Trapping Zero. Джек Марс

office hours to review coursework. Her name was Karen; she was twenty-three and one of the brightest in his class. She’d taken a couple years off after high school before going to college and traveled, mostly around Europe.

      He nearly smacked himself in the forehead with the sudden realization that he knew more than he should about the young woman. Those office visits hadn’t been for assignment help; she had a crush on the professor. And she was undeniably beautiful, if Reid allowed himself for even a moment to think like that—which usually he did not, having long since grown adept at compartmentalizing the physical and mental attributes of his students and focusing on education.

      But the girl, Karen, was very attractive, blonde-haired and green-eyed, slender but athletic, and…

      “Oh,” he said aloud to the empty classroom.

      She reminded him of Maria.

      It had been four weeks since Reid and his girls had returned from Eastern Europe. Two days later Maria had been sent off on another op, and despite his texts and calls to her personal cell, he hadn’t heard from her since. He wondered where she was, if she was okay… and if she still felt the same way about him. Their relationship had grown so complex that it was hard to say where they stood. A friendship that had very nearly turned romantic became temporarily soured by distrust and, eventually, to alienated allies on the wrong side of a government cover-up.

      But now wasn’t the time to dwell on how Maria felt about him. He had vowed to return to the conspiracy, to try to discover more of what he knew back then, but with returning to teaching, his new position in the agency, and taking care of his girls he hardly had the time to think about it.

      Reid sighed and checked his watch again. Recently he had splurged and purchased a smart-watch that linked to his cell phone via Bluetooth. Even when his phone was in his desk or in another room he would still be alerted to text messages or calls. And looking at it frequently had become as instinctive as blinking. As compulsive as scratching an itch.

      He had sent Maya a text right before the lecture started. Usually his texts were seemingly innocuous questions, like “What do you want for dinner?” or “Do you need me to pick anything up on the way home?” But Maya wasn’t dumb; she knew that he was checking in on them, no matter how he tried to present it. Especially since he tended to send a message or make a call every hour or so.

      He was smart enough to recognize what this was. The neurosis about his girls’ safety, his compulsion to check in and the subsequent anxiety waiting for a response; even the strength and impact of the flashbacks he endured. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, all signs pointed toward some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder from the ordeals he had gone through.

      Still, his challenge to overcome the trauma, his road to return to a life that resembled normalcy and trying to conquer the angst and consternation of what had happened was nothing compared to what his two teenage daughters were going through.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Reid unlocked the door to their home in the suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia, balancing a pizza box on the flat of his palm, and punched the six-digit alarm code into the panel near the front door. He had upgraded the system just a few weeks earlier. This new one would send an emergency alert to both 911 and the CIA if the code wasn’t properly entered within thirty seconds of any point of egress opening.

      It was one of several precautions that Reid had taken ever since the incident. There were cameras now, three of them in all; one mounted over the garage and directed towards the driveway and front door, another hidden in the floodlight over the back door, and a third outside the panic room door in the basement, all of which were on a twenty-four hour recording loop. He had changed every single lock in the house as well; their former neighbor, the now-deceased Mr. Thompson, had a key to their front and back doors and his keys were taken when the assassin Rais stole his truck.

      Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, was the tracking device implanted in each of his daughters. Neither of them was aware of it, but both had been given an injection under the guise of a flu shot that implanted a subcutaneous GPS tracker, small than a grain of rice, in their upper arms. No matter where they were in the world, a satellite would know it. It had been Agent Strickland’s idea, and Reid agreed without question. Most bizarre was that despite the high cost of outfitting two civilians with CIA tech, Deputy Director Cartwright signed off on it seemingly without a second thought.

      Reid entered the kitchen and found Maya lying in the adjacent living room, watching a movie on TV. She lounged on her side on the sofa, still in her pajamas, with both legs hanging off the far end.

      “Hey.” Reid set the pizza box on the counter and shrugged out of his tweed jacket. “I texted you. You didn’t answer.”

      “Phone’s upstairs charging,” Maya said lazily.

      “It can’t be charging down here?” he asked pointedly.

      She merely shrugged in return.

      “Where’s your sister?”

      “Upstairs,” she yawned. “I think.”

      Reid sighed. “Maya—”

      “She’s upstairs, Dad. Jeez.”

      As much as he wanted to scold her for her petulant attitude of late, Reid held his tongue. He still didn’t know the full extent of what either of them had gone through during the incident. That was how he referred to it in his mind—as “the incident.” It was a suggestion from Sara’s psychologist that he give it a name, a way for them to reference the events in conversation, although he’d never actually said it aloud.

      The truth was that they barely talked about it.

      He knew from the hospital reports, both in Poland and a secondary assessment stateside, that while both of his daughters had sustained minor injuries neither of them had been raped. Yet he had seen firsthand what had happened to some of the other trafficked victims. He wasn’t sure he was ready to know the details of the horrific ordeal they had experienced because of him.

      Reid headed upstairs and paused for a moment outside of Sara’s bedroom. The door was ajar a few inches; he peered in and saw her lying on top of her blankets, facing the wall. Her right arm rested on her thigh, still wrapped in a beige cast from the elbow down. Tomorrow she had an appointment with the doctor to see if the cast was ready to come off.

      Reid pushed the door open gently, but still it squeaked on its hinges. Sara, however, did not stir.

      “You asleep?” he asked softly.

      “No,” she murmured.

      “I, um… I brought a pizza home.”

      “Not hungry,” she said flatly.

      She hadn’t been eating much since the incident; in fact, Reid had to constantly remind her to drink water, or else she would hardly consume anything. He understood the difficulties of surviving trauma better than most, but this felt different. More severe.

      The psychologist Sara had been seeing, Dr. Branson, was a patient and compassionate woman who came highly recommended and CIA-certified. Yet according to her reports, Sara spoke little during their therapy sessions and answered questions with as few words as possible.

      He sat on the edge of her bed and brushed the hair away from her forehead. She flinched slightly at his touch.

      “Is there anything I can do?” he asked quietly.

      “I just want to be alone,” she murmured.

      He sighed and rose from the bed. “I understand,” he said empathetically. “Even so, I’d really like it if you came down and sat with us, as a family. Maybe try to eat a few bites.”

      She didn’t say anything in response.

      Reid sighed again as he headed back downstairs. Sara was clearly traumatized; she was much harder to get through to than even before, back in February when the girls had had a run-in with two members of the terrorist organization Amun on a New Jersey boardwalk. He’d thought it was bad then, but now his youngest daughter was downright joyless, often sleeping or lying in bed and staring