3. 3 #2
We rounded the corner, reaching the range, and Elias opened the door for us, letting go of my hand to allow me to enter through the open door. I stopped just inside the room, and Elias walked into the back of me, forcing me to stumble forward a step.
He noticed after I did. Agent Bloom was back, and stationed at the closest lane to the door.
Wearing ear protection, he might not have heard us walk in.
I moved to turn around, but Elias shook his head and walked ahead of me to the last lane of the range, putting as much space as possible in between Agent Bloom and ourselves.
To my dismay, he saw us immediately, and unloaded his weapon, setting it in front of him.
“You really did come back,” he said, pulling his earmuffs off.
“You really came despite me telling you not to,” Elias said in return. “We have work to do.”
“Hmm, so you really work here?” He asked.
I was so annoyed by this man. Nothing about him made any sense, and his insistence on guarding the integrity of the CIA shooting range was driving me wild. “Dude, obviously,” I said, throwing my hands in the air.
“You admitted that you don’t, already. You work for the NIH,” he argued.
“I just got out of a meeting in this building, so once again, I’m permitted to be here.”
Elias shifted his weight and by the glint in his eye I knew he was about to say something unnecessary. “We actually just left a meeting with your father.”
I could see his cheeks turn pink, his secret no longer kept. “You’re not the pain in the ass agent he was complaining about this morning, are you? You can’t be.”
“The one and only,” Elias said, smiling.
Bloom. . . or Little Montgomery, whoever he was, began to pack up his things. “Well, if he’s done with you, I guess I’ll be heading out with him.”
“Why’d you say you were an Agent?” I asked.
“I don’t answer to you, Miss Hayes,” he said.
My mouth fell open in shock, but Elias just laughed. “I can’t wait to talk to your dad,” he said. “For the record, Dr. Hayes is one of our top assets right now. It wouldn’t hurt to show a little respect.” He held up his hand and pinched his fingers together. “Just a teensy.”
“Says the guy who fucked the mission objective,” he retorted. “Real respectful.”
“Whoa,” I said, looking at Elias. We’d discussed this at length after I probed him about it.
After everything had settled, I needed to know if he was instructed to get close to me, or if he had done so of his own accord.
Honesty was crucial, and he made it clear that his job was to seek out information about the variant and its potential vaccine.
I just happened to be at the center of it.
In a way, he was expected to talk to me, to pry into my work, but directly, he was supposed to monitor the situation, snooping around at night when employees vacated.
Asking me about my favorite foods and finding out what I looked like nude were absolutely not the pieces of information he was meant to be gathering.
That was just for him. He acted inappropriately, got unnecessarily involved, and intervened with my untimely death, rather than just taking the laptop and running away.
If he were following protocol, that was what he would have done.
It was unorthodox the way the world brought us together, but it was genuine, and I could live with that.
Elias wasn’t bothered by Bloom’s comment. “I did, you’re right,” he admitted, nodding his head. “And it was awesome. I still fuck the objective all the time. I’ll probably even fuck the objective again tonight.”
I smacked Elias on the arm, my own face turning red, even more so than Bloom’s.
I turned away, no longer wanting to participate in the conversation.
“Loser,” muttered Bloom, and he left the room.
Elias let out a whoosh of air. “Thank God,” he said. “I’m really tired of that kid.” He paused for a moment, looking at me quizzically. “Why did he say the bit about fucking the objective? There is no reason he should know you or I were anywhere near Baker and Pryor.”
I leaned against the wall, my hands crossed over my chest, still feeling a bit vulnerable. “I mean, he works in cybersecurity, he’s got to be pretty good with computers. I’m sure he looked into both of us.”
Elias shook his head. “People much wiser and more skilled than him also work for the CIA and set up protections against randoms reading classified information. I can think of someone else that disapproves of our relationship.”
“You think his dad is sharing secrets?” I asked. “I don’t see why he’d do that. It seems, like, extremely inappropriate, especially for someone who handles such sensitive cases.”
Elias scratched his head, leaning on the partition between lanes. “I don’t know. It’s particularly interesting to me that he knows details that have nothing to do with what transpired. Neither of our reports even allude to us having a sexual relationship.”
“What about our psych evals and medical clearances? You told me to be honest, so I was,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I was honest then, too, but I can’t imagine that he’d seek those out.
That’s psychotic, and we aren’t even identified in those, it’s all letters and numbers.
Then the added protection of it being through a medical doctor, there’s HIPAA.
Even the President would have to get a subpoena from a federal judge to get access to those. ”
“It’s obvious that we are together now, though,” I said.
“To anyone with eyes.” He really couldn’t keep his hands off of me.
The majority of his touch wasn’t sexual, especially when we were at work together, but it was more intimate than I’d share with a coworker, or even a friend that saved my life.
“It definitely is, but that still doesn’t explain why he knows that we were at Baker and Pryor,” said Elias. “I’ve done a lot over the years, and I’ve never had someone who wasn’t a part of a mission with me ever know or mention a single detail about my work.”
“It’s agreed, then. We don’t trust General Montgomery.”
“No, we don’t,” Elias concurred.