Chapter 18 Cami
CAMI
Ididn’t know what to expect when Kyle told me he worked for a covert government agency and he’d been authorized to take me with him to HQ on Friday evening.
Maybe a phone booth with an elevator to an underground bunker, like in the old Get Smart movies Lizzie and I had loved as teenagers.
Maybe a maze of hallways with twists, turns, and a series of heavy steel doors like those on bank vaults.
Instead, I entered the Sentinel office building on Garnet Street through a normal office-building front entrance.
The lobby was a cozy waiting area with glass-front doors, pale gray carpeting and paler walls, and a handful of white upholstered chairs to the left of the doors.
A long white reception desk stretched from the left wall to the right.
The one oddity was that instead of a receptionist stationed out front, like Darla was at the vet clinic, there were two uniformed guards, one on each end of the desk.
And it appeared the only access to the rest of the building was by lifting the middle portion of the long desktop and walking between the two sentries.
That seemed like overkill, even for a security firm.
Then again, as Kyle had prepared me, the entire front area was a facade.
The real business—and purpose—of his covert agency lay beyond the lobby.
One of the guards nodded to Kyle and motioned for me to take a seat.
The man punched something into a computer.
A minute later, an attractive woman of Asian heritage emerged from the door behind the desk.
She wore her black hair pulled into a tight bun on top of her head and a very expensive black suit.
With a glance from her, one of the guards punched a button that snapped the front door locks into place, then both of the guards disappeared into the back.
“Dr. Vaughn.” She held out her hand as she approached me. “X.”
I raised my eyebrows as I took her hand, unsure whether she’d just given me her name. “Ms. X, it’s a pleasure. Please, call me Cami.”
“Call me X, no Ms.” She turned to Kyle. “Rogers, you have a team meeting in the UNCLASS conference room.” She glanced down at Bella, and patted her head once. “Take the dog with you.”
He looked at me. “I thought I’d be staying here with Cami.”
“She’s in good hands.” She gave him a stern look. “We made an agreement and you have my word.”
“And the NDA?” he asked.
“Just as we agreed.”
“Thank you.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Cam, will you be okay?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. While he was there, I felt reasonably safe. Once he left, I might melt into a pathetic puddle. But as far as I could tell, X wasn’t giving us a choice. I laid my hand on top of his for a moment. “I’ll be fine.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll see you shortly.”
He left, and X sat in the chair across from me. She handed me a clipboard with a stack of papers on it. “You’ll need to initial and date each page at the bottom, and sign on the last page,” she said.
“I don’t suppose I can have a lawyer review this.”
“No, I’m sorry. And I understand if you’re not comfortable with signing, given that limitation.”
“I’ll read through it and let you know.”
She smiled. “Very good. There’s not much legalese in it, and there are no “gotchas.” If you have any questions about the terms, I’ll be happy to answer them.”
I read the three-page document, then flipped back a page and pointed to the paragraphs on classified data. “I’m not sure I’m clear on this.”
“Ah.” X leaned forward. “That’s a direct quote from regulations, which is why it’s hard to follow if you’ve never had a security clearance.
Basically, you will not be given any classified data because you don’t have the clearance.
And if you ask any HEAT agent, and that includes Kyle, about something that’s classified, he will not be able to discuss it with you.
“If there are exigent circumstances and you must have the information, you will be brought here or to another government facility with a SCIF to receive it. That’s an acronym for sensitive compartmented information facility.
There’s also close-hold information, which, while not subject to the same limitations as classified data, should not be shared with anyone outside of HEAT.
” She frowned. “Despite what pop culture would have you believe, we don’t exchange the US government’s secrets in shady parking garages, nor do we carry home classified documents. No one does that legally, anyway.”
Her harsh tone indicated it was a sore subject for her, and I’d heard all I needed for clarification, so I nodded. “Thank you for the explanation. And thank you for allowing me to do this.”
“It’s not for you, Dr. Vaughn.”
“Well, for accepting Kyle’s request on my behalf.”
She fiddled with a button on her suit jacket. “I and the agency have two years invested in him. We know he didn’t make the request lightly.”
I got the distinct impression our conversation was over. I initialed and signed the document in all the appropriate places. I handed the clipboard and pages back to X.
“Good. Now you can follow me.” She led me to the reception desk and reached over it to press her finger into a reader that was impossible to see from the lobby.
The center of the desk retracted and the lock on the door behind it clicked.
I glanced behind me, out through the glass doors, to the parking lot and the world beyond it.
I hesitated. My instincts warned me entering Kyle’s world would irrevocably change mine.
But learning more about him was the only way I’d be able to put my full faith in him.
I threw back my shoulders, braced myself, followed X into HEAT’s inner sanctum. And hoped to hell I hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.