The Wait
"This is ridiculous." Kev chucked the cheap, plastic ballpoint he'd been fiddling with onto his notepad; the pen struck the paper with a rattle, bounced once and rolled off the long edge onto the conference room table. "They do it on purpose. Insist on us dragging our asses all the way here and then make us sit around. Like we don't have better things to do, a country to protect."
No doubt the CIA agents in question were also busy protecting the country—of that, Henry felt fairly certain. But he didn't say so. Nor did he point out that the rivalry that clearly festered between the IC's various agencies couldn't be healthy. He was new to the NSA, and only a one-or-two-op recruit at that, so it wasn't his place to judge—and any judgments he did make, he sensed he'd do well to keep to himself. Instead, he lifted his takeout cup from the table, took a slow sip of lukewarm coffee and continued staring out through the glass wall opposite.
The sky was a crisp and cloudless blue.
Perfect for flying…
The thought snagged something in his chest.
On days like this he couldn't help but wonder if he'd made the right decision when he retired from the Marines and returned to academia. He loved to fly and he took great pride in serving his country, but he'd experienced one too many losses and one too many near-misses and at some point he began to question if it was really worth the risk, especially when out there somewhere a woman was waiting for him, a woman whose initials formed the mark over his heart, his soulmate.
He hadn't met her yet though, despite what he'd once thought, and it could be decades before he did. Had he quit too soon? Or was this the path he was supposed to take?
Another five or six minutes passed before the door handle clattered and the door swept open.
"Finally," Kev muttered, and straightened up in his seat.
"Sorry about that, folks," a man said, his tone breezy and not sorry in the slightest.
Still holding the takeout cup loosely in one hand, Henry twisted around in his chair, hoping to get a look at his new colleagues as they filed into the room, maybe size them up and figure out which ones might be difficult to work with, which ones he was bound to hear endless griping about from Kev, but his gaze darted straight to the woman second to enter and then clung to her while everything around her faded to a dim blur of grey. His mouth turned dry, his heart pounded, and his soulmate mark throbbed like it were a second heart embedded in the skin of his chest.
Caroline Faulkner…
It couldn't be her. Surely. Not here. Not at Langley.
But it was her, and despite knowing her name, his reaction to her was exactly the same as it had been the first time they'd met. It made as little sense now as it had back then.
oOoOo
18 months ago…
Henry pocketed his cell phone and strode through the shabby red and gold decor of the hotel foyer towards the reception room where the other attendees had already gathered for drinks and mingling. He'd felt rude for stepping away to take the call, but he knew that if he didn't his mother would keep on calling, and apparently the time difference between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and London, England meant nothing to her, so if he didn't get it out of the way now he'd risk her phoning in the middle of the night. Again. She insisted she was simply keeping him updated on his eldest sister, Maureen, who was due to give birth any day, but somehow the conversation always wound its way around to whether he'd met anyone yet—'anyone' meaning his soulmate. It felt like she'd expected him to meet his one and settle down within days of returning from the Marines. He would have liked that too—he wanted the whole marriage and kids and white picket fence thing that everyone else his age (and a decade or more younger) seemed intent on doing—but there were some things he couldn't force. Fate being one of them. All he could do was hope and wait.
He came to a stop just inside the double doors of the reception room. The room was packed and the air buzzed with a hundred different conversations. The rosy cheeks and loud bursts of laughter, not to mention the conspicuously empty seats at the presentations, suggested some people had opted to skip the main event and make a head start at the open bar. What with the monotone deliveries of a handful of the speakers, Henry couldn't blame them.
He scanned the crowd in search of Dr Amari, a visiting scholar at UVA who he'd collaborated with while working on his PhD and who had invited him to attend the conference, but instead of Dr Amari, his gaze found her. And the rest of the room fell away.
His heart thudded, his palms dampened with sweat and the initials on his chest throbbed. It felt like his whole being pulsed with the sound of those letters. E - A - E - A - E - A…
People always said that when you met your soulmate, you just knew.
And he did. She was it. She was whom he'd been waiting for. She was his soulmate.
Before he could process what was happening, he found himself pushing through the crowd towards her, like he were magnetised by her, an invisible force pulling them together; he squeezed past the groups clustered in conversation, murmuring excuse me after excuse me, his gaze never once leaving her. With honey blonde hair wound into a tousled chignon, simple yet stylish black-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose and a long-skirt-white-button-down-shirt combo, she reminded him of a librarian. But not any of the librarians he'd met. A sexy librarian.
When he was four or five paces away, her gaze shifted from the person she was talking to and landed on him. He could have sworn he saw her pupils dilate.
Had she felt the pull, too? Were his initials pulsing through her? H - M - H - M - H - M…
His lips parted, his tongue searched for something to say, Hi, I think you're my soulmate, but half a second later she looked away again, as if nothing had happened, and she resumed the conversation. Her voice was husky, unexpected, her accent English, that of the upper class.
Perhaps she was just being polite to the person she was talking to, not wanting to interrupt their discussion and turn her attention to someone else, or perhaps she didn't do public displays of emotion, even upon finding her soulmate. After all, she was British.
Henry hovered at the edge of the conversation, looking for an opportunity to join in, but before he could find one, her gaze flitted to him again, just for a fraction of a second, and the person she was speaking with followed the drift of her gaze and pivoted to face him.
Dr Amari.
"Henry, there you are." Dr Amari took a step to the side and opened up the circle to Henry.
"I hope I'm not interrupting." Henry looked from Dr Amari to the woman and back again.
"Of course not." Dr Amari gave him a warm smile. Then he returned to the woman. "This is Henry McCord, a student at UVA. He's about to finish his PhD."
The woman eyed Henry. Her gaze held a glint that made her seem vaguely amused, maybe playful even, but it had a sharpness to it too, like on some level she were assessing him.
Henry might have questioned what that look meant, were every cell of his body not still pulsing with the sound of the initials that marked his chest.
E - A - E - A - E - A…
Was she an Eleanor? An Emilia? An Elizabeth? He'd always loved the name Elizabeth.
Dr Amari turned to Henry. "Henry, this is Ms Faulkner."
Henry frowned. Faulkner…?
The pulse quietened.
But 'Faulkner' didn't start with an 'A'.
Ms Faulkner held out her hand, her fingers angled down in a way that left it open for him to decide whether he wanted to kiss her hand or shake it. "Caroline."
"Caroline…?" His voice was parched and unsteady; it made the name sound like a question.
"Well, Caro to friends." Her face lit with a smile, like she'd said something terribly witty.
Caroline. His heart slumped. He'd been so sure, so convinced that she was his soulmate. But Caroline didn't start with an 'E'.
He fought to keep the disappointment from his expression and instead offered a somewhat taut smile. "It's nice to meet you, Caroline," he said, and he forced himself to shake her hand.
oOoOo
Present day…
Henry watched Caroline as she walked around the end of the conference room table and set a stone-blue manila folder down in the place opposite him. Although his mind was consumed with her, those initials throbbing through him just as they had the first time they'd met, she seemed oblivious to his gaze. She'd left her hair down today, so the ends hung in soft curls around her shoulders, and she'd traded the librarian look for a light grey pantsuit. Her glasses were the same.
She folded her hands over the backrest of the chair and dragged the chair far enough away from the table that she could step around it and sink onto the seat. Then she scooted the chair closer to the table's edge, the ends of her hair bouncing as she did. Once she was settled, her gaze flicked up and met Henry's. A spark danced in her eyes and a smile quirked the corners of her lips.
E - A - E - A - E - A…
The throb of those initials pulsed harder. Henry outright stared at her. It made no sense that he should react this way—she was Caroline Faulkner. CF. Not EA.
Caroline's gaze dipped to the folder in front of her and she peeled back the cover, while the brunette who'd taken the seat to her left leant in and whispered something in her ear, causing Caroline's smile to widen to a grin and a small, husky laugh to escape her.
"Right then, let's get started, shall we," said the man who'd been first to enter and who now sat at the head of the table. "Agent Kevin Clark of the NSA. Dr Henry McCord, a religious scholar at the University of Virginia and a former student of Dr Amari." He gestured to their side of the table, and then, once he'd finished introducing them, swept his hand to the three seated on the opposite side. "Agents Michael Wright, Elizabeth Adams and Isabelle—"
"Elizabeth?" Henry blurted.
The room fell silent. The air grew thick and tense.
All gazes turned on Henry, and Henry's cheeks flamed.
Caroline—Elizabeth?—seemed unperturbed. "Adams," she said, as if Henry simply hadn't heard. "Elizabeth Adams." Then she shot him a sly smile. "Nice to meet you, Professor."
Her accent was American, no distinct dialect.
After a lengthy—and somewhat awkward—pause, the man at the head of the table perhaps waiting to see if Henry would object to anyone else's name, the meeting resumed. Henry knew he ought to concentrate, especially seeing as he was the one who would be making contact with Dr Amari and if he messed up he might well blow the whole operation, but his mind was reeling.
Elizabeth Adams, not Caroline Faulkner. EA.
When the meeting finally dragged to a close what felt like hours later, enough time to make several transatlantic trips, Henry abandoned Kev and hurried out into the corridor, hoping to catch up with Elizabeth. The moment he stepped over the threshold strip that separated the slate grey carpet tiles of the conference room from the identical carpet tiles of the hallway, a hand caught hold of his wrist.
"Hey," Elizabeth said.
Henry turned to her and his mouth hinged open, ready to say, 'Hey,' in reply, but before the word had the chance to form on his tongue, she hooked one finger beneath the V of her blouse and tugged the material to the side, revealing her soulmate mark, just to the left of her breastbone.
HM.
"I felt it, too," she said, and straightened her blouse. "But I couldn't afford to blow my cover with Amari." With a nod, she gestured to his chest. "And I already know yours matches, courtesy of your military file, so don't worry about showing me." She paused, and then added with a smirk, "Well, not yet anyway."
"You researched me?" He didn't know if he should be pleased or concerned.
"What can I say?" She shrugged. "You made an impression."
"Bess!" Isabelle's exasperated shout echoed from the far end of the corridor.
"I gotta go." Elizabeth paced backwards away from him, her face alight with a mischievous grin. "I look forward to working with you, Henry McCord," she said. Then she turned on her heel and strode away.
Henry watched after her. He still wasn't entirely sure what had happened that morning; a couple of hours ago it felt like it might be decades before he finally met his soulmate. But when Elizabeth sent him a glance over her shoulder and bit down on her bottom lip, he felt sure of this:
Not only had he been on the right path all along, but Elizabeth Adams was more than worth the wait.