“Emma, what would you do if you had a secret? Would you tell?” I looked into the mirror and massaged makeup primer onto my face the way the beauty consultant at Nordstrom had showed me, watching Emma’s face closely while trying to keep mine impassive.
Emma stopped applying her mascara midstroke to stare at me suspiciously. “Depends on what it is. And how much someone tortured me to pry it out of me. Why?” She stretched the question out in a singsong voice.
“I’m having a hard time keeping something to myself and I’d like to tell you. I want your opinion,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.
She turned to face me. “I’m good. Out with it.”
“Only if you promise not to tell anyone.”
“Cross my heart.” She made the appropriate gesture.
I bit my lip, trying to phrase my accusation carefully. Finally, I gave up and just spit it out. “My camera disappeared while we were at orientation last night.”
She looked genuinely surprised by my claim. She frowned slowly. “No way. Are you sure? You didn’t misplace it, did you?”
“Positive. Someone took it from my drawer. I’ll show you.”
She followed me into my room, where I showed her the crime scene.
“You took everything out? You’ve looked everywhere?” Emma asked, scanning the room.
I nodded.
“Was it expensive?” Emma plopped onto my bed.
“A couple hundred dollars. Chump change.” To all of them, anyway. “Not worth stealing.”
“Unless we have a klepto in our midst.” Emma paused, obviously mulling over the possibilities. “I can’t see why any of the campers would take it, unless maybe someone took it as a prank.”
“But we were all at the orientation,” I objected.
She nodded slowly. “Could be a maid.”
I’d thought of that myself. “But the room was already clean. Why would a maid be in my room?”
Emma didn’t offer an explanation. “So what are you thinking, then?”
I told her my theory.
“Could be,” she said when I finished. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I have no idea.” I looked at her hopefully, but she seemed as clueless as I did.
“Have you reported it?”
I shook my head no. “I thought I’d give it some time to see what develops. I’ll mention it if it doesn’t turn up by the time we leave. In the meantime, why don’t we keep our valuables locked up and our eyes open?”
“Oh, I’m all up for spying on people.” She grinned. “Count me in.”
You have to win the trust of your allies, or you’ll end up dead meat. That goes for banking, spying, or life. I figured now that I’d confided in Emma and warned her to be careful, we’d be more likely to bond and she’d be more likely to share any information she discovered with me. She didn’t have to know that I wasn’t planning on sharing everything I found out at camp with her. Dear old Mom taught me there are a few things you should never share—your man and whatever gives you an edge.
Eight o’clock in the hot, hot morning found my fellow spies and me in the war room, the main trainingcenter conference room. Rockford started in on a lecture on the realities of spying, counterintelligence, and special ops. I listened with half an ear, the other half being busy with some surreptitious surveillance spy stuff, Jenna-style.
Fry and Torq sat at the front of the class as Rockford lectured. Torq focused his attention on me. Why? God only knew, when he could’ve been looking up Pussy’s skirt as she did a Sharon Stone a few rows over from me. He didn’t look away even when I met his stare and did the visual caught-you-looking thing. Instead, he flashed an enigmatic half smile.
“People come to camp thinking this is all James Bond stuff,” Rockford said. “Fast cars, fast women …”
At the mention of fast women, Torq looked at me again. Okay, this had to be genuine interest on his part. With Emma’s admonishment to use some Mata Hari type spy seduction ringing in my mind, I flashed him my best shot at a sexy little smile. When he grinned back, there was definite lecher in his eyes. I smiled to myself and looked away.
“… and lots of gadgets. But the real world of spying and special ops is no Bond fantasyland. You’ll have no special gizmos, no rocket-launching bagpipes, piano-wire garrote watches, laser-firing cameras, or machine-gun-firing BMWs to get you out of scrapes. But neither will the bad guys. You’ll have nothing but this.” He tapped his head. “And this.” He indicated his body. “Our goal is to teach you competency with these two most powerful weapons.”
I tuned in and out of Rockford’s little speech, pondering everything from how cold the air-conditioning was set to my chances of getting my camera back.
“The number-one Murphy’s Law of combat is ‘Anything you do can get you killed, including doing nothing,'” the Chief continued. “We’ll teach you how to act instinctively under stress so you up the odds of making the right choice.” His fierce gaze bounced around us. “Having people trying to kill you makes you a fast learner. Soldiers who learn by experience end up dead.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. No learning by experience? And here that was my main learning style. What happened to “Experience is the best teacher"?
Rockford paced in front of us; the guy had too much energy to stand still. “Situational awareness is your key to survival. Fighter pilots are masters of this; they may be upside down pulling Gs, but they know where up and down are, where the enemy is, and where their friends are.”
I didn’t even know who my friends were here. Hadn’t he just told us to trust no one? And now he wants us to have friends? The man was a pacing conundrum.
“To survive this special ops mission you’re going to have to go into combat mind-set—anything to survive. Use discipline. Fight like you train. And use your weapon"—the Chief pointed to his head again—"with precision. You’ll have to learn the art of invisibility—the job of the spy is to find the enemy, or information about the enemy, and return without being caught.
“Now, we’re going to divide the group into two squads for the morning. Torq will lead Squad A. Fry, Squad B. Squad B will learn the fine art of breaking and entering and planting a bug … in the other five CTs’ rooms. One of the goals of this mission is to discover a clue to the other CTs’ real identities.” Rockford grinned evilly. “Hope you picked your panties up, boys … and girls.” He laughed.
“Squad A will run through face recognition and Grace-Under-Pressure training.” Rockford found something about Grace-Under-Pressure training especially amusing. His smile spread in an imitation of Dr. Evil’s. I was beginning to think Rockford had one warped sense of humor. I instantly knew I was not going to like Grace Under Pressure.
Rockford began calling out assignments. Emma, who’d been sitting next to me during the intro, gave a hoot and pounded the air with a victory punch when she was called into Fry’s group. She leaned into me and whispered, “Told you I had dibs on him.”
I got her back by laughing when Rockford assigned Pussy to her group.
I was assigned to the stoic, scary Torq’s squad, along with Max, John, Ethan, and Tom Bishop. It would have been a perfect group if Ethan and Tom had looked, and behaved, more like their Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt movie counterparts and less like adolescent morons.
Those of us in Squad A got the pleasure of remaining in the freezing conference room while Torq set up to show a video. I got the idea that while my panties weren’t lying around for all to see, I’d like to secure my valuables, such as I had left. My BlackBerry was still up for grabs. I got up and tried to slip out.
Rockford had none of it. He stopped me at the door. “No one leaves the room.”
I raised a brow. “You want us dancing in here?”
Rockford called my bluff. “We got paper cups in here. You can take a whiz in one of those or I can escort you to the ladies'. Your choice.”
I sat down, grumbling as I went.
I noticed Torq wa
tching our exchange as he worked, ever the spy. He called the CTs over when he was finished. We gathered in the middle of the room before the fifty-inch plasma TV screen and Rockford left his post as guardian gargoyle.
“That Rockford’s a regular card,” Torq said in a monotone, his face impassive. “If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times to introduce this session as what it is—mind reading.” He looked to the group of us for our reaction. “Intrigued?”
Next to me, Max snorted. “It’s the old mind-reading trick. Seen it a million times.”
I sat up straighter, mostly because my poor posture made my fake boobs droop, and tried to look like I was paying attention.
“Next I suppose you’ll be teaching us defense against the dark arts.” I perched on the edge of my chair and smiled straight at Torq, wanting to see if I could crack his serious-guy veneer.
To my surprise, Torq laughed. “I like a girl with a sense of humor. And the answer would be yes. At some point. Almost everything we do is cloak-and-dagger stuff. But we don’t teach Quidditch. Our own version of Q hasn’t perfected the flying broom yet.”
Was it just me, or were we connecting just the tiniest bit?
Personally, I didn’t believe in mumbo jumbo. You watch enough Secrets of Magic Revealed and you realize everything’s a trick. Uncle Bob has the complete series on DVD. We’ve watched it together at least a dozen times. If Torq tried the old levitating-on-one-foot trick, I was out of here. Even I could do that one.
“Okay, let’s begin.” Torq looked directly at me, grinning as though he liked my edge-of-my-seat attentiveness. Some mind reader! I’d fooled him with my fake enthusiasm. Or my fake boobs.
“You have a nice AU combination of skepticism on your face, Domino,” he said to me.
My mouth popped open like I was intent on catching a few flies—that’s what Mom would say. As I snapped it shut again, he winked at me, letting me know he had my number. That was completely scary. Guys aren’t supposed to know what we’re thinking.
“AU stands for action unit,” he said, getting back to business. “AUs are the building blocks of the Facial Action Coding System, FACS.
“The most common judgments we make of other people are what they’re thinking or feeling, how we feel about them, whether they’re telling the truth or not, in other words, mind reading. Most of us do it without thinking. We’re probably right, on average, eighty or ninety percent of the time. But ninety percent isn’t good enough in the spy business. We’re shooting for one hundred percent accuracy.” He walked over and stood directly in front of me, made direct eye contact, gave a small smile, then looked down and averted his gaze.
My heart did a little flip and I felt my nipples contract. I broke into a flush. He was definitely hot and definitely flirting with me now. Right in front of the class!
Next thing I knew, he dropped into a squat so he was eye-to-eye with me. “What was I just doing, Domino? Read my mind. Come on,” he coaxed in a smooth, deep voice. “You can do it.”
I felt my flush deepen, my mouth pop open, and my tongue go dry.
Torq shook his head and winked conspiratorially at Max next to me before rolling forward on the balls of his feet, leaning in, and focusing intently on my face. “Okay, I’ll go first and read yours.” He looked deep into my eyes. “I see surprise, embarrassment, hesitation—you know the answer, but you’re afraid telling the truth will make you look foolish and vain. I see some fear and … yes, a little anger and annoyance for being put on the spot. Your turn.”
“You were flirting!” Okay, so I spoke a little louder than I intended. I hadn’t quite mastered the cool-cucumber spy mode yet. But the day was young.
“But was I really flirting, or was I faking?” He rose out of the squat and back to his feet away from me in one quick, smooth move.
Good thing, too, because I was sputtering in his face, or would have been if he’d stayed put.
“Hey, that’s a very good AU 4-5-7-24 combination, Domino.” He grinned at the boys. “Anger.” He walked back to the front of the class. “If Domino here was good at reading what we call micro expressions, she’d know the answer to my question. She’d be an expert mind reader. Madam Domino, the all-knowing.” He had the nerve to wink at me. “Micro expressions are quick, instantaneous, completely involuntary expressions that cross our faces.
“Our faces don’t merely echo our feelings and thoughts, they are our feelings and thoughts. Try as hard as we can to mask our feelings, we can’t succeed. A micro expression will give us away. See the connection between mind reading, special ops, and spying?”
Torq paused and took a sip of water. “For the spy, it means detecting the liar and recognizing a friend, if there is such a thing.
“Some emotions can be expressed with a single AU; most are much more complex. AU one.” Torq’s eyebrows shot up. He looked suddenly anguished. “Distress. How about this, AU twenty-four, thinning of the lips.” He looked suddenly pissed. “Anger.”
Torq went through half a dozen more combinations of AUs, each time transforming his expression. He was so convincing, he should’ve been an actor.
“As I’ve said, some of these facial expressions are voluntary,” Torq continued. “Some are not. That’s why smiles forced for the camera are so obviously fake. You can control the muscles around the mouth, but not those around the eyes that mark a true smile. Learn what a genuine smile looks like and you can unmask the false friend.”
I felt a sudden chill. Here was a man who could imitate with precision practically any emotion he wanted at will. How could you trust him? Not like I had good reason to trust him in the first place, but I made a mental note to be very cautious around him.
“There’s good news and bad news about mind reading,” Torq continued. “The bad news first—extreme situations can disrupt our ability to correctly process what we normally instinctively recognize.
“The good news is mind reading abilities can improve with practice. They can be taught.” He grabbed the remote. “Let’s try a little test of your mind-reading abilities. I’m going to show you a short clip of a dozen or so people claiming to do something they had or hadn’t done. I want all of you to write down who’s lying.”
He clicked the remote and we watched the video.
“Shit,” Ethan said when the clip stopped. “That was brutal, man.”
Torq collected our tests and took a quick look at our answers, shaking his head.
“AU whatever—disapproval,” I called out.
The class snickered. Torq laughed. I think it was actually genuine, though I couldn’t be sure.
“Good mind reading, Domino,” Torq said. “Too bad all of your mind-reading results came out at about the average for chance guessing.” He set the papers down and picked up the remote again.
“I’m going to show you a thirty-five-minute training video that teaches people to read AUs. We use this DVD when we train bodyguards.” He dimmed the lights and clicked the remote again. Thirty-five minutes later we were all sputtering in awe of our newfound capabilities as our success rate of reading another test video correctly skyrocketed.
“This is fantastic,” John Steed said. “I’m going to use this on my kids. Next time I tell them they’re giving me crap, I’m going to know it for sure. No more lying about anything.”
“On your kids? This should work on the chicks!” Bishop said.
I was thinking more along the line of interviewing loan applicants. I could be the banker girl with the lowest loan default rate in the history of banking, meaning big profits for Uncle Bob and me. All I had to do was get expert on recognizing the AU for deceit and insincerity.
Torq shook his head. “Just remember the involuntary micro expressions and don’t get cocky.” He stepped away from the podium. “Take five. Then the fun begins—Grace Under Pressure.”
Chapter Six
When Torq said “take five,” he meant five and not a second more. Class reconvened before I’d even had time to ful
ly recover from his flirt exercise. As all of us CTs faithfully gathered around him, a faint aura of anxious anticipation hung over the group. Or maybe that was just the odor of nervous perspiration. Probably partly my own. During the break Torq had singled me out to put on an orange jumpsuit, which didn’t bode well—in all likelihood I was going to be made a fool of first.
“Time for Grace Under Pressure. You’re up, Domino,” Torq said.
Why was I not surprised?
“Put this on.” Torq handed me a mask of sorts. Kind of a pair of goggles with a flexible face mask that covered not only the eyes, but also the nose, mouth, and chin.
Holding it in my hand, I hesitated, stalled by equal parts fear and annoyance. I was in no mood to be maimed, not so soon after being gorgeoused up. Nor did I feel like ruining a good hair-extension day. I cocked my hip and put my hand on it, trying to look calm and Bond girl-like. Not easy in the baggy orange jumpsuit Torq had made me wear. “Where’s my matching bulletproof vest?”
“A vest would be overkill,” Torq said.
I didn’t really like the way he emphasized “kill.”
“The mask’s just for insurance purposes, to keep our rates low.” Torq gave a grin that reached his eyes as he helped me put the mask on and adjusted the straps so tightly it rubbed uncomfortably against my hidden cornrows.
“The game’s completely harmless.” He gave my chin a playful chuck. “Comfy?”
Hell, no. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I did a mind-read of his face. If there was a micro expression of lying or lust, I didn’t see it. I probably needed a bit more mind-reading practice and vowed silently to get the “experience” he’d mentioned earlier.
“You look like Freddy Krueger as a beekeeper,” Max said, admiring my getup.
“Thanks. You really know how to flatter a girl,” I said.
“And she’s the good guy in this scenario.” Torq winked at me. “Mask must fit. Sounds like you can speak just fine.” Torq took my arm and strapped a heart-rate monitor on it before I could protest. Then he handed me a strap that contained the transmitter and told me to put it around my chest under the jumpsuit.
Spy Candy Page 5
