Carrie raised an interested eyebrow.
“Perhaps you know her? Pansy Little?”
“Oh, Pansy.” That earlier grin bloomed into a full-fledged smile. “Yes, of course.” Her gaze went from him to the umbrella seated opposite, the latter exuding the bearing of a curmudgeon waiting on a fresh cup of coffee. “Oh, wait, you must be one of her camp friends.”
Camp friends? Did she mean the Academy? Well, of course. How else would a permanent post family explain summer-long absences except with a stay at a sleep-away camp?
“You could say that.”
“That first year she went?” Carrie huffed. “I was so jealous. But then I had nothing but summer camps from all those teen movies in my head. You know, bonfires and marshmallows and sneaking out after dark.”
“I assure you, it was nothing like that.”
“I know. Pansy came home absolutely wrecked. I think she slept for all of Labor Day weekend. It’s some sort of survival thing, right?”
“Yes. No marshmallows and certainly no”—Henry cleared his throat—“shenanigans.”
Carrie raised an eyebrow, her voice sly. “That’s not how I heard it.”
A rush of blood touched his cheeks, but the heat only made him laugh. “I assure you things never got too out of hand.”
Carrie glanced away, and he had the distinct impression she rolled her eyes.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to it. It’s sweet of you to visit. I’m sure Pansy appreciates it.”
That, Henry doubted. He was going to push, dig a little deeper, test a hypothesis that had emerged at the cemetery. But what he wanted to ask was something a friend would already know. There was one rule you always followed, whether a field agent or permanent post one: maintaining the balance, the façade, with the locals was absolutely crucial.
So, instead, he nodded.
Carrie was at the alcove’s threshold, framed by eyelet lace, when she turned and said, “It’s good to see her camp friends looking out for her.”
Only once she left did Henry taste the admonishment against his tongue, a soft refrain of It’s about time.
A whisper came from his umbrella, a variation of Carrie’s words.
Henry ignored both and hit a key, banishing the screensaver on his laptop, and picked up where he’d left off.
Cadet Pansy Little is an adequate, if unremarkable, trainee. She could become a productive permanent post agent with additional instruction from the right mentor.
“What a pretentious asshole.”
A slight rustling came from his umbrella.
“Glad you agree.”
But five years ago, Henry conceded, he was a pretentious asshole. The first of his class to make principal field agent, the first to make the rank before turning twenty-five. That hadn’t happened since his father’s generation, his father being one of those agents.
Rose Little had been the other.
And five years ago, he had dismissed her daughter with barely a glance.
Henry scanned the notes from that graduation exercise. He’d made plenty, although startlingly few on Pansy. That, in itself, was odd. He always made notes, copious annotations, observations, even though his recall was impeccable, and he almost never referred to them.
Why was Pansy Little a mostly blank—and unremarkable—slate? Why could he barely remember her from that summer? He searched her records for blips in her performance during the capstone exercise, a simulation meant to replicate a major field mission. Except there weren’t any.
Her yearly mentor reports yielded nothing but expected progress. But even when a mentor was less than forthcoming in their evaluations (a common occurrence when the mentor was also a relative), data from umbrellas never lied. Henry brought up those records, or tried to. Each attempt resulted in an access-denied message.
He heaved a sigh, finished off his coffee—which Carrie once again deftly and stealthily refilled—and picked up his phone to call the Enclave’s personnel department.
