Thief

  He seemed to sense me staring and turned his attention to me. When magazines were emptied this round, he shouted. “Okay, boys, Raven’s going to take over.”

  “That’s my clue,” Raven said. He stood up and stretched.

  “You mean cue? That’s your cue?”

  “Clue, cue, cute. It’s a word.” He dropped a hand on my head, massaging my scalp. “Stay here, little thief.”

  I swatted his hand away. I was tempted to go hide somewhere when his back was turned just to tick him off.

  Axel met him halfway, they exchanged a few words and then continued on, trading places. Raven took up position where Axel had been. He barked some order I didn’t understand, and the kids started to open up their guns, checking to make sure they were empty, before passing off the gun, open, to the next person. There was a stack of ammunition in front of each of them. They selected the right one for that particular gun, reloaded, and waited. Raven found another ear protection headset and put it on.

  I flinched again when they started firing. Axel directed himself at me. For a moment, my insides quaked as I realized he intended to talk to me. My heart raced and I wasn’t sure why. Was I worried he’d pry into my past some more? Or was it his sense of calm composure when I felt anything but calm? Wasn’t I supposed to yell at him? Isn’t that what Raven brought me here for?

  He turned his back on the teenagers and the gunfire as if to show me he was only paying attention to me right now. “So you’re still here after all.”

  “You mean I surrendered to my kidnapping? Yeah, I guess I was a little tired this morning.”

  His eyes sparked with something that was almost humor but it disappeared quickly. He curled his fingers at me. “Come on,” he said. “Raven said you wanted to shoot.”

  I jumped up, glancing back once at Raven but he was steady, paying attention to the boys.

  Axel threaded an arm around my shoulders, drawing me away. “You probably shouldn’t watch,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll make them nervous,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Distracted. They’re not ready for that yet.” He aimed me toward a red Jeep Cherokee parked in the lot.

  “How many people are in the Academy?” I asked. “I mean, how many spies do you have running around Charleston, poking their noses in other people’s business?”

  “Not as many as you think,” he said. He released me and opened the back of the Cherokee. He pulled out a couple of long gun cases. “This is actually a training ground for our group.”

  “You mean this place? The gun range?”

  “I mean Charleston in general.” He passed off one of the cases to me so he could close the Jeep up.

  “What do you mean by training ground?”

  He started toward the large cinder block wall behind the blue building. He did it without directing me at all that I should join him, but I followed anyway. “Not all of us are from here,” he said. “We recruit from all over the globe. Some grew up here, just because it is easier to recruit local to home base, but often enough, if you become an Academy recruit from somewhere else, you’ll get transplanted to Charleston for training.”

  All of Charleston? My home? They used it like some crazy military base for an underground police force? I’d been here all my life and I’d never heard of such a thing. “Why here?”

  “Because it isn’t New York City, and it isn’t Tiny-Town in the middle of nowhere. Charleston is relatively safe, but with its own problems. It gives us a home to work from. It’s still big enough that we don’t stand out, and we can blend in with everyone else and be that forgettable face in the crowd. We also have situations we can handle, that we can ask trainees to handle.”

  “You train them in a smaller town to be able to handle themselves outside of it later? Like what Marc was doing at the mall?”

  “Unusual cases are one of the things we do.”

  “So you’re in training?”

  There was a flicker of amusement in his tone. “No. I graduated a while ago.”

  “But you stayed here in training camp?”

  “We’re here right now,” he said. “Our team liked Charleston, so we chose to make this home, but we could have moved anywhere. We help with training recruits, and help out in the local area where needed, usually on bigger assignments some of the kids can’t handle. Sometimes we get sent out, and travel. It depends on what we feel like doing, but the guys like getting out of the country every now and again.”

  “How far does this go?” I asked. The idea that the Academy had a global stretch was intriguing. “I mean, okay say you go through training. You do your time and then you want to wander off on your own to Europe...”

  He shook his head. “No, not that.”

  “No Europe?”

  “I mean no going off on your own,” he said. He turned the corner around the block wall. The other side contained two long rifle ranges. The ranges were really just marked off by the edge of the wall, and lines painted in white, like lines on a baseball field. A lopsided table was parked in the grass in front of the ranges. At the far end was another mound of dirt covered in carpets. There were wood poles set up for holding up targets. “You can’t take assignments alone,” he said. “You have to have a team.”

  “Why a team?”

  “Working solo is not what we’re about. It would defeat the purpose.”

  “What is the purpose?”

  He planted the gun case on the table, hanging on to it as the table jiggled until he was sure it wouldn’t slide off. He bent a little, opening the case to reveal a long rifle. His jet-black hair traced along his chin and fell in front of his face. It was startlingly exquisite. “Did you want to shoot or did you want to ask me questions?”

  I planted the second case near his on the table. “Both.”

  “Then ask me questions about guns.” He held up the one he had taken out of the case. “Have you done this before?”

  “No.” I really wanted to ask him more about the Academy, but he made it seem easy to talk about it, like I could ask him later. I was sure I would. Wasn’t this supposed to be a secret? How was he able to talk about it so openly? Unless it really wasn’t that secret. Just their jobs were confidential. It was confusing.

  He rubbed the stock of the gun as if to show me it was harmless. “This is a 303 British.” He opened it up, revealing an empty chamber. “It’s a top loading rifle. You drop the cartridge in from up here.” He demonstrated without a cartridge. “When you’re ready to shoot, you have to flip this.” He pointed to the safety. “And then pull here to load.” He did the motion without actually pulling. “There’s a scope on this one, too. You aim and fire. You have to reload a new bullet into the chamber every time you want to take a shot.”

  “So not an automatic?”

  “No. Reload every time. This way if you fuck up, you’ve only hit someone with one and not the entire magazine.” He passed the gun off to me.

  “Wow, confidence booster there.” I held it with both hands, holding the stock and the barrel, flipping it over in my hands to look at it. “You’re not going to load it for me?”

  “You fire it, you load it.” He grabbed a couple of rounds of ammo and pointed to the grass range. “Let’s try it over here.”

  My heart thundered against my ribs. Watching the guys was one thing. I wanted to shoot, but my nerves were getting to me about it. I guess I expected a longer lecture or for him to show me how before he let me hold one.

  Axel stopped at the end of the range and motioned to the ground. “Come on,” he said. “Get down.”

  “Huh?”

  “I think it’ll be easier if you drop to the ground and fire this. At least your first time.” He took the gun from me, exchanged it for the cartridges of bullets, and sunk to the ground. He sprawled on his stomach, and then motioned for me to join him.

  I sidled up next to him, laying on my stomach, feeling the grass on my legs. It kind of shocked me. Whe
n was the last time I sprawled out on the grass? I propped myself up on my elbows to watch.

  He pushed the stock to his shoulder, and aimed downrange. “When you’re like this, you won’t get it so hard in the shoulder. You need to lock it into your shoulder, and this way you just naturally do it.” He passed the gun back to me. I had to drop the cartridges to take it.

  “How do I load?” I asked, unsure.

  He showed me how to load the cartridge again, and walked me through positioning the gun. I held myself up on my elbows while aiming downrange.

  Axel stayed shoulder to shoulder with me until he thought I was ready to start shooting. He went back to the gun cases, pulling out two pairs of ear protection. He passed one to me and then put some on his own head. Then he got on his knees to make some distance.

  “What do I shoot at?” I asked.

  “Try to hit those poles out there,” he said.

  I made a face. They were tiny targets. I guess he was saying it didn’t matter, my first time shooting, he wasn’t going to have me hit a target.

  I lowered my head, using the scope, and sized up the pole. The scope was actually pretty neat. I’d have to depend on the accuracy.

  I breathed out slow, lining up my sight again, and keeping the scope lined to what I thought was a good spot on the thin wood pole.

  “Lock it into your shoulder,” he said.

  I jabbed it into my shoulder again, retargeting. I wasn’t sure how tight I needed it to be. It felt good enough.

  “Take your time.” The tone indicated I was taking a while.

  “I do have a loaded gun,” I said, hoping my tone said shut up or I would aim at him.

  “Never let intimidation hold you back,” he said in that smoky voice.

  I relocked the 303 to my shoulder. I yanked to load up a bullet, and aimed again using the scope, keeping an eye on the target.

  I pulled back on the trigger. The gun fired.

  The scope cracked against my forehead between my eyebrows. Pain radiated instantly. I put the gun aside, rubbing the spot. It was like banging your head into the corner of a cabinet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The scope is stupid.”

  “You were scoped.” He patted my thigh. “Leave the gun for a second.”

  I touched my forehead between my brows, wondering if I was bleeding. It didn’t feel like it but I wasn’t sure. I got up on my knees, feeling the heat running through me at messing up my first shooting experience. Thank goodness there was a wall and Raven didn’t see.

  Axel crouched next to me and held my chin in his fingers. He brushed aside my hair from my cheek. When I still didn’t remove my hand, he curled his fingers around my wrist. “Let go.”

  I didn’t want him to see, but he tugged and I relented. He scanned my forehead, his fingers touching the spot. When his fingers got too close, I yanked my head away. “Ow.”

  “Just a fender bender,” he said. “You’ll have a good bump for a while though.”

  “Oh great,” I said. “Do I need ice?”

  “Did you want to stop?”

  I blushed; I didn’t want to. If I stopped after one shot, I was worried the guys would call me a wimp. Plus, shooting wasn’t that bad. It was actually kind of fun, since I wasn’t shooting a person or at risk of getting shot at. I could see doing something like this on days off in the future. Without getting hit in the head. “It doesn’t hurt too bad.” It was partially true. It stung, but I could live with it. “Did I hit the pole?”

  Axel looked out, squinting at the wood pole. He dropped down, picked up the rifle, and used the scope to check. “Fucking shit. You nailed it.”

  My heart leapt. I dropped down next to him. “I want to see.” He passed the gun over, and I checked in the scope. Sure enough, there was a hole that split the wood, slightly to the left. “Was I not supposed to hit it?”

  He clapped me on the back of the shoulder. “You’re either a natural or you’re damn lucky. Go ahead and empty the magazine.”

  This time I avoided the scope, and locked the gun into my shoulder better. I aimed at the back dirt pile, simply trying to hit a singular carpet. Dust clouds rose at every place I hit as bullets zipped into the carpets, and I managed to land them relatively close to each other.

  After I fired every bullet, I felt a rush. Excitement surged through me to be holding something so powerful. It wasn’t that I wanted to hurt anyone with it. I just liked the control and the risk.

  “When you’re finished, you pull the magazine out,” he said, showing me. He also taught me how to make sure the barrel was empty, to check the cartridge.

  He brought out another gun, a stage coach rifle, this one I only had to pull back once and after the first shot, it would reload and be ready for the next pull of the trigger. There wasn’t a scope on this one, so I aimed with the barrel sight, trying to hit the pole again. I got it twice more. The pole tilted forward and to the left after so many hits and needed to be replaced.

  Axel roughed his fingers through his black hair. “Even with a different gun, you’re still hitting your targets.”

  “I kind of like it,” I said.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have shown you this. I don’t want you shooting people.”

  I huffed and was about tell him I’d only shoot idiots, but stopped short when a cool black eyebrow lifted on his face. His look stilled me until there wasn’t any fight left in me. It was fear of disappointing him if I even joked about this topic. Did I really worry that much about what he thought of me? I swallowed to shake off the feeling. “I won’t shoot anyone,” I said.

  “Good.” He got up on his knees. “Let me check that bump on your forehead.”

  I sighed, getting up. That was going to be a pain to explain to the others.

  He cupped my head in his hands again, his gaze focused on my brow. “It’s puffy.”

  “Can I tell the guys you beat me up?”

  “Did you want me to die today? You hate me that much?”

  I must have had a temporary brain melt down or something. I forgot how Southern guys usually took hitting girls very seriously. Normally, if a guy hit a girl around here within sight of another guy, he could expect a beating. Once, I saw a guy kick a girl at school, and a swarm of guys swooped in on him. I don’t recall seeing him at school ever again. Probably the only reason Raven got away with it with me in front of the others was because I fought back and you could tell he wasn’t hitting as hard as he could. I was pretty much asking for it every time and it was fun. Probably because most Southern gentlemen wouldn’t ever dream of it. “I don’t want them knowing what really happened.”

  “Happens to everyone the first time. Suck it up.” His palms warmed my cheeks and he pressed them until my lips made a fish face. “If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’ve got no sense of humor.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said through my squished lips.

  He released me with a slight shove that knocked me back a half step. “Help me clean up.”

  I helped by putting the 303 back into the case and collecting the empty magazines and the casings he could find. I worked beside him in silence for a while, trying to figure out if I would get a headache later from the welt on my forehead.

  “So,” he said. “You told Coaltar you were a biology researcher?”

  I slowed in strapping the gun into place in the case. “Uh ... maybe?”

  He had his head bowed, focusing on the gun. “Was any of that real interest, or were you just trying to talk to him?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  He shrugged, snapping the gun case shut. “It made me wonder why you talk about Wil going to college, but you never mention it for yourself.”

  I snorted. “Me? At college?”

  “Why not?” He picked up the gun case, carrying it under his arm. He motioned to the wall, back toward the parking lot and started heading that direction. “You’re pretty smart. You could take the SATs and probably start at a community colleg
e for basic classes.”

  I shrugged, carrying the gun case and walking beside him. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “You seemed interested in the glowing fish.”

  “I’m interested in a lot of things. I just never really thought about what I wanted before. It was just always what I could get so I could scrape by.”

  We got to the Cherokee and he opened the back. We dropped the gun cases inside. He closed the back again and leaned against it. “If you had to pick something, what would you go for?”

  I shifted from foot to foot. The truth was, a lot of things did interest me, like biology and other sciences, and now even shooting guns. It was impossible to pick. “Why do I have to pick one?”

  His dark eyes sparkled with amusement. Was he pleased with this answer? “Pick two.”

  “I don’t want to pick,” I said. “I don’t want to ...” I didn’t know how to express it.

  “Get locked down into one thing?”

  I bit my lip to try to stop the heat on my cheeks. I didn’t want to say yes, but couldn’t deny that was how I felt. It was why I’d resisted the idea of college a long time ago and simply never tried at all in school. You had to pick just one type of study that ended up costing a lot of money in student loans and you had to stick with it. Why? I folded my arms over my stomach and leaned against the back of the Jeep. “How did you get into biology?”

  “Kind of by accident,” he said. “When I went into the Academy, they encourage you to explore and do what interests you.”

  “I thought you were trying to say it was an espionage group. So it is like a school? Like a college?”

  “It is more than you think,” he said. “As far as your interests, they offer whatever they can so you can pursue your own talents. Their classes aren’t exactly normal. For example, if you were interested in working with zoo animals, they’d find a place for you at the zoo with hands on training. If you want biology, they stick you in a biology lab.”