Page 2 of Mastermind

Cortland has been running through the incident over and over in his mind, trying to figure out how I got the better of him. He finally decided he simply wasn’t prepared. He was right.

I lean forward on my closed case. I caught him off guard before and was able to bring his wrists together before he realized it. Now he won’t let me do that. He’s too strong. I have to get him to do it for me.

“Which thing?” I ask with a lighthearted smile, making myself seem unthreatening.

“The handcuff trick,” he says, bringing his hands together to show me.

Perfect.

“Oh.” I look to the clock on the wall. “I’m not sure if we . . .”

He relaxes, and his eyes flick to the clock.

His hands drop slightly. Click.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Cortland yells as he looks down at his bound wrists.

Everyone explodes with laughter. Tom Simmons and Ned Antonio, my co-instructors, are standing at the back of the classroom near the door, grinning.

This is the crucial moment, the one I want Cortland to learn from, because in some ways he’s the most vulnerable. He lifts his hands and stares at the handcuffs. It isn’t shock that he feels this time. It’s the reality of life setting in.

All the other students are watching him, waiting to see how he’ll react. Is he going to get angry? Will he protest that it wasn’t fair?

Cortland appraises his situation. He looks at the steel restraints like they’re some ancient scripture. A light goes on. His face relaxes. His anger fades. He smiles.

“You understand the secret?” I ask.

Cortland nods. “Never let your guard down.”

“Never,” I reply. “And you write the rules. Your greatest threats aren’t always going to be in front of you. Sometimes they’re thousands of miles away, plotting your demise.”

He drops his hands to his waist, unconcerned with the handcuffs; he’s accepted them now. “The stuff they told us about you—the cartel gun battles, the assassination attempts. I thought they hyped it up to make you into some kind of woke female superhero.”

I shake my head. “No. I was dumb and put myself into situations you all should be smart enough to avoid. I’m alive because I won a lottery, not because of tricks like this. They only work when I see what’s coming. When I don’t, I won’t survive.”

“Is this why you’re not in the field anymore?” asks Rhonda Parry, a petite young woman from Phoenix.

“The bureau decided I was better as a cautionary example than a tragic one.”

Tom Simmons jokes that I’m like the shop teacher who’s missing a few fingers.

Rhonda is sharp. She studied biology in college, then decided on forensics, but her criminal justice classes made her want to become an FBI agent. She sticks around after class and asks me about cases she’s researching and about my own history.

With every class, I get a few cadets like her. They see me as a role model and not the cautionary tale I should be viewed as. I do my best while secretly wanting to tell them to find some boring job and spend their evenings watching Netflix with someone they love and not a stack of folders and a pile of photographs of dead people.

“There have been some more miracle-cure ‘angel’ cases,” she says hesitantly. “I’d like to talk to you about them.”

“How about tomorrow?” I reply. “My office?”

“Okay.” She gives me a nervous smile.

“Ahem,” says Cortland, holding up his manacled wrists.

“Here.” I hand him a ballpoint pen.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“When I was eight, my grandfather put a pair of handcuffs on me, actually child-size ones, and locked me in a closet with just a pen and a notebook,” I explain.