by Jack Mars
A flash of fear crossed Tommy’s face, but he stood his ground. “So? Needle doesn’t care about that.”
“No, you’re right. He doesn’t.” Sara lowered her voice to a whisper. “But Thomas Howell, Esquire, down at Binder & Associates? He might care about that.” She cocked her head to one side. “That’s your dad, isn’t it?”
“How do you…?” Tommy shook his head. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Maybe not. That’s up to you.” She walked past him, bumping her shoulder roughly against his as she did. “Stop pissing in the sink. That’s gross.” And she headed upstairs.
Sara had left Virginia more than a year earlier as a frightened and naïve fifteen-year-old girl. It was hardly more than a year later, but she’d changed. On the bus between Alexandria and Jacksonville, she’d made two rules for herself. The first was that she was not going to ask anyone for anything, least of all her dad. And she stuck by it. Maya helped her out a bit from time to time, and Sara was grateful—but she never asked for it.
The second rule was that she was not going to take shit from anyone, period. She’d been through too much. She had seen things that she could never talk about. Things that still kept her awake at night. Things that a guy like Tommy could never imagine. She was beyond pettiness, past teenage angst. Past her own past.
Upstairs she pushed open the door to the bedroom that she and Camilla shared. It was set up like a dorm room, two twin beds sitting against opposite walls with a lane between them and a shared nightstand. They had a small vanity and a closet that they split. The roommate in question was still in bed, lying awake on her back and scrolling through social media on her phone.
“Hey,” she said with a yawn as Sara entered. Camilla was eighteen, and thankfully pleasant. She was the first friend Sara had made in Florida; it was her online ad for a roommate at the co-op that had brought Sara there in the first place. They’d gotten along well. In fact, Camilla was teaching her to drive. She’d taught her how to put on mascara and how to pick out clothes that flattered her narrow frame. Sara had picked up a lot of new terms and mannerisms from her. Kind of like a big sister.
Like the kind of big sister that doesn’t abandon you with a man you can’t stand.
“Hey yourself. Get out of bed, it’s almost ten.” Sara grabbed her purse from the nightstand and made sure she had everything she’d need.
“I had a late night.” Camilla worked as a waitress and bartender at a local seafood place. “But hey, look at this stack.” She flashed a thick wad of cash, tips from the night before.
“Great,” Sara muttered. “I got to get to work.”
“Cool. I’m off tonight. You want me to do your hair again? It’s looking a little haggard.”
“Yeah, I know, it looks like shit,” Sara snapped irritably.
“Whoa, hostile.” Camilla frowned. “What’s got your panties twisted?”
“I’m sorry. Just Tommy, being an ass.”
“Forget that guy. He’s a poser.”
“I know.” Sara sighed and rubbed her face. “Okay. I’m off to the mines.”
“Wait up. You seem pretty high strung. You want a bar?”
Sara shook her head. “No, I’m okay.” She took two steps to the door. “Screw it, yeah.”
Camilla grinned and sat up in bed. She reached over for her own purse and took out two items—an orange prescription bottle with no label and a small plastic cylinder with a red cap. She shook out a single oblong blue Xanax from the bottle, dropped it into the pill grinder, and screwed the red cap tightly, crushing the bar into powder. “Hand.”
Sara held her right hand out, palm down, and Camilla shook out the powder onto the fleshy bridge between her thumb and forefinger. Sara brought her hand to her face, plugged one nostril, and sniffed.
“Attagirl.” Camilla smacked her lightly on the butt. “Now get outta here before you’re late. See you tonight.”
Sara flashed a peace sign as she closed the door behind her. She could taste the bitter powder at the back of her throat. It wouldn’t take long for it to kick in, but she knew that one bar would barely get her through half the day, if that.
It was still hot out, even for October, like the Indian summers they sometimes experienced in Virginia. But she was getting used to the weather. She liked it, the almost year-round sunshine, being close to the beach. Life wasn’t always great, but it was a far sight better than it had been two summers ago.
Sara was barely out the door when her phone rang in her purse. She already knew who it would be, one of the only people who ever called her.
“Hey,” she answered as she walked.
“Hi.” Maya’s voice sounded quiet, strained. Sara could tell right away that she was upset about something. “Got a minute?”
“Uh, a few. I’m on my way to work.” Sara looked around. She didn’t live in a bad neighborhood, but it got a little rougher as she neared the thrift shop. She’d never had a problem herself, but she also stayed alert to her surroundings and kept her head up while she walked. A girl distracted by her phone was a potential target. “What’s up?”
“I, 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 sme
lled 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 do that. Don’t try to make me feel like some kind of criminal deviant because I tried something once or twice at a party.”
“Once or twice, huh? You have these parties every night?”
Sara felt her face grow hot. It wasn’t just because he had offended her; it was because he was right. It had started out as once or twice at a party, but then quickly became a bump after work. A little something to take the edge off. But she wasn’t about to acknowledge that now.
“It must be so easy for you,” she said. “Standing there, clean cut, Boy Scout, Army Ranger. CIA agent. Must be so easy to judge someone like me. You say you know what I’ve been through. But you don’t understand it. You can’t.”
Strickland nodded slowly. He stared directly at her, with those eyes that she might have found charming if he was anyone other than who he was. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t know what it was like to be emancipated at seventeen—”
“I was fifteen,” Sara corrected.
“And I was seventeen. But you didn’t know that about me, did you?”
She didn’t. But she didn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.
“I joined the Army right away. A lot of states will let you do that. I had my first confirmed kill two days before my eighteenth birthday. Funny thing about the military. They don’t call it ‘murder’ when you kill someone.”
Sara bit her lip. She knew what it was like to kill someone. It had been a mercenary with the black ops team called The Division. He would have killed them, her and her sister, so Sara shot him in the neck. And though the nightmares still plagued her, she’d never once thought of it as murder.
“At one point I was on four different prescriptions,” Strickland told her. “For PTSD. Anxiety. Depression. I abused them all. It was so much easier to be numb, to pretend that everything I did happened to someone else.”
He smiled sadly. “And man, I was a good addict. No one knew. Or maybe no one cared as long as I was a good soldier. Eventually one of my Ranger pals found out. He started following me, keeping close tabs on me. It was so damned irritating. He even took me to see a therapist. It was really hard. It’s so much harder to quit and deal with all your shit than to just take something. I still see a therapist, twice a week when I’m able.”
Sara stared at a small stone on the sidewalk to avoid looking at his eyes. After everything her dad had put her through, Strickland could have been lying. This could have just been a story. But he told it with a lot of conviction. Just like he was trained.
“I know that you’ve experienced some awful things,” he continued. “I know how hard it is to commiserate with normal people and listen to them whine about money or jobs or relationships when you’ve seen real, genuine horrors in the world. But don’t stand there and lean on your crutch and tell me that I don’t understand it. Because you’re lying to yourself right now. You’re heading down a path that’s going to lead to addiction. Homelessness. Death. Is that what you want?”
“What I want…” Her voice cracked.
You will not cry. You don’t do that anymore.
She cleared her throat and said as clearly as she could, “What I want is for you to leave me alone. I want to make my own choices and live with the consequences. I want to be free of any and all reminders that any of those things ever happened. That includes you.”
He nodded, with a faraway look in his eyes that suggested defeat. “Okay, Sara. If that’s what you want, I’ll leave you alone. Be well.” Without another word, he turned and strode back the way he’d come.
She stood there for a long moment. She was already late for work; another minute or two wouldn’t matter much. She wished she’d hit Camilla up for a second bar. It was still morning and this day was already awful.
What else could possibly go wrong?
CHAPTER SIX
Zero was lying on his back on the sofa, one leg up and the other on the floor. He had no idea what time it was or how long he’d been lying there in a daze, replaying the scene from the night prior over and over in his head like a recurring nightmare.
He knew that Sara wanted nothing to do with him—she’d told him as much directly—but he thought he still had a chance to make things right with Maya. Until last night, that is.
I don’t ever want to see you again.
He didn’t even hear the door open, but then she was there, standing over him, looking down piteously.
“Hey,” Maria said gently. “You okay?”
&nbs
p; He frowned. It couldn’t possibly be late enough for her to be home. “What time is it?”
“It’s about one o’clock. I took a half-day. Tried to call you a bunch of times.”
“Phone’s on silent. Sorry.” He pulled himself up to a seated position. Maria sat beside him and took his hand in both of hers.
“I’m sorry that happened. It’s not how any of us wanted it to go.”
He shook his head. “You know, I keep playing it again in my head, as if I can change how things went if I think about it enough.”
“Don’t do that. You’re just torturing yourself—”
“It was that damned kid,” Zero continued. That was the obvious point at which everything had taken a turn for the worst, when Greg opened his mouth and called Maria “Mrs. Lawson.” That was Maya’s trigger. “If only he hadn’t been there. If only she came alone, maybe we could have actually talked, worked it out…”
He trailed off as a realization hit him. He had been so nervous about seeing Maya, so anxious about how the night might go that he hadn’t given it a second thought—but he did now.
“You knew.” He looked Maria in the eye, but she looked away. “You knew he was coming. When they came to the door, as I was coming downstairs, you said, ‘You must be Greg.’ You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”
“Yes,” Maria admitted. “I knew. Maya asked me if she could bring him. I didn’t tell you because I knew what you were hoping for out of this visit, and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“So instead you just let it happen,” he accused.
“I didn’t know he was going to say what he did!” Maria countered.
Zero pulled his hand from hers and stood, pacing the small living room. He had pins and needles in his legs from lying for so long, but he ignored them, treading the carpet quickly. “I don’t believe this. That might have been my last chance to reconcile with her.”
“I don’t believe that,” Maria said gently. “I think she just needs time, Kent.”
