Love filled with Lies

14.

​The next five days were hard. I so badly just wanted to sit in my room eating a tub of ice cream, but I was an agent, and that is not what we did. So life went on. I put everything I had into trying to find this traitor. I was sitting at my desk clinging to any clues I could get when there was a knock on the door. It was Lou.

​"Well hello, stranger," Lou said, as she walked in and sat down on my sofa.
​"Hey, Lou," I said, sitting down next to her.
"So that was a bit crazy, eh? Crystals death I mean she kind of had it coming really." Lou stated
​"Lou, you can't say that!"
"I know, I know, I'm sorry I just didn't like her. Anyway, where the hell have you been? You haven't been at training for a week. I have been in my room writing your eulogy, as I thought you must have been the next victim of the intruder."

​This was a sad and grim time, but Lou had a way of always making intense situations into a joke to downgrade the seriousness. I whacked her lightly on the side of the arm.
"I have just been so busy with all this assignment work. I have to catch this intruder before anyone else gets hurt."
​"Well if you're working on the assignment where's your hunky sidekick?"
"Um, he is not here. We kind of broke up." I said feeling a pitch in my stomach as I said it. I had been trying hard to put Connor out of my mind, trust Lou to bring up his name.

​"Wait for someone to break up, first they have to date. Ooh, tell me everything." Lou made herself comfortable on my sofa, waiting for the gossip.
​I then told her everything. She sat there processing my words for a few seconds then finally spoke.
​"Oh wow, Bell you are such an idiot."
​"What!" I replied, surprised by her opinion.
​"You broke up with a guy who was tough, protective, handsome, romantic, funny and sweet."
​I opened my mouth to speak, but Lou cut me off.
"And don't you dare say it's for the academy because that's bullshit Bell. The truth is you're scared. You saw Crystal's dead body and you freaked out because you didn't want her or anyone else's blood on your hands. You needed someone other than yourself to blame so you threw away the one good thing in your life."

​I listened to what Lou said, and she was right. I didn't want anyone else's blood on my hands and I blamed Conner when he did nothing wrong.
​"You're right Lou, I stuffed up the one good thing in my life because I was scared."
​I started freaking out as I realised my relationship with Connor was over because of my selfish reasons.
Lou looked at me and shrugged. "Well I would love to sit here with you and try to come up with a way for you to get your boyfriend back, but I don't get to slacken off from training like you. So I have to go, but I will see you later. Oh and make sure to update me on anything that happens."
And with that said, Lou stood up and left my room.

​I just sat there for ages thinking about how I acted with Connor and ruined everything. Lou was right - I had found a guy who had everything, there was nothing wrong with him, he had no blemishes. Blemishes hmm? I suddenly realised something - pretty much everyone has physical blemishes.
​I quickly ran over to my desk and clicked on the body scans. I then clicked on my own body scan and for the first time, realised mine was missing. Okay, I would look into that later. Um, right, I knew Lou had a mole on the side of her knee. I brought up her scan and zoomed onto her knee. There was no mole. As I scanned through, I realised not one person had a blemish of any kind on their body: no freckle, no mole no marks at all. Someone must have deleted all the blemishes. The intruder must have realised we would see her birthmark so she deleted it off her body so we wouldn't find her. She was even smart enough to erase everyone's blemishes so if we found out what she did, we still couldn't figure out who she was. This meant everyone in the 'Sharpening group' was a suspect, again.

​Who from amongst us was clever enough to do this? I know we were all learning to be agents, but this person had managed to scrap this information from Nigel's personal computer and it would have taken time. Not to mention that they would have had to enter his office and I for one know he has two security cameras in there.

​After figuring out about the blemishes, I was so excited and the first person I wanted to tell was Conner. But how? I had no way to contact him and besides that, he was probably angry at me. The only link I had to Conner was Nigel. I quickly ran over to his office.

​"What do you want Agent 1, I'm very busy!"
​"Sorry to interrupt you, Nigel. I was just wondering that if the next time you see Conner you could tell him I need to talk to him about the assignment."
​"Actually I haven't seen my son for a week. I think he has ghosted me. He hasn't been home or at his mums and he isn't answering his phone. I was actually going to ask you if you had seen him and if you have any clue as to why he would just up and disappear."

​Nigel was looking up at me and I did everything in my power to remain casual.
​"Oh, I don't know maybe he just needed a break," I replied trying to act as normal as possible.
​"Well if you see him, Agent 1, get him to call me. If that's all you want then you can leave now." Nigel said, dismissing me and returning his attention to his computer.

​I left without saying another word. Conner hadn't been at home for a week, that worried me. He could be in trouble