Free Secrets by Jude Deveraux

there were three blasts from his gun. Behind him came another person, but the man spun and shot. They saw the man quickly raise his gun and fire the fifth round, this time at the figure crouched on top of the wall.
    â€œDamn it!” said the man as he jumped to the ground. “I thought I had you that time.”
    Their teacher, Jefferson Ames, had shot all five of them with the red paint slug, then removed his mask and was now reloading. “I heard you and I saw you.” He looked up at them, their masks now removed and their young, eager faces looking at him with wide eyes.
    â€œHave any of you reloaded?” His voice was full of the frustration of having to tell them the same things over and over.
    â€œNo, sir,” three of them said sheepishly.
    â€œA good agent—” Jeff began, but then he saw the face of the girl. She was good at the book work, but she had a long way to go with the physical aspects of being an agent. Right now her eyes were open wide in astonishment, as though she saw something behind her teacher.
    Jeff spun, but not fast enough to shoot first. The intruder’s gun went off. Exactly over Jeff’s heart, in a perfect shot, a red blob of paint marred his black running suit. In front of him was a man wearing a pair of khaki trousers and a dark brown leather jacket, his face hidden under a black ski mask.
    Behind Jeff were his five students, and he could feel that they were standing absolutely still. Who had had the audacity to shoot their teacher? And who had been able to sneak up on him and get that deadly shot off?
    Jeff turned to the students. “May I introduce my father? Thomas Ames.”
    Jeff smiled at the respectful silence that hit his students. His father’s name was in the textbooks and on award plaques around the school. Thomas Ames was a legend to those training at the CIA school, the school that the United States government said didn’t exist.
    Thomas pulled his ski mask off, revealing his handsome face and thick gray hair, and smiled at the students, who still hadn’t recovered enough to speak.
    â€œOur guest lecturer for the next hour,” Jeff said, and he was pleased to see his father’s slight frown. Thomas hated teaching. He was a man who learned by doing and thought others should learn that way too. Jeff knew his father had come to have lunch with him, but the elder man couldn’t resist showing off by shooting his own son in front of his students. So his punishment was to have to teach for an hour while Jeff showered and changed.
    Thirty minutes later, Jeff went back to the classroom to find his father reading a book, his feet propped on Jeff’s old desk.
    â€œWhat did you do with them?” Jeff asked. “They didn’t deserve a holiday.”
    â€œYou’re too hard on them. That blond boy has potential.”
    â€œMaybe. He’s too impetuous for my taste.”
    â€œI seem to remember saying that to someone else.”
    Jeff smiled. For all that his father said he hated teaching, when Jeff was growing up, they had played endless games of “find the spy”—or whatever name they came up with. By the time he was in the second grade, Jeff was figuring out simple codes. When he was twelve, he started training with weapons.
    In their house, what his father did for a living was never spoken about, but Jeff and his mother knew. There were many nights when Jeff had sat by his mother and held her hand while she waited nervously for a call from her husband. Three times the call had come from agents to tell her that Thomas had been injured.
    It was an injury to Thomas that had caused Jeff to be at the conference where Margaret Madden and her daughter were. As a favor to an old friend, not on official business, Thomas had agreed to work on security that weekend. Tempers were high over jobs that were being lost and others that were to be gained. Jeff was young and wasn’t a CIA agent then, but