You Won't Know I'm Gone Page 8

  “Your entire life has been building up to this moment,” Browning says, reading our minds. “Qualifiers: where you think you’re just a year away from joining the training academy. Twelve months away from being sent off on missions around the world. Well, guess what? Your parents may have told you that you were special. But I’m here to tell you you’re not. Prove to me you deserve to be here. Until then, you’re nothing.”

  With that, she turns and exits the room, the sharp tap of her high heels echoing in the silence, reality plunging deeper and deeper into our brains with each rapid beat. I look around the room. Eyes are wide and mouths are open or twisted beneath wringing, nervous hands.

  The room is silent until Anusha leans over and whispers in my ear, “Let the bloodbath begin.”

  ELEVEN

  My scorching body spreads like a sticky starfish on the cool, blue mat. My sweaty pores are like a million suction cups, clinging to the plastic as I stare up at the two-story ceiling and wonder about the feat of engineering that went into building this place. Cam’s upside-down face appears in my line of sight, leaning over my body, his mouth spreading into an upside-down grin.

  “Did you know one of your nostrils is bigger than the other,” he greets me, his head now tilting to one side, examining me at this very odd angle.

  “Nice to see you too, asshole,” I answer with a smile so he knows I’m kidding. I raise my eyebrows up at him. (Or would it be down? This upside-down face thing is confusing.) “All I know is that both of my nostrils are ginormous.”

  “Hey, that’s a good thing,” Cam says, still looking down at me. “You get double the oxygen to your heart than most people with those two caves.”

  “I guess I have my Sicilian grandmother to thank for that.”

  “Gotta love those Mediterranean noses.”

  “Let’s just hope I don’t inherit the matching Mediterranean mustache in about twenty years,” I say and push my reluctant body back up. I reach my hands out for Cam to help lift me to my feet.

  “I’ll buy you an electrolysis gift certificate for Christmas,” Cam answers and pulls me into a standing position. “Ya know, just in case the lip fuzz makes an early debut.”

  “I kind of hate you,” I reply, the giggle in my throat muffled by the sting searing up my sore legs. After our Qualifiers meeting, I thought I should get in an extra run and practice some sprints before tomorrow’s first assessment. I think I may have overdone it.

  “You lie. You know you love me, Reagan,” Cam says, throwing his arm around my neck and pulling me into his body.

  “Stop, I’m all sweaty,” I reply and playfully push him away but he only pulls at me tighter, which makes me laugh.

  The hairs stand up on the back of my neck, an invisible pull, tethered to someone else’s eyes in the room. I always know when I’m being watched. My smile falls. My eyes flick up. Luke is standing in the doorway of the training center. His sweet face from earlier has been replaced by a vacant stare that burns through me despite the ice in his glare. His pale blue eyes catch mine and even though I have nothing to feel guilty about, my skin pricks with a million fire-blazed pins.

  “Luke,” I call out, instinctively pulling away from Cam. “Come here. I want you to meet someone.”

  Luke stares at me for a second longer, the straight line of his lips deepening into a slim frown. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his maroon New Albany soccer sweatshirt and walks slowly toward us, his eyes fixed on the concrete floor.

  What is he doing?

  Once he finally makes his way across the gym, I start my overly enthusiastic introduction.

  “Luke, this is Cam. He is a fellow displaced trainee like me, so we’ve been training together at CORE for the last six weeks. Cam, this is Luke. You’ve heard me talk about him before. He was my neighbor back in Ohio and ended up on the mission with me in Colombia.”

  “Oh, hey, man,” Cam booms, his voice rising with surprise. He sticks out his hand to warmly greet Luke. “It’s so nice to actually get to meet you. Heard a lot about you. I had no idea you’d be at Qualifiers.”

  “She didn’t either,” Luke answers coolly, shaking Cam’s hand and nodding toward me. “Long story. Maybe I can tell you over a game of pool or something later tonight.”

  “Sounds great,” Cam replies, glancing at the digital clock over the row of weight machines. “Hey, I’m gonna hit the showers before my meeting with my adviser. Great to meet you, Luke. I’ll catch you later tonight?”

  “You’re on,” Luke replies, bobbing his head and puffing out his chest. Like a total bro. A side to him I’ve never, ever seen. Even around his jock high school friends, he was consistent in his anti-bro-ness.

  “I’ll see you later, Reagan,” Cam says, placing a warm hand on my shoulder before jogging out of the training facility.

  Luke’s eyes narrow, following Cam as he walks out the door. When he’s gone, Luke turns back toward me, his eyes still creased, waiting for an explanation. I stare at him for several beats, not sure what to say. Not sure if he even deserves an explanation.

  I roll my eyes, annoyed by our silent game of chicken. “What?” I finally blurt out.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Luke asks, tilting his head back toward the door.

  “What? No!” I reply, my voice a little louder than I meant it to be. “He’s just a friend. What is with you?”

  “He didn’t look like just a friend to me,” Luke says, his tone sharp and cutting as the words leave his mouth.

  “Why are you acting like this?” I ask.

  “Is that how you always refer to me?” Luke asks, bulldozing past my question. “Is that how you think of me? As your neighbor?”

  “Of course not,” I reply, running my fingers along my tight jawline, already exhausted by this conversation. “But what do you want me to do? Share my screwed-up sob story with every single person here? I mean, how do you refer to me?”

  Luke casts his eyes to his feet and kicks the corner of the blue mat. “I guess I don’t know now,” he answers without looking back up at me.

  “I really don’t know what you want from me,” I say, shaking my head and beginning to walk away. “I’ve got to shower.”

  I push past Luke and head for the door, the heat of his sudden, surprising jealousy evaporating any happiness I may have felt earlier today.

  “Did you even think about me?” Luke calls after me, forcing me to turn around. “When we were apart? I know you said you worried about me, but you’re a Black Angel. You know how to tell people what they want to hear.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask, my hands rising to the center of my stinging chest as I move back toward him. “How can you think something like that, let alone say it out loud?”

  “So did you?” Luke asks.

  “Luke, I thought about you all the time. I worried about you constantly. I used to put out an extra coffee cup on the counter and pretend you were in the other room so I wouldn’t feel so alone. But when you got off that plane in Virginia, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Thinking about you physically hurt. So excuse me if I had to pull myself together and try to get over you so I could make it through the day.”

  Luke’s eyes shift from anger to a silent, private ache. He bites down on his lower lip, his chest rising as he gathers his words.

  “Reagan, don’t you know I’d do anything for you?” Luke finally asks, his voice quiet. “One of the reasons I chose to go into hiding and be away from my family was because it was the only way I’d ever get to see you again.”

  A tattered breath catches in my chest, oxygen molecules disguised as razor blades. Does he even want this? Did he choose all this just for me? The guilty knot in the center of my gut tugs and tugs and tugs until it’s so tight I can barely move.

  “I ran after you and into that house in Colombia,” Luke says, his voice barely audible. “And I’ll never stop running after you, Reagan. I guess I just wonder sometimes if you’d do the same for me.”

  It�
��s like he ripped the words right out of my brain. Luke made the biggest decision of his life based on me. But I’ve never considered giving up my shot at the Black Angels for him. Not once. The guilt spreads, sharp and searing, through my veins. But even now, with him standing right in front of me, I’d make the same choice. I would never say it and hate to even think it. But as much as I care about him, Torres is my sole priority. There’s no room in my heart for love. Only revenge.

  “Look,” I finally say, my brain struggling to string together the right words. “There’s no denying how much I’ve missed you. How much you mean to me. But I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost my mother. I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost my friends. I’ve lost my father. I mean, he’s so destroyed he can barely stand to be around me. And I thought I lost you forever. My world has been ripped into a million pieces. So becoming a Black Angel, focusing on making it through Qualifiers, has consumed me. It seemed like the only way to get over losing my life. I’m sorry if you think that I haven’t thought about you. I have, but…”

  “No, stop,” Luke replies and closes his eyes. He shakes his head and runs his fingers through his hair before returning his eyes to me. “Don’t apologize. There’s nothing for you to apologize about. I’m sorry. I’m being a selfish jerk.”

  “No, you’re not,” I answer and reach out to touch him behind his elbow. “You lost a lot that night too.”

  And he has. I see it in the paleness in his skin. The way his eyes have lost their shine. Even the way he carries himself. He’s different. Damaged somehow. And it was my choices that snuffed out the light that used to follow him wherever he went.

  My lungs pull in a breath as I let my fingertips linger on his warm skin. “It’s hard for me to see past one hour at a time,” I say, moving closer to him.

  “I understand,” he replies as we walk together toward the door, his hand settling onto the small of my back. “I’ll still be here.”

  And he would be, even if I told him to run away.

  Back in Ohio, I was ready to open my heart to him. I nearly handed him a map of my deepest, most joyous and painful parts. And as he runs his fingertips along my spine, I know how desperately he still wants that map. But I can’t give it to him. I can’t give it to anyone.

  TWELVE

  “Ladies, let’s move it.” Our trainer Michael’s voice booms over the sound of two dozen pounding feet. “I’m not impressed. You’re supposed to be Black Angel trainees. Right now you look like a bad high school track team.”

  I glance over at Michael, standing at the curve of the indoor track as we round the corner, a stopwatch in his hand, a frown deepening on his face. Part of today’s assessment is timed intervals, and in true Black Angel form, we only get thirty seconds of rest in between each one. We’ve already completed a 400 then an 800 then a 200 followed by another 400. Despite my grueling training schedule with Cam and Anusha, my strength and endurance is still not where it was before Colombia. I’ve finished somewhere in the middle during every single race (and have received side-eyes galore from my fellow trainees every time I cross the finish line, Really? written in between their raised eyebrows). I have to finish near the top during this 800 or I’m going to dig an even deeper hole for myself at Qualifiers. But as our feet thunder toward the curve for our last lap, I’m boxed in between a group of girls in the inner lane. I try to find a way out but I’m completely trapped. As we get to the straightaway with another three hundred meters to go, I see a small gap between the two girls in front of me, large enough that I could sprint through and get to the front.

  Go, go, go, my mind screams as I push my legs to move faster, dig harder. But as I move closer to the opening, a sharp jab to my right ribs knocks out the strained breath I have in my screaming lungs. I glance to my right. Of course. Lex. She sees the opening too and with one more wind-sucking stab of her elbow, she rushes past me, pushing her way through the opening and into the front of the group.

  Fall on your face, fall on your face, my mind commands, my eyes narrowing and throwing invisible switchblades into Lex’s back, as if my brain has the bewitching power to make it so.

  As we round the last two hundred meters, I grit my teeth so hard, I fear they might crumble in my mouth. My muscles feel like they’re pulling apart, tendon by tendon, as my feet pound harder against the rubber track. Blood swishes through my ears, urging me to fight my way to the front. But that last knock to my ribs has made it impossible for good air to find its way back into my lungs (even with my carnival-show-sized nostrils). And despite my speedy pace, I remain confined to the middle of the pack. I can’t push my way through without pulling a Lex and sabotaging everyone else’s time. And I refuse to play dirty.

  “Almost there, kick your way through the finish,” Michael calls out, jogging over to the finish line as the rest of us sprint through the last fifty meters. Lex crosses the finish line first and triumphantly pumps both fists in the air like she just won the freaking Olympics (way to be humble, Lex). I cross the finish line somewhere in the middle again. Not the worst. But so clearly not the best.

  “All right, passable job, you guys,” Michael says, looking down at his stopwatch. He’s about forty with the unicorn combination of dark hair and piercing blue eyes. But what’s even more striking about him are his dark eyelashes; they’re so long and thick, he almost looks like he’s wearing mascara. “It wasn’t total shit, but I was expecting a lot more out of some of you.”

  His eyes scan the crowd of female trainees, clutching our stomachs and trying to hide the impulse to pass out. His gaze doesn’t stop on anyone in particular, but the muscles in my neck seize anyway as I wonder if he’s talking about me.

  “Go ahead and take a short break while I time the guys in some of their runs,” Michael continues, looking over his shoulder as the male trainees file through the doorway after their strength assessment. “Get hydrated. Stretch. Your run isn’t over yet. Regroup and I better see some major improvement out of some of you.”

  Michael’s eyes find mine in the crowd and hold them for a beat before he runs to the other side of the track, where the male trainees are waiting for their next test.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I turn on my heel, hanging my head as I jog over to the long bench along the far wall where my enormous water bottle is waiting. I grab it and take several greedy gulps, wishing the water was ten degrees cooler, right on the edge of frozen.

  “He was totally talking to you, ya know,” a voice says from behind me. I don’t have to turn around to know that raspy, irritating voice is Lex’s. Water droplets roll down my lips and chin, splattering on the polished concrete floor. I wipe away the excess liquid and turn around to face her.

  Lex’s blond high ponytail swings from side to side as she shakes out her legs, her hands resting in her favorite position on her hips. Only she could make a state of rest look so aggressive. While I’m a sweaty mess in a pilling T-shirt and running shorts, Lex looks like a trophy-wife-in-training in her aqua Lululemon tank and tight yoga pants. I try to keep my expression as blank as possible, but clearly she sees agitation in my eyes because her lips part into a satisfied smile.

  “I think we’re all a little surprised and frankly disappointed,” she presses as her eyes scan my body.

  “And why is that?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm and even.

  “Well, you’ve been built up to be some type of god,” Lex answers, her voice haughty. She bends her waist from side to side, her tank top riding up to show off her sharply defined stomach (I’m sure this little maneuver is all by design). “My parents were on the Rescue/Take-down team with your parents for years, so all I’d ever hear is ‘Reagan Hillis got asked to train in Israel with Krav Maga specialists’ and ‘Reagan Hillis got asked to go to a weaponry camp in Russia this summer’ and ‘Why can’t you be advancing like Reagan Hillis?’ Frankly, it got a little old. So to see you in Qualifiers and sucking? Kind of makes me wonder why the hell everyone’s been so impressed and why you were eve
r singled out as an elite.”

  “I probably could have run a faster time if someone didn’t knock the wind out of me on the final lap,” I answer, my voice feigning disinterest. I take another swig from my water bottle and pretend like her words don’t bother me even though my blood runs hotter by the second.

  “Yeah, right,” Lex answers with a laugh. “I’ve been watching you. You’re a middle-of-the-pack kind of girl. Which is fine with me. I want a spot on the RT squad so when I saw you were at Qualifiers, I’m not going to lie. Got a little worried. But looks like I won’t have much competition after all.”

  “Why do you think you can talk to people the way you do?” Anusha says, appearing at my side from behind me. I hadn’t even realized she was there.

  “Listen, EOP,” Lex answers, rolling her eyes. “I can talk to people however the hell I want. You are nothing. My family literally built the very floor you’re standing on. What was your family doing four generations ago?”

  “My great-grandfather was a doctor in Mumbai,” Anusha answers, her arms crossing in front of her chest. “My great-grandmother raised seven children and ran a school for girls. But even if they were selling chicken curry out of carts in the street, I’d still be proud of where I came from.”

  “Talk to me when your family helped to change the world,” Lex throws over her shoulder and saunters toward the other side of the room where a tiny clique of followers is watching and waiting for her.

  “I don’t understand,” Anusha says, turning toward me and pointing over her shoulder with a hitchhiker thumb. “Changed the world? Built the floor we’re standing on? Do you know what the hell she’s talking about?”

  “Holy crap,” I answer with a nod, remembering my Black Angel history lessons, pieces of the puzzle that is Lex Morgan’s self-important attitude snapping into place. “I didn’t realize who she was. No wonder she’s so smug. Her family practically invented this agency.”