The First

by A. Claire Everward

  Of course, Jennison himself would never leave such a task—killing Aelia and Kyle—in the hands of someone like Neace. No, he would choose someone close to Kyle's level, another one of his elite operatives. Perhaps his best one, in fact, after Kyle, and the one who knew Kyle most. And that could only be Semner. Semner who, unlike Kyle, who was flexible and decided on how to kill his targets based on the circumstances, always killed the same way. Three tight shots to the heart.

  Laree had three tight shots near the heart.

  Kyle's eyes narrowed. Semner was his closet friend. He didn’t have many friends, in fact Semner was one of a rare few in his life who he ever called a friend. They'd known each other since they were kids. Semner was a couple of years older than he was, the son of one of his father's military buddies, and they’d joined the organization just a few years apart.

  The idea that it was Semner who was after them troubled Kyle. For one, the guy was no longer a field operative, having decided instead to climb up the hierarchy ladder by leaving field work and acting as Jennison's right-hand man, a position that Kyle himself had declined. And why would Jennison risk this mission by sending after Kyle the only operative in the organization who was Kyle's friend?

  And why would Semner agree to go after him?

  Worse, three bullets near the heart, that was a miss. And the fact that Semner didn’t make sure his victim was dead, didn’t realize Neace was going after them himself, and apparently didn't notice that they had left, that was sloppy. And Semner was good, he didn't do sloppy unless something pushed him off balance. So what the hell was going on?

  Which brought Kyle back to the initial question. Why would Jennison turn on him? The decision to actually send someone to kill him, him, and without even allowing him time to complete the mission, made no sense.

  Kyle realized he was grasping the steering wheel so tightly that the blood flow to his hands stopped, and he forced himself to relax them. There was only one way to find out what was going on, and that was to confront Jennison. He threw a look at the woman sitting beside him, the woman who was the reason for all of this, and his brow furrowed. She was staring out through the passenger side window, her eyes on the night outside. She looked so vulnerable. There was nothing bad, nothing threatening about her. She was nothing like his targets over the years. How the hell did she come to be at the center of this mess?

  As if to answer, his mind brought up all he'd been told since he was a child, and what Jennison had confided to him as an adult. But in answer to that, came the memory of all he had witnessed since he had first laid eyes on her. And the as yet unanswered question that had been playing in his mind followed, more insistent than ever. Who was she really?

  He focused back on the road with determination. The only thing he was sure of, the only thing he did not doubt, was that he needed, wanted, to keep her safe. So first he would find a way to ensure her safety, and then he would deal with those who were supposed have his back and instead had turned on him, and get some answers in the process.

  She was sitting in the passenger seat beside her would-be killer turned protector, a man she felt safe with even after witnessing him so easily killing another. Aelia leaned her forehead against the cool window and closed her eyes. She couldn’t begin to make sense of it, any of it. Why was this happening, what did these people want from her? It wasn’t like she mattered.

  Unwanted. That's what she always knew she was.

  In fact, that was her first clear impression of herself as a child. It was the second time she sat in that small, colorless room at social services, after yet another family had returned her, deciding they didn't want her after all. Two foster homes behind her, a string of homes yet to come, and the feeling of being unwanted with a long, long way to grow.

  She learned quickly to hide her feelings, but she never learned not to care. That made her life even harder, but she was a strong-willed girl, with that impenetrable place inside her that never broke, and she survived. No matter what, she survived.

  She was smart, and that helped. She spent days on end in libraries. Libraries were warm, had vending machines, and no one shouted at her in them. Sometimes she could even hide and stay there overnight, after the staff was gone. Although she suspected at least some of them knew and turned a blind eye. She was, after all, a good girl, helped them put books back in place or clean up sometimes. And she loved the books. They made her think, and she could lose herself in them. Search for herself in them.

  Being smart got her through a lot. It got her work, got her emancipated at sixteen, got her into college that same year. Got her where she was now. But it never helped with the knowledge that no one wanted her. That none of those foster parents chose to keep her. That even her own parents hadn't chosen to keep her. Or at least made sure that she knew something about herself.

  Except for the name that had been embroidered on the clothes she had been wearing the day she was found. Her name. Aelia. She'd always wondered about that, that her parents didn't care enough to keep her, but took care to give her a name and make sure whoever found her knew it. That one piece of information, the only thing she knew about herself.

  Her name.

  Other than that, she was, always had been, unwanted. That was what had been imprinted on her, and it was what had kept her from letting anyone get close to her, what had made her keep a protective wall, an entire fortress really, around her. She was the child no one had wanted, the child nobody had thought worthwhile enough to keep.

  And yet now there were people after her. Trying to kill her, protecting her. Two men had already died, and somehow this was because of her. Someone wanted her dead, and someone else wanted her alive.

  The unwanted, so very unwanted girl.

  This just didn't make any sense.

  Nothing makes sense anymore, a small voice sounded in her mind. Nothing, it continued, but she clamped down on it, unable to fully face yet whatever it meant.

  Chapter Seven

  They got on the next flight to Rome. Kyle would have liked to arrange for different identities, maybe a private plane, but the fact was that they didn’t have the time for that. He needed to get Aelia out of there quickly, hopefully without giving Semner or anyone else in the organization a chance to track them down too soon. There had been no apparent indications of interrogation on Laree's body and Kyle had taken all his means of identification, so he figured it would take the organization some time to find out who the guy was and, Kyle had to assume, understand where Aelia and he himself were headed. And they would need to untangle the mess they left behind first, and actually get their hands on the body. Still, the organization had powerful resources and there were other ways to track Aelia and him down, so speed was his only advantage.

  He didn't have a safety net to fall back on because he couldn’t just do what he always did, call on the organization for whatever resources he required, having essentially switched sides when he turned from his target's killer into her protector. He was alone. And so was Aelia. The way things had gone, the police were certain to find the dead man in her apartment. She couldn’t go back now, there would be too many questions she couldn't begin to answer because she obviously had no idea why all this was happening. The upside was that the police would find signs of another man, him, in her apartment, through DNA traces most likely. He wasn't the least bit concerned, since anything they found would be useless. He knew for certain that he was unidentifiable, the fact was that as long as they didn't actually have him in custody, he didn't exist. But the mere fact that he had been there at all did afford a possible explanation that might allow Aelia to return to her home and to her life, if the time ever came. That she was held and then taken by him against her will.

  The closest international airport was small and had only one terminal, which limited Kyle’s options. He would have preferred the huge, bustling airport of a major city, where they could more easily disappear. He also needed to make sure they would not be seen together, so that they
would be more difficult to trace, both by the organization and by the police, although frankly right now he was more worried about the organization. Still, because of its size, this airport was not as carefully secured, which made up somewhat for the limited options it afforded.

  In the nearest residential area outside the airport, he abandoned the car they were in and stole another from a used car lot closed this time of night. He instructed Aelia to hide her face to the best of her ability using eyeglasses and a scarf he had taken from the car lot's office, and put on a baseball cap he found. They made it into the airport without incident, the sleepy guards barely throwing a look at them. He let Aelia out not far from the terminal, watching to make sure she entered safely, and then drove to the multi-level parking lot of the airport. He parked in the most isolated place he could find, pulled the cap down low on his eyes and ducked out of the car, making sure he would not be seen by any surveillance cameras.

  He then left the parking lot and headed to departures, where he bought a travel bag in a men's chain store—luckily he could rely on there being one in nearly every airport he'd ever been to—and some items to go with it, the bare minimum that would avoid questions when he checked in on an international flight. He expected to have to answer the cashier's curious questions but found her conveniently susceptible to his flirting. He was used to it, had done it so many times before, used his looks and charm to get what he wanted and avoid questions.

  He took his newly purchased acquisitions and walked calmly through the terminal, stopping as if to check his flight on the flight board while in fact selecting one, the only flight to Rome available. A flight to Naples, closer to their destination, would have been better, but this airport had none. Still, they were lucky there was a flight available to Rome here, and at such short notice. He then continued on his way, going directly to where he'd told Aelia to wait, in the ladies’ room near the airport security. Risky, but he'd rather she fell into the hands of the airport police and not the organization's. He went into the men's room in the same corridor and waited. At the designated time he came out, to walk ahead of Aelia as she walked down the corridor.

  They joined the line at the airline desk for the flight Kyle had selected, Kyle first and Aelia a moment later, and bought tickets with the contingency cash Kyle always had on him on missions. Aelia used her own passport, which he had her pack back in the apartment. It made her more vulnerable to discovery if she were flagged at some point as a possible suspect or accomplice in Laree's death or even if she were assumed by them to have been kidnapped, but once again, he had no choice but to work with what he had. For himself he used a fake identification, an alias the organization didn’t know he had, one he'd never had to use in the past while he was protected by them but had kept nonetheless. Just as he'd been trained to do—always be prepared to disappear.

  Semner cut the ribbon the police had left on the door and picked the lock, then entered the woman’s apartment with a last look around him to make sure that no one had seen him break in. He'd had to wait long hours until the police and crime scene techs finally left and he could get into the building.

  Using a fake badge to pass as a plain clothes police officer sent to stand at the apartment door so that no one would disrupt the crime scene, he'd chatted up that talkative doorman downstairs. According to him the police had traced the blood to the apartment and had found a dead body inside—covered, and it seemed that someone had tried to help him—but there was no one else there. They found the fingerprints of the woman who lived there and signs that someone else, a man, had been there too, but nothing was known about this man, and no one had seen him. They thought she might have been kidnapped by him and that he might have been the one to shoot the man discovered at her apartment, but weren't sure. They seemed to have no real idea what was going on, which Semner was relieved to hear.

  The apartment was in shambles. There was still blood on the living room carpet and bloody towels were strewn everywhere, and the police had conducted a thorough search. Semner proceeded to conduct his own but found nothing to indicate where his targets might have gone. He stood beside the table in the woman’s study, staring at it, then abruptly swiped everything off it savagely. How the hell did they get away? He should have interrogated that man before he killed him, it might have given him a clue as to who he was. And a place to start.

  Now he had nothing.

  He braced himself, stifling an oath, and made the call.

  They made the flight just barely. They got two adjacent business class seats on the half-full flight, and Kyle sat Aelia near the window, lingering to check out the other passengers around them before he finally sat down beside her. Still, even long minutes into the flight he was unable to relax. This was the first time since Jennison had called him in that he'd actually stopped, could do nothing but sit here, in this relatively safe place, and his mind was free to fully focus on the precarious situation he was in.

  He was on the run, with the woman he was sent to kill. The training and experience he was so accustomed to falling back on were keeping him focused, but the fact was that his entire world had been turned upside-down. He'd lost everything, had nothing to go back to. And he still had no idea why. In fact, with each step he was taking there were more questions, and no answers in sight. He was now going with his gut feeling, against everything he'd ever been taught, and against the people he trusted and had relied on his entire life. And all he knew for sure was that what he was doing felt right, that he could not act differently. He literally could not act differently, as if something was guiding him, closing all doors in this corridor he was walking through and leaving only one path open. He closed his eyes, thought about who he was, his family, the organization that was his home—

  A soft hand rested gently on his. He opened his eyes and looked at Aelia. Incredibly, her eyes were filled with worry. For him. She said nothing, but he knew. It amazed him. She amazed him. She had lost everything just as he had, her life had been torn apart, and she had every reason to huddle in a corner, paralyzed with fear. And yet here she was, a quiet strength in her eyes, assuring him. Trusting in him. He nodded and leaned back, forced himself to relax, get some sleep. He had no idea what awaited them in Italy, and he needed to be alert.

  For her.

  In that place deep inside her she wasn't even aware she turned to, Aelia felt him relax. She rested her head back on her seat and stared through the window at the peaceful dark sky, but all she saw was Benjamin Laree dying on her living room carpet, and that man who'd chased them falling back on the concrete road after Kyle's bullet struck him. Dead. She closed her eyes. How could this be about her? How could all this death be about her?

  Jennison threw the phone at the wall in rage. He'd thought the plan was foolproof, that it could not fail. How could it? It was daring and brilliant, and it had been his idea all those years ago, his idea and his doing. It's what brought him to this prominent position in the organization. And it had worked so far. Until now. Until the two of them met. And now, instead of having the best asset the organization had ever had on its side, Kyle had switched sides and all Jennison had was the second best. Except that Semner was nowhere close to being as good as Kyle, no one was. No matter how many the organization had tried to train, no one had ever come close to him. Semner was their best bet because he knew Kyle better than the others did, could perhaps exploit some weakness, maybe even influence him to switch sides again.

  Jennison closed his eyes in despair. Yes, well, that was unlikely. After all, that was the whole point of using Kyle and not just anyone else.

  He had to admit he had no control over the situation.

  He considered his possibilities. One was to wait and try to resolve the situation. Perhaps there was still hope with Semner on it. The other was to inform the organization's governing board of the predicament they were in. But he knew this would in fact be reporting his failure, and that would not be forgiven. Not with the stakes involved and not with the unprecede
nted preparation that had gone into this. He sighed and let his hand fall from the button that would initiate a conference call. He wasn't ready to give up this mission—or his life—yet.

  It was now in Semner's hands.

  No one was following them when they disembarked in Rome, and it seemed that Kyle's plan to get away unseen had worked. For now. The organization would never stop, and the power it had would ensure that Aelia and he would eventually be tracked down. And so he wasn't about to stop, or even slow down.

  Getting through passport control was not a problem. Kyle had gotten rid of the entry and exit stamps in Aelia's passport to avoid questions about her taking the same trip so soon, and was glad that none of the airports involved had automatic services, which would make the record of her travels too readily available and might have led to a security alert.

  Aelia herself was disoriented, finding herself back in the city she had left just days before, the very place where it all started. Wanting to get out of the airport quickly, Kyle put his arm around her, and guided her to a car rental stand where he used his alias to rent a four-by-four, and they set out in the chilly afternoon, a stubborn drizzle hugging the windshield.

  Hoping to find some answers.

  Chapter Eight

  They made no stops except for Kyle to redress Aelia's wound, and quiet roads and the sturdy four-by-four with Kyle behind the wheel brought them to the small village at the Amalfi Coast within a few hours. The village was a short distance up the mountains, out of the way of all but the most curious of tourists and dormant even at the height of the season. It was clearly ancient, yet well maintained, as if a hidden hand cared for it. Kyle parked near a homely looking restaurant not far from a large travertine stone fountain, hoping the location would be central enough to help them find someone who would know what Laree meant, who or what Aeterna was.