Stalked

His pale eyes didn’t leave hers, and if this was a test, he was the perfect person to throw her off-kilter. But she stood her ground. Laughlin was essentially a bully, and bullies wanted their victims to cower. Lucy refused to let him make her a victim.

“Maybe I did before,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, “but not now. If something happens and I’m forced to leave, I have other options.” She wanted this because she’d been working toward becoming an FBI agent for the last seven years. Though the why was different now from when she first made the decision, it was no less important to her. And no way was she discussing her reasons with a man who disliked her.

“Leave? You’re a shoo-in.”

He scowled, and Lucy realized he knew something she didn’t, something that he wanted her to know. Every instinct in her body told her to smile and walk away, but she couldn’t.

She needed the truth.

“Shoo-in? Hardly. Though there is a ninety percent graduation rate, so I think the odds are in my favor.”

“The odds are stacked in your favor. But you know that.”

The truth suddenly shone through, and Lucy was almost relieved. It explained why Kate and Laughlin were arguing the other day. If Laughlin and Kate had a past during the first Adam Scott investigation, he would hate that Kate might have the power to get people privileges in the Bureau.

“I think you misunderstood. My sister-in-law didn’t pull strings for me. I told her I wanted to be here on my own merits, and she honored my request. I earned this slot. You can ask her.”

He tilted his head, a half smile on his face, but it wasn’t friendly. She was the canary; he was the cat.

“You can’t honestly tell me you didn’t know that both hiring panels rejected your application. Assistant Director Vigo himself stepped in and overruled them. Most of the new agents here are relatively anonymous; you already had a history when you arrived. Don’t be surprised if other people know exactly what I do.” He stepped toward her, only inches from her. It was almost impossible not to step back, but she forced herself to hold her ground.

Laughlin continued. “You got here because the powers that be want you here, not because you earned it.”

All Lucy had wanted was to do this on her own. To prove to her family, but mostly to herself, that she’d earned this spot in the Bureau. That the FBI would want her because not only was she a good investigator but also she had suffered and now was whole.

She walked to the tree-lined clearing on the far side of Hogan’s Alley, hoping to clear her head and think about what she should do, but she couldn’t focus through an overwhelming feeling of betrayal, of being lied to by the people she trusted most.

She sat on the fallen log and looked up through the center of the trees to the sky, wishing for answers but not even knowing what questions to ask.

Was this why Kate hadn’t told her the truth about her confrontation with Laughlin the other day? Did Kate know what Hans had done and didn’t want Laughlin to tell her?

In the past, secrets had nearly torn apart the Kincaids because her family wanted to protect her from some hard truths. And while Lucy had understood and loved her family for wanting to spare her, she also knew that secrets were dangerous and they could just as easily destroy as protect. Kate had promised to be honest with her, to not keep things hidden under the auspice of protecting her feelings. Lucy was strong enough-she was a survivor.

Lucy didn’t understand what Laughlin’s endgame was. He didn’t hate Lucy just because Hans got her into the Academy; it had to go deeper than that. Something bad in Laughlin’s background that she personified. She was a lightning rod for a wrong he hadn’t been able to fix. And she had no doubt that between the two of them she and Sean would figure out why Laughlin had put Lucy in his sights.

But that didn’t change the facts.

She suspected that the first panel that had denied her application had done so because she’d helped put a former FBI agent in prison for life for spearheading a vigilante group who targeted sex offenders. The actions that led up to the imprisonment of her mentor and former friend had shaken her, so she let herself believe that it was her own psychology and doubts that had screwed up the first panel.

In the middle of the hiring process, she’d learned to trust herself and trust her instincts. It was still hard sometimes to rely on her intuition and experience because of her youth and her past, but maybe it was because of the same fresh outlook and tragedy that she’d developed a unique skill set. When she’d appealed the decision and was granted a second panel interview, she’d gone in knowing that if the FBI rejected her again she would be okay. For the first time in years she could see a future without her long-held dream of being in the FBI. She believed that change in attitude had given her the edge with the second panel, which had approved her application. Getting past that panel had been the last in a long line of hurdles.

Maybe she’d been wrong and her involvement in taking down the vigilante group hadn’t been the primary reason for being denied. Did they distrust her sanity? For a long time, Lucy had questioned her pathologies. Whether her lack of remorse for killing her rapist showed a disconnect from humanity. She had told both panels, when asked, that today she would have done the same thing in the same situation.

And they didn’t even know everything. People close to her had buried the truth-that Adam Scott hadn’t been armed when she shot him at point-blank range. That she’d known her brother was safe when she pulled the trigger six times, each.357 bullet hitting Scott in the chest. She killed Adam Scott because he was an evil murderer who raped and tortured women for his sick pleasure. And while she’d convinced most people that she didn’t remember most of what happened that fateful day seven years ago, she remembered every second. Everything: the smell of fear, the feel of the revolver, the shock on Scott’s face when she shot him.

The second time she’d killed a man was to save Sean’s life, as well as her own. She didn’t regret that decision, either. Any hesitation and Sean would have been dead. She realized then, though she hadn’t articulated it, that when threatened she went into a different mode, a different mind-set. She became both survivor and predator. She didn’t like it, but at the same time she counted on self-preservation to protect her. It was like the flip of a switch, and she would do anything to save herself and those she loved.

Whether because they didn’t trust her psychological makeup or because she’d killed two men to save her life, it didn’t truly matter. What mattered was someone stepped in and gave her what she wanted when she hadn’t earned it.

She kicked the log. Dammit, she had earned it!

What more did anyone want from her? She’d proven she was physically capable, emotionally stable, and intelligent. She should be here. She deserved to be here. So why did she feel like her heart had been ripped out of her chest? Why did she want to walk away and never look back?

Laughlin told you what Hans did because he wanted to hurt you.

Intellectually, she knew that. She wanted to think logically, to put aside her emotions and move forward. She could dismiss Laughlin’s motives much more easily than she could dismiss Hans Vigo manipulating her life. If anyone had the authority to overturn the decision of a hiring panel, it was Hans. For the last several years he’d worked out of national headquarters with Assistant Director Rick Stockton, arguably the most powerful man in the FBI other than the director. Possibly the most powerful man behind the scenes.

That meant something. That someone of Hans’s stature and position thought she deserved to be here meant she should be here.

Then why couldn’t she shake the feeling that it was bordering on nepotism? That no one she worked with would truly trust her and that she’d be constantly trying to prove herself to her colleagues. She grew weary just thinking about constantly being assessed and analyzed and doubted.

And in the end, she wanted to be here without favors, without special privileges.

Lucy’s phone rang. “Hi, Sean.”

“I’m at the desk.”

“Give me five minutes. I have to do something.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.” She hung up and walked back to the main building, then down to the