Never Miss

by Melissa Koslin

  He heard the car door open and close and then footsteps—fairly light sounding, probably female.

  Just as the woman turned to walk around the back of the car, Lyndon stood.

  She stopped short. “Lyndon.”

  He stared at her. “Dr. de Athia?”

  “WE HAVE AN EYEWITNESS who saw you kill them, Miss Rogers.”

  Kadance continued to stare at the opposite wall of the interrogation room. She’d gathered that they’d caught one of the surviving mercenaries from Dr. Ibekwe’s house. He’d given them a description of her, and she guessed they’d followed the path of destruction back to the storage facility where she’d used her Sarah Jeane Rogers alias to rent the unit.

  The FBI agent sat down in the chair across from her. “I can wait here all night. I’m a very patient man.”

  Have you crouched in the dirt through a rainstorm for thirty-five hours waiting for a target, perfectly silent and still, focused? She could already see his frustration surfacing.

  Finally, she said, “I’m waiting for my phone call.” She’d weighed all her options, and she really had only one.

  The agent got up and left the room. He closed the door a little too hard.

  A few minutes later, a uniformed officer escorted her to a phone mounted to the cinderblock wall. She dialed from memory. It’d been a very long time since she’d dialed this number.

  “Authentication,” she said into the receiver.

  “Go ahead,” said a bland voice on the other end.

  “Lima yankee november delta 12251441514.” She just hoped someone might talk to her.

  “Hold please.”

  There was a pause for about a minute. Kadance wasn’t sure how long of a call she’d be allowed.

  Another voice came on the phone, one she recognized—her old handler. “Recent bread-making?”

  The code she and her handler had used for her missions. Her handler must’ve recognized her work in the Capitol building shooting. “Yes.”

  “Situation?”

  “McCarran International Airport. FBI Agent Cornwallis.”

  “Understood.” The line went dead.

  The officer escorted her back to the interrogation room, she resumed her seat, and he cuffed her to the table.

  Agent Cornwallis came back in. “Ready to talk now?”

  “Just to say this is much bigger than you realize. I appreciate you’re doing your job, but I’m protecting you by not talking.”

  He threw a file folder onto the table. “Is that so?”

  She resumed staring at the opposite wall.

  “Look at me,” he demanded. His tone was harsh and might have made other people jump.

  She continued to stare with a blank expression. She had no idea if her call had worked, if they’d continue to ignore a disavowed agent, or if they’d step in and control the situation due to the nature of what’d happened at the Capitol building.

  Only a few minutes later, another agent in a suit walked into the interrogation room. He spoke quietly to Agent Cornwallis, but Kadance still heard. “Someone’s here to take her.”

  “Who?” Cornwallis asked incredulously.

  Another man walked into the room. He wasn’t in a suit like the others but jeans, boots, and a black jacket. His skin was very dark, almost as dark as his short black hair.

  The other agent turned to him. “I asked you to wait outside.”

  “You are to release her to me immediately.”

  Cornwallis cursed.

  “Call your superior,” the new man said. Kadance had never seen him before, but she recognized his demeanor, his stance, his manner of speaking. Certain aspects were similar to her own.

  Cornwallis took his phone out of his breast pocket and dialed. “Sir, someone is here to take—” He stopped and listened. “Sir, the jurisdiction on this case—” A longer pause. Cornwallis’s voice was hard. “Yes, sir.” He ended the call and put his phone back in his pocket.

  He spoke to the other agent. “Take off the cuffs.” He walked out of the room.

  The other agent removed the handcuffs and stood to the side. The man in the black jacket walked out, and Kadance followed.

  IT WAS DR. DE ATHIA. Lyndon was positive. She looked different these years later—gray hair, though still long and a little untamed, a peasant skirt, cardigan, and flowy scarf rather than the pantsuit. But it was definitely her. “You gave the commencement address at my graduation from Johns Hopkins,” he said.

  “Very good. I see you’ve finally freed yourself from that brunette Barbie. You’re finally coming around.”

  She’s the mastermind.

  Peripherally, Lyndon eyed the cooler she had in her hand. It was fairly large and did not look to have a solid locking mechanism. He was concerned if he grabbed for the cooler or attacked her in any way, the virus could be exposed. “So, what’s the plan?” he asked. “Plant the virus in the fire riser, cause the sprinkler system to go off, and move on to the next building? In the chaos, you might even get to all the buildings on the campus.”

  She paused. “I really only need to infect the scientists.”

  “The administrative staff will get infected eventually. They won’t be helpful in stopping the progression of the virus.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Obviously, you’ve found a way to transmit the virus via water. Impressive. How much more contagious is it than the already-known strains?”

  “Brush your fingertip against a surface an infected person has touched, and within five hours, your whole body will be nothing but open sores and puss-filled blisters. If you make it that long.”

  He wasn’t sure why she was standing here talking with him like this, but he was going to use the opportunity. “What’s your plan to get it to spread outside the country? Do you have carriers set up to get on planes?”

  “It’ll spread too fast for anyone to stop it. I’ve run the numbers. It’ll reach all major cities within a week. It’s persistent. I need just this small amount to cleanse the Earth.” She smiled a little.

  “Has this been your plan all along, since the ’70s, cleanse the Earth?”

  “It wasn’t until after my son was born that I realized my true calling. I needed to make the world better. For him.”

  “Where is your son?”

  “Have you ever wondered about certain things? Your aptitude for science?”

  “My mother was a scientist.”

  She smiled so brightly Lyndon wasn’t sure what to think. He wished Kadance were here to help read her. “Exactly. A brilliant scientist.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t know where she was going with this.

  “A woman who devoted her life to you. To making the world a better place for you.”

  A thousand thoughts rushed into Lyndon’s mind all at once.

  That was it.

  Why she was so dead set on making him focus. In her mind, he was her legacy.

  “You think I’m your son,” he said.

  forty-two

  “I KNOW YOU’RE MY SON,” Dr. de Athia said.

  Lyndon wasn’t sure what to do. His first instinct was to make her see logic, but he needed to be careful.

  “I gave birth to you,” she said. “I fought for your life in the jungle of the Congo.”

  She thinks I’m the child she aborted.

  “But you were stolen from me,” she said. “Aurel Vaile had recently had a miscarriage. Dr. Pearce tried to help her, but she couldn’t deal with it and stole you. And then they sent you back to America, and Lee Vaile’s father hid you away. I searched and searched for years. Then I finally found you, but it’d been too many years—you’d been brainwashed. So, I had to guide you from a distance.” She’d lost most of that edge she usually had in her voice and was looking at him as if praying he understood and accepted her.

  He had no idea what to do with that.

  His phone dinged with a text, but he left it in his pocket.

  Then he heard something. He’d heard something
similar before, at the storage unit. The sound of a bullet hitting a wall. It’d hit behind him by a few feet. Apparently, it’d been quiet enough that Dr. de Athia didn’t notice.

  He knew exactly who it was. He had no idea how, but he knew. She was there to help, to back him up, and she’d rightly figured that her presence would just upset Dr. de Athia that much more. He took his phone out of his pocket and read the text: “Apartment building across the street. Signal if I should take her.”

  He texted back simply, “Wait.” A plan formed in his head, but could he pull it off? “I need your help,” he said to Dr. de Athia.

  “I have an inoculation for you. We’ll be together now. You’ll carry on my legacy after I’m gone. You’ll make sure the new world is done right.”

  “I need your protection.”

  “You’re away from that woman and with me. Why would you need protection?”

  “Someone has been trying to kill me.” He had a theory forming about who had actually been behind that. Dr. de Athia seemed to be far too invested in the fantasy that he was her son—he didn’t think she’d planned the attacks on him. “They’re using that family of snipers. They’re going to find me eventually. I need a way to get them to back off. Information on them.”

  “That won’t matter soon enough.”

  “But what if they don’t die from the disease right away? As I understand it, they live very remotely, so they’ll be some of the last to be infected. I would feel better if I had information on them.”

  She paused to consider. “I have a recording of Bastion Tolle accepting a job and explaining exactly how he’d get it done.”

  “Does he mention who actually carries it out?”

  “I assume he did it. He’s very clear that he’s accepting the job.” She took her phone out of a pocket in her cardigan.

  She emailed the recording to an address he’d set up on his cell phone.

  Now how to get this phone into the right hands? He glanced down at Mac standing patiently beside him. He turned back to Dr. de Athia. “Can I borrow your scarf? I think he’s cold.”

  She smiled. “You’ve always been kind to animals. They’re a part of Mother Earth.”

  He took the scarf from her, wrapped it around Mac’s middle while slipping the phone into the folds, and tied it to him. “Thank you.”

  “We should get moving.” She shifted toward the building.

  “Wait,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  She paused. “We don’t have long.”

  “When is my birthday?”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “May fifth.”

  He guessed that was the day she had the abortion, because it certainly wasn’t his birthday. “How old am I?”

  “Lyndon, what’re you talking about?”

  He scrambled for something that was technically not a lie. “I feel confused about where my life is going. I just want to feel like I have a firm grasp on something.”

  “I have to remember how overwhelming all of this must be. You’re twenty-five. I’ve been counting the years, celebrating your birthday by myself.”

  “Did you know I have three doctorates?”

  “I know. I couldn’t be prouder. You even followed in my footsteps at Johns Hopkins. I like to think some part of you was trying to find me there.”

  “It took so long to finish school.”

  “With a little nudging, you stayed on track.”

  He’d allowed himself to push his grandfather’s and Angela’s deaths out of his mind, and now rage threatened to take over. But he focused past it. “I moved faster than most, but it still took over ten years.”

  “It was a good thing you started right after high school.”

  “Yes. At eighteen.” He paused to see if it would hit her—the problem with her math. He’d been eleven when his parents died, which based on his estimations, was probably a few months after her abortion.

  She just looked at him, as if waiting for him to be ready to go.

  Then she stared at him—at his thirty-six-year-old face.

  Then she whispered, “You’re my son. They took you from me.”

  He kept his voice gentle. “I look like my mother. I have her hazel eyes.” He could hear sirens now—he prayed that didn’t send her hurtling over the edge. He assumed either Kadance or perhaps the workers he could see in the windows of the nearest building had called the police.

  Dr. de Athia stared at him with her pale blue eyes. “No . . .”

  “You care about life,” he said, “don’t you?”

  She just kept staring at him.

  “Obviously, you care about life.” He kept a close eye on the cooler in her hand. “Or else the abortion you had wouldn’t have been so devastating to you.”

  “No . . .”

  “I’m asking you to continue to care about life. Please. Please put the cooler down.”

  Her eyes were wide. Then she looked down at the cooler, as if surprised to see it in her hand.

  “There are better ways to help the Earth. Please put the cooler down.”

  She set it down and then backed up a step.

  Sirens pierced the air, and police cars came at them from both directions.

  Lyndon held his hands up. He looked down at Mac. “Go. Find Kadance.”

  Mac looked up at him and then around at the loud noises and flashing lights.

  “GO,” Lyndon said.

  Mac ran.

  Officers approached from all directions, weapons drawn.

  “You’re my son,” Dr. de Athia whispered.

  Lyndon held eye contact with her, willing her to stand there and not struggle.

  She stared at him. “Lyndon,” she begged.

  An officer approached her from the side.

  “No!” she screamed. “You’re my son!”

  Two officers grabbed her. She kept screaming.

  Another officer approached the cooler on the ground.

  “Be careful,” Lyndon said, still with his hands up. “Don’t open that. It’s dangerous.”

  Someone took his hands, wrenched them behind him, and put handcuffs on him.

  It’s over. He didn’t let himself look at the tall apartment building across the street until an officer turned him to escort him to a car. He caught a flash of silky black hair at the rooftop. Kadance’s hair. And he remembered something . . .

  He was sure he’d never see her again, but he was thankful she was safe.

  He was shoved into the back of a police cruiser and didn’t let himself look over at the rooftop. It was over. All of it.

  forty-three

  THE INTERROGATION LASTED FOR HOURS. He told the agents everything—his research; the attempts on his life; Dr. Ibekwe’s house, though he made it sound like the mercenaries killed each other; the fireworks at the Capitol; James and his ties to Dr. de Athia. Everything except for Kadance. He made it seem as though he’d been alone through it all, which meant he had to fudge some things. He was surprised when he seemed to pull it off.

  And then they took him to a cell, a dank little hole of cinderblocks and bars. One of the agents told him he was being held under the Patriot Act. He didn’t bother asking further questions.

  He sat on the cot in the corner and leaned back against the cold wall.

  His mind went to Kadance, to his relief that she’d managed to get free of her family. Of course she had. And he was confident Mac had found her and Kadance had found the recording on the phone.

  She was free.

  He pulled his feet up on the cot and rested his elbows on his knees. He was exhausted but couldn’t bring himself to lie down. He tried to grasp the fact that he’d probably never see freedom again, but it wouldn’t quite compute. Perhaps he simply didn’t care enough at the moment. Not that he wanted to spend the rest of his life incarcerated. He supposed it had to do with the fact that he wasn’t giving up much of a life. Once he settled into a permanent prison, he’d probably be able to continue some kind of research, though they might make h
im choose a different subject. He’d bury himself in it just like he always had. He took a deep breath and sighed.

  Days passed.

  They took blood from him once. He suspected they were confirming his assertion that he was not Veda de Athia’s son, as she was surely still claiming.

  Various agents questioned him several more times. They tried to trip him up, but he had his story straight. He acted nervous when appropriate, and when he recited events, he varied the minor details he provided to mimic the imperfect memory of the average nervous person. If he was too perfect in the details, they’d suspect it was all a rehearsed lie. He surprised himself more each time he was questioned.

  As he lay on his cot one night, he realized why he’d suddenly found the ability to pull off lying. It was because he was protecting Kadance. Nothing was more important. Though if she were here, she’d surely see through him just as easily as she always had. The thought made him smile a little.

  The outer door clanged open, and then an agent appeared at his cell. “You’re out of here, Vaile.”

  Lyndon lifted his head. “What?”

  “You’re out of here. You’re being released.” He unlocked the cell door.

  Lyndon stood. He wanted to ask why or how, but he kept his mouth shut. They hadn’t charged him with anything, but he’d assumed they’d eventually decide to charge him with something. Just setting off fireworks at Congress was surely enough to get him some good hard time.

  He followed the agent out. They gave him back his things and showed him out of the building.

  Just like that.

  He looked back at the building, still wondering what in the world was going on. Then he turned and started walking.

  But then he stopped.

  Kadance was standing there on the sidewalk, with Mac sitting by her feet. Shadows obscured her expression.

  “HOW’D YOU DO IT?” Kadance asked.

  He looked a little disheveled. “Are you all right?”

  She wanted to smile at that, at the first thing out of his mouth being to ask if she was okay, even with everything he now knew about her and everything he’d just been through. But she kept her expression impassive.