Drawn Read online

“Come on, Breckenridge.” Chelsea’s palm hits the table. “You know very well she did.”

  I’ve never heard her raise her voice to anyone but her mom. Not even to me—and I’ve driven her plenty crazy.

  Agent Breckenridge folds his arms over his chest. “I’m not asking you, Agent Tanner. I’m asking her.”

  I look him up and down. Maybe he’s with the Inspectorate General. Even I know enough to be afraid of Internal Affairs—and not to trust a guy who would narc on his own people. Especially for doodling.

  I point to the corner of one of the drawings, at my signature with the S in Sasha swirled around the name like a whirlpool.

  “There. Obvious.” Chelsea shuffles the drawings back into a pile. “Get to the point, Breckenridge.”

  “I have a new assignment for her. Overseas.”

  “The FBI can’t work overseas.” I don’t bother to hide the unspoken duh that follows.

  He reaches into the inside front pocket of his suit and pulls out a small leather wallet, which he flips open. There it is. A CIA badge with gold eagle, spread wings and all.

  Chelsea steps between us. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Am I—” Dang that wobble in my voice. I slip my hand back into my pocket and rub my thumb over the chalky surface. Four years I’ve been with Chelsea—the longest I’ve ever been with anyone. Long enough to have routines, expectations. Long enough that I had stopped wondering what the next day would bring because I actually knew. Maybe it’s naïve, but I thought I was done with transfers. I clear my throat. “Am I being reassigned?”

  “Would you rather be benched?”

  My mouth gapes open and closed like that of a fish. What’s a girl supposed to say to an offer like that? Reassignment is one thing, but benching is another. Benching is the bureaucratic equivalent of putting a bullet in a horse because of a lame leg or putting down a dog when it gets sick. Your career is, for all intents and purposes, dead. “You can’t. Why?” I deserve that at least.

  “Ask her,” he says.

  “Her?” I look from Breckenridge to Chelsea. She’s been quiet and her spine’s straight as an arrow. Because why? They both clamp down their lips. I’m used to this reaction. It takes five seconds for the air to clear so they can control what they’re saying, but the five seconds feels like an eternity to not yell, scream, tear out my hair.

  She knew?

  The suit talks first. “Agent Tanner put in a request for your psych eval.”

  “For what?” I’m a lot of things but I’m not, never have been, am no way no how crazy. How could she? That steel rod down my spine could come in handy because my lower lip is wobbling. I feel a fool and stupid and a fraud in this grown-up suit like I have power over anything.

  Chelsea bends down to my level and tries to set her hands on my cheeks, but I shrug her off. “Listen to me, Sasha. It wasn’t a bench request. It was supposed to be temporary leave for psych eval. You know you need it. You haven’t been the same since the Halloween Horror.”

  “I’m not crazy. I’m disappointed we didn’t get him—same as you.”

  “It’s perfectly normal for an agent to take time off after a disturbing case.”

  “I don’t need time off.” Time off is code for we don’t want you. Like my parents didn’t want me, like none of those foster families wanted me, like nobody has ever wanted me … until they found out how useful I can be.

  She pins me with a firm look. “You don’t need an overseas assignment, either.”

  “If I could interrupt.” Breckenridge intends to interrupt whether we like it or not. He looks at me—that I’m gonna level with you look I’ve seen a hundred times before from guys in suits or lab coats. Like they’re about to talk to me like I’m an adult but then they don’t. “You’re perfect for this assignment. In fact, you’re the only person who can do it.”

  Chelsea hisses. “She’s just a girl.”

  “I think we all know that I’m not just a girl.” I’m a semifunctional lie detector that’s been passed around more than a joint at a party, and I’m as easily discarded once used. Chelsea knows I feel that way. Chelsea’s the first person I’ve ever told about how I felt getting shuffled around.

  She was going to bench me anyway. I hold out my hand. “Let me see the file.”

  He pulls it out of his briefcase, but she snatches it away and holds it behind her back. “I didn’t mean it like that. Ask me, Sasha. Ask me and I’ll answer.”

  “My voice doesn’t work like that and you know it.” If she focuses on a lie enough, if she makes herself think it, she can lie to me. How many times has she lied to me? She’s been keeping the benching hidden for long enough.

  The suit clears his throat to get our attention. “With all due respect, Agent Tanner, she doesn’t need your permission.”

  She rises to full height, a move she reserves for the worst offenders and maybe her mom. “I’m her handler and her guardian.”

  “She’s sixteen next month.” His gaze flickers to me. “Old enough to emancipate.”

  Chelsea sucks in a cold breath.

  Ha. She hasn’t thought of that, has she?

  She rolls the file between her shaky hands. “We’ll need time to discuss.”

  “No, we won’t.” I grab the folder.

  ~~~~~

  Tanner residence, Marietta, Georgia

  My room is at the end of the hall, first floor, in what was the servants’ quarters. There’s even an old-fashioned sink, the kind where you pump a handle to drain water into a basin for washing. The sink hasn’t worked since the residence served as a plantation house that goes back in Chelsea’s family for generations, not that she likes to talk about it or anything to do with her family.

  I’ve already packed, but haven’t finished cleaning. I strip the nautical sheets off my twin bed and toss them in the laundry basket. Next up are my sketches taped to the wall—a recreation series of vintage Wonder Woman wearing her signature red, white, and blue star-spangled leotard and wielding the golden Lasso of Truth. I’ve thought of my voice as my lasso of truth ever since Chelsea started calling me her truth wrangler. She even got me the gold cuff like Wonder Woman’s for my last birthday. Even now it’s heavy on my right wrist. That fantasy I had as a kid of being a comic-book superhero never died…and now, maybe, I get the chance to live it. That would be something, at least.

  I reach up to crumple the drawings. Instead, I trace one of the silhouettes with my finger. My first drawings looked like misshapen potatoes until Chelsea had me watch online tutorials on how to draw people. The key being relative dimensions. The distances between facial and body features are the same for everyone. Eye to nose. Eye to eye. Mouth to chin. All the same. It’s the other distances that mess me up—the distances between people.

  “Don’t mind that.” I spin around at her voice. She’s framed in the doorway, so tall her head nearly brushes the frame. “Just get your things.”

  I turn to look at the drawings. I don’t want to throw them out but I don’t want her to rip them off the walls, either. I make myself turn back to face her. The drawings are paper and ink. The sheets are cloth. The house is wood frame and nails. Paper. Ink. Cloth. Wood. Nails. Just things, nothing worth fussing over. Nothing worth a fuss. “I should take care of it. If I don’t, it’s more work for you.”

  “It’ll be nothing. You get your things. I’ll be getting the car ready.” She spins around and bangs her shoulder into the frame but rushes off, rubbing it, not even stopping to swear up a storm.

  I grab my duffel bag off the floor. My name is stitched in red thread along the canvas strap. It was my sole possession when Chelsea and I were first assigned together, a single reminder of my stint in the Lab. Four years on, I now own six boxes of clothes, comic books, and art supplies en route to my new assignment via cargo plane. My world in cardboard boxes, ready to be shipped whenever I’m asked to go.

  I head down the hall and outside. The front door swings wide off its hinges—bam—and
crashes into the wall like it does whenever Chelsea kicks it open with her foot when she’s carrying pizza boxes for dinner. My toes trip over each other when I get outside on the wraparound porch. I trail my fingers along the wood railing and drink in the antebellum mansion for the last time.

  The faded, chipped yellow paint, the white shuttered windows. The porch swing where I’d sketch and listen to chirping crickets at dusk. The chilly air nips at my nose as humidity blankets my cheeks—one of Georgia’s many contradictions. Like southern gentility and prettily veiled insults that come unsolicited, even without my voice to help them along. “Why, child, you’d be downright striking if you bothered to make an effort, bless your heart,” or “With skin that color, you don’t need a hat or nuthin’ to keep the sun off you, lucky thing.”

  I focus on those saccharine ladies, on the way kids stare at me at school. Sideways. I won’t miss everything about this place.

  Chelsea unlocks her sedan parked in the curve of the gravel driveway. “Hurry now. Security can take forever on these international flights.”

  I leap the steps of the porch, gravel crunching beneath my sneakers. Chelsea opens the trunk and practically rips my bag out of my hands to set it inside. She peels off, faster than she should, so pebbles churn and spit beneath the wheels.

  “Evasive maneuvers?” I ask.

  “Don’t be all dramatic, now.”

  It’s what we do, after all.

  ~~~~~

  Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Atlanta, Georgia

  Chelsea stamps the parking brake and clicks on her hazard lights in the departures lane. By the time I open my car door, she’s waiting on the curb, a tower of self-possessed calm amidst flustered pedestrians dragging their baggage behind them. She hands me the duffel bag she retrieved from the trunk.

  I throw it over my shoulder to thump against my back. “I guess this is it.”

  Five seconds pass in silence.

  Our first year, when I was twelve, she hardly spoke to me after blurting to her boss when we were introduced, “I ain’t babysitting some dang kid.”

  By our second year, she got the hang of pacing five seconds so she wouldn’t Goose off my voice.

  By our third year, she would answer quick, her thoughts in line with what she wanted me to hear.

  By our fourth year, she hit spontaneous territory. Our conversations felt natural. Real.

  Now it looks like we’re back where we started. Five-second lag time.

  Finally, she speaks. “Don’t mind if Mr. Jennings and his family are quiet for a while. They’ll need time.”

  She means time to adjust to you.

  Porter Jennings is my handler for my next assignment.

  I’ll live in his house, like I lived in Chelsea’s.

  I’ll take his orders, like I took Chelsea’s.

  I’ll assist in his case, like I assisted in Chelsea’s.

  But this won’t be like working with Chelsea in two ways. For one, Porter won’t be my official guardian. My emancipation is a few days over the horizon and then I can work cases without the specter of guardianship looming over me. For two, unlike Chelsea, Porter Jennings is a CIA spy—a NOC living undercover—and being a spy isn’t a day job like being an FBI agent. It’s a way of life, twenty-four seven. Of course, those won’t be the only ways it’ll be different, but the other ways don’t matter—not to the job.

  Chelsea wraps her arms around me. My cheek rests in the curve of her warm neck. She’s been the most constant thing in my life and thinking about a day without her leaves a big, blank spot in my brain. “You take care,” she says.

  We’re jostled by a harried couple with a baby. Chelsea pulls back. For a moment I feel weightless, like I could float away. Like without her, there’s nothing anchoring me to the earth. But hasn’t that always scared me—that once Chelsea was done with me, there’d be nowhere to go?

  But that’s not true. I am useful. I am needed. They wouldn’t have reassigned me if I wasn’t.

  “You want me to help check you in through the gate, hon?” She flashes her FBI badge. “This is good for sumpthin’, at least.”

  I’ve never been that kid with a mommy who installs a nanny cam or walks her to school or watches her child from the corner wringing her hands. I’ve never been that kid with a mommy. Why start now? Still, this is probably the last time I’ll see her. I can’t leave without saying something. My throat tightens. No words quite feel right, so instead of my feelings, I settle for the plain, honest, simple truth. “I wouldn’t have survived the past few years without you.”

  The corners of her mouth lift. “Don’t be all dramatic, now.”

  I rub my stomach clockwise with an open palm. My gut aches. Maybe I should have eaten something. Words race up my throat, yearning to get out, but I don’t know which to pick. It’s a good thing I can control myself the way other people can’t when I’m around. I swallow down my words and settle for, “Goodbye, Chelsea.”

  I turn to walk away but she blurts out behind me, “Wait.”

  I spin back. Our gazes lock. “Yeah?”

  Five seconds. Five seconds for her to control her thoughts—why, what’s she really thinking? Good riddance, you ungrateful brat, jumping ship at the first chance?

  “Did you remember your dossiers?”

  I’m long over rookie mistakes like that. Even so, I give her the courtesy of a nod.

  “You aware of the protocol differences?”

  Another nod.

  “Your phone’s fully charged?”

  This nod comes with a sigh, and a short shot of wistfulness because this is the closest someone’s come to giving a damn about me. It took her years to get here and with Mister CIA I’m back to square one.

  We both stand there for a moment, quiet, and in that quiet, snippets of our life flash in my mind.

  Two trips to Disney World.

  Four Christmases.

  A dozen sailing trips.

  Fifty-six closed cases.

  One thousand cups of coffee.

  “You’ll do great,” she says. “I know you will.”

  II

  Zaventem National Airport, Brussels, Belgium

  I’m herded through a swinging door into a crowded pickup zone. Waiting families shuffle back and forth, vying for a glimpse of us past the barrier. Every searching gaze brushes over me, as dismissive as the disembodied female voice whispering from above.

  Please report any suspicious activity to the nearest airport official.

  S’il vous plaît signaler toute activité suspecte à la fonctionnaire le plus proche.

  Meld verdachte activiteiten aan de politie.

  First time out of the country. Don’t know a soul. Working for the CIA, surrounded by all this foreignness—and not just the languages. What have I gotten myself into?

  The surge of bodies at my back carries me toward the open lobby. Chelsea had said he would find me, but as I keep walking I’m struck with this vision of running outside to the street. Not stopping until I’m swallowed by the city. No job, no ties. I whip my head back and forth, hoping for something familiar, and I find it in the crowd of eager faces—my name, written in black marker on a piece of cardboard.

  Holding the sign is Porter Jennings, fresh from Clark Kent’s Smallville: salt-and-pepper hair, weathered skin, and a blue and white checkered shirt. He looks so normal that my relief at not being abandoned at the airport is tempered by a flare of disappointment. No James Bond tuxedo for this Company NOC.

  At second glance, I concede he’s clever. He’s been assigned to Brussels for over a decade but hasn’t shed his Midwestern vibe. A perfect anti-spy disguise. No one would pick him out of a lineup unless it was for a tractor driver. I’d packed and unpacked my pinstriped suits a half-dozen times before finally leaving them hanging in the closet. The decision that had at first felt petty now feels smart.

  Porter spots me, folds the sign into halves, and shoves it in his back pocket. As I approach, he grabs my hand for a vigorous shake
but never breaks stride, forcing me to keep up.

  “Welcome aboard, Sasha.”

  “I’m glad to be here, sir.” Simple. To the point. Pretty close to what I’d practiced on the plane.

  “Quick, quick. I’m hoping we can make it home for dinner.” He makes for the automatic glass doors, leaving me to break into a jog, canvas bag and all. What kind of spy cares about being home for dinner, I don’t know. Maybe he’s not very good at his job after all. Maybe that’s why he needs a teen misfit to do his dirty work.

  We pause a brief moment outside at the airport curb, which is shrouded in mist like a black and white noir film. The average winter temperature for Brussels, according to the CIA’s fact file, is six degrees Celsius and the chill rattles me down to my elbows and knees. I search through my duffel bag for my new brown wool scarf—Chelsea had read the CIA fact file, too, and insisted on a wardrobe to match—and wrap it around my neck. Porter, with no coat to speak of, keeps walking. I tie off my scarf and follow.

  Compact cars zip down a street so black and slick from rain that it reflects and scatters the overhead beam of fluorescent lights. We pass a line of parked vehicles until Porter skitters to a stop in front of a beat-up white BMW with a dent in the back bumper. Not much of a spy car, but maybe it’s a cover, like the rest of him—or maybe it comes with an ejector seat.

  Don’t be all dramatic, now. I push back the image of her soft, southern smile and hop in on the passenger side. Porter jerks the wheel so we zoom into speeding traffic while I fumble with the seatbelt, snap it into place, and then crane my neck for my first glimpse of this foreign city.

  The freeway loops around an elegant skyline of steepled homes and stone buildings. The city is like none I’ve lived in despite my track record of being shuffled up and down the Eastern seaboard. The buildings, the people, even the air, all press against each other, packed tight as if vying for the same square foot of ground.

  We take a hard corner and my body slams into the passenger door. As I shake off the impact, Porter grabs a pen from his front shirt pocket, clicks it, and sets it on the dashboard. Its tip glows red.