The Protectors

by Dowell, Trey

  In a span of three hours, Aphrodite received both the phone numbers and the undying devotion of nine agents, three deputy directors, the facilities manager, and the head of campus security for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  —

  By Sunday afternoon, couriers had made more than five deliveries to the house in Mason Neck. Building blueprints, emergency response guidelines, and a complete phone directory of the CIA’s Langley headquarters lay scattered across the kitchen table. Lyla conducted a few phone interviews to give us any information we needed beyond that. Before the pizza showed up for dinner, we had enough intel to upgrade our planned assault on Langley from “suicidal” to “mildly stupid.” We were only missing one puzzle piece.

  After dinner, though, we received our first personal visit from a VIP: Harold Prinne, the deputy director of clandestine affairs. I’d met Director Prinne back in the old days and come away unimpressed, and five years hadn’t done much to change my view. The guy sure looked and smelled the part of Agency brass, though—three-piece suit, an expanding gut, and coffee breath foul enough to curl your toes. Like many of his kind, Prinne cared far more about his power position in the org chart than he did about the American flag pin he stuck on his suit lapel every day. Patriotism Lite. The CIA was full of it.

  As a minion, however, Harold’s devotion was unquestioned. Not to mention, for the first time since I’d met him, I actually gave a crap about what came out of his mouth.

  “Special Agent Tucker is on-site. He’s been in the ECB for the last three days,” Prinne said, never taking his adoring eyes off Lyla.

  As expected, Tucker ran like a frightened schoolgirl as soon as he got my text—to the emergency command bunker just below the main campus building at Langley.

  “What’s his current posting?” I asked.

  Like General Ahmadi, Prinne didn’t turn toward me to answer. “He’s coordinating the worldwide hunt for the Protectors.”

  The deputy director’s last word was like a splash of water on all our faces. He’d called us the Protectors—not fugitives, not traitors, and not McAlister, Mendoza, or Ravzi.

  The Protectors.

  “Feels good to hear that again,” I said.

  Diego leaned back in his chair and smiled. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  Lyla was more focused. “Is it imperative for us to find Tucker to send a message? If he’s in the most fortified section of the building, why risk it?”

  Diego was in agreement. “I can take the building down around him. He is irrelevant.”

  “You cannot take down the building, and Tucker is not irrelevant.” More angry hiss to the words than I wanted.

  Lyla reached across the blueprints and rested her hand on mine. “Scott, he didn’t order us dead. Decisions like those are made above the head of a midlevel bureaucrat. He fulfilled his role. Any agent would have.”

  “He filled it a little too happily,” I said. They couldn’t fully understand my mad-on for the guy; to them he was just another government stooge, in a long line of stooges. No better or worse than the others. But Diego and Lyla hadn’t been face-to-face with him. Heard his thoughts. Felt his contempt and hatred for us. For me.

  I pulled my hand from under hers. “Yeah, it might not have been his call to terminate us, but I guarantee you, he was the devil on the shoulder of the guy who did,” I said. “Besides, right now, Tucker’s probably the single most secure target on the planet. Prying him out of that bunker is the best way . . . maybe the only way . . . to prove what we can do. Tucker goes down. I’ll do it alone if I have to.”

  An uncomfortable silence sprang up in the middle of the table like a balloon fastened to a helium tank. The longer it went, the bigger the balloon got. Lyla finally popped it.

  “That won’t be necessary. We are a team again—no one goes it alone.” She sounded like the leader I was supposed to be—calm and caring, yet resolute and strong. In that moment—watching her take charge—the number of times she’d saved our asses overwhelmed the memory of how many times she’d risked them. I realized General Barrington’s mistake in choosing me as team leader: Lyla was the true heart of the Protectors.

  She turned to Prinne. “Harold, would you be so kind as to identify the ECB on these blueprints for us?”

  Prinne did so without hesitation, pointing to an empty area adjacent to the Command Center. The bunker was secret enough to be redacted from any building specifications or blueprints, but that precaution was meaningless when pitted against someone with Lyla’s reach.

  “Now, please draw us a path to the bunker,” she continued. “The simplest, least dangerous one, avoiding as many security measures, cameras, and patrols as possible. Then, I want you to describe that path in detail to my friends. Answer any questions they have as well. Do you understand?”

  Not only did Harold understand, he relished. Like the Iranian scientists before him, Deputy Director Prinne undid a lifetime of work in just over twenty minutes, telling us everything we needed. When he finished, Lyla smiled at me and her eyes broadcast her thoughts—this is going to work.

  My own thoughts were just as optimistic, but sprang from a less tactical source. Her strength, her decisiveness, our shared moments of laughter and affection, the growing closeness we’d experienced over the last week . . . it all felt like a prelude to something else. Something better. Something . . . real.

  This isn’t an embrace. I love her.

  I was overjoyed, right up until the deputy director turned to leave.

  When Lyla looked at Prinne and said thank you.

  When Harold basked in her thanks, and whispered, “Anything for you.”

  And I fucking lost it.

  CHAPTER 45

  Our first time goes exactly like you’d imagine, considering she’s a goddess and I’m a dude who hasn’t had sex in over a year and a half.

  After some apologies and earnest promises of future overachievement, the second time is better. The third blows my mind.

  Our tryst happens after a mission in northern Italy: Lyla embraces a trade minister before a critical vote of the G20 Summit, while I provide transport and cover. The operation is such an easy success, it almost feels unfair; but at least we get to escape the confines of the base and enjoy some time alone, away from inquisitive eyes.

  I bathe in postmission afterglow in our Venice hotel suite, a room luxurious to the point of ridiculousness. In contrast, we’re three floors above a waterway that smells different than the postcards lead you to believe. Part of the twisted reality of Italy’s canal-filled tourist gem: a romantic paradise, steeped in raw sewage and rotted fish. But up here in an ivory tower with Lyla, I’m too high to smell the truth.

  “That was amazing,” I tell her. When she doesn’t respond in agreement, I cock a worried eyebrow. “Right?”

  She laughs. “Amazing-ish.”

  “Awww, man . . . that is so uncool. Seriously?”

  “We’ll work on it,” she says, and kisses me on the nose. Instead of disappointment, the prospect of future attempts fills me with a joy I don’t think I’ve ever experienced.

  “It’ll get better, I swear.”

  “Naked promises in the dead of night are notoriously unreliable, Mr. McAlister, but I believe you nonetheless.”

  She rolls away and I slide over to spoon. Lyla’s hair tickles my nose as I nestle in close. “What do you think Carsten or Diego would say if they could see us now?” I whisper.

  “Carsten would be embarrassed. He blushes every time I speak to him . . . like a little boy.”

  “Diego would probably critique your body. Rank each section on a ten-point scale.”

  “Argh. Men.”

  “Hey now, don’t lump me in with him. Y’know, if we keep this up, they’re gonna know. They may be odd, but they’re not stupid.”

  She pauses for a moment, thinking. Then, a deci
sion. “They won’t. Even if they do, they won’t.”

  My head yanks back from hers. “You’ll embrace them?”

  She flops over to look me in the eyes. “If I have to. Scott, this”—she touches her chest, then mine—“is ours. For us. After the last year, the training, the missions . . . this controlled insanity we live with, I need something that’s normal. This piece we keep secret, yes?”

  I understand completely. We live our lives under a microscope of politicians, spies, soldiers, and scientists. Having something beyond the fishbowl makes me feel special and normal at the same time, if that’s possible. The only roadblock to secrecy, though, is Barrington. The general keeps his distance from Lyla . . . always has. He knows better. But he’ll see it in my eyes, sense it. He already knows I have a crush on her. It’s possible to get one gold star on your shoulder and remain clueless, but not three.

  “Barrington will figure it out,” I admit. “Hell, I’d be better off just coming clean. You freak him out so much, he’ll see it as a better way to keep tabs on you. A way to exert some control over Madam Mind Control.” A burst of inspiration hits. “I can be a double agent, let you know everything he says.”

  Lyla doesn’t share my excitement. She touches a palm to my cheek, and the golden-green eyes open a little wider. “No,” she pleads. “Not Barrington. Not anyone. Promise me you’ll keep this secret. I need you to promise.”

  The bed is our sanctuary. I feel warm in her arms, safe from the outside world.

  Loved.

  So I say the only words in my mind. The ones I’ve wanted to say since the day I saw her sitting on the edge of the metal table, dangling her legs. The day I met Aphrodite.

  “Anything for you.”

  —

  My hands went to my head in shock, but “shock” soon graduated to “rage,” and I was pulling at my hair hard enough to rip it right out of my scalp. Only one thought screamed beneath the roots of all that hair:

  How stupid can you be?

  “Son of a bitch.” Diego cocked his head at me, clueless. Lyla looked the same, which meant she was an even better actress than I gave her credit for.

  “What is it? What’s wr—” she started.

  I finished. “Wrong? Why don’t you look at this fucking idiot”—I pointed to the still-smiling, wistful Harold Prinne—“and ask me that again. You know goddamn well what’s wrong, Aphrodite.” I threw a few dozen coats of disgust on my last word.

  She’s done it to me again. I’m no different than Prinne.

  Wide-eyed and silent, Diego rotated on his heels and beat it out of the room in haste. Blaster wasn’t big on emotional conflict, and my expression must have shown just how much I had stored up.

  “I don’t understand . . . ,” Lyla said. She came around the table and I retreated backward.

  “I cannot believe I didn’t notice until now. Goddammit I should have, with your Jedi-mind-trick bullshit. You don’t even need to spin your eyes to get me to swoon.”

  “Scott, that’s not true. I haven’t . . .” Her face was a mixture of surprise and hurt, and it looked honest. If I hadn’t just realized I’d spent the last week as a meat puppet with Lyla’s hand stuck up my ass, I might have bothered to listen.

  “Save it,” I said with as much contempt as I could muster. “Jesus, I should be relieved. Falling in ‘love’ with you again isn’t due to my own shitty judgment—it’s your fault.”

  Her expression flickered between wounded and enraged. I didn’t wait to listen to whatever excuse she wanted to spew—or give her another opportunity to turn on the charm. I stormed out of the study and took the stairs to the upper level, three at a time.

  When I got to the bedroom, I had barely enough time to call myself a moron again before Lyla crashed the door in pursuit. She was almost as pissed as I was. Almost.

  “Read my mind!” she yelled, slamming the door shut behind her.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Read my mind. Now!”

  “Kiss my ass.” I wasn’t about to subject myself to the agony for nothing. People can spew a line of mental bullshit just as easily as they can verbally. “It’s just more of the same. My emotions, desire . . . love. It’s all crap. Illusions.”

  “Do you really think I’m manipulating you? Forcing you to be a helpless minion?” She sounded like she did back in the hallway of Mr. Barstow’s house in London. Angry to the point of losing control. I walked to the window and kept my eyes focused on the street—no way was I going to look directly at her.

  “Yes,” I said to the glass, calmer, for both our sakes. “It’s just like before.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I shook my head in frustration. “Lyla, nothing’s changed. You control people’s emotions like I drink a glass of water. It’s so automatic you don’t even have to think, and that was the old you. Now after your turbocharged evolution or whatever you want to call it—you’re even stronger. The voice tricks, the questions on the plane, our night in Tehran . . .”

  “So I’ve been manipulating you the entire time? That’s what you think?”

  “You need me. Not just to help you sleep and maintain focus, but for survival. And what do you do when threatened? You use your powers. You always have.”

  “I do not—”

  “Please. Why don’t you go back downstairs and feed that line of bullshit to my oldest, dearest friend,” I said.

  “So I am a liar! I take advantage of the noble Scott McAlister, twist his feelings, and use him like a puppet.” Her sarcasm was so rank, Diego could probably smell it from downstairs. “God, you are such an ass.”

  I heard her stomp around the room, muttering to herself. After a few laps she stopped almost directly behind me.

  “After all we’ve been through,” she said, more in disbelief than anger. “All that’s happened. You say these horrible things as if you’re trying to make me hate you. How could you still not trust me?”

  No more lies. Just tell her.

  I twisted my head to look Lyla in the face.

  “Because the last time almost killed me.”

  The soft skin above her nose puckered as her eyes searched mine. “What? I don’t understand.”

  I turned back to the window and rested my forehead against the glass. I couldn’t look at her while I spilled my guts. “After Carsten. One day you were the most important thing in my life. The next, I’m alone in Colorado and it was like you died with him. For the first six months, every day was a battle not to swallow a bottle of drain cleaner. Every. Single. Day.” I slammed my fist against the windowsill with each word.

  She said nothing, which was good. I didn’t want to stop until I’d bared everything . . . air out the truth, once and for all.

  “The emptiness I felt. Words don’t . . . can’t . . . convey. My soul ripped apart, Lyla. And the worst part was every night, sleep would knit back whatever pieces were left, and the next morning would shred everything all over again. When I finally stopped wanting to die, that’s when I knew.”

  “Knew what?” The voice was surprisingly tender.

  “That you’d embraced me. I’d heard the eggheads talk about ‘the hangover’ after you released someone . . . I read the files. ‘Severe depression, longing, sorrow . . . unlike anything the target has experienced before.’ Trust me, the reports don’t come close to describing it.”

  Lyla said my name and her hand touched my shoulder. I shrank away from both the window and her, raising an arm in surrender.

  “No, it’s all right, I get it. I understand why you released me. You were angry about Carsten and I deserved to suffer. But I did my time—I took the punishment and recovered. Barely. But now we’re together again, and I see those goddamn lovesick grins on the fucking scientists and that asshole Prinne . . . how thrilled they are to say, ‘Anything for you.’ Brings all the mem
ories back. I can’t go through that nightmare again.”

  When I finally turned to face her, tears clouded my vision.

  “Lyla, I won’t survive another embrace.”

  She didn’t say a word. I swiped a forearm across my eyes so I could look at her. Patterns of light and shadow from the ceiling fan above played across her face. The light sparkled when it reflected off the tears on her cheeks.

  I sucked in a breath to ask why she was crying and she lunged at me.

  She kissed me. Not erotic or sensual. The kiss was a single hard push, urgent . . . almost desperate. Then her hands pulled at the back of my head and she stabbed her lips against mine, two, three, four times. When she finally pulled back and saw the astonished look on my face, she gulped down air in a half-laughing, half-crying fit.

  “You idiot!” she choked out between sobs. “I never embraced you. Ever. You felt that way because you loved me.”

  “What? But that . . .” No more words escaped because her lips covered mine. My inner computer kept flashing the error message, but after a few seconds desire flipped the override switch. I kissed her back.

  It wasn’t until we came up for air that she grasped both sides of my face and laughed. “My lovely, sheltered fool . . . that’s what love is supposed to feel like when it ends. It destroys everyone, me included. The five years after Carsten died were desperate for both of us. I watched a friend die, then lost the one person who cared for me despite my power. The one man who loved me for me.”

  Before I could kiss her in response, she punched me in the chest.

  “And now you’re a jerk who thinks none of it was real!” she cried, but there was no sadness beneath the tears. Just disbelief at my colossal level of stupidity.

  I pulled Lyla down to the bed to apologize. One of my favorite rules to live by: the best apology is a naked apology.

  I’d never been so happy to be so wrong.