I woke up the next morning to a loud knocking on my door. I groaned as I went to open the door. I was most definitely a little hungover and if this was Ford to take me to another survival challenge, I was going to punch the wall. We were supposed to have Sundays off. That meant that I should be able to sleep off the night before in peace for fuck sake.
I opened the door and was confronted with one Payton Taylor sporting a large purple bruise on her right cheek. The sight of that bruise instantly filled me with guilt. Last night was not the first time I had one too many and then hit on inappropriate men. I was accustomed to waking up with bruises to complement my hangovers. Her injured cheek was my fault. She took that hit to protect me. Why she had become so protective of me, I couldn’t guess, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Hey,” I mumbled as I rubbed my face trying to wake up, “why are you waking me up on my well-deserved day off?”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” Payton retorted as she handed me a blessed cup of coffee and two white tablets that I assumed was Advil. “We have a date with the Green Monster. We are a week behind in our training.”
I stepped aside, and Payton walked into my room. I took the pills and downed about half of the coffee before I spoke again. “Okay, we can go torture ourselves with that stupid obstacle course after I take a shower. Give me ten minutes.” She nodded in response and walked over to my desk and started looking over my computer equipment. I decided I better take one very quick shower. If it was a normal person I left alone with my rig, I would have total confidence in my firewalls and security protocols. But I was learning not to underestimate Payton and suspected that she might be able to get into my system.
After the quickest hung-over shower I could have pulled off, I emerged from the bathroom to find Payton just staring out the window. She hadn’t even tried to get into my system. And now I felt guilty for accusing her of such a thing. Even if it was in my head, I should have known that she would respect my personal space.
I was not surprised to find that we were the only ones up and training on the Green Monster that morning. We worked on the aerial moving monkey bars till my hands started bleeding from broken blisters and then Payton had us doing reps of pushups, sit-ups, and suicide runs. By the end of the two-hour training session my entire body was shaking and I had thrown up twice. This was extra impressive because I hadn’t eaten anything all day.
I felt better once Payton forced me to eat lunch and then we spent the rest of the day window shopping in Helena. I found that it was extremely easy to be in Payton’s company when she wasn’t playing at being a drill sergeant. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t or try to impress her. I could just be myself. It had been a long time since I felt that I had just been myself without putting on some sort of front to be accepted. However, I could tell that Payton still hadn’t let down her guard enough to be as easygoing with me as I was with her. She was careful to never allow our bodies to touch and never reciprocated in telling stories of her past. Payton was the most guarded person I had ever interacted with.
During the following week, Payton and I fell into a routine of sorts. We woke up and worked for an hour and a half training in the Green Monster before meeting up with the rest of our team. In the mornings Ford, Dwight, and Griffin would have us work on physical protection skills like shooting or hand-to-hand combat. Then after lunch, Whistler would test us both individually and as a team. We had to breach buildings and take down the villains while protecting hostages. We were tasked with breaking into rooms and gaining access to information without tripping any alarms. We would be given new identities and backstories to memorize and then tested on how we integrated our false backgrounds into social situations. During each new scenario Ford, Dwight, or Griffin were there, constantly taking notes.
I felt watched and judged almost twenty-four seven. My every move was being analyzed to see if I was good enough to join Chris as a Whistler agent. And I was constantly failing. I felt weak and inadequate compared to the slabs of muscle that surrounded me. All the insecurities I had developed being compared to my brother’s accomplishments growing up rushed to the surface and I doubted that I could do this daily. The situation was not helped by the constant teasing and harassment that the other recruits threw my way. By the end of the second week, I was positive the only reason I was surviving was because of Payton.
She had become my rock. She seemed to know when to push me to give a little more and when I had reached my breaking point and just needed support. I was pretty sure she was capable of performing better than she was, but she refused to leave me behind. I was positive she could take me out in hand-to-hand combat with her eyes closed, but she remained patient and focused on teaching me instead of showing off for Whistler. I wasn’t scoring very well on the individual tests but Payton always made sure that I contributed and excelled in the group environment. Throughout this last week, all of Payton’s and my time was directed towards helping me improve in the personal challenges.
We spent at least fourteen hours a day working side-by-side. Yet I still knew very little about Payton. I had told her countless stories about my childhood, my family, and working with Chris’ Whistler team yet she never reciprocated. I didn’t even know if she had any brothers or sisters. I tried to bring it up once and she had completely shut down for the rest of the day. Payton had made her message very clear, her past was a no-go area.
I knew that she was no stranger to physical pain. Most people who have been hit in the face tend to touch the bruise throughout the day. They are unused to pain and can’t pull their focus away from it. But Payton acted as if nothing was wrong with her face even as the bruise darkened to an ugly purple and then started to fade to green and yellow. This told me that either she had a crazy high pain tolerance, or she had carried bruises so often that she was accustomed to it. My guess was that it was some mixture of both.
If we had met in some college class her unwillingness to open up might have bothered me, but it was different here. I felt that she was the only person on my side right now. Even my brother, who had always been there for me, had not only left me unprepared for this program but hadn’t even checked in with me in the two weeks that I had been here. I may not know much about Payton’s past, but I did know what kind of person she was. She was fierce, could be fucking scary, and loyal to a fault. And I knew that we had become very close friends.
The rest of the team wasn’t bad. I liked Jon, but he had the tendency to boss the rest of us around and then not contribute much himself. Amir was scary as fuck. He usually scored the best out of their team during the individual challenges but if he didn’t believe in what we were tasked with doing he would flat out refuse to participate and not even Ford risked confronting him about it. Victor was your typical jock that had a small view of the world. He was a sore loser and tended not to think things through to their conclusion. Payton understood Victor and usually could manipulate him into doing what she wanted him to do. I found it fucking hilarious and enjoyed watching her lead him around by his oversized ego.
We were beyond prepared for the mock scenarios we were running today. We were acting as the bad guys first and trying to take out the other team’s client armed with paintball guns. We used the camera feeds that Payton had hacked into to monitor the other team’s position within the building. Our target was at the venue to give a speech and the plan was to take him out at the podium. The target was going to be standing still for at least twenty minutes while giving his speech. Amir had a long-distance rifle up in some ventilation shaft with a clear view of the podium. Payton was with him to watch his back and act as a lookout. Jon and Victor were waiting a block away. If Amir and Payton failed, they would make a second attempt as the target ran from the building. I was monitoring everything from my laptop in the getaway vehicle. It was my job to watch everyone’s back and coordinate our strike.
The other team clearly thought that we would hit them in transit to or from the event because they had an impressive formation around their client, that was being played by Dwight dressed up in a black suit. Everything went according to our plan and about three minutes into his speech, Dwight was decorated with a bright blue paintball to his upper left chest. Then with me directing them, Payton and Amir were able to slip away in the ensuing chaos.
That afternoon we prepared for our more anticipated role as protectors of Esli Vasquez, played by Griffin. This added a problem that we hadn’t prepared for because Griffin is about twice the size of the average guy. We were worried about exposing his head when we moved from the car to the building when Amir pointed out that we could just have Griffin duck. Esli/Griffin was to be flanked by Victor and Jon the entire time he was in our care. Payton and Amir had gone to the event center to clear it of any threats before Esli/Griffin arrived. I was scanning through the camera feeds to spot our opponents and relay their location to Payton and Amir.
All five members of the other team had positioned themselves within the event building with the intention of ambushing us as our team moved to the main room. One by one Payton, Amir, and I worked as a team to eliminate each of them before Esli/Griffin even stepped foot in the building. However, we had been directed to treat this like a real Whistler job, so I remained vigilant in my review of the camera feeds until the speech had been completed and Esli/Griffin was returned safely to Whistler HQ.
I was grinning at our overwhelming success as I joined a group that included my team along with Griffin, Ford, and Dwight. My smile faded when I saw the expression on Dwight’s face. He was an ugly shade of red and he looked ready to tear my head off.
“How dare you hack into the Whistler secure network!” Dwight barked into my face. “There is no way you could have pulled that level of operation off if you had only accessed the dummy network we set up for this exercise. It only had cameras on the entrance and main hall. But you had eyes on the entire building. Those cameras are only accessible through our secure network.” Dwight stepped into my personal space and dropped his voice in a menacing whisper, “We are a multinational firm that is responsible for protecting hundreds of people and their secrets. Please tell me you did not compromise that by hacking into our secure network.”
I caught Payton moving towards us from the corner of my eye and knew that she was about to admit responsibility for the hack. I raised my chin and looked Dwight directly in the eye. “Of course I hacked into your secure network. It had the resources I needed to ensure my team had the tools it needed to get the job done successfully. If Esli Vasquez was a real person that we were tasked with protecting from the Honduras drug cartel then I would use every resource available to keep him safe. Do you see any paint on Griffin or any of my teammates? No, you do not. That is because I took action to keep them safe.”
Griffin let out a low chuckle. “He has got you there Dwight. We can’t recruit computer genius like him and then get mad when they do their job.” He turned to look at me and all humor left his face. “But Oliver, Dwight is right that our network is more important than this entire training program. I expect you to rebuild all of our firewalls so that not even you can get through them.”
Griffin was towering over me and it took everything I had not to step back. “Yes sir,” I replied and bowed my head in acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Dwight shook his head and turned to walk away from the group like if he thought I was getting off easy. I didn’t think I was. It would take weeks to build that kind of firewall. But as I looked over and saw the shock and appreciation in Payton’s eyes, I knew I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was time that she learned that I had her back too.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
