by Jack Mars
A wave of unjustified anger washed over him. “I asked you not to call me that.”
“You said while Maya was here—”
“Ever,” he said firmly. “I’m not Kent Steele anymore. And while we’re at it, you’re not even Maria Johansson. Your name is Clara Barren. Or did you forget that?”
Maria closed her eyes and sighed. It was true; Maria Johansson was her CIA agent alias. But when she became deputy director, she’d continued to use it to distance herself from her father and his name, to avoid any accusations of nepotism. She’d even mentioned once or twice about legally changing it, though she hadn’t gone through with it yet.
“Why does it matter what we call each other?” she asked. “We have history. We know each other as Kent and Maria.”
“Kent and Maria aren’t real,” he said forcefully. He felt heat in his face and fire in his belly. It was the first time in weeks he’d really felt much of anything, but what he was feeling wasn’t anything good. “Look at us. Using fake names. Playing house.”
“Is that what you think we’re doing?” Maria’s arms folded over her chest as her eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind?”
Don’t say it. You’re being irrational. You’ll regret it later.
Zero cast his eyes downward to the carpet. “I don’t want to have a baby with you.”
He waited, expecting her to explode. To shout. To throw things. But it was worse than that. Maria simply nodded. “I know you don’t. All you seem to want to do is lie on the couch and live in your head, in the past. But not me. I’m a deputy director now. I’ve got plans. I want to make this world a better place, and I want to bring a child into it. I know what I want. Do you?”
“No,” he said honestly. “Maybe that’s why we’re still calling each other Kent and Maria. Maybe… maybe that is who we really are. I failed as a professor, and turns out I’m a shitty father. The only thing I was ever good at was torturing and killing.”
Maria shook her head adamantly. “I don’t believe that. You can start over—”
“You’re not getting it. I don’t want to start over. I don’t want to forget the past. How can we?”
“It’s not about forgetting. It’s about forgiving yourself.”
“It’s not that easy,” he insisted. “I can’t look at my own hands without seeing the blood on them. And…” He sighed. “And sometimes, it’s hard to look at your face and not see the things we’ve done. To not see what I did. To not see her.”
Maria’s shoulders slumped slightly as she stared at the floor and said nothing.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he told her. “I’m telling you because we’re not supposed to have secrets between us. But…” He chuckled sadly. “But we’ve never been very good at that either, have we?”
“No,” she agreed, “we haven’t.” She was silent for a long moment before asking, “Do you remember when we had that talk? The one where you told me you didn’t want to get married again… didn’t even want to put ‘labels’ on what we were…”
“Wait a second,” he said defensively. “You can’t put all that on me. We both agreed—”
“Is that how you remember it? Because that’s not what happened. You told me those things, and I agreed because I wanted to be with you. I should have said something. I should have told you how unfair it was that you had your shot at a family and I didn’t. But I said nothing.
“And the next day, I left on an op. They didn’t even need me; I just didn’t want to be here with you. I was angry and hurt. We needed intel from an arms dealer, an Italian. So I went undercover. Gained his trust…” She trailed off.
Zero could see the writing on the wall, but still he frowned deeply. “What are you trying to say?”
“I slept with someone.” She refused to meet his gaze, her voice breathy as if it was actively resisting the words.
Zero blinked. His lips parted slightly. A thousand questions formed in his head, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask any.
“It didn’t mean anything,” she told him. “It was mechanical. Part of the job, just like filing a report. At least that’s what I told myself. Because…” She finally looked up, and her gray eyes met his. “Because maybe you’re right. Maybe we are just playing house. Maybe none of that other stuff is meant for us. Maybe it’s all just a charade.”
Zero stared back. It was strange; he would have expected such an admission to crush him, but instead he just felt cold. Detached. “I’m not hearing an apology in any of this.”
“Because I’m not giving you one,” she said succinctly. “I did what I felt was necessary for the preservation of international security. That’s not an excuse. It’s part of who I am. I won’t apologize for doing whatever is necessary.”
He didn’t know what to say or do. He wanted nothing more than this conversation to end, but there was no going back to the life they’d had yesterday after everything they’d each just shared. “So,” he said quietly. “Where do we go from here?”
“I’m not sure. But I think we need some time,” Maria suggested. “Some space… apart.”
Zero nodded. “Yeah. I… I think I’ll go for a drive.” He strode to the kitchen and retrieved his phone and his car keys. He patted his back pocket to make sure he had his wallet.
“Where will you go?”
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door, and then he was outside. It was a breezy afternoon, not cold but foreshadowing the weather to come.
“Kent?” she called to him from the open doorway. “Will you be okay?”
He didn’t want to answer to that name anymore. But still he nodded vaguely before getting into the car. He didn’t have a destination in mind—at least he didn’t think he did, but as soon as he considered where he would go, the answer popped into his mind instantly.
He knew exactly where he had to go.
Not thirty minutes later Zero parked the car in the long-term lot at Dulles. He cut the engine, and then sat there behind the wheel in silence for several minutes.
“What the hell are you doing?” he murmured to himself.
He wanted to be angry with Maria. She’d been unfaithful and justified it in a bizarre fashion. But nothing that she said was untrue.
If he was being honest with himself, he was angrier at Kent Steele than he was her.
I should call Alan. He needed a familiar voice, a friend, someone with a bendable ear to whom he could vent his frustrations over a few drinks.
He could hear Alan’s voice in his head now: Wanna know what I think? Tough, I’m going to tell you anyway. Stop being an idiot. Cool down, go home, and talk to her. It’s Maria, for Christ’s sake. You’ll apologize, she’ll apologize. Then you’ll have terrific makeup sex.
He pulled out his phone and made the call.
“Zero?”
“Yeah, Todd. It’s me.”
“Wow. Been a while.” Strickland sounded as confused as he did relieved. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“You too.” Zero got out of the car and headed toward the terminal. “I need an address.”
“For what?”
“You know what.” Zero knew damn well that Strickland was still keeping tabs on both his girls. The young agent had made a promise, and he was the kind of guy who kept it. Not like Maria.
Not like Zero.
“I need to see her, Todd.”
Strickland sighed. “Look, I’ll give it to you straight, Zero. I just came from there. I’m on my way back to DC now. She’s… she won’t be happy.”
“I know.” But I’ve alienated just about everyone else in my life. He needed to know if it was truly too late. Perhaps enough time had passed that Sara, his youngest, his baby girl, would be willing to make amends with her dad.
Or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment.
“I’m not so sure it’s a good idea…” Strickland said cautiously.
“And I’m not ask
ing you,” Zero said harshly. “This isn’t a request, Todd. Tell me where to find my daughter.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three and a half hours later, Zero stood in front of a beige storefront in a small strip mall in what he would consider a rough neighborhood of the city. Its façade was chipped and worn, and the particular store in question was lacking a sign. Instead, two words were painted on the inside of the window in large white strokes: SWIFT THRIFT.
Strickland had given him both her home address and her workplace and let him know that she’d be done with her shift when the thrift shop closed at seven. It was about quarter after five, but Zero couldn’t wait that long. Besides, he was aware she lived with several roommates. By the looks of the small store, he had a better chance of having a private moment there than he did at her home.
Her home. His heart broke anew with the thought, the realization that the place she called home was no longer the same place he did.
He took a breath, summoning his courage with it, and went inside.
There was no bell or chime on the door, but it squeaked a little on its hinges. An odor struck him immediately, reminiscent of his grandmother’s closet from when he was a little boy. Mothballs, he realized. That’s what the place smelled like. And something else beneath it—mildew, perhaps. Some kind of dampness in the air.
He navigated slowly around racks of clothing, shelves of used toys, assorted items that had been given away in lieu of being thrown out: old suitcases, board games with worn boxes, VCRs, questionable appliances. The cash register was near the back of the store, and someone was standing before it, an old woman stooped with age.
Opposite her, facing slightly away from Zero, was Sara.
Seeing her again made his breath catch in his throat. She looked… she looked so grown up. He hardly recognized her. Her hair was red, though her blonde roots were showing. She wore dark mascara on her eyelashes that made her blue eyes shine fiercely. She had gotten her ears pierced, with a little silver hoop in each. But her face… he would recognize that face anywhere, at any age. If Maya was looking more and more like her father each day, Sara was growing to become a spitting image of Kate.
“Thank you,” she said to her elderly customer. “See you next week, Mrs. G.”
The elderly woman turned away, and Sara’s attention shifted toward him. Zero quickly spun, facing away from her, pretending to inspect a cracked blender.
This was a mistake. You shouldn’t have come. You’re not in the right state of mind to be doing this. The elderly woman shuffled past him on her way to the door.
“Can I help you with something?” Sara asked. She was right behind him. It was too late to do anything now except turn around and face her and hope for the best.
So he did.
“Hi, Sara.” He was surprised at how meek his voice sounded.
Her smile evaporated instantly into a blank stare. Then the corners of her mouth drooped and, as if in a slow-motion replay, her eyes became narrow and hard, tiny creases showing at their corners. Her teeth clenched together like a snarling dog.
And he, Zero, who had faced terrorists and biochemical weapons and active warheads, he shrank under her glare.
“No.” She shook her head as if trying to jar something loose. “No. Get out.”
“Sara, please—”
“Get. Out!” she screeched.
“Two minutes,” he said quickly. “Just let me talk for two minutes…”
“I’m calling the police.” She strode quickly back to the counter and grabbed up a cell phone with a scuffed cover. She didn’t dial anything, not yet, but made a show of holding it upright, her thumb poised over the screen. “You don’t get to just walk back into my life whenever you feel like it! I told you I didn’t want to see you.”
Zero held up his hands, palms out, as if approaching a frightened animal. “Sara,” he said cautiously, “I just want to talk to you. Can you give me that?”
She scoffed. “Did Todd put you up to this?”
He frowned. “No. Todd didn’t even want to tell me where you were.”
“Yeah. Right. Do you think I’m stupid? First Maya calls me, then Todd shows up to lecture me. Now you appear out of nowhere. And that’s just supposed to be a coincidence? Let me guess; he told you about the drug thing. And you decided to run down here and play dad. Is that it?”
“What?” His throat felt tight. “Sara, what drugs? Are you… are you doing…?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” she hissed. “It’s your job to lie.”
Drugs? He already felt like enough of an utter failure, standing here in a stinking thrift shop where his teenage high-school-dropout daughter worked—all because of him. But this… it was too much.
“Come home,” he managed to say. “Please. I… I need you. Maybe you need me too—”
For the briefest of moments, it looked as if her hard expression faltered into something that resembled regret. Or doubt. But then Sara shook her head fiercely. “You don’t get to say that to me.”
She pressed a few buttons on the phone and showed it to him. She had dialed 9-1-1, but hadn’t yet made the call. “Get out.”
“What are you going to tell them? That you’re being harassed by your father? That someone’s trying to help you?”
She stared him down defiantly as she pressed the call button and put it on speaker.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” said a hasty female dispatcher.
“I’m at the Swift Thrift on Twenty-second Avenue,” Sara said into the phone, still staring him in the eye. “The man who killed my mother is here, and he has me cornered.”
*
She’d done it. She’d actually done it.
Zero walked briskly down the block with his hands in his pockets, his head bowed low, barely attentive of his surroundings. He had no idea where he was and didn’t care. He knew he was heading generally east; the sun was dipping low in the sky behind him.
Sara had called the police on him. Worse, she’d called him a murderer. He had no choice; he got out of there quickly, before any authorities arrived. The last thing he needed was to have to make an awkward call to Maria from a Florida jail.
Even as he left the shop, Sara shouted after him. Reminding him that she didn’t want to see him, now or ever. That if he came back there’d be a restraining order.
So he walked, sweating a little under his light jacket but feeling cold, not paying any attention to the passersby or where he was going. Twice he walked right into a street and a car screeched to a halt, the driver honking and shouting angrily while Zero just walked on, wondering why they’d even bothered to stop. Life would get a lot simpler very quickly if they’d just hit him.
He walked until he couldn’t walk anymore. He’d reached the ocean, a thin stretch of public beach that was nearly vacant with the setting sun.
I could keep walking, he thought. Walk out into the surf until it’s over my head.
Instead he walked parallel to the beach, following it for more than a mile until the sand turned to pebbles. A long breakwater of large, sharp rocks jutted about a hundred yards out to sea. He walked out on it, ignoring the signs that suggested he didn’t and stepping carefully from wet stone to wet stone. The rocks were porous, brown, and craggy, some stuck fast with barnacles, small crabs skittering out of his way.
He’d never truly known what it was like to feel alone. Even in the most desperate moments of his past he always remembered he had his girls waiting for him at home. And then when he didn’t, at least he had Maria. Who did he have now? There was Alan. He was a good friend—a great friend, even. But compared to Reidigger faking his own death and spending the last four years living incognito, Zero’s problems of being a bad father and partner would seem paltry. Laughable.
His phone rang in his pocket. He ignored it.
Before he knew it he’d reached the end of the jetty. The sea roiled beyond the rocks, spraying cold white foam on his clothes and face. There was a sign t
here, the metal post of it stuck between two large rocks at an awkward angle. Danger, it said. Peligro. In English and Spanish, it warned of riptides and advised against swimming past the breakwater.
His phone rang again. He didn’t reach for it.
Zero knew about riptides, currents so strong and fast that even the best Olympic swimmers couldn’t contend with them. They would carry you miles out to sea in no time, if they didn’t drown you first.
What if I took one more step?
What if I just let it carry me out and vanished forever?
He laughed bitterly at himself. He didn’t have it in him to take the step. He dared his feet to move.
“Why?” he asked aloud. Why am I thinking like this? But he already knew the answer. His whole adult life, he’d been needed. He’d been needed by his wife. Needed by his children. Needed by his students. Needed by his country. Until recently he didn’t know what it was like not to be needed, and he didn’t know how to handle it.
“You need to be needed.” He chuckled sourly again. “What a fucked-up codependency.”
His phone rang a third time, shattering his introspective moment. For some reason a rage ignited inside him, swift and hot and aimed at the device. He yanked the phone out of his pocket and reared back to hurl it into the unforgiving ocean.
But before he could throw it, it chimed again—a text message.
He slowly lowered his arm and read it. He didn’t recognize the number, and the message was only two words.
Zero. Please.
And then the phone rang again.
“Who is this?” he snapped as he answered.
“Hello, Zero.” The voice was calm, smooth, female, and accented, though her English was flawless. Vaguely familiar too, though he couldn’t quite place it. “I need your help.”
“Who is this?” he demanded again.
“You would remember me as Emilia Sanders.”
What the hell? Sanders was an agent of the FIS, Ukraine’s intelligence agency. Eighteen months earlier, she had been posing as a White House aide and had helped him uncover the conspiring cabal within President Pierson’s cabinet.