“Shouldn’t I meet the person for whom I’ll be working?” I said.
“That’s not necessary. The decision isn’t hers to make. It’s mine.” She paused “She’s already observed most of this interview, anyway.”
Alice half turned and waved up at the corner of the room. Like a wart, a small, dark Plexiglas dome protruded from the flat ceiling, no doubt concealing a video camera.
“Wow,” was all I could think of to say. “So, you’ll call me . . . ?”
“In a few days,” Alice said. “When we’ve completed the background check.”
“So, I guess that’s it, then. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Alice rose and came around the desk. “I think this will work out nicely.” Her eyes trod all over me in hiking boots again. “Yes, I think you’ll be just the ticket.”
Two days later, Alice Pemberton called and offered me the job at a ridiculously low starting hourly wage. But she indicated that if things worked out, I’d be put on salary. She told me to come back to the house the next day at an hour when normally the only thing I see is the back of my eyelids.
I showed up at the appointed time, and Alice escorted me to the capacious kitchen. She sat me down in a breakfast nook and offered me a choice of eggs or pancakes. A large Latina woman in a white apron stood at the stove and nodded, a wide smile on her face, encouraging me to order. I asked for eggs, sunny-side up.
“You wan’ choreee-zo with that?” the woman asked in heavily accented English.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“This is Rosalita,” Alice said. “Rosalita, meet Oliver.”
Rosalita beamed even more and nodded, letting loose a stream of Spanish far too rapid for my limited linguistic skills to keep up. I smiled and nodded back, trying to be gracious.
As I sat down, it occurred to me that I knew very little about the person I’d been hired to assist except that she was female and a student. I didn’t know if she was fat or thin, smart or dumb, a princess or a witch. I didn’t even know what Alice’s relationship was to the mystery woman. They could have been mother and daughter, but I got the distinct impression that Alice wasn’t married and never had been.
“Miss Pemberton,” I said. “Is it Miss or Missus?”
“Alice will be fine, since you may be with us for a while.”
“Alice, then. I wondered if you could tell me more about the person I’ll be assisting. It could help me prepare how I approach both her and the manner in which I assist her.”
“I want you to keep a open mind, Oliver. Your client will tell you as much or as little as she wishes about herself.”
She must have seen the look on my face because she added quickly, “Don’t worry. I think you’ll get along just fine. And given your educational background, you should have no problems with your duties.”
Rosalita brought over a steaming plate of huevos rancheros on a warm tortilla, with a side of chorizo. She set it down in front of me and stood, waiting until I’d taken a bite, arms folded across her ample chest. Impressive biceps bulged from her short-sleeved white cook’s blouse. She looked the part of Rosa, but I was having trouble with the “lita” part. Fortunately, I’m a big fan of Mexican food and spicy food in general. She looked momentarily disappointed when smoke didn’t come out of my ears, but lit up when she saw sweat break out on my forehead and a smile on my burning lips.
“¿Es bueno?”
“Muy bueno,” I said. “Muchas gracias.”
“De nada.”
She walked back to the stove, singing in a soft voice.
“Rosalita likes to have fun at our expense sometimes,” Alice said, eyeing my red face. “You can ask for something different if that’s not to your liking.”
“It’s good,” I said. “Spicy. It’ll wake me up faster than coffee.”
Alice turned her head toward the door, and I caught the sound of footsteps approaching. I swiveled in my seat. A short, older Japanese man in khakis and a work shirt escorted a young woman on his arm. A girl, really. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and she was drop-dead gorgeous. Long, black hair framed an oval face with a straight, upturned nose, wide mouth, and eyes the color of crystal-clear, azure water off a Bahamian beach.
“Ah, there you are,” Alice said. “Guess who’s here?”
“Good morning,” I said, jumping to my feet.
With a small cry, the girl wrested free of her escort and fled back the way she’d come, arms waving in front of her as if feeling her way. I frowned, wondering if I had chorizo stuck in my teeth. What I’d seen slowly registered in my awestruck brain. The girl who’d just freaked out on me wasn’t tripping on the way I looked.
“She’s blind,” I said to no one in particular.
“Very observant, Oliver,” Alice said.
I faced her. “You hired me to be her guide dog?”
CHAPTER 7
Tess was horrified. She stumbled down the hallway, heard her flat heels hit the hard stone of the entry, and madly waved her hands in front of her until she found the wall that would lead her to the foot of the stairs. She raced up as fast as she dared, grasping the banister, slipping once and barking her shin on the edge of a stair. Sobbing, she reached the top and almost fell into the wall across the hall. Placing one hand in front of the other, she made her way down the hallway, counting doors as she went, tears running down her face. Finally, she reached the safety of her bedroom—a place where she knew every square inch. Even so, after a few faltering steps she put her hands out to feel for the soft duvet on her bed before throwing herself on top in frustration. In the distance, she heard Alice calling her from downstairs.
“Tess Barrett, you get down here for breakfast right now! You don’t want to be late on your first day back!”
What difference could it make?
Tess was already a year late for school. The accident had caused her to miss the last few months of her junior year and most of her senior year. Technically, she was a senior. Once Alice had seen Tess accept Yoshi’s gentle instruction, Alice had also stepped in as Tess’s tutor, and had homeschooled her, riding Tess hard so that she passed equivalency tests for junior year and kept up with her classmates throughout senior year.
As much as she sometimes resented Alice, Tess had to grudgingly admit that Alice’s cajoling and her unrelenting focus on Tess and her studies had given Tess the impetus she needed to keep going. Tess had found some of her former drive to excel. With Alice’s help she’d even sent applications to several universities, including Brown, Stanford, Pepperdine, USC, and Cal Poly—where her parents had met. To her surprise, USC had turned her down, but she’d received her first acceptance letter from Brown. She hadn’t heard from the others yet. Stanford was her first choice, but she liked Brown.
But a condition of attending college was proving that she could physically navigate school again in her condition. So, she was going back for the last trimester so she wouldn’t miss the experiences of a high school senior, like the prom she hadn’t attended junior year, and all the end-of-year senior traditions . . . So, fine. Now she’d be the same age as kids in her class instead of being the youngest. She’d been gone for a year. She dreaded the awkward looks, the stilted, forced conversations with the people who’d left her behind, both friends and enemies. And she was even more stressed about having to start over as the new kid again. She’d already done that, and had the scars to prove it.
Worse, she’d just made a fool of herself. This guy Alice had hired must think she was a complete basket case.
Soft footsteps padded into the room, followed by the faint scents of wisteria and green tea. Tess lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Oh, god, Yoshi. I’m such a mess,” she said.
“You frightened, missy,” he said. “Is no shame in knowing fear, only shame in hiding from it. You must face your fear.”
“You make it sound so easy. Try being blind for a while.” The words tasted bitter in her
mouth.
“We are all blind in our own fashion,” he said softly.
“You? What are you afraid of?”
“Many things, missy. But I choose not to give in, not to show my fear. Now, come. We try again.”
“Do I have to, Yoshi? Can’t I go tomorrow? I just want to crawl back into bed.”
“No, today a good day for school. And very handsome boy come all this way to take you there. You don’t want to disappoint him, no?”
“He’s taking me to school because we’re paying him to. It’s not like some huge sacrifice for this guy.” She paused. “You think he’s good-looking? He’s not, like, a nerd, is he?”
“I not have a chance to know him yet, missy. But Alice not let just anyone have job.”
Tess sighed. “Guess you’re right. He can’t be a complete loser.”
He’d sounded nice, too, in his interview with Alice, Tess recalled. But that didn’t mean she had to like him. Alice was forcing this on her—both going back to school and taking a chaperone with her. She sighed and let Yoshi take her hand, steadying herself as she climbed off the bed. She let him lead her downstairs once more. Halfway to the kitchen, she stopped and tugged at Yoshi’s sleeve.
“Do I look okay?” she whispered.
A year earlier, she’d obsessed about her appearance. It had taken her an hour to apply makeup and do her hair before school. The cupboards in her bathroom had been full of cosmetics and skin care products. Her collection of lip gloss rivaled the displays at some department stores—drawers lined with scores of colors from dozens of brands. Now it didn’t seem so important.
“You look fine,” Yoshi reassured her.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Tess straightened and held her head high as Yoshi guided her the rest of the way to the kitchen.
“Ah, good,” Alice said. “You’re here. Don’t dawdle now. Tell Rosa what you’d like for breakfast.”
Tess turned toward the sound of a pan banging on the stove. “Something I can eat with my hands, Rosalita, por favor. A breakfast burrito, maybe?”
“Si, si. Un momento.”
“Thank you.”
Tess faced the spot where Alice’s voice had come from and stuck her hand out a little to the left. She was angry with Alice for pushing her into this, but at least she could be polite.
“You must be Oliver,” she said.
She heard the scrape of a chair on the floor and felt a rush of air as someone hurriedly stepped in front of her. She smelled soap and just a touch of something astringent. Not sweat, exactly, but perspiration, and definitely masculine. A warm hand clasped hers, dry, not moist, to her surprise.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” a male voice said. “I’ve heard practically nothing about you.”
The voice had nice timbre, pitched somewhere between a tenor and a baritone. Deep, but still youthful. And apparently the man behind it had a sense of humor. She bit back a smile.
“You’ll discover, if we don’t scare you away, that we’re full of secrets,” she said. “I’m Tess, by the way. I imagine that’s one of the secrets Alice managed to hide from you.”
She heard him laugh, and the sound made her relax. It might be nice to have a guy around to talk to again. Besides Yoshi, that was. Someone closer to her own age. It had been a while—not since before the accident, she realized. But she remained cautious. She didn’t know this guy.
A hand clasped her arm above the elbow.
“Would you like to sit down?” Oliver said.
“Yes, thank you.”
She let him guide her to the table and heard a chair being pulled away from it. The hand applied just the slightest pressure on the inside of her arm, so she took a step to her left. Almost immediately she felt the edge of the chair gently nudge the backs of her knees. She lowered herself onto the seat, and the chair slid under her. Her father had done that for her mother. He’d opened doors for her mother, too, and her mother had had perfectly good vision. From the way she’d been seated Tess knew that Oliver must have been raised learning the same sorts of manners.
“So, Tess,” Oliver said, sounding awkward, “Alice did tell me you’re going back to school. College?”
Tess laughed nervously. “I wish. No, high school.”
“Really? You look old enough. Oh, that didn’t come out right, did it? I meant that you’d fit right in with all the other students on campus.”
“No, I’m a senior, but . . .”
“You took some time off,” Oliver finished for her.
“Yeah, I guess you might say that.”
“So, are you ready to go back?”
“I don’t know,” Tess said. She squirmed in her chair. “Are you?”
“Ready to go back?” Oliver sounded surprised. “To high school? It will be like going back, won’t it? Frankly, I kind of wish I’d seen the last of high school.”
He sounded so mournful that Tess couldn’t help a laugh this time. “What? You weren’t one of the cool kids?”
“Nope. But I wasn’t one of the geeks who got picked on, either. I guess I was pretty average.”
“Average doesn’t cut it in my school,” Tess said, dread creeping into the edges of her consciousness again.
“You look like you’re far from average, Tess.”
Tess felt her face grow warm and wondered how much it showed. “What would you know? You don’t even know me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “You’re right. For all I know you could be a dumb blonde. You’re obviously not. Blonde, that is.”
“No, you were right, Oliver,” Alice said. “Tess is far from average—except when it comes to manners sometimes.”
Tess’s ears burned now, and she was sure she must have turned bright red from embarrassment and anger.
“Aquí está tu burrito, señorita,” Rosalita said, interrupting just in time.
Tess heard the soft thud of a plate being set on the table in front of her.
“Gracias, Rosa.”
She reached for her napkin, found it with her fingers, and spread it on her lap. Then carefully feeling the outline of the plate with both hands, she moved her fingers in until they touched the burrito. She grasped it in both hands and brought it to her mouth. Alice and Rosa were used to seeing her make a mess of her meals, but she suddenly felt self-conscious in front of the stranger at the table. She realized she was too hungry to care and took a big bite. As usual, Rosa’s cooking was amazing. She’d mixed scrambled eggs, chorizo, sautéed onion, fresh cilantro, diced jalapeño, queso blanco, and a touch of cumin and rolled them up in a warm, soft flour tortilla.
“Mmmf,” she said with her mouth full. “Did you get something to eat, Oliver? You should try this. It’s delicious.”
“Thanks, but Rosa already made me breakfast.”
“Okay, Tess,” Alice interrupted, “it’s almost time to head for school. Finish your breakfast. You don’t want to be late. Oliver, I’ve taken the liberty of preparing directions for you, and there’s a GPS device in the car you’ll be driving in case you take a wrong turn. Here’s a class schedule with a map of the campus. Tess, I’ve got your bag ready with all the books and supplies your teachers say you need. Do you want to carry it, or shall I give it to Oliver?”
“OMG, Alice, it’s the pink one, right? I think I better take it. I doubt it goes with whatever Oliver’s wearing.”
“I suppose you have a point. Oliver, you may want to bring of bag of your own next time so you can help with a few of those books. After all, Tess won’t need them as much as you will.”
“I don’t—” Oliver said.
“Well, I certainly can’t read them,” Tess interrupted. “They’re so you can follow along with the work I’m doing, and make sure I understand my assignments. You know, we ‘dumb blondes’ have trouble with that sort of thing.”
CHAPTER 8
One year earlier. . .
“I’ll give you a team,” the general said.
Travis forced h
is mind to pay attention, still shocked by the enormity of what Turnbull had suggested.
“They’ll have to be off the books, of course,” the general continued, “but I’ll make sure they’re all former SF or SOG. We can’t let any of this be traced back.”
“SOG, sir? Can we trust those guys?”
The Special Operations Group was the CIA’s covert military operations arm. Almost all of its operatives were former Army Special Forces soldiers. But Travis was convinced the CIA played head games with its people. After meeting a few of the guys from SOG in Afghanistan, he understood why its agents were called “spooks.” They were like ghosts, but not just because they were invisible. They also were a little scary. Really intense, and not in a good way. It seemed they were in it only for the thrills, and had lost sight of the big picture—duty and country.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure everyone on your team is properly vetted,” Turnbull said. “But it’s important we don’t take anyone currently active in the service. As of today, Travis, you’re officially out of the army. Early retirement, sabbatical—I don’t care what we call it, but if this is going to work, you can’t be one of us anymore.”
“What about resources? I’ll need equipment as well as men.”
“James has agreed to pay for security, so I imagine you’ll have an unlimited budget even though it’s coming out of his own pocket, not the company’s.”
Travis grimaced. Knowing James, the budget might be unlimited, but it would come with all sorts of questions and maybe even a few strings attached. He sighed.
“I understand the assignment, sir,” he said, “and even if I’m no longer in the army you know I’ll do whatever you order me to. But can I think about this idea of yours for a while before making a commitment?”
Turnbull nodded. “Of course, Travis. But don’t take too long. We don’t know how imminent this threat is. We could be talking weeks, but possibly only days.”
“I’ll give you an answer as soon as I can, sir.”
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