The Espionage Effect(65)

“Train me,” I repeated. “Show me what I’m missing. Make me a field agent.”

His tongue skimmed along his upper teeth. “To be clear, it’s impossible to train you to be a field agent in a day, even a week. Remember, it takes months of intensive exercise in dozens of areas, including resistance to torture. Repetition until each skill becomes muscle memory is employed before EtherSphere brands an agent as field ready.”

“But you’ll train me,” I insisted. I heard it in the tone of his voice; he was relenting.

“I’ll begin. If I’m satisfied you can handle the basics, we’ll see.”

“And if I can, you’ll introduce me?” I wanted the terms set. Before I gave him one more ounce of help, I wanted to cement what I would receive in return.

“To EtherSphere?”

I gave him a nod.

He stared hard at me before answering. “Yes. If you can handle everything I give you, and if you prove yourself in a field situation, I will introduce you.”

“Last night was a field situation.”

“Which you failed.”

I scoffed. “I supplied you with valuable information.”

“You wore electronic lenses that captured everything for base command. A task I’d intended on and was fully capable of completing myself.”

Riled, I took a deep breath. “You said you were glad I was there, ‘perfect cover’ you claimed, right before you f*cked me against a wall.”

He fought a smile, but then his face fell, relaxing. “I was. You were.” He tilted his head, eyes softening further. “Then you fell apart.”

The prisoners. Their presence—my trauma—had crippled me.

And I guess we were going to talk about one of the three potential topics after all.

“So train me. Consider last night my baptism by fire. At EtherSphere, a weakness like mine would’ve been used to torture-train me. In the dungeons, I compartmentalized off the cuff.”

“True. But then you completely shut down.” He angled his face a fraction downward, but his fierce gaze held mine from beneath his dark brows. “A shut-down agent…is a dead agent.”

“Then I guess you’d better harden me. You are going to get me that introduction with EtherSphere One. I am going to find something better to wear.” With that, confident I had him on board, I walked past him and out of the kitchen, in search of something to train in other than a loose-fitting tee with no underwear.

A lot was riding on the outcome of the next few hours. Everything was.





After rifling through all four of his dresser drawers, then wandering past the wall behind his bed into a large built-in closet, I came to a conclusion: Alec had expensive taste, a monochrome color palette, and believed in function over variety.

He owned five pairs of combat cargos, four casual cargos, seven pairs of jeans, two tuxedos, one suit, five white dress shirts, and seventeen V-neck T-shirts in black, gray, or some shade in between. No pajamas to speak of. I refused to count his boxer-brief underwear. Or socks.

“Finally,” I muttered. On a shelf in the back corner of the closet, two stacks of black clothes were neatly folded: six soft cotton lounge pants on the right, seven matching tees on the left.

I removed the large shirt I’d confiscated earlier in favor of one of the newer tees. The fit was a bit snugger—still loose, but it would serve better for ease of movement. I slipped my legs into the bottoms, pleased to find that while they dragged five inches beyond my heel, the lightweight fabric easily rolled, with enough material in circumference for me to fasten them below my calf with a small knot. They also had a flat woven drawstring at the waist, enabling me to cinch them securely into place.

Satisfied that what I wore was appropriate to test my hand-to-hand combat skills, I retraced my steps back to the kitchen. Not finding Alec, I continued through the house, passing a closed door on the right before stepping through an open door on the left.

Alec sat at a desk positioned halfway down the right wall, facing outside to view the stretch of beach and ocean beyond. He furiously typed at a laptop’s keyboard. “Just about done.”

“With what?”

“The report from last night.”

“Encrypted,” I murmured, assuming it would be. My comment went unchallenged as his fingers rapidly clicked keys. As the tapping sounds blurred together, I wondered if typing an astronomical amount of words per minute was a vital part of spy field-operative training.

“What?” He paused, glancing up at me. “Oh, no. Well, yes. The entire system is on the Shadow Network.”

“Shadow Network?”

“The darker Internet behind the Internet. And our communications are invisible, even there. No one could accidentally stumble into or hack our grid. You have to be given the address, know how to navigate the security layers, and even if you make it there, you have to fluently speak the language or it throws you out.”

“Oh.” So no exceptional typing skills needed. One only need be fluent in the art of secret programming.

“I have another message to send. Make yourself at home; just don’t venture into the atrium. Deadly viper. Grab something to eat if you want. I’m about to make energy smoothies. We’ll make eggs, bacon, and stir-fry vegetables later. Once we’re done, you’ll need it.”