by Harte, Roxy
“The second assassination was a man of little to no importance, a banker in Israel, and the child kidnapped—his daughter—might have only been a coincidence, but garnered the Guardians’ full attention when it was realized these two were directly related to this woman.” She hangs photos of the banker, the young girl and the female, a Mossad agent I once completed an assignment with.
“The third assassination was of global consequence. Charles Linquist, king of Sweden. The second and third kidnappings were two brothers, Charles Linquist II and Randolf Linquist. Charles is heir apparent to Sweden’s throne.”
She attaches the three photos to the board, father above, sons below and beneath the sons she pins a photo of Eva, a lover from my past.
“The fourth assassination was Senator Duluth of Kansas. His wife and children are safe. Fast actions on their own part prevented the attempted kidnapping.”
She hangs the photo of the senator and beneath it his wife and children. And lower, Claude, a man standing in the room. The likeness he bears to the senator leads me to believe it is his father.
“Are we noting a trend?” She taps each face on the bottom row of photos. “Agent, agent, agent, agent. We are only as strong as our weakest agent, and as of this moment our four strongest agents are emotionally compromised. And why?”
She glares at us.
“What is the first thing we learn when we become a Guardian? No emotional attachments. You do not have family. If you have a lover you must keep the fact in your mind at all times the person is expendable.”
She paces the length of the room. “Who’s next? That is what our enemy wants us to spend our time thinking and worrying about. We cannot gather every single father, mother, spouse, child or sibling into safe houses. We cannot protect your lovers.”
She stops directly in front of me. “You took a wife, bore children.”
She moves to Claude. “You went home. Tell me, what point was the elaborate cover story? Your death, your funeral? If you were so weak that you had to run home to Mommy and tell her you were alive?”
“She had a nervous breakdown,” he argues in his defense.
She slaps his face and in the same moment one of her men, who until this point has merely been one among us, stabs a hypodermic in the back of his neck. Claude drops at her feet and she doesn’t give him a second glance as she walks around his body. It is fairly obvious he is dying, but no one makes a move to aid him.
She faces us, posture stiff. “Who are we?”
As a group we answer with a rally cry, “Guardians.”
“We are at war, Guardians. Our enemy believes we will be drawn out. They don’t really know us. If they did, they would know that these brothers are expendable.” She taps the photos of Eva’s brothers for effect. “This sister, this wife—” Her gaze locks with mine and I know Lattie has already been confirmed dead. “Expendable.”
One of her men asks, “Do we know who they are?”
“No,” she answers curtly. Moving to a laptop, she types. On a wide screen across from the table, photos flash large then move to thumbnail size before another large photo flashes and another thumbnail. When she has moved through the sequence there are thirty faces looking back at us, twenty-seven men and three women. “These are our known rivals, some powerful, some we have believed weak enough not to be any threat at all.” There are ten agents present, including my brother and myself. She hands us each a manila envelope. “Within forty-eight hours, I expect any and all threats to be eliminated.”
No one is brave enough to ask what happens if none of those identified turn out to be at the root of our current problems.
She claps her hands. “Move out.” She finally meets my gaze. “Except for you.”
“I heard you were dead,” I hear my brother say. He is hamming it up with one of the other agents as they leave the room. If he is troubled that he has been reactivated, he doesn’t show it.
The agent he addressed answers, “As I did you,” just before the door closes on their conversation.
“You don’t think you’re overreacting a bit?” Someone will notice this. Several of the thirty are high-profile dignitaries. I lay the manila envelope on the table beside the scattered photos.
She looks at me with boredom. “I’ll know in forty-eight hours.”
She grazes her hand over my shoulder, a touch meant to be reassuring that makes my blood run cold though there is no immediate threat of death. I remind myself that neither Henri nor Claude saw it coming either.
“I told you to stay home with your children.” Glorianna moves fast, hugging me. She could have as easily killed me but she has no intention of that. I see that now. I feel like my chest might explode from within. Every emotion I’ve ever felt for her collides. Love. Hate. Empathy. Fear. I would sleep better tonight knowing she was dead, but I can’t will myself to wrap my fingers around her throat. My guess is that she feels exactly the same way and so we will part, granting each other life. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I look at my feet. “I had to try to rescue my children’s mother.”
She lifts my chin and catches my gaze. “Even if it left them orphaned? With no protector?”
There is a threat underlying the question, and it dawns on me that I have been moronically reckless.
“Can I count on you to perform the tasks I’ve assigned you?”
“Can you tell me you have proof of Lattie’s death? Will you give me assurances as to the safety of my children and my lovers?”
Pursing her lips, she looks old, bitter. “You’re so damn greedy.”
She crosses the space to open the door to a room that is little more than a closet, obviously used to store artillery. She walks over to one of the boxes in the pile and touches it with her hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She strides by me, leaving the room quickly. I don’t want to go into the closet-size room. I really don’t want to look inside the small crate that is obviously too tiny to hold a body for fear of what I might find within the box, and I fear entering a trap.
I can’t leave without looking.
I cross the small space in two strides and use a metal bar to pry off the lid. There is a body bag inside and, although it is folded onto itself to fit in the box, it obviously holds something. I unzip the bag and looking, immediately regret that I did so. As my field of vision blurs, I know I needed to see. I wouldn’t have believed without visual confirmation. Latisha is dead.
As I reseal the box, Nikos comes up behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Glorianna sent me. She didn’t want you to be alone.”
I swallow, unable to speak.
“Are you all right?”
“All that’s here is her head.”
“God, Ari, I’m sorry.”
I grip the side of the box as a wave of dizziness washes through me. I thought I still had time to find her, to get her out alive. I never thought for a minute this would be the outcome. Obviously we’ve had our differences over the last two years, but she was so passionate about life, so vibrant. I can’t imagine a world without her in it. “I failed her.”
“No. You didn’t. She shouldn’t have been here. Thank God you got your children out.”
“Yes, thank God.”
It bothers me that Glorianna’s team reached my children before Pepé’s team. The only way it could have happened as it did was if she already had men on the ground when she called me from the shower.
I don’t understand.
I lift the small crate, planning to deliver Lattie’s remains to her relatives, but Nikos keeps me from leaving the small chamber. “Are you carrying out her plans?”
Our gazes collide.
“I’m going to appear to, for now.”
“Outnumbered, outgunned, is it? You’ve become a coward?”
“I won’t leave my children orphaned. Once I get my feet firmly back on US soil, I’ll make what decisions I need to. For now, I cooperate.” I push past him to go into the larger room.<
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“Are you sure your children are alive?”
I pause beside the long table where Glorianna left dozens of photos scattered. Setting the crate down, I pick up the photos of Celia and Garrett and start pushing the other photos around, hoping I don’t recognize any others, but I do. Nikkos. Hektor. Olympia. Athena-Sophia.
Beside me, my brother opens my manila envelope and looks through the information of the targets I was assigned. I don’t have to ask what he’s thinking; he’s planning on completing his assignments and mine in the allotted time. I don’t doubt that he can, but I wish he wouldn’t. I wanted a life free of the agency for his future, but his future is the least of my worries as I stride from the room to confront Glorianna. I wave the photos of Garrett, Celia and the children in front of her. “Tell me about these.”
Her bodyguards move to intervene, but she waves them off.
“I planned to wait until we are on the plane back to the United States before discussing this.”
“Perhaps you should tell me now.” I palm my handgun but don’t aim it at her and am rewarded with an AK-47 pressed up against my temple by her nearest guard.
Behind him I hear a click as Nikos, having my back, cocks his revolver.
“The plan was to round up the ones we believed were important to be placed under the protection of the Guardians.”
“There were at least thirty photos on that table. You’re going to provide protection for every family of every agent you feel is at threat?”
“That’s ludicrous.” She puts her hands on either side of my face and holds my gaze. “Only the ones we have already identified who are in immediate danger.”
I drop my gun.
The soldier holding the AK-47 to my head steps away, removing the threat, but coldcocks Nikos with it as another soldier disarms him. I close my eyes against the unsaid in Glorianna’s eyes. I know her too well. “Please, tell me they are safe.”
“I can tell you we successfully airlifted Garrett out of Cincinnati at fourteen hundred hours.”
Garrett was in Cincinnati?
“However, following an explosion at zero hundred hours, we lost visual on Celia and your children.”
“An explosion,” I repeat, opening my eyes.
“We have every reason to believe that Celia and your children are alive. No bodies were recovered, and two vehicles were reported fleeing the scene.”
“The scene? Where was she?” Pulling away, I shake my head, trying to make sense of what she is telling me.
“The Guardians were preparing to extract her and your children from your Sea Cliff Road residence when the explosion occurred.”
They’d have never seen the Guardians coming, which means someone else spooked them. Sea Cliff. If the house exploded it was because someone triggered the self-destruct. It’s a complicated sequence, not something one can stumble on and get right accidentally, which means she was spooked enough for Hektor to tell her how to do it…and what to do next.
Two vehicles were reported fleeing the scene.
“Two vehicles?” I ask. “Celia was pursued?”
“The driver of the second vehicle was apprehended. He reported his name as Enrique, Garrett Lawrence’s houseboy. Mr. Lawrence has confirmed his identity.”
I’m more distressed that Garrett is under the protection of the Guardians than I am that Celia and the children are missing. What does that say about my trust level right now? On the ground, Nikos stirs.
Another soldier enters the cavern, announcing, “We’re ready to transport you to the airfield.”
Glorianna is insistent. “We need to go. Now.”
“I came here to recover my wife. I won’t go back to the States without returning her remains to her family.”
She waves her hand dismissively. “We have errand boys for that. I need you to leave with me immediately.”
A soldier takes my wife’s remains and carries them to one of the armored vehicles waiting for us.
Nikos slaps me on the shoulder. “This is where we part ways.”
“What?” I demand. “No. Fly back to the States with us.”
He smiles, tilting his head. I can tell by his expression that he isn’t willing to spend the rest of his life on the run—that’s what I’m looking at—and if I’m honest with myself, he’s excited about getting back into the field. Ever since we started our training for the WODC, he always loved the danger, the excitement. I don’t remark on the shiner his encounter with the butt end of the rifle left him.
He hugs me.
I whisper against his cheek, “I expect to hear from you. Phone, email, Facebook. I don’t care how you stay in contact but you do it.”
“I’ll find you,” he whispers back.
I watch him run to a waiting vehicle and have to laugh. He’s like a kid running headlong into the surf. Now I’m especially glad for his company the last two weeks. It doesn’t make up for the decade we had apart, but I at least know his head is screwed on straight. I wait until they’ve driven away before joining Glorianna inside the Humvee. As soon as I am settled we’re in motion. I look out the window into the billowing cloud of sand created by the vehicles’ tires. We ride in silence, the driver and another soldier in the front, me and Glorianna in the back. Not a word. At the airbase, both soldiers disembark with their weapons aimed and ready. Under their cover, Glorianna and I run to the plane, very aware that we are in hostile territory.
Minutes later, we are in the air. Glorianna and I both speak at the same time.
“I can’t—”
“I’m sorry—”
I gesture for her to speak first, because I know what I’m going to say is going to start an argument.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, taking a deep breath. I still can’t believe Lattie is gone. There will be a time to mourn, but now isn’t it. I can’t dare let my guard down here.
“We’re doing everything we can to locate Celia and your children.”
I remember who I’m dealing with and too late I realize I haven’t reacted to Celia and the children being missing. I think she already suspects that I know exactly where they are—and I do—if everything went according to plan. “I can’t go back to being Lex Karros. I can’t abandon my children now.”
She nods and I expect her to say something—argue with me—but she bides her time, leaving a crater of empty silence between us.
“Will you please say something?”
“Are you going to tell me where to send the recovery team so that we can protect Celia and your children?”
I rub my face, the hours and days catching up to me. How do I politely decline her protection?
She says lightly, “Before we part company so that you can get to work, I need you to make a final appearance as Lex Karros. Stand at my side while I withdraw my bid for candidacy.”
I stare at her blankly.
“I thought I could wear two caps, but the truth is I would rather protect global concerns than try to make a stronger US. And if all of this was some divine act to force me to see the error of my ways, then I’ve chosen, and if it is to divide us and break the Guardians, then I need to focus all of my passion toward saving us.”
Face-to-face with her fervor, I don’t envy her antagonist.
“So after I stand at your side for this final performance, and assassinate the three targets in this envelope, do I get my life back?”
She shrugs. “Which life? Who do you want to be? I can’t go back to being Senator Abigail Wainwright-Fuller, you can’t go back to being Lex Karros, but neither can you go back to being Thomas Stephanopoulos. I will continue to be the director of the Guardians but by your tone, I assume you want to be free of us.” I meet her gaze but move far enough away to avoid further casual touch. She tsks under her breath. “We’ve been through so much together and still you don’t trust me?”
I guess she could take my silence either way.
She cocks one eyebrow, weighing me,
measuring me. “If I allow you to walk away, will you enjoy a quiet retirement? Or will you become my worst nightmare? I don’t think the world is ready for you as a rogue agent, fighting only the injustices you choose to fight. That’s why our kind are never allowed to be completely free. We can’t be trusted, not really. My lover tonight, my murderer tomorrow, isn’t that how it goes?”
“I could say the same about you.”
“But I have already stated my intentions. I am a Guardian.”
“I intend to retire. One hundred percent. My loyalty is solely to my family now.”
“Family.” She scoffs. “People like us cannot have families.”
“Yet you gave me your word and I fulfilled my part.” If she hears the threat in my voice, she doesn’t comment on it. The remainder of the flight, all fourteen hours of it, we spend in silence. I’ve never been so happy for a plane to touch down.
We are met on the tarmac by her personal secretary and Zita.
She takes the dog, her voice changing immediately to Senator Abigail Wainwright-Fuller’s voice. “Baby! My beautiful! Did you miss Mama? Oh God, I missed Zita! No more business trips without my baby, I promise.”
The little dog licks her face happily, believing her promises with blind devotion.
* * * * *
Her speech before a standing-room only crowd is short, sweet and to the point. The crowd reacts with great disappointment and sadness. America loved their Republican princess and I have no doubt she’d have taken easy street to the White House.
A mob of paparazzi witness our climbing into an SUV; they do not witness our smoke-and-mirrors exit just before our vehicle explodes, and our deaths are covered on the evening news. They are also not privy to Glorianna’s complete and utter emotional meltdown when she discovers her beloved Bolognese is missing.
With mascara-stained tears running down her face, she sobs. “Zita! Oh God, Zita! If anyone hurts you, they will pray for death!” She turns to me, clutching my shirt. “Find my Zita. Please!”
She crumbles into an incapacitated ball of emotion. Fuck. Now what?
Indeed. What? Thinking fast, I make phone calls and create contingency plans on the fly. Several hours later, barely recovered, Glorianna takes me with her to the mid-range hotel where I am assured Garrett has been kept safe. I am not allowed to see him. Instead, we join a meeting already in progress, an update on the current level of threat.
