by Alex Howell
Duke just shook his head, cursing up a storm about how he was going to get back at Diego. Even by Duke’s standards, it seemed excessive, although Case wanted to do the same given the blood trickling down his nose and the bruises forming on his ribs.
“Doesn’t matter now,” he said. “President’s family is in danger. I’ll handle my own ‘family business’ on my own time.”
Case had a bad feeling on that one, but just hoped that it was just Duke having an unusual case of rage for everything that had transpired. There was definitely something about what the Joras had done… maybe, Case thought, he could arrest Diego on “aggravated assault” and use it as a chance to interrogate him further on what he meant.
As far as the case went, though, he didn’t have enough to accuse the Joras of kidnapping the children. And in his gut, he strongly suspected they were innocent, anyways—well, innocent of having Warrior be one of them. Perhaps they had gotten paid to be the scapegoats, and perhaps they had even done it, but by all accounts, Case most strongly suspected someone had paid them to be a false lead, to be a red herring that wouldn’t matter in the end.
Which, if that was true, just meant that he and Duke had wasted an entire evening chasing something that would have no impact on the rescue of President Morgan’s nieces and nephew.
Case could not shake the feeling that he had missed something. The only way he was going to learn it, he realized, was to go back in there.
But he had to go alone. He couldn’t bring the person who had arrested Diego before.
It was the only way.
13
August 18th, 2028
8:17 p.m. CST
Manhattan, KS
It better not be. Don’t tell me those cries are who I think it is…
Mason hurried through the darkness of night, listening to the grunts and groans. He ignored the searing flames from mere feet away, the own pain in his body, and everything else that begged for him to just take a break, lie down for a few minutes, and rest and recover. He pushed through it all and had his worst fears confirmed.
There, lying on the ground, was Clara.
His daughter.
His only child, the one who was supposed to be in her room in Baltimore, relaxing with just a few days before they headed to Stanford.
And… she was here?
She’d openly defied him and followed him… here?
How?
Why?
“What the…”
Mason couldn’t even bring himself to finish the thought, which contained more swears than he even knew existed. To say that he was outraged by what had happened was an understatement—if hell had no fury like an angered woman, then Mason’s anger came pretty damn close to that right now. And it did the situation no favors that Mason knew he had to help her before he could berate her.
First, he leaned down, hoisted his daughter on his shoulders, and carried her as far away as he could before his legs just would not allow him to go any further. When he had to stop, he gently knelt down, let her off, and looked into her slowly adjusting eyes. Though she looked dazed and shook by the blast, she didn’t look like she was in dire need of any emergency care. A few burns here and there, but nothing that would require a hospital visit.
Which was just as well, because Mason had no intentions of giving her anything other than hell.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?!?”
Mason didn’t bother to hide his fury. Why would he? He now knew Clara would live, he knew he was alone, and he knew that she had disobeyed his requests to stay in his home.
She then coughed badly, hacking up what looked like soot, and Mason just as quickly went into doctor mode, making sure that she was ok.
“I’m… fine,” she said, coughing some more. “I just got the wind knocked out of me.”
“Good,” Mason said, then switching back to angry father. “Because I’m about to knock a hell of a lot more out of you in a second. I’m gonna knock all of the insanity in your head that led you here. What the hell were you thinking? This, right here? This building blowing up, this bomb? That was the best case scenario, Clara, the best case!”
Mason was not lying, either. He had fully anticipated a shootout, grenades, a bomb without a timer… for this to have happened was, in some weird way, a miracle.
“What if there were men in there with guns? Or what if the bomb was bigger and it had gotten both of us? What then?”
Clara didn’t say anything at first, looking at the ground, refusing to look him in the eye. This was so unlike Clara, and it enraged Mason even more, who stood up, went over to a chain-link fence, and kicked it as hard as he could. He hadn’t figured out yet if Clara was ashamed of what she had done or just summoning the courage to be a hardass again, but either way, it wasn’t going to quell his anger. At this point, frankly, nothing was.
“What do I have to do, lock you in the goddamn house?” he roared. “I could have gotten killed. I, the trained SEAL, could have gotten killed! What did you think would happen to you? You think you’re better trained?!?”
“Dad…”
Mason was set to continue going off on her, to fume even louder and with more words. It was only because Clara looked weak, and not as if she was summoning the strength to fight back, that he stopped himself, switching quickly into concerned father mode. He closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and glared with a mixture of authority and paternal concern.
“You have no business being here, Clara,” he said, although he spoke with a much softer tone, if not a more understanding one. “You could have gotten yourself killed. If you were this serious about coming, you should have at least warned me. What the hell are you doing here anyways? How did you get here?”
What happened next only served to raise Mason’s wrath.
Clara’s weakness had merely been feigned, because she rose, dusted herself again, and crossed her arms defiantly, her eyebrows narrowed and her lips pulled back. She’s got a little bit of me, it seems. Well, this is just great. I get to play babysitter and undercover operations.
“The bullet train is free for students, so I was able to take it to Kansas City,” she said. “I was planning on just renting a car, but you spent so long on your phone that I was able to sneak into the trunk of your car. And then…”
Goddamnit, Clara.
Admittedly, a part of Mason was kind of impressed that Clara had pulled this one from underneath his nose. He hadn’t had the “hide in the car” trick pulled on him before, and he supposed that it was better that his adult daughter use it than an enemy terrorist who would have finished what the blast had started. That she had even gotten onto the bullet train without him noticing was impressive. It was a sign to Mason he had to better pay attention to his surroundings, but it was promising for the sake of Clara’s training.
But that was just a part. The greater whole of Mason remained enraged and, frankly, horrified at what had happened. And he most certainly had no intentions of teaching Clara anything else if she was going to pull stunts like this.
“You nearly died, Clara,” Mason said. “Do you not remember what happened a few months ago?”
“I do, dad, and that’s exactly why I’m here now!” Clara said, with such force it left Mason recoiling. “I’m not a child anymore. I haven’t learned everything you have taught me the past few months just to have in my back pocket. I want to help. I know this was dangerous, which was why I let you go ahead of me. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“That’s lovely,” Mason said, his anger and authoritative roar returning. “And what did you plan on doing if you ran into Warrior? Karate chopping him? Using our boxing drills in a one-on-one match? What if he sneaked up on us, getting you first? You think you could have handled yourself in such a spot? There’s a reason that I got trained for years on years and I still rely on the help of others, Clara. And it’s not because I’m weak.”
Even though I prefer to go at it alone.
“There’
s a reason you can’t learn all of this in the span of one summer, Clara.”
Every time Mason said his daughter’s name, it was as if he was trying to make himself believe that what he was seeing was real. It most definitely did not feel that way; Mason wanted to believe that the blast had caused him to hallucinate.
The hallucination, however, would have faded by now. This was very real, too real.
“But it seems you’ve forgotten that. You, Clara, are grounded for the rest of your life. You’re not leaving the house until you go to Stanford, and when you get home, you’re staying there.”
“How old do you think I am, Dad?!?”
“Not old enough to defy me!”
Mason knew as soon as he let those words go how poorly he had chosen them. If not for the fire raging behind Clara, he would have had good reason to believe that his battle had shifted from Warrior to Clara. Certainly, for at least the next couple of minutes, the focus had gone to her.
But, unlike before, when he’d regretted calling her a baby, there was no sincere regret with those words. The time for careful choosing of his words had long passed—something this outrageous didn’t allow for him to be cautious with how he spoke to her.
“I am not a child!” she spat back. “Yes, I am depending on you for help with school, but if you cut that off, I’d be fine, dad. I could figure it out on my own. You want me to be like the rest of those high schoolers who are staying and getting jobs as car mechanics or whatever?”
Oh, Christ, really gonna pull that one on me? Fine.
“Better that than wandering into abandoned, rigged warehouses or warehouses that might have been surrounded by enemies!”
“And you think I thought it was going to be a walk in the park?”
Mason was getting to the point of quitting the conversation, if only because he saw no reason to continue. Clara had her points, but Mason would never, ever allow his daughter to continue on a mission with him. Even if she went through SEAL and black ops training and demonstrated that she was ten times the soldier he ever was…
Too much emotion. Too much risk. Mason hated losing his comrades in battle was it was. What would it look like if he had to lose his daughter in combat and missions?
“Clara, honestly,” Mason said, unable to modulate his voice between frustration and a modicum of empathy. “I just don’t want you to die, ok? I lost Bree already. At least she died peacefully and with all of us. You go out here, you get shot? It could be extraordinarily painful, and there’s no guarantees I’ll be there. And, even if I am, I don’t want to see that. What do you think my worst nightmare is? It’s losing you. Now you tell me I could lose you to a gunfight or in battle? I literally cannot live with myself if that happens.”
Clara’s eyes watered, but her determination held firm. Mason sighed as he realized that no matter how stupid, no matter how insane, no matter how much he suspected Clara had lost her mind, she was 18 years old; she did need to start making her own choices; and she was here now, anyways. It was not like he could just put a teleporter in front of him and send her back to Baltimore.
Some realities, as much as they sucked, could not be ignored or compartmentalized. Mason had to figure out a way to incorporate Clara into this mission; whatever punishment or warnings would have to wait until a future day.
“Just… just stay out of my way, goddamnit,” Mason mumbled as he headed to the car. “Don’t get yourself killed.”
She’s really going to follow me like this, huh. She’s really going to follow in my footsteps.
I guess this is what I get for training her.
Or, really—since training her was necessary—I guess this is what I get for having gone into this life of being a soldier. If I could go back in time… but I can’t. This is the only thing I’m good at.
I guess that’s the price I pay. Having a daughter smarter, more charming, more ambitious, more everything than me decide that she’s going to do the very thing I worked my life to make sure she didn’t have to do.
Damn.
Mason cursed to himself as he reached into the back of the vehicle, finding some first aid equipment. Though neither he nor Clara looked like they needed emergency aid, the burns and the smoke made it a good idea to provide some preventive care.
Mason applied some burn ointment and some band-aids to Clara and himself, trying not to continue to berate his daughter. He felt he’d made his point; whatever happened from here on out in terms of Clara’s actions was something that Mason didn’t really have much control over. He’d established what would happen, and he wasn’t kidding about grounding Clara when she got home. There was no need to repeat everything that he had already said ad nauseam.
Of course, she was house-ridden when you left her, and we saw how that worked. Do you really want to be the dad that treats his daughter like an animal at the zoo? Or do you want to allow her to face the risks of the world and grow on her own?
Damn, being a dad to an 18-year-old sure is hard. Harder than being a Navy SEAL in some ways.
“Keep those on you for another day or so,” Mason said once he’d finished applying the band-aids. “Don’t go anywhere. I have to make some phone calls.”
“Phone calls?”
“Business-related.”
“Can I listen in?”
Mason rolled his eyes. It was like now that Clara had taken a mile, she wanted to take five more miles. When would it stop?
It doesn’t. And you know that.
“I’m not putting it on speaker phone,” he said, which was true but not exactly the “no” that he had suspected he would have emphasized even just three minutes ago. Of course, three minutes ago, the name “Clara” had never even sprung to mind.
He grabbed his Onyx phone, called Raina, and waited for her to answer. He decided not to tell her about the arrival of his daughter—it wasn’t great for first impressions, and it wasn’t really critical for the sake of the mission anyways.
“Mason, what’s going on?”
She sounds stressed, too. That can’t be good.
“I’m at the warehouse, or, well, what was the warehouse,” he grumbled. “Who all is there?”
“Me, Kyle, Chris, and Marshal. Duke and Case went to meet the Joras.”
“I’m sure that’s going to be a delight,” Mason said with an eye roll.
“I’m going to put you on speaker phone so everyone can hear,” Raina said. “Given that you said ‘was’ I don’t think this is going to be good news.”
Mason was too tired and too emotionally spent with his daughter to give a gruff response or smart comeback to that. He waited until Raina gave the OK and continued. At least she didn’t ask me to put her on speaker phone as well.
“I hope that we paid the guy, because this warehouse was as empty as an abandoned shack in Texas when I got there,” Mason said. “Granted, I could see from my thermals that the enemy was here recently, maybe earlier today, but he had left. And he made sure the place wasn’t totally abandoned. When I kicked down a door, it was a bomb set to detonate after the door opened. If not for the delay between the timer starting and the bomb going off, you’d be talking to Manhattan police right now.”
And you’d have to discuss the burial of two bodies.
“Mason,” Chris said on the other end. “Do me a favor. Turn on your video so I can see the damage. I want to know what this guy knows.”
Mason went through his phone, found the right buttons, and turned on the video, showing the burning building. Mason got as close as he could, passing Clara in the process, so that the crew in D.C. could better see the damage and what had happened. That, and he didn’t want them to see her there.
“Who’s the girl?” Raina asked. “A hostage?”
Damnit. Mason saw no way of getting around it other than by just outright ignoring the question.
“Don’t get me started,” Mason grumbled. “Chris? Can you tell anything from what you’re seeing?”
“Best guess, the way the buil
ding seems to be on fire and crumbling? C4. Low-tech, basic explosives. It’s been around since the 20th century, but it does work. It’s also not something that your average civilian can just get, even those from outside the country. I suspect that this means we’re not working with someone who has access to the real high-tech stuff, but not some homegrown Joe either. I can understand our enemy a little better because of this, the little punk.”
“I hope so, because I don’t have any leads otherwise,” Mason said with a long sigh. “Far as I can tell, he’s as good as out in the fields right now.”
A long silence came from as all parties sought the appropriate next step that wasn’t just “wait and see.” Unfortunately, Mason didn’t see what other option there was; they had no leads, no insight into Warrior’s personality, and nothing to go off of other than his demands.
“Do you still have the bag of goods I included?” Marshal asked.
And then the worst thing happened.
“What’s that?”
Of all the people Mason had expected to partake in the call, Clara was about the last person. Mason turned, shot her a disgusted look, and then looked back at the camera. There was no hiding the fact that Clara was now known and noticed by all of Onyx.
“Who is that?” Mason heard Kyle say. “Wow. She’s beautiful.”
Oh, great. Just what I need. The nerd on the term having the hots for my daughter. I’m going to shut this all down right now.
“She is my daughter, Kyle,” Mason growled, his voice unusually on edge even for him. “She decided to defy my orders, sneak on board the bullet train, hide in my vehicle, and sneak into the warehouse with me. She went against my orders and nearly got killed in the process. She is in a lot of trouble right now for acting so foolishly and will be punished accordingly, but she is still my daughter. I suggest you tread very carefully, Kyle.”
“Oh, uh, ok,” Kyle said, although Mason could see him still wearing a grin. He even waved to the camera, causing Mason to turn and see Clara waving back. The stern glare to both of them ended the interaction, but Mason suspected by their waving at each other that this was far from the end of their… partnership, he would say.
