only thing I’d have to do, until he asked me to hold my breath under the water. That day, I found out that one minute and five seconds wasn’t good enough.
There was also an indoor shooting range. A small emergency room was filled with shelves of medicine. There was one room that contained only metal spikes fastened to the walls, and the only way to go from one end of the room to the next was to swing by them.
Logan and I usually stuck with the basics, but on days when he wanted to push me to my limit, he gave me more advanced tasks.
“You ready, princess?” my father asked.
Saying no would have been an understatement, so I simply went with a nod.
TASK FORCE
“Funny thing is, we always hide our bruises,
Always forgetting, the scars would show.”
Melody Manful
Okay, you can do this, Abigail. I mean, how hard could it be to climb a rope?
Well, this rope looked more liked a fishing net with bigger holes. The first time I made it to the top of this particular rope without falling, I bought myself a tub of ice cream. It was more like my bodyguard, Felix, bought me ice cream because I couldn’t go into the store on my own without getting mobbed by the paparazzi.
“You understand the task ahead?” my father asked me, already taking his position behind a punching bag.
The task he was talking about was more of a challenge, really. We were at the part of the building where training equipment such as the rope were located. And a stone wall was built in the middle of the room. Behind that, the floor was divided so that big holes lay between the floors, approximately eleven feet deep with nets at the bottom. Each hole was about six-and-a-half feet wide. The thought of even attempting to jump across them scared me, and the nets below did absolutely nothing to calm me down.
There were three holes to jump before we’d reach the single rope that had to be climbed in order to reach the quiver and bow that were placed on top of a wooden platform sticking out from the side of the wall.
After we got a hold of the bow and quiver, we’d have to race behind a black line, where we’d have three chances to shoot at a red button that was fastened underneath a screen that was counting down the ten minutes we had to complete the task.
The challenge was to make it through all those steps before the countdown stopped—the real challenge for me was to try to get close to beating my father. The CIA agents had to repeat the exercise over and over until they got it. I tried it once whenever I was with Logan, but I’d never even made it past the third hole: I always fell down.
We had to warm up before we started the challenge, which consisted of punching a big, red boxing bag followed by hand-to-hand combat with my father. I quickly wound a wrap around my hands to protect them from the punching bag.
“What does the winner get?” I asked as my fist connected with the punching bag. My father, who was holding the bag, took a step back and steadied himself so my next punch didn’t take him by surprise.
“The loser tells mom he or she broke that lamp in the sitting room yesterday,” he said with a teasing smile.
“But you broke it,” I argued, taking another punch at the bag. “You were that one who knocked it down.”
“It was an accident.” He defended himself.
“Sure, if you call flying through the air at top speed just to be the first one to get the TV remote an accident, then yes.”
“Still an accident.” He winked while I counted punching the bag, this time three direct punches in a row, before I took a breath. “You punch heavier than you look. Logan must have been teaching you well,” he complimented as my hand collided with the bag again.
I continued hitting the bag for almost half an hour as my father commented on my moves and made suggestions on how to improve, and he handed me a water bottle when I finished. Right after the short water break, we moved to combat training. It was here that I’d be able to show off any self-defense skills Logan had taught me.
My father tossed me a pair of boxing gloves and tightened another pair on his own hands—at the intensity with which we