Simon and Adam sat at opposite ends of the common room in the London safe-house. While each attempted to ignore the other, it wasn’t working. Simon spent more time sending Adam venomous looks than he did watching the TV, and Adam, doing his best to not engage, worked on his required training exercises. He had recently finished four of his ten practice worksheets when movement near the hallway caught his eye.
Rachel!
“Good evening,” he called. Rachel looked up and smiled.
“Hi, Adam,” she greeted as she drew near. Adam sighed in contentment. He never tired of her voice and had once equating it to the song of a canary: soft and sweet, full of bright tones, and possessing a lilting beauty.
“It is good to finally see you leave your room,” he said.
“Yes, it is.” She pulled out a chair and sat. Leaning forward, she studied the papers in front of him. “Hidden pictures? Isn’t that a bit juvenile even for you?”
Adam smiled.
“You’ve found about thirty so far,” she continued. “How many more do you have to find?”
He shrugged. “There are over a hundred items in that picture.”
“A hundred?” Rachel poked at the top sheet, uncovering the others beneath it. His neat circles around the hidden objects identified all the items he’d already discovered. “How long have you been at it?” she asked.
He glanced at the clock. Adam had been sitting there in the commons for under a half hour, but he’d only recently started. “Ten minutes, maybe.”
Rachel raised her eyebrows and pulled the stack closer. After glancing at the other sheets, she asked, “You’ve found over 400 items already and you just started?”
“Sure,” he said, shrugging off her awe. The task wasn’t hard for him, and truthfully, if he’d spent less time trading dirty looks with Simon during those ten minutes, he could have been done with all the sheets by now.
Studying the drawings, she frowned, and Adam felt compelled to continue. “Hidden pictures teach us observation. In the field, the smallest detail may mean the difference between life or death.” He pointed to the picture in her hands. “In this one, there are over a hundred hidden items.” He slid a blank one out from under the others, checked the code at the top, and said, “This sheet will be a lot harder. It only has fifty items.”
“Why the difference?”
“Some missions only have one objective, such as item retrieval, and others have a plethora to choose from, for example, reconnaissance. Believe it or not, this gives us experience for both. I had one picture once, that only had one hidden item to find.” Adam paused and smiled, “I spent half an hour on it.” …And then had gone to find the artist. They’d spent a pleasant afternoon discussing the merits and difficulty of each drawing.
“You do this often?” she asked.
Adam nodded. “Though these games are mostly used to train novices, but I find them relaxing, and often do them for fun.”
“What other games do you use for observation skills? Word search? Crosswords? YouTube Whodunit videos?”
Adam snickered. “Crosswords are critical thinking, not observation, and word search is pattern recognition, and I don’t use YouTube. They’re amateurs.”
Rachel rolled her eyes and amusement lit her face. It made him want to reach across the table to touch her, but Simon chose that moment to shift in his seat across the room, drawing both of their attention.
“You willing to play Golf?” she asked.
Adam refocused on Rachel, and Adam silently cursed himself for his inattention. He’d missed the fact she’d brought cards to the room. He’d been too busy watching her reaction to Simon—and, he had to admit, how well she filled out her shirt—to notice the deck of cards.
Sloppy.
“Golf?” he clarified.
Rachel grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. Zach got me hooked on it. There’s not much strategy involved, but it’s a fun way to kill some time. I was hoping Zach would be down here, but I guess he’s in the library and that’s too far away for me tonight.”
Adam’s attention again shifted to Simon when he changed the channel and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. It didn’t escape his notice that Simon turned the volume up in the process. He repressed his sigh and turned back to Rachel.
“So?” she repeated, “Will you play?”
“Sure.”
She started shuffling the deck. “We can play a few practice rounds first. I’ll deal.” Rachel spent the next few minutes explaining to him the point structure and rules of the game. When she was done, she asked, “Ready?”
Adam agreed, and they spent the next fifteen minutes taking turns dealing cards. They were halfway into the first nine rounds when Rachel looked back toward Simon and scowled, visibly annoyed. “How loud does he need that TV?” she quietly asked. “He’s right there.”
“He’s trying to drown us out.”
“I gathered that,” Rachel paused. Adam watched as several emotions cross her face, one of which was unease, but it faded as resolve settled in. “I’ll be right back,” she announced as she stood and walked over to Simon. Simon tensed as she drew near. Adam did as well, ready to spring to her defense if she needed it.
“Hey Simon,” Rachel said over the laugh track of the comedy Simon watched, “would you turn it down a bit? My ears are bleeding over here.”
Simon tilted his head back to look up at her. As the staring contest continued, Adam quietly stood. He didn’t want to break up a chance for Rachel to assert herself, but the two of them were getting nowhere. Thankfully, before Adam could take steps to resolve the standoff, Simon grunted and tapped the volume control.
“Thank you,” Rachel replied with obvious sincerity as the decibels decrease. Turning, she rejoined Adam with a smile. “Let’s finish.”
It wasn’t long after they resumed their game, that Zach came down the hall. Spying them, he beelined to their table. “Oh! Golf? Can I play too?”
“Sure,” Rachel replied, grinning. Collecting all the cards, she added, “We’ll start over as long as Adam doesn’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
They had played two rounds of the new game when Simon sat forward abruptly. “Don’t call me on this number,” Simon said in a low voice—but not low enough to not be heard.
He had Adam’s full attention, even while he played his hand.
“You found the photo?” Simon paused for a response. “Already? Are you sure? There was only one copy.” He ran his hand through his hair, “Tell me what you see.” There was another pause while whoever he was talking to replied. Simon’s voice held a tinge of excitement when he spoke again, “I can’t believe it. I just told you about it the other day. When can I pick it up?” Adam lost the rest of the conversation when Simon dropped his voice lower and eventually hung up the phone.
Adam’s attention drifted back to the table and the game of cards. Zach had his hand on Rachel’s arm and her mouth was open as if he stopped her mid-word. Adam gave a minute shake of his head and her mouth snapped shut.
“Who’s turn is it?” he asked. Rachel’s curiosity would have to continue unabated. He’d not learned anything from Simon’s phone call except that the other Hashashin was taking care of some personal business, and provided he wasn’t shirking a mission, there was no rule against that.
“Yours,” she replied.
Adam nodded. He checked his hand before selecting a card and resuming the game.
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