You Won't Know I'm Gone Read online

  “Yeah,” he says quietly with a soft nod.

  “And you feel it too, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he whispers, his eyes holding mine, a silent understanding passing between us.

  When you’re a Black Angel trainee, every sense is heightened. It’s what you’re practically programmed to do. To not only be aware of your surroundings through what you see and hear, but what you feel. Our parents have been on enough missions that we know immediately when things go well and when things go terribly wrong. It’s not just by tight smiles or how they hug us hello, but by their energy. A bad mission changes the molecules that surround their bodies. The tension expands the gases in the room, diluting the oxygen, until it’s hard to breathe, hard to feel anything but their fear. They try to hide it, but we know. Most of the time, I’d let it go. I wouldn’t push for details. I’d simply give Dad an extra kiss or hold Mom’s hand at the kitchen counter for a few beats longer than normal. It’s like we’ve signed a silent policy where we don’t ask and they don’t tell. But we always know. We were designed to know.

  “What do we do?” Anusha asks, tapping her fingers nervously on the table. “How can we find out if that’s true?”

  “I’ll hack into the files,” Cam answers, his eyes still on me.

  “Are you sure about that?” I ask, reaching out for the top of Cam’s wrist. “What about the Tribunal? You almost lost your spot once. I don’t want you to risk losing it again.”

  “This time I won’t get caught,” he replies.

  “You think you can even get in?” Anusha asks.

  “I don’t know,” Cam says with a sigh. “But I want to at least try.”

  * * *

  “Let’s just grab it and go down to one of the secure conference rooms,” I say quietly to Cam as he pulls his Black Angel–sanctioned laptop from underneath his bunk bed. He opens his nightstand drawer, digs around, and pulls out a tiny envelope. He examines it for a moment then shoves it into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

  “What’s that?” Anusha asks, eyeing the envelope’s exposed white corner.

  “You’ll see,” Cam answers, pushing the envelope deeper into his pocket, hiding it completely out of view.

  “What are you guys doing?” a voice says from behind us. Anusha and Cam turn around, their faces streaked with alarm. I swivel my head slowly, knowing his voice. Luke.

  “Just come with us,” Cam answers, tucking the laptop under his arm and walking briskly toward the door. The three of us follow Cam’s quick pace down the hallway, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I look down at Mom’s watch on my wrist. We still have about twenty minutes before our morning training begins.

  Once we reach a small, soundproofed conference room, Cam ushers us in and we quickly close the door behind us.

  “We don’t have a ton of time to do this,” I say as Cam takes a seat at the conference table, the metal frame whining at the changing weight.

  “Do what?” Luke asks, his eyes searching each face for some type of answer. We all stare at one another, not sure what to say or who should explain.

  “I think Torres has resurfaced and … I don’t know what, but something is happening with the Black Angels,” I answer, walking closer to Luke. “They keep canceling all training sessions outside of CORE. Plus, Sam is back and seems really upset and weirdly protective and worried and I just … I just know something is going on and we want to find out what it is. So Cam is hacking into the secure files.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Luke replies curtly, shaking his head at me. He steps around me to get a better look at Cam, who is already typing away at his computer. “Weren’t you almost kicked out of the Black Angels for hacking?”

  “Slap on the wrist,” Cam answers without tearing his eyes away from the computer, seemingly unmoved.

  “Well, don’t you think we should wait until the trainers tell us what’s going on?” Luke presses, turning back toward me.

  “Yeah, right,” I snort, my face contorting with the impossibility of trainees being looped in on something so highly confidential. “They’re not going to tell us anything. Especially if it has something to do with Torres. And if it does, I think we, of all people, should know.”

  “Why?” Luke asks, crossing his arms over his chest. “Reagan, don’t you think there are protocols in place for a reason?”

  “Look, if you want to be all military and follow the rules, then you don’t have to be here,” I answer, the words sounding much harsher out loud than in my head. But I don’t really have time for this. “Cam and I have people we love on the front lines in the Black Angels. We deserve to know what’s going on. We’re doing this.”

  Luke’s full lips disappear as he squeezes them in a thin line between his teeth. “Fine. Do what you want, Reagan. I’m just trying to protect you,” he answers quietly, taking a seat on the other side of the table while I rush back to Cam’s side.

  “Okay,” I say, standing behind him and peering at his screen. “What do we do?”

  Cam walks us through the hacks. He has already bypassed a restrictive security program put into place for all trainees. Now the computer is free to be accessed by any Black Angel operative. Next security protocol to bypass: biomechanical. Facial recognition is hard to fake. Thank goodness Cam’s laptop only has a tiny clear rectangle on the right. It wants a fingerprint. But not Cam’s fingerprint. A higher ranking Black Angel fingerprint. Someone who can actually get into the CORE database.

  “How the hell are we going to get a senior leader’s fingerprint?” Anusha asks, rolling her seat closer to Cam. He smiles at her mischievously and pulls out the envelope tucked in his pocket. He holds it up and waves it in the air with about the same enthusiasm he would if it contained the secrets of the universe.

  “Director Browning should be more careful where she places her hands,” Cam answers and unseals the envelope, pulling out a tiny piece of pink latex. My jaw becomes unhinged.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I reply with equal parts astonishment and respect. The lengths Cam had to go to in order to get that print defies all rational human behavior. He probably had to lift her prints from multiple surfaces (without getting caught once, mind you), take a high-resolution photo of a perfect fingerprint, secretly access CORE’s computer labs to print its inverted form on a transparent sheet with a thick toner setting, then sneak latex out of one of the engineering labs. Jesus. I know the basics of how to do it, but lack the balls. That kid is brave.

  “I knew it’d come in handy one of these days,” Cam states, carefully pulling Browning’s latex fingerprint closer to his face, moistening it with his breath. “Here goes nothing.”

  Cam places the fingerprint to the screen and my heart pounds anxiously against my chest as the security scan begins. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. The laptop screen flashes two words: Access Granted.

  “Yes,” Cam whispers and kisses that little latex print.

  “You’re an evil little genius,” Anusha says, patting him on the back.

  Cam pulls out a slip of paper tucked inside the envelope. I stare down at a series of numbers, words, and letters. Browning’s passwords.

  “How the hell did you get those?” I ask, grabbing him from behind by both shoulders.

  “Easy. I was in her office a few weeks ago for a status meeting and she left for a minute to grab some reports, so I installed a keylogger that recorded her keystrokes,” Cam answers. “She never suspected a thing. After a week of recording, I analyzed it and narrowed down her list of passwords.”

  “You’re kind of insane, you know that, right?” Anusha says, a small smile creeping up her face. “Like the good kind of insane but still … Jesus.”

  “Okay, now what?” Cam says, more to himself than to us. My eyes scan the laptop screen, landing on a red circle with a pair of angel wings in the right corner.

  “There,” I answer and Cam clicks on the symbol. A screen pops up, requesting his password. “H
ow do you know which one?”

  “I don’t,” Cam replies, his chest rising with a nervous breath. “I should get a couple tries though.”

  “What happens if you type in one too many wrong passwords?” Luke asks, his hands steadily climbing up his face with each stressful minute. When he sat down they were at his chin, then his cheeks, now they’re hovering around his eyebrows.

  “Then we get locked out,” Cam replies, staring down at the list of passwords. “Oh, and bonus … CORE will be alerted of suspected theft of information.”

  “Perfect,” Luke answers, his hands now sliding up to his temples.

  “It’s cool,” Cam utters with a confident nod but a cracking voice. “I’ve got this.”

  Cam types in the password, marked with a star, on his tiny sheet of paper. He double-checks every letter and number, then hits enter. My chest tightens and I hear Anusha suck in an anxious breath as we wait for the CORE mainframe to let us in.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

  The screen suddenly fills with activity.

  “We’re in,” Cam says, his hand pounding triumphantly against the table. Satellite photos come in live in the left corner of the screen while white lines crescendo and fall on the right. Cam clicks on the box and we hear a man’s voice speaking in Russian. A phone call interception. A spinning, blue globe in the center has icons that pinpoint where the call is coming from, where the satellite photos are being taken. It’s like having an inside view of CORE’s secure intel center that I’ve never been allowed to see. Down at the bottom, tiny blue folders are marked with mission code names. I scan the list. Sniper Five. Operation Big Ben. Driftwood Rebellion. Metal Spear. Huxby Light. Traitor Terror.

  “Traitor Terror,” I say and point to the bottom of the screen. “Think about it. Former Black Angel turned traitor. That’s got to be it.”

  Cam clicks on the blue folder and a screen pops up, requesting a password.

  “Which password is it?” Anusha asks, peering down at the list in Cam’s hand.

  “I don’t know,” Cam answers and shakes his head. “I knew that first one would be her log-in because she uses it all the time. I don’t know which password is for the Torres folder. Or if that password is even on this list.”

  “Shit,” I say under my breath.

  Luke stands up from his seat across from us and silently walks to where we’re huddled on the other side of the table. We all stare at the list, narrowing down the possibilities.

  “Well, it could be two options,” Luke says, pointing at the paper. “Diablo919. Diablo is the Spanish word for devil. I feel like that’s fitting for someone like Torres. Or, maybe it’s Wings160. You know, in reference to the Black Angels since he was a former agent?”

  “Good thinking, Luke,” I say, relieved to have him with us and not against us. Not that I gave him much choice in the matter. “Let’s try those.”

  Cam types Wings160 into a tiny password bar, triple-checks it, and hits enter. The screen immediately blackens, the laptop’s speakers blaring with three warning beeps. Access Denied pops up on the screen in thick, red type.

  “Crap,” I say, mentally crossing that password off the list. “Try the diablo one. Luke may be right. That one might be it.”

  Cam slowly and purposefully types in the last password, his fingers shaking slightly with every keystroke. The four of us check and check and check again.

  We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to do this, my mind whispers. I shake my head, drowning out the doubtful noise trying to stop me. We need to know where Torres is. What he’s up to. If he’s coming after us.

  “Okay,” I say softly and touch Cam on the shoulder. “It’s right.”

  The room is silent as we collectively hold our breaths. Cam hits the enter key. I close my eyes as pinpricks race across my spine, my stomach heaving as each second passes.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

  I open my eyes. The screen lights up. Access Granted. We’re in.

  “Oh, thank God,” I boom, my hands grabbing at my throbbing stomach and massaging the knot coiled around my intestines. A steady stream of air escapes through my gaping mouth and an unexpected laugh bubbles up my throat.

  “I seriously almost blacked out,” Anusha interjects, shaking out her hands.

  There are dozens of files in here. We scan their names: Recorded Phone Calls, Banking Reports, Digital Tracking, Surveillance Videos, Known Associates, and Satellite Photos. Cam’s cursor hovers over the Satellite Photos file and clicks in. The first satellite photo that comes up is Torres’s ranch in Tumaco. I remember the layout from our mission. The satellite photos are dated three days ago. There are no lights. No guards. No activity. He’s not there.

  My eyes settle on a file labeled Attacks. “Wait, what’s that?” I answer and point toward the file. “Attacks. What does that mean?”

  “Click on it,” Luke says, leaning in closer to the computer. Cam clicks on the folder and a Black Angel report pops up. It’s marked with yesterday’s date. The words Highly Classified are written in red block letters across the top. My eyes scan the report.

  Black Angel operative shot and killed.

  Assailant fled.

  Surviving operative: Samantha Levick.

  Surveillance photos retrieved.

  Assailant identified. Torres White Angel.

  Second attack on Black Angels.

  Torres at large.

  Extreme threat.

  Reagan Hillis. Luke Weixel. Highest targets.

  Trainees locked down.

  All Black Angels on high alert.

  No. Oh lord, please no.

  My head begins to shake back and forth in furious bursts, like that could erase the words on the screen. But when I look again, they’re still there.

  Bile rises up my throat as the fragments of what I just read paint a terrifyingly clear picture. Torres is targeting and killing Black Angels. Because of me.

  The room spins, my stomach throbs with the twist of a thousand knives. Bile rises farther and farther up my throat until I cannot contain it. I sprint across the room toward a metal trash can and throw up for the first time in years. The acid burns my throat and the biting, sour smell makes my eyes sting with tears. I heave once more, throwing up what little breakfast I was able to force down, and then there’s a hand on my back, rubbing my clammy skin.

  “It’s okay, Reagan,” Luke’s voice says gently from behind me. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay,” I cry out, my voice echoing against the hollowed metal. I stay bent at my waist for a second more, making sure I’m not going to throw up again, before standing up and wiping my rancid lips with the back of my hand. “People are dying because of what I did. He’s coming after Black Angels for no other reason than what happened in Colombia.”

  “What are you talking about?” Luke says softly, turning me around. “He came after you and your family two years ago. He came after you again in the fall. He’s always been targeting Black Angels.”

  “Yeah, but I started this attack,” I reply, pointing toward Cam’s computer, hot tears still burning my eyes. “I killed his brother. He wants us both dead and if he can’t kill us, he’s going to kill somebody else. And that’s not fair. It’s not fair that other Black Angels are in danger because of me. I wish he’d just killed me in Colombia. Ended this whole mess.”

  “Listen to me, Reagan,” Luke says, clutching both of my shoulders. “Santino Torres is an evil man. He’d come after the Black Angels even if we both died in that storage room. This is what he wants. He wants us to be scared. And he won’t stop until the Black Angels find him.”

  “Well, what the hell is taking so long?” I answer and throw my hands up in the air. “How is Torres completely off the grid and yet he’s able to track us down? That doesn’t make any sense. This is supposed to be the best spy agency in the world. How is he beating us at our own game?”

  “Pain can make you
superhuman,” Cam replies, his voice monotone, his eyes unfocused, caught in a stare he can’t break. “He’s lost his son, his brother, his freedom. And he wants us to pay for that.”

  “I hate to even say this, but training starts in five minutes,” Anusha says, glancing up at the clock over the soundproofed door. “How are we supposed to get through the day knowing all this is happening?”

  “We just have to,” I say, clearing the lingering emotion in my throat and forcing the fear and sorrow and panic back into their little box. “We can’t breathe a word of this to anyone. You guys understand? No one can know.”

  The three of them stare back at me, nodding their heads, silently accepting that this is our dangerous secret to keep. And right now, there’s nothing we can do but watch and wait. That fire, that anger that consumed me for months has grown inexplicably cold. I feel paralyzed, helpless. The only cure for this sickness is action. But I have no idea what to do or where to begin.

  SEVENTEEN

  Their breathing has become my nightly soundtrack. I lie awake and stare into the black while their breaths wrap around one another, like a symphony, each with their role to play. Lex’s is unmistakable. Erratic, she alternates between low and quiet, then deep and noisy. She’s the percussion. Anusha sleeps one bunk over. She broke her nose playing lacrosse two years ago and suffered a deviated septum. When it’s quiet, I can hear the slightest whistle. She’s the wind instruments. Hannah, the girl who sleeps on the bunk above me, has steady, dependable breaths. Quiet and calm, almost sweet. She’s the strings.

  It’s after two o’clock in the morning and I have yet to fall asleep. My brain refuses to turn off for the fourth night in a row. Ever since we found out about Torres, what he’s doing to Black Angels, I can’t sleep. I long for Sam’s sleeping pills, for the imaginary hand that pushes me deeper into the heavy fog of drug-induced slumber.