A quick, but thorough, shower and a cup of coffee with a bagel were enough to wake me up completely. I might be flagging by the end of the day, but right now, I was good. My first class would be with Clay, and it didn’t matter how long he’d known me or the fact that we were sleeping together, he’d call on me if he thought I was dozing. It was one of his favorite things to do to trainees. It didn’t matter if he was lecturing in a full auditorium or doing a more casual class where he was in front of only a dozen people. He demanded attention. The thing that kept him from being a total asshole was that it was always about making sure people were learning what they needed to, so they’d do the best job possible. Sometimes, that meant embarrassing the hell out of someone. I sure as hell didn’t want it to be me.

As I walked in the building, he was there. I barely glanced at him, but I felt his eyes on me as I walked past him and into the classroom. Today’s lecture was about family annihilators and what made their psychopathy different from mass murderers or serial killers. We wouldn’t be dealing with those sorts of cases much here in the FBI, but a family hostage taker could be an annihilator and we’d need to know how to handle it differently than, say, someone who wanted something.

I couldn’t say I was looking forward to it, but I’d deal with it the same way I’d dealt with everything else in my life. Besides, if I couldn’t handle hearing about it, I’d be no good if I was called to a scene where it was the issue. As an Intelligence Analyst, that wouldn’t be my usual case, but I believed in being prepared. Besides, there was no guarantee I’d actually make it in the field I’d chosen. Best to plan for all possible contingencies.

I usually sat in the first couple rows, but before I’d gone more than a few steps, the door opened behind me.

“Quick!”

I turned around, the movement automatic the moment I heard the familiar bark of Martin Edwards, one of the senior agents at Quantico. He wasn’t the very top guy, but he was up there pretty far, and he scared the shit out of pretty much every trainee here. Not me, but I wasn’t exactly the best judge when it came to fear. Not many people intimidated me. I couldn’t think of a single one off the top of my head.

“Yes, Sir?” I gave what I hoped was a polite, but not too cheery, smile.

He scowled at me and my heart sank.

“Come with me.”

Shit. Had someone figured out about Clay and me? Shit, shit! We could deny it, I supposed. The fact that we’d known each other before could be a believable reason for me visiting him at his hotel. He’d been my uncle’s friend, after all.

When I was almost at the door, he walked away, and I hurried to keep up with him. He clearly didn’t want to walk and talk, but I was fine with that. If he was about to chew me out for fooling around with Clay, I definitely didn’t want to do it with an audience.

We made it all the way to his office without a single word being said, but as soon as he opened the door he snapped at me, “Sit.”

My stomach twisted. This was worse than I thought. I sat.

He settled in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. His face was back to being expressionless, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was off the hook. Especially when he didn’t start talking right away. I vaguely remembered hearing somewhere that he’d been one of the agency’s top interrogators, and I finally admitted that I was in extremely deep shit.

“Rona Quick.”

“Yes, Sir?”

He gave me a look that said he hadn’t wanted a response from me. He’d let me know if I was supposed to speak.

“Rona Elizabeth Quick.” He reached forward and picked up a file folder from his desk. “That’s the name you submitted on your application.”

Fuck. It wasn’t about Clay.

“Mother, Dana Quick, father unknown. Birthplace, Carmel, Indiana.”

My pulse raced but I didn’t interrupt him as I tried to figure out exactly how bad this was going to be.

“Do I need to keep reading?” he asked, clearly expecting an answer this time.

“No, sir,” I said quietly.

“You were asked if you were known by another name, and you said no. At the end of the application, you were asked, as was every applicant, if the contents of the application were true to the best of your knowledge. You checked the ‘I agree’ box and signed underneath it. In doing so, you also accepted that lying on the form would be a federal offense.”

I was going to be sick.

“We would normally have weeded out any discrepancies fairly early on, but you came with a letter of recommendation from one of our own–”

Shit. Clay.

“He didn’t know,” I whispered.

Edwards continued as if I hadn’t even spoken. “Once we started looking, however, we found that you’d lied about several different things, including your name, your parentage, and the fact that a close family member had been convicted of a felony.”

I’d known it was coming. If they’d found one lie, they’d found all of them, because they were all connected. Pick at a single thread long enough and everything would unravel.

“I assume all of what we found is true, and not more fabrication.”

I picked up the folder and glanced inside. I didn’t need to read the details to know what it said. “It is.”

“Did you really think that you could get away with it?” He seemed more curious now, than angry.

I didn’t want to look at him when I answered, but I forced myself to do exactly that. I’d known the risks and the consequences, and I’d made the decision anyway. “I didn’t know, but I thought it was worth trying.”

He tossed the folder back onto the desk. “Why didn’t you fill it out truthfully?”

“I thought about it,” I said, “but I knew if I did, it would all be there in my permanent file, where anyone could find it if they wanted to look hard enough.”

“Your past wasn’t erased, Miss Quick. It can still be found.”

“You know all of it then,” I said. When he nodded, I continued, “I didn’t want anyone thinking I had a weakness that could be exploited, that I wasn’t strong enough to handle what someone might throw at me because of it. I didn’t want instructors using it as a reason why I wouldn’t make it. And I didn’t want it to be all anyone saw when they looked at me.”

Maybe the lengthy explanation wasn’t really necessary, but I wanted it out there. I hadn’t done it on a whim, or without understanding how serious it was. Other people might not get it – hell, I was pretty sure no one would get it – but I stood by my decision, even now.

Oh well. Nothing I could do about it now. Might as well get along with it.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I need to know who knew about this,” he said.

“No one.”

He gave me a skeptical look.

“By the time I met Dr. Kurth, I’d already had my name legally changed,” I said. “As for the rest of it, we didn’t talk about it. Ever.”

“And you believe that your uncle never told Agent Kurth anything?”

“He wouldn’t have,” I said. “Believe me, it was the last thing either of us ever wanted to talk about.”

“What about when he talked to you about joining the agency?”

“I didn’t say anything,” I repeated. “He still doesn’t know.”

Edwards gave me a hard, searching look and I suddenly understood what it must have been to sit across from him in an interrogation room. As strong and stubborn as I usually considered myself, I couldn’t imagine lasting very long against him.

“This isn’t something that can be excused,” he said, “no matter your reasoning. You have fifteen minutes to clean out your room and any other possessions you may have on the premises. Your clearance is revoked, and you’ll be escorted from the grounds.”

It could have been worse, I supposed. I could’ve ended up with a fine or jail time. Instead, I was only being kicked out the FBI academy, bringing all of the plans I’d had for the future to a screeching halt. No Intelligence Analysis. No FBI. No solving cases or protecting people. From the first moment Clay had suggested the FBI to me, I’d been determined to make that my life.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I waited until he called for someone to follow me to the dorms, and then hurried away, desperate to leave before anyone realized how humiliated I was. I heard Clay calling my name, but I refused to even look at him. It was better this way. Once he realized that I’d been lying to him for years, he wouldn’t ever want to speak to me again, no matter what our history.

Yet one more thing to add to the list of ways I’d fucked things up, simply so I wouldn’t have to remember the past.