She spied her own reflection in the glass frame of the display. Her glasses were gone, her hair was straight and sleek. She didn’t look too much like the girl he dated. Her norm was no longer his norm.
“Let’s take the stairs,” Preston said as he grabbed her wrist and gave her a gentle tug.
“The stairs? Why?” Elle was forced to keep up with him or he would’ve ended up dragging her on the floor. Although his tug had been gentle, his grip on her wrist was strong. Was he ticked that she wouldn’t tell him what he was thinking? Or her crack about “bolting”?
He didn’t answer, just glanced past her, behind them. She followed his gaze to see the door to the computer lab open. One of the guys stuck his head out and peered down the hall at them.
As soon as Preston opened the door to the stairwell he picked up the pace. “Let’s move.”
Even as she stayed right on his heels, she said, “There you go with the orders again. We’re supposed to be a team-”
The door they had just entered through burst open. The guy looked down the stairwell at them before saying something into his headpiece.
Dammit. Those two had looked like regular college students. How had Preston figured out they weren’t?
He started moving even faster, and she kept up, but the guy was right on their heels.
“Stop!” His shout echoed through the stairwell.
Elle glanced up to see him holding a gun, which he pointed right at them. The other guy wasn’t far behind him. She remembered her training. If being pursued and the pursuer pulled out a gun, keep running. Force them to shoot if necessary. Surrendering guaranteed capture, which they were to avoid at all costs. Often the goal was not to kill an operative but to capture and torture them for intel. It was unfortunate they had to run down eleven flights of stairs.
“Keep moving,” Preston grunted. His feet shuffled so fast it was almost like he was sliding down the stairs rather than running. How the hell did he do that?
A hand seized Elle’s arm, causing her to lose her footing on the stairs. She fell, pulling the guy who grabbed her down with her. He fell on top of her, but she was already trying to wrench her arm away. With her free hand she reached up, yanking his sunglasses away so she could gouge at his eyes. When her fingernails touched his eyelids he let her go, and she sprang up just as his partner reached them.
Without even thinking she struck out with a side kick, which knocked him into the wall.
The pop of gunfire had all three of them hitting the ground.
Elle looked down to see Preston a couple of floors below, his gun aimed at them. She jumped up and started running as he yelled, “Come on!”
Like she needed to be told.
The guy whose eyes she’d attempted to gouge reached out for her again, but she was able to move just fast enough so his fingers merely grazed her upper arm as she rounded the stairwell. Then she felt a hit to her shoulder and went flying.
The feeling of being airborne had never felt so terrifying. She turned partway in the air so that her side slammed into the stairs as she slid down them. She didn’t feel any pain in her arm, hip or leg as she focused on reaching for her gun, yanking it out even as she turned on her back.
She raised her arm, trying to take aim at the guy closest to her even as she was still sliding down the stairs. Her back hit the floor of the landing with a jaw-jarring thud even as she squeezed the trigger of her gun.
The guy right behind her was thrown back by the blast of the shot as his shoulder seemed to explode. He hit the wall, leaving a bright spot of blood. The guy’s partner tried to pass him but then he was flying back, too, hitting the wall before falling down the steps, his body sagging and bumping on each step.
Elle was up on her feet before he landed right next to where she’d been. His eyes were open but unseeing. The red hole in his forehead told her all she needed to know.
He was dead. Jesus.
“We’ve gotta go!” It was Preston.
She looked down to see him still standing there, his gun in hand. He’d fired the second shot that killed the other guy. He raised his arm again, took aim, and fired a second time.
She looked at the stairwell in front of her to see the guy who’d pushed her down the stairs, who she had just shot in the shoulder, slump over.
Two dead bodies in a university stairwell.
“Mason said to keep our noses clean-” she began, but Preston interrupted.
“We have to get out of here now!”
She knew he was right and began running. Her legs felt wobbly, but she was still moving down the stairs at a good pace, not too far behind Preston. She couldn’t get the images of those two bodies out of her mind. They had been alive- and chasing her- sixty seconds ago.
Now they were lying like broken dolls, bleeding out.
She gulped in the crisp night air as soon as she got outside, relieved for the cool breeze, even as she kept pace with Preston. He was wasting no time getting to their car.
“Get in the back: driver side!” Preston was already opening the driver’s side door to slide in behind the wheel. Again, he was making the right call: it was better for her to get in the car rather than waste precious seconds running around it to the passenger side, but she still didn’t appreciate the order. Yet she climbed into the back seat, slamming the door shut.
She could hear the wheels spinning on the pavement as the car came to life, lurching out of the parking spot into the street. “Those guys-”
“Command, this is Aston Martin.” Preston was already talking into his earpiece as he drove. “We need cleanup at the university in the Logan Building. Two spills in the north stairwell, between the fourth and fifth floors. Full sanitation required. Have the plane waiting. Aston Martin and Bookworm are en route for extraction.”
The cleanup crews were people they called in case they left bodies behind they didn’t want found. Typically the CIA tried not to leave dead bodies in its wake. With this being on domestic soil… Mason was going to have a heart attack.
Elle gazed out the window, watching the lights and cars whiz by as they sped through traffic. He drove fast enough to make all the yellow lights but not quite fast enough to get them pulled over for a ticket. The sway of the car was oddly comforting.
Tonight, she shot someone for the first time. She even saw two people die, literally right before her eyes. She didn’t fire either of the kill shots, but it was still a lot to process.
“I’m guessing Mason’s going to be upset,” she said into the silence.
Preston shrugged. “We accomplished the op and got the code. We were being pursued, and they nearly caught us. We had no choice. A car chase through Cambridge would be far worse.”
A car chase certainly would bring more attention to them. But… they nearly got caught because of her. She hadn’t been as fast as Preston. She was the one they had been able to reach, even knock down.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up to see him glance at her in the rearview mirror before focusing on the road again.
“You had a pretty bad fall there.”
Now that he mentioned it, she was beginning to feel aches in the side of her arm, her hip, and the side of her leg. She was able to walk and move without a problem, however, so it couldn’t be that bad. “I’m fine.”
He pulled up at the private hangar where their jet waited. It was already on the runway, waiting for them to board. Preston looked her over as they made their way to the plane. He seemed satisfied with what he saw as they boarded.
***
Once they took off, Preston got up and rustled around in the back of the plane. He came back with ice packs and a first-aid kit and dropped them in the seat next to Elle before sitting down across from her.
“Ice wherever you hit the stairs,” he told her. “It’ll help with the swelling.”
Yet another order. She was sure the irritation flashed in her eyes. “I’m not swelling.”
“You will be.” He sat bac
k in his chair, regarding her. His face was expressionless.
Again, as much as it galled her, she knew he was probably right, so she opened up one of the ice packs and pressed it up against her thigh, holding it in place against the plane seat. She wedged another one in so it lay against her hip. Then she took a third pack and pressed it against the side of her arm.
She looked up to see him still regarding her. Was he going to lecture her on not drawing her weapon sooner?
After a moment, Preston spoke. “This is why we have to keep our personal lives uncomplicated.”
She blinked. “Come again?”
“We’re on what seems like a simple, straightforward op. How much safer does it get than a college campus?” He shrugged. “And yet we still almost get killed.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “Well- I don’t think they were going to kill us.” Now she was studying his impassive face, trying to figure out where this had come from. “They had ample opportunity.”
“They would have eventually.” He leaned forward, his gaze intent. “Yeah, they were trying to capture us for interrogation, but don’t think we eventually would have been freed. We were operating on domestic soil: it’s unlikely Washington would even acknowledge us as operatives, much less barter for a trade.”
That was always a possibility: a captured operative may very well be left to die since the United States did not negotiate with terrorists for any reason.
“You’re a senior operative.” She tried to lighten the tone with a joke. “Surely you’ve been in closer calls than this.”
He didn’t smile, but he did nod. “I have. I understand the risks I take every time I go into the field.” His gaze turned even more penetrating. “Do you?”
She couldn’t stop herself from scowling. “Yes, Preston, I understand. I understood before I signed up. This wasn’t my first encounter with hostile agents, you know.” It wasn’t. She’d first encountered them while still in college, and the thought of Michael Kagan still made her skin crawl.
“At least, as an operative, I have the skills to defend myself.” It was a big part of the reason she insisted on becoming field rated.
“And it’s a little more exciting than sitting behind a desk,” he added.
She shrugged, not willing to admit that to him for whatever reason, and felt a twinge in her arm that made her wince.
“Your arm?” His scrutiny sharpened.
She nodded. There was no use denying it.
After another pause, Preston asked, “Wouldn’t it be more exciting having fun with the guy who makes you glow?”
“What business is that-” Elle began, still trying to figure out where he was going with this, but he held up his arms.
“It’s none of my business,” he said. He seemed to be trying to think before adding, “It’s just- the choices you have to make with this job are tough. Tonight you got a peek at what your life could’ve been. How are your choices stacking up?”
She thought about her original ten year plan of going to grad school and then marrying Adam. According to that plan, she would be in school right now, taking law classes with Marni as well as business classes. She and Adam probably would’ve taken turns visiting each other once or twice a month. Did she wish that was her life?
There was nothing pleasant about watching anyone get killed, but adrenaline pumped through her blood. She was part of a major op to protect the United States. She’d loved college and learning, but nothing beat the excitement and sense of purpose that came from being an operative.
“They’re stacking up just fine.” She could look him in the eye because she meant what she said. “And I still don’t see why we have to choose. Operatives do have private lives.”
“Imagine if someone was waiting for you at home.” His face remained expressionless, but there was a note of something in his voice.
“Your father was an operative.” He’d told her that while they were dating- hooking up- when she was in college.
He sighed. “My mother wasn’t a happy little housewife. She resented him. I missed him. Our home life… it wasn’t always the happiest.”
She knew a thing or two about that. Her own parents divorced when she was young, remarried, and there hadn’t been any room in either of their new families for the daughter left over from an unhappy marriage. “I thought your parents stayed together? They didn’t divorce.”
“No, they didn’t: my mother’s homemaking skills weren’t exactly marketable. But she was unhappy.”
“But they made it.” She wouldn’t let this point go; she knew the alternative all too well. “They’re still married today.”
He nodded. “It got easier once my father got out of the field, but for a couple of decades, things were tense. Very tense.”
His thinking made sense to her. She was determined not to repeat her mother’s mistake of being dependent on a husband for everything. Preston was determined not to have an unhappy wife at home. “If they made it through a couple of decades, something was working.”
If he saw her point, he didn’t acknowledge it. She decided to switch to language he was likely to understand. “There are always multiple possible outcomes to any scenario.”
Did he actually look impressed, despite himself? “Spoken like a true operative, but you don’t have blood on your hands yet.”
What the hell did that mean? Her expression must’ve spoken for her.
“I took those guys out-” he began.
“I shot one!” She couldn’t believe the indignant note in her voice, but it was true: she had drawn her firearm and shot one of them in the shoulder.
“But I took them out,” he interrupted. “You haven’t truly been anointed until you’ve ended a life.” He fixed her with a look so intense, she felt as if she was pinned into her chair.
She looked out the window at the blackness beyond the glass. Intellectually, she knew being in the field might mean having to take someone’s life, but she hadn’t given that much thought. She sure as hell wasn’t admitting that to him, though.
Chapter 17
For this op Elle planned ahead and arranged not to be in the office the next day, so she didn’t have to worry about getting up for work after she finally got home and was able to fall asleep. Falling asleep hadn’t been easy: she kept seeing blood on walls and unseeing eyes staring at nothing for a long time. She reminded herself that this was part of what she signed up for; it was part of working in the field.
By lunchtime she was up and dressed- and very bruised. The side of her thigh and her hip had big purple splotches where she’d hit the staircase and the floor. She had another deep purple patch on her upper arm, and as she saw in the mirror, on her upper back, too. She could move around with no problem, though, so the damage was just cosmetic. She reviewed the data she had gotten the night before, since she’d picked up some other files along with the code. It looked similar to the other data she had retrieved. Had more intel been leaked? She prepared a full report and sent it to Mason; he messaged her back that they would meet the next day.
After finishing her analysis, she finally had time to think. Preston’s warnings about how their op could have gone very differently and any op could go differently rang in her head. What if those guys had decided to shoot them? Her body and maybe Preston’s would have been picked up by a cleaning crew. Well, maybe just her body. Preston moved faster than her throughout the entire op; he would have made it out.
Was she in over her head? She had pulled out her gun and even shot someone. The look of pain on the guy’s face as he was thrown against the wall was haunting. Yet he had been holding a gun on her and even pushed her down a flight of stairs. She had to defend herself. It was literally killed or be killed in this line of work, something that had been drilled into her during training. She understood what her instructors had been saying, but the reality was still… daunting.
That guy knew the score of being an operative, but he probably hadn’t planned on dying last
night. She certainly hadn’t thought it was even a possibility. They were on a college campus of all places. Yet she knew college campuses weren’t that safe: her past experience proved otherwise.
Did she really know the score? Dammit, why was she letting Preston get into her head like this?
Her phone beeped, indicating a text. She picked it up to see it was from Reese.
Ready for me to school you some more at the gym?
School her? What was up with all these men thinking they were so much better than her? Even as she thought it, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Sparring with him would be fun.
But Reese was supposed to be a fling. They had already hooked up twice. How many times did people, well, hook up with the same person? Intellectually, she knew there was no right answer to that, yet she wished to hell there was. It would make life a lot easier.
She couldn’t just sit in this apartment thinking about dead bodies. Sparring would do her good; she wasn’t too sore. She texted him back:
I’ll bring some cold packs: you’ll need them by the time we’re done.
By the time Elle got to the gym she was ready to fight. She wore long slacks to make sure the bruises on her leg and hip were covered. Her t-shirt was short-sleeved, but it covered most of the bruise, so she shouldn’t attract any more curious stares than usual.
Reese eyed her as she stepped onto the mat. He looked relaxed in his sweats and t-shirt. She tried not to ogle his biceps, even if they were drool-worthy. She was the fittest she’d ever been in her life yet knew she was no match for him, not really. This was going to be a great distraction
“What happened to your arm?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as he focused on it.
She glanced down although she knew what he was referring to. Shit. He was perceptive. “Oh, I- knocked into some shelves in the stacks, dealing with books.”
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