You Don't Know My Name

by Kristen Orlando

  “But you’d be dead.”

  “I’d be dead but everyone else would be safe.”

  “Don’t say that,” Luke says, grabbing my arm, turning my face toward his. “Don’t even think it.”

  I nod in forced agreement. But it’s hard not to. The butterfly effect. Had I done one tiny thing differently, I wouldn’t be sitting here.

  “We’ll find them, Mac,” Luke says, his face falling as soon as the nickname escapes his lips. Cooper’s and Sam’s muffled voices just beyond the wall fills the sudden space between us. He looks down at the ground, digging the heels of his sneakers into the cement floor, then looks back up at me. “Sorry.”

  “I actually really like that nickname. I’ve never told you that before. But now it just feels strange, like Mac is part of another life, another Reagan, and you know the real one now.”

  “How many Reagans have you been?” Luke asks, his blue eyes still sad.

  “So many,” I say and tuck a strand of my dark hair behind my ear. “Seven or eight. At least that’s the number of covers I remember. I’ve created a lot of lives and told a lot of lies. Honestly, it’s been hard to keep them straight. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to do it anymore. I know the good I could do as a Black Angel. It’s just…”

  “So hard,” Luke says, finishing my thought, and I nod. Luke opens his mouth to speak, then changes his mind and stops.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” Luke says, rubbing the palms of his hands over the top of his jeans. “I feel in this weird way sort of envious of the training you’ve had. I want to be in the military more than anything. Maybe even become a Black Angel one day now that I know the group exists. But at the same time, I feel like you’ve been cheated somehow. I can’t really imagine what it’s like to feel like you’re in constant danger while also trying to pass geometry.”

  I look down at my hands and examine my almost nonexistent fingernails. I tuck them into the sleeves of my sweatshirt and hug them to my chest. “I’ve gotten so used to it—to the fear—that it’s sort of become my normal. I feel so guilty about not wanting to go to the training academy. I was planning on it all my life. I didn’t have a question in my mind. That was just what I was meant to do. But in the last year things have just … shifted.”

  “You got a taste of normal life,” Luke says. It’s incredible how that boy can read my mind.

  “Yeah. I mean, I feel like I made real friends and created a real life. I met you,” I reply, and shrug. “And when I was with you guys, there was sort of this lightness I never felt before. I guess I’m scared of losing that feeling.”

  “Well, I support your decision.” Luke reaches out and touches my arm with the tips of his fingers. I look down at his hand. He pulls it away and runs it through his hair. “I want you to be happy.”

  “Me too.” I turn my body toward him and lean my head against the concrete wall. “You know, the danger and all that stuff … I could live with it. I mean, I really like the idea of helping people. Like saving that girl today, I wasn’t remotely scared when I was doing it. I think I just hate that I can never have a real life. I can never get close to anybody. I hate having to leave with the clothes on my back in the middle of the night and never see the people I care about ever again. That’s the part of this job I have a hard time dealing with. I don’t ever want to disappear and have someone wonder what happened to me for the rest of their life.”

  Luke’s eyes widen as my words answer the question that has been spinning on repeat in his head for days. “So that’s why,” he finally says, his voice barely audible.

  “I’m so sorry, Luke,” I say and look into his eyes so he knows I mean it.

  “I knew there had to be a reason,” Luke says, his voice soft and still, his eyes dropping to the floor, hiding what’s written inside. “I just never thought you’d hurt me like that. Even under these absurd circumstances.”

  I reach out and place my hand on his wrist. “After Templeton, I found out how bad the mission went and I could feel it. That threat of having to leave again. I needed you to hate me. I thought kissing that guy would make you never want to talk to me again.”

  “It almost worked,” he says, pulling his hand away. His face scrunches as the night comes back to him.

  That’s the part that has haunted me: the broken look on his face after he saw me kiss Oliver. The hurt behind his eyes crushed me then and crushes me now.

  “I wish I could tell you I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I did. I figured it’d be less painful than finding out that I just disappeared. I didn’t want you to come knock on my door and have no one answer or for my phone to ring straight to some automated voice saying my number was no longer in service. For you to search for me. I know you. I know you’d worry about me forever.”

  We hold each other’s stare for a second. I want to ask him what happens now. What happens to us? Could he still love me? I open my mouth to speak, then close it. Afraid of the answer. Maybe I’m too late. Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about me anymore. And if he doesn’t, I don’t think I want to know.

  “Luke,” Sam’s voice says from the doorway. We turn to look at her. “We need to start preparing for the mission so we need to get you home.”

  “Has someone done a sweep of the area?” I ask, my heart compressing anxious beats in my heavy chest.

  “We’ve done a complete check,” Sam replies, nodding. “He’s safe.”

  “Okay, great,” I say and rock myself off the floor, my legs carrying me quickly into the weapons room, where I grab my Glock pistol. “Just let me take him home with Cooper or something and I’ll come back and we can go over the mission with CORE.”

  “Reagan,” Sam says softly. And just by the way she says my name I already know the words that linger on the other side of her turned-down lips.

  “Do you want me to drive or do you want to drive?” I ask, looking around for the keys, stalling the inevitable. My pulse pounding against my neck, fluttering beats of hope and fear.

  “Reagan,” Sam says again, now at my side, but I avoid looking at her, rationalizing that maybe if I don’t stare directly at her, she won’t say it. She does anyway. “There’s no way you can be involved with the mission.”

  “Why not?” I ask coolly, loading rounds of ammunition into my clip and avoiding her eyes.

  “Sweetie, there’s about a dozen reasons why,” Sam replies and I have to suppress the instantaneous urge to remind her how much I hate being called sweetie. Starting a sentence with “sweetie” is like immediately telling someone they’re dumb or wrong. Or both.

  “Well, there are about one hundred reasons why I should be involved,” I answer, tucking my gun into the back of my pants.

  “Reagan, be reasonable here,” Sam replies, firmly grabbing my arm. “As much as I want you there, even think we need you there, you are not a full agent. You’re emotionally compromised. And on top of that, you are the original target. We need to get you out of Ohio and to Langley tonight. If you were in my shoes, you know you’d make the same exact call.”

  My eyes stare hard at the sharp blades lined up on the metal counter, waiting to be packed and put on board a jet bound for Colombia. With my free hand, I reach out and touch one of the serrated edges. I run my finger carefully along each bump and imagine plunging it into Torres’s neck. I have to get down there. I have to at least be in the country. And if Sam won’t take me, I’ll get there myself.

  “I understand,” I lie, my voice shrinking.

  Sam looks over her shoulder at Luke standing in the doorway then turns back to me. “Take a minute to say good-bye,” she says, her voice low. “You’ll probably never see him again.”

  The weapons room’s dense air burns my lungs as I take in a deep, noisy breath. Sam pats my arm, giving me a weak, closed-mouth smile before walking back into the situation room.

  Luke stares at me, his pale eyes tired and
worried. I press my lips in a thin line and move toward him, taking him by the wrist and leading him into the darkest corner of the gun range, out of Sam’s earshot.

  “They’re taking you home,” I tell him, my voice low and my heart pounding painfully beneath my breastbone, each beat begging: Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.

  “What about you?”

  “They’re taking me to Langley tonight.”

  “What happens from there?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. New name, new life. The way it’s always been.”

  “So … will I ever see you again? Is this good-bye?” Luke asks, his eyes glassy and searching my face.

  “We’re leaving in one minute, Luke.” Sam pokes her head into the room then disappears.

  My arms wrap around Luke’s neck and pull him toward me. “I don’t want to say good-bye to you,” I whisper, tears stinging the back of my throat and muting my voice.

  Luke puts his arms around my waist and pulls me closer to him. I take a mental note of the way his body feels against mine: strong and warm and safe. I bury my face in his shoulder and take in his scent. Soap and cinnamon and something metallic I don’t recognize.

  “I can’t imagine not seeing you again,” Luke says into my ear, his hands running up my spine, rubbing a smooth spot on the back of my neck with his fingertips.

  “Reagan,” Sam says from the doorway. “I’m sorry. But it’s time.”

  I rise on my toes and brush my lips against his smooth cheek. Luke’s arms tighten around my waist, and my body tingles and aches all at once.

  “Stay by your phone,” I whisper in Luke’s ear. “I’m going to need you.”

  I squeeze Luke’s neck hard for one more second and then let him free. I watch in silence as Luke follows Cooper up the steps. When they reach the top, Luke turns around and looks down at me, his right hand rising in a silent good-bye. His lips turn up into a small, sad smile. I take in the way his long lashes frame his kind eyes. The way his dimples crease into his creamy cheeks. I file him away as he turns around, walks through the door, and disappears.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Okay, is everyone dialed in who needs to be?” I can hear Thomas’s muffled voice on the other side of the situation room door. As soon as Cooper got back, they closed the door, refusing to let me in to hear any part of the plan. It’s classified. Even though it’s my parents.

  I shrugged, acted like I understood. But here I am, my face pressed to the cold door as I rack my brain trying to figure out how to get all the intel I need.

  I imagine Thomas standing in the situation room at Langley, the live feed of CORE’s bunkered conference room broadcasting onto one of the large monitors in front of Cooper and Sam. I know I’ve seen inside CORE’s headquarters before. I know exactly what it looks like. Where have I seen it? I rub my hands over my scrunched forehead as my brain scrolls through years of training. I close my eyes as jagged half memories pulse into my mind, a half a second at a time. Then my brain lands on a memory from a year ago. Mom on her tablet during our middle of the night ride from Philadelphia to DC. She had pulled up the situation room at Langley and was listening to a briefing on the hitman in our house.

  How did she get there? Think, Reagan, think. I draw a deep breath through my pursed lips, almost hoping to hypnotize myself and pull out a long-buried memory.

  My brain focuses on the moments before she pulled out her tablet. She told Dad she needed coffee. He said he’d pick up some once they crossed out of Pennsylvania. She pulled the tablet out of her go-bag, typed in a series of numbers, and pulled up the conference.

  The Black Angel code.

  I tear across the room and open Mom’s go-bag. I rifle through her stuff. Her favorite sweater, pictures of me as a kid, letters from Dad, and I find it. Her Black Angel–issued tablet. It’s not like anything you can buy at Apple.

  I turn on the screen. It commands a six-digit passcode. My fingers type in the Black Angel number I memorized. 1-7-8-2-2-9.

  As soon as I break in, a message pops up on the screen:

  CORE Conference In Session.

  Below that message bubble, there are two options.

  Join as Elizabeth. Join Anonymously.

  Join Anonymously. Duh.

  Thomas and the situation room at Langley take over my screen. I’m in.

  “According to the flight plan, they are landing at a small private airport near Tumaco.” Thomas touches a screen built into the conference room table and a map of Colombia takes over my tablet. He circles a tiny town on the Colombian coast near Ecuador. I pull out my phone and take a photo of the map. “Torres has a large ranch outside of town so we believe Jonathan and Elizabeth will be taken there.”

  “So, what’s the next step?” I hear Sam ask. I imagine her on the other side of the wall, biting down on her right thumbnail.

  “The Columbus team will fly down to Ecuador immediately,” Thomas answers. “There will be a foreign Black Angel agent waiting for you at the private airport in Quito. He’ll get you to San Lorenzo, where we’ll put you in the bed of one of our trucks and get you across.”

  “What about the rest of the team?” Sam asks.

  “DC is unfortunately having huge storms right now,” Thomas answers with a heavy sigh. “Our pilot won’t take off. Says it’s not safe for a plane that small, so we’ve had to book a commercial flight for Meredith and PJ. Flight leaves in two hours. Eduardo, a Black Angel transporter, will be waiting for them at El Jefe Café in the commercial airport in Quito.”

  Thomas pulls up a picture of Eduardo and circles the location of El Jefe Café in the airport. I snap another photo on my phone.

  “Eduardo doesn’t have a high-security clearance,” Thomas continues. “So keep the discussion of the mission to a minimum until he gets you to the official team in Colombia.”

  “Can we trust him?” a young woman, who I can only assume is Meredith, asks from inside the conference room at Langley.

  “Yes, we’ve worked with him many times,” Thomas’s voice answers and pulls up the route the teams will take once they land. I snap another photo of the blue squiggly line that leads from Quito to San Lorenzo, a beach town just outside the Colombian border where Thomas explains each team will be smuggled separately across the border.

  “Don’t wait in San Lorenzo for the DC team,” Thomas reminds Sam. “You guys need to get across the border first so we don’t attract attention.”

  “All right,” Sam agrees.

  “Get ready for the codes. Here we go. Columbus team, 220394. DC team, your code is 392043,” Thomas says and the screen switches back to the conference room at Langley.

  220394. 220394. 392043 392043. I repeat the numbers over and over again until they lock into place.

  “Plane is on its way to you guys in Columbus,” Thomas says and glances at his watch. “Should be there in less than fifteen.”

  “Got it,” I hear Sam reply. “We’ll get our gear and get out of here.”

  “All right. Radio contact can be spotty down in Ecuador but the team you’re meeting in Colombia will have full satellite capabilities,” Thomas replies. “Good luck, everyone.”

  The screen goes black. I hear the scrape of metal chairs on the other side of the wall as Cooper and Sam stand up. I fly off the floor and silently run to the opposite side of the room, hiding Mom’s tablet in my go-bag.

  I slink back down onto the ground, my back up against the wall, my lips pushed into a disinterested pout as Sam opens the door.

  “Reagan, you can come in now,” she says, waving me through. I stand up, steadying myself against the wall to catch my breath from that too-close-for-comfort maneuver.

  I follow Sam into the weapons room where Cooper is hurriedly packing M4 carbines, pistols, knives, and ammunition into steel weapons cases.

  “We need to get you to Langley as soon as possible but we’ve got to get down to South America,” Sam states, running her hands through her hair and fixing her falling ponytail. “Cooper
, you’ve got to stay with her until Brian gets here to take her to CORE.”

  Cooper stops dead in his tracks, his strong arms crossing over his body. “No way. I’m going on this mission with you. You cannot go alone. What happens if the DC team can’t make it? We need firepower.”

  “We can’t just leave her. Brian is still two hours away—” Sam begins.

  “I’ll be fine,” I interrupt, my voice strong and confident. I need them to leave me alone.

  “We cannot leave you by yourself,” Sam says, shaking her head and putting her hands squarely on her hips. “We need someone to protect you and get you to Langley safely.”

  “Sam, just go. Look at where we’re at,” I say and motion around the weapons room. “I’ll grab some weapons, I’ll lock myself into the panic room, and I’ll wait for the watcher to come pick me up.”

  “I don’t know,” Sam says with her face cocked to one side. I grab her by her shoulders.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I say and give her a reassuring squeeze. “You know I can handle myself. Just please, go get my parents.”

  “Sam, we’ve got to get to the airport,” Cooper interjects, clicking closed the last packed weapons case. “We don’t have time to waste here.”

  Sam looks up into my eyes and presses her lips together. I know she’s weighing the pros and cons of delaying the trip down to Ecuador or leaving Cooper behind. She glances at her watch and finally nods. “Okay. Brian will be here in less than two hours. Grab some guns and get into the panic room.”

  I walk over to the first cabinet door and pull a loaded Glock 22 pistol and M4 carbine off the shelf. Sam hands me a bottle of water and wraps her arm around my shoulder as we walk in silence toward the open panic room door.

  I step inside the seven foot by seven foot steel-and-concrete box and turn to face Sam, her eyes suddenly glassy. She takes my hands into her own, opens her mouth to speak, but words don’t come out. I don’t know what’s making her so emotional. Visions of me as a little girl. The thought of my parents gagged and beaten. The mission to rescue them resting heavy on her shoulders. Probably a combination of all three.