Recall Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #6)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Zero was glad he didn’t have to talk about them. But Alan knew better than to ask about the girls.

Reidigger stuck around for about forty-five minutes before rising from the deck chair, stretching, and in his usual fashion, announcing he’d better “hit the ol’ dusty trail.” Zero gave him a brief hug and waved as he pulled the pickup truck out of the driveway and silently thanked him for not asking about his daughters, because the truth was that if Alan had asked how they were, Zero couldn’t answer.

He found Maria in the kitchen, wearing an apron over her work clothes as she chopped an onion. “Good visit?”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Just the rhythmic tock of the knife against the cutting board.

“You ready for tonight?” she asked after a long moment.

He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely.” He wasn’t. “What are you making?”

“Bigos.” She dumped the cutting board’s contents into a large pot on the stove that already contained simmering kielbasa, cabbage, and other vegetables. “It’s a Polish stew.”

Zero frowned. “Bigos. Since when do you make bigos?”

“I learned from my grandmother.” She smirked. “There’s still a lot you don’t know about me, Mr. Steele.”

“I guess so.” He hesitated, wondering how best to broach the subject on his mind, and then decided direct was best. “Um… hey. So tonight, do you think you could maybe try not to call me Kent?”

Maria paused with the knife hovering over a dried mushroom. She frowned, but nodded. “Okay. What do you want me to call you? Reid?”

“I…” He was about to agree, but then realized that he didn’t really want that either. “I don’t know.” Maybe, he thought, she should just avoid calling him anything.

“Huh.” It was obvious from her expression that she was concerned, wanted to push further into whatever was going on in his head, but it wasn’t the time to unpack all that. “How about I just call you ‘pookie’?”

“Very funny.” He grinned in spite of himself.

“Or ‘cupcake’?”

“I’m going to get changed.” He headed out of the kitchen even as Maria called after him, laughing to herself.

“Wait, I got it. I’ll call you ‘honeybunch.’”

“I’m ignoring you,” he called back. He appreciated what she was trying to do, attempting to diffuse the situation with humor. But as he reached the top of the short staircase that led to the loft, the anxiety bubbled up within him again. He’d been glad for Alan’s visit because it meant he didn’t have to think about it. He’d been glad Alan didn’t ask about the girls because it meant he didn’t have to face facts or memories. But there was no avoiding it now.

Maya was coming to dinner.

Zero inspected his jeans, made sure they were free of holes or errant coffee stains, and traded his lounging T-shirt for a striped button-down.

You’re a liar.

He ran a comb through his hair. It was getting too long. Slowly turning gray, especially at the temples.

Mom died because of you.

He turned sideways and inspected himself in the mirror, pulling his shoulders back and trying to shrink the slight paunch that had gathered around his belly button.

I hate you.

The last meaningful exchange he’d had with his eldest daughter was vitriolic. In the hotel room at The Plaza when he’d told them the truth about their mother, Maya had stood from the bed. She’d started quietly, but her voice rose quickly by the octave. Her face growing redder as she cursed at him. Called him every name he deserved. Telling him exactly what she thought of him and his life and his lies.

After that, nothing had been the same. Their relationship had changed instantly, dramatically, but that wasn’t the most painful part. At least she was still there physically, at the time. No, the slow burn was so much worse. After the admission in the hotel, after they had returned home to their Alexandria house, Maya went back to school. She was ending her junior year of high school; she’d missed two months of work but she hit the books with an intensity Zero had never seen in her before.

Then that summer came, and still she exiled herself to her room, studying. It didn’t take long for him to figure out what was going on. Maya was fiercely intelligent—too smart, he’d often say, for her own good. But in this case, she was too smart for his good.

Maya studied and worked hard and, thanks to a little-known bylaw in her school district’s charter, she was able to test out of her senior year of high school by taking and passing every AP exam. She graduated from high school before the end of that first summer—though there was no ceremony, no cap and gown, no walking with classmates. No proud, smiling photos next to her father and sister. There was just a form letter and a diploma in the mail one day, and Zero’s abject astonishment as he realized what she was trying to do.

And then, only then, was she gone.

He sighed. That was more than a year ago now. He’d last seen her just this past summer, around July or August, not long after his fortieth birthday. She rarely came down from New York these days. On that occasion she’d come back to get some of her belongings out of storage, and had hesitantly agreed to have lunch with him. It had been an awkward, tense, and mostly silent affair. Him asking questions, prodding her to tell him about her life, and her giving him succinct answers and avoiding eye contact.

And now she was coming to dinner.

“Hey.” He hadn’t heard Maria come into the loft bedroom, but he felt her arms around his midsection, her head resting against his back as she hugged him from behind. “It’s okay to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.” He was very nervous. “It’ll be good to see her.”

“Of course it will.” Maria had organized it. She had been the one to reach out to Maya, to invite her over the next time she was in town. The invitation had been extended two months earlier. Maya was in Virginia this weekend to visit some friends from school, and reluctantly agreed to come. Just for dinner. She wouldn’t be staying. She made that very well known.

“Hey,” Maria said softly behind him. “I know the timing isn’t great, but…”

Zero winced. He knew what she was going to say and wished she wouldn’t.

“I’m ovulating.”

He didn’t respond for a long moment, long enough to realize that the silence was becoming uncomfortable as it yawned between them.

When they first moved in together, they had agreed that neither of them was terribly interested in marriage. Kids were not even on his radar. But Maria was only two years younger than him; she was rapidly approaching forty. There was no longer a snooze button on her biological alarm clock. At first she would just casually mention it in conversation, but then she ceased her birth control regiment. She started keeping keen track of her cycle.

Still, they’d never actually sat down and discussed it. It was as if Maria simply assumed that since he’d done it twice before, he would want to be a father again. Though he never said it aloud, he secretly suspected that was why she hadn’t pushed for him to return to the agency, or even to teaching. She liked him where he was because it meant there would be someone to care for a baby.

How can it be, he wondered bitterly, that my life as an unemployed civilian could be more complicated than as a covert agent?

He’d waited too long to reply, and when he finally did it sounded forced and lame. “I think,” he said at last, “that we should put a pin in that for now.”

He felt her arms fall away from around his waist and hastily added, “Just until we get past this visit. Then we’ll talk, and we’ll decide—”

“To wait longer.” She practically spat the words out, and when he turned to face her she was staring at the carpet in undisguised disappointment.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Yes, it is.

“I just think it warrants a serious discussion,” he said.

So I can man up enough to admit I don’t want it.

“We should at least deal with what’s in front of us first.”

Like the fact that the two children I already raised hate me.

“Yeah,” Maria agreed quietly. “You’re right. We’ll wait longer.” She turned and headed out of the bedroom.

“Maria, wait…”

“I have to finish dinner.” He heard her footfalls on the stairs and cursed himself under his breath for mishandling that so badly. It was pretty much par for the course in his life lately.

Then the doorbell rang. The sound of it sent an electric tingle through his nervous system.

He heard the front door open. Maria’s cheerful voice: “Hi! It’s so good to see you. Come in, come in.”

She was here. Suddenly Zero’s feet felt like lead weights. He didn’t want to go downstairs. Didn’t want to face this.

“And you must be Greg…” Maria said.

Greg? Who the hell is Greg? Suddenly he found the willpower to move. One stair at a time, she slowly came into sight. It had only been a few months since he’d last seen her, but still she took his breath away.

Maya was eighteen now, no longer a child, and it was showing more rapidly than he cared to admit. When they’d met for lunch the past summer, her hair was still long and curled into the military-requisite donut bun, but she had since had it cut shorter, a pixie cut, short on the sides and back and sweeping across her forehead, accentuating her lean face, which was growing mature and angular. She looked stronger, the muscles in her arms developing, small but dense.

She was looking more like him every day, while he was looking and feeling less like himself every day.

Maya glanced up at him as he came down the stairs. “Hi.” It was a passive greeting, not bright but not flat. Neutral. Like someone greeting a stranger.

“Hi, Maya.” He moved in to hug her and the slightest hint of apprehension shadowed her face. He settled for a half-embrace, one arm around her shoulders while her hand patted his back once. “You look… you look well.”

“I am.” She cleared her throat and addressed the elephant in the room. “This is Greg.”

The boy, if he could be called that, stepped forward and stuck out an enthusiastic hand. “Mr. Lawson, a pleasure to meet you, sir.” He was tall, six-two, with short blond hair and perfect teeth and tanned arms that were testing the limits of his polo shirt’s sleeves.

He looked like the high school quarterback.

“Uh, nice to meet you too, Greg.” Zero shook the kid’s hand. Greg had a firm grip, firmer than was necessary.

Zero disliked him immediately. “You’re a, uh, friend of Maya’s from school?”

“Boyfriend,” Maya said unflinchingly.

This guy? Zero disliked him even more now. His smile, his teeth. He found himself incensed with jealousy. This grinning i***t was close to his daughter. Closer than Zero was allowed to be.

“What are we all standing around here for? Come in, please.” Maria closed the door and led them toward the living room. “Have a seat. Dinner isn’t quite done yet. Can I get you something to drink?”

They responded, but Zero didn’t hear it. He was too busy examining this relative stranger in his house—and he didn’t mean Greg. Maya was flourishing into a young woman, with her new hair and pressed clothes and boyfriend and school and career trajectory… and he wasn’t a part of it. Not any of it.

Despite everything that had happened, Maya hadn’t deterred from the goal she had set for herself almost two years earlier. She wanted to be a CIA agent—more than that, she wanted to become the youngest agent in the CIA’s history. But it had nothing to do with following in her father’s footsteps. She had been through some harrowing experiences of her own, chief among them being kidnapped by a psychopathic assassin and handed over to a human trafficking ring, and she wanted to be among the protectors who would keep such things from happening to other young women.

After testing out of her senior year of high school, and unbeknownst to Zero, Maya applied to the military academy West Point. Even though her grades were excellent, she had no ROTC experience and no plans for military service, and therefore wouldn’t have made the most attractive candidate. But she had a plan for that too.

In an act of cunning and guile that foreshadowed an illustrious career in covert operations, Maya went over her father’s head to fellow agent (and friend) Todd Strickland. Through him, and under the pretense of being Agent Zero’s daughter, she managed to secure a letter of recommendation from then-president Eli Pierson, who thought he was doing Zero a personal favor. She was accepted into West Point, and moved to New York before the end of that first summer after discovering the truth about her mother.

Zero found out all of this while she was packing her bags. By then it was too late to stop her, though not for lack of trying. But no amount of pleading would dissuade her.

She was in her second year now, and even though the ties between father and daughter were nearly severed, Maria kept tabs on Maya as best she could and updated Zero. He knew that she was top of her class, excelling in everything she did, and earning admiration from the faculty. He knew that she was heading toward great things.

He just wished that it wasn’t the same career path that had gotten her mother killed and ruined the relationship with her father.

“So.” Greg cleared his throat, sitting beside Maya on the sofa while Zero sat across from them in a recliner. “Maya tells me you’re an accountant?”

Zero smiled thinly. Of course Maya would choose such a bland occupation as his cover. “That’s right,” he said. “Corporate finance.”

“That’s… interesting.” Greg forced a smile in return.

What a sycophant. What does she see in this guy? “And what about you, Greg?” he asked. “What do you plan to do? Become an officer?”

“No, no, I don’t think that’s for me.” The kid waved a hand as if swatting away the notion. “I plan to go into the NCAVC. Specifically, the BAU…” He trailed off and chuckled lightly to himself. “Sorry, Mr. Lawson, I forgot I was talking to a civilian. I want to be an FBI agent, with their Behavioral Analysis Unit. Violent Crime Division. You know, the guys who hunt serial killers and domestic terrorists and such.”

“Sounds exciting,” Zero said flatly. Of course he knew what the NCAVC was, and the BAU—just about anyone who turned on prime time television knew that—but he didn’t say so. In fact, he had little doubt that if this smarmy kid across from him knew who he was, Agent Zero, he would wipe that unctuous grin off his face and devolve into a slobbering fan in point-five seconds flat.

But he couldn’t say any of that. Instead he added, “Sounds ambitious, too.”

“Greg can do it,” Maya chimed in. “He’s top of second class.”

“That means ‘junior,’” Greg offered to Zero. “But we don’t call them that at The Point. And Maya here is the best in third class.” He reached over and gently squeezed Maya’s knee.

Zero had to physically restrain himself from his lip curling in a snarl. Suddenly he understood why Maya brought this boy with her; he was more than just a buffer between them. With him there, they couldn’t talk openly. There would be no talk of the CIA, no talk of the past. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could ask the one thing he wanted to ask the most, which was about Sara.

Maya leaving for school crushed him. But Sara… even after all this time, it felt like that nail in the coffin had pierced straight through to his heart.

Greg was still talking, saying something about the FBI and cleaning house in light of the scandal that had rocked the former administration, and how his family had connections, or something of the like. Zero wasn’t listening. He looked over at her, his daughter, the young woman he had raised, given everything he could. He had changed her diapers. Taught her to walk and talk and write and play softball and use a fork. He’d grounded her, hugged her when she cried, brightened her day when she was feeling down, put Band-Aids on scraped knees. He’d saved her life and gotten her mother killed.

When he looked over at her, tried to catch her eye, she looked away.

And in that moment, he knew. There would be no reconciliation, at least not tonight. This was a formality. This was Maya’s way of saying you deserve to know that I’m alive and well, but not much more than that.

She stared at the carpet while Greg droned on about something or other, her gaze pensive. Her smile faltered, and as it vanished, so did Zero’s hope of getting his daughter back.