“You’re asking me to perform mutiny on my team member,” I hissed, the sound carrying for miles. I pressed my lips together, but the words bubbled to the surface, begging to be released. “Shawn, you know as well as I do that we live by a code, and by asking me to do this you are telling me to turn my back on all of my beliefs and all of your teachings. Is it worth it for one kill?”
“It’s out of my hands, Caitie,” he told me in a voice that sounded automated, like a robot. Like they trained him to say their words the same way that he trained me how to pull a trigger. Mechanical. Practiced. Perfected. My eyes narrowed. “There is nothing I can do once they give me an executive order. They have their reasons.”
“And I’m sure they are damn good ones,” I remarked sarcastically, stepping in front of him before we could turn a corner. He sighed and shifted his weight as if he was nervous, glancing anywhere but at my face. “I’ll never be forgiven for a betrayal like this, Shawn.”
“I know,” he said, and he sounded like a burning man.
“I’ll be hunted,” I announced, and my voice shook. “I’ll never be allowed in Helford again. My name will be stricken from the record.”
“You will be a ghost,” he whispered, and a shiver rolled down my spine with a nonexistent chill.
We stood there in total silence for the longest time before I murmured, “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“It’s not about if you can or not,” he told me. “It’s about whether you’ve been ordered to or not. And you have; you are expected to perform and execute those orders to the best of your abilities.”
I closed my eyes.
“I’m not saying I like it, Caitie,” Shawn muttered. “I’m carrying out orders just the same as you are.”
“And if I don’t kill him?” I demanded, opening my eyes again to look him square in the eye. “If we kill the target and I let him walk away?”
“Then you will be brought down with him,” he said, and that was all I needed to hear.
“The code, Shawn.”
“I know. But it’s not enough.”
“I’m learning that now,” I told him impatiently before I turned and walked away, leaving him behind without glancing back. I didn’t want to look at him—not when I realized what he was setting me up for.
Not when I realized that the only man I was allowed to trust just offered me an ultimatum that I wasn’t allowed to refuse.
I was either going to break the code—the code in which we all swore to protect each other and watch each other’s backs with everything we had—or I was going to die. I would either walk away proud, or I would be rolled out in a body bag.
I reached up and touched my face, and my hand came away covered in blood.
I had seen a lot of things in this world of mystery I lived in, but never before had a seen a stab into the back with quite so clean a cut.
I guess there was a lot about this world that I still didn’t know.
~*~
For the last three years of my life, I had been recruited into this agency; it’s what happens when you enroll in Helford Academy. Somewhere undisclosed on the California coast, a giant rock castle, looking like it sprung straight from the earth, sits, hidden in plain sight, filled with the phantoms that hide in the shadows. From the first day in this school, we were taught that we were a family, and that we were to protect and respect family. People like Shawn drilled into our heads that we were to look after each other’s backs, that we were never to leave the other behind no matter the case. They taught us that there was nothing more sacred than what we shared with the people around us, the ones with the mutual secret.
For the company upstairs to turn around and tell me to betray one of my brothers shook me to the core.
It would be the worst kind of treason.
I walked through the halls at a hurried pace, all of my normal thoughts running through my mind as my hands shook down at my sides, reaching for the reassurance of a weapon that was not there. I thought about how this academy had turned me into a monster, a murderer, and I couldn’t fathom to understand how they could send me out to do it again and again, like there were enough people in this world for people like me to pick off like flies. I asked the empty air how they could ask other human beings to kill, but there was no answer.
This second part of the mission, this betrayal, it would be like shooting my own brother in the back. My own flesh and blood.
But I knew who I was.
I was a murderer.
I was a monster.
I was Caitie Alastair now, and Caitie Alastair did what she had to do to survive.
I might have held my chin up a little higher, but the sick feeling in my stomach didn’t disappear.
~*~
“Ah, there she is,” Shawn announced cheerfully, standing as I walked into the room, my hands tucked into my pockets. “And all cleaned up, I see. Very nice.”
I gestured. “Much thanks for the reconstruction on my face. My eyes haven’t been this swollen since Cecily, and that was the worst hangover of my life.”
Shawn chuckled, turning to angle himself so that he could address the young man who had stood beside him at attention. Automatically, my back straightened, my fingernails digging a little deeper into my palms because I knew who this was, even before Shawn sent him a smirk and said, “This is her—tread carefully.”
I smiled pleasantly, turning to the man as well, my nails drawing blood. “I don’t bite,” I teased him easily. “Not unless I have a clear shot at the jugular.”
At that, a small smile tugged at the toy soldier’s lips.
I would be lying if I said that he wasn’t handsome, but I had played escort to more handsome and more powerful men in my life. He was tall and buff and he had a head of dirty blond hair that looked natural, but I couldn’t even remember the color of my real hair. He had these blue eyes that weren’t too light and they weren’t too dark—just right. He looked to be about twenty years of age, but again never before had someone correctly guessed my age on the first try. If he was just another boy on the street, he would be stunningly attractive, and gazes would follow him as he walked by. Here in Helford, we had to be desensitized to the physical appeal.
Desensitized or not, I couldn’t help but to let my eyes linger a little bit longer, and I couldn’t help but to notice that mine were not the only ones.
I stepped forward, breaking the trance, and I suddenly came to the realization that Shawn was watching us with predatory eyes. I smiled and hoped it wasn’t too sickly sweet under the scrutiny.
I offered him my hand to shake, not taking notice to the four thin lines of blood rolling down my palm. “Caitie Alastair,” I told him while flashing my winning smile. The frigid stoicism on his face shifted, and the ghost of an attractive smile tugged on the corner of his lips.
“Rian Blackwell,” he introduced, his voice like warm honey, and as his hand touched mine, his skin was like an electric wire. There were calluses on his hand the same as mine from the constant practices with guns and other weapons, calluses that he probably as well passed off as being from religiously practicing a musical instrument. He shook my hand, his so warm, and his eyes met with mine as he did. Something flickered across the back of those eyes, but he was a professional at hiding his emotions.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I purred, my smile turning wicked. I took my hand back and stepped away, turning slightly to look at Shawn and hesitating at what I saw—something on his face, something like sadness, pain. It was gone in an instant, so quickly that I thought that maybe it hadn’t even been there at all. I wondered vaguely if that was another one of his tricks.
Shawn clapped his hands together happily, grinning a toothy smile. “Well, I’ll leave you two to talk. You’ll be debriefed as to the details in about an hour and immediately afterward you will be escorted to your flight, so this is going to be your last moment of peace before you’re off overseas, and the two of you are going to need to be very well acquainted. I would be joining you and helping segue, but as it turns out I have some unfinished business to handle, so I will be back when it is time for the debriefing. Any questions?”
We didn’t have any, so he nodded and shot us another grin before he left the room. I couldn’t help but to wonder if the unfinished business was signing Rian Blackwell’s death warrant.
I waited until he was off and down the hall before I turned back to my partner, not even batting an eye when my eyes fell on his, already on me. He didn’t look away or smile sheepishly like he was guilty, and instead a small smirk pulled at the edges of his lips like this was all just a cat and mouse game to him. He was too proud to be self-conscious about me catching him staring—I could tell it in the way he held his shoulders, squared even though they were casually slumped. The boys in Helford were all the same in that they all looked like a product straight out of the military factory line, inspected and approved.
He moved toward the table set in the corner of the recreational room and pulled out a chair for me, smiling in a way that it would have sent an ordinary girl swooning. “Madame,” he murmured in a perfect French accent, and I made sure to look down, casting my long eyelashes over my cheekbones as I sat, pulling out all of the little tricks that went a long way in what I do. I watched my hands and followed his footsteps with my other senses as he crossed to the other side of the table and sat, his eyes still on me.
My eyes snapped up to his, and I smiled. “You spent a great deal of time in Dublin, did you not?”
His eyebrow arched, but otherwise he did not answer. I crossed my legs, making sure to draw his attention to the curve of my skin and the tan shine, the red heels, the skirt pushed up my thighs. His eyes flickered there, but for only so long for me to know that they had warned him what I specialized in, and they had cautioned him. Fair enough. I could fight fire with fire.
I glanced at my cherry red nails, bored. “You have a very slight lilt under your words, just barely there but enough that when you speak English with a proper American accent, it stands out as a shaking sound. When you use a French accent, it disappears completely, thus leading me to conclude that it is not nervousness thrumming under your voice.”
“You’re good,” he complimented, but he did not smile. “They told me that much. Sorry to be the one to break this to you, doll face, but I’m better.”
I smiled, amused.
“For example,” he said, and his chair screamed against the wooden flooring as he shifted it closer. “I know that you have a golden cross in your pocket even though there is no religion left that could save you now. You have a very slight limp on your left ankle and you favor your left hand, meaning that although you pretend to be right handed, you really are not. You lost someone you cared about right in front of your eyes, and you used that as the fuel you need to do what you have to do.”
Nothing on my face moved.
“Am I right?” he demanded, smirking because he knew he was. I breathed out, still smiling.
“Right on all counts, Mr. Blackwell, for all but one,” I murmured, leaning closer, not blinking with his eyes on me. “It’s not a cross—it’s a crucifix.”
He had no response, and no more icebreakers, so we sat in an absolute silence until Shawn returned.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Say hello to Rian Blackwell, kids :)
(Both in the chapter and at the picture on the side.)
x Riley