by Diana X Dunn
“I’ll tell you everything about him if you can outshoot me with a laser pistol,” she offered. She grabbed a weapon and handed him another one. “Start at ten yards and see how far you can get.”
Five minutes later, she looked over at him. “According to the screen, you missed at fifty yards.”
“I’m a little bit rusty.”
“Try again, from ten. I’ll watch and see where you need work.”
“I just need practice.”
“So practice.”
“I have my level six certificate. The school isn’t accredited to award anything beyond that. This is a waste of my time.”
“If I tested you right now, you wouldn’t get a level one certificate. You’re out of practice.”
He shrugged. “I’ll start coming out here with some of the others from the class. We can practice together.”
“There are cameras covering every inch of this facility. Don’t think you can bring one of the women out here and try to get better acquainted with her.”
Mark laughed. “Cameras don’t bother me. I don’t have anything to hide. You might enjoy watching me in action, anyway.”
Sara didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she picked up the pistol again and shot down the range to the very last target. A glance at the screen showed that she’d hit dead center.
Mark picked up his gun and winked at her. “If I match that shot, I get to take you to bed.”
“You aren’t going to match that shot,” she laughed.
He aimed and fired, cursing as he missed the target entirely.
“I’ll get it this time,” he said angrily, aiming again.
“You’re wasting your time, aiming that far away. You need to start at the top and work your way down. Find your limit and practice there for a while before you move on again. It’s going to take you time to get good enough to hit the last target, more time than we have today.”
“When I do hit it, you’ll sleep with me?”
“No, but I’ll congratulate you.”
He frowned. “A quick twirl might be good for both of us.”
“Everything else aside, I could get fired for getting involved with a student.”
“Really? Jake seemed to be trying to get Tamara into bed. He didn’t seem worried about getting fired, either.”
“I hope Tamara turned him down.”
“She wasn’t that direct. She was leading him on make sure she got good marks in his class. Now that he’s gone, maybe she’ll start paying me some attention.”
“If you’re interested in Tamara, you shouldn’t be hitting on me.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’d much rather twirl with you than Tamara. But you’re involved elsewhere and Tamara isn’t.”
“Yet, anyway.”
“She’s pretty keen on Luke,” Mark replied. “I’m encouraged by the fact that he isn’t returning the interest, at least not yet. Maybe I should try things out with Lacey. She’s pretty, but she’s also a lot smarter than Tamara.”
And too smart for you, Sara thought. “You know how I didn’t want to talk about my personal life? I don’t really want to talk about yours, either.”
“I suppose I owe you an apology,” he said a moment later. “I shouldn’t have locked you in the maze. It was Jake’s idea, though.”
“Jake’s idea?”
“Yeah, he told me all about the fake murder scene and then he suggested that I find a way to get you into the maze before anyone else. He wanted to watch you find your way out.”
“Did he now?” she said, her mind racing. “So you knew all about the murder scene?”
“He asked me for some advice about one or two points, being that I was with the police.”
Sara nodded, wondering why Jake had really included Mark in the planning. She glanced at her watch. “Let’s head back. We’ve done our forty minutes for today.”
“I really am very attracted to you,” he said as she drove them back across the compound. “I’m sure there are ways around the rules, if you wanted to spend some time getting to know me better.”
“I’m not interested, but thank you,” she replied. “Out you go,” she added as she stopped in front of the classroom building. “I have to send a quick message to someone. Please tell Ethel that I’ll collect another student in a few minutes.”
Mark frowned and then slowly climbed out of the transport. Sara watched him walk away and then pulled out her M-ped. “We need to talk about all of the students,” she messaged Robert.
A moment later, an automatic reply popped up on her screen.
“I’m sorry, but I’m out of the office at the moment. Please contact Candie Owens with any questions or concerns.”
Scowling, Sara got out of the transport and stomped into the building. As she went, she tried to decide which of the remaining students would be most tolerable to work with next.
“Lacey, please,” she told Ethel.
Ethel nodded as Lacey got to her feet.
“I was really disappointed in how I did the other day,” she told Sara in a low voice as they walked to the transport. “I thought I’d do better. I did as much civilian training as I could.”
“Civilian training? Does that mean shooting with pseudo-weapons?”
“Well, yeah, they weren’t the real things. No where near where I live had a license to teach with real weapons.”
“I believe there are only a handful of places in country that use real weapons. No matter how much the people running the civilian schools want you to believe otherwise, real weapons are very different to the pseudo ones.”
“Yes, that’s what I discovered when we were last at the range.”
When they arrived, Sara handed the girl a laser pistol, carefully going over safe handling with her. “Now, aim at the ten-yard target. I don’t care where you hit it, but try to hit the target.”
“Oh, I did it,” Lacey exclaimed happily.
“And you weren’t far off center, either.” Sara pointed to the display screen. “Try again, this time really focus on your aim.”
Forty minutes later the woman was reliably hitting the center of the target sixty-yards away. “That’s enough for today,” Sara told her. “Your hand is going to hurt tomorrow.”
The girl shrugged. “It’s worth it. I really enjoyed that.”
“You’re good at it, too. Next time we’ll do some work with the laser rifle, as well and then take a look at some of the other weapons.”
“I feel a lot better now,” Lacey confided as they made their way back to the classroom building. “I’m still worried about Jake, though.”
“Worried about Jake? Why?”
“Are you certain he died of natural causes?”
“Working that out is Dr. Freeman’s job, not mine. He seemed pretty convinced, but he can’t make a final ruling until he’s completed the autopsy and received all of the test results.”
“If it was murder, do you think Dr. Freeman would cover it up?”
“Do you have any reason to believe that it was murder?”
“No one liked Jake. He drank too much and he kept making inappropriate suggestions to Tamara and me. I think he tried something with Donna, but she won’t talk about it.”
“There are a lot of very unlikable people in the world. Very few of them get murdered.”
Lacey shrugged. “I feel as if just about everyone wanted him dead, or at least gone from the school. Even Robert had to realize that Jake was a liability.”
“Who do you think killed him, then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think about that part, really. I’m just worried that there might be a murderer at the school, that’s all.”
“You don’t suspect anyone in particular?”
“Not really,” the girl said, turning her head to look out the window.
Sara stopped the transport and put her hand on Lacey’s arm. When she turned her head, Sara stared into her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Lacey flu
shed. “Jeff makes me nervous, that’s all. He has cold eyes and he never smiles. Some of us have been trying to arrange things in the evening, just time to hang out together, really, but he never comes. Everyone else at least makes an appearance, but not Jeff. I just feel as if he could murder someone and not bat an eyelash.”
“If he did kill Jake, I’m not sure why Robert would cover that up for him.”
“Jeff probably knows all of Robert’s secrets. I’ll bet he has all sorts of underground connections.”
“I’ll talk to Robert. I can’t imagine him covering up a murder, though,” Sara said, feeling that lying was preferable to letting the girl continue to worry.
“I wanted to kill him,” Lacey said quietly.
“Really?”
“He told me that I was never going to be any good at this. He said being smart and ambitious would only take me so far. He suggested that he could help my career if I twirled with him while I was here.”
“I hope you told him to go to hell.”
Lacey gave her a small smile. “I wasn’t that direct. In fact, I was afraid to turn him down. I just kept putting him off and hoping that he’d get tired of asking, really.”
“You should have come and told me or Ethel. We would have spoken to Robert and gotten him to make Jake behave.”
“He seemed to think that he was untouchable. Someone in one of the classes complained about his teaching and he just laughed. He said something about Robert needing him a lot more than he needed Robert, whatever that means.”
“Whatever happened in the past, if you have any additional trouble here, please don’t hesitate to speak to me about it. No one should have to deal with sexual harassment in this day and age and if you struggle with your classwork, I’m sure I can help.”
“The classwork has been fine so far. I’m enjoying most of it, really. Code breaking is challenging, but interesting, and I’m really enjoying your classes in field work.”
“I’m glad to hear that. We’ll have another session on the range early next week. You’re going to be an excellent marksman with a bit more training.”
Lacey grinned. “I hope so.”
With Lacey’s comments about Jeff running through her head, Sara asked Ethel for him next. He was silent as he walked out to the transport with her.
“I’m sure you know how to use nearly all of these,” she said when they arrived at the range.
“I do.”
She handed him a laser pistol and took one herself, repeating the challenge she’d given Donna earlier. When she was done, she looked over at Jeff. He fired off one last shot and then returned her look.
“I was half a second behind you, but I hit every center,” he said.
Sara looked up at the screens and rapidly flipped through the targets. She and Jeff had both hit center on every single one of them.
“Want to try with the rifle?” she asked.
“Whatever.”
She handed him the gun and then stepped back and watched him work. He was clinically efficient as he shot target after target, hitting the exact middle of each one of them.
“Impressive. Are there any weapons here you’d like to try?”
“No.”
“So what shall we talk about?” she asked, meeting his cold eyes with an aggressive stare.
“Why are you here?” he shot back. “This is a crappy school for wannabe spies. I don’t know your background, but it’s obvious that you were trained by some of the best in the business. Either you made a huge mistake and got yourself fired or there’s something going on here that is a problem. In light of Jake Brown’s death, I’m going to guess the latter.”
“There are dozens of other options, of course. Maybe I just got tired of fieldwork and wanted to do something different. Maybe I owe Robert a huge favor for something and this is how I’m repaying him. Maybe I was secretly married to Jake.”
Jeff’s laugh was a sharp barking noise. “The first two are possibilities, but not the third. You wouldn’t tie yourself to a drunk idiot.”
“Why are you here? You were military. Surely you had other, better options.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? When missions go wrong, mission leaders get the blame, even if someone else along the way betrayed them. I was given options. Believe it or not, this was least objectionable.”
“Six months here and then what?”
He shrugged. “A new location, a new identity, a new start. With the skills I’m learning here, I should be able to create a whole new life for myself.”
“A new life in covert operations or doing something else?”
“I don’t know how to do anything else. My parents died when I was ten. My uncle was my legal guardian, but he didn’t have a clue what to do with me, so he sent me off to a military academy. They didn’t normally take kids under the age of fourteen, but my uncle had connections. I was dumped out on the training field and told to keep up. I don’t really remember life before that, what it was like to have a family, or anything. I’m sure that’s weird for you, but that’s how it was.”
Sara didn’t reply. There was no way she was going to share her own history with him.
After a moment, he shrugged. “I liked the military. They told me where to go and what to do, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If I wasn’t working, I was training or sleeping. Those were my options and it worked.”
“Perhaps you should try socializing with the other students more.”
He made a face. “I’d rather not.”
“You’re an interesting group.”
“I find the others incredibly boring.”
“Each of you has your own unique reason for being here. The only thing I think you all have in common is a shared hatred of Jake Brown.”
A surprised look flashed over Jeff’s face before his carefully neutral mask slid back into place. “I didn’t hate him.”
“No? I did.”
“It’s a good thing he died of natural causes, then, isn’t it? Otherwise, people might think that you had a motive for killing him.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Because you know whatever really happened to Jake, Dr. Freeman will be declaring it natural causes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Robert won’t let a little thing like murder get in the way of the success of this school.”
“You think Jake was murdered?”
“Probably. You said yourself that everyone hated him. His death is awfully convenient for Robert,” Jeff said.
“Are you suggesting that Robert killed him?”
“Maybe, but there are plenty of others who had motives. I don’t much care what happened, really. I didn’t like him and I won’t be mourning his death.”
“But if someone killed him, others could be in danger, too.”
“I can take care of myself. That doesn’t worry me in the slightest.”
Sara wanted to argue further, but it was time to head back. In the transport, she threw out a question.
“If Jake was murdered, who do you think killed him?”
“You’d be my number one suspect,” Jeff replied.
“Me?” Sara was amused.
“If you’re here because you lost your last job, you may well need this job rather desperately. Jake was a loose cannon who was going to destroy the school if he wasn’t brought into line. Robert seemed oblivious to the trouble that Jake was causing, deliberately so, I’m sure.”
“I’d have done a better job of it.”
Jeff barked out another laugh. “That’s probably true. In that case, I’ll move Robert to the top of my list. He’s far less clever and we know he was with Jake in the maze. It would have been a simple matter to swap the fake knife for a real one, stab the man, and then simply walk away.”
Sara nodded. “Let’s hope Jake’s death was from natural causes.”
“I’m sure it will be, officially, anyway,” Jeff replied.
Cha
pter 8
“Tamara next,” Sara said after she’d followed Jeff back to the classroom.
“You may as well take me and Luke together,” Tamara suggested as she stood up. “He’s already an expert. He can give me pointers while I shoot.”
“That’s my job,” Sara replied.
Tamara sighed. “He’s better looking than you are, though.”
“Yes, isn’t he just?”
Luke looked up from his work and winked at Sara. Tamara was already making her way out of the building as Sara turned around and went after her.
“Take your time,” Tamara said with a yawn as Sara drove. “I’m not in any hurry to get back to that class.”
“Not enjoying code breaking?”
“Code breaking was crazy hard, but now we’re working on financial records and that’s even worse. I don’t know if it’s harder or not, but it’s really, really, really boring.”
“What a shame. Weapons training should be more exciting.”
At the range, she handed the girl the laser pistol. “Let’s start here.”
Tamara looked bored throughout the brief safety lecture. “Can I just try shooting the darn thing?” she asked.
“Sure, go ahead. Aim at the ten-yard target.”
The shot went wide, passing harmlessly into the wall.
Sara stood behind the girl and took her hand. “You want to look right down the center of the weapon and aim for the middle of the target. Try again, right there.”
Tamara rolled her eyes at Sara and then pressed the fire button again. “This would be a lot more fun if Luke was the one holding my hand.”
“You could probably get Mark to come up here with you for some practice,” Sara told her, eager to keep the woman away from Luke.
“I don’t know about Mark. He’s okay, but Luke is better looking and smarter. You aren’t thinking about making a play for Luke, are you?”
“Staff aren’t allowed to get involved with students.”
“Really? Someone should have told Jake that,” Tamara laughed.
“He was told.”
“So he just didn’t care. That sounds like him.”
“You should have said something to Robert.”