Ashley glanced between the three of us and reached a conclusion on her own. She smiled brightly at Temple. “Hey, do you want the grand tour?”
“There’s a grand tour of an ordinary government office building?
"Nope. Follow me anyway. I’ll show you where the good coffee is."
Temple left with her, shooting me a loaded expression. He was buying me time, now I needed to use it wisely and get our friend here to open up.
Lucas surveyed the place, debating. Instead of his own tour or showing me his desk, we sat on the couches in the reception area. The woman behind the desk had left for lunch, leaving just the two of us, sort of. People worked a short distance away.
How badly I wanted to be the guy Lucas could trust might fall a few feet—or huge gaping yards—shy of professional. But a fling with me would just complicate a situation that keeps getting more complicated by the second, so I focused and started with something easy.
“So, how did the whole secret agent thing start?"
"I told you. Jack started it."
“Yeah, but why?” Besides jealousy on Jack’s part.
“The hiring process here apparently seemed like something out of a spy movie. An otherwise ordinary government agency that recruited me out of college, detailed background checks, classified information and clearance levels, all very clandestine from an outside perspective.”
Called it. Jack hadn’t been recruited out of college. Total jealousy. Lucas had brains and drive, his cousin had the charm and conventional good looks. Kind of like me and—nobody, it reminded me of nobody I knew.
“Now Jack thinks it’shilariousto call me a secret agent when working at the IRS is what most people consider the most boring job in the world.”
"You must enjoy the job, right? That’s what matters." This suited him better than spycraft anyway.
Lucas hesitated. “It’s not very exciting.”
"So what? I promise I won’t fall asleep."
"I won’t blame you if you do. The endless tax documents are mind-numbing to some, and people hate the IRS…” He stared at his hands so long I thought he might stop talking. Then he took a deep breath and dove in. “My work involved a larger project. I monitored and sent in state data while we developed algorithms to detect deliberate fraudulent patterns that appear frequently in criminal convictions, which ideally, would allow the government to focus on thoseintentionallyand habitually deceiving the system instead of law-abiding people who made a math error or put a decimal point in the wrong place.”
Whoa. He always seemed brainy but that soundedreallybrainy. And noble, trying to save innocent people the stress of worrying about whether the government was going after them because of a mistake.
“Are you—” Lucas looked to me to find me watching him intently. “O-oh. Yeah, you’re still awake.”
“Your work is really impressive.” Having no reason to whisper, I whispered anyway. He seemed kinda sensitive about this, like he might spook if I delivered a compliment at full volume.
“No, even if we succeed, the bureaucrats in charge may decide the current system is more lucrative, and this is hardly as impressive as being anactualsecret agent.”
"Come on. No need to be ashamed. Intelligence is se—cool, you’re really impressive."
"I used to be.” He laughed bitterly, glancing up towards the office still busy at work while we sat here. “Even when the time off stretched, when I wasn’t ready to come back, they’ve been so accommodating…it’s really gonna suck when I let them down."
"Why would you?"
"Because I’m broken.” He whispered this time. “I thought I’d heal eventually. I tried to be patient…I probably failed, but Itried.Then one month became two became four. I’m not sure it’s ever going to get better.”
“That must be terrifying. But it takes time, right?” Mending physically was one part of the battle. Other damage might take longer.
"There was no permanent brain damage,” he continued. “They adjusted my medications to reduce any mental side effects, sent me to therapists, and nothing worked, so now they say it’s all in my head.” Lucas cut off abruptly, head whipping to the people working and not paying attention to us.
“If one of them is a, you know what—” he pointed to me, “—can they hear us?”
“Uh, probably. If they were listening.” However, shifters didn’t keep their heightened senses turned on 24/7. That would get exhaustingfast.
Lucas jumped up and bolted out of the office before I explained further. I found him standing in the narrow hallway outside the offices. He looked freaked out. Facing me head on in the tight space, I thought he’d lose the nerve to continue.
But he surprised me.
