Happily, Crystal gave birth to two healthy girls.  Less happily, one week post-partum her heart began to fail.  She narrowly recovered and improved enough to make a heart transplant unnecessary, but she’d never be able to use the frozen embryos she and her husband had saved.  They’d wanted more children but Crystal’s heart couldn’t stand the strain of another pregnancy.

Big sister Dawna had immediately started trying to find out why things had gone so wrong for her little sister.

Read the whole story in the September 2007 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.