Trapping Zero

Reid Lawson was exhausted, aching, and anxious.

But above all else, he was confused.

Less than twenty-four hours prior, he had succeeded in rescuing his two teenage daughters from the hands of Slovakian traffickers. In the process he had stopped two freight trains, inadvertently destroyed a very expensive prototype helicopter, killed eighteen men and severely injured more than a dozen others.

Was it eighteen? He had lost count.

Now he found himself handcuffed to a steel table in a small, windowless detention room, awaiting the news of what his fate would be.

The CIA had warned him. The deputy directors told him what would happen if he defied their orders and struck out on his own. They were desperate to avoid another rampage like the one that had happened two years earlier. That’s what they called it—a “rampage.” A violent, bloody tear across Europe and the Middle East. This time it had been Eastern Europe, across Croatia and Slovakia and Poland.

They had warned him, threatened him with what would happen. But Reid saw no other recourse. They were his daughters, his little girls. Now they were safe, and Reid had resigned himself to accept whatever end might be in store for him.

In addition to the activity of the past several days and a severe lack of sleep, he’d been given painkillers after having his injuries treated. He had sustained a shallow stab wound in his abdomen from his fight with Rais, as well as thorough bruising, some superficial cuts and scrapes, a gash across one bicep where a bullet grazed him, and a mild concussion. Nothing serious enough to keep him from being detained.

He wasn’t told his destination. He wasn’t told anything at all as three CIA agents, none of which he recognized, silently escorted him from the hospital in Poland to an airfield and onto a plane. He was, however, somewhat astonished when he arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia instead of the CIA black site Hell-Six in Morocco.

A police cruiser had carried him from the airport to agency headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in the unincorporated community of Langley, Virginia. From there he was ushered into the steel-walled detention room on a lower level and handcuffed to a table that was bolted to the floor—all without any explanation whatsoever from anyone.

Reid didn’t like the way the painkillers made him feel; his mind wasn’t fully alert. But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. Especially not in the uncomfortable position at the steel table, the handcuff chain threaded through a metal loop and tight around both his wrists.

He’d been sitting in the room for forty-five minutes, wondering just what the hell was going on and why he hadn’t yet been tossed into a hole in the ground, when the door finally swung open.

Reid stood immediately, or as much as he could while being handcuffed to the table. “How are my girls?” he asked quickly.

“They’re fine,” said Deputy Director Shawn Cartwright. “Sit.” Cartwright was Reid’s boss—or rather, he had been Agent Zero’s boss, right up until Reid was disavowed for striking out to find his girls. In his mid-forties, Cartwright was relatively young to be a CIA director, though his thick, dark hair had begun to gray slightly. It was surely coincidence that it started right around the same time that Kent Steele had returned from the dead.

Reid slowly lowered himself back into the seat as Cartwright took the chair across from him and cleared his throat. “Agent Strickland stayed with your daughters until Sara was discharged from the hospital,” the director explained. “They’re on a plane, the three of them, on their way home as we speak.”

Reid breathed a short-lived sigh of relief—very short-lived, since he knew the proverbial hammer was about to fall.

The door opened again, and anger spontaneously swelled in Reid’s chest as Deputy Director Ashleigh Riker entered the small room, wearing a gray pencil skirt and matching blazer. Riker was head of Special Operations Group, a faction of Cartwright’s Special Activities Division that handled covert international operations.

“What’s she doing here?” Reid asked pointedly. His tone was not friendly. Riker, in his book, was not to be trusted.

She took a seat beside Cartwright and smiled warmly. “I, Mr. Steele, have the distinct pleasure of telling you where you’ll be going now.”

A knot of dread formed in his stomach. Of course Riker would take pleasure in doling his punishment; her disdain for Agent Zero and his tactics was hardly masked. Reid reminded himself that he had gotten his girls to safety, and he knew this was coming.

It still didn’t make it any easier. “Okay,” he said calmly. “Then tell me. Where will I be going?”

“Home,” Riker said simply.

Reid’s gaze flitted from Riker to Cartwright and back again, unsure he had heard her correctly. “I’m sorry?”

“Home. You’re going home, Kent.” She pushed something across the table. A small silver key slid over the polished surface to just within his grasp.

It was a handcuff key. But he didn’t take it. “Why?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” Riker shrugged. “The decision came from above our pay grade.”

Reid scoffed. He was relieved, to say the least, to hear that he wouldn’t be thrown into a miserable pit like H-6, but this didn’t feel right to him. They had threatened him, disavowed him, and even sent two other field agents after him… only to set him loose again? Why?

The painkillers he’d been given were numbing his thought process; his brain was unable to work out the kinks in what they were telling him. “I don’t understand…”

“You’ve been away for the last five days,” Cartwright interrupted. “Conducting interviews, researching a history textbook you’re editing. We have names and contact information for several people that can corroborate the story.”

“The man that committed the atrocities in Eastern Europe was confronted by Agent Strickland in Grodkow,” said Riker. “He was discovered to be a Russian expatriate masquerading as an American in an attempt to cause international strife between us and the Eastern Bloc nations. He drew on a CIA agent and was shot dead.”

Reid blinked at the flood of false information. He knew what this was; they were giving him a cover story, the same one that would be issued to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world.

But it couldn’t be that easy. Something was certainly amiss—starting with Riker’s bizarre smile. “I was disavowed,” he said. “I was threatened. I was ignored. I think I’m owed a little bit of an explanation here.”

“Agent Zero…” Riker began. Then she chuckled slightly. “Sorry, old habit. You’re not an agent; not anymore. Kent, this wasn’t our decision to make. As I said, this comes from higher up. But the truth of the matter is, if we look at the sum and not the parts, that you eliminated an international human trafficking ring that has plagued the CIA and Interpol for six years now.”

“You took out Rais and, presumably, the last of Amun with him,” Cartwright added.

“Yes, you killed people,” Riker said. “But every one of them has been confirmed to have been a criminal—some of the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles. As much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree with the decision that you did more good than harm.”

Reid nodded slowly—not because he agreed with the logic, but because he realized his best course of action at the moment was to stop arguing, accept the pardon, and figure it out later.

But he still had questions. “What do you mean I’m not an agent anymore?”

Riker and Cartwright exchanged a glance. “You’re being transferred,” Cartwright told him. “That is, if you accept the job.”

“The National Resources Division,” Riker chimed in, “is the CIA’s domestic wing. It’s still within the agency, but doesn’t require any field work. You’ll never have to leave the country, or your girls. You’ll recruit assets. Handle debriefs. Meet with diplomats.”

“Why?” Reid asked.

“Simply put—we don’t want to lose you,” Cartwright told him. “We’d rather have you onboard in another function than not with us at all.”

“What about Agent Watson?” Reid asked. Watson had helped him find his girls; he had gathered equipment for him and gotten Reid out of the country when he needed to. As a result, Watson had been caught and detained for it.

“Watson is on an eight-week medical leave for his shoulder,” Riker said. “I imagine he’ll be back as soon as he’s adequately healed up.”

Reid raised an eyebrow. “And Maria?” She had helped him as well—even when her orders from the CIA were to apprehend Agent Zero.

“Johansson is stateside,” said Cartwright. “She’s taking a few days’ respite before reassignment. But she’ll be heading back into the field.”

Reid had to keep himself from visibly shaking his head. Something was definitely wrong with this—it wasn’t just him being pardoned. It was everyone associated with his latest rampage. But he also had the instinct that told him it wasn’t the time or place to argue about going home.

There would be time for that later, when his brain wasn’t bogged down with sleep deprivation and painkillers.

“So… that’s it then?” he asked. “I’m free to go?”

“Free to go.” Riker smiled again. He didn’t at all like the look of it on her face.

Cartwright looked at his watch. “Your daughters should be arriving at Dulles in about… two hours or so. There’s a car waiting for you if you want it. You can get yourself cleaned up, changed, and be there to greet them.”