“What do you mean?” I asked as I walked over to my desk to set my things down.
“Didn’t you say you were going out drinking with Nick last night?” she asked me eagerly as she brushed a stray strand of long brown hair behind her ear. There was a spark in her eye as she mentioned my best friend’s name. She’d been fascinated by Nick ever since she’d learned he was once affiliated with the mafia, but I also had a strong suspicion that she had a crush on him.
“Oh, yeah, we did.” I nodded as I took a seat in my chair. “It was fun.”
“What do you mean by fun?” she pried further, her eyes practically boring holes into me.
“I don’t know…” I muttered, unsure what kind of answer she was looking for. Chloe was a nice person, but she could be really weird sometimes. She was an anthropology professor before she became an agent with the SDCT, and sometimes it seemed like she viewed other people as some kind of foreign species. “We had drinks and then went home.”
“That’s it?” She sighed. “Why are men so boring?”
That wasn’t really it, but I wasn’t about to tell her about Nick getting hammered and taking a girl home, or about my own inability to do the same. I wasn’t much into gossiping, and that was such a common routine by now that it really didn’t seem noteworthy, anyway.
“Being boring is preferable to being a jerk,” A third, uncomfortably familiar voice butted into our conversation from behind me.
I turned around in my seat and came face to face with Agent Bette Owens, whose desk was right behind mine.
As usual, her face was set into a relaxed sneer. Even so, Bette was stunning. She had the appearance and air of a pissed-off goddess, and people who met her were always shocked by how discordant her prickly personality was with her pretty face.
“You should be careful, Agent Park. You’re a pretty decent guy, and I wouldn’t want you to end up like Nick.” Her expression curdled like she’d bitten into something rotten as she said my friend’s name.
“Uh-huh.” I pursed my lips as an awkward silence fell over the three of us. It was no secret that Bette hated Nick. It would be difficult for anyone in the office not to be aware of it, since she took every opportunity she could to bring up how much she disliked him. It had caused no end of tension in the office.
“How was your evening, Bette?” Chloe asked her in an attempt to change the topic.
“It was fine,” she replied curtly. “I didn’t spend it getting drunk and hitting on women in some dingy bar, so it was time well spent.”
“Were you spying on us, Agent Owens?” I sighed as I turned around and began to organize my desk.
“No,” she huffed behind me. “It’s just that Nick is so predictable. It’s easy to guess what that idiot spends his free time doing.”
“Okay, how about we just get to work?” a fourth voice boomed from across the thin aisle that ran through the center of the bullpen. It was Agent Theodore Duncan coming to rescue us from Bette’s incessant ranting. “You know the director gets annoyed when he hears you badmouthing Nick.”
Bette huffed and rolled her eyes, but took his advice and turned her attention to the paperwork on her desk. I sent a silent nod of gratitude toward Agent Duncan. I was used to Bette acting like that, but that didn’t mean it was any less annoying.
Agent Duncan smiled ruefully at her before turning back to his own work. He was one of the older agents in the office. Unlike most of the rest of us, who had joined the SDCT as fresh-faced rookies, Duncan had a lot of prior experience working on narcotics and organized crime cases. He was a police officer in Miami for ten years before he joined the SDCT, so he had a lot of insight that the rest of us didn’t yet. He was also one of the only people in the office Bette got along with.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot,” Chloe suddenly exclaimed. “Director Flint wants to see you. That was the main reason I came over here.”
“Okay,” I replied as I stood up from my desk. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“No problem.” Chloe beamed before heading off in the direction of her own desk.
Our office was pretty big, but I wasn’t that friendly with most of my fellow agents, aside from Bette and Agent Duncan, who both had desks that bordered mine, and Chloe, who hung out with me because I was friends with Nick.
I was reminded again how busy our office was as I made my way from my desk, which was at the very front of the floor, all the way to the back where Director Flint’s office was. It seemed like people were always walking back and forth throughout the day. There were different departments within the SDCT, like the main field agents, which included me, Bette, Chloe, and Theo, the lab technicians, and the intelligence analysts. Even though the SDCT had already existed for two years, I still didn’t recognize everyone. I spent most of my time investigating out in the field, so I didn’t interact much with the agents who worked exclusively in the office.
I knocked on the director’s office and waited for a reply before stepping inside.
“Come in,” Director Flint called gruffly from inside his office.
“You asked to see me, director?” I asked as I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. He was sitting behind his desk, his back ramrod straight and his expression as serious as ever. Markus Flint was a no-nonsense kind of man, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair and broad shoulders that gave him the look of a linebacker. He wasn’t a mean person, per se, but he wasn’t particularly friendly either, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him smile.
“Yes.”
