by Jack Mars
Instead he slung the AR-15 from his back. He lowered himself to a kneeling position, more than half of him obscured by the weeds, and brought the rifle’s stock to his shoulder. He estimated the truck had stopped about forty yards from where he’d landed. An easy shot.
Through the scope, there was no movement except for the smoke pluming from beneath the hood. He waited and watched as sirens whooped in the distance, growing steadily louder.
Then the driver’s side door rattled twice. After a few seconds it was forced open, and a woman fell out of the cab. No, not a woman—the woman. She had fiery red hair and fair skin and landed in the grass on her hands and knees, coughing.
Zero studied her through the scope. She wore all black, no makeup, with plain features. If not for her bright hair, she could have easily blended into any crowd. There was blood on the side of her face, but she didn’t appear to be seriously injured. This was the woman they’d been looking for. He had no doubt about it. The shot would be easy; nonlethal. Clip her in the shoulder, or a careful hit to the thigh, avoiding the femoral…
But then the woman stood. She turned back to the cab, and she stretched out her arms. Like she was beckoning someone. Zero remembered the passenger of the truck, the one that had fired the RPG at the helicopter; the one that had nearly shredded him with machine gun fire.
Tiny arms reached out of the cab. The woman stepped forward, pulling her passenger from the wreckage.
It was a child.
It was a little girl, wearing jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt.
Zero watched through the scope as the redheaded woman cradled the girl in her arms like a mother carried her tired child at the end of a long day.
He still had a shot. He could hit the woman in the leg. The girl would fall, but nothing nearly as bad as the collision she’d just been in. His finger was on the trigger. It would just take a squeeze…
A memory surged through his head, powerful and intrusive.
You’re in Bosnia.
On the second floor of what used to be someone’s home, long since gutted by bombs.
You lie on your stomach, the barrel of the rifle barely jutting between broken bricks as you peer through the scope. Waiting. Patient.
Your target rounds a corner four blocks north. He’s walking home alone. Eyes cast downward at the ground. You have the shot—
Wait. His face lights up as he spots something on the ground and bends to pick it up. It’s shiny. A piece of metal—a coin, perhaps. He looks pleased as he sticks it in his pocket.
You have the shot.
You know from your briefing package that he is nine years old.
Your finger compresses the trigger. You take your shot…
Zero sucked in a breath, backing away from the scope as he snapped out of the memory. No—it felt much more like an experience than a memory. An experience he’d had.
Did I… did I kill a child?
He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have. His gaze flitted back and forth across the tall yellow grass, searching for an answer that wasn’t in the weeds. Searching his memory for some indication that it had been a lie, one of the fabrications that Guyer had warned him about. But he found nothing that would confirm or deny the reality of it.
He saw only a boy in the dirt, as a single shot echoed from rooftops.
The Russian. Suddenly he remembered where he was, what he was supposed to be doing. He peered through the scope again and scanned the scene of the smoking truck, the crushed fence, the damaged oak tree.
They were gone. In the moments it took the memory to distract him, they’d vanished.
Zero let the AR-15 fall to the ground. He rubbed his temples as if he could coax something out of them. Was it real? Had he assassinated a boy? And if it was real, why hadn’t that come back with the rest of his memories?
Was it something he’d repressed, buried so deep down in shame and ignominy that it took another child in his crosshairs to bring it back?
“Kent!” He turned at the sound of Maria’s voice to see her hurrying through the tall weeds toward him, a slight limp in her left step. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he told her as she reached him. “You’re bleeding.”
“It looks worse than it is.” There was a narrow, bloody tear in her thigh, and the leg of her jeans was soaked dark. “Nothing vital, I promise.”
Strickland trotted up behind her. He had a couple of abrasions on his neck, but otherwise seemed fine—likely thanks to being airborne when the helicopter went down. “You dropped this,” he said, holding out the Glock.
“Thanks.” Zero tucked it in his jacket. “The pilot?”
“Broken arm, probably a concussion, but he’ll live,” Maria said quickly. She glanced past him, at the crashed truck. “Did you see anyone?”
“I did. The woman—the redhead—she was driving. And you’re not going to believe this, but… she has a child with her.”
“A child?” Maria repeated blankly.
“A little girl, no more than eleven or twelve.” Then he added quietly, “They slipped away.”
Maria glanced down at the AR-15 lying in the grass near his feet, but she said nothing. If there was a child involved, he knew she wouldn’t have been able to take the shot either.
“I’ll put out an alert immediately,” she said. “They can’t have gotten far. You two check the back of the truck—carefully. If we have their weapon, this is still a win.”
As she got on the phone with the state troopers to set up a dragnet, Zero and Strickland hiked the distance between them and the wreckage. But he already had a sinking feeling at what they would find.
Strickland covered him with the AR-15 while Zero pulled up the rear gate, rolling it to the ceiling with a clatter.
It was, as he suspected, completely empty.
“I don’t understand,” Strickland said, lowering the rifle. “Was this a decoy?”
“Not necessarily,” Zero murmured. It was certainly a distraction—but also more than that.
They wanted us to find this truck.
This was part of their head games.
They wanted us to use our intelligence, our resources, our best technology… and still come up empty-handed.
The only thing that he couldn’t figure was the redheaded woman. She was, quite literally, the face of the operation. She couldn’t seem to help but show herself. Why did they want her so visible?
And why was there a child with her?
He looked down and noticed that his hands were trembling slightly. He stuck them in his pockets as they hiked back to Maria to tell her the bad news. She was still on the phone, establishing parameters to find the woman—but much like the truck, he already knew there would be nothing to find.
The woman and the girl. The ultrasonic weapon. The inexplicable loss of his skills. And now, the resurfaced memory of an assassination.
Once again Zero found himself left with far too many questions, and no answers.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Do we really have to do this now?” Sara asked, fidgeting uncomfortably in the chair.
“I’m afraid so.” The woman seated across from her smiled warmly. “This is what we call the entrance interview, and it’s important that we do it as soon as possible after your admission. You walking through those doors meant you’re ready for treatment; we want you to be honest and open with us about your reasons for coming here.”
Her dad had been right about one thing; Seaside House Recovery Center was a nice place, though it didn’t resemble any sort of house. It was a square, contemporary-style building in beige and soft browns, with lots of windows and skylights and two smaller outlying buildings accessible by covered causeways. They were only a few blocks from the beach; Sara could smell the salt on the air.
Maya had stayed with her long enough to fill out the admission paperwork, and then they’d hugged for a long moment, and then her sister was gone, headed back to New York. A female administrator with a kind fa
ce had given her a quick tour and showed her where she’d be staying, which looked a lot like a room out of any halfway decent hotel.
Now she sat in the office of Dr. Mavis Greene, an African-American woman Sara pegged to be near fifty, wearing a small crucifix and a pantsuit as they sat across from each other in matching brown armchairs. There was no desk between them; that was pushed up against the far wall because, as Dr. Greene had explained, “There are no barriers between you and me at Seaside House.”
Dr. Greene crossed her legs and set her notepad on a knee. “Sara, I’m just going ask you a few questions about yourself, some of which you may have already answered upon admission—but please, indulge me.” She smiled again.
Sara could imagine that some people might see warmth in that smile, but she thought it looked fake. Insincere. Judgmental.
“How old are you, Sara?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“Sixteen,” Dr. Greene repeated softly. “And I understand you’re emancipated. When did that happen?”
“About… a year and a half ago, I guess. Two summers ago.”
“Two summers ago.” The doctor, or clinical psychologist, or whatever she’d introduced herself as that Sara couldn’t quite remember, scribbled notes on her pad after each question. “So you were only fourteen at the time?”
“Fifteen. I’d just had my birthday. It’s in the summer.”
“In the summer,” Dr. Greene murmured.
“I’m sorry, can you… can you stop doing that?” Sara said abruptly. “The repetition?”
The doctor smiled. “I apologize. It’s a technique called ‘echoing.’ They teach therapists and medical professionals to repeat the last few words of a response so the patient understands that we’re paying attention.”
“I bet some of them find it pretty irritating,” she said flatly. She wasn’t trying to be openly hostile. It was just that everything about this place felt… manufactured. Forced. Contrived. It felt like an illusion designed to placate people who were trying to escape their real-life problems.
Dr. Greene merely chuckled. “I’ll do my best to rein it in.” She consulted her notes and then asked, “Sara, can you tell me about the nature of your emancipation? I assume it was a falling-out with family?”
She nodded. “Yeah. My dad.”
“I understand that these kinds of things can be very difficult to talk about. Would you be willing to share with me what happened between you?”
Sara bit her lip. What was she supposed to say? My dad was the reason my mom was murdered. He knew who killed her and kept it from us. He let her murderer walk free.
“No,” she said instead. “I don’t really want to talk about that.”
Dr. Greene nodded slowly. “That’s fine. We’ll have plenty of time together. You can take as long as you need. However… I do need to ask another difficult question. All I need to know is if the falling-out with your father had anything to do with abuse; that is, emotional, physical, sexual—”
“No!” Sara blurted out. “No. There was no abuse. It was…” She was certain this woman was not going to back down without some kind of answer. “Look, my mom died a while back. Almost four years ago. And my dad, he… he lied to me and my sister about how it happened. He thought he was protecting us.”
“But when you learned the truth, you didn’t feel protected,” Dr. Greene guessed. “You felt angry. Betrayed.”
“Yes.”
“You felt like you couldn’t trust him anymore.”
“Yes.” Jeez, what is this woman’s degree in? Sara thought sourly. Obvious answers?
She flashed her smile again. “Let’s move on. I understand you’re here for substance abuse, primarily anti-anxiety medications and cocaine. When did that begin?”
She shook her head. “I’m not exactly sure. Maybe a year ago? It was on and off. I tried to stop a bunch of times.”
“But it’s hard. That’s why you’re here.” The doctor scribbled a few notes. “I also see here that you’ve been clean for a month now, which is terrific. Yet you wouldn’t be here if you trusted yourself not to go back to it.”
Once again, paging Dr. Obvious. But Sara said nothing.
“Sara, it seems to me like your addiction—as with a lot of people in your situation—is a means of escape. I think the best way to go about your treatment is going to be to reconcile the issues with your mother and father, but also to help remind you of what brings you joy. I don’t think you need the drugs as much as you need something for yourself, something that makes you want to wake up every morning and greet every day to the fullest. So I’d like to go back a little further, to before your habits started. There must have been something in your life that meant a lot to you; some dream, an aspiration, a goal… Can you think of anything like that for me?”
Sara shrugged, staring at the checkered pattern in the carpet. What did she have? The only thing she could think of before all of this happened was her family. Wait, that wasn’t quite true. Before her emancipation, even before she discovered who her father truly was, she’d wanted to be an artist.
“My mom,” she said quietly, “she used to restore paintings for a museum. She was really artistic. I think I got that from her. I used to draw a lot, and paint.”
“You used to paint,” Dr. Greene repeated. Then she smiled and said, “I’m sorry, force of habit. But I think that’s an excellent place to start. We have a fully stocked art room here, with just about any supplies you could want. You’re welcome to use it anytime.”
“Great.”
“Well.” Dr. Greene glanced at her watch. “I think that’s enough for this evening. It’s getting late, but we don’t institute a curfew here. There’s a rec room, with some games and a television and a few computers.”
Right. The administrator who had given her the tour had mentioned the TV and computers. Their Wi-Fi network and cable had blocks on them; not just for pornography and that kind of stuff, but also for social media, certain news sites, anything they thought might trigger their patients back into destructive behavior.
“Thanks, but I’m pretty tired,” Sara told her as she stood. “Think I’ll just head back to my room.”
Dr. Greene smiled and shook her hand. “All right, Sara. Thank you for meeting with me. I’ll follow up with you in a couple of days—and I really hope to see some of your artwork.”
“Yeah,” Sara murmured as she headed for the door. “Maybe.”
She left Dr. Greene’s office and headed down the corridor. It was brightly lit, but eerily empty and just as quiet. She wondered if the other patients—or “guests,” as the administrator had called them—were allowed to go home to their families for the holiday.
It was fitting; she was actually just as alone as she felt.
This was a mistake. Just the few minutes in the office with Dr. Greene had shown her that. She could see how some people might be reassured by the doctor’s smile, or find her words and tone of voice comforting. But Sara just found her to be sycophantic—a word she didn’t realize she’d picked up from Maya until she thought it.
These people couldn’t help her. They would try to analyze her, get her to open up with their therapy sessions and techniques. But she couldn’t open up to them. What would she say—that her mother had been murdered by a CIA agent? That her father had lied for years about his identity? That she was constantly tired and struggled sleeping because she still had night terrors about being kidnapped and trafficked?
She couldn’t be honest with them, which was an oversight not only on her part but on her dad’s and Maya’s as well. Without honesty, any therapy—and by extension, this whole place—was a waste of time.
Well, she thought, maybe not a complete waste. Dr. Greene sounded right about one thing: she needed to reconcile her mother’s death and the issues she still had with her dad if she was going to stay clean.
But you can do that on your own. You don’t need this place. You just needed a push in the right direction, and you
got one.
You know what you need to do. And that Dr. Greene can’t help you do it.
Sara headed for the rear of the building, where the guests’ rooms were, which meant she had to pass the corridor that led to the main entrance of the facility. She peered down its length, past the admissions office, past the front desk, to the sliding glass doors that led out into the quickly darkening evening. There was a man there, an older man in a blazer and tie, seated near the doors and poking at a cell phone screen. He wasn’t a guard; he was just there to witness the comings and goings and report them to the administrators if necessary.
There was nothing legally keeping Sara here. As her dad had mentioned, she was emancipated, so she could leave anytime she wanted. But the man by the doors would see her, and he would report it, and they would call her father—who, if he wasn’t still out there doing whatever it was he was doing, would come for her again.
She couldn’t have that, for the same reason she couldn’t just call her dad and voice her concerns. He would try to make her stay. No, she needed to get out of this place in such a way that they didn’t notice she was gone at first. Maya had left her with fifty dollars in emergency cash, just in case. It should be enough to hop a bus back to Bethesda, she figured. If she could escape unnoticed, and could give herself a three-hour head start, she could make it back home and talk to her dad in person. Convince him that this wasn’t the right place for her.
She just had to figure out a way to get out that gave her enough time to do that before anyone knew she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Zero took no solace in the fact that he was right. The police failed to find the redheaded woman and the little girl with her after the truck crashed. They had expanded their dragnet and continued the search even as night fell, but he knew that there would be nothing to find. She was long gone by now, most likely to rendezvous with the others in her group, wherever the ultrasonic weapon was being kept.
And it was his fault that she had gotten away. He had her in his sights, and he’d failed.
