Page 14 of Acting on Instinct
“That’s it, Ty. Time.” The woman sitting in front of him was Iniquus’s administering psychiatrist, Dr. Banyon. She was the dragon at the gate, the main hurdle he’d have to jump on his way to a job offer with Cerberus K9 Team Delta.
In a spacious office decorated in muted colors and void of anything personal, Dr. Banyon wore a charcoal-gray suit that was tight on her form—not in a sexy, look-at-me way, more in a constrained, regulated way.
Ty vaguely wondered if this was a uniform that she wore to elicit from her interviewees the sensation of being a child in the principal’s office.
She had slicked her hair into a bun that gave Ty the impression that she had a military background. Or maybe she’d been a dancer. Normal citizens didn’t sit that ramrod straight.
Every bit of how Dr. Banyon presented herself seemed psychologically purposeful.
Perhaps Ty thought that because he’d seen Johnna White on his way into the building.
Yeah, while Dr. Banyon and White didn’t have the same stature or look, they shared the same vibe of manipulation.
Where he’d met Dr. Banyon a few hours before, Johnna White had been a character in his world for years, and from his time knowing her, he knew White was a master mind of games. “A blessing and a curse,” as his mom liked to say. The biggest blessing? White had offered Ty a mission with an endgame he’d wanted for a long damned time. Two end games: to take down a specific terrorist and finally find the love of his life.
And as White had wanted, the terrorist was flatlined, and Kira was in his arms, thanking him.
Kira both loved him and didn’t fully trust her feelings for him.
Understandable.
He’d come into her life by design. Sent in to form an attachment so he could get the information his team needed. Nothing about the beginning of his relationship with Kira was happenstance. It was all White, hovering over the stage, pulling at the marionette strings.
Selfishly, he hoped Kira would reach a point where she could trust herself and believe in them, like he did.
He wasn’t going to push.
If the day never came when Kira believed her love was real, Ty was still hugely grateful that White chose him for that fateful mission that potentially saved Kira’s life and protected her from a vicious future.
Just knowing Kira breathed easily and lived her gentle life of books and walks in the woods was a gift to Ty.
Right now, though, Kira was dealing with PTSD from the fallout of his mission and a terrorist attack that came right on its heels, where she saw her best friend shot in the head.
Ty twiddled the pen in his hand, and when Dr. Banyon said nothing more to him, he gingerly placed it on the table and pushed back in his chair, lifting his palms to his eyes.
During his time in the military, Ty had been through his fair share of psychological assessments, aptitude and IQ tests, but nothing like the battery of evaluations he had just gone through with Dr. Banyon.
His brain was mush.
There was not a single fold of his gray matter that hadn’t been lifted and palpated for rot.
He’d been warned that the vetting at Iniquus was intense, and he’d kind of brushed it off. He didn’t earn his place in The Unit by letting anything intimidate him. He’d decided to take it one step at a time and do his best with each step.
But the good Dr. Banyon kept her foot on the gas the entire time.
When Ty was out on a mission with his working K9, Rory, sometimes they were in situations where he couldn’t run his dog to burn off all that Malinois energy. So Ty devised different games to engage Rory’s brain.
“Tell me your thoughts,” Dr. Banyon said, gathering up the papers from in front of Ty and sliding them into her briefcase.
“Two things, a question I had about the pen, and I was thinking about Rory.”
“I’ll answer your question if I can.”
“Why did I take the test with pen and paper and not on a computer? From what I know of Iniquus, you all do nothing without forethought and distinct reasoning.”
“That’s true.” She leaned back in her chair, looking comfortable while Ty sat with military erectness. “If you were guessing, what would those reasons be?”
“Perhaps handwriting analysis? To be honest, I haven’t done a lot of handwriting since back in high school. Everything’s done with a keyboard now. I can’t say that the analyzer is going to have a good time trying to make out my writing.”
