Target Zero

“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.