The Ghost Pattern

…4

Louie Blake tried his best to make his colleagues comfortable with the exercise he had in mind. He knew them well enough to know they’d be unhappy with the day’s agenda. Therefore, he had reserved the entire gun club for the morning, and he even brought everyone’s favorite coffee in steaming, tall paper cups.

Alex Hoffmann was the first to arrive, only a few minutes late.

“Hey, Lou,” she greeted him and gave him a quick hug.

He made her proud. He was her protégé, although the ex-SEAL had twice her body mass and it was all muscle. She had recruited him from her first client, impressed with his initiative, quick brain, and relentless courage, all great assets for an undercover investigator. Not to mention his amazing hacking skills. Lou could break past any firewall, and crack any encryption.

Steve Mercer was the next one to arrive. Their very own corporate psychologist, the man who helped them think through theories and profile their suspects. The man who brought calm to emotional storms and kept their clients steady and levelheaded during their biggest crises. The man she still loved, but couldn’t forgive. She made eye contact with him for a split second, then looked away.

“I thought I had the address wrong, Lou,” Steve said instead of a greeting, but accepted the coffee with a wide grin. “What am I doing in a gun club?”

“Wait for it,” Lou replied cryptically and winked. Steve smiled and leaned against the wall, sipping on the extra hot mocha latte.

“Good morning,” Brian said professionally, entering the clubhouse, confusion written all over his face.

Brian Woods was the business genius of the team, and their very own expert in the gadget technologies they sometimes engaged to help them in their work. His main expertise remained business though, and his classy demeanor made him look every bit the part. On many occasions, he had stayed behind in client organizations, serving as executive officer until leadership replacements were recruited, or until the client finished with the cleanup that many times followed their covert investigations.

That was the team she had joined just a few short years before, as a young executive with a computer science background. Even to this day, she sometimes wondered why they had chosen her; why Tom Isaac, The Agency’s owner, had put his faith in her and her abilities. Since then she had accumulated a few decent notches on her belt, a few, yet challenging cases she had worked successfully, causing that self-doubt to start fading away. She finally felt she belonged.

“Is Richard coming?” Alex asked, eager to see the rarely visible financial genius of their crew.

“No, not this time,” Lou replied. “He’s on the East Coast and couldn’t make it.”

“If I’d only known,” Brian said sarcastically and smiled while accepting his triple espresso from Lou. “Why are we here?”

“Thank you, reluctant colleagues, for being here today,” Lou said, earning some chuckles as he spoke. “Per our boss and mentor, Tom, I am now in charge of your fitness, self-defense training, and gun proficiency.” The pride in his voice was both amusing and heartwarming.

The two men groaned in protest.

“I work with my brain,” Steve said, making a dismissive gesture with his left hand, still holding his latte in his right hand. “I don’t need any self-defense… I’m a shrink. I can talk my way out of pretty much anything.”

“You’re not gonna talk your way out of this one, Steve, that I can promise you,” Lou replied.

“I don’t need this either, I think I’ll head out,” Brian said, making a beeline for the exit. “Thanks for the coffee, mate.”

“Not so fast,” Lou said, cutting across his path. “I was tasked to do a job here, and I will not fail.”

Brian stopped and looked him in the eye. Then he relaxed a little. “OK, let’s see what you have. Although I have to warn you, I am a total klutz when it comes to guns and fighting. I am a businessman; I fight with numbers.”

“What am I doing here, Lou?” Tom asked, surprisingly appearing out of nowhere. “I have tasked you to train the team. Why did you call me?”

Unperturbed, Lou handed Tom the remaining cup of coffee.

“Well, aren’t you a part of the team?”

They all laughed, seeing how shocked Tom looked.

“I’m not… Well… I don’t need this, you know. I rarely go undercover any more, I just stay behind—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Brian said, grabbing Tom in a side hug, “what’s good for the goose, you know…”

“Yeah, OK,” Tom conceded. “Lou, please remind me to train you on how to take direction,” he added with humor in his voice.

Tom Isaac was the founder of The Agency, the man who had created their small investigative unit, focused solely on high-profile corporate clients. He was the one who brought them all together — their mentor, and their friend. To Alex, he was more than that; Tom and his wife, Claire, had become Alex’s family.

“Ready?” Lou asked, and was immediately rewarded with a variety of grimaces, long sighs, and smirks. He didn’t seem to care.

He opened a duffel bag filled with handguns. “Brian, what do you do if you have to fire this weapon?”

“Umm… I examine it and, if available, I read the manual first,” Brian replied, and Alex couldn’t contain a chuckle. In all fairness, she had been the only one who had discharged a weapon in the past couple of years. However, without Lou’s diligent training in Krav Maga and firearms, she would have been toast a few times over.

There was no way of knowing, before taking a client’s case, what types of danger they’d be facing. Most of them had worked for The Agency for more than ten years and their lives had never been in any significant danger. Corporate investigations sometimes bordered on boring rather than adventurous, or even dangerous.

Yet Alex had been held at gunpoint on her very first case. Gun proficiency was a good skill to master, even if one’s record didn’t support that belief. Sometimes, although seemingly benign at first, the cases they worked uncovered significant crimes being committed by people with either too much, or nothing left, to lose. That, in itself, was a recipe for danger. That was the reason why she had accepted to go through the rigorous physical conditioning Lou was imposing on her every week, complete with self-defense, close quarters combat, and timed target practice. Although, in all fairness, she still hated the crap out of that physical conditioning routine.

“OK, that’s not going to work,” Lou replied, all serious. “You have to be ready at a moment’s notice. Today we’ll do basic gun safety, gun operations, and you’ll all handle these guns until your hand knows what to do before your brain even acknowledges it.”

“Lou, please start with these two,” Tom said, “I really don’t think I need this much of—”

“Nonsense,” Lou interrupted, “what would you like to start with? A Sig? Or a Beretta?”

Alex smiled discreetly. Her protégé knew how to hold his ground.