Assassin Zero

Zero shook his head. It didn’t have to be complicated. He had to believe that two people could be friends, regardless of their past or current associations.

“It’s a great idea,” he told her. “I won’t take no for an answer. Have dinner with us.”

“Well…” Maria’s gaze flitted from Zero to Reidigger and back again. “Okay then,” she relented. “That sounds nice. I guess I should go get started on that paperwork.”

“I’ll text you,” Zero promised as she left the warehouse, heels clacking loudly on the concrete.

Alan pulled off his own tac vest with a long grunt, and then replaced the sweat-stained trucker’s cap over his matted hair before casually asking, “Is this a scheme?”

“A scheme?” Zero scoffed. “For what, to get Maria back? You know I’m not thinking about that.”

“No. I mean a scheme for Maria to be a buffer between you and them.” For a covert operative who had been living the last four years as someone else, Alan had a brutal candor about him that sometimes bordered on insulting.

“Of course not,” Zero said firmly. “You know there’s nothing I want more than for things to be the way they used to be. Maria is a friend. Not a buffer.”

“Sure,” Alan agreed, though he sounded dubious. “Maybe ‘buffer’ wasn’t the right term there. Maybe more like a…” He glanced down at the bulletproof tac vest lying on the steel cart in front of them and gestured to it. “Well, I can’t think of a more apt metaphor than that.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zero insisted, trying to keep the heat out of his voice. He wasn’t angry with Alan for being honest, but he was irritated at the suggestion. “Maria doesn’t deserve to be alone on Thanksgiving, and things with the girls are far better than they’ve been in more than a year. Everything is going great.”

Alan put up both hands in surrender. “Okay, I believe you. I’m just looking out for you, that’s all.”

“Yeah. I know.” Zero looked at his watch. “Look, I gotta run. Maya’s coming in today. Let’s hit the gym on Friday?”

“Definitely. Tell the girls I said hi.”

“Will do. Enjoy your chicken and engine.” Zero waved as he headed for the door, but now his head was swimming with doubts. Was Alan right? Had he subconsciously invited Maria because he was afraid to be alone with the girls? What if them being together again reminded them of why they had left in the first place? Or worse, what if they thought the same thing Alan did, that Maria was there as some sort of protective barrier between him and them? What if they thought he wasn’t trying hard enough?

Everything is going great.

It wasn’t at all a comfort, but at least his ability to lie convincingly was sharp as ever.

CHAPTER TWO

Maya trudged up the stairs to the second-floor condo that her dad was renting. It was in a newer development outside of downtown Bethesda, in a neighborhood that had been built up over the past few years with apartments and townhomes and shopping centers. Hardly the sort of place she had ever expected her father to live, but she understood that he had been in a hurry to find something available when things fell apart between him and Maria.

Probably before he could change his mind, she imagined.

For the briefest of moments she mourned the loss of their home in Alexandria, the house that she and Sara and her dad had shared before all of the insanity started. Back when they still believed he was an adjunct history professor, before discovering that he was a covert agent with the CIA. Before they had been kidnapped by a psychopathic assassin who sold them to human traffickers. Back when they believed their mother had died of a swift and sudden stroke while walking to her car after work one day, instead of being murdered at the hands of a man who had saved the girls’ lives on more than one occasion.

Maya shook her head and swept the bangs from her forehead as if trying to push away the thoughts. It was time for a fresh start. Or at least to give it an earnest try.

She found the door to her father’s unit before she realized that she didn’t have a key and should have probably called first to make sure he was home. But after two brisk knocks, the deadbolt slid aside and the door opened, and Maya found herself staring for several dumbfounded seconds at a relative stranger.

She hadn’t see Sara in longer than she cared to admit, and it was evident all over her younger sister’s face. Sara was quickly growing into a young woman, her features becoming defined—or rather, the features of Katherine Lawson, their late mother.

This is going to be harder than I thought. While Maya more closely resembled their father, Sara had always taken on aspects of their mother, in personality and interests as well as looks. Her younger sister’s complexion was paler than Maya remembered too, though whether that was a trick of her memory or a result of a detox, Maya didn’t know. Her eyes seemed somehow duller, and there were evident dark crescents beneath each that Sara had attempted to obscure with makeup. She’d dyed her hair red at some point, at least two months earlier, and now the first several inches of the roots were showing her natural blonde. She’d had it cut recently as well, to chin level, in a way that framed her face nicely but made her look a couple years older. In fact, she and Maya might very well have passed for the same age.

“Hey,” Sara said simply.

“Hi.” Maya snapped out of the initial surprise of seeing her dramatically different sister and smiled. She dropped her green duffel and stepped forward for a hug that Sara seemed grateful to return, almost as if she’d been waiting to see how she might be received by her big sister. “I missed you. I wanted to come home right away when Dad told me what happened…”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Sara said candidly. “I would’ve felt awful if you left school for me. Besides, I didn’t want you to see me… like that.”

Sara slid out of her sister’s arms and grabbed up the duffel bag before Maya could protest. “Come in,” she beckoned. “Welcome home, I guess.”

Welcome home. Strange how little it felt like home. Maya followed her inside the condo. It was a nice enough place, modern with lots of natural light, though rather austere. If not for a few dishes in the sink and the television humming in the living room at low volume, Maya wouldn’t have believed anyone actually lived there. There were no pictures on the walls, no décor that spoke to any sort of personality.

Kind of like a blank slate. Though she had to admit that a blank slate was appropriate for their situation.

“So this is it,” Sara announced, as if reading Maya’s mind. “At least for now. There are only two bedrooms, so we’ll have to share a room…”

“I’m fine with the couch,” Maya offered.

Sara smiled thinly. “I don’t mind sharing. It’d be like when we were little. It’d be… nice. Having you around.” She cleared her throat. Despite how often they had talked over the phone, it was painfully obviously how oddly awkward it was to be in the same room again.

“Where’s Dad?” Maya asked suddenly, and perhaps too loudly, in an effort to diffuse the tension.

“Should be home any minute. He had to stop off after work and get a few things for tomorrow.”

After work. She made it sound so casual, as if he was leaving an office for the day instead of CIA headquarters in Langley.

Sara perched herself upon a stool at the bar-like countertop that separated the kitchen and small dining room. “How’s school?”

Maya leaned against the countertop on her elbows. “School is…” She trailed off. Though she was only eighteen, she was in her second year at West Point in New York. She’d tested out of high school early and was accepted to the military academy on the merit of a letter from former President Eli Pierson, whose assassination attempt had been thwarted by Agent Zero. Now she was top of her class, perhaps even top of the whole academy. But a recent tiff with her sort-of ex-boyfriend Greg Calloway had evolved into hazing and some bullying. Maya refused to give in to it, but she had to admit it made life irritating lately. Greg had a lot of friends, all of them older boys at the academy whom Maya had shown up at least once or twice.

“School is great,” she said at last, forcing a smile. Sara had enough problems of her own. “But kind of boring. I want to know what’s going on with you.”

Sara almost snorted, and then held her hands out at her sides in a grand gesture at the condo. “You’re looking at it. I’m here all day, every day. I watch TV. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t have any money. Dad got me a phone on his plan so he can keep an eye on my calls and texts.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s like one of those white-collar prisons they send politicians and celebrities to.”

Maya smiled sadly at the joke, and then cautiously asked: “But you’re… clean?”

Sara nodded. “As I can be.”

Maya frowned at that. She knew a lot about a lot of things, but recreational drug use wasn’t one of them. “What does that mean?”

Sara stared at the granite counter, tracing a small circle on the smooth surface with an index finger. “It means it’s hard,” she admitted quietly. “I thought it would get easier after those first few days, after all the junk was out of my system. But it didn’t. It’s like… it’s like my brain remembers the feeling, still craves it. The boredom doesn’t help. Dad doesn’t want me to get a job just yet, because he doesn’t want me having any extra money lying around until I’m better.” She scoffed and added, “He’s been pushing me to study for my GED.”

And you should, Maya very nearly blurted out, but she held her tongue. Sara had dropped out of high school after she was granted emancipation, but the last thing she needed right then was a lecture, especially when she was opening up like she was.

But one thing was clear: Sara’s problem was worse than Maya had realized. She’d thought her younger sister had just been experimenting recreationally, and that the near-OD on pills had been an accident. Yet the opposite was true. Sara was a recovering addict. And there was nothing that Maya could do to help her. She didn’t know anything about addiction.

But is that really true?

She suddenly recalled a night, about two weeks earlier, when she’d woken her dorm mate by coming in from the gym at one in the morning. The irritated cadet had grumbled at her, half-asleep, something about being a “workout junkie.” And then Maya had stayed up for another hour studying, only to be out on the track for a jog at six the next morning.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized she knew all about addiction. Wasn’t she addicted to proving herself? Had she not been chasing a dragon of her own success?

And her father, even after all the tumult of the last two years, had still gone back to the job. Sara still craved the chemical high the way that Maya craved accomplishment and their dad craved the thrill of the chase—because maybe they were all just a family of addicts.