Page 3 of Twelve
There was a long, suspicious pause.
“The worst part of my week,” Sloane replied brightly, “was blowing up Hogan’s Alley. But in my defense, a person cannot, by definition, defuse a bomb unless it’s operational to begin with.”
And that,I thought,is why the FBI Academy might not survive the Naturals.
“Hogan’s Alley,” Lia repeated. “As in the fake town the FBI uses for training purposes?”
Sloane was quiet for a second or two. “I only blew up seventeen percent of it.”
That seemed like as good a time for a subject change as any. “Your turn, Dean.”
I imagined the way he would look in an FBI Academy dorm room. He’d be sitting on the end of the bed—hospital corners, if he was the one who’d made it. Getting inside his head was a matter of instinct as much as training.
You’re looking at the phone and thinking about me.
“This.” Dean had always been a person of few words. It took the others a moment to catch on, so I translated.
“The best part of your week,” I said. “It’s this.”
Being separated was tough on us—all of us. Their training schedules didn’t allow for much downtime, let alone regular visitation. Knowing it was temporary—measured in weeks, like an elongated summer camp—made it easier, but only just.
I closed my eyes briefly and pictured Dean again.You’re looking away from the phone now, down at your own hands, thinking of mine.
“I’m not going to tell the two of you to get a room,” Michael announced, “because that is geographically impossible. So instead, I will suggest, quite delicately, that the two of you get ametaphoricalroom.”
Dean remained unruffled. After years of exposure, he was pretty much Michael-immune. “I don’t think Townsend would like it if I said the worst part of my week is not being there to wake you up from the dreams, Cassie.”
There had been a time when I’d been the one who’d woken Dean up from memory-ridden nightmares, instead of the reverse.
“Come now, Redding,” Michael enunciated, “the worst part of your week wasclearlylosing a bet and being forced to carry a man-purse to training activities for forty-eight hours.” He paused dramatically. “Some of our classmates call him Agent Man-Purse now.”
“You’re the only one who calls me Agent Man-Purse.”
“So far.”
“Most Improbable?” I asked Dean. Sloane was the one who’d invented this game, and that was her favorite question.
Dean took his time with a reply. “Townsend, hand me the phone.”
The sound of scuffling was audible in the background, but Dean must have come out on top, because a few seconds later, his voice came through with no background noise. “You’re not on speaker anymore, Cass.”
I glanced at Lia. She gave an elaborate roll of her dark brown eyes, but handed over my phone. I took it off speaker and held it to my ear.
“What was the most improbable part of your week?” I asked again. My voice was low, but not low enough to keep Lia from hearing the question.
There was a long pause on Dean’s end of the line.You’re leaving the room. You’re closing the door. You lean your back against the wall. Are your eyes closed or open?
“The most improbable part of my week”—Dean echoed my words, as if somehow, that could close the distance between Colorado and Virginia—“is the fact that my appointment with the Bureau psychologist wasn’t the worst.”
The FBI director had pulled strings to get my friends into the Academy. Their participation in the Naturals program was Need To Know, but their general backgrounds were not. Given the information that was out there on Dean—on Dean’s serial killerfather—even with the director’s personal recommendation, the FBI Academy’s admissions panel had required DeanReddingto jump through a handful of extra hoops—the kind of hoops designed to make sure he was psychologically intact.
“I’m glad to hear your session wasn’t torture,” I said. Dean wasn’t much of a sharer—not with anyone but me.
Then again, these days, I wasn’t much of a sharer, either.
“Cassie…” Dean let the undertone in his voice say what he wouldn’t put into words.
You want to tell me that I should have come with you to the Academy. You want to ask if my past—and the hoops they’d makemejump through—is why I did not.
