With a Pull of a Trigger

Chapter Twenty-Two

Catherine nodded, taking out a black pen from inside her black and silver shoulder bag. She quickly scribbled her number on the small piece of paper handed to her, and she put back her pen inside her bag, smiling at the receptionist as she took the offered papers and put them inside a brown folder. “Thank you very much.”

The woman smiled. “It’s no problem at all. However, I will warn you that Mister Hamilton rarely accepts applicants over the age of twenty. You better be damn good, and you better not disappoint him.”

“I won’t,” said Catherine, beaming. She wasn’t really sure if she was capable of being an agent, or if she could make it without disappointing Mister Hamilton, but it was a way to meet Gil again, and that was what mattered. “I won’t.”

Greg could still remember how he met Reini and Eena.

Eena was somewhat of a legend. After all, she was the only child of Ian Acker and Maureen Le Fay, both of whom were amazing CIA agents before they had died in a mission in Budapest, Hungary when she was still thirteen years old. When poor, little Eena suddenly found herself without her parents, she became overwhelmed with the sudden loss and the large amount of money that was suddenly hers. She was thirteen, was the daughter of two CIA legends, and so, she suddenly went under the care of the whole CIA, still living at their house, but having visitors every now and then. She was the daughter of two legends, and she found herself becoming quite a legend at age fifteen, when she expressed her desire to join the CIA like her parents had. She was the daughter of two legends, the little girl everyone took care of, the one they had all hoped would join the organization like her parents, and so, she became one of the very few who were allowed to become an intern at age sixteen.

Greg was, to be honest, quite a legend himself too, though not as big as Eena had been. When he had come out to his parents at age twelve, and his dad had started beating the gay out of him a month after the talk, he didn’t hope for a good ending to his story. As it happened though, somebody must have loved him very much, because when he was fourteen, officials finally learned about how his dad constantly beat him. At age fifteen, he was adopted by a kind woman named Victoria Van Kamp, and she was one of the stars of the CIA. So while Eena had been a legend for being the daughter of two legends, Greg had been a legend for being adopted by one.

Victoria Van Kamp was one of the CIA’s best, along with the Ackers. That was the very reason why Greg didn’t find out about her real occupation until he was seventeen. The day he found out was the day when Greggory Taffet became Greggory Van Kamp, and the day when he decided he would follow her footsteps and become an agent too.

At age eighteen, Eena was already one of the best junior agents of Cell Six, about to be promoted to becoming a Cell Twelve junior agent. At age eighteen, Greggory was one of the interns who showed much potential, and at age twenty, Greggory was a junior field agent in Cell Four.

Greggory was twenty-two when he became a junior field agent promoted to Cell Twelve, where he met the legendary Eena Acker, who was twenty-one.

It wasn’t really a secret that Greggory was gay, but it also wasn’t something he shouted from the rooftops. It was just that if people asked, he answered, and if people speculated, he didn’t bother correcting them. It was exactly this that made his eyebrows rise when Eena had told him she liked him, and shyly asked him out to dinner.

“No,” he had said slowly, not wanting to hurt Eena’s feelings, “Eena, I’m gay.”

“Oh,” she had said, like the idea hadn’t occurred to her, like it was impossible. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s okay. At least, now you know. And I would like you to know that I would very much want for us to remain friends.”

“I’m fine with that,” said Eena, and she had shrugged.