His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby

by Martuneac, Peter

  “My best friend’s mom, I mean,” she said. “It was when the first outbreaks in Chicago happened. She was out getting some food when the riots began, and a man shot her over a loaf of bread.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “She called me just before everything collapsed, told me all about it. She was just a kid. She didn’t even have her dad.”

  “Is she here? Did she get out of Chicago?”

  Abby paused, looking away from Derrick for a moment. She turned back and said, “She’s still out there, somewhere. I think she’s lost.”

  Derrick was silent, waiting for Abby to continue talking. But when it became clear that that was the end of her story, he said, “I’m so sorry for you and your friend.”

  Abby sighed and said, “It’s just hard. She was a great woman, and was like a mother to me when I was young.”

  “I understand. I really do.”

  Another silence stifled the room, until Abby said, “Well, I’m definitely starting to feel a little sick so you should probably get on back to your room now. I’ll be okay here. Thanks for walking me back.”

  “Of course. Goodnight, Abby. I love you.”

  There it was again, the ‘L-word’. Desperately trying to keep her composure, Abby replied, “I love you, too.”

  Abby closed the door behind her and began to sob quietly, alone in her dark room.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Happy birthday to me,” the now nineteen year old Abby sang to herself as she took a shower before bed. It was only nine o’clock at night, but her day had been exhausting, thanks to Derrick. He brought her over to his dad’s house (his dad was already at the new White House for work) and cooked her a beautiful breakfast frittata. Then they went for a walk through the district, seeing some sights, and had lunch at a very expensive seafood restaurant. Seafood didn’t come cheap anymore, not even for the elite. After lunch, they got a couple’s massage, then went and played paintball with some other agents from their squads. This was followed by a movie and a later dinner, and then cake.

  She stepped out of her shower and dried off with a green towel, then got dressed into a pair of shorts and a loose shirt when she heard her door unlock from outside and open up. It was Derrick, using the spare keycard she’d given him.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey. I just realized that I never gave you your present, which is insanely stupid of me.”

  Abby smiled and said, “Silly, everything we did today was present enough.”

  “Then allow me one more,” Derrick replied, and he pulled from behind his back a garment bag, holding it out to Abby.

  She took it with a curious look and unzipped it. What was inside made her gasp: a gorgeous black, strapless dress.

  “I love it!” she said to Derrick, and then kissed him. “Is there a special occasion for this?”

  “Actually, yes,” Derrick replied. “As it happens, my dad is hosting a banquet at the White House next month on our first anniversary. And we’ve been personally invited.”

  “Ooo, swanky!” Abby said, still looking over the dress in her hands. Had it already been a year? It still surprised Abby sometimes that Derrick seemed committed to a long-term relationship like this. She then looked at Derrick and said, “Tell the President we accept his formal invitation.”

  “Exactly how long have you been waiting to say a line like that?” Derrick laughed.

  “Eleven months,” Abby replied.

  “Sounds about right. Alright, I’ll see you in the morning. I love you.”

  “Love you too,” Abby replied as she spun about to hang up the dress in her closet. They had started saying ‘I love you’ whenever they left each other, ever since that night at the bar almost six months ago. It bothered Abby at first, but now it came as naturally as saying it to Hiamovi, though it carried not nearly the same significance.

  “Oh, Hiamovi,” she whispered. She needed to go see him right away. This banquet could be a huge opportunity for her. Despite dating the president’s son this would still be only the first time she’d ever seen the inside of the capitol building.

  Later that week, Abby had a day off in which she went out to District 2 to find Hiamovi early in the morning. She decided to take a risk by going directly to his apartment, not wanting to waste any time wandering around the district. She knocked on the door three times, and then waited. After a few moments, she heard the deadbolt unlock and the door swung inward. Abby immediately stepped inside, getting out of sight.

  “What are you doing here? Is there something wrong?” Hiamovi asked as he closed and locked the door. Hector was there too, sitting in a chair and reading the newspaper.

  Abby couldn’t help a smile as she whispered, “I’m gonna be inside the White House.”

  Hector started, looking up from his newspaper. “Did I hear that correctly?” he asked as he stood up to join Abby and Hiamovi. “Did you say you’ll be in the White House?”

  “Abby, that’s huge!” Hiamovi said, and he kissed her.

  “When? And why?” Hector asked.

  “Next month, on the third,” Abby replied. “The President is hosting a banquet there, and his son and I are invited.”

  “A banquet, huh?” Hiamovi asked, pointedly ignoring the part about Abby’s date.

  “Uh huh. I think he’s cozying up to the Senate. But I’ve got a plan.”

  Abby told Hector and Hiamovi of a plot she’d concocted over the last few days, something that could prove invaluable for the ReFounding Fathers, if all went well. It was dangerous, and carried an enormous degree of risk, but the potential payoff was too good to pass up, even for Hiamovi.

  “This could be the beginning of the end!” Hector exclaimed with a beaming grin. “After years of doing little more than frustrate the machinations of the government, this is our chance to really break them down. I must get messages out. Thank you, Abby. Thank you so much. Do be careful.”

  With that, Hector grabbed a light jacket and departed, leaving Abby and Hiamovi alone in silence.

  “So what do you think?” she asked Hiamovi.

  “I agree with granddad,” he replied. “It’s not every day you get to be inside the capitol building.”

  “You don’t have any reservations or concerns?”

  “Well, of course I have concerns. But what would you have me do? Insist you pass up on this golden opportunity to ease my fears? You’re doing incredible things, Abby. Incredible deeds don’t come easy, or everyone would do them.”

  “Well, I don’t know if they’re incredible. But yeah, this is pretty big. So how have you been?” Abby asked, wanting to escape the spotlight, even if it was just the two of them.

  “I’ve been good. Just working down at the diner now, running the occasional mission for granddad, and counting the days until we can be together again. I miss you.”

  Abby gave a sad smile. “I miss you too.”

  “Alright, well I’ll go talk to Jay and ask him if he can whip something up for us,” Hiamovi said. He went to get a jacket, but stopped and said, “Oh, wait! Wait right there!”

  He disappeared into his bedroom, but came back a moment later with something behind his back. “It’s a few days late, but…happy birthday, Abby,” he said.

  He handed Abby his gift for her: an old but intact hardback copy of The Lord of the Rings, all three books in one edition.

  Her smile ate up half of Abby’s face. “Hiamovi, I love it!” she said, taking the book from him and looking it over.

  “I know it’s not much, but—” Hiamovi started to say, but he was cut short when Abby practically jumped on him and kissed him. She knocked both of them off-balance and they fell to the floor, Abby landing on top of Hiamovi, both laughing.

  “You sure you can handle a clandestine mission at the White House, klutz?” Hiamovi joked.

  “Don’t worry, I’m ‘on top’ of it,” Abby replied with a wink.

  “Well, that killed the mood. Go on, get outta here.”

  “
No way, you get outta here.”

  “This is my home.”

  “Well, I’m the law ‘round these parts,” Abby said, turning on a thick Southern drawl, “and less’n you git a move on, pardner, there’s gon be trouble.”

  Both burst out laughing again.

  “Wow, this DAS gig went right to your head, huh?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Abby leaned down to kiss Hiamovi again, causing the necklace she wore, the one Derrick gave her, to slip out of her shirt and strike Hiamovi’s nose.

  “Wow! Where’d this come from?” he asked, gazing at the brilliant emerald.

  Abby sighed and sat up, disentangling herself from Hiamovi. She gave him an awkward, apologetic look, which Hiamovi understood immediately.

  He sat up with a frustrated groan. “I’m especially looking forward to never having to think about that asshole again.”

  “Hey, he’s not an asshole,” Abby said. “He’s really nice, and it’s not his fault he was born on the wrong side.”

  “What, you’re defending him now?”

  “I’m not defending him, I’m just saying he’s actually a decent guy.”

  “Abby, he’s DAS. He’s bad, oppressive, and completely deluded, just like everyone else in that organization.”

  “I’m DAS too, you forget about that? What are you saying about me?”

  Hiamovi scoffed. “Don’t do that. Obviously I didn’t mean you.”

  “Okay, so why do I get a pass and not Derrick? Is it so impossible to imagine that not every single person on the other side is an evil, mustache-twirling bastard?”

  “They killed my fucking parents, Abby! Yes, they’re evil!”

  “Well you guys killed his mom! So he thinks you’re evil!”

  A pause stretched into an insufferable silence as Hiamovi and Abby glared at each other.

  “You do remember your relationship with him is fake, right? Because every time we meet you seem more and more fond of this jerk, and now you’re wearing some fancy necklace he got you and taking his side. I’m starting to wonder just how deep undercover you’ve gone!”

  “Don’t!” Abby interjected, jabbing a finger at Hiamovi. “I love you. I love you so damn much, and I miss you like crazy every time I think about you. But unlike you, I don’t have the luxury of venting whenever I want. I have to put on a show! I have to act all happy and giddy with a man I don’t love while only getting to see the man I do love once every couple months! You don’t have any idea how fucking hard this is! I’m riding a goddamned emotional rollercoaster that never stops!”

  “And I don’t care what you want to think about him, Hiamovi, but he is a good person, and one of these days I’m going to have to disappear on him as if I never existed, and he’ll never know why! And I’m nice too, and doing something like that really upsets me. I understand you being jealous and unhappy with how things are, I really do. And I’m sorry. But don’t you ever accuse me like that again.”

  Abby waited for Hiamovi’s response, still seething. She was angry with him for assuming the worst in her, but part of that anger came from fear, fear that he was actually on to something.

  She did still love Hiamovi, and she missed him a great deal, but only when she thought about him, and such times were becoming less frequent. Even on her birthday, it was almost by accident that she remembered Hiamovi. By now, she was simply so immersed in her cover, and she so rarely met up with Hiamovi that, in some ways, her cover was replacing her real identity. Some days, she didn’t think about her real life even once.

  Hiamovi still hadn’t responded, so Abby said, “Look, I’m sorry I yelled. And I’m sorry I was still wearing this necklace. I only wear it for pretenses, and I honestly just forgot about it. That’s how little it means to me.” She unclasped the necklace and tossed it towards the trash can in the kitchen several feet away. “You have every right to be unhappy with my cover right now, but you had no right to throw an accusation like that in my face.”

  Hiamovi sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I do trust you, Abby. I just… “

  “What?”

  “I just don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” Hiamovi admitted. “The separation, the constant knowledge that there’s some guy out there holding you and kissing you. And I believe you when you say there’s no love in it for you, but that doesn’t really make me like it any more. And I know I’m being self-centered. After all, you’re the one risking your life out there. But I can’t help missing the woman I love, or feeling upset that I have to share you.”

  Abby smiled at Hiamovi and kissed him. “I understand,” she said. “And maybe we won’t have to deal with this for much longer. If my plan goes as expected, then this month may be the last month I need to be undercover. We’ve almost hit the finish line, Hiamovi. We can do it.”

  “Okay,” Hiamovi responded as he did his best to smile. He stood up, trudged towards the kitchen, and retrieved Abby’s necklace. “Here,” he said, handing it back to her. “You’ll probably need that to keep your cover up.”

  “Thank you,” Abby said. She took the necklace and dropped it into her front pocket though, instead of clasping it around her neck.

  “Sapphires are a better look for you than emeralds, by the way,” Hiamovi said. “And a stone that big is just pretentious.”

  Abby smiled. “Yeah, I kinda agree.”

  “So, we’re good, right? There were apologies, forgiveness, so now we move on?”

  “Almost. We can’t really move on until we make up,” Abby said with a wink.

  Hiamovi’s eyebrows arched up and he checked his watch. “Are you sure you have time for that?”

  “I’ll make time. Come on,” Abby said. She took Hiamovi by the hand and led him down the hall to his bedroom.

  ***

  The rest of the month passed by in a haze for Abby, partly owing to the fact that she never heard back from Hector, Hiamovi, or Jay about her plan for the banquet. She needed Jay and his magical tech skills to come through for her, or else the whole plan would be a bust, and she’d squander what could be her only chance to be inside the White House.

  Finally, less than one week before the banquet, Abby saw the signal she’d been waiting for. She was on patrol with her squad, and they passed by her old apartment building. She looked up and saw in the window of Hector’s apartment three, small potted plants. Abby lifted her rifle to look through the optic and saw the number eighteen marked on one of them.

  “See something?” the agent behind Abby asked.

  “Just checking out those flowers,” she replied as she lowered her rifle again.

  “Flowers?”

  “Yeah, flowers. It’s an interest of mine. Got a problem with that?”

  “Never pegged you for the ‘flowers’ type of girl.”

  Abby ignored the comment and continued the patrol. Three flower pots meant three days from then, which would be Thursday, two days before the banquet. The number eighteen meant she and Hiamovi would meet at six o’clock in the evening at the prearranged spot: the coffee shop. That had become their favorite rendezvous point.

  She was almost late, as training had run late that day, but she strode into the coffee house at precisely six o’clock to find Jay sitting where Hiamovi usually sat. A little disappointed, she walked over and sat down across from Jay. He’d ordered her coffee apparently, but with a to-go lid on top.

  “You trying to rush me out the door?” Abby asked.

  “Perish the thought,” he replied. “Just figured you might want to take the whole thing with you when you do leave.”

  Abby gave him a funny look, then took the lid off her drink. Taped to the inside of the lid was a small, black rectangular object, a little smaller than her thumb and wrapped in several layers of plastic.

  “Now listen,” Jay whispered, “any computer up there worth hacking probably has some crazy defenses. There’s programs that encrypt files and lock them up tight, and even one unauthorized attempt at accessing them can
trigger an alarm and wipe all the data from the hard drive.”

  “So how is this little thumb drive gonna help?”

  “Let me finish! I’ve slept a total of like fifteen hours the past three weeks, cooking this up for you. Plug this little baby into a computer, any computer, and it uploads a virus. This virus will copy and download all the data from the hard drive into this, wiping the data from the computer as it goes. And it creates an exact copy of that data at the very instant it’s been downloaded and leaves that in its place. It goes so quick, any defense program won’t have time to understand that data is being downloaded, and it won’t trigger any defense protocols.”

  “And the best part is, the computer doesn’t even have to be turned on! So if you can make your way to an important person’s personal computer, plug this little guy into the USB port, and in just under a minute you’ll have the entirety of that computer’s data transferred to the thumb drive without leaving a single trace! Then you sneak it out of the banquet like a sexy, female James Bond, and you bring it back to me.”

  Abby ignored the flirtatious comment, chalking it up to Jay’s exhaustion, and asked, “What do you do with it then?”

  “Well, the data will still be encrypted so I’ll have to unlock it which will take a very long time. But since it’s been copied onto a thumb drive I can make as many attempts as I need.”

  “Oh yeah? Think you’ll need a few dozen attempts?” Abby teased.

  Jay furrowed his brow into a very serious expression and said, in a tone much deeper than his regular talking voice, “I only need one.”

  Abby smirked, making Jay laugh.

  “Sorry. I’m absolutely drained. This is my fifth cup of coffee today,” he said.

  “I understand. Thank you, Jay. I won’t let you down.”

  “You better not after all the work I put into that.”

  “Give this to Hiamovi for me?”

  With that, Abby rose from her seat and kissed Jay on the cheek. He stood up next to her, again putting on a grave visage, and said, “Madame, rest assured that your kiss will find its way to Hiamovi’s lips, even if I have to kiss him myself.”