uh…” Maya hesitated. Being sullen and reluctant was unusual for her. “I saw Dad last night.”
Sara stopped in her tracks, but said nothing. Her stomach tightened instinctively as if she was preparing for a punch to the gut.
“It… didn’t go well.” Maya sighed. “I ended up shouting some things, storming out—”
“Why are you telling me this?” Sara demanded.
“What?”
“You know that I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to hear about him. I don’t even want to think about him. So why are you telling me this?”
“I just thought you might want to know.”
“No,” Sara said forcefully. “You had a bad experience, and you wanted to talk to someone that you think might understand. But I’m not interested. I’m done with him. Okay?”
“Yeah.” Maya sighed. “I think I am too.”
Sara hesitated a moment. She’d never heard her sister sound so defeated. But she stood by her position. “Good. Move on with your life. How’s school?”
“School’s great,” Maya said. “I’m top of my class.”
“Of course you are. You’re brilliant.” Sara smiled at that as she resumed her walk. But at the same time, she noticed movement on the sidewalk near her feet. A shadow, stretched long with the mid-morning sun, was keeping pace with her own. Someone walking not far behind her.
You’re being paranoid. It wouldn’t be the first time she mistook a pedestrian as a pursuer. It was part of the unfortunate fallout of her experiences. Even so, she slowed as she reached the next intersection to cross the street.
“But seriously,” Maya said through the phone. “You’re doing okay?”
“Oh, yeah.” Sara paused and waited for the light. So did the shadow. “I’m doing great.” She could have turned and looked at them, made them aware that she was aware, but she kept her eyes forward and waited for the signal to cross to see if they would follow.
“Good. I’m glad. I’ll try to send you a little something in a couple weeks.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Sara told her. The light changed. She strode briskly across the crosswalk.
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Anyway, I’ll let you get to work.”
“I’m off tomorrow.” Sara reached the opposite corner and continued on her way. The shadow kept pace. “Call you then?”
“Definitely. Love you.”
“Love you too.” Sara ended the call and stuck her phone back in her purse. Then, without warning, she made an abrupt left turn and jogged a few paces, just to get out of his line of sight. She turned, folded her arms across her chest, and put on her very best stern expression as her pursuer rounded the corner after her.
He practically skidded to a stop when he saw her there waiting for him.
“For a supposedly covert operative, you’re shit at this,” she told him. “I smelled your cologne.”
Agent Todd Strickland smirked. “Nice to see you too, Sara.”
She did not return the smile. “Still keeping tabs on me, I see.”
“What? No. I was in the area, working an op.” He shrugged. “I saw you on the street, figured I’d come say hi.”
“Uh-huh,” she said flatly. “In that case, hi. Now I have to go to work. Bye.” She turned and walked away briskly.
“I’ll walk with you.” He trotted to catch up to her.
She scoffed. Strickland was young for a CIA agent, not yet thirty years old—and, she realized, irritatingly handsome—but he also reminded her too much of her father. The two were friends, going back nearly two years when Sara and her sister had been kidnapped by the Slovakian traffickers. Strickland had helped rescue them, and at that time he’d made a promise that no matter what happened, he would do whatever he could to keep the two girls safe.
Apparently that meant using CIA resources to keep abreast of Sara’s whereabouts.
“So things are good?” he asked her.
“Yup. Peachy. Now go away.”
But still he walked beside her. “That guy in your building still giving you grief?”
“Oh my god,” she groaned. “What, did you bug the place?”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay—”
She spun on him. “You’re not my dad. We’re not even friends. Once upon a time, maybe you were a… I don’t know. Glorified babysitter. But now you’re coming off like a fucking stalker.” She had known that he was tracking her for some time; this was not the first occasion in which he’d suddenly appeared in Florida. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want to be reminded of that life. So how about you tell me what you want from me, and we can go our separate ways?”
Strickland barely reacted to the outburst. “I want you to be safe,” he said plainly. “And, if I’m being honest, I want you to quit the drugs.”
Sara’s eyes narrowed and her mouth fell open a little. “Just who do you think you are?”
“Someone who cares. It would break your father’s heart if he knew.”
If he knew? “Oh, you mean you’re not hand-delivering him weekly reports?”
Strickland shook his head. “Haven’t seen him in months.”
“So you’re just following me out of some misguided sense of duty?”
The young agent smiled sadly and shook his head. “Whether you like it or not, there are still a lot of people out there that remember Agent Zero. I hope the day never comes that you have to thank me for keeping an eye on you. But until then, I’m going to keep doing it.”
“Yeah. I bet you will.” She looked straight up, squinting at the bright sky. “What is it, a satellite? Is that how you watch me?” Sara stuck one arm over her head and flashed a middle finger to the clouds. “There’s a photo for you. Send it to my dad as a Christmas card.” Then she turned and started away.
“Sara,” he called after her. “The drugs?”
Christ, why won’t he go away? She turned to face him. “So I smoked a little weed. Who cares? It’s practically legal here.”
“Uh-huh. And the Xanax?”
The Xanax. Her first question was, how did he know about that? The second that crossed her mind was, why hadn’t it kicked in yet? But she knew the answer to the latter already. Her body was getting too accustomed to a single bar. It wasn’t enough anymore.
“And the coke?”
She laughed at him then, a bitter and caustic laugh. “Don’t
