Page 9 of One Knight Stand

“I considered that, but she isn’t in the country at the moment. She’s on assignment for her company in South America somewhere.”

“Well, it does make the wife the easy decision, doesn’t it? Except she won’t be easy to get at. She’s being watched since the attempted kidnapping of her daughter.”

Isaac smiled, wrapping his fingers tightly around the steering wheel. “Not anymore. We’re officially clear on that front. After all, the budget only goes so far for so long. My sources tell me that other than occasional drive-by, she’s not being closely watched anymore. That’s not public knowledge, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Make no mistakes this time, Sampson. Hire the right people and bring her in. We can’t afford another misstep.”

“Yes, sir. This time it will be executed perfectly.”

Chapter Six

ANGEL SINCLAIR

The UTOP campus sits on several hundred acres of government land somewhere in rural Virginia—the exact location is classified—and consists of a number of buildings, including an administration center, dorms, classrooms, and an operational arts training studio (OATS) that contains a fitness facility, driving simulators, firing ranges, mocked-up tactical environments, and operational labs where we can become proficient with a wide range of equipment and techniques. The gate at the entrance to the campus has an arched sign that reads,Si vis pacem, para bellum.Translated from the Latin, it means, if you wish for peace, you must prepare for war.

I’m beginning to understand how that works.

There’s also a white cement building that’s set away from the rest of the campus, called the Kids-In-Training, or KITs, compound. That’s where I lived for a month while undergoing the trials to see if I qualified for UTOP. At the end of those trials, candidates either make it through to UTOP or wash out. For the first time in UTOP history, myentireclass made it through—all eight of us.

Since I’ve been at UTOP, I’ve had three students ask me if Angel is my real name. Although I’m in training to become a secret agent, my real nameisAngel. According to family legend, my dad took one look at my face after I was born and declared I was to be named Angel instead of Ginny, which is what my mom said they’d previously decided.

My dad has been a big unknown in my life until recently. Until just a few weeks ago, I’d been pretty sure he was dead. He vanished when I was eighteen months old. He’d driven to work, left his wallet in the passenger seat, tucked his car key under the front left wheel, and disappeared.

There were no signs of foul play, no known trouble at home or in his marriage, and no debt or financial problems. Ethan Sinclair was just a regular guy—a security engineer and geek—who was well-liked among family and friends until,poof, he was gone.

The police investigated for some time, but they had no leads, no body, no evidence of foul play, no trail, and no plausible reason for his disappearance. The case went cold, and life went on. My mom and older sister, Gwen, who was eight at the time, were heartbroken. I didn’t remember him, but that didn’t change the heartache of growing up without a father, especially when family and friends constantly told me I had his talent with numbers, math, and computers.

As I got older, I decided to find out for myself what had happened to him. I didn’t tell anyone, especially my mom or Gwen, because I didn’t want to upset them. It became my personal mission. I spent most of my preteen and teen years hacking database after database to see if I could find a trail. My secret obsession honed my hacking skills to a razor-sharp edge. I got better at hacking faster than I would have ever imagined, so in some way, I owe him for that.

I searched for him for years and had no luck. I’d been poking into his work as a security engineer when I got tapped to try out for UTOP. While undergoing the trials, I uncovered a big secret—my dad hadn’t been working for an engineering company. He’d been working for the NSA when he disappeared. His job at King’s Security was just to hide his involvement in a top-secret government project. Shortly after I discovered this—just a few weeks ago—I was nearly kidnapped, for reasons unknown, but I was saved by my friends and a man I’d thought was just a regular customer in the café UTOP students frequented during our Saturdays off from the trials.

That man turned out to be my father.

The problem was that I didn’t know he was my father at the time. But I do now, and at least I know he’s alive.

I also know he’s in some kind of trouble. Big trouble. At this point, I’ve kept his reappearance secret from my mom and Gwen, because I don’t have enough details, and it’s a wickedly painful subject for them. Besides, I don’t want to endanger him orthemuntil I know what’s going on.

Had my search for the truth about my father unearthed something dangerous? Something that even the government might not want me to know?

I wasn’t sure. But one thing was certain—I was going to find and help my dad. Then, I’d bring him home to Mom, Gwen, and me, so after fourteen years, our family could get the answers we deserved.

It’s unquestionably the most important mission I’ll ever have—spy or not.

I headed back to my dorm in an excellent mood after acing a pop quiz in Psychological Analysis of Adversary Motivations and Vulnerabilities. The weather was cool and the sky a stormy gray, but none of that bothered me. I pressed my palm against the keypad at the dorm entrance, and the doors swung open. I was housed in Mulligan Hall, named after American Revolutionary War spy Hercules Mulligan. All the buildings at UTOP were named after famous spies, which I thought was kind of cool.

Frankie and I shared a suite on the fourth floor with the two other girls from our original team at the UTOP trials—Kira Romanova and Hala Youseff. Our suite had two rooms, each with two beds, as well as a connecting bathroom and a common area furnished with a table, mini-kitchen, and couch where the four of us could study, snack, or talk. The four guys from our group were in a similar setup on the first floor of the dorm, with Wally and Mike Garcia rooming together and Jax and Bo Coleman sharing the other room. It wasn’t fancy, but it was nice we were all in the same dorm.

Just saying that was a big step for me, considering that just a few months earlier I was one of the biggest loners on the planet. Somehow I’d morphed into a person capable of living in close quarters with three other girls and not even minding…much.

As soon as I entered the suite, I ran into Kira, who was fixing a salad in our common kitchen area. Kira, tall, blonde, and beautiful, spoke something like fifteen languages and was a biology whiz who wanted to become a doctor who spies. Her father had been a top Russian official, as well as a double agent for the US, so I guess spying was in her blood. We’d had a rocky start as competitors at the trials, but she’d proven herself as an ally and, much to my surprise, as a friend. I wasn’t sure which of us had been more astonished by that. Wally had a wicked crush on her, but then again, so did most of the students at UTOP. Kira, however, was more of an introvert like me, so she ignored all the attention. She was deadly serious, however, about the spy stuff.

“Did you hear the news?” she asked me, carrying the salad to the couch and sitting down. She folded her long legs beneath her and took a bite.

“What news?” I slid my backpack off my shoulders and dropped it on a nearby chair.

“They’re closing the school for a week due to asbestos remediation starting tomorrow, after school. We can either go home for the week or the government will house us at a nearby hotel, which means like forty minutes away.”

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