Before he Sees. Blake Pierce

and started to turn around when she realized that Harry was following far too close behind her. She nearly stepped on his feet as she backed away from the room.

      “Sorry,” he whispered in the dark. “I thought it – ”

      He was cut off by the sound of a gunshot. This was instantly followed by an oof noise from Harry’s mouth as he went to the ground.

      Mackenzie pressed hard against the wall as another blast came. The shot pounded the wall from the other side; she could feel the impact of it against her back.

      She knew that if she acted quickly, she could take the perp down right now rather than engaging in a shootout from around the wall. She looked at Harry, saw that he was still moving and coherent for the most part, and reached out to him. She hauled him through the doorway, out of the line of fire. When she did, another shot came. She felt it go just over her shoulder, the air whizzing around her raincoat.

      When she had Harry to safety, she wasted no time and decided to act. She grabbed her flashlight, clicked it on, and tossed it out the door. It clattered on the ground seconds later, its white beam dancing wildly along the floor on the other side of the wall.

      Following the clattering noise, Mackenzie whirled her body out of the doorway. She was crouched low, her hands skimming the floor as she curled herself into a quick, tight roll. As she rolled hard to the left, she saw the shape of the perp directly to her right, still focused on the flashlight.

      Coming out of her roll, she extended her right leg with a vicious amount of force. It caught the perp on the backside of the leg, just below the knee. The suspect buckled a bit and that was all she needed. She sprang up and wrapped her right arm around his neck as he sagged and brought him hard to the ground. With a knee to the solar plexus and a deft motion with her left arm, the perp was down, trapped, and quickly disarmed as his rifle went to the floor.

      From somewhere else within the old building, a loud voice said, “Halt!”

      A series of bright white bulbs popped on with audible clicks, flooding the building in light.

      Mackenzie stood up and looked down to the suspect. He was smiling up at her. It was a familiar face – one she had seen in her training modules several times, usually barking orders and instructions at the agent trainees.

      She held her hand out and he took it from his place on the floor. “Damn good work, White.”

      “Thank you,” she said.

      From behind her, Harry stumbled forward, holding his stomach. “Are we absolutely certain they’re just packing bean bags in those things?” he asked.

      “Not only that, but these are low-grade,” the instructor said. “Next time we’ll use the riot bags.”

      “Awesome,” Harry grunted.

      A few people started filing into the room as the Hogan’s Alley run came to an end. It was Mackenzie’s third session in the Alley, a mock-up of a derelict street that was heavily used by the FBI in training agent trainees for real-world situations.

      While two instructors stood by Harry, letting him know what he had done wrong and how he could have prevented being shot, another instructor headed directly over to Mackenzie. His name was Simon Lee, an older man that looked like life had dealt him a crap hand and he had responded by beating the hell out of it.

      “Amazing work, Agent White,” he said. “That roll was so damn fast that I barely saw it. Still…it was a little reckless. If there had been more than one suspect out here, it could have gone totally different.”

      “Yes, sir. I understand.”

      Lee smiled at her. “I know you do,” he said. “I tell you, at the halfway point of your training cycle, I’m already over the moon about your progress. You’re going to make an excellent agent. Good work.”

      “Thank you, sir,” she said.

      Lee took his leave and walked elsewhere into the building, speaking with another instructor. As they started to file out, Harry came over to her, still grimacing a bit.

      “Well done,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt half as bad when the person that came out on top is exceptionally pretty.”

      She rolled her eyes at him and holstered her Glock. “Flattery is useless,” she said. “Flattery, as they say, gets you nowhere.”

      “I know,” Harry said. “But would it at least get me a drink?”

      She grinned. “If you’re paying.”

      “Yeah, I’ll pay,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t want you to kick my ass.”

      They exited the building and walked back out into the rain. Now that the drill was over, the rain was almost refreshing. And with several instructors and consultant agents skimming the grounds to end the night, she finally allowed herself to feel proud of herself.

      Eleven weeks in, she had passed through the majority of the classroom-oriented part of her Academy training. She was almost there…about nine weeks away from wrapping up the course and potentially becoming a field agent for the FBI.

      She suddenly wondered why she’d waited so long to leave Nebraska. When Ellington had recommended her for the Academy, it had essentially been her golden ticket, the push she needed to test herself, to break out of what had been comfortable and safe. She’d gotten rid of the job, the boyfriend, the apartment…and she’d picked up a new life.

      She thought of the flat expanse of land, the cornfields, and the open blue skies that she had left behind. While they held their own specific beauty, it had, in a way, been a prison for her.

      It was all behind her now.

      Now that she was free, there was nothing left to hold her back.

*

      The rest of her day proceeded with physical training: push-ups, sprints, crunches, more sprints, and selective weights. For her first few days at the Academy, she had hated this sort of training. But as her body and mind had gotten used to it, it seemed to her that she actually craved it.

      Everything was done with speed and precision. She ran through fifty push-ups so fast that she wasn’t aware of the burning in her upper arms until she was done with them and headed for the mud-flecked obstacle course. With just about any sort of physical activity, she had gotten into the mindset of thinking that she wasn’t really pushing herself until her arms and legs were trembling and her abs felt like slabs of serrated meat.

      There were sixty trainees in her unit and she was one of only nine women. This did not bother her, probably because her time in Nebraska had hardened her to not really caring about the gender of the people she worked with. She simply kept her head down and worked to the best of her abilities, which, she wasn’t too proud to say, was pretty exceptional.

      When the instructor called time on her last circuit – a two-mile run through muddy trails and forest – the class broke apart and went their separate ways. Mackenzie, on the other hand, took a seat on one of the benches along the edge of the course and stretched her legs out. With nothing much else going on for the day and still pumped from her successful stint in Hogan’s Alley, she figured she’d head out for one last run.

      As much as she hated to admit it, she had become one of those people that liked to run. While she wouldn’t be enlisting in any themed marathons anytime soon, she had come to appreciate the act. Outside of the required laps and courses in her training, she found time to run along the wooded trails of the campus that sat six miles away from the FBI headquarters and, subsequently, about eight miles away from her new Quantico apartment.

      With her workout tank top drenched in sweat and a flush in her face, she rounded out her day with a final sprint around the obstacle course, leaving the hills, fallen logs, and nets out of it. As she did, she noticed two different men watching her – not out of some sort of lustful daydreams, but in a sort of awe that, quite frankly, spurred her on.

      Although, truth be told, she wouldn’t mind a few lustful glances here and there. This new svelte body she had worked so hard for deserved to be appreciated. It was weird to feel so comfortable in her own skin, but