Target Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #2)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Reid held up his arm like a crossing guard stopping traffic.

“It’s okay, Mr. Thompson,” he called out. “It’s just pizza.”

The older man on his front lawn, with his graying buzz cut and slight paunch, stopped in his tracks. The pizza guy glanced over his shoulder and, for the first time, showed some emotion—his eyes widened in shock when he saw the gun and the hand resting upon it.

“You sure, Reid?” Mr. Thompson eyed up the pizza guy suspiciously.

“I’m sure.”

The delivery guy slowly pulled a receipt from his pocket. “Uh, it’s eighteen,” he said, bewildered.

Reid gave him a twenty and a ten and took the boxes from him. “Keep the change.”

The pizza guy didn’t have to be told twice. He jogged back to his waiting coupe, jumped in, and screeched away. Mr. Thompson watched him go, his eyes narrowed.

“Thank you, Mr. Thompson,” Reid said. “But it’s just pizza.”

“I didn’t like the look of that guy,” his next-door neighbor growled. Reid liked the older man just fine—though he thought Thompson took on his new role of keeping a watchful eye on the Lawson family just a bit too seriously. Even so, Reid decidedly preferred having someone a bit overzealous to someone lackadaisical in their duties.

“Never can be too careful,” Thompson added. “How are the girls?”

“They’re doing fine.” Reid smiled pleasantly. “But, uh… do you have to carry that around in plain sight all the time?” He gestured to the Smith & Wesson at Thompson’s hip.

The older man looked confused. “Well… yes. My CHP expired, and Virginia is a legal open-carry state.”

“…Right.” Reid forced another smile. “Of course. Thanks again, Mr. Thompson. I’ll let you know if we need anything.”

Thompson nodded and then trotted back across the lawn to his house. Deputy Director Cartwright had assured Reid that the older man was quite capable; Thompson was a retired CIA agent, and even though he’d been out of the field for more than two decades he was clearly happy—if not a tad eager—to be useful again.

Reid sighed and closed the door behind him. He locked it and activated the security alarm again (which was becoming a ritual every time he opened or closed the door), and then turned to find Maya standing behind him in the foyer.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing. Mr. Thompson just wanted to say hi.”

Maya crossed her arms again. “And here I thought we were making such good progress.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Reid scoffed at her. “Thompson is just a harmless old man—”

“Harmless? He carries a gun everywhere he goes,” Maya protested. “And don’t think I don’t see him watching us from his window. It’s like he’s spying on—” Her mouth fell open a little. “Oh my god, does he know about you? Is Mr. Thompson a spy too?”

“Jeez, Maya, I am not a spy…”

Actually, he thought, that’s exactly what you are…

“I don’t believe this!” she exclaimed. “Is that why you have him babysit us when you leave?”

“Yes,” he admitted quietly. He didn’t have to tell her the unrequested truths, but there wasn’t much point in hiding things from her when she was going to make such accurate guesses anyway.

He expected her to be angry and start throwing accusations again, but instead she shook her head and murmured, “Unreal. My dad is a spy, and our next-door nut-job is a bodyguard.” Then, to his surprise, she hugged him around the neck, almost knocking the pizza boxes from his hand. “I know you can’t tell me everything. All I wanted was some truth.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Just risking international security to be a good dad. Now go wake your sister before the pizza gets cold. And Maya? Not a word of this to Sara.”

He went into the kitchen and took out some plates and napkins, and poured three glasses of soda. A few moments later, Sara shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Hi, Daddy,” she mumbled.

“Hey, sweetheart. Have a seat. Are you sleeping okay?”

“Mm,” she murmured vaguely. Sara plucked up a piece of pizza and bit off the tip, chewing in slow, lazy circles.

He was worried about her, but he tried not to let on. Instead he grabbed a slice of the sausage-and-pepper pie. It was halfway to his mouth when Maya intervened, snatching it out of his hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“…Eating? Or trying to.”

“Um, no. You have a date, remember?”

“What? No, that’s tomorrow…” He trailed off, uncertain. “Oh, god, that is tonight, isn’t it?” He nearly smacked himself in the forehead.

“Sure is,” said Maya around a mouthful of pizza.

“Also, it’s not a date. It’s dinner with a friend.”

Maya shrugged. “Fine. But if you don’t go get ready, you’re going to be late for ‘dinner with a friend.’”

He looked at his watch. She was right; he was supposed to meet Maria at five.

“Go, shoo. Get changed.” She ushered him out of the kitchen and he hurried upstairs.

With everything going on and his continual attempts to elude his own thoughts, he’d nearly forgotten about the promise to meet with Maria. There had been several half-baked attempts to get together over the past four weeks, always with something getting in the way on one end or another—though, if he was being honest with himself, it was usually his end that made the excuses. Maria had seemed to finally grow tired of it and not only planned the outing, but chose a spot halfway between Alexandria and Baltimore, where she lived, if he would promise to see her.

He did miss her. He missed being around her. They weren’t just partners in the agency; there was a history there, but Reid couldn’t remember most of it. Barely any, in fact. All he knew was that when he was around her, there was a distinct feeling that he was in the company of someone who cared for him—a friend, someone he could trust, and perhaps even more than that.

He went into his closet and pulled out an ensemble he thought would work for the occasion. He was a fan of a classic style, though he was aware that his wardrobe probably dated him by at least a decade. He pulled on a pair of pleated khakis, a plaid button-down, and a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” Maya asked, startling him. She was leaning against the door frame to his bedroom, munching casually on a pizza crust.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it is that you look like you just stepped out of a classroom. Come on.” She took him by the arm back to the closet and began rooting through his clothes. “Jeez, Dad, you dress like you’re eighty…”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” she called back. “Ah. Here.” She pulled out a black sport coat—the only one he owned. “Wear this, with something gray under it. Or white. A T-shirt or a polo. Get rid of the dad-pants and put on some jeans. Dark ones. Slim fit.”

At the behest of his daughter, he changed his outfit while she waited in the hall. He supposed he should get used to this bizarre role reversal, he thought. One moment he was the overprotective father; the next he was caving in the face of his challenging, astute daughter.

“Much better,” Maya said as he presented himself anew. “You almost look like you’re ready for a date.”

“Thank you,” he said, “and this isn’t a date.”

“You keep saying that. But you’re going for dinner and drinks with a mysterious woman that you claim is an old friend, even though you’ve never mentioned her and we’ve never met her…”

“She is an old friend—”

“And, I might add,” Maya said over him, “she’s quite attractive. We saw her get off the plane in Dulles. So if either of you are looking for something more than ‘old friends,’ this is a date.”

“Good god, you and I are not talking about that.” Reid winced. But in his mind, he was panicking slightly. She’s right. This is a date. He had been doing so many mental gymnastics lately that he hadn’t paused long enough to consider what “dinner and drinks” really meant to a pair of single adults. “Fine,” he admitted, “let’s just say it’s a date. Um… what do I do?”

“You’re asking me? I’m not exactly an expert.” Maya grinned. “Talk to her. Get to know her better. And please, try your best to be interesting.”

Reid scoffed and shook his head. “Excuse me, but I am plenty interesting. How many people do you know that can give an entire oral history of the Bulavin Rebellion?”

“Only one.” Maya rolled her eyes. “And do not give this woman an entire oral history of the Bulavin Rebellion.”

Reid chuckled and hugged his daughter.

“You’ll be fine,” she assured him.

“You will too,” he said. “I’m going to call Mr. Thompson to come by for a while…”

“Dad, no!” Maya pulled away from his embrace. “Come on. I’m sixteen. I can watch Sara for a couple of hours.”

“Maya, you know how important it is to me that you two aren’t alone—”

“Dad, he smells like motor oil, and all he wants to talk about is ‘the good ol’ days’ with the Marines,” she said exasperatedly. “Nothing is going to happen. We’re going to eat pizza and watch a movie. Sara will be in bed before you’re back. We’ll be fine.”

“I still think that Mr. Thompson should come—”

“He can spy through the window like he usually does. We’ll be okay. I promise. We have a great security system, and deadbolts on all the doors, and I know about the gun near the front door—”

“Maya!” Reid exclaimed. How did she know about that? “Do not mess with that, do you understand?”

“I’m not going to touch it,” she said. “I’m just saying. I know it’s there. Please. Let me prove I can do this.”

Reid didn’t like the idea of the girls being alone in the house, not at all, but she was practically begging. “Tell me the escape plan,” he said.

“The whole thing?!” she protested.

“The whole thing.”

“Fine.” She flipped her hair over a shoulder, as she often did when she was annoyed. Her eyes rolled to the ceiling as she recited, monotone, the plan that Reid had enacted shortly upon their arrival in the new house. “If anyone comes to the front door, I should first make sure the alarm is armed, and the deadbolt and chain lock are on. Then I check the peephole to see if it’s someone I know. If it’s not, I call Mr. Thompson and have him investigate first.”

“And if it is?” he prompted.

“If it’s someone I know,” Maya rattled on, “I check the side window—carefully—to see if there is anyone else with them. If there is, I call Mr. Thompson to come over and investigate.”

“And if someone tries to force their way in?”

“Then we get down to the basement and go into the exercise room,” she recited. One of the first renovations Reid had made, upon moving in, was to have the door to the small room in the basement replaced with one with a steel core. It had three heavy deadbolts and aluminum alloy hinges. It was bulletproof and fireproof, and the CIA tech that had installed it claimed it would take a dozen SWAT battering rams to knock it down. It effectively turned the small exercise room into a makeshift panic room.

“And then?” he asked.

“We call Mr. Thompson first,” she said. “And then nine-one-one. If we forget our cell phones or can’t get to them, there’s a landline in the basement preprogrammed with his number.”

“And if someone breaks in, and you can’t get to the basement?”

“Then we go to the nearest available exit,” Maya droned. “Once outside, we make as much noise as possible.”

Thompson was a lot of things, but hard of hearing was not one of them. One night Reid and the girls had the TV on too loud while watching an action movie, and Thompson came running at the sound of what he thought might have been suppressed gunshots.

“But we should always have our phones with us, in case we need to make a call once we’re somewhere safe.”

Reid nodded approvingly. She had recited the entire plan—except one small, yet crucial, part. “You forgot something.”

“No, I didn’t.” She frowned.

“Once you’re somewhere safe, and after you call Thompson and the authorities…?”

“Oh, right. Then we call you right away and let you know what’s happened.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Maya raised an eyebrow. “Okay as in, you’ll let us be on our own for once?”

He still didn’t like it. But it was only for a couple of hours, and Thompson would be right next door. “Yes,” he said finally.

Maya breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. We’ll be fine, I swear it.” She hugged him again, briefly. She turned to head back downstairs, but then thought of something else. “Can I get away with just one more question?”

“Sure. But I can’t promise I’ll tell you the answer.”

“Are you going to start… traveling, again?”

“Oh.” Once again her question took him by surprise. The CIA had offered him his job back—in fact, the Director of National Intelligence himself had demanded that Kent Steele be fully reinstated—but Reid hadn’t yet given them an answer, and the agency hadn’t yet demanded one of him. Most days he avoided thinking about it altogether.

“I… would really like to say no. But the truth is that I don’t know. I haven’t quite made up my mind.” He paused a moment before asking, “What would you think if I did?”

“You want my opinion?” she asked in surprise.

“Yes, I do. You’re honestly one of the smartest people I know, and your opinion matters a lot to me.”

“I mean… on the one hand, it’s pretty cool, knowing what I know now—”

“Knowing what you think you know,” Reid corrected.

“But it’s also pretty scary. I know there’s a very real chance that you could get hurt, or… or worse.” Maya was quiet for a while. “Do you like it? Working for them?”

Reid didn’t answer her directly. She was right; the ordeal that he’d been through had been terrifying, and had threatened his life more than once, as well as the lives of both his girls. He couldn’t bear it if anything happened to them. But the hard truth—and one of the bigger reasons why he kept himself so busy lately—was that he did enjoy it, and he did miss it. Kent Steele longed for the chase. There was a time, when all this started, that he acknowledged that part of him as if it were a different person, but that wasn’t true. Kent Steele was an alias. He longed for it. He missed it. It was a part of him, just as much as teaching and raising two girls. Though his memories were fuzzy, it was a part of his greater self, his identity, and not having it was like a sports star suffering a career-ending injury: it brought with it the question, Who am I, if I’m not that?

He didn’t have to answer her question aloud. Maya could see it in his thousand-yard gaze.

“What’s her name again?” she asked suddenly, changing the subject.

Reid smiled sheepishly. “Maria.”

“Maria,” she said thoughtfully. “All right. Enjoy your date.” Maya headed downstairs.

Before following, Reid had a minor afterthought. He opened the top dresser drawer and rummaged around in the rear of it until he found what he was looking for—an old bottle of expensive cologne, one he hadn’t worn in two years. It had been Kate’s favorite. He sniffed the diffuser and felt a chill run down his spine. It was a familiar, musky scent that carried with it a flood of good memories.

He spritzed some on his wrist and dabbed each side of his neck. The scent was stronger than he remembered, but pleasant.

Then—another memory flashed across his vision.

The kitchen in Virginia. Kate is angry, gesturing at something on the table. Not just angry—she’s frightened. “Why do you have this, Reid?” she asks accusingly. “What if one of the girls had found it? Answer me!”

He shook the vision loose before the inevitable migraine came on, but it didn’t make the experience any less disturbing. He couldn’t recall when or why that argument had happened; he and Kate had rarely argued, and in the memory, she looked scared—either scared of whatever they were arguing about, or possibly even scared of him. He had never given her a reason to be. At least not that he could remember…

His hands shook as a new realization struck him. He couldn’t recall the memory, which meant that it might have been one that was suppressed by the implant. But why would any memories of Kate have been erased with Agent Zero?

“Dad!” Maya called from the bottom of the stairs. “You’re going to be late!”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Coming.” He would have to face the reality that either he sought a solution to his problem, or that the occasional resurfacing memories would continuously struggle forth, confusing and jarring.

But he would face that reality later. Right now he had a promise to keep.

He went downstairs, kissed each of his daughters on the top of their head, and headed out to the car. Before making his way down the walkway, he made sure that Maya set the alarm after him, and then he climbed into the silver SUV he’d bought just a couple weeks earlier.

Even though he was very nervous and certainly excited about seeing Maria again, he still couldn’t shake the tight ball of dread in his stomach. He couldn’t help but feel that leaving the girls alone, even for a short time, was a very bad idea. If the events of the previous month had taught him anything, it was first and foremost that there was no shortage of threats that wanted to see him suffer.