I plan on putting on some sweatpants, making some tea, and hunkering down…”
“No,” Zero interrupted firmly. “No way. Come have dinner with me and the girls.” He said it without fully thinking it through, but he didn’t regret the offer. If anything, he felt a stab of guilt, since the only reason she’d be alone on Thanksgiving was because of him.
Maria smiled gratefully, but her eyes were hesitant. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
She had a point; their relationship had ended barely more than a month prior. They had been living together for more than a year as… well, he wasn’t sure what they had been. Dating? He couldn’t remember ever referring to her as his girlfriend. It just sounded too strange. But it didn’t matter in the long run, because Maria had admitted that she wanted a family.
If Zero was going to do it all over again, there wouldn’t be anyone else in the world he’d rather do it with than Maria. But when he took a good introspective look, he realized he didn’t want that. He had work to do on himself, work to repair the relationships with his daughters, work to exorcise the ghosts of his past. And then the interpreter, Karina, had come into his life, in a too-brief romance that was dizzying and dangerous and wonderful and tragic. His heart was still aching from her loss.
Even so, he and Maria had a storied history, not only romantically but professionally and platonically as well. They had agreed to stay friends; neither of them would have it any other way. Yet now he was an agent again, while Maria had been promoted to Deputy Director of Special Operations—which meant she was his boss.
It was, to say the least, complicated.
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…”
