Trevor sipped his iced tea. He’d always considered pizza the ultimate food. “Were you being serious yesterday when you said your parents don’t know what you do for a living?”
Alina’s eyes sparkled with mischief as she shook her head. “I was just messing with you. Of course my parents know I worked for the CIA. Though to be truthful, they refuse to talk about it.”
He was about to ask for details, but their server came over with their pizza just then. It was an absolutely drool-worthy collection of cheese, pepperoni, and excess grease. In other words, perfect. The woman placed the big pizza on the table between them along with plates, utensils, and a load of napkins.
Trevor contained his curiosity about Alina’s family while they each helped themselves to their first slices of pizza. He watched in amusement as she used some of the paper napkins to soak up the excess grease, then practically emptied half a bottle of Parmesan cheese on her slice.
“You plan on having any pizza with that?” he teased as she poked the slice a few times with a fork as if she thought that would help all the added powdered cheese stay in place.
Alina shrugged. “I like Parmesan cheese on my pizza. Is that a crime or something?”
“Nope, not a crime at all.” He picked up his slice and took a few bites. “Back to your parents. What’s the story behind them refusing to talk about you being in the CIA?”
Alina hesitated long enough to take a bite of her own pizza before answering. “My family is what you’d describe as politically active. They’ve been involved in state and city politics for generations. City council, state senate and assembly, state cabinet positions, campaign management and fund-raising—you name it, and someone in my family has done it. With my background, everyone assumed I’d go into politics, too.”
He snagged another slice of pizza and sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on it. “You didn’t want to?”
“Actually, I did. I never saw myself running for office, but I thought about doing the behind-the-scenes stuff, maybe managing a campaign or working on someone’s staff. I even went to college for political science.”
“How did you go from being a poli-sci major to joining the CIA?”
She ate a few more bites of her pizza, nibbling all the way down to the back of the slice but not eating the crust there. When she was done, she tossed the pizza bone to the side and got another piece, drowning it in powdered cheese.
“There was a small Agency recruitment effort on campus,” she explained. “A lot of my friends didn’t want to have anything to do with them, but I went and listened. This was sometime in 2003, and the intelligence failures of 9/11 were all anyone talked about those days. What they told me changed my entire outlook. I signed up a few months later and went straight into the CIA right after graduation. With my background, I thought I’d be doing analyst work, but I ended up in the field instead.”
Trevor had still been in the army at that time and clearly remembered what those years following 9/11 were like. Those events had changed a lot of people’s outlooks.
“What did your family think of your career choice?” he asked.
Alina sipped her iced tea. “My brothers and sister weren’t thrilled, but they respected my decision. But when I told my parents I was joining the CIA, well, let’s just say they were disappointed. I think they had visions of me running around the world, inciting coups, toppling governments, kidnapping people, and assassinating world leaders. There was a period of time in the beginning when both of them stopped talking to me.”
Trevor winced. “And now?”
“It’s better,” she admitted. “But now, when I visit for the holidays, my profession is strictly off-limits. I don’t talk about what I do, and no one brings it up.”
Damn. That sounded really screwed up. “Must make for some tense dinners.”
She laughed. “Not as bad as you might think. I love my family to pieces, but sometimes they act as if the real world doesn’t exist. They’re comfortable believing everyone and every situation, anywhere in the world, can be handled through reasonable political debate and a nice, civil voice. You and I both know that, sometimes, things don’t work out like that. My family would simply rather not talk about those things. They’re comfortable not knowing what I do, and I’m comfortable not telling them.”
Alina might have seemed cool about the whole thing, but the slight elevation in her heart rate told Trevor she wasn’t as chill with her family’s opinion of her chosen career as she might try to suggest. He could get that. Family was family. If you knew they were disappointed in you, it was hard to act like it didn’t matter.
“Are you from the DC area, or did you move here after the DCO hired you?” he asked.
“I grew up in Sacramento, but the Agency had me based out of DC for the past five years. I have an apartment in Del Ray, near Reagan National.”
He reached for another slice of pizza. “Del Ray? That’s practically at the end of the airport runway. You don’t mind living near all that noise?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that bad. I don’t even notice it anymore. Besides, it was really convenient while I was in the Agency, since I practically lived in the airport.”
He chuckled. “I feel ya. Sometimes I think it’d make more sense to live in an RV. That way, I could park it at the airport whenever I go somewhere. Any plans to move closer to the DCO training complex at Quantico so you won’t have to deal with that morning commute?”
“No. I like my apartment, and my neighbor is my best friend. No way am I going anywhere.” She shrugged. “Besides, I still have no idea if this gig in the DCO is going to work out. It would be stupid to move then find out I don’t like the work that much.” She motioned at him with her half-eaten slice of pizza. “How about you? Do you live near Quantico?”
“Yeah. I have an apartment in Woodbridge that I was lucky enough to get into called Kensington Place. I can stumble to my car ten minutes before work and still make it there in time.”
She blinked. “I’ve heard of that place. It’s kind of fancy, isn’t it?”
“It’s a little pricey, I admit. But shifters do get a bonus over the regular GS wage scale. The DCO actually found the place for me.”
