Athena Force: Books 1-6

by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann

  “She estimates that between your family’s guest list and ours, we’re looking at upwards of a thousand people, if not more. It will be the social event of the year.”

  He looked pleased. Alex felt a bit sick.

  “She’ll want to give you suggestions on your dress,” Emerson said. “Please, just let her prattle on. Then you can do what you want.”

  What she wanted was to trot into the nearest Saks and pick something off the rack that she liked and that happened to be white or something close. The idea of cramming fittings like the ones her cousin Charlene had gone through into her already impossible schedule added to her queasiness about the whole thing.

  “I’ve never seen your mother so happy,” Emerson said. “She’s so delighted our families will be connected officially.”

  The bite of tiramisu she’d just taken seemed to turn to chalk in her mouth. A snippet of conversation flashed through her mind, from the day she had told her mother Emerson had proposed and she had accepted.

  “Wonderful!” her mother had exclaimed with no small amount of triumph. “The Howlands and the Forsythes. The perfect connection. Finally!”

  Not a word about whether she loved him, was happy herself or even congratulations. Just the acknowledgment that the joining of two such prominent families was a delight to the socially conscious Veronica Forsythe. Alex had finally, years after she had given up even trying, pleased her mother.

  Was that why she was doing it?

  The question leaped into her mind, and she cringed at the impact it had. For a moment she stared at Emerson, wondering if that’s what he was, the trophy presented to her mother, to prove she really was the good girl Veronica Forsythe had always wanted, and not the changeling who continually disappointed her by being more her grandfather’s ideal than her mother’s.

  She also wondered, for the first time, if her grandfather had had to fight her mother to get her to allow Alex to attend Athena. Veronica rarely stood up to anyone. She usually relied on manipulation to get what she wanted. But she hadn’t been able to manipulate Charles. Alex knew her mother hadn’t liked the idea of her going, knew that the kind of woman Athena produced was far from her mother’s vision of what a woman should be, but if there had been any arguing it had been done out of her presence.

  “…favorite designer, although she agrees that if you prefer Wang or perhaps a European designer, that would be acceptable.”

  Alex belatedly tuned in again. Emerson continued. Her fiancé, she realized, was discussing wedding dress designers.

  Suddenly it all seemed to be too much. All this urbane refinement layered over the shock and horror of Rainy’s death made her more than a little ill. Abruptly she got to her feet.

  “I’m sorry Emerson. I don’t feel well. I’ll call you.”

  She gave him a light kiss that landed more or less on his temple and then left him sitting there, at last showing emotion through a slightly stunned look on his face. And she was too agitated to appreciate the tiny victory.

  Chapter 9

  Alex wished now she’d never used that particular example to poke at Emerson. Because now that she had, the image of herself at the farm with a couple of kids, teaching them about the joy of horses, even while shoveling manure, wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She looked out the airplane window at the heart of America passing beneath her as she flew westward, but that image was all she saw. It grew clearer and clearer, until she almost ached with the power of it. And now she didn’t know if it would ever come true. If it ever could come true.

  That’s why, of course, she realized. If it weren’t for the suddenly very real possibility that it might never happen, that the choice to make it happen might have been stolen from her, it wouldn’t be pressuring her so much. She’d never really worried about it, or even thought about it all that much until she’d had to consider someone else might have made that very personal choice for her, some total stranger who had no right to interfere, who moved by stealth and deception, who committed this awful violation in secrecy and left the horrible results to be discovered years later. It was—

  She stopped herself. You can’t do anything about it now. At this moment, on this plane, the only thing you can do anything about is your work. So do it.

  She pulled the folder that held a printout of the one case she hadn’t yet finished her report on out of her large bag. She’d brought it intending to finish it on this flight, but now she was beginning to doubt she’d ever be able to concentrate enough.

  Focus, she ordered herself. Those little girls who were raped and murdered and dumped in drainage ditches deserve it. The photos of those tiny, broken bodies drove her, and she was finally able to get through the outline of the report she would finish inputting when she was able to get online with her laptop. She went through it all again, just to be sure. Her brick of evidence had to be solid, or the entire case could wash away and an animal with a vicious taste for young, innocent flesh could walk free again, the worst kind of predator.

  When she was certain she’d done all she could, she put the file away and locked that section of her satchel. She looked out the window of the airplane again. She finally gave up trying to distract herself and surrendered to the demanding thoughts of the mess she was heading back to.

  The funeral tomorrow would be a painful, aching thing for all of them, probably especially for Josie who was on temporary duty out of the country and couldn’t be there.

  It didn’t seem possible the Cassandras were burying one of their own. But she better than any of them knew it was true; there was nothing like an autopsy to convince you.

  Rainy’s death had pounded home to Alex that she herself could not count on the fifty or sixty years she’d always assumed she would have. A foolish assumption, probably, given that she dealt with the fallout from untimely death all the time, but there it was. Her intellect knew no one could count on that kind of generosity from life, but her gut shied away from that truth.

  Was it a sign of maturity, this outgrowing of the youthful assumption of immortality? Or had it simply been scared out of her by Rainy’s death? Would she lose it as time dulled the pain slightly? Would she go back to believing that people who died were of her grandfather’s generation, or in some cases her mother’s, but not her own? Never her own. Not yet.

  But it had happened. It could happen again. And the fact that she had never expected it, despite the dangerous career paths many Athenans had taken, only made her feel naive and a bit stupid.

  She wished she were as tired as she’d been on her last cross-country flight, so that she could sleep. But she’d slept so well at the farm, and surprisingly well the couple of days she’d had at home, she felt rested. If she’d thought about it a bit more, she would have stayed up later last night working for just this reason, to tire herself out. But she hadn’t and therefore she had nothing to do but think. When they finally began the descent into Phoenix, she was more relieved than she wanted to admit. At least she could fill her head with the logistics of the rest of the trip, distract herself with the details of gates and baggage and rental cars.

  The landing was as rough as her thoughts had been. The plane bounced and shook going through waves of rising heat. For a moment the irony of dying in a crash landing just minutes after her unpleasant earlier thoughts about death and funeral plans rolled over her until the plane finally settled safely on the ground.

  She picked up her rental car, worked her way out of Sky Harbor airport onto Interstate 10, and headed north, then west. She had made plans to stay at Athena Academy tonight and go with Christine to Tucson for the funeral tomorrow. She was able to give enough attention to her driving to keep her thoughts out of what were rapidly becoming a pair of well-worn ruts. Between her suspicions about Rainy and her fears about what might have been done to her, as well, too much of her mind was running constantly hard and fast as it tried to sort, refute, prove and fill in too many blanks with too little information.

  Maybe one o
f the others would have something by now. Maybe Kayla had turned up something more, or Christine. Anything that would make sense of this, anything that would turn this world of crazy theories and wild ideas into something reasonable and sensible.

  But no matter what they might have learned, there couldn’t be anything that would make Rainy’s death acceptable. And that was the bottom line.

  The funeral was going to be small for someone as well-loved as Rainy, but Alex thought it would be exactly what she would want, only those dearest to her to witness the end of her far too short life. Odd, that with everything the Cassandras talked about, they’d never talked much about death. At least, not in anything but the abstract.

  They’d especially never talked about the death of one of their number. Once one of them had joked about the Vikings having the right idea, to go out on the water in a blaze of glory, but they’d never gone any further than that. More of that youthful belief in their own immortality, she supposed. But now here they all were, headed for a funeral, with no choice but to face the inevitability and finality of it.

  Kayla had said she would go early to pick Darcy up from the Tucson airport. Darcy would likely have her young son in tow. She never seemed to go anywhere without him.

  Tory had called Christine last night to say she’d be there. Alex knew Tory had been covering a story in Britain, but suspected she would have been here even had the story not been finished. She hadn’t made it to that first fateful meeting that Rainy had called, when Alex, Kayla, Darcy, Josie, and Christine had learned of Rainy’s accident and then her death. Only Josie, unable to get leave, and Sam—who also had not made that meeting and who was God knows where on God knows what assignment for her employer, the CIA—would not be there. They weren’t even sure their message about Rainy’s death had reached her.

  But though Josie and Sam would be absent in body, Alex knew they would be here in spirit. Even Sam. Because if Samantha St. John somehow knew, despite being out of reach, that Rainy was being buried today, Alex wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Sam had a way of finding things out, her brilliant ability to hack just about any computer on the planet just one of her methods.

  Alex had offered to drive her rental to Tucson, and Christine had accepted. Although she hadn’t planned it that way, it occurred to her that this sad journey was the perfect chance to ask about what her grandfather had told her at the farm that night.

  “I was able to visit my grandfather while I was back home,” she said.

  Christine turned to look at her and smiled warmly. “How is Charles? I haven’t spoken to him in some time, I’m afraid. I keep meaning to call and catch up, but time always seems to get away.”

  “He understands,” Alex assured the woman. “He knows what a huge job running Athena is. He’s just glad you’re here to do it. He even commented on the excellent job you do screening the staff.”

  Christine’s smile widened. “That’s good of him. We’re lucky to have him as such a staunch supporter.”

  Alex negotiated a lane change to get out from behind a slow-moving truck. When she was safely in front, she changed back. She’d found herself driving very carefully of late.

  “We were also talking about Rainy,” she said when the maneuver was complete. “I asked him if there was anyone he could think of that could be holding a grudge they might take out on her.”

  “I’d find that hard to believe. She was such a lovely woman.”

  “I can’t imagine it, either. But what if she were just…handy?” Alex glanced at her passenger. “What if the grudge was really against Athena?”

  Christine drew back, obviously startled. Kayla clearly hadn’t voiced her suspicions to Christine when Alex left. She turned her attention back to the road

  “Athena? You think her death is connected to Athena?”

  “I think it’s possible. This isn’t the first time someone connected to Athena has died mysteriously,” Alex said, referring to the unsolved murder of Athena founder Marion Gracelyn nine years ago. “Many of us are in a position to keep our connection to Athena quiet, known only to those who have to know. But with Rainy it’s a matter of public record, in her qualifications at the law firm, for anyone who bothers to look.”

  Christine’s tone sounded thoughtful. “I suppose it’s a possibility. We do have our enemies. People can be very resistant to change. There are people who fought Athena from its inception.”

  “What about after that?”

  “After?”

  “Has anybody been fired who could hold a grudge?”

  “A disgruntled ex-employee? I don’t think we’ve had any. Most who have left have gone by choice, for personal reasons or because they realized they weren’t right for the job, or it wasn’t right for them.”

  “You can’t think of anyone who might feel they were treated unfairly?”

  “And who would be angry enough to take revenge on a former student? No.”

  Alex waited until they had reached a straight, relatively clear section of road before she glanced at Christine again and asked, “What about Dr. Bradford?”

  Christine’s eyes widened, and to Alex's amazement she thought she saw a tinge of color rise in the woman’s cheeks. Christine turned her head, almost jerkily, to look out the windshield.

  Oh, boy, Alex thought, turning her eyes back to the road again herself. That hit a nerve.

  “Oh, that was long, long ago,” Christine finally said. “Back in our second year. Rainy was an eighth grader. But I’m sure there’s no connection.”

  Christine seemed to have herself back in hand now, but Alex couldn’t help wondering what had caused the uncharacteristic reaction.

  “Who was he?”

  “He is—at least I assume he still is—a doctor and researcher in behavioral science. He has focused most of his work on women, which is obviously unusual. That’s why we thought he might be a good fit at Athena. But he wasn’t full-time staff. He came as a guest lecturer for special psychology segments.”

  Alex stayed silent as she took the off-ramp they needed to get to the church. At the bottom was a traffic signal, with three cars backed up ahead of them. She eased the rental to a stop. Then she looked at Christine once more.

  “What happened?”

  There was a moment of silence before Christine answered. “He was…there was a problem between him and Betsy Stone.”

  Alex barely managed not to say that didn’t surprise her. Betsy could inspire people to be difficult. She was a talented and competent nurse, but her bedside manner was not her strong suit.

  But her grandfather had given her the impression the problem with Dr. Bradford had been with Christine herself, so she pressed on.

  “A problem?”

  “He was…harassing her. So I recommended that he not be asked back.”

  Alex found it a little hard to believe that anyone would dare harass the formidable Betsy Stone, but she was distracted from that thought by the realization that the usually serene, unflappable Christine seemed to be having trouble looking her in the eye as she spoke.

  Chapter 10

  Alex had expected Allison Gracelyn at the funeral and wasn’t surprised to see her already there when she and Christine pulled into the parking lot of the small chapel. Not only was Allison an Athena Academy board consultant, but she had been in Rainy’s class and one of Rainy’s closest friends besides the Cassandras.

  She was now an NSA programmer and mathematician. But she was also the daughter of late Athena founder Marion Gracelyn, who had died tragically from a blow to the head right there at Athena. The first time death had visited. Though it had been suspected that her death was not accidental, motive and a murderer had never been found. Marion had been the woman who had had the vision, who had made the dream of Athena come true. This made Alex feel a kinship with Allison, along with fellow Cassandra Josie Lockworth, whose father had been not only an early and strong supporter of Athena but who had also been director of the CIA at the time of its inception. They had
all had exceptionally large footsteps to follow in at Athena, and they had all felt the strain of the effort.

  Allison’s brother, David, was with her. The two looked much alike, with their dark brown eyes and hair, and were easily recognizable as siblings.

  Alex’s brow furrowed as she watched Allison whisper something to her brother, to which he shook his head. His jaw was tightly clenched, she saw, his feelings obviously very near the surface. He even moved somewhat jerkily, like a man on the emotional edge, or running on nerves alone. She recognized the symptoms all too well.

  Then she had to concentrate on parking the car. As she got out and turned to lock the door, she saw Kayla walking toward the church with another brunette, a short-haired woman who had a child in tow. She frowned. The child was Darcy’s adorable little Charlie, she’d seen them both a little more than a week ago, but….

  She looked a second time at the woman who was holding the boy’s hand. The change in Darcy Allen Steele was still a shock.

  But once she looked past the dyed brown hair, and blue eyes made brown by what had to be colored contact lenses, it was clearly Darcy Allen. Bright, eager-to-please Darcy, who had always excelled at disguise. She had once made redheaded, fair-skinned Alex look like a dark-eyed, honey-skinned Latina, and won the drama class trophy when nobody could guess who was under the dark wig.

  They hadn’t had time to talk about Darcy’s situation the night Rainy died. Alex supposed she would get answers later. She was certain Darcy had good reasons for whatever she was up to. Right now, she needed to get inside, the service would be starting shortly.

  The small chapel was reminiscent of Greek architecture, complete with columns. It was elegant and classical, strong and graceful, just as Rainy herself had been, and it seemed to Alex the perfect place for this, her final send-off.

  Christine went ahead to speak to Marshall Carrington as the official representative of Athena. Despite her determination to get through this, Alex found herself lingering outside, putting off going in as if that would somehow change things. As if once she stepped inside, once she saw that coffin there would be no further denial, no avoiding the fact that it was really time to say goodbye.