Trapping Zero. Джек Марс

classes. Besides, they’re not likely to let you in if you flunked an entire semester.”

      Maya was silent for a long moment. At last she said, “I don’t think I want to go to Georgetown anymore.”

      Reid frowned. Georgetown had been her top choice of colleges since they’d moved to Virginia. “Then where? NYU?”

      She shook her head. “No. I want to go West Point.”

      “West Point,” he repeated blankly, completely thrown by her statement. “You want to go to a military academy?”

      “Yes,” she said. “I’m going to become a CIA agent.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Reid balked. He was certain he had heard her right, but the combination of words that came from her mouth made little sense to him.

      She’s winding me up, he thought. She was expecting an argument and I resisted. This was just youthful angst. It had to be.

      “You… want to be a CIA agent,” he said slowly.

      “Yes,” said Maya. “More specifically, I want to attend the National Intelligence University in Bethesda. But in order to do that, I would first have to be a member of the armed forces. If I go to West Point instead of enlisting, I would graduate as a second lieutenant and be eligible to attend NIU. There I can get a master’s in strategic intelligence, and by that point I’d be over twenty-one, so I could enroll in the agency’s field-training program.”

      Reid’s legs felt numb. Not only was she very obviously serious, but she had already done some thorough research to find her best course of action and education.

      But there was no way in hell that he would ever let his daughter choose that path.

      “No,” he said simply. All other words seemed to fail him. “No. No way. That’s not happening.”

      Maya’s eyebrows shot up in unison. “Excuse me?” she said sharply.

      Reid took a deep breath. She was headstrong, so he would have to deny her more carefully than that. But his answer was an unequivocal and emphatic “no.” Not after everything he had seen and everything he had done.

      “It hasn’t been all that long since… the incident,” he said. “It’s still fresh in your mind. Before you make a decision like this, you need to consider all angles. Finish your classes. Graduate high school. Apply to colleges. And we can revisit all of this later.” He smiled as pleasantly as he could muster.

      Maya did not. “You don’t get to dictate my life like that,” she said heatedly.

      “Actually, I do,” Reid countered. He was quickly growing irritated himself. “You’re still a minor.”

      “Not for long,” she shot back. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen. I’m not going back to those classes at Georgetown. In fact, I’m not going back to school until September. I’ll flunk my spring semester and I’ll have to take all those courses over again. I’ll be seventeen next month, which means by the time I graduate I’ll be eighteen. And then you don’t get to tell me where I can go or what I can do anymore.” She folded her arms to punctuate her point.

      Reid pinched the bridge of his nose. “You cannot just skip three months of school. And what about all these study sessions you’ve been doing? All that time would be wasted.”

      “I haven’t been going to study sessions,” she admitted.

      He looked up at her sharply. “So you’ve been lying to me? After everything?” He scoffed in dismay. “Then where have you been going?”

      “After you drop me off, I go to the rec center,” she told him matter-of-factly. “There’s a self-defense class there a few times a week. It’s taught by a former Marine. I’ve also been reading up on counterintelligence and espionage tactics.”

      He shook his head. “I can’t believe this. I thought we weren’t going to have any more secrets between us.” Even as he said it, a painful memory flashed through his mind—Kate’s murder, the truth about their mother. He still hadn’t told them, despite his promise to himself to cease the lying and guile. It killed him to keep it from them, but in the wake of the incident it had been too soon to reveal something so horrible. Now, four weeks later, he was afraid it was too late and that they would be angry at him for keeping it to himself for so long.

      “I knew you’d react like this,” Maya said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. But I’m telling you now. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m going to do.”

      “When you were seven you wanted to be a ballet dancer,” Reid told her. “Remember that? When you were ten you wanted to be a veterinarian. At thirteen you wanted to be a lawyer, all because we watched a movie about a murder trial—”

      “Do not patronize me!” Maya leapt up from her seat, standing in front of him with a pointed finger of warning and a glare on her face.

      Reid leaned back in his seat, shocked by her outburst. He could hardly even be angry at her, as surprised as he was at the strength her reaction.

      “This is not some little girl’s fairytale pipe dream,” she said quickly, her voice low. “This is what I want. I know that now. Just like I know what keeps Sara awake at night. She has nightmares about her experience, what she went through. What she survived. But that’s not what traumatizes me. What keeps me awake is knowing that it’s still happening out there right now. What I saw and what I went through is someone’s life. While I’m in my warm bed, or eating pizza, or going to classes, there are women and children out there living every single day like that—until they’re dead.”

      Maya put one foot up onto the chair and yanked the leg of her pajamas pants up to the knee. There on her calf were thin, ruddy-brown scars spelling out three words: RED. 23. POLA. It was the message that she had carved into her own leg in the moments before the traffickers’ drugs took hold of her; the message that provided a clue as to where they had taken Sara.

      “You can pretend this is just a phase if you want,” Maya pressed on. “But these scars aren’t going anywhere. I’ll have them for the rest of my life, and every time I see them I’m reminded that what happened to me is still happening to others. All I did was figure out that if I want it to end, the best way to do it is to be part of the people trying to stop it.” She pulled down the pajama leg again.

      Reid’s throat felt dry. He couldn’t counter her argument any more than he could consent to it. Something Maria had once said to him flashed through his mind: You can’t save everyone. But he could save his daughter from living the kind of life he had been thrust back into. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “But no matter how noble your intentions might be, I can’t support this. And I won’t.”

      “I don’t need your support,” Maya declared. “I just thought you should know the truth.” She stormed out of the dining room, her bare feet stomping up the stairs. A moment later a door slammed shut.

      Reid slumped in his chair and sighed. The pizza was cold. One daughter was disturbed into silence and the other was determined to take on the underworld. The psychologist, Dr. Branson, had told him to be patient with Sara; she had said that time heals all things, but instead he had pressed the issue and upset her anew. On top of all that, Maya’s intention of joining the CIA was the very last thing he had expected to hear.

      In a strange way, he admired her ability to channel the trauma she’d experienced into a cause. But he simply could not agree with the means she’d chosen. He thought back to everything he had seen and the injuries he had sustained. The things he had to do and the threats he had to stop. The people he had helped, and all of those he’d left broken or dead along the way.

      Reid realized suddenly that he had no idea what had inspired him to join the CIA in the first place. His own motivations had been long lost, shoved into the darkest recesses of his mind by the experimental memory suppressor. It was possible that he would never remember why he became CIA Agent Kent Steele.

      You