Page 3 of Absent Remorse

Finally, the exercise was done.

“All right, clear your weapons, then you can go,” Rauzer said. Amber made to do as he’d instructed. “Not you, Young.”

Amber had to wait in her firing station while the others left. Rauzer stepped up in front of her.

“What was that?” the former agent demanded.

“I … I don’t have much experience with guns,” Amber admitted.

“But you had the Glock back together faster than any of the others. Then you hesitated,” Rauzer said. He’d obviously been watching. “Why did you hesitate?”

Amber didn’t have a good answer for him. “It’s the noise, and …”

“And the thought of shooting something?” Rauzer demanded, not letting up.

Amber nodded mutely. She knew how stupid that would seem to someone like him, but it was simply the truth. Guns terrified her.

“And if a bad guy is threating the life of a civilian, what then? Are you going to hesitate then? Your scores are the worst on the whole range, Young. Nowhere near the standard needed to pass this course.”

Amber already knew that. She could see the paper targets as well as anyone.

Rauzer’s tone softened briefly. “Your other instructors say that you do well in most of this. You keep up in the physical parts, you excel in everything else. But ultimately, an FBI agent has to be able to use lethal force if that is what is required to protect themselves or the public. If you can’t do that, maybe you should go back to making puzzles.”

Amber hadn’t told him what she used to do for a job, but it seemed that the news had spread. The thought of not being good enough to do this terrified her. She wanted to be an FBI agent, wanted to be able to help catch bad guys, wanted to be able to do something to help people with the mind that let her absorb information and solve complex puzzles so easily. Right now, though, it seemed as though all that was a million miles away from her.

“I’ll try to do better, sir,” Amber said. She didn’t know how, but she would.

“Don’t try, do,” Rauzer shot back. “You need to shape up, Young, because if you don’t, you arenevergoing to be an FBI agent.”

Amber swallowed at that. She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t. Shewouldbe an agent, whatever it took.

CHAPTER THREE

The moment Amber walked into the restaurant, her heart started to race. Even now, after they’d had a couple of dates already, meeting up with Joseph Conolly like this made her feel as nervous as if she’d been made an agent and was about to try to take on a whole cartel’s worth of bad guys.

Not that Joseph was a bad guy, just the opposite, andthatwas what made Amber so nervous. The moment she caught sight of him there, sitting at a table across the restaurant, she had to fight a part of her that wanted to run away because there was no way she could be good enough for him. Even on their third date, he seemed to have this effect on her.

It wasn’t just that he was tall and handsome, although he was, with dark hair, high cheekbones, and deep, brown eyes that it would be easy to get lost in. He was also intelligent, funny, inquisitive … no wonder Amber had had a crush on him back at the newspaper for as long as she could remember. Today, he was wearing a blue suit and had just a hint of stubble. Both suited him far too well, making Amber instantly wonder about her own clothing choices.

She was wearing a dark dress that she’d bought earlier today, higher heels than she would normally have worn, and a red jacket. She was wearing her glasses again rather than contacts because they felt comfortable and because that was the version of her that Joseph was used to seeing.

Amber made herself walk over to the table. This wasn’t their first date, where if Joseph hadn’t met Amber at the door, she probablywouldhave run away. She knew him a little better now. Well enough that she could at least walk over to join him.

“You look amazing,” he said, looking her up and down so that Amber had to suppress a blush. She knew she didn’t look like anything special, not compared to him.

“Thank you,” Amber managed with a smile. She looked around the restaurant. It was a nice place, with a rustic aesthetic and elegant, abstract pieces of art around the walls. “What made you pick this restaurant?”

“Perhaps I wanted to impress you,” Joseph said.

It occurred to Amber that this was the kind of place that was probably expensive and hard to get into. It meant that Joseph had gone to a lot of trouble, for her. It meant that he was trying hard to impress her, and Amber found that a little hard to believe. Joseph had been the hot reporter, in every sense, back in the office, while Amber had just been the puzzle editor.

“Well, consider me impressed,” Amber said. “Was it very difficult to get in here?”

Joseph hesitated for a moment, like he was considering making it sound harder than it was. Then he gave an almost boyish grin and shrugged. “TheNewslikes to use this place to interview prominent people,” he said. “So, when I called, they assumed it was work.”

“Is that going to get you into trouble with Harry?” Amber asked, thinking of her former lead editor. He was not a man known for his easygoing ways. He definitely wasn’t the kind of man to let someone get away with using the newspaper’s resources for their own ends.

“They gave me the table because they know me, but I’m paying for it, not theNews,” Joseph said. “In any case, Harry has chilled out a little since you left.”

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