No more pencils, no more books…
It was a silly thought, a silly song to be running through her head, but Maya couldn’t seem to shake it as she entered the lobby through double glass doors. The place was busy, filled with rigid men in stiff suits. The atrium beyond was equally packed, mostly men, shaking hands and speaking amongst each other in groups of four or five. The hotel bar was beyond that, and would even be in her line of sight if not for the number of people between it and her.
“Jeez.” Her partner stepped up beside her and wrinkled his nose. Rather, her “partner,” as she’d come to think of him, quotation marks added, because calling him a partner added a level of legitimacy that he simply didn’t deserve. “The air in here is like fifty percent cheap cologne.”
“Focus,” she said sharply. “It’s the business conference.”
Coleman just looked at her blankly.
“The textile manufacturers’ conference?” Maya’s exasperation was growing. “From the notes I sent you? The whole reason I said ‘dress professionally’? So we can blend in?”
He shrugged. “I skimmed.”
Maya’s jaw clenched instinctively. “Forget it. We need a distraction so I can get behind the desk and find out what room he’s in…”
“Come on, Maya. It’s obviously the penthouse suite. Don’t you watch movies? It’s always the penthouse suite—”
“This isn’t a movie,” she said brusquely. “And when we’re out here, it’s Agent Lawson to you.”
“Whatever you say.” He grinned. “Junior Agent Lawson.”
Her teeth clenched again, so hard it made her jaw ache. Of the fourteen people in the program, of course she was partnered with him for this.
Trent Coleman had won the genetic lottery. He was tall, a few years older than Maya, with brown hair that was never out of place, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. He was intelligent, funny, charming, and had been his high school’s star wide receiver for three years. His father was an attorney at a firm that counted half the Senate as their clients. His mother was a former Miss Maryland who could have won the title of Miss America had she not graciously dropped out of the competition when she was accepted to her top-choice med school. She was now an internist at Kaiser Permanente.
Maya had, obviously, read his file.
And she had decided, even before being partnered with him, that she loathed Trent Coleman.
She’d known this type of guy before. In high school, and again in West Point. The kind of guy who had skated by because he had good looks and half a brain. The kind of guy who considered a bad day to be one in which his sports car got a flat or his Wi-Fi wasn’t working. The kind of guy who could melt problems away with a wink and a smile.
Trent Coleman had a damn perfect smile. It showed off both rows of white, symmetrical teeth. It made guys trust him and made girls weak in the knees.
God, she hated that smile. Seeing it made her jaw clench so hard she feared she’d crack a tooth.
The two of them couldn’t be more different. Trent Coleman had never once had to worry if he was going to get abducted in the night—again. He’d never had to learn that his mother’s untimely death was a murder at the hands of a man he’d once trusted with his life. He’d never been kidnapped and sold to traffickers, drugged, and nearly raped. He’d never watched a girl his own age get gunned down right in front of him.
No, Trent Coleman had gotten by on money and a modicum of intellect and that smile. That rage-inducing, oh-so-punchable smile.
“Are you going to take this seriously?” Maya asked him somberly as they stood in the lobby of the Hilton Grand in downtown D.C. “Because if this ends up being like the water rescue training…”
Trent chuckled. Maya stuffed her hand in her pocket to keep it from flying across his cheek of its own volition. “Look, that was just a dare.” Last week, Trent had shown up to their water rescue training wearing a snorkel and a large inflatable pink inner tube with a flamingo’s head. Everyone had such a laugh at his antics. Even the former Navy SEAL the CIA had brought in to teach their junior agents in the program had a little chuckle.
And Maya, she’d seethed, and she’d clenched her jaw, and she’d worried about cracking a tooth.
“I get it, Lawson. I’m clearly the last person you want to be here with,” Trent said. “I can tell by that thing you’re doing with your face. That’s going to give you little lines in your forehead, you know.”
Don’t hit him.
“But I’m just glad to be out of that stuffy facility and getting some real action,” he continued. “So let’s get it done, huh?”
“Fine,” Maya relented. “But we’re going to do it right. So we need a distraction so I can get a look at their check-ins. You seem to be good at attracting attention.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “What’d you have in mind?”
Maya glanced left and right. No one was looking their way. So she stepped slightly in front of Trent, cocked an arm tight against her side, and in one smooth, quick motion she jerked her hips around, throwing most of her body weight as she drove her elbow into his solar plexus.
Hard. Really hard.
“Ooph!” The air left Trent’s lungs in an instant. Both hands grasped at his midsection as he fell to one knee. Maya allowed herself to flash him a smile, for just a millisecond.
And then she screamed as loud as she could.
“Oh my god, someone help! Help, please!” Suits appeared at her side and huddled around in concern as Trent’s red face and bugged eyes stared at her. “I-I don’t know what happened, h-he just grabbed his stomach and collapsed!”
More men huddled around as Trent struggled to breathe. The woman at the front desk scurried over in small steps and precipitous heels, crouching beside Trent. “Sir? Sir, what’s happened? Do you need an ambulance? Sir?”
“Please, help him…” Maya took a step back, and then another, and broke through the small crowd of do-gooders that all wanted to later tell the story to a rapt audience at the hotel bar about the young man whose life they saved. Maya crouched low, low enough that she couldn’t be seen over the granite check-in counter, and silently thanked the God of Squats as she duck-walked to the hotel’s computer.
She put her fingers to the keys and quickly typed: S-M-Y-T-H-E.
No results.
Think. Probably didn’t use his real name. What sort of pseudonym would make sense for a man like…?
Aha.
S-M-I-T-H.
There were five Smiths registered at the hotel that day. Two were women. One was a Bradley. Another was a Hunter. The fifth was a Jimmy.
Jimmy. Jimmy Smith. James Smythe.
Got you.
And the room he was checked into was…
“Son of a bitch,” she murmured. Then she duck-walked back out from behind the counter and hurried over to the crowd of onlookers, putting on her terrified face again. “Is he okay? Honey, are you all right?”
The front desk woman was helping Trent to his feet. He breathed shakily and stared daggers at Maya, but nodded. “I’m okay… honey. Just some… indigestion.”
“Thank you,” she gushed as she gripped the front desk clerk’s shoulder. “Thank you so much for your help.”
“I’m not sure I did much of anything—oh my.” The woman was taken aback as Maya pulled her into an emphatic hug.
Her left hand tugged the woman’s key card from the lanyard clipped to her belt.
“Are you certain you wouldn’t like me to call anyone?” the clerk asked.
“No, no, I think he’s fine. Again, thank you.” Maya smiled as she tucked the key card into her own pocket.
Without a spectacle, the crowd dispersed quickly as Maya thanked them and gripped Trent’s arm in fake concern.
“Come on,” she said, and pulled him toward the elevators.
“You got a hell of an elbow. Did you enjoy that?”
“Made me weak in the knees,” Maya said with a smirk.
“Terrific. Let me guess. He’s staying in the—”
“Shut up,” Maya snapped. “Let’s just go.”
They rode the elevator to the penthouse level in silence. Or relative silence, as a Muzak version of “The Girl from Ipanema” played as background noise to Trent’s occasional cough.
Maya knew from schematics that the Hilton Grand’s penthouse level was a luxury apartment that took up the entire top floor. It was also only accessible by the current guest or hotel staff—so the front desk clerk’s keycard had come in handy when Maya was required to swipe it before pressing the penthouse button.
Her heart rate almost doubled as they ascended. This was it, her first real op as a junior agent. She wondered briefly if she should have told Maria where she was actually going, just in case something happened today. But what good would it do? For one, the CIA would thoroughly deny it, even to one of their own agents. Furthermore, she’d come this far without her dad or Maria even knowing what she was up to, let alone getting involved. She didn’t want their help or intervention.
Besides, this was a low-impact operation, even compared to some of the things Maya had done before her time in the program.
Five floors to go.
“You remember the objectives?” she asked Coleman.
“Of course. Locate the briefcase, neutralize Smythe, not necessarily in that order.”
She nodded once. Had it been anyone else in the elevator with her there might have been a more thorough plan, one zigs while the other zags, but she couldn’t count on Trent to follow through. As far as Maya was concerned, she’d take care of this and just hope that this idiot didn’t get in the way.
According to the brief, James Smythe was a former NSA peon who had somehow fallen in with the Croatian mob. (Before today, Maya hadn’t been aware that there was a Croatian mob, but it stood to reason that just about any country could conceivably have a mob, so why not Croatia?) Yesterday Smythe had packed a briefcase with classified US intelligence and was holed up here at the Hilton Grand awaiting a red-eye flight to Zagreb.
It was unfortunate he’d be missing his flight.
Idiot. What sort of aspiring criminal used such an uninspired pseudonym and stayed in the penthouse suite for only a single night? Someone like Coleman, she reasoned, who had watched too many movies. Smythe might as well have hung a bright neon sign from the balcony.
Funny, she thought, how her heart rate had jacked up. How her palms were starting to sweat. This operation was so low-threat that not even the Department of Homeland Security wanted to deal with it. Even the FBI had shrugged it off, tossed it down the ladder until the CIA junior agent program scooped it up.
“Good training,” they’d called it.
“This is our stop,” Coleman murmured as they reached the top floor. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the Glock 19 holstered under his shoulder.
She did the same. It felt heavy in her hand, real steel filled with real rounds that had no place in this hotel or this elevator.
The elevator doors dinged and slid open. The two of them stepped out into a contemporary foyer with long windows, lots of natural light, white walls, and a six-foot-three ape in a black jacket built like a linebacker who looked just as surprised to see them as they did to see him.
“What the f—” was all he managed before Maya launched herself forward. She took two leaping steps and jumped, wrapped an arm around his neck and using the momentum to swing herself around behind him, her legs locking around his elbows and midsection as her arms snaked around his neck in a chokehold.
There were two types of chokeholds, with slightly different arm positions; one that would cut off a person’s air supply, and one that would cut off the blood supply to the brain. Maya chose the latter, not only because the victim would typically pass out quicker but also because an overzealous stranglehold could cause permanent damage to a trachea. And while she had no compassion for whoever this man was, he was merely an obstacle, and she wished him no more ill will than she might a speed bump.
It took fourteen seconds for his knees to buckle, and she set him down as gently as she could. Coleman had acted in precisely the capacity that Maya had assumed he might—which was to stand there slack-jawed as she did all the work.
“There wasn’t supposed to be anyone but Smythe up here,” he said at last.
“Quiet. And I know. Just stay alert. Be ready for anything. And… maybe stay behind me.” She faced the door to the penthouse proper.
“Uh… yeah. Good idea.”
She nodded to him and counted silently, moving her lips. One… two… three.
Then she kicked out a foot, striking the door just above the knob. It flew open and she was through it in an instant, tracking the barrel left to right in a quick arc as she announced loudly, “CIA! James Smythe, come out with your hands up!”
Damn, that feels good to say.
But she saw no movement. Coleman swept in behind her, and then moved past her to clear the kitchen and dining room.
“Clear!” he called.
She turned right, into a wide den with a flat-screen television, a mahogany coffee table, and a black leather briefcase.
“Briefcase!” she called out.
“On it.” Coleman hurried past her and knelt on the floor to check the contents as Maya swept the rest of the apartment.
Maybe he’s not here? she wondered, until she saw the closed door at the rear of the penthouse.
She put an ear to it but couldn’t hear anything.
Soundproof? If Smythe was in there, he might not have heard them bust in.
She took a breath and kicked open the door.
“CIA!”
And she froze.
She had seen photos of James Smythe in the briefing package. He was a man as bland in appearance as anyone would expect from someone who chose to go incognito as “Jimmy Smith.” He was short, a bit chubby, his boyish features only belied by the jowls in his cheeks. He wasn’t anyone that anyone would look twice at if they passed him on the street.
She had seen photos of James Smythe, but presently he stood at the foot of a king-sized bed in nothing but plaid boxer shorts, his mouth agape, his body frozen. There was something in his hand—what was that?
A riding crop. He had a brown leather riding crop in his hand.
On the bed was a girl, slight-framed and small. Wearing only white cotton underwear, she looked back at her just as wide-eyed as Smythe, but her expression wasn’t one of shock. It was fear.
And if this girl was a day over thirteen, Maya was next in line for the throne of England.
“Lawson, we got it.” Coleman’s voice drifted to her from somewhere outside her field of vision, somewhere beyond the bed and the man and the riding crop. “Did you find… oh. Damn.”
In that moment, Maya forgot a lot of things. She forgot what James Smythe’s offense was in the first place. She forgot why it was important that they were there at all. She even forgot about Coleman’s inadequacies. She forgot anything that didn’t matter.
But there were two things she knew. One was that she had a gun in her hands. The second was the definition of “neutralize.”
To render someone or something harmless by way of opposing force.
“Lawson,” said Coleman carefully from his far-off place, “let’s just arrest him…”
Render harmless.
She looked down at the Glock 19 in her hands.
By opposing force.
James Smythe shook his head. “Please. Just not in the face…”
“Lawson, wait!” Coleman shouted.
Maya raised the gun and fired two shots. They were quick—pop-pop—and both center mass, right around where his heart would be if he had one.
Smythe’s body flopped backward and hit the carpet hard.
“Jesus…” Coleman breathed. “Christ.”
Maya holstered her gun. She held both hands up, palms out, toward the girl. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe now.”
“I know,” the girl said plainly. “Well done.”
Maya frowned. “…What?”
A door opened to her right. One she hadn’t even noticed was there, thanks to Smythe and his own extracurriculars. Beyond the door was another room—a dressing room or sitting room of some sort. All Maya noticed were the three people in it, all in suits.
Two of them she didn’t recognize. But one she did.
“Agent Bradlee?”
Their handler at the CIA junior agent program stepped into the room, her hands clasped behind her back. Bradlee was semi-retired, her hair entirely white now and cut short, styled to one side with pomade. She had the habit of holding her chin high so that when she nodded—as she did now in Maya’s direction—it was a deep nod, almost reverential.
“Lawson, Coleman. Excellent job.”
Maya blinked. She was fifty percent confused, and fifty percent certain that she knew what was happening here—and that she didn’t like it at all. “Ma’am?”
Bradlee prodded Smythe’s body with a foot. “Come on now.”
To Maya’s shock, Smythe sat up, or at least halfway, propping himself on his elbows. He grimaced deeply. “I think I need… a hospital.”
Maya could hardly believe what she was seeing. She should have noticed it sooner, when there had been no blood spray across the pristine white sheets of the bed. Neither place where she’d shot Smythe had penetrated skin; instead, they’d left large welts, already raised on his skin, a horrid red color that was spreading out from the impact site and rapidly turning purple.
They’d handed her the gun that morning at the briefing. She’d felt the weight of it in her hand as they’d said, “It’s already loaded.” Of course she had ejected the magazine to check for herself, and seeing it full she’d pushed it back in.
Had she inspected any of the rounds themselves she would have noticed.
“Rubber bullets,” she murmured.
“Correct,” Bradlee said. “There is no James Smythe, former analyst of the NSA absconding with US intelligence to Croatia.”
“Thanks,” said not-Smythe with a groan, “for not shooting me in the face.”
This had been another exercise. Training and nothing more. They had let her believe that she had made junior agent and would be taking on her first op, only for it to be a ruse.
No; not a ruse.
“A test,” she murmured.
“Indeed. And you passed,” said Bradlee. “You caused an excellent distraction—no offense, Mr. Coleman—and located Smythe. You found the briefcase. And… I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but I may as well. The two of you were the only team to effectively neutralize the target, despite the emotional impediment.”
Emotional impediment. She meant the girl on the bed, too young and mostly naked. Others had come before them, others in the program, and they had failed. How had they failed? Perhaps they had demanded an explanation, or merely detained Smythe, or rushed to make sure the girl was okay first.
But not her. She had shot first with no intention of questions later. Funny—an emotional impediment, when her emotions were all that had dictated her actions.
“You wanted us to kill him?” asked Coleman behind her.
“What else would you expect ‘neutralize’ to mean?” Bradlee asked candidly. “You can’t honestly expect us to put ‘kill’ in a briefing.”
The girl rolled off the bed and stretched before pulling on a robe that hung on a hook on the back of the door. The action was so casual, but still Maya looked away.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Bradlee, “but Ms. Lindt here is actually twenty-two.”
Is that supposed to make me feel better? Maya thought bitterly. But she held her tongue as Smythe groaned in pain and muttered again his desire for a hospital.
“Of course,” Bradlee replied. “In just a moment.” She turned to Maya. “Congratulations, Agent Lawson.”
Maya blinked. “You mean…?”
“Yes. This was your final exam. Out of fourteen candidates, two have just become junior agents.” She looked past Maya to Coleman and nodded to him as well. “Welcome to the CIA.”
Maya held her head high, keeping herself straight-faced as possible as she said, “Thank you, ma’am.” It was as if everything that had just happened dissolved, simply faded into the background.
Because she’d done it. She was an agent now.