by Lisa Gardner
Kimberly despised her Red Handle. It seemed childish and silly to her. She wanted her Glock back. On the other hand, the various accountants, lawyers, and psychologists in her class, who had zero firearms experience, loved the things. They could knock them off their belts, drop them in the halls, and sit on them without shooting themselves or anyone else in the ass. One day, Gene Yvves had been gesturing so wildly, he whacked his Crayola halfway across the room, where it hit another new agent on the head. Definitely, the first few weeks, it was a good idea that not everyone in the class was armed.
Kimberly still wanted her Glock back.
Once piled high with linens, uniforms, and toy handguns, the new agent trainees returned to the dorms to meet their roommates. Everyone started out in the Madison and Washington dormitories, two people to a room and two rooms sharing a bath. The rooms were small but functional—two single beds, two small oak desks, one big bookshelf. Each bathroom, painted vivid blue for reasons known only to the janitor, had a small sink and a shower. No tub. By week four, when everyone’s bruised and battered bodies were desperate for a long, hot soak, several agents rented hotel rooms in neighboring Stafford purely for the bathtubs. Seriously.
Kimberly’s roommate, Lucy Dawbers, was a thirty-six-year-old former trial lawyer who’d had her own two-thousand-dollar-a-month Boston brownstone. She’d taken one look at their spartan quarters that first day and groaned, “Oh my God, what have I done?”
Kimberly had the distinct impression that Lucy would kill for a nice glass of Chardonnay at the end of the day. She also missed her five-year-old son horribly.
In the good news department, especially for new agents who didn’t share particularly well—say, perhaps, Kimberly—somewhere around week twelve, new agents became eligible for private rooms in “The Hilton”—the Jefferson Dormitory. These rooms were not only slightly bigger, but entitled you to your very own bathroom. Pure heaven.
Assuming you survived until week twelve.
Three of Kimberly’s classmates already hadn’t.
In theory, the FBI Academy had abandoned its earlier, boot camp ways for a kinder, gentler program. Recognizing how expensive it was to recruit good agents, the Bureau now treated the FBI Academy as the final training stage for selected agents, rather than as a last opportunity to winnow out the weak.
That was in theory. In reality, testing started week one. Can you run two miles in less than sixteen minutes? Can you do fifty push-ups in one minute? Can you do sixty sit-ups? The shuttle run must be completed in twenty-four seconds, the fifty-foot rope must be climbed in forty-five seconds.
The new agent trainees ran, they trained, they suffered through body-fat testing and they prayed to fix their individual weaknesses—whether that was the shuttle run or the rope climb or the fifty push-ups, in order to pass the three cycles of fitness tests.
Then came the academics program—classes in white-collar crime, profiling, civil rights, foreign counterintelligence, organized crime and drug cases; lessons in interrogation, arrest tactics, driving maneuvers, undercover work, and computers; lecture series on criminology, legal rights, forensic science, ethics, and FBI history. Some of it was interesting, some of it was excruciating, and all of it was tested three times over the course of the sixteen weeks. And no mundane high-school scale here—it took a score of 85 percent or higher to pass. Anything less, you failed. Fail once, you had an opportunity for a make-up test. Fail twice, you were “recycled”—dropped back to the next class.
Recycled. It sounded so innocuous. Like some PC sports program—there are no winners or losers here, you’re just recycled.
Recycling mattered. New agents feared it, dreaded it, had nightmares about it. It was the ominous word whispered in the halls. It was the secret terror that kept them going up over the towering Marine training wall, even now that it was week nine and everyone was sleeping less and less while being pushed more and more and the drills were harder and the expectations higher and each day, every day, someone was going to get awarded the Deadly Deed of the Day …
Besides the physical training and academics, new agents worked on firearms. Kimberly had thought she’d have the advantage there. She’d been taking lessons with a Glock .40 for the past ten years. She was comfortable with guns and a damn good shot.
Except firearms training didn’t involve just standing and firing at a paper target. They also practiced firing from the sitting position—as if surprised at a desk. Then there were running drills, belly-crawling drills, night-firing drills, and elaborate rituals where they started out on their bellies, then got up and ran, then dropped down, then ran more, then stood and fired. You fired right-handed. You fired left-handed. You reloaded and reloaded and reloaded.
And you didn’t just use a handgun.
Kimberly got her first experience with an M-16 rifle. Then she fired over a thousand rounds from a Remington Model 870 shotgun with a recoil that nearly crushed her right cheek and shattered her shoulder. Then she expelled over a hundred rounds from a Heckler & Koch MP5/10 submachine gun, though that at least had been kind of fun.
Now they had Hogan’s Alley, where they practiced elaborate scenarios and only the actors actually knew what was going to happen next. Kimberly’s traditional anxiety dreams—leaving the house naked, suddenly being in a classroom taking a pop quiz—had once been in black and white. Since Hogan’s Alley, they had taken on vivid, violent color. Hot-pink classrooms, mustard-yellow streets. Pop quizzes splashed with purple and green paint. Herself running, running, running down long endless tunnels of exploding orange, pink, purple, blue, yellow, black, and green.
She awoke some nights biting back weary screams. Other nights, she simply lay there and felt her right shoulder throb. Sometimes, she could tell that Lucy was awake, too. They didn’t talk those nights. They just lay in the dark, and gave each other the space to hurt.
Then at six A.M. they both got up and went through it all over again.
Nine weeks down, seven to go. Show no weakness. Give no quarter. Endure.
Kimberly wanted so desperately to make it. She was strong Kimberly, with cool blue eyes just like her father’s. She was smart Kimberly, with her B.A. in psychology at twenty-one and her master’s in criminology at twenty-two. She was driven Kimberly, determined to get on with her life even after what happened to her mother and sister.
She was infamous Kimberly, the youngest member of her class and the one everyone whispered about in the halls. You know who her father is, don’t you? What a shame about her family. I heard the killer nearly got her, too. She gunned him down in cold blood …
Kimberly’s classmates took lots of notes in their eagerly awaited profiling class. Kimberly took none at all.
She arrived downstairs. Up ahead in the hall, she could see a cluster of green shirts chatting and laughing—National Academy students, done for the day and no doubt heading to the Boardroom for cold beer. Then came the cluster of blue shirts, talking up a storm. Fellow new-agent trainees, also done for the day, and now off to grab a quick bite in the cafeteria before hitting the books, or the PT course, or the gym. Maybe they were mentoring each other, swapping a former lawyer’s legal expertise for a former Marine’s firearms training. New agents were always willing to help one another. If you let them.
Kimberly pushed her way through the outside doors. The heat slammed into her like a blow. She made a beeline for the relative shade of the Academy’s wooded PT course and started running.
Pain, Agony, Hurt, the signs read on the trees next to the path. Suck it in. Love it!
“I do, I do,” Kimberly gasped.
Her aching body protested. Her chest tightened with pain. She kept on running. When all else failed, keep moving. One foot in front of another. New pain layering on top of the old.
Kimberly knew this lesson well. She had learned it six years ago, when her sister was dead, her mother was murdered and she stood in a Portland, Oregon, hotel room with the barrel of a gun pressed against her forehead like
a lover’s kiss.
CHAPTER 3
Fredericksburg, Virginia
6:45 P.M.
Temperature: 92 degrees
Twenty-year-old Tina Krahn had just stepped out the front door of her stifling hot apartment when the phone rang. Tina sighed, doubled back into the kitchen and answered with an impatient hello while using her other hand to wipe the sweat from the back of her neck. God, this heat was unbearable. The humidity level had picked up on Sunday, and hadn’t done a thing to improve since. Now, fresh out of the shower, Tina’s thin green sundress was already plastered to her body, while she could feel fresh dewdrops of moisture trickle stickily down between her breasts.
She and her roommate Betsy had agreed half an hour ago to go anyplace with air-conditioning. Betsy had made it to the car. Tina had made it to the door, and now this.
Her mother was on the other end of the line. Tina promptly winced.
“Hey, Ma,” she tried with forced enthusiasm. “How are you?” Her gaze went to the front door. She willed Betsy to reappear so she could signal she needed a minute longer. No such luck. Tina tapped her foot anxiously and was happy her mother was a thousand miles away in Minnesota, and couldn’t see her guilty expression.
“Well, actually I’m running out the door. Yeah, it’s Tuesday. Just the time zones are different, Ma, not the days.” That earned her a sharp rebuke. She grabbed a napkin from the kitchen table, swiped it across her forehead, then shook her head when it immediately became soaking wet. She patted her upper lip.
“Of course I have class tomorrow. We weren’t planning on drinking ourselves silly, Ma.” In fact, Tina rarely drank anything stronger than ice tea. Not that her mom believed her. Tina had gone away to college—egads!—which Tina’s mother seemed to equate with choosing a life of sin. There was alcohol on college campuses, you know. And fornication.
“I don’t know where we’re going, Ma. Just … out. It’s like … a gazillion degrees this week. We gotta find someplace with air-conditioning before we spontaneously combust.” Lord, did they.
Her mother was instantly concerned. Tina held up a hand, trying to cut off the tirade before it got started.
“No, I didn’t mean that literally. No, really, Ma, I’m all right. It’s just hot. I can handle some heat. But summer school is going great. Work is fine—”
Her mother’s voice grew sharper.
“I only work twenty hours a week. Of course I’m focusing on my studies. Really, honestly, everything’s fine. I swear it.” The last three words came out a smidgeon too high. Tina winced again. What was it with mothers and their internal radars? Tina should’ve quit while she was ahead. She grabbed another napkin and blotted her whole face. Now she was no longer sure if the moisture was solely from the heat, or from nerves.
“No, I’m not seeing anyone.” That much was true.
“We broke up, Ma. Last month. I told you about it.” Kind of.
“No, I’m not pining away. I’m young, I’ll survive.” At least that’s what Betsy, Vivienne, and Karen told her.
“Ma—” She couldn’t get in a word.
“Ma—” Her mother was still going strong. Men are evil. Tina was too young to date. Now was the time to focus on school. And her family, of course. You must never forget your roots.
“Ma—” Her mother was reaching her crescendo. Why don’t you just come home? You don’t come home enough. What are you, ashamed of me? There’s nothing wrong with being a secretary, you know. Not all young ladies get the wonderful opportunity to go off to college …
“Ma! Listen, I gotta run.”
Silence. Now she was in trouble. Worse than her mother’s lectures was her mother’s silence.
“Betsy’s out in the car,” Tina tried. “But I love you, Ma. I’ll call you tomorrow night. I promise.”
She wouldn’t. They both knew it.
“Well, if anything, I’ll call you by the weekend.” That was more like it. On the other end of the phone, her mother sighed. Maybe she was mollified. Maybe she was still hurt. With her, it was always hard to know. Tina’s father had walked out when she was three. Her mother had been going at it alone ever since. And, yeah, she was bossy and anxious and downright dictatorial on occasion, but she also worked ferociously to get her only daughter into college.
She tried hard, worked hard, loved hard. And Tina knew that more than anything in the world, her mother worried it still wouldn’t be enough.
Tina cradled the phone closer to her damp ear. For a moment, in the silence, she was tempted. But then her mother sighed again, and the moment passed.
“Love you,” Tina said, her voice softer than she intended. “Gotta run. Talk to you soon. Bye.”
Tina dropped the phone back on the receiver before she changed her mind, grabbed her oversized canvas bag and headed out the door. Outside, Betsy sat in her cute little Saab convertible, her face also shiny with sweat and gazing at her questioningly.
“Ma,” Tina explained and plunked her bag in the backseat.
“Oh. You didn’t …”
“Not yet.”
“Coward.”
“Totally.” Tina didn’t bother opening the passenger-side door. Instead she perched her rump up on the edge of the car, then slid down into the deep, beige leather seat. Her long legs stuck up in the air. Ridiculously high brown cork sandals. Hot-pink toenails. A small red ladybug tattoo her mother didn’t know about yet.
“Help me, I’m melting!” Tina told her friend in a dramatic voice as she threw the back of her hand against her forehead. Betsy finally smiled and put the car into gear.
“Tomorrow it’s supposed to be even hotter. By Friday, we’ll probably break one hundred.”
“God, just kill me now.” Tina straightened up, self-consciously checked the knot holding her heavy blond hair, and then fastened her seat belt. Ready for action. In spite of her lighthearted tone, however, her expression was too somber, the light gone out of her blue eyes and replaced now by four weeks of worry.
“Hey, Tina,” Betsy said after a moment. “It’s going to be all right.”
Tina forced herself to turn around. She picked up Betsy’s hand. “Buddy system?” she asked softly.
Betsy smiled at her. “Always.”
The sun setting was one of the most beautiful sights in the world to him. The sky glowed amber, rose, and peach, firing the horizon with dying embers of sunlight. Color washed across the clouds like strokes of an artist’s brush, feathering white cumulus billows with iridescent hues from gold to purple to finally—inevitably—black.
He had always liked sunsets. He remembered his mother bringing him and his brother out to the front porch of the rickety shack every evening after dinner. They would lean against the railing and watch the sun sink behind the distant rim of mountains. No words were spoken. They learned the reverent hush at an early age.
This was his mother’s moment, a form of religion for her. She would stand alone, in the western corner of the porch, watching the sun descend, and for a brief moment, the lines would soften in her face. Her lips would curve into a slight smile. Her shoulders would relax. The sun would slip beneath the horizon and his mother would sigh long and deep.
Then the moment would end. His mother’s shoulders would return to bunched-up tension, the worry lines adding ten years to her face. She would usher them back into the house and return to her chores. He and his brother would do their best to help her, all of them careful not to make too much noise.
It wasn’t until he was much older, nearly an adult, that the man wondered about these moments with his mom. What did it say about her life that she relaxed only when the sun eased down and signaled the end of the day? What did it mean that the only time she seemed happy was when daylight drew its last gasping breath?
His mother had died before he could ask her these questions. Some things, he supposed, were for the best.
The man walked back into his hotel room. Though he’d paid for the night, he planned on leaving in the next
half hour. He wouldn’t miss this place. He didn’t like structures built out of cement, or mass-produced rooms with only one window. These were dead places, the modern-day version of tombs, and the fact that Americans were willing to pay good money to sleep in these cheaply constructed coffins defied his imagination.
He worried sometimes that the very fakeness of a room like this, with its garish comforter, particle-board furniture, and carpet made with petroleum-based fibers would penetrate his skin, get into his bloodstream and he’d wake up one morning craving a Big Mac.
The thought frightened him; he had to take a moment to draw deep breaths. Not a good idea. The air was foul, rank with fiberglass insulation and plastic ficus trees. He rubbed his temples furiously, and knew he needed to leave more quickly.
His clothes were packed in his duffel bag. He had just one thing left to check.
He wrapped his hand in one of the bathroom towels, reached with his covered hand beneath the bed, and slowly pulled out the brown attaché case. It looked like any other business briefcase. Maybe full of spreadsheets and pocket calculators and personal electronic devices. His, however, wasn’t.
His carried a dart gun, currently broken down, but easy to reassemble in the field. He checked the inside pocket of the attaché case, pulled out the metal box, and counted the darts inside. One dozen hits, preloaded with five hundred and fifty milligrams of ketamine. He had prepared each dart just this morning.
He returned the metal box and pulled out two rolls of duct tape, heavy duty, followed by a plain brown paper bag filled with nails. Beside the duct tape and nails, he kept a small glass bottle of chloral hydrate. A backup drug, which thankfully he’d never had to use. Next to the chloral hydrate, he had a special insulated water bottle he’d been keeping in the minibar freezer until just fifteen minutes ago. The outside of the container froze, helping keep the contents cool. That was important. Ativan crystallized if not kept refrigerated.
