California Blend Summer Vacation: the Heart's Journey Home, #1 by Nikki Jackson

Author:Nikki Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Emotions and Feelings, Teen & Young Adult Spy in Training, Teen & Young Adult Dealing With Stepmother, Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age
Publisher: Nikki Jackson
Published: 2022-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Somewhere between two and four in the morning Tori found some sort of resolve. She’d gotten out of bed and walked around the darkened Penthouse moving from room to room. She told herself that her father was like the Penthouse, expensively made up, rare, a super nice place where people stayed and enjoyably so, but it wasn’t a permanent place where anybody lived. To be honest it was never meant to be. That’s the peace Tori told herself she’d have to make with her father. That he was an expensive Penthouse but not a home. He loved her, she told herself, and at the end of the day that’s what mattered most.

As for Rachael? Tori told herself she could do a little better, be a litter nicer, maybe a little more accepting. AJ had weighed in when she made that remark. That it would only make things around the house a little better and Tori had to admit that since the talk in the gazebo things had evened out a bit for them both. For the first time Tori could honestly say she was being nice to Rachael.

The rest of the day for Tori went better than she expected. Joe Pinto gave her a wide berth, barely making eye contact with her the entire day. Joe was happy when they split everyone up into teams of five and he and Tori were on different teams. Matt however, was happy because he and Tori were on the same team.

The teams were together at the Tactical And Emergency Vehicle Operations Center. TEVOC was a one mile oval track the FBI used to train their new agents skills in evasive driving; lane changes, backing up, counter-steering techniques, emergency braking and fast take-offs.

The instructor pointed out a paved road where a lone black car was parked. He raised a horn and sounded it once and immediately the black car sped off down the road. Within a couple of minutes a white car came out of nowhere and rear-ended the dark car causing it to spin before the driver was able to bring it under control. The windows on the white car lowered, guns appeared and shots were fired. Both cars disappeared around a bend.

The group spent the better part of the morning receiving instruction. They sat on bleachers while real life scenarios played out in front of them and the instructors pointed out what was done right and wrong in each case. They broke for lunch and after the meal the teams donned helmets and got into a car with an agent. During the first round the agent sat behind the wheel. After that, each member of the team got to sit behind the wheel and experience handling the car during an emergency situation. Tori’s favorite part of the class wasn’t the driving, it was being able to return fire on the assault vehicle.

***

Tori noticed two obvious things when she got off the elevator. For one, her grandmother wasn’t waiting for her at the door and there was loud music coming from inside the penthouse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.