The Thing About Love

by Julie James

  That did not sit well with him.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been just average. He’d done well at the University of Wisconsin, and not just “well” for a football player—he’d graduated with honors and worn the fancy stole with all the other smarty-pantses at the commencement ceremony and everything.

  But the other trainees in his class were smart, too. Real smart. Every year, the FBI received nearly one hundred thousand special agent applications, but less than a thousand of those applicants would be chosen for the Academy. Which meant, as John was quickly learning, that everyone had been the best in their fields before coming to Quantico. And while he certainly wouldn’t complain about being the top marksman or fighter in his class, out in the real world, FBI special agents rarely discharged their firearms or got into street fights. The academics side of the program was where he would learn the skills that he would use every day as an agent.

  Kind of important, that.

  One of the things they particularly focused on in the classroom was interviewing and interrogation techniques. For the practice exercises, the Academy hired professional actors and actresses to play witnesses and suspects, and the agent-trainees would be given an objective—for example, to get as much information as possible out of the witness in thirty minutes. The practice exercises were videotaped, so the trainees could review their performances, and their interview and interrogations instructor would often show the trainees’ videos and critique them for the entire class.

  John got a nice wake-up call of his own the first time he reviewed his videotape.

  It wasn’t that he was terrible. But he’d never interrogated, cross-examined, or deposed anyone before, and it showed. He’d spent too much time letting the witness talk about nonrelevant information, and he must’ve said Okay about fifty times during the interview. By contrast, the lawyers in the class, and some of the guys who’d come from law enforcement backgrounds, looked polished and comfortable working with the witnesses, established a good rapport, knew how to get the most important information faster, and didn’t have any verbal tics or nervous habits. And when the class moved on to more advanced situations, like trying to get a confession, the lawyers and law enforcement officers already seemed to have a cache of tricks for dealing with an adversarial witness.

  Jessica, in particular, was a standout. And John would know, because throughout those weeks, their interrogations instructor played almost every single one of her videos as a “good” example of what to do in whatever scenario they’d been given that day.

  John, on the other, had yet to find his groove. Given his military training, his natural inclination was to be a little tough and demonstrate who was in charge, but all that did was get the witness hollering about Miranda rights and demanding to see a lawyer.

  “I said ‘take charge’ of the situation, Shepherd, not scare the crap out of the guy,” their interrogations instructor said after John had completed an exercise with an actor who’d pretended to be a defense contractor suspected of stealing a blueprint he planned to sell to a foreign intelligence agent.

  John held out his hands innocently. “You said we should move in at this point in the questioning and invade the guy’s comfort zone. That’s what I was doing.”

  The instructor—a short, bald man in his early fifties—gestured to John. “Yes, but when you do that, it comes off particularly intimidating.”

  John grinned. Well . . . yes. That was Ranger blood running through his veins, and the good citizens of the United States weren’t spending their hard-earned tax dollars to teach the most elite battalion in the Army to be a bunch of wusses.

  “That wasn’t a compliment, Shepherd.”

  Right. He nixed the grin stat.

  The instructor stood there for a moment, scrutinizing John. “Is there any way you can make yourself seem . . . smaller?”

  Needless to say, John’s video was not one of the “good” examples shown to the class that day.

  Later that afternoon, his class headed off to PT. They were sparring again, and when John found out whom he was paired against, he braced himself for the onslaught of douchebaggery.

  Not that he was worried about the fight—candidly, he wasn’t worried about any of the fights—but there was an unspoken etiquette to these matches. No one wanted to get seriously injured and be forced to drop out of the program, so with the exception of the “Bull in the Ring” day—the day they were specifically told to fight as hard as possible by the instructors, who wanted them to know they could take a punch and keep going—the trainees typically didn’t go all-out, Rocky-style. The purpose of the exercises was to learn the techniques and know how to control an opponent in a hand-to-hand confrontation—not to beat the crap out of one another. But of course, there was always one jackass in the class who pulled no punches, literally, and went for the throat every time.

  Cue the guy with the PhD in linguistics.

  Now, normally, John tried to be generous while sparring and not take advantage of the fact that he had considerably more training and experience than his opponent. But when their defensive tactics instructor blew the whistle and Linguistics PhD came charging at him—fists flying and trash-talking John in some foreign language as an attempt to psych him out, John had no choice but to (a) take a moment to try his hardest not to laugh and (b) take the guy immediately down to the ground and get him into a handcuffing position.

  After the PT session, John got caught up talking to his instructor, and he was late getting back to the locker room. Just before he rounded the row where his locker was located, he overheard Linguistics PhD talking.

  “It’s bullshit that they pair us against him,” he ranted. “Everyone knows Shepherd’s only here because they recruited him for HRT. The guy’s a fucking grunt. You think he would’ve made the cut otherwise, with a bachelor’s degree from Wisconsin?”

  As John stood on the other side of the lockers, his jaw tightened.

  While the idea of storming over and handling this situation grunt-style was very tempting, he kept his cool as he walked around the corner.

  Linguistics PhD instantly fell quiet and pretended to be looking at something in his locker. His sidekick, the Silicon Valley guy with double degrees, went pale and suddenly became very interested in tying his shoes.

  John opened his locker and stripped out of his shirt. He tossed it into his gym bag, holding Linguistics PhD’s gaze. “Is there something we need to discuss?”

  The guy went red in the face and looked away. “Just blowing off steam, Shepherd.”

  “Maybe blow it off a little quieter next time.”

  Apparently having nothing to say to that, Linguistics PhD hastily got dressed and made a passive-aggressive show of slamming his locker as he left. His sidekick from Silicon Valley managed a nervous smile at John before following him out.

  Moments later, one of the other trainees in their class, a detective from San Francisco, came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Can we just give the guy a good ass-kicking and be done with it?”

  John half chuckled, appreciating the camaraderie. In the Army, guys with attitude problems like Linguistics PhD quickly found themselves zip-tied, covered in shaving cream, and stuffed in an empty locker. “Unfortunately, I think they expect us to be gentlemen here.”

  “So we’ll put on suits and ties before we kick his ass.” The homicide detective nodded at John as he headed to his locker. “Don’t pay any attention to that bullshit he was saying, Shepherd. The guy’s just being a sore loser.”

  That was John’s take on it, too.

  Mostly.

  For the rest of the evening, there was a small part of him that wondered whether other people in his class felt the same way. That he, with a “mere” BA from the University of Wisconsin, wasn’t intellectually on the same level as many of them, that he was a jock who’d been recruited
not because the FBI believed he would make a good special agent but because they thought he’d be handy to have in a gunfight.

  He got his answer to that question the very next day.

  During firearms training, John was lined up next to Jessica at the outdoor shooting range. He noticed that she was having a hard time hitting the target and getting more and more frustrated with every shot. Their instructor was currently working with someone else down the line, so John figured he’d help her out.

  “You’re anticipating the blast and flinching when the shot fires,” he offered. “Plus, your stance is wrong.”

  She glared at him, slapped the magazine into place, and got into position again—the wrong position.

  John fought back a smile—So stubborn—and moved in closer to demonstrate. “Spread your legs and lean into it,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

  She jerked away from him. “Hey. Easy there, big guy.”

  The look on her face completely took him by surprise.

  Back off, it said, in no uncertain terms.

  In that moment, John realized that he’d been very wrong in his interpretation of the dynamic between him and Jessica. These past few weeks, he’d thought they’d had a fun, playful vibe going with the quips and the teasing, possibly a way to cover up some sexual tension they both knew they couldn’t act on given the fact that they were in the Academy and would be sent off to different field offices after graduation.

  But nope.

  Apparently, Jessica Harlow just thought he was a dick.

  Feeling like an idiot, he snapped, “Don’t flatter yourself, Harlow. I was just trying to help. But if you want to keep on sucking at this, hey, that’s your prerogative.”

  Yes, it was a shitty thing to say. But in his defense—what the hell? He’d been trying to help by offering her shooting advice. These past weeks, all he’d done was try to help her. And if she’d had some problem with his approach, or didn’t like the way he acted around her, she easily could’ve pulled him aside and talked to him in private. Yet instead, she chose to call him out in front of the whole class. As if he was . . . what? Hitting on her?

  Pfft. He had better things to do with his time.

  They didn’t speak a word to each other for the rest of the firearms class. But later, when he got back to the dorm-style suite he shared with three other guys in his class, he thought more about his interactions with Jessica.

  And now he saw them in an entirely different light.

  Easy there, big guy.

  Maybe you’d rather just tie a rope around my waist and drag me the rest of the way?

  Isn’t there some tree you could fell with your bare hands, or a boulder somewhere that needs tossing?

  Sure. Because he was the grunt who relied on brute strength, right?

  With that in mind, he set a new goal for himself. He might not have had a postgraduate degree, and he might not have come to the Academy with legal or law enforcement experience, but he was a damn fast learner. And anyone who thought he was all brawn and no brains was about to get a serious reality check.

  He was going to get that high mark in academics.

  To execute his plan, he stopped by their interrogations instructor’s office the following day to ask how he could improve his interviewing technique.

  The instructor seemed surprised by the question. “You’re doing fine, Shepherd.”

  Jaw set determinedly, John stood military-straight in the doorway. “With all due respect, sir, ‘fine’ isn’t good enough.”

  The instructor looked him over for a moment. “All right.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

  The following evening, they walked through some of John’s videotapes. It reminded him of the postgame review they used to do when he played football, except instead of focusing on ways he could run a route better or his tendency to transfer his weight to his back foot before taking off from the line of scrimmage, they worked on refining his “neutral, nonaggressive approach” to interviewing.

  “Try making more small talk,” the instructor advised. “You military guys are used to coming in hard and fast—you get in, do the job, and get out. Here, you need to slow down. Establish common ground with the witness. Ask about his job or hobbies, or if the interview is at the witness’s home or office, ask about any pictures of his family that might be sitting around. Start soft, and most important, let the witness talk. Agents can get hung up on getting a confession, but that’s not always going to happen. And a really detailed lie is the next best thing.”

  The extra practice paid off. Over the next few weeks, John fixed his Okay problem and became much more comfortable going with the ebb and flow of the interview instead of being fixated on following a set list of questions. And with that, he finally found his groove. He’d originally assumed, given his build and background, that he’d be more of a bad-cop type in interrogations, but he discovered that playing against type and creating a “bond” with the witness could be much more effective.

  “You seem stressed, Karen. Tell me what’s going on,” he said, in a sympathetic tone, to the “suspect” the next time their class was given an interrogation exercise. In the evenings, while the rest of the trainees were grabbing beers at the Boardroom, he’d been doing extra research into the interviewing techniques they learned in class, like “emotional labeling”—a technique used by FBI crisis negotiators—statement analysis, and how a person’s body language, or even certain linguistic markers, could indicate deceit or suspicious behavior. Fascinated by the subject, he soaked up as much information as he could get his hands on.

  And in turn, he became good at the practice exercises.

  The only problem was, Jessica kept getting better, too. No matter what he did or how much he studied, he couldn’t shake the damn woman. And the instructors loved her—loved how much she’d improved her shooting, how instinctive she was at Hogan’s Alley, how she did such a great job keeping the practice exercises from escalating into violence, blah, blah, blah.

  Whatever.

  Sure, under different circumstances, he might’ve found her skills and determination admirable—along with the fact that she somehow magically managed to look cute even when sweaty and wearing nylon gym shorts. But his views on Jessica had changed ever since that day at the shooting range. Now that he properly understood their situation—that she considered him Public Enemy Number One—he, too, had taken off the proverbial gloves. So if Jessica Harlow wanted that high mark in academics, she was going to have to get through him first.

  And this grunt wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Seventeen weeks into the program, that mantra took a rather literal turn.

  “Shepherd—you’re up. And you, too, Harlow,” their defensive tactics instructor called out as the trainees lined up in the gym to be paired up for their next sparring match.

  As John put on his gear, he caught sight of Jessica on the opposite side of the mat. She adjusted her ponytail as she got ready for the fight, then took a deep breath, as if nervous.

  Seeing that, he felt a mixture of things. Annoyance, for one. Yes, they didn’t get along. No doubt, she was a burr up his ass. But did she really think there was a chance he would actually hurt her?

  Christ, he hadn’t thought her opinion of him was that low.

  And second, knowing she was nervous made him feel . . . uncomfortable or something. Jessica Harlow was sassy and sarcastic and confident—she didn’t get nervous. So she needed to snap out of it, because by now she should’ve thrown at least two dirty looks at him and whispered one snarky comment, and the fact that she hadn’t was starting to seriously weird him out.

  As they faced each other across the mat, he knew what to do.

  When the instructor blew the whistle to start the match, John charged straight for Jessica, as if he planned to take her down hard. Her
eyes widened as she put up her gloves, but she held her ground. Stopping just short of her, John changed course and gave her a cocky smile as he began circling her on the mat.

  A spark of attitude and anger flashed in her eyes when she realized that he’d been messing with her.

  Now that was the Jessica Harlow he knew.

  Game on.

  Throughout their training, the instructors had emphasized that there was no distinction between the genders, and that the men should fight the female trainees the same as anyone else. Nevertheless, chivalry was not dead. So instead of ending the match in two seconds, as John obviously had the ability to do, when Jessica made her move he let her get in a few punches so she could demonstrate that she’d learned the proper techniques.

  Of course, his generosity only seemed to aggravate her more.

  Big surprise there.

  “Stop dancing around, Shepherd.” Her speech was slightly slurred from the mouth guard, but her irritated tone came through loud and clear.

  “Wait. You mean this is supposed to be a fight? And here I’d been brushing up on my tango.” He heard a few chuckles from the class, but he remained focused on Jessica as he closed in, ducked her punch, and grabbed her.

  She shifted her weight into a strong stance and shoved him off, but instead of retreating, as he’d expected, she lunged and struck the base of his throat with her forearm, channeling all her strength against that one vulnerable spot.

  He stumbled back, coughing, and had to catch his balance.

  Now it was her turn to smile. “Looks like your tango needs some work,” she said as they circled each other.

  “Eh. I’ve got a few moves you haven’t seen yet.”

  “That’s what they all say, Shepherd.”

  The class chuckled again, obviously enjoying the show. John feigned looking in their direction, knowing that Jessica would try to take advantage of his momentary distraction.