She was thinking of the drunken prostitute at the hotel, but she saw no point in sharing her fears about the mother she'd never known. "It's nothing, really. Just believe me, I can construct a phony family so dysfunctional they'll name me cult recruit of the month."
"You wouldn't want to overdo it. One of the biggest problems for an undercover agent is remembering the story she tells. It's a good idea to stick to the truth as much as possible, at least on things that don't matter. Like, do you have any brothers or sisters? Did you take dance lessons as a girl? What does your father do for a living?"
"Am I a half-breed who was adopted and raised by middle-class white parents?"
"Now that you mention it, that is a rather plausible background for someone who might have issues later in life. Someone who might eventually be drawn to a cult." He saw the expression on her face, then backpedaled. "I didn't mean you--"
"It's okay."
"I don't want you to think you have to embrace any particular back story just to earn my approval. If I were doing this assignment, I'd obviously have to go as a black man. But you look white, you were raised white, you can be white. Or you can be Indian. Or you can be mixed. You have that unique luxury."
"It's no luxury," said Andie.
"Bad choice of words, sorry."
Very bad. She could have told him how in college she'd gone to a powwow on the U. W. campus and was shunned as just another horny white chick on the prowl for a brown Indian warrior. How the scholarship committee had rejected her claim of Native American status because she had no idea what tribe her mother belonged to. How as a girl she'd kept an Ai-Ya-To-Mat, a hemp string diary that marked the most important days of her life with knots and colored beads, only to have her mother take it away and burn it out of fear that it was linked to some kind of devil worship.
"Isaac, are you giving me this assignment or not?" "Yes. I am."
"Thank you." She was startled but pleased.
"You're welcome. But you should probably thank Victoria more than me."
"Victoria?"
"I had a talk with her about an hour ago, just to see what she thought about you taking the assignment. She's been down in the dumps lately, which accounts for her lackluster performance on this case. I think she sees some of her old self in you. You play your cards right, you might just find yourself a mentor."
"She'd want to mentor me?"
"She's already looking out for you. Doesn't want to see you passed over as a young and inexperienced female for risky assignments like this one, never getting the chance to build the kind of record you need to make it all the way to the top."
Andie knew about Victoria's failed bid for chief of the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit, knew that no woman had ever been chief of a profiling unit at Quantico. "Funny, my toughest critics have always been women. It's nice to have one on my side. Thanks for passing that along."
"You're welcome. And again, I apologize for my stupid comments about cults and your mixed heritage. I was out of line."
"Forget it. It's just complicated when you're adopted. You wonder about different things, like brothers or sisters who might have been raised elsewhere. Maybe their lives were more difficult than mine, but maybe they also understand who they are better than I do. Does that make any sense?" "Sure."
They sat in silence, as if there had been enough said about that. Andie checked her watch. "If it's a go, then I'd better pay the tech guys a visit."
"Definitely."
. She rose and started for the door.
"Oh, Andie?" he called.
She stopped and turned. Isaac shook his head, half smiling and half scowling. "Damn it, Kira. You flunked your first test."
"That will never happen again, sir." She smiled and gave a mock salute as she left the office. At least I hope not, she told herself, her smile fading to concern.
It was a foggy Friday morning on Puget Sound. The sun wouldn't rise for more than an hour, so the thick gray shroud hovering over the Washington Corrections Center for Women hadn't even begun to burn off. In the pre-dawn silence, the bare cement floors and cinder-block walls were at their coldest.