The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder

Author:Tracy Walder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

One evening, Buck, Judy, Larry, and Mo showed up at the dorm. A few of us were in the sitting area watching The Bachelor on TV and heckling the contestants. We weren’t drinking, but we were pretending to, taking pantomimed shots each time someone said the word “journey.” We all looked up when the instructors walked in. Annie picked up the remote and muted the TV.

“Meeting down at the mess hall,” Buck said. Then he turned to me and said, “Tracy, I’ll ride with you.”

The keys to the Ford were in my pocket. I pushed myself off the couch and walked out of the dorm with Buck.

The darkness was astounding. If it weren’t for the sheet of white stars, I would have thought I was in a sealed velvet bag. There were no streetlights at The Farm. No city lights. No empty buildings lit up. No sirens throwing sound and light out into the landscape. It was just thick blackness with the eerie sense of the trees closing in around you. And above that was only sky—that beautiful, vast, and starry sky.

“It’s not like this in D.C.,” I said. Part of my chatter was to make up for my nervousness. The day we’d been handed the keys to the Fords we’d been instructed to always park “ass-in.” This allows for a quick getaway, of course, but it also requires that you use reverse, which remained beyond my abilities. I’d figured out about eight different ways to get ass-in to most spots at The Farm, all of which required circling other parked cars, driving over rocks, dirt, and grass, and banging over parking bumpers so that I’d end up face out. My circle and drive-over technique proved hardest at the dorm, however, where the building position, along with the small parking lot, led me to usually park at some strange angle that made it look like I’d been drinking.

Buck looked up at the sky, moved his chin as if he were outlining the Milky Way, and then nodded at me. “Yeah, we’re all alone out here. Not a soul other than the people in that building right now.” Buck pointed at the dorm. No one else was coming out, so I figured they all had to fetch their keys from their rooms.

We got in the Ford. I was relieved that Buck had said nothing about the crooked-tooth angle in which I was parked. Buck rolled down his window and hung his arm out. I laughed.

“I was hit by a car speeding in the opposite direction,” he said, shaking his arm and then letting it dangle. “But that’s impossible right now. Even the cleaning crew isn’t here. Even Bernetta, that woman who checked you into your room, isn’t here. It’s just us and the stars.”

I put the car in first and did the usual high-propulsion takeoff over the lawn and out of the parking area.

Buck gave a closemouthed smile. “I guess no one will get you like that,” he said.

“Mess

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