The Professor

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Natasha,” Henry began in a low voice.

  “No,” she said, stopping him. “You don’t get to talk first when I don’t even know your real last name. Who are you?”

  “I told you.”

  “Yes. Agent Henry Altman. I don’t know Agent Henry Altman. Who is he?”

  “I’m still the exact same person, Natasha,” said Henry. “You do know me.”

  “Do I?” The words wavered as they floated up the stairs to me. “Because I married a man who told me he worked on the farm that he grew up on for the majority of his life, and you, evidently, are not that man.”

  “For the record, I did grow up on a farm. Just not this one. And my work was classified. I wasn’t permitted to share it with you.”

  “Federal agents aren’t required to hide their identities,” my mother shot back.

  “I was undercover.”

  “Why?”

  Henry sighed, and the sound of a kitchen stool scraping across the wood floors reached my ears. “Before I explain this, I just want you to know that this was never part of the plan.”

  “What was never part of the plan?”

  “You and me.”

  I bit my lip, waiting out Natasha’s response. I could already see where this was going. From the sound of the story so far and the wistful sighs that Henry kept releasing, he had made the classic mistake of falling in love with his mark.

  “How long?” asked Natasha in a small voice.

  “I was assigned to this investigation in 1990.”

  “Twenty-five years?”

  “Twenty-five years.”

  “Go on.”

  Henry inhaled such an enormous breath that I could hear it from my position at the top of the stairs. “The Bureau had been looking into the Black Raptor Society for a while, but we were unable to find any concrete evidence of the society’s existence. We knew it was there, but back then, its members were significantly more skilled in hiding their tracks. They were guilty of everything, Natasha—laundering money, tax evasion, art theft, you name it—but the fact was that we weren’t making any progress on the case. The Bureau needed an inside man.”

  “And you volunteered?”

  “I was assigned,” corrected Henry. “I was one of the youngest agents on the case, so it was less suspicious for me to be seen on a college campus. I spent almost two years at Waverly, trying my damnedest to find even a whisper of the Raptors. I nearly gave up.”

  “And then?”

  “I attended the annual charity event,” Henry explained. “It was a last-ditch attempt at obtaining new information. The event had been planned and executed by one of Waverly’s most prestigious families: the Lockwoods. Of course, the whole family showed up in all their glory. By then, Catherine Flynn had already been married and widowed. I remember wondering why anyone would ever marry a woman like that in the first place. Even when she spoke at the event, she seemed cold and distant.”

  There was a pause, during which I assumed Henry was reminiscing on his life-altering evening. My mother, like me, waited in silence. Henry went on.

  “Later on, I caught sight of Flynn sneaking out of the event. I followed her. She met with another member of the society. She was livid, prattling on and on about ‘losing another lead.’ And then she mentioned you and Anthony both.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing of much use to me,” said Henry. “Instinct told me not to let it go. I researched the names. Can you imagine what I found?”

  “Our death records.”

  “Bingo. At first, I thought it was another dead end. Then I began to wonder. Natasha Petrov and Anthony Costello, both young and healthy, died within two years of each other. Something didn’t add up. Of course, my research on Anthony fell flat. He really was gone, although the circumstances surrounding his death were pretty hazy. I found you though. You’d changed your name, updated your ID, and moved out of state, but I found you regardless. So I moved to Palo Alto in order to track you down.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Behind me, the bathroom door swung open, and Wes emerged from the steam with a fluffy, tan towel wrapped around his midriff. I pivoted around, placing a finger to my lips before he could say anything. He paused, knelt down to my level, and mouthed, “What’s going on?”

  “Henry’s with the FBI,” I whispered back. Hot water dripped off of Wes’s nose as I pointed downstairs. “Listen.”

  Henry trudged onward with his retelling. Now that he had begun to explain his alternate life story, it seemed that he wanted to get it all out on the table in one fell swoop. “My orders were to get close to you,” he admitted. “I just watched you from a distance for a little while, as terrible as that sounds, to gauge my next steps. You seemed sad, lonely even, but there was nothing inherently suspicious about your existence other than your presumed death. When I noticed that you regularly attended group therapy, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I never meant to—”

  “Don’t say it,” ordered Natasha suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Don’t say that you never meant to fall in love with me.”

  I pumped my fist once in a gesture of victory and whispered to Wes, “I knew it. God, what a cliché.”

  “Shh,” said Wes, bumping my shoulder.

  “Fine, I won’t say it,” said Henry from downstairs. “But you know that it’s true.”

  “You have been using me for twenty years.”

  “Not quite,” disagreed Henry. “It’s true that when I first met you, I was digging for information. But not long after, the case flatlined. We’d had too many false leads. Too many mistakes had been made. The investigation was put on hold, and I took a step back from the Bureau.”

  “Then how did you manage to find out about Nicole?”

  “Even though the case was put on the back burner, something didn’t sit right with me,” said Henry. “And once I knew how involved you had been with BRS, I thought that it was simply a precaution to keep an eye on the goings-on at Waverly. Then, almost three years ago, I recognized a familiar name on the enrollment list.”

  “Nicole Costello?”

  “You got it. I thought maybe it was just a coincidence, but Nicole so blatantly resembled Anthony. There’s a little bit of you in her face too, no matter how vehemently you deny it. Not to mention, the timeline added up perfectly. I never told you that I knew about Nicole because you so obviously had never wanted me to know about her. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but keep tabs on her.”

  “This just keeps getting creepier and creepier,” mumbled Wes, resting his wet chin on my shoulder.

  I envied his warmth. All I wanted was to take a hot shower, eat a homemade meal, and fall into bed, but Henry’s explanation continued on downstairs, and he was just getting to the good parts.

  “For Nicole’s first year on campus, there was no trouble at all,” said Henry. I tensed, gripping the banister in order to hold on to something steady. Wes was right. It was a little unsettling to hear a complete stranger talk about your life. “Maybe it had all blown over, I thought. After all, she wasn’t you. Then George O’Connor disappeared. No explanation. I knew he had ties to the Raptors in the past—”

  “How?” interrupted Natasha. “Where did all of your information come from?”

  Henry didn’t answer immediately. Rather, he seemed to be trying to find the right way to phrase a response. After a minute or so, he finally said, “When Nicole enrolled at Waverly, I recruited someone who could look the part amongst the Raptors. I needed a source. This individual has been my eyes and ears on campus for the past few years.”

  “Who is it?” asked my mother, voicing the question in my own head.

  “I can’t divulge that information.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The individual is trustworthy and entirely on our side,” Henry assured her. “That’s all I can say. Anyway, after O’Connor disappeared, I started hearing more and more about Nicole from my source. She had begun
investigating O’Connor’s disappearance. That’s how she discovered the Raptors. Your old rival, Catherine Flynn, was both ecstatic and devastated. Nicole was essentially a newer, updated version of her oldest rival. You, Natasha.”

  “Consider me flattered,” replied my mother.

  “You might chide me for this next part,” admitted Henry. “When Nicole began stirring up trouble, I thought it best to allow her to do so in order to lure the Raptors from their sanctuary.”

  My mother scoffed. “You used her as bait.”

  “And it worked. The Raptors, particularly Flynn and her cohorts, were getting sloppy in their desperation to contain Nicole. It became easy to discern who among the society was willing to put Nicole in the line of fire. Admittedly, I waited too long before I intervened. I underestimated Donovan Davenport, one of Flynn’s devout followers. It resulted in the string of events that occurred yesterday, which could have been avoided. Recognizing my mistake, I took action to extract Nicole and Wes from the situation. Their safety became my number one priority, and your faith in me moved to number two.”

  Silence fell in the kitchen. I could picture Natasha and Henry gazing at each other across the countertop. They had both kept secrets. I couldn’t really relate. Wes and I had always told each other everything. Even during the past few months, with tensions running so high, the two of us had managed, for the most part, to keep one another informed. Lying to my significant other was a foreign concept to me, but Natasha and Henry’s entire relationship had been built on a bed of precarious untruths.

  “Is that all of it?” asked Natasha.

  “It’s been twenty-five years, my love,” said Henry tiredly. “I’m sure I left something out. But as much as I remember, yes, that’s all of it.”

  “Then kindly go get Nicole and catch her up to speed.”

  “Shit,” I hissed. I shoved Wes away, scrambling to my feet and attempting to disappear from the top of the steps. Henry’s footsteps echoed through the entryway.

  “Nicole?”

  I peeked over the banister. “Yes?”

  “You can come down now.”

  I glanced at Wes, who nodded. “Go ahead,” he said, still in his towel. “I’ll get dressed and be down in a minute.”

  So I headed downstairs alone, following Henry back into the kitchen. Natasha stood at the kitchen sink, absentmindedly wringing the same worn-out dishtowel between her hands. Her eyes looked vacantly out of the window above the sink, as if she wasn’t really seeing the front yard.

  Henry cleared his throat. “So, Nicole, I guess it’s only fair for us to fill you in.”

  “Can I be honest?” I asked, leaning across the counter to commandeer the plate of chicken that had been cast aside and forgotten about. I took a bite of a drumstick. Even cold, my mother’s cooking was flawless. I frowned. I’d almost been hoping that she was terrible at something. “I was listening from the top of the stairs.”

  Henry lifted an eyebrow. “Wow,” he said to Natasha. “She really is your daughter.”

  Natasha made a rude gesture at her husband, to which he responded with a low chuckle.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m glad we’re all up to speed,” I said, attempting to wave away the taut string of stress that lingered between Natasha and Henry like a persistent spider’s web. “But what do we do now? What’s our next step?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Henry.

  “To take down the Raptors,” I clarified. “I mean, you have a plan, right?”

  At the window, Natasha bristled but remained firmly planted by the sink, unwilling to join the conversation.

  “Nicole,” said Henry gently. “I didn’t evacuate you from the Waverly campus so that we could rendezvous and formulate some harebrained scheme to eliminate the Raptors. I did it so that you would be safe, once and for all.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re done,” stated Henry, his fingers cutting across the counter in a movement that mirrored his tone of finality. “No Waverly. No Black Raptor Society. Nothing. Your assignment now is to wait this thing out. Stay hidden. Stay safe. I’ll report back to the Bureau and take care of everything else.”

  “Forgive me if this comes off as a little rude, Henry, but I don’t know you,” I reminded him. I pointed to Natasha. “Or her, for that matter. Blood doesn’t make you family. I appreciate the rescue and the safe house, but it’s not enough. I still have friends who are at the mercy of the Raptors, and even if I didn’t, there’s no way I would just let Catherine Flynn continue on her quest for world domination unhindered. Now, Natasha, where are the tapes?”

  For the first time since I had returned to the kitchen, Natasha redirected her attention away from the front yard, her eyes wide as she watched, not me, but Henry.

  “What tapes?” he demanded.

  I rolled my eyes, officially fed up with the way all of our conversations were reminiscent of a terrible rendition of an Abbott and Costello sketch. “The tapes,” I said, ignoring the look on Natasha’s face that pleaded with me to shut up, “of Catherine Flynn’s murders while she was still attending Waverly. She’s been after them for years.”

  “And you have them?” Henry asked of Natasha.

  “Well, Flynn certainly doesn’t,” I said before Natasha could answer. “Natasha set up a fake scavenger hunt to throw Flynn off the tracks. Where are the real ones?”

  Natasha stared at both of us, her face a mask of resolute calm.

  “Well?” prompted Henry.

  “I don’t have them.”

  “Then where are they?” I asked.

  “Gone.”

  My frustration had begun to overflow again, but the uneasy feeling that burned in the pit of my stomach told me that frustration was the least of my worries. “What do you mean they’re gone?”

  “I destroyed them. Years ago.”

  “Why?”

  Before Natasha could answer, the front door slammed, startling all three of us. Through the window above the sink, we watched Wes—dressed in a pair of Henry’s jeans, a borrowed flannel shirt, and his own police jacket—sprint out to the red pickup truck and climb into the driver’s seat.

  “What the hell—?” I pushed by Henry and ran out to the front porch, but it was too late. Wes threw the truck into gear and peeled out, the muddy tires kicking up an arc of dirt as he executed a rough U-turn and took off down the driveway. I turned to Henry who, along with Natasha, lingered in the doorway. “Do you have another car? Can we follow him?”

  “There’s a Triumph in the shed,” he said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around Natasha. To my surprise, she leaned into him. Even though they had kept so much from each other, they were still a team.

  “I can’t ride a motorcycle!”

  “Out of luck then, kiddo,” he said gruffly, watching the red truck turn on to the dirt road.

  “But he’s still injured!” I protested. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun, following the path of the truck as Wes drove back toward the center of town. “How could he be so stupid? Where is he even going?”

  “Looks like he’s on a mission,” replied Henry. “Nothing much you can do but wait for him to get back.”

  The feeling in the pit of my stomach intensified. I had no reason to doubt Wes, but with all the insanity that he had to put up with because of my last name, it was any wonder he hadn’t left me yet. “What makes you think he’s coming back?”

  Henry chuckled. “Because I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  Though Lauren had freed herself of the zip tie, she felt immobilized. The expansive meeting room was more oppressive than the tiny cell that Lauren had been waiting in for hours. Innumerable pairs of eyes stared at her, rooting her to the high-backed chair, as the Raptors awaited her reaction.

  Lauren consulted her aunt’s expression. A single tear had carved a pale path through the layer of bronzer on Catherine Flynn’s face. For a woman who often exhibited no emotion, Flynn’s stoic display of grief was co
nvincing, but Lauren, unlike the other Raptors, was highly practiced in seeing through Flynn’s facades.

  “You’re lying,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “I can assure you, Lauren, that I would not lie about my own brother’s death,” said Flynn, her voice trembling.

  “You could win a damn Oscar, Aunt Catherine,” whispered Lauren.

  Flynn cleared her throat. “Could everyone leave us, please? I’d like to have a word alone with my niece. Hastings and Dashwood? The two of you may stay.”

  As the Raptors began to clear the room, a tremor began in Lauren’s hands. She hid them beneath the table, keeping her chin tucked so that the Raptors shuffling by wouldn’t see the tears on her eyelashes. Some of the society members muttered condolences on their way past her. Two or three of them squeezed her shoulder, but she remained impassive until they had all filed out. When only Olivia and Holden Hastings remained, Lauren wiped her eyes and nose and lifted her head.

  “Now that your rapt audience has dispersed, tell me the damn truth,” said Lauren. “What did you do to my father?”

  “Nothing,” replied Flynn. “He suffered a heart attack late last night.”

  “First of all, my father has never had a history of heart problems,” said Lauren. “And secondly, I saw him late last night. Once more, what did you do to my father?”

  Instead of responding, Flynn opened a file folder, drew out a document, and flicked it across the length of the dining table until it settled against Lauren’s clenched fists. Lauren drew it toward her. It was a death certificate.

  “I told you,” said Flynn. “I wouldn’t lie about Orson.”

  Lauren rested her head in her hand, shielding her face from Flynn, Olivia, and Hastings, but there was no hiding the shaking of her shoulders as her emotions got the best of her. She allowed herself a minute or two, ignoring the other people in the room. Then she flung the death certificate back at Flynn.

  “Where’s my mother?” she demanded, her face streaked with tears. “I assume the hospital contacted her. Where is she?”

  “She was at a conference in Belgium,” reported Olivia when Flynn didn’t reply. “She’s on her way back now.”