It didn’t take long to see that Edward had a very prestigious career for the short time he was in the Army Special Forces. He had enlisted right out of high school and had fulfilled his basic along with his special forces training at Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall in North Carolina. Edward had apparently completed his training in a record time of fifty-two weeks while most took at least fifty-six. He was considered among the elite of his unit and was a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant but also had the exemplary knowledge and capabilities to have been a communications skills specialist as well.
Reading further I found details about the types of missions he had been on. Most of them were counter terrorism, foreign affairs, and reconnaissance and warfare duties. Clicking on another link I found that he had scored in the top three if not the highest in all five phases of the Special Forces Qualification Courses and Special Forces Operations Courses.
The file went on listing his outstanding merits and abilities. He could speak four languages including Arabic, French, Spanish and Italian. The Italian suddenly stood out as I remembered him speaking to the valet and our waiter when we had gone to dinner. I clicked another link which gave me some personal information such as his birthdate, which was June 20, 1980, and his enlistment and discharge dates. It dawned on me that his birthday had just passed; in fact it was the day we went boating, the day we admitted our feelings for each other.
In addition to the fact he could speak Italian fluently, in the process of reading through the list of training phases he had completed I also learned he had taken several psychology classes and training courses. I could see where it would be essential to be able to keep your cool in extremely intense or dangerous situations. But the part of his psych training that stood out the most to me was how to foil your opponent and disguise your emotions. He had gone through just as much if not more psychological training than I had; his was geared in a different manner, towards putting up pretenses whereas mine was breaking them down. He had been trained to know how to lie without being caught. Suddenly the horrible sick feeling I had felt on the airplane was creeping back up on me to the point where I was almost wishing I hadn’t been able to get into the army’s system. Maybe I would have been better off going straight to Emmett with my suspicions and letting him run the check on Edward.
The more I read about Edward’s military career, I could see that everything about it was as he said it was. But the fact that he could speak Italian and his extensive psych training still stood out. It was as if he had been sought after specifically for the purpose of fooling me. Like someone knew he’d be the perfect person to dupe me, and James Reynolds would know that.
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