The Carrier (The Carrier Series Book 1) (13 page)

One morning, five days into my stint in the Dells,
I received an email from my boss, Agent Harper, detailing the lack of progress
in my mission, as nothing had developed, and it looked like I’d be playing the
part of ticket agent for the whole summer. I was okay with that. If I had to
jump through a few hoops to land a bit higher on the ladder, then that’s what I
was ready and willing to do.

Agent Harper’s email also indicated that he’d
arranged for me to take the next day off from work at DBT and was to report to
the CBB offices in Chicago. I went to sleep that night excited for a twist in
what had become a somewhat mundane routine in the Dells and to spend the day
training and getting briefed at the CBB office.

I left at an ungodly hour early in the morning
in order to make the four-hour drive into Chicago and land at the office’s
front step by 9 A.M. I survived on three large coffees and a bag of chocolate
mini doughnuts. Oh, and my favorite talk-radio station.

A few times my mind wandered to the day before,
when Ava and Jack came up to visit Lower One during their break. Before I knew
it, I had somewhat scolded Ava for almost tumbling down the hill into the
river, but she apologized sweetly, not bothered by my reprimand. 

Being so close to her really stirred up some
feelings inside me and thinking about it now scared me a little. I could not
let some petty feelings for a woman I barely know get in the way of my career
aspirations.

No more thoughts of Ava today
, my
brain threatened my heart.

“Fine,” I said out loud. “She’s gone. Clear
head.”

The parking garage was noticeably empty as I
pulled into one of the first stalls. I wondered if half the agency was off for
some reason. It felt good to be back at the office. Although I had only been
gone about a week, there had been a sliver of homesickness present in my heart.
I pulled on my suit coat before I shut the car door and took a deep breath of
city air.

I swiped my ID card at the door and entered the
passcodes
outside the elevator. The CBB offices were
located on the fifteenth through twenty-fifth floors of a Chicago-based bank
building. I was told the employees of the bank thought the execs inhabited
those floors and, as a rule, stayed away.

I took the elevator up to CBB’s reception and
checked in. “Agent Hill, reporting for Agent Harper,” I told the pretty blond
at the desk. Three oversized, silvery letters spelled out CBB on the wall
behind her head. Upon closer look, I noticed the words
North Central
under
the large letters.

“Agent Hill,” she smiled brightly,
“Credentials, please.”

I handed over my ID card and badge. She swiped
them over the scanner built into the desk and held onto them as the results
popped onto the computer screen. “Agent Harper is expecting you.” She leaned
forward to reach something at the back of her desk and I got an eyeful of her
cleavage. I looked away politely as she put a small tablet and stylus on the
high counter in front of me. “Please sign here and enter your
passcode
.”

I did as she said and returned the device. She
traded it for my credentials.

“Your agenda for the day has been uploaded to
your phone. Please take the A Elevators up to the locker rooms as you’ll be
training within the hour.”

“Thank you,” I replied, gathering my briefcase
from the floor.

“Have a nice day, Agent Hill.”

“You too, ma’am.”

The A Elevators were all the way at the end of
the hall. I pressed the up button and found the agenda on my phone as I waited
for the elevator doors to open. In thirty minutes I was to be changed and ready
in the training arena found on the sixteenth floor for rifle and assault
training until noon. It looked like I’d have a break for lunch and then spend
the afternoon at intelligence getting briefed on any updates with the current
mission.

I smiled. It felt good to be back.

There were a few other agents in the arena when
I arrived. I didn’t know any of them by name, but recognized their faces. We
engaged in small talk while we waited for our instructor to arrive.

“Good morning, agents,” a man called as he
entered the cavernous room. He took several hard steps on the concrete floor
and then his gait gained a little bounce as he walked onto the mat covering
most of the arena. He was a tall man with square shoulders and tight muscles on
every inch of his body. His long black hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail
at the back of his head.

“Oh great,” the guy next to me muttered.
“Agent Miller.
He’s a hard ass.”

I groaned quietly. I’d be sore tomorrow for
sure.

Agent Miller reached the middle of the arena.
“I’m Agent Miller, new to this division, but I’m sure you’ll find me suitable
for your needs. We’ll begin with combat training. Let’s get to work, boys.”

 
*     *     *     *

Just
as predicted, training was tough and by lunch I felt exhausted. We spent an hour
and a half in combat training with Agent Miller and then we were sent to the
gun range where we sharpened our shooting. Afterward I took a nice long shower
and then relaxed in the agents’ lounge before I had to report to intelligence.

The afternoon turned out to be a complete
opposite of the morning—drab, uninteresting, and very slow moving. I sat
through two policy meetings and no sliver of amusement came until midway
through the second meeting when we heard shouting in the hallway.

“It’s all a hoax!” a man’s voice yelled.
“You’re being fooled!”

The agent presenting to us rose quickly from
his chair and jumped to the door. I caught a glimpse of a suited agent
struggling to break free from the hold of two other agents trying to escort the
man down the hall.

“That’s enough,” replied a stern voice. Two
electronic darts shot from a guard’s stun gun and stuck to the man’s torso. He
let out a series of grunts and then fell to the ground, limp, just as the door
to the conference room shut.

“That was odd,” I whispered to the agent next
to me.

“That’s Agent Hicks,” he whispered back. “He’s
been talking crazy for weeks. They would have sacked him before now, but he’s a
genius, and they need him.”

“Let us continue on, shall we?” the agent in
charge suggested.

Finally, by late afternoon, I met with
intelligence to be briefed on my mission. But that was anticlimactic because
there was nothing really to report. We were still searching for a source of
radiation somewhere in the Midwest.

They must know more,
I
thought as I drove back to the Dells that evening. The FBI has some of the most
high-tech equipment in the world. Why couldn’t they narrow down the source of
radiation more easily?

But I wasn’t about to lose sleep over it now. I
was more than excited to be on my first mission, be it boring as all hell. That
night my aching body slept like a baby.

It wasn’t long before I settled into my job as
ticket agent. I spent a few days working at different booths uptown and there I
got a chance to read some reports Agent Harper had required me to review. I was
able to sneak my tablet under the ticket counter at a booth called Upper Ducks,
and even if I left my hotspot in the cabin, I could hook up to some Wi-Fi from
a nearby coffee shop. It all worked out perfectly.

But as much as I tried, I couldn’t shake Ava’s
pretty face from my mind, so I was very happy when Darren expressed how
impressed he was with my selling skills. This meant I would be scheduled at
Lower
One
or Two most days, and, in turn, I would see
Ava. I liked working with Brian and Suzanne, too. They were both a blast to be
around. It was a nice change from the suit-wearing, stuck-up nerds hanging
around headquarters.

Ava gradually began spending more and more time
visiting the booth on her breaks. I knew I initially had a physical attraction
to Ava, but the more I got to know her, the more I began to utterly adore her
sweet personality and irresistible laughter. We played off each other well and
had the same sense of humor.

But each time my heart opened up a little more,
my brain was there with a rebuttal.
You’re not here for romance.

However, things with the agency were moving
pretty slow. It might be okay if I explored a relationship with Ava.

If only for the summer.

So that’s why I took the risk one afternoon
when Darren sent me out to the Delton Corners ticket booth unexpectedly part
way through my shift. I was really disappointed. I hadn’t even gotten to talk
to Ava yet, and now that I had to leave, I wouldn’t be around when the
General
Bailey
returned to the docks.

On a whim, I took a piece of scrap paper and
wrote a note for Ava. Maybe she would come out to see me after work.

Don’t do it,
my brain protested as
I handed Suzanne the note.

“Could you please make sure Ava gets this?” I asked
her, ignoring my brain. She grabbed it with a sneaky smile on her face.

“What’s it say?”

I took the money and tickets out of the drawer
and packed up my briefcase. “I bet you could guess.”

Suzanne threw out her hip and placed her right hand
on top of it. “Oh, Nolan, don’t you think she’s a little out of your league?”

I swallowed hard. That was flat-out rude. I
turned around to look at her. “What do you mean by that?”

Suzanne was known to say precisely what was on
her mind, even if it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate thing to say to
someone’s face. “I don’t want you to get your heart broken.” She placed the
note on her stool and handed me my phone from the counter.

No matter how hurtful Suzanne came off, her
comments couldn’t be as damaging as my own insecurities. “Just give her the
letter. See you tomorrow.”

I left the booth and headed toward the parking
lot. There was a great view of the river and power dam on the south side of the
lot, and I stopped to take a look and think for a moment. It was this exact
place where I rescued Ava from tumbling down the rocky hillside. Even if Ava
was too good for me to date, she at least could use someone watching out for
her safety. I noticed the Bailey coming in and instantly felt disappointed. I
had just missed Ava. She was standing by the gate on the back deck holding the
rope in her hands, waiting to tie up the boat. Soon she’d be up at the booth,
possibly looking for me.

Seeing Ava made my heart beat quicker. I put
Suzanne’s comments out of my head for the time being and reluctantly headed off
to my car.

I hopped in my Audi and drove ten minutes or so
down Highway 12, all the way out to Lake Delton. I parked in the lot by the
Delton Corners ticket booth and shut off the engine. I had a few hours to wait
before Ava could
come
visit, if she even decided to
come out to the booth, so I took my CBB briefcase inside, expecting to get some
agency work done.

It wasn’t long before I was deep into an essay
on the types of harmful radiation found on earth. Although radiation naturally
occurs within our bodies from birth, we also receive a small dose from space
and sometimes larger doses from the earth itself. The agency was sure the
background radiation they were detecting was terrestrial, or found deep within
the earth. They wanted to pinpoint the source before they contracted drillers
and started ripping up the Midwest. It was more than the commonplace radon gas
that forms naturally from radioactive elements that decay in our soil. No, this
was stronger, more deadly.

I traced my fingers over a recent map of the
Midwest in my file. There were several areas colored-coded according to their
levels of harmful radiation. Much of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota showed
the highest levels.

I flipped to another document provided by the
agency. It was a chart indicating the levels of radiation commonly released by
certain radioactive materials. There were several dozen elements, all naturally
occurring on the earth. I scanned the list twice, reading all the levels.

Something didn’t seem right.

I turned back to the map. The levels of
radiation in certain areas on the map were much higher than any of the levels
in the chart of terrestrial elements.
Much, much higher.

“The radiation isn’t terrestrial,” I said out
loud. “Cosmic. It has to be cosmic.”

I grabbed my tablet and researched levels of
radiation from heavily charged space particles and gamma rays.

“That’s closer.” I flipped between the map and
the chart of cosmic radiation levels. “We’re not looking for something deep
within the ground! We should be searching for something fallen from space,
probably on the surface of the earth!”

I popped up, ready to perform my best
touch-down dance when a light blue Oldsmobile pulled into the parking lot, the
driver’s brown hair touching epaulettes on the shoulders of her white
button-down shirt.

Ava!

I scrambled to put away my documents and heard
the bell ring over the door just as the last of my things were hidden. Ava was
standing in the doorway. She came to see me!