Scott reached out and grabbed her wrist as she passed his chair. “Wait up, Nikki.”
Cole swung around on him. “My name’s Noel. Remember? Noel Jenkins. God! Even you. Total fail.” She jerked her arm free and stalked away.
Her head ached and her chest felt too tight. If she didn’t get away from Scott and the two DEA agents who had been sent from Texas to prep them for going undercover she would explode from shame and anger.
Head down, she hurled herself forward out the doors of the Harmonie Kennel classroom complex and into the late afternoon where the sky was turning golden along the rim of the Shenandoah Mountains to the west.
Three days. Three days of prep and she couldn’t even remember her own alias: Noel Jenkins.
They had said choose something close to her real name because it would be easier to remember.
They said think of herself as being in a play. Real time, live, but not only on a stage.
They said be spontaneous, the character was hers to create. Elementary school children playacted every day. It came naturally to most people. Not to her.
“Unnatural acts. That’s what they should call this mission.”
Cole wiped the sweat trickling down her forehead with the heel of her hand. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t giving it everything. It was all she thought about when she wasn’t in the ring working Hugo. But this was like trying to learn Greek from a Dutchman.
She was too self-conscious to let go and “inhabit the role” as her high school drama teacher would have said. Maybe if she’d been dealing with total strangers she could have pulled it off. But she was also dealing with Scott.
Sam Lott not Scott Lucca. Noel Jenkins not Nicole Jamieson. Not hard to remember. Except that keeping her volatile feelings under wraps around Scott was keeping her from being able to pretend anything else when he was being Sam.
If one more person said, “Loosen up and show us how Noel feels about Sam,” she was going to lose it. No, make that, had lost it. Unprofessional or not, she was done.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a worse disaster looking to spoil their plans. Hugo had decided to balk at the Weave Poles obstacle.
The ability to weave in and out of a set of poles spaced fourteen inches apart usually took a dog weeks to learn. Like a skier learning the zigzag of a slalom race, speed and close maneuvering were the key. But Hugo didn’t like the idea of moving back and forth. After three weaves, he was done. Trouble was, there were always ten to twelve poles in the competition. And so that was that. Deal off.
She could not do this. Absolutely could not. That’s what she was going to tell them. But first she needed to get away from here to cool off.
Cole glanced around, surprised to find herself in the parking lot near the truck she had been loaned by the DEA. First law of undercover, separate yourself from your personal life. She reached for her keys but they weren’t in her pocket.
“Damn!” She kicked the front tire with her boot.
“That’s a lot of temper.”
Cole looked up, prepared to do battle with Scott.
“Don’t snarl at me, little lady. I’m just the messenger.” It was DEA agent Jeff Richards, one of their pair of tutors. He must have followed her.
She bit back the angry words that had rushed to the tip of her tongue. She’d made enough of a fool of herself. She stiffened into a professional pose. “Sorry, sir.”
“No need to be professional out here. I don’t see any cops, do you?”
Cole wilted. Right. She was supposed to be playing at not being a cop. Epic fail.
Richards leaned against the front fender of her truck and pulled out a cigar. “I’m not supposed to have this. My wife thinks I’m into vaping these days. But once in a while, when I’m away from home, I cheat. It’s okay because she knows I do it, but we pretend she doesn’t so I can have my guilty pleasure.”
He stacked one heavy scarred cowboy boot over the other as he reached for a lighter. He was tall and broad. With his shirtsleeves pushed up to reveal burly forearms bristling with the same red-gold hair that sprouted in a buzz cut from his scalp, he looked more like a day laborer than a government agent. That didn’t explain why he was out here.
Cole bit the inside of her lip to control her emotions as she waited for him to finish lighting his cigar. She expected him to lay into her about her performance. She had it coming. He might even be about to fire her. Not that she’d give him the chance. She was going to quit.
He exhaled a perfect doughnut ring of smoke before he spoke. “You know what your problem is?”
“I have a problem? How about that. I had no idea.” Okay, she couldn’t control the snark.
He chuckled. “I’m going to tell you, anyway. The trouble is you see Scott when you’re supposed to be dealing with Sam.”