Oxblood (9 page)

“So . . . where are you from, Adam?” I asked.

“Well, that was random,” he said. “You wouldn't be stalling, would you?”

I rolled my eyes. “No,” I lied. “I was just curious as to where you were from. I mean, Ian's British and Damon is from around here, I'm guessing. What about you?”

He waited a moment before he answered. “Canada.”

“Oh, cool.”

We stared at each other for a moment with tight-lipped smiles. I was hoping Adam would elaborate, but it was obvious he was just waiting for me to quit stalling.

Finally, Adam took my hand and put the gun in my palm. Then he molded my fingers around the handle. We went over the load-and-make-ready movements, then he handed me a pair of bulky headphones and told me to put them on.

“These are tactical headphones,” he said. I could hear him clearly. “They muffle the sound of gunfire but allow you to hear your surroundings. Can you hear me okay?”

“Yes,” I said a little too loudly. Adam laughed.

“You ready?” he asked.

“No, but I'm doing it anyway,” I told him. At that moment, Ian appeared through the doorway. A current of nervousness shot through me so intensely that my teeth hurt.

“How is she doing?” he asked, barely acknowledging me.

“She was just about to have a go at it,” Adam answered.

“Great. Let's see it then.” Ian folded his arms in front of his chest and waited.

I pushed down every ounce of fear I had and replaced it with every scrap of courage I could muster. I didn't have to get it right. I just had to look like I had the nerve to keep going. I raised and aimed my weapon.

“Is the shooter ready?”

I took a few deep breaths like Adam taught me.

“Yes.”

“Fire when ready.”

Chapter 8

I spent two days in that building and on the surrounding property in intense training.

Ian and Adam worked me like a dog, making me shoot targets in the basement over and over again. For Ian, nothing I did was good enough. Even when I hit a bull's-eye on my first shot, he was quick to dismiss it as beginner's luck. “Things won't be this easy in the real world,” he added condescendingly. “The targets are moving and you won't have the time to prepare—or Adam to walk you through each step.” All I could do was grit my teeth and put my headphones back on. At least those were proving to be useful at drowning out the gunfire
and
Ian's disappointment.

“Again,” Adam would say after I emptied each magazine.

During the day, Adam took me outside for tactical training. The old factory building was situated on a large pasture. I couldn't see them, but the sound of cows mooing in the distance broke the silence as we walked to the end of the meadow and into the woods. Along the way, we passed several mounds of hay. A long fence of wooden posts connected with chicken wire enclosed the area directly behind the building.

“You have to be aware of your surroundings while staying hidden,” Adam said. “This is your next lesson.” He held out his arm as if to welcome me to the forest. We were a good twenty-five yards inside the woods. I could barely make out the pasture through the trees.

“How is the forest my next lesson?” I asked.

“Close your eyes and count to twenty,” he said. I shot him a look, but the expression he retaliated with trumped mine so I did as instructed. When I opened my eyes, Adam was nowhere to be seen. I turned around, twigs and leaves crunching beneath my feet. I looked everywhere, even up in the trees. I don't know how he did it, but he had disappeared without making a sound.

“Ha-ha, Adam,” I said. “You can come out now. I get it. You're the master of hide-and-go-seek!”

I waited for him to appear and elaborate on the lesson, but a full minute went by and he still hadn't appeared. It was dead silent, and I was starting to get creeped out. I swallowed hard and wondered, yet again, what I had gotten myself into.

I took a step toward the tree line and heard a gun go off, and then a bullet whizzed past me. I spun around looking for its origination but only saw trees.

“They're rubber bullets, but they still hurt like a bitch,” Adam called from his hiding place.

“What the hell, Adam!” I called out to him.

“I'd run if I were you.”

I mistakenly went deeper into the woods thinking I could hide, but Adam's aim was excellent and a forest full of trees wasn't going to be enough to protect me. I had to make it back to the building. At the tree line, I decided my best plan was to run from one bale of hay to the next, then dash into the old factory for safety—all without getting caught or captured.

As I made a run for my first hiding spot, I felt the swish of air as another bullet missed me—undoubtedly, on purpose.

“I swear to God, Gil. When we make it out of this, I'm going to kick your ass.” With one more look behind me, I made a run for it.

When we walked back into headquarters, I was nursing a welt on my arm the size of a golf ball. I had been moments away from reaching safety when Adam reminded me just how inexperienced I was by hitting me intentionally. Though Ian had instructed him to give me the fast-track training, I felt like I had come a long way, so it was discouraging to be caught at the last minute.

“Don't sweat it, Vic,” Adam said. “For someone who's never had any kind of training, you're doing remarkably well.”

I winced going down the stairs to the basement. “Yeah, well, I'm determined. I have to find Gil. There are no other options.” Adam nodded. “And I don't have
zero
training. I'll have you know, I'm at the top of my class at the Asher Home School of Self-Defense.”

“I'm sure! Which is why we're headed to the mats.”

Unlike Ian, Adam valued my DIY self-defense skills and helped me hone a few moves, like using your assailant's charging force to flip them to the ground and head-butting your attacker from behind hard enough to do some damage. He tried to teach me how to throw a punch, too, but I couldn't muster enough force to make it useful.

The whole experience was very
Die Hard
. I was tired and dirty and I smelled awful—and, surprisingly, I loved every second of it. Something inside me lit up when I was training with Adam. I felt like I belonged there.

When it was time for Damon to work with me, I had to force my eyes to stay open and my chin from drooping to the desk.

“Your observation skills must be as keen when you are tired as they are when you are rested,” he said as he stood next to me. We were in another room in the basement. I sat at a table while Damon's tall, dark, and handsome stature shadowed over me.

He pulled out images that reminded me of those Hidden Pictures pages in
Highlights
magazine from when I was a kid. All the cards were big, like the size of a regular piece of paper, and the images varied from advertisements to actual photos. At first, they were easy. I had to find what was off about a picture. They became harder as we went along; missing objects got smaller and scenes became more chaotic.

Next came the pictures with scenarios.

“This woman is asking you for directions to the nearest bathroom so she can change her
bambino
's diaper. Do you believe her or not?” Damon said, his Italian accent ringing in my ears.

In the photo, a woman was standing next to a large fountain. There were a few people scattered around her, sitting on the fountain's ledge or walking across the square. It looked like it had been taken somewhere in Italy based on the architecture. She was wearing a simple black T-shirt, jeans, and flats. Her auburn hair was long and brushed behind her shoulders. The photo appeared to have been taken from a distance.

“Well, based solely on this image, since there's no baby anywhere in sight, I'm going to say no,” I replied.

“Good,” Damon said. “This woman proceeded to take a hostage and then demanded the release of her boyfriend who had recently been arrested for an attempted terrorist attack.”

Damon moved on to more challenging scenarios. One after another, he put photos in front of me and asked detailed questions about each scene.

I knew we were winding down when he put an image of a cream-colored strapless gown with a slit up the length of the leg and asked, “Where will you hide your gun in this dress?”

“That has nothing to do with being observant, Damon,” I quipped.

“Maybe not, but I'm very curious.” He raised his eyebrows and then winked at me. Strangely enough, it relieved some of the stress that had been building up.

We took a short break to eat
caprese
sandwiches that Claudia made in a kitchen I had yet to see. There was no small talk. No talk at all. We ate in silence. Well, everyone else ate. I inhaled my food like I hadn't eaten in weeks.

After lunch, I continued training with Damon. Another hour or so later, I thought I was going to lose it. Anger was burning inside of me. I was angry with Adam for shooting me when I was so close to victory. Angry at Ian for making me go through his spy training. But most of all, I was angry with Gil for leaving me. My mother would have used the word
coal
to describe this feeling. “Coal is dark and dirty, but inside of it there is something beautiful that can only come from the trial it faces,” she would say. If she were here now, I would call it bullshit. This anger sucked, and I was having a difficult time seeing the something beautiful. It was finding Gil, of course, but I had a feeling our relationship would never be the same.

“Which one is our guy?” Damon asked as he slapped down a picture of a group of people. It looked like a run-of-the-mill Italian family portrait. Father, mother, children.

“They're all just standing there in a posed shot. How am I supposed to figure that out?”

“You have to know who the imposter is. We take months, sometimes years, and embed ourselves into the enemy's family. We become so much a part of who they are that they don't pay attention to the tiny details.
You
have to pay attention to the details, Victoria.” Damon's eyes bore into me as he spoke.

It was an impossible task, but I picked up the eight-by-ten photo to examine it more closely.

“Put it down. You don't always get a better angle. Use the one you've got. What do you see?” Damon said.

I took a breath, sat up straight in my chair, and looked again.

“There are four men, one of them is much older and is most likely the father of the group. The other three seem to descend in age so I'd say they're his sons,” I said as I began by stating the obvious. “There are five women. One is clearly the older man's wife. Two of the other women are wives of the other men, and the other two women are daughters.”

I studied each person in the photo again and pointed to one of the men in the middle after a moment. “This guy. He's not one of the sons so he must be one of us.”

“Why?” Ian said from behind me. I was surprised to hear his voice, as I hadn't seen him since he stopped torturing me during my gun training with Adam.

“The father and his two sons have rounder shoulders, little paunch bellies, and hairy chests. By the way, that gaping-­shirt look is not attractive. This guy has broad shoulders. He's fit and trim, and his chest is as bare as a
Men's Health
model,” I answered.

“You could say some brothers don't match up exactly to their family,” Ian challenged.

“But could you also say that they color their hair? His roots are starting to grow in. He has hazel eyes while everyone else has brown.” I yawned involuntarily, making my eyes water. I rubbed them and said, “Next.”

“We're done for now,” Ian said. “Good job, everyone. Get some rest, and I'll have an update for you soon. Claudia, can you initiate Phase Two with Victoria, please?”

Ian walked away, and I got up to meet Claudia at her station. “What, exactly, is Phase Two? Because I thought I just spent the last two and a half days going through phases two through twenty.” Hours ago, I would have fist-bumped this win with Adam, but my arms were too sore to even consider it.

“Well, Phase Two is a good sign if what you want is to be part of this team.” Claudia said, chuckling as she tucked her thick black hair behind her ears. “Phase Two means I temporarily wipe you off the face of the earth.”

“What?” Her statement hit me like a cold shower, momentarily perking up my exhausted body. “How on earth do you
temporarily
wipe someone off the face of the earth?”

“I don't really wipe you out. I just make you invisible. It's like an electronic cloaking device. If someone tried to look you up, it would be like you didn't exist.”

“Um, he said to
initiate
Phase Two. Is it a process or is it immediate? I mean, I feel like I should email my friend back home to let her know I'm okay.” My heart welled up at the thought of dropping off the planet and Tiffany not knowing I was okay. I knew that pain well. That pain had brought me to Italy. “And what about the hotel?”

“I've already changed the name and payment on the reservation to one of Ian's aliases. I don't know how long you'll stay there, but as far as the hotel is concerned, Victoria Asher was never a guest.”

Claudia looked at me sympathetically. I wondered if she remembered the day she disappeared and if it was painful for her. “And once I make you invisible, you won't have an email address.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that wouldn't be good,” I whispered.

“Tell you what. If you want to send your friend a final email, I can set up a dummy account. Your name can't be in any part of the email address. You'll need to think of something so she'll know it's you. And you'll need to dictate the email to me so Ian doesn't catch us,” Claudia added in a hushed tone.

“That would be great, Claudia. Thank you.” I gave her a tired smile as I recited Tiffany's email address, and she set up the dummy account. “Send it from . . . Prada.” Claudia gave a little chuckle and began to take my dictation. “Dear Tiff, first off, I'm great. I'm going to be out of pocket for a bit, but please don't worry. I have to shut my email down, but everything is fine. Once I find Gil, I'll explain everything to you. Thanks for taking care of my place. I'm wiring money to Sam. Please ask him to pay my rent and whatever else he needs with it. I love you and I'll see you soon. Hugs . . . Vic. P.S. Don't go into Gil's room.”

I looked at Claudia as she hit send. “Thank you. I also need you to wire money from my account to my boss.” She nodded and I gave her some of Sam's information.

“It's done,” she said.

“Wow. You've got the world at your fingertips.” Claudia's workstation had several monitors and black boxes with wires and cables connecting everything together. The screens glowed and the ports on the boxes blinked with green lights. I considered myself relatively computer savvy, but all this was beyond me.

I sat in the chair next to her desk and started to lay my head down on top of my arms like a bored elementary-­school kid, but stopped myself. I couldn't look too defeated or Ian would surely use it as an excuse to make me repeat Phase One.

“I wouldn't have it any other way,” Claudia said. “I've had a computer attached to my fingers for a long time. It got me into some pretty hot water, which is when Ian found me. He's a good man to know, Vic. He'll be hard on you, and it will seem unfair and unreasonable, but it'll keep you alive. And it will hopefully lead you to Gil.” She put her hand over mine.

“If he'd quit being so difficult, I think I'd have an easier time. He's been hot and cold since the moment I met him. One minute, he acts like he wants to be my friend. The next, it's like he's doing everything in his power to break me.”