The Espionage Effect(21)
Every year we followed the same routine. I studied away at school. They worked sunup to sundown, both with government biophysics projects that often took them abroad. When school was on break? They traveled. Always. Made a daughter wonder if it had been in their work contracts to avoid family.
I’d stopped caring years ago. Latchkey kids were a common thing on my upper-middle-income suburban block, two working parents the norm. And after the initial trauma had worn off, my situation morphed into something vastly different than normal. But my parents hired the very best psychologists to ensure their gifted daughter didn’t skip a beat.
I hadn’t.
Also hadn’t taken me long to realize what little love my parents possessed in the first place had been rescinded. And following their example, it hadn’t been hard to fool my parents. Then the shrinks. Then the test administrators.
Apparently I’d been gifted with my cognitive ability in all the right places, enabling me to hide my emotions so well, it was as if they didn’t exist. And for a child testing on the top end of the IQ spectrum, the experts not only had accepted it, they’d expected it.
I learned very well how to hide in plain sight.
“Give me the phone, Francine,” Dad said in the background.
“Good-bye, Devin,” Mom said. “We’ll try to be home for spring break.” A lie. But then, why give up the pretense now. We’d mastered the pretty-little-family-unit camouflage so well.
“You know not to have drinks with ice, right?” Dad inquired. Clearly my first vacation made them second-guess my intelligence.
I jogged down the stairs, shaking my head. “Watch it, Dad. I might mistake your advice for parental concern.”
He cleared his throat. “You’ve never traveled before.”
“You drilled into me the necessity for research when stepping into unknown situations. Remember the shopping mall?” Maybe I hadn’t ever traveled, but before I’d visited an indoor mall the first time, I’d spouted off the stolen-vehicle statistics of various parking quadrants, health inspection reports from the eleven eating establishments, and the location of the security offices, the number of exterior exits, and the distance to police and fire stations.
His deep chuckle sounded out. “Yes. You came home safe and sound.” Which was all they cared about. Not whether or not my friends had ditched me, only to suddenly reappear when I’d initiated a heated debate with last year’s star quarterback over his choice of colleges and the odds of him needing the education over the draft.
“Then trust me. I got this.” Mostly.
“Of course you do.” An awkward pause followed, then a woman’s garbled voice sounded over an intercom amid buzzing background noise. “Time to go. Our row was called. We’ll send you a postcard from Switzerland.”
Right. They hadn’t gotten their cover story straight. France, Italy, and Greece for Mom. Switzerland for Dad? Maybe things weren’t all they appeared on the surface.
Their call ended right as I passed the gift shop and reached the gravel-covered roundabout near the resort entrance. Beyond two of the resort’s black SUVs, idled an unassuming open-top Jeep. Alec’s Jeep.
Just the mere sight of him, even with his aloofness, roused my body to life. My scientific mind provided an analytic answer. He was the ideal specimen—and my biological match. His pheromones enticed mine on a primitive level. Not to mention, I found that dark penetrating gaze of his both unnerving and exhilarating. And the way his sleek muscles tensed the closer I approached not only appealed to me, but suggested that his body also physically reacted to mine.
He leaned against the rear quarter panel, watching my approach with a look of focused intensity. Like he tried to read me—see through me. Had he detected something was off after I ended my call by the way I carried myself? By my expression?
Good luck with that, Spy Guy. I’d patented the ability to be unreadable. Fooled everyone. He wasn’t going to crack my code with one spectacular orgasm and the promise of more. Some things were designed to be indecipherable.
And again, for the second time since our encounters, staring back at him was like looking into a damn mirror. Lack of expression. Layers of walls. Secrets.
I tipped my head toward him in greeting, mirroring him back.
He replied with a short nod of his own, then pushed off the tire with his boot and turned, breaking our eye contact.
Relief coursed through me and out with a slow exhale. He rattled me. But instead of wanting to distance myself from the perplexing phenomenon, the intriguing man only drew me closer.
His Jeep’s body had no shine to it whatsoever, the surface rough against my fingertips as I opened my door and climbed in. No bulletproof glass either. Nor ballistic doors. Only thing above our unprotected heads? A roll bar.
I glanced at the tops of the buildings around us, the shadowy walkways, and scanned the dense jungle perimeter as I fastened my seatbelt. “So, am I gonna get shot at today? Am I a target by association?”
“Doubtful.” He slid a pair of dark sunglasses over his eyes, then pulled out and accelerated quickly as we drove along the shade-dappled gravel road that led out of the resort. “But it’s early yet. We’ll see how the day goes.”
“Oh. So a funny Spy Guy, then.” A gut feeling pinged into my brain. “You’re not a guest of the hotel.” He hadn’t outright said it, but instinct broadcast the fact in nuances: the way the staff responded to him, the very non-rental look of the Jeep, his air of confidence when moving about the place, like he’d made himself at home. Plus there was the whole Field Cocktail kit versus guest-toiletry-sewing-kit clue.