“Oh, cool. That’ll be why.”
“Do you even go to school here?”
“You’re really not keeping up, are you, ma’am?”
“How did you get let onto campus?”
“Baby face like this?” The girl—woman?—shrugged again and walked away with a backward wave of the skull-tipped fingers. “Have a nice day!”
So much for the school’s “enhanced security measures.” Come to think of it, where were the extra security guards when Alice’s car was being forcibly valet-parked?
Alice studied the top page of the document as her footsteps echoed along the corridor. She unlocked her classroom door and backed in, pushing it open with her butt. Thick, textured bond paper. The letterhead of a D.C. law firm she might have heard of, though any three surnames strung together sounded like a law firm. The language looked authentic, but what would she know?She dumped her keys and purse next to her laptop, dropped onto her chair and slapped the document onto her desk.
“Shit,” she said. Even if it was genuine, it was clearly toothless. But would she need a lawyer to make it go away? A single consultation would cost ten times the ebook royalties she’d earned.
Survive the day.She took a deep breath, and gagged.Whatwas that smell? Rotting garbage? Swallowing hard, she wheeled her chair to the side of the desk. Nothing in the trash can but paper, and the room had smelled fine when she’d left it. Well, “fine” was a relative term for a room inhabited by twenty-five teenagers in June, but it hadn’t been this bad. Another prank?
“Bad news?”
Alice yelped and leaped to her feet. A man was sitting on the sofa in the reading corner, leaning forward, hands clasped, eyes locked on hers. Definitely not a student. Big and built, unshaven, wearing fluorescent orange coveralls. A garbage collector? She grabbed her blue plastic-handled scissors from her desk and jabbed them in his direction. “Who are you?” She’d locked the windows and both doors before she’d left—she’d checked twice. Was he one of the strangers who’d been reported lurking around the school?
“Just a curious reader.” He held up a phone. A familiar book cover filled the screen, open in an e-reader app:Names Have Been Changedby Annika Vasnetsova and Alice Thornton.
“How didyouget let in?”
“Smelling like this? Who was going to question—” He stood and went to wipe his hands on his thighs. He stopped just short, wrinkling his nose and staring down at the coveralls as if he’d just discovered he was wearing them. “‘How did you get let in?’” he repeated slowly, lifting his gaze. “You emphasized the ‘you.’ Who else has been here?”
“Outside, just now,” she said, pointing like he wouldn’t know where outside was. “I got … served, I guess. So if that’s what you’re here for, you’re too late.”
He laughed, abrupt and humorless. “You got served. I’m shocked.” He strolled toward her, scanning the basketball court outside the windows. “Defamation? Dissemination of state secrets?”
She raised the scissors to eye height—his, not hers. They shook. They barely cut paper, and he had to be six-three and broad with it. She glanced at her purse. Her cell phone was buried somewhere inside. “Who are you?” she repeated.
“You don’t recognize me?” He stopped at the front row of desks and perched on one, tapping his phone screen. He swiped ahead a few pages in the novel and started reading aloud, stretching his legs in front of him and crossing his ankles above filthy work boots:
“Anderson Holt pocketed his phone and approached me with his deceptively lazy stride, his inscrutable and bottomless dark brown eyes assessing me head to toe and back up, like a walking CT scan.” Alice sidled closer to her purse. If she could get a call into the school office… Or should she go straight for 911? She kept her eyes on the man, who was reading aloud from his phone. “I half-expected to hear beeping as he analyzed me and computed my disheveled appearance and what it might mean. A Navy SEAL turned CIA case officer, Holt was legendarily sharp. The guy picked up languages like regular people picked up takeout. I didn’t know if he’d ever worked as a honeypot—a ‘raven’ in his case, being male—but I was pretty sure he could reel in anyone: male, female or other; gay, straight or other. He had that much allure.”
Alice slid a hand into her purse, feeling her way. Tissues. Deodorant. Lip gloss. She risked a glance but—yeah—a blackphone in a black-lined purse? How many times had she vowed to buy a bright cover?
“Not a man to be underestimated,” he continued, still focused on the ebook, “no matter how carefully he cultivated that laid-back, unshaven, fresh-from-the-beach appearance.”
Alice’s little finger brushed the phone screen. She inched it out. Holding it low, she thumbed through her contacts, her breath catching. In her peripheral vision, she caught movement—the garbage guy vaulting clean over her desk. She spun away and pressed “call” on the first school number she saw: the dance teacher. Before it could dial, he caught her from behind and whisked away the phone and scissors. He ended the call and released her. She made a break for the door but he got there first, with time to spare.
“You’re a regular Flash Gordon,” she said breathlessly.
He gave an abrupt laugh and eyed her curiously for several seconds longer than was socially acceptable before leaning back on the door and scrolling through her contacts. “A body like that was ninety-nine percent deterrent,”he recited. “I’d rarely seen him use it to get his way. Possessing it was enough.”
She backed toward her desk. “Youmemorizedthat line?”
“I remember most things I read, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. You know me, Alice.” He met her eyes again, raising an eyebrow, and again it was just a beat longer than was comfortable to be stared at by a guy like that. “Surprisingly well. Here, have these back, in case they make you feel more secure.” He tossed the scissors. By the clatter, she guessed they’d landed on her desk behind her. His gaze looped across the windows again. She checked over her shoulder. What was he looking for? There were just kids shooting hoops, thethunk-thunk-thunk-bangechoing around the horseshoe of classrooms. Was it time to scream yet? “Relax. I have no intention of hurting you. I need your help.” He said the last bit like he was annoyed about it.
“You still haven’t told me who you are.”
He slipped her phone into a pocket and resumed reading from the book. “I was a gray agent, so plain and unremarkable that people looked right through me and didn’t remember me from one day to the next. But Holt? I don’t know how he got away with being so striking, working in clandestine ops, though his record spoke for itself. Maybe he used his memorability like I used my anonymity.” The guy pushed off the door and rolled his shoulders. “Kinda liking this version of me.”
Whoa.
Rewind…
