Lauren refilled her own cup once Chris was done and began to dump cream and sugar – a great deal of it – into the strong African brew. “Minuteman? You’re being generous, Chris,” she replied caustically. “I’d say more like thirty seconds, if that. But, no, that isn’t why he’s probably seeking medical attention right about now. That would be due to the fact that the lying scumbag was trying to steal photos off my laptop. Turns out the bastard works for the travel bureau of one of those third-rate news agencies, didn’t have the budget to go on the dive we took yesterday, and thought he’d help himself to one of my photos for his article.”

Karl emitted a low whistle. “That’s fucked up, kiddo. How’d you figure it out?”

She slathered more butter on her croissant. “Caught him red-handed. I had a weird feeling about him from the minute we walked inside my room – the way he kept looking around, some of the questions he asked. So after the most pathetic excuse for a shag you could ever imagine, I pretended to fall asleep. He barely waited five minutes before he booted up my computer and plugged in his flash drive.”

“Ah, shit.” Chris shook his head. “How bad did you mess him up? Are we going to have to scrub blood off the floor or anything?”

“Nah.” Lauren waved a hand in dismissal. “I mean, I was so pissed I didn’t trust myself with a knife. Especially when the little prick – and you can take that description figuratively and literally – started whining that he was only going to copy one photo. Like that made it okay.”

Stefan regarded her with a guarded expression. “So what exactly did you do to him?”

She grinned evilly. “I told him that copying just one photo was a wise decision, since that meant I only had to dislocate one of his fingers. But then I remembered how he’d shot his load off before I’d even gotten warmed up, so I jerked a second finger out of joint as payback.”

All three men stared at her in mingled shock, amusement, and honest to God fear.

“Jesus,” muttered Karl. “You are terrifying, kiddo. Fucking terrifying. So what did Quickdraw McGraw do then?”

“Screamed like a teenaged girl at a rock concert,” replied Lauren matter-of-factly. “And while he was wailing away I grabbed his little flash drive and flushed it down the toilet. Then I got the knife out and slashed holes in all his clothes. He had some nice stuff, too – Ralph Lauren shirt, Diesel jeans, Magli boots.”

Stefan shook his flaxen head in disbelief. “You even slashed his boots? I remember admiring those Magli’s last night in the bar, too. He must have been pretty pissed off.”

Lauren winked at her crew members. “He was too busy chasing after his stuff. After I shredded them I tossed everything off the balcony.”

“Isn’t your room on the third floor?” inquired Karl.

“Yup.” She eyed the basket of croissants longingly, wondering if taking a third would officially classify her as a glutton. “Lucky for him it was late and no one else saw him running around bare-assed naked. Or wearing see-through clothes.”

Chris was laughing uncontrollably by now, clutching his stomach. “Christ, I can just picture him running around the lawn picking up his boxers and boots. And didn’t it rain most of the night?”

“Like cats and dogs. Though Minuteman looked more like a drowned rat by the time he ran off,” clarified Lauren. “Serves the cocksucker right. He’s damned lucky he got off that easy.”

Karl ran a hand through his nearly shoulder length dirty blond hair. As the oldest of the crew, he tried – usually unsuccessfully – to keep the others in line when they were on assignment. And ever since Lauren had joined the team six months ago, he’d more than had his hands full trying rather futilely to do just that.

He pointed a finger at her. “You’d better hope he doesn’t press charges, kiddo. Or file a complaint with the magazine. I’m guessing he already knows who we work for.”

“Yeah, right,” scoffed Lauren. “Because every guy I know – including you, Karla, Christina, and Stefanie – would be so anxious to admit some girl half your size dislocated your fingers and tossed your clothes off the balcony.”

Lauren had christened each of them with the feminine versions of their names within the first month of her joining the crew. It had been towards the end of an assignment, and only Lauren hadn’t been tired or cranky or eager to get home. She’d joked then that they were all acting like a bunch of high school girls, and from that point on she teased them with their nicknames whenever they got a little whiny.

The three men exchanged a glance before Karl nodded sheepishly. “I see your point. And hopefully Quickdraw will think twice about trying to poach someone else’s work again.”

“And I’ll tell you right now what else is never going to happen again,” declared Lauren. She glared darkly at Chris. “You are never again going to dare me to do anything that involves boinking some dude. You know I’ve got a problem, Chris,” she whined. “When someone dares me to do something I can’t back down, no matter what. So in the future dare me to do stuff like eat bugs or do a handstand on a six-inch wide ledge. But no – more – guys. Got it?”

Chris heaved a sigh of resignation. “Fine. But only because I don’t want a dislocated finger of my own.”

Karl chuckled. “Now that we’ve heard all the juicy details of Her Majesty’s adventures last night, let’s talk about today’s adventure, hmm?”

Lauren grinned at Karl’s use of the nickname Chris had come up with during her first assignment in Guadeloupe. They’d run into some difficulty with their hotel reservations, and she had shoved Stefan aside as he’d tried to resolve the problem in his usual calm, diplomatic manner. Instead, Lauren had let loose on the hapless desk clerk with a stream of rapid fire French. Within five minutes they had been handed room keys, and Chris had dubbed Lauren “The Queen of Confrontation.”

She’d looked at him quizzically. “Huh?”

“You know, like from Seinfeld,” he’d explained. “They used to called Julia Louis Dreyfuss’s character that because she always got in peoples’ faces and said what was on her mind. But you’re way ballsier than she ever was.”

So the nickname had stuck, and had gradually evolved into the abbreviated “Her Majesty”. And Lauren continued to make sure she remained worthy of such a title, never backing down from a confrontation or allowing anyone to intimidate her. The rest of the crew always seemed more than a little in awe of her, and in barely six months’ time Lauren had become the unspoken leader of the group.

Landing the job as a photographer with National Geographic Travel right after college had been so far beyond what Lauren could have hoped to achieve at this point in her life that at times she still couldn’t believe it. She’d entered a photography contest sponsored by the magazine during the fall semester of her senior year at UCLA, never expecting to win.

But win she had, and landed this job with the magazine’s travel affiliate that had been part of the prize. At the age of twenty two, she was traveling to all of the places she’d always dreamed of seeing, and taking photos of the tourist attractions and activities each location offered, like yesterday’s amazing dive off the Bazaruto Archipelago.

As the very junior member of her crew, Lauren had been fully prepared to have to prove herself to the three other members, to slowly gain their respect and earn her stripes. But she’d been pleasantly surprised at how easily and how quickly the three male members of the crew had accepted her and made her feel like one of them.

Karl, who wrote all of the articles and photo captions, was in his early thirties, tall and rangy with his long, dirty blond hair, and a full beard and mustache. He favored ripped jeans, funky T-shirts, and cowboy boots, and nearly always traveled with his guitar in tow. When he wasn’t on assignment, or attending planning meetings in New York, he lived with his longtime girlfriend in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.