Chapter 4
Chapter 4
S ix Months Later…
M aggie put her hand on the front door, twisted the knob, then turned and ran back to the bathroom. After losing her breakfast, she brushed her teeth, touched up her makeup and stared at herself in the mirror. I can’t do this.
“You can do this.” Her little sister, Amelia, stood in the doorway, disheveled and still half asleep. Her sister, on a break from college, had come to help Maggie settle in to her new home. She would also be taking care of Maggie’s dog, Samson, until the new dog sitter could begin the next day.
“Do you honestly think so?” It was a sign of her desperation that she was now relying on a college junior for encouragement, but her baby sister had been the most enthusiastic member of her family by far when it came to Maggie’s new job. She had even gone so far as to pick out new clothes for Maggie to wear. And Maggie had let her because she was kind of a mess when it came to finding things to wear and her sister was a budding fashionista.
“Maggie, come on. Look at you.” She put her arm around Maggie’s shoulders and stared at their joint reflection in the mirror. “You made it through twenty weeks at Quantico, you learned to run not one but five miles, you lost twenty pounds. You have never looked better.”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Maggie felt obliged to remind her.
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Maybe not, but they’ll take you pretty far, and you look hot.”
“I’m not supposed to look hot; I’m supposed to look professional.”
“That, too,” Amelia said, pulling out her phone and beginning to scroll. “You’ve got this,” she reiterated as she yawned.
“I have to ride the train for an hour. What was I thinking buying a house so far away from work?”
“That it was all you could afford unless you wanted to hock a kidney?” Amelia said.
“There’s that,” Maggie said. It was either buy a tiny, two-bedroom house in the suburbs far away from the city or share an even tinier apartment in downtown DC. Maggie opted for privacy and a break from city life. As a bonus, the house had come with a fenced yard for Samson. All she’d had to do was install a doggy door with a sensor so he could let himself in and out at will while she was at work. She would be working crazy hours and would have a long commute, something she felt terrible about. One of her first tasks after her move had been to find a dedicated dog sitter who would check on Samson every afternoon and at a moment’s notice on the days Maggie couldn’t make it home. Still, she felt guilty about leaving him alone so much. The only tradeoff was that she now ran with him every morning, a bonus he seemed more than happy to accept.
“Okay, okay, I can do this,” Maggie said, trying hard to feel the hollow words. She wasn’t at all certain she meant them. So far she had survived the transition because so many things had required her attention: find a house, move her belongings, unpack, find a dog sitter, change her address, connect the utilities. The tedious list had taken all of her focus and provided a handy distraction from homesickness, uncertainty, loneliness and fear. Now they were hitting hard. She was really in a new city, about to start her first day on a new job, as a spy, no less. She knew no one besides her boss, a man she hadn’t seen in six months.
“You can totally do this. What’s the big deal? You’re going to be a librarian, same as before,” Amelia said. Maggie had fudged her job description a bit, telling her family she was going to be a librarian for an obscure government office. They had no idea she was actually going to be working in covert ops because she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, not even her parents. They had thought her training at Quantico was standard procedure for everyone. Maggie didn’t dare tell them the truth, that she’d had to withstand tear gas, spend three days in wilderness survival training with no food, been physically forced to fight with other cadets, learned the basics of how best to disable and kill an enemy, and had extensive training with multiple different types of weapons. It was more, a thousand times more, than she ever thought herself capable of. And the fact that she had done it gave her a new sense of pride about herself she had never felt before.
She straightened and brushed a hand down the skirt her sister had picked out for her. New clothes hadn’t been simply for vanity, they’d been a necessity. Since losing twenty pounds, nothing fit anymore.
“I can do this,” she said with more certainty. She kissed her sister’s cheek, scratched her dog’s ears, grabbed her bag, walked to her car, drove to the train station, boarded the train, and sat down, clutching her bag to her chest like a lifeline. She had brought a book, intending to read during the long commute. Instead she sat stock-still and counted the stops until it was her turn, suddenly feeling very much like a little girl lost once again.
At last it was her turn. She stood and disembarked with a mass of other suburbanite straphangers. The new company was five blocks from her Metro stop. Today the weather was nice, but she was already dreading the walk during torrential downpours or snowstorms. Since it was now March, there were bound to be many such downpours. To her surprise, several of the people from the Metro also went into her building with her. She tried not to gawk. The building itself was a ubiquitous brown brick monstrosity, built sometime during the age when any sort of pleasing aesthetic was considered a luxury. The sign out front read, “Landwood Consolidated.” To the outside observer, it was any other boring corporation. Only those who worked there knew it was actually a highly classified government agency. Of the three classification levels, top secret, secret, and confidential, Maggie now qualified for secret clearance. A big part of her still couldn’t believe it, so she tried not to think about it.
She pulled out her badge—the one she had checked for seven times before leaving home—and fumbled a little as she slid it through the door. The badge was the first level, the innocuous one posted for strangers. After that came the retina scan and armed guards. Maggie smiled nervously at them, but they were like palace beefeaters—neither made eye contact or acknowledged her in any way. Her bag went through the scan with no beeps, and she was at last on her way to the elevator that would take her to the floor that housed her new office.
She stepped off the elevator once again feeling nauseated. Absolutely no one looked up to acknowledge the newcomer, and that was fine by her. She made her way to her cubicle, set down her bag, and faced her computer. And that was when she saw it—a chocolate chip cookie with a bow on top. The sight of it made tears spring to her eyes and she fought hard to push them away. Someone in this swarming mass of humanity knew her, at least a little bit. Someone was glad she was here. To Cameron Ridge, she was slightly more than badge number 53709.
Smiling now, she logged on to her computer and read the daily briefing, the listing of intelligence reports that detailed exactly what was going on in the world. It was the same report the president received every morning. With a jolt, Maggie realized she might one day be adding to it.
It was Maggie’s first such briefing, and she read it with all the shock and horror one might imagine. How was the world not currently at war with so much going on? And how was everyone able to keep it out of the evening news? Suddenly every conspiracy theory she had ever heard seemed much more believable. After an hour, which she spent learning to navigate the computer programs she would be using daily, her phone buzzed. She jumped, startled by the unusual sound.
“Mr. Ridge would like to see you in his office,” a woman said and immediately disconnected while Maggie flailed for a response.
Maggie stood, righted her skirt, and pressed a hand to her hair. It had grown overly long while she was in training. Most days, today included, she wore it all up in a tidy knot. As she walked down the long trail to Ridge’s office, she could feel multiple pairs of eyes on her. It felt a little like the last walk to a guillotine, but she had no idea why. There was no sign of a secretary outside Ridge’s office. Maggie would later learn she worked on a different floor and was shared between three people. Without a secretary as a buffer, nothing stood between Maggie and her new boss but a heavy wooden door. She took a breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
She had wondered how she would feel upon seeing him again. Their last meeting had felt so natural, so fluid. It was as if they had known each other forever and could say anything. Had that been a fluke? Would the fact that he was now officially her boss change everything?
She took a tentative step inside and stopped short. His head was down, bent over something she couldn’t see, and he seemed to be reading intently. When he at last looked up, there was no smile of welcome. They regarded each other in silence, his eyes scanning her from head to toe. And then he smiled.
“You made it.”
She beamed. “I really did, and I only blacked out and threatened to quit eighteen times.”
He chuckled. “Congratulations, Maggie.”
“Thanks, Ridge. Still Ridge?”
“Still Ridge,” he said.
“Thank you for the cookie,” she said.
“What cookie?” he asked, looking so innocent she almost believed him.
“The one I showed to all the other employees when I ran through the office yelling, ‘The boss gave me a cookie. Where’s yours?’”
“See? I knew you would make friends easily and keep the drama to a minimum,” he said.
“I haven’t actually talked to anyone yet. Is that weird?”
“It hasn’t been the warmest environment. I don’t know why,” he said, frowning. “Do you need anything, do you have questions?”
“How are some people able to solve a Rubik’s Cube in mere seconds?” she asked.
“Any questions about the job,” he clarified, smiling.
“Oh, not so far. Just trying to learn how to navigate the computer systems, so far, so good.”
“Great. Well, if you need anything, my door is open. Hey, let’s plan a time to grab coffee. You can catch me up on your adventures in Quantico.”
“Sounds great. Also, you should know that ‘Adventures in Quantico’ is officially going to be the title of the movie I’m writing,” she said.
“You’re writing a movie?” he said.
“Yes, in fact this job is a clever ruse to get me closer to several noted Hollywood producers.”
“Hollywood is on the other coast,” he informed her.
“I knew I shouldn’t have taken that mail-order geography class from the discount club. There’s three dollars I’ll never see again.”
He chuckled. She gave him a little wave and let herself out of the office. The long walk back to her cubicle felt no less conspicuous. She tried to make eye contact and smile, but every time she caught someone’s eye, he or she looked furtively away. Weird, she thought.
At lunch she made her way to the break room with trepidation. It felt like being in middle school all over again. She was tempted to eat at her desk, but that wouldn’t do. This was her life now; she needed to meet people and make friends. Tentatively, she entered the room, filled her bottle with water, and sat down at a long table with a few other people. No one said a word. A minute later, a man with blue, spikey hair sat down across from her.
“You’re the token librarian,” he announced.
“I am,” she said. “Are you the token Smurf?”
The room seemed to hold its breath, but the guy laughed, as Maggie hoped he would. “Baby, I am way too mighty to be tiny,” he said.
“That’s going to be a wordy tattoo you’ll someday regret,” she said. He laughed again and held out a hand to shake.
“Name’s Blue.”
“Real name?” she asked. “Because if we’re calling ourselves by our attributes, my name is ‘Likes Dessert.’” She shook his hand and a couple of other people in the room chuckled.
“Believe it or not, it’s my real name,” he said. “And it gets worse.”
“Your wife is yellow and your children are green?” she guessed. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“Wrong. My middle name is Indigo,” he admitted.
“Blue Indigo. That’s pretty cool,” Maggie said. “If I name my first kid that, it’s a total coincidence that has nothing to do with you, so don’t get cocky.”
A round-faced woman with a short brunette bob sat down beside Maggie. “Okay, I like you. I’m Babs, short for Babette. Never call me that.”
“I’m Maggie, short for Margaret, never call me that,” Maggie said, smiling hello at Babs.
“Where’d you move from?” Babs asked.
“Washington, the state. How about you?”
“Another government agency, same as Blue,” she nodded at the blue-haired man. “He’s a hacker, and I do data entry, snore, snore.”
“I saw you got called up into the dragon’s lair,” Blue said, and Maggie was confused.
“Huh?”
“The boss’s office,” Babs translated. “Was it horrible? Did he yell at you?”
Smiling, she looked between them to see if they were joking. “What are you talking about?”
“Cameron Ridge, AKA Satan,” Babs said.
“Are you kidding? He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met,” she said.
Blue laughed and then instantly sobered. “Wait, are you being sarcastic or do you actually think that?”
“I’m serious, I like him a lot. He’s super sweet,” Maggie said. “Are you guys joking?”
Babs and Blue looked at each other. “I’ve cried three times since I transferred here,” Babs said.
“Me, too,” Blue agreed.
“Are you for real?” Maggie asked.
“Are you?” Blue said, but Babs nodded in a knowing fashion.
“It’s because he’s ultra hot, right? Believe me, eventually you start to see past that, usually right about the time you spend your lunch break bawling in the bathroom and searching your phone for other job openings,” Babs said.
“Wait a minute, are you actually saying you think Ridge is mean?” Maggie said. “What has he done that’s so bad?”
“If you don’t do something the way he wants, the minute he wants, he will scream at you and make you feel like the stupidest creature that’s ever inhabited the earth,” Babs said.
“Or worse, he won’t scream at you. He’ll sit there and stare while you try to maintain eye contact and bladder control. Eventually you lose both and turn to crawl back to your desk in utter shame.”
Maggie sat back, flabbergasted. “I don’t believe this.”
Babs and Blue nodded together. “Wait until it happens to you. You’re going to want to go crying back to your cherry orchard.”
“But what about the actual job? Do you like the work?” Maggie asked.
“The work’s cool. I mean, it’s stressful and a total overload, but it’s doable. It’s Cameron Adolf Ridge who makes life unbearable,” Blue said. “Be careful, I’m serious.”
“All right,” Maggie said, still sounding puzzled. How could she possibly reconcile the man she had met with the man they were describing? He had left her a welcome cookie, for goodness sake.
“Hey, let us take you out tonight, sort of a welcome wagon type thing,” Babs said.
“That sounds amazing, really, but my little sister is in town for one more day, so I kind of need to be with her tonight. Rain check?” Maggie said.
“For sure,” Blue said. He held his fist over the table, and she bumped it.
By the time lunch was over, she felt like she was on her way to making some friends. Later, as Ridge passed her desk and gave her a sly wink, she felt more than a little confused over her new friends’ description of him. Was he the sweetheart who had recruited her or the monster they believed him to be? Time would tell.