I sat at Cole's desk and looked out over the darkening skyline. He was changing his clothes back in a closet beyond my field of vision. Even after the confrontation with his dad, he remained calm, calmer than I had expected him to be. I had to admit it impressed me. For a boy with no real understanding of what his father was capable of, he held his own. Cole was his own person, unapologetically, much to his father's dismay.
“Ready, Julia?”
I stood up from the desk and turned to see him dressed in tight jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket. I swallowed my lust for him and reminded myself we’d never even have crossed paths in this world if I hadn’t been assigned to babysit him by the government.
“Yeah.”
A smile crossed my lips when he held his hand out to me. I took it and tried to ignore the adrenaline that pumped through my system.
Cole guided us out to the balcony that overlooked Central Park. Blending in with the building was a discreet set of stairs camouflaged seamlessly into the architecture to anyone looking directly at them. He kept his fingers linked with mine as he pulled me up the stairs. We should’ve been going down. My steps were hesitant, but his warm smile kept me going up to what was a waiting helicopter.
Why would we need a helicopter? I squeezed his hands, betraying my reaction to the surprise.
“My garage is in upstate New York. Care if we ditch school tomorrow?” Cole asked.
I shook my head and plastered a grin on my face. Of course, he wouldn’t ride a bike like that in city streets. God, the wealth of these kids and the toys they had. I didn’t know if I would ever expect it. A grin spread across my lips, but fear still shot through me, not helped by the rush of adrenaline.
I reached for my earring to switch my comms on. The agency didn’t know that I was leaving Manhattan.
“Where upstate is your house?”
The whirling of the chopper blades echoed in my earpiece as the agent on the other side asked me to repeat. I didn't trust it enough to know my cover wouldn't be blown. I had never really done anything reckless. I was prepared for field work, but nothing prepared you for a one-on-one with a boy, a cute boy. Growing up in Utah hadn't allowed me to have a lot of wild abandon. Besides, I had been in the government's care since I was a kid. Who knew I had a thing for bad boys?
Every single move I’d made since Eisenhower had been made with purpose, calculated to get a direct result for the government. I wasn't just an agent; I was a trained assassin. The injections I’d been given from the moment I arrived at the academy chemically enhanced my physical abilities. I ran faster, had trained harder. Hell, I might even have better vision. I could for sure bench press more than the average guy my age.
How did I land in all this? My dad was retired Air Force and would do anything for the United States. That sense of patriotism was ingrained in me, so my parents had had no doubts when they’d sent me to Eisenhower. I could've easily handled Mr. Thomas earlier, but that wasn't the hand we were currently playing.
My ability to read, analyze, and react to situations before most people could blink was the ace up my sleeve. The agency I worked for didn't even know the extent of my ability. The program I was trained under was classified well beyond the clearance that regular CIA agents had. Eisenhower reported to the Director of the CIA, and most candidates were hand-picked by the president of the United States.
If I were to be activated under the Eisenhower protocol, my decisions would supersede any orders given to me by my current superiors. It remained typically pretty hard for most men in the government to take orders from a girl, especially a nineteen-year-old. Eisenhower chose to push me through the Central Intelligence Agency. I was placed there for their benefit.
But even now, I wasn’t sure of their ultimate goal. I did know that, if activated, the chemical reaction my body would create would be lethal to my target. I gave my body and soul away to the government, for the safety of the country I love. Apparently, the agency and the protocol had the same agenda for the time being, or else I would have been pulled off of Cole a while ago. Still, sometimes, the lack of control in my actual life scared the crap out of me. I didn’t do a single thing without clearing it with the government—a form of prison if I’d ever heard it. I wasn’t behind bars, but I was theirs. What would happen when they were finished with me?
Cole leaned over to help me with the straps on my seat belt. I let him, even though I was more than capable of attaching the harness. My thought process had me too consumed to care. He handed me noise-canceling headphones with a mic attached. The helicopter blades loudly rotated and Cole spoke to the pilot through his mic, but I wasn't privy to the conversation as my device didn’t have access to their comms line. I read his lips, but I couldn't see the pilot’s face to know what he was saying. Something about his private estate in upstate New York … somewhere near the Catskills?
Catskills?
That had to be at least a two-hour flight. Suspicions regarding my current situation erupted in my head. I began reviewing the last few hours in my mind, without the distraction of having to look into Cole's green eyes.
If I hadn't been distracted by his boy-next-door/built-like-a-Roman-soldier looks, I would’ve realized that this situation had been out of my control since we’d left my apartment and the watchful eye of the government. My instincts shot on high alert and I refused to be swayed anymore by my emotions for this boy, locking them into the box my training had given to me, and slipped on my mask that allowed me to be happy, fake, and calculating.
The city slipped behind us, and the landscape changed from industrial to rural. Darkness had almost fallen, but the last remaining traces of light outlined the gorgeous scene before me. I had never approached upstate New York from a helicopter. The view of the Catskills proved to be beyond any picture I could have found on Google. Seeing nature’s beauty through my own eyes, rather than someone else's camera lens, never got old.
The first time experiences were the ones that shaped our souls. I would look back on this moment when I was old and wrinkled and no longer an asset for the government. Cole slipped his hand onto my thigh and found my fingers. He looked at me through long, thick eyelashes and smiled. I smiled back, controlling every muscle in my body, even though the smile wasn't fake. My senses were on high alert and my skin tingled. I couldn’t pinpoint why.
We landed on the backside of an estate completely surrounded on every side by mountains. Well-hidden, almost fortress-like. From what I could see, the stone compound was massive. It could easily be as big as the Heidelberg Castle I’d seen while on a mission in Europe.
The chopper touched down and the blades stopped spinning. I unhooked my harness and replaced the headphones. Cole’s stare had turned intense and burned wherever it touched. He looked different when I turned to face him, like I was looking at a different Cole altogether.
This boy was not the one I had been tracking the last six months. Cole had been wearing a mask, too. I saw it slipping. His eyes became sharp and cold, assessing. He was aware of every single thing. Almost predatory.
Crap. How had I not seen it before? My stomach dropped as I choked on butterflies. How had I been played? I had never miscalculated. I never made mistakes. I twisted my earring, like it was a nervous habit, and heard static in my ear. No service for comms, but I needed to let them know. This wasn’t in the plan. This changed everything. I needed to find a landline and dial in.
“You won't be able to get a hold of them,” Cole said.
My neck snapped to the left as panic and adrenaline pumped through my blood. My left hand twitched in anticipation as my training started to flood my memory. Limited space, no communications. I looked out the window, beyond Cole. As soon as I could, I would fall back into our recovery. I could play along I needed to, to survive.
Cole tilted his head and recaptured gaze.
“I'm not working with my father.” He spoke slowly, as if to a three-year-old incapable of understanding him. “He thinks we’re at a cabin. He has no idea that this even exists. It isn't exactly mine alone. There is a group of us.”
I was digging my nails into my palms so tight, I had broken the skin. Hot moisture slid along my skin before a drop of blood landed on my jeans.
Compound? Us? Who in the hell is us? What was Cole involved in?
“Who are you?” I asked.
Cole gave me a half smirk. That smirk that sent ice through my veins. Without his mask, seeing Cole for who he really was … This man, he was deadly, and I was his target.
“Caldwell, we’re bigger than the government. We’re kind of like a sister school to Eisenhower, or we were. Their program was compromised shortly after you graduated. The Sway has people in every early recruitment program across the world. I've been with them since I was twelve. I’ve been relaying my father's dealings to them, and in return, they’ve kept me safe and kept the government from acquiring any specific intel that could get my father locked away in a prison that doesn't exist, as far as regular citizens are concerned,” Cole said.
He called me Caldwell. He knew who I was. I had no cover. He called me Caldwell.
This couldn’t be real. How did he know? How did he have access to this kind of intel? He was ticking off government secrets like he wasn’t blowing my mind and turning my world upside down.
I released my fingers from the grip I’d held them in and rubbed my hands together. He knew my real last name. No way on God's green Earth I was buying this load of BS. If Eisenhower had a sister school, I would’ve known about it. Things like that didn’t just exist without anyone knowing about them. Especially people like me. I ran through my intel in my head on all of the CIA’s early recruitment. Eisenhower was the only academy of its kind. Nothing else existed to train adolescents.
“What's going to happen next is going to piss you off. I'm sorry about that, truly. I didn't think I was actually going to like you when I got put on you. So really, I’m sorry about this,” he said.
Wait. He got put on me? Who were these people? What did they want, in the end? And what if I got activated? I looked at him as I actually processed that he said that something was going to happen. As in, this moment.
Cole pulled out a syringe. The needle was long and the vial thick, full of a blue, iridescent liquid.
Shit. I put up my right hand to block his attempt at putting the syringe in my arm. He reacted by squeezing my arm with his left hand. I tried to retaliate with my other hand.
“This will block your chemical trackers. It also neutralizes your activation. For all intents and purposes, the United States government will assume you’re dead. Your name will be honored. Your parents and brother will be taken care of. As much as you think you’re serving your country, the control they have over you isn't right.” He grunted out the words before taking a deep breath and quirked up a half-smile “This is going to hurt.”
He appeared so calm and in control. Monstrous, even…
Cole jammed the needle into the muscle of my upper right thigh.
“I think you hit the bone,” I whispered.
He smiled at me and shook his head.
That was the last image my brain saw before my vision blurred and I succumbed to the darkness.