Quick Study Read online

  Quick Study

  A Federal Paranormal Activities Agency Prequel

  Katherine Kim

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  10. Epilogue

  If you enjoyed Quick Study

  About the Author

  Books by Katherine Kim

  Quick Study © 2019 Katherine Kim. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Venkatesh of Killer Book Covers

  * * *

  Copyright © 2019 Katherine Kim

  All rights reserved.

  1

  Caroline shivered under the table. It served her right, really, that everything had gone so horribly wrong. She shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and now she was paying for it. It was the dumbest thing, too. She shouldn’t have let Monique and her cronies get under her skin. She should have just let it all wash over her and not snapped back like that. If she had just let it go and not started mouthing off, the gym teacher would never have heard her, and then… ugh.

  It wasn’t even worth remembering, but she still felt her face heating over the humiliation of it all. And that, of course, was why she’d decided to skip school for the first time ever. And being her first time skipping school, she’d gone somewhere she was positive that nobody would look for her: the city’s Local History Museum. It was just a few rooms in the back of the city hall, with a small side entrance so that visitors wouldn’t disturb the grand municipal business, and nobody ever went there.

  Until today, naturally, when Caroline decided to be a truant. Today would, of course, be the day armed thugs decided to come crashing into the front room of the museum nobody ever went to, to start rummaging loudly through the displays, while she sat in the furthest back room with her novel.

  So now she huddled under the table covered in pamphlets and the empty mailing list signup sheet, hoping that none of the weird attackers would find her and she could go home to confess everything to her parents. She didn’t even care what sort of punishment she’d get, anything they could dole out would be heaven compared to this.

  A boot stopped right in front of her, it’s scuffed black leather clear in the couple of inches between the cheap blue tablecloth and the floor.

  “You’re sure there’s nobody here? I could swear I keep hearing something,” said a deep, male voice. It almost sounded musical and was so far from what Caroline expected to hear that she almost gasped. She slapped her hand over her mouth and held her breath, eyes wide and staring at the boot as it shifted.

  “Me too, but I can’t find anyone. We ran off the couple of gawkers. Not like anyone cares about their local history these days, after all,” said a second voice. It must belong to Boots in front of her here. A few more footsteps and another foot appeared, facing Boots. This man’s footwear was similar in style but they were absolutely pristine. Shiny, even, for all their rugged foot protection.

  “As long as we find the artifact we came for. We will deal with any witnesses one way or another,” Shiny said. Caroline could almost hear the smile in his voice, and it felt oily to her.

  “Another hostage could come in handy. Those idiots in the FPAA might not stress too hard to retrieve one of their own, but a civilian might give them a few minutes to think,” Boots agreed.

  A loud crash nearby made Caroline jump. It sounded like part of the building collapsed, and there was a shout of triumph accompanying it. Both pairs of feet in front of her turned to face the noise and she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that any noise she’d made in her surprise had been muffled by the ruckus, whatever it was.

  “I got it!” someone shouted. There was a sound of more feet rushing around, Boots and Shiny stepped away from the table and out of her view, then after a few minutes there was quiet. Caroline stayed under the table, motionless and silent for a long time. An odd image flashed into her mind of a rabbit that lived in her mom’s garden that would sit just under the edge of a bush in the twilight and watch you watching it. She’d sat there watching the animal for maybe fifteen minutes once, both of them sitting still, the rabbit no doubt hoping that either Caroline hadn’t seen it already or that she wasn’t hungry.

  Finally, when she couldn’t take the heavy quiet anymore she crept towards the sliver of light where Boot’s boot had appeared and pressed her face to the floor to peek out. The room was a mess, one of the display cases overturned and the contents scattered across the floor, mingling with shards of glass and splinters of the wooden frame that had held the case together.

  No feet. No people at all. Still, she waited a few more minutes, holding her breath and watching the dust swirl in the one shaft of sunlight that speared through the window. The displays usually needed dusting, she thought to herself, but this seemed like a terrible way to go about it. As soon as she thought it, she breathed a quiet giggle. It was such a ridiculous thought that the tension drained out of her all in a rush and she decided that she was being completely silly, hiding under a table when the thieves had gone a long time ago. The police were probably outside right now, and she could go tell them the little bits that she’d overheard and then go home to be grounded for the rest of her life when her parents found out.

  Caroline crept out from under the table, careful not to put a hand or knee on a glass shard— last thing she needed was to cut herself and start bleeding everywhere— and stood up with a shiver to survey the damage.

  A hand gripped her arm and she froze again.

  “I knew I heard something.” It was Shiny’s voice. Caroline twisted to look over her shoulder and saw his perfect boots matched the rest of him. He was dressed like the undercover military SWAT team guys usually were in the movies with his black boots and cargo pants, and the black long sleeved shirt under a black vest of some kind, but at the same time he managed to somehow look like he was wearing formalwear. He was sitting cross-legged on top of the table so she would never have seen him when she looked across the floor, and when he was still it was the complete stillness of an inanimate object.

  Caroline did the only thing in that moment that she felt that she was full capable of. She fainted.

  2

  “Hey.”

  Caroline shivered. She wasn’t sure why but she was terrified and just hoped that whatever it was she was scared of wouldn’t notice her. Probably jet the end of a nightmare. She had them sometimes and could never really remember them after, just the odd, creeping feeling of dread that didn’t wear off for a few hours.

  “Hey, miss. You need to wake up and let me know you’re okay.” Okay? Why wouldn’t she be okay?

  Then the whole scene rushed through her memory at high speed: the disaster at school, running off campus to just get away from all that drama, going to the tiny town museum, and the robbery.

  She’d been kidnapped. Holy shit.

  “Miss, if you’re okay, please let me know. I don’t want to be locked in here with a corpse. Again.” The voice was strained and not at all melodic like Boots or Shiny. Still, she kept her eye
s closed and didn’t say anything. She just focused on keeping her breathing deep and even so he’d think she was still out while she tried to come up with a plan.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” The voice said. “You’re not hurt too badly then. Thank goodness for that anyway.”

  Caroline’s eyes flew open and she sat up.

  “How could you tell I heard you?” she demanded. Then she wanted to smack herself in the face for being so easily taunted into revealing herself. The man chuckled softly. There was no malice in the sound, just amusement.

  “I could hear your breathing change. You were working too hard at sounding asleep.” He said. Caroline looked over and saw a man sitting on the floor in the corner across from her, one arm propped on his bent knee. He looked relaxed lounging there in the corner, but she had the strange sensation that it was an act. He was wearing jeans and a polo shirt, and scuffed up hiking shoes, and looked a bit like anyone. Well, aside from the dirt smearing him from head to toe, and the tears all over his clothes, and the blackening bruises she could see all down the left side of his face and peeking through the holes in his shirt. Dried blood trickled past his right ear from somewhere under his hair and his left eye was swollen almost shut.

  “Holy shit what happened to you?” She was clearly going to have to work on her filter when under stress. The man shrugged.

  “You should see the other guys,” he smirked before sobering a bit. “Well, some of them anyway. They got me with elf shot from behind. Stupid, rookie mistake leaving my back exposed like I did. The rest of this is just them enjoying themselves for a few minutes after I went down. Stress relief or something.”

  “Elf… shot?” Caroline wondered what kind of weird slang that was. “Where are we? What’s going on, anyway? Who are those guys? Why are we here? Why would those guys want anything in that boring old dustbag excuse for a museum?”

  “Well what were you doing there then?” he countered.

  “Er…” Caroline wondered if she’d lost her mind. Why was she feeling guilty about admitting that she skipped school when she’d been kidnapped by museum robbers. “I, um. I was kinda hiding out.”

  “Hiding out? I guess a dusty unvisited museum room is a good place to do that.” The man nodded. “Although I hope you weren’t hiding from them, because in that case you did a lousy job.”

  “Well, not when I went there to begin with, no.” Caroline slumped on… what was she on? She actually took a moment to look around now and discovered that they were in what looked like a basement room, with a small, barred window high up in the wall letting in a trickle of sunlight. She sat on a cot that she had expected to be filthy but was surprisingly clean and comfortable. There was even a wool blanket folded up at the foot of the narrow mattress. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and probably warm. In the wall opposite the window was the expected door, and as expected it looked thick and strong and had no opening in it anywhere. What she hadn’t expected was in the wall opposite her own seat on the cot was another door, standing halfway open, and opening onto a small bathroom.

  “Where…” Caroline didn’t even know what to start asking. The man sighed and the noise sounded so… defeated somehow that she looked back at him.

  “I’m not honestly sure how much I should tell you,” he said, staring at the floor between them. “If we ever get out of here it might be best if you don’t know.”

  “If? Won’t the police come save us?” She asked. Caroline knew that she was a bit sheltered. She was a self-admitted nerd and her parents knew that she was probably too trusting of people and as such kept her on a pretty tight leash. Skipping school today had been her first and so far only act of rebellion since third grade, unless one counted wearing navy blue instead of black like her mom had picked out to go to her dad’s formal club dinner. Still, wasn’t that the whole point of having police? Even in a smaller town like this one? The man sighed again.

  “Not very likely. Well, not the police you’re thinking of anyway. My team will have pulled rank on them pretty damn quick, and they work under slightly different rules. If they come here they will try to get us out, yes, but we’re not going to be their main focus.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “My chief probably won’t even bother looking for me, frankly. He’ll be glad to be rid of me. And they may not even know about you.”

  “What? But why?” Caroline heard the bitterness in his voice as he spoke. There was frustration and anger and defeat there as well, and a few other things that were less strong. She’d never been very good with people, felt that ‘socially awkward’ was probably the nicest way to describe herself, but she had always been able to hear more shades in people’s words than everyone else. It was how she reacted to the knowledge that she didn’t know how to deal with.

  He flashed her a small smile, wincing at the flair of pain from his eye.

  “He’s never cared much for my kind. Hated it when my transfer application was approved. I used to work up in Washington state.” He shrugged again.

  “Your kind? What, like some sort of special undercover cop or something?” Caroline asked. He glanced up at her and blinked. Then took a deep breath and slowly started to sit up straight. She watched him unfold himself from his spot lounging on the floor and realized that he was tall. Very tall, it seemed to her, easily another foot and a half taller than she was herself. And he was muscular, like a swimmer.

  “Someone’s coming,” he said, leaning back against the wall again and crossing one foot over the other. Again she got the feeling that he was pretending to lounge, but was actually more like a coiled spring.

  “What? How—”

  The door opened. And three men came in. Shiny, in the middle, carried two trays and the other two men had very serious looking guns pointed at her cellmate. Caroline watched the men with huge eyes, but they didn’t even glance at her, keeping their whole attention trained on the beaten man leaning against the wall under the tiny window.

  “Here you go, young lady. Dinner is served. I hope your accommodations meet with your approval, but let’s be honest with each other. It wouldn’t much matter if they didn’t,” Shiny said. “Pity that you had to pick today to investigate local history, but that’s simply the strange way fate works. Until we decide what to do about you— both of you,” he glared at her companion now, “you’ll simply have to stay here and be patient.” He set the trays down on the bed beside her. It was clear that nobody considered her a threat, but that they were very careful of her cellmate.

  “As for you,” Shiny was saying. “Your colleagues don’t seem terribly interested in retrieving you. I’m somewhat amused by that. Office politics go sour?” Caroline heard the taunts in his voice, but was confused by what lay underneath. Worry and just a hint of fear. Caroline felt dizzy with questions, but knew one thing for dead sure. She was in way over her head.

  Her cellmate just shrugged and stayed otherwise still. Shiny narrowed his eyes and glared for a moment before turning and walking out. The gunmen backed out slowly, never taking their attention off their target before the door closed and she heard a heavy thunk as it was locked.

  “What…” Caroline’s voice squeaked and she had to clear her throat. “What’s your name? I can’t just keep thinking of you as ‘that guy.’ I’m Caroline.” She swallowed and waited.

  “Darien,” he said, then slid down the wall to sit on the floor again. He was breathing heavily like he’d been running and she saw that the blood running down his face, which had been dry when she woke up, was now dripping onto the shoulder of his shirt. He swiped at it gingerly. “My friends usually shorten it to just my initial. Because they’re lazy and think they’re clever, I guess.”

  “So just D?” She said, grabbing a water bottle from one of the trays and twisting the top off. She scrambled over to where he slumped on the floor and tried to hand it to him. “You’re really badly hurt, aren’t you?” He glanced up at her and shrugged.

  “Besides the obvious?” He winced at his movement. “Yeah. A few
broken ribs, maybe some internal damage. I think my wrist is broken. More than likely a concussion. Almost certainly a concussion”

  “Why aren’t you lying down?” Caroline swore she felt herself go pale as he casually listed off injuries that should have him in a hospital bed. “Why did you stand up like that? You need a doctor!” He shook his head.

  “If they think I am anything less than a very serious threat to them, it won’t end well for me certainly. Maybe not for you either, since they’ve tossed us in together.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Although maybe they didn’t have a choice. I think they just had this room ready in case they needed it, not because they were expecting lots of prisoners. Maybe it’s the only one they have.” He shrugged again.

  “There’s no way you can be a threat to anyone besides yourself if you’re so badly hurt,” she said. “Let me help you over to the bed, okay?” Darien shook his head.

  “No, I’ll heal. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on the losing end of a fight. Trust me, this will pass. Eventually.”

  Caroline sat on the floor beside him. It was strangely comforting, even as badly injured as Darien was, to know that she wasn’t in this alone. Just having his company was probably keeping her from hysteria.

  “That guy sounded kinda scared of you. And then the extra scary guns on top of it. Those other guys must look really terrible after all.” That got a laugh.

  “Yeah. I’d have made it out fine if I’d been less of an idiot.” Then he frowned. “What do you mean he sounded scared of me?”

  “Oh, just his tone of voice, you know? Under the taunting bravado, he was kinda… I dunno. Scared of you I guess. And a little confused, which doesn’t make much sense, but…” she shrugged now herself.