Allison Brennan - Stalked

My eyes widened. “You said shit. ”

“So did you.”

“Only because you said it first.”

Rachel smiled at me, but it was a sad face. I wished she didn’t think I was a little kid. I was nine, in third grade, and I was smart, too. All my teachers said so. They had wanted me to skip third grade, but my parents said no because I’m shorter than all the other third graders.

“Think about it, Pete, okay? I won’t say anything if you’re not okay with it.”

I didn’t believe her. Rachel was lying to me. I knew it deep down and didn’t know how I knew. Maybe because she wasn’t looking at me? Like when she said she wasn’t sneaking out to visit Jessie last month, but she did, anyway.

Maybe she was right and we should talk to Grams.

I didn’t want to leave.

“I’m going to my room to call Jessie. Set up Mario Kart, we’ll play when I get back, I promise.”

I did what she said and played a couple games alone while I waited for her. But she didn’t come back. I don’t know when I fell to sleep, but I woke up to thunder.

The clock on the VCR flashed 12:00. The power must have gone off and on. But it felt later than midnight. I went downstairs, feeling my way down the narrow staircase to the second-floor landing. The house was very quiet. It smelled like it always did after a party, of stale smoke over stinky food and drink. Rachel’s light was off. I opened her door. Her night-light shined on her bed. It was empty. She must have snuck out without me. Went to Jessie’s without telling me. I started crying. I didn’t want to be alone.

I crawled into my sister’s messy bed, missing her and mad at her for leaving me.

It wasn’t until six days later that the police found Rachel. She was dead. But in my heart, I think I’d known from the beginning.

FBI Academy, Quantico

“Kincaid!”

Lucy entered the gym with two minutes to spare. Her conversation with her criminal psychology instructor, Supervisory Special Agent Tony Presidio, had taken longer than she’d thought, but she made it on time.

“Yes, sir,” Lucy said, pulling up at the end of the row of new agents from Class 12–14.

“Five pull-ups.”

“I’m not late, sir.” Lucy spoke automatically but immediately realized she should have kept her mouth shut.

Tom Harden stared at her, his expression unreadable. He wasn’t an agent but had been an Army Ranger with extensive experience in physical training. He looked every bit a recently retired drill sergeant, with close-cropped hair and a rock-hard body. He’d run New Agent Physical Training for the last three years. He was only five foot nine, an inch taller than Lucy, and stared without blinking.

“Make it ten, Kincaid,” he said. “You were the last one out by more than five minutes. No need to pretty yourself for a workout, sweetheart.”

Lucy almost argued with him. She wanted to. But she understood the psychology behind the FBI’s New Agent Training program. One of the primary tests-a test they began the moment they set foot on campus-was a stress test. How well did the new agents handle stress? How well did they perform under fire? Could they both take orders and think independently?

She’d prove she could handle stress as well as anyone. Sometimes, she thought her entire life had been one big stress test.

Lucy walked over to the pull-up bar and grabbed it.

She expected Harden to order her fellow agents to start their warm-up run; instead, he turned and watched her, which meant everyone else also stared.

She broke out in a sweat.

Please, please, please, start the drill. Don’t look at me.

Lucy’s phobia manifested and her arms began to shake. She hated being watched. It wasn’t hate; it was fear. Cold, dark, crushing fear that made her want to run. Fear that made her head ache, fear that made every hair on her body rise as she felt the eyes of her friends on her.

She’d been doing so well these last three weeks. No exercises were solo, most were in groups or she had a partner, and even when her team was watching she managed to talk herself out of the panic born from her kidnapping and rape seven years ago. She had convinced herself that her fellow new agents were observing the drill as a whole, or her partner, but never watching only her. When she thought of herself as part of a unit she successfully battled her phobia. It worked during their first PT test on day two at the Academy, and it had worked every day since. It had been nearly two months since her last real panic attack.

Not here.

Harden said, “That was a half-ass pull-up. You’re still on two, Kincaid.”

Bastard.

Did he know about her fears? Of course he did-it must be in her file. Nothing was secret from the FBI. Her file was probably thicker than anyone else’s here.

Stress management. If she couldn’t control this phobia, she was going to lose everything she’d worked for.

She closed her eyes, but that made it worse because even though she couldn’t see anyone the pricks of their eyes on her skin made her squirm. She felt them, a sixth sense that she’d successfully used as a self-defense skill but that she couldn’t control. She hung from the bar, her muscles pulling at her, tense not from the pull-ups but from the panic. Locked up so tight that she wasn’t able to pull herself up, she wasn’t able to stop shaking.

“Three, Kincaid,” Harden counted. “No one is doing anything until you’re done.”

Lucy opened her eyes and stared at him. There was something in his flat expression-hope? Did he want her to fail? To embarrass her? To remind her that she had been a victim?

She pulled herself up again. Four.

I am not a victim.

Her arms burned because she’d hung too long, but she was going to make it if she killed herself. She would not fail, and damn if she was going to let a cocky, authoritative instructor make her feel like a failure-or, worse, a victim. She wasn’t a victim, and she wasn’t going to let anyone make her feel victimized.

Lucy felt her shields rebuilding as she pulled her chin over the bar. It was almost as if the last eight months hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t learned to be almost normal. If she was going to survive the FBI Academy, she’d have to regain her distance, her detachment, bury her emotions again. Failure wasn’t an option-she was going to survive, she was going to be an agent, and if she had to be cold and unemotional she would be.

Five.

Everyone here had stories. Not hers, but the eleven trainees who’d served in the military had faced life and death. Different, but no less soul-searching than her own past.

Margo had joined the Army right out of high school. She’d been a poor kid from New York with a drunk for a mom and no hope for the future. The Army gave Margo a future.

Six.

“Your nose didn’t even top the bar,” Harden said. “You may be a decent runner, but are you going to run away from danger, or face it? Let’s see a real six.”

Bastard.

Six.

The Army had given Margo her college education. She’d wanted to be a cop but she’d been recruited into the FBI when she was a twenty-seven-year-old college senior. Lucy felt closer to her than anyone else-and not just because they shared a bathroom.

She and Margo had fallen into a small, dedicated group of new agents-two other military veterans, a paramedic, a prosecutor, a detective, a linguist, and an accountant. The accountant, Reva Penrose, was a math teacher with a Ph.D. in accounting. Reva was Margo’s opposite. Petite, feisty, a bundle of energy. Growing up in rural Texas, Reva had been raised with guns and had aced her first firearms test. But while she was a whiz on the range, she’d gotten the minimum acceptable score on the PT test.