I was supposed to be concentrating on a mission.

A very important mission, involving a missing Italian Navy General and NATO official, Davide Basilone. He had been commuting back and forth to Croatia for months, without telling anybody and apparently just going whenever he felt like it, which eventually got him discharged from the navy. Within the hour he left on his boat, La Libellula, and nobody had seen him since.

But the General's disappearance and the mystery surrounding it was not my primary focus at the moment, even though it was my job and Basilone's life could potentially be on the line. As a General in the Navy he knew Italian military secrets. But he was also a key figure in the NATO alliance, which meant he could know about any potential plans the other 28 countries that were represented in the alliance may have cooking up.

No, right now my primary focus was, unprofessionally, on a girl.

A girl whose hands trembled when too many people looked at her. Whose eyes tried to take in everything she saw all at once. Who tilts her head instead of talking. Who doesn't trust herself and yet could knock your teeth out without even breaking a sweat. A girl who had eyes the color of when sunlight hits ocean.

I hadn't decided what specific color Adira's eyes were before now. Well, I still hadn't. Every time I saw them they looked a different color than before, but since being on the Italian coast picking up the trail of a Navy general, I'd been next to the ocean a lot. And when the sun shone on it just right, it mirrored the typical color of her eyes. That might be a reason this mission is taking longer than expected —every time I look at the ocean I worry about her.

That and Basilone seems to have actually dispersed from the face of the Earth. There were no records of him making credit card transactions, his cars hadn't moved, no payment for gas, no presence on security cameras or entrance to his office, no news of him in any other countries, or basically existing after about a month ago. I have yet to try Croatia and try and pick up a trail there but it was looking dull.

It was early January, and one of those days where the sky was clear and endlessly blue, but it was also freezing. Basilone's house was homey, two stories above the ground and windows on either side of the door. I sat in the driver's seat of a car across the street and down a few houses, warm in just a t-shirt. I don't get cold very easily. I slept on the rooftops of buildings in Chicago when there was nowhere else, and if that doesn't build up a good resistance to weather, I don't know what does. His house was one of the places I hadn't checked yet. For the past three days I had been by and mapped out what his wife's schedule was, what times she would be away from and when I can get inside and check Davide's home office. In about six minutes she should leave. Until then I stared out the window in front of me and rested my wrists on the top of the steering wheel.

I just hoped that Adira was safe. That's all that I cared about. Because after what she told me had happened to her in the past... I don't understand how she can even sleep at night. There are no words. Flagg hadn't listened to me when I said that making her an agent would be a bad idea, but when he made me do it anyway I vowed that I could at least try to give this girl a second chance. A second chance to be granted the feeling of safety that she, like every human, deserves. And I wouldn't give up on that.

I also hoped that she was being respected. I'd told Harrison not let any of the typical players go anywhere near her, which he has probably interpreted as flirting with her every few minutes to ensure that nobody else does. But deep down Harrison is a good guy, he's like my brother, and will ultimately deck anybody who looks at her wrong with or without my instruction.

I hoped that James was helping her in every way he could. He'd been through a lot. What I had been thinking when I presented James as a candidate for Adira's supervising agent was that he would be able to teach her to navigate a place where all eyes would be on her. He knew a lot about that.

At the agency Flagg holds one principle particularly above all the rest: no fraternizing between agents. He says it initiates alliances and spawns trust issues, which could compromise training and cause fights, rifts and general uncomfortable feelings between agents, which would overall manifest into failed missions. I mean I guess that makes a little sense but something tells me it's a cover up for some homophobic bullshit. He even hates us having friends.

Heaven forbid a mission goes slightly wrong because we've found someone to help heal ourselves.

James is known for breaking that rule. That's why people shun him, stare at him and make fun of him. He's always the last to get food at meal times, and ends up with the scraps that nobody else wanted. He never goes to the rec rooms after training, he goes on missions alone if at all. He gets beat up and does nothing to fight back.

It was almost four years ago that they were caught, James and this other agent, for "fraternizing." I don't know how long it had been going on for, or how the Director even found out. Flagg was.... furious doesn't even begin to cover it. James was shaping up to be a very promising agent at the time, which I think is why the Director kept him on as agent, even after he dragged him down to the prison cells and personally bashed his knee in with a 20 pound sledgehammer. Punishment is not a word that can cover that kind of cold-hearted execution of remorse. It was torture. Screams echoing up through the vents, making the younger agents scrub James' blood off the floor. And then the other agent vanished.

James closed up afterwards. Wouldn't speak to anybody. Didn't sleep or eat. Even though the other agent didn't have a reputation for me to know him by, apparently James thought he was special by the way he acted after he left. Shortly after, Owen was appointed Inspector, and double the amount of cameras were added to virtually every sector of the agency to ensure that nobody broke the rule again. James serves as a living reminder, limping through his day, eating in the dining hall, sleeping in my dorm, teaching level 3s as if nothing happened. As if his life hadn't shattered like his kneecap had.

I didn't tell Adira James' story. Maybe if they got close enough James would tell her himself. I hope that he is helping her, become a spy and deal with the sudden thrust back into society again. Perhaps helping her would help him help himself a bit too. It had been four years. Even if he had possibly... loved that other agent, he was gone now.

Love was weird. Not that I knew anything about it, but if James was willing to break the rules just to be with someone, love was more powerful than a grenade launcher. And I had personally fired a grenadine launcher before, and it was awesome and scary and fun all at the same time. I guess love is like that too. Oh how poetic I am to compare a feeling to a WOMD.

Basilone's wife came out the back door of her house like usual, slipped into a green electric Audi and sped off to work at approximately 6:54am. I glanced at the watch on my right hand. The neighbor on the right leaves at 7:02 and walks to a cafe five blocks away for French roast coffee, so I would wait until he left too. My eyes flicked up to a window on the second floor of the Basilone house, charting how bad it would hurt if I had to jump out of it for some reason.

I don't think it would come to that though. Flagg didn't just send me on this mission so I would be away from Adira and let her learn on her own during her first few weeks, I was also a good agent. Really good. Flagg was taking extra precautions with me, making sure I wouldn't follow in James' path, and end up with a broken knee and a broken heart.