Arch Enemy (31 page)

He blacked out to the warm glow of the fire on the sinking ship and the bobbing of the waves.

“H
e's coming! He's coming!”

Valkyrie had the familiar glint in her eyes. Centurion had almost forgotten what it was like, how Praetorian brought this out of her. It burned at his insides, how close he and she had gotten in the past few months, all that they had shared, and still, she never once during that time seemed as excited about anything as she was now.

He followed her outside to the misty morning, looking out into the Appalachian Valley, the sea of evergreens poking out of the snow, the sun just peeking out between the mountains behind them.

All this beauty, and still Centurion's eyes were drawn to Valkyrie, her purple-highlighted dark brown hair, her fine pale white features like a china doll's. And her eyes, large, beautiful and blue, looking only at the chopper approaching in the distance like the faithful awaiting salvation.

Centurion sat on a frigid rock as the minutes ticked by and the helicopter drew closer, but Valkyrie didn't move. It was as if she wanted to reach out, to run so that she might see him a few seconds sooner.

The helicopter touched down in the clearing a couple of hundred feet down and Valkyrie sprinted down to meet it. To meet
him
.

Centurion waited, imagining as Valkyrie embraced Praetorian, kissed him, gave herself wholly to him. It was better than seeing it firsthand.

They appeared from between the trees as they walked up to the house, the mercenaries taking the lead.

And there he was, just ahead of Valkyrie, a manic smile plastered to her face.
Him
. The beautiful. The terrible.

Praetorian.

He looked haggard. His hair was longer, his beard overgrown. But there was triumph in his eyes.

“Greetings, brother,” Praetorian said. “Sister Valkyrie tells me you've been a good lieutenant in my absence.”

Centurion bowed. “My allegiance is with you. Welcome back.”

Behind him was someone else. Someone Centurion had never seen before. But he knew exactly who it was. And he knew that Praetorian's mission had been a success.

M
organ woke up chilled to the bone in a hospital bed, hooked up to wires and with an IV stuck in his arm.

His arms were bandaged from shoulder to fingertip, with only patches of skin showing here and there. Another bandage was constricting his upper abdomen. “Hey!” He yelled out to a passing nurse. “Hey! I'm awake!”

She came into his room. “There's no need for that,” she said, and he put her accent in the Pacific Northwest. “You have a call button, see?” She pointed to the little green button on the side of his bed.

“Where am I?”

“University of Washington Medical Center,” she said. “You came in last night with severe hypothermia.”

“How did they find me? Who brought me in?”

“That I don't know,” she said. “But why don't you rest, Mr. Bevelacqua. I'll see if there's anyone here for you.”

Morgan pushed himself to a sitting position, but felt light-headed and had to lie down again. He looked around the room, but saw nothing of his there. It was a private room, expensive. That and the name Bevelacqua pointed to Zeta.

He wondered whether Jenny or Alex knew where he was.

The person who came in through the door of his hospital room was Diana Bloch.

“How are you feeling?”

“Not my best self,” he said. “But alive.”

“You were pretty torn up and nearly frozen to death when they found you.”

He remembered his upward dive, scraping the side of the ship. “How did they find me?”

“A nearby ship came when they saw the explosion,” she said. “They sent a rescue helicopter and found you floating on a piece of debris.”

“Any other survivors?”

“None.”

Urgency surged within him. “Praetorian! We need to—”

“He's escaped,” said Bloch. “Vanished. The trail's gone cold. Morgan, I'm going to get a full debrief from you in time. But for now, I need you to rest up.”

“Jenny—”

“Is fine,” said Bloch. “And so is Alex. But this isn't the end of Praetorian's plans. And if he's already accomplished this from the inside of a secret prison, I shudder to think what he's going to do now that he's on the loose.”

W
hen Morgan arrived home he still hadn't shaken the cold. It seemed like it might take a couple of days for the warmth to seep in. He pulled up to his house in his Olds 442, which had been parked at Zeta during his expedition, switched off the engine, and exhaled. This had not been a good day. In fact,
not good
was the understatement of the damn century.

And Jenny was out, hidden away by Project Aegis. Not even Neika was home. He had an empty house to look forward to.

At least he'd be able to take a long and very hot shower and sleep.

He opened the door to the kitchen and set down his keys.

He pulled open the refrigerator and scanned it for anything edible when he heard a noise upstairs.

There was someone in the house.

His gun was in his bedroom. There was no other gun downstairs, and he'd left his carry weapon at Zeta.

Stupid. Sloppy. He'd let his exhaustion get the better of him.

He closed his fist around the handle of a seven-inch chef's knife and drew it slowly from the knife block so that it wouldn't make a sound. He used his feet to take off his shoes and crept in his socks, his footfalls making only the faintest of sounds.

He tightened his grip on the blade. This was his home. Nobody was going to invade his home.

Knife in hand, he took the steps one by one. Slow. Steady. He turned into the hallway to the bedrooms.

A shadow, and then a figure emerged. Morgan tensed to strike.

His knife arm fell slack at his side. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.”

But her expression didn't mirror his relief. “Dad, I think I've done something really stupid.”

Morgan's expression darkened. “What is it?”

“I'm in trouble,” she whispered. “They might be listening.”

Morgan held a finger up to his lips.

He pulled a bag of popcorn from a cupboard and tossed it into the microwave. He turned it on. He then took out his cell phone and set it on the counter, motioning for her to do the same. Once she did, he opened the door to the garage. They walked out to the sound of corn popping and got into Morgan's Olds.

“Dad—”

“Not yet.”

He pulled out onto the driveway. Once they hit asphalt, he spoke. “Okay, tell me.”

“I thought I was doing good,” she said. “I swear I was. But then all those people
died
, and I—”

“Hold on,” said Morgan. “Start from the beginning.”

Morgan's heart sank as she told him about her involvement in the Ekklesia. Morgan let her speak, but he had already filled in the blanks in his head when she got to the meat of the matter—her unwitting complicity in the murder of the Acevedo Board of Directors, and the discovery that the Ekklesia was part of the Legion all along. The many, many ways in which this was bad unfolded in his mind. The fact that she could face a life sentence at the hands of an unsympathetic judge was not among the worst things, which did not say much for her situation.

One thing was for certain: Alex had been, however indirectly, complicit in the Legion's act of terrorism.

“That's it,” she said, sniffling. “When I heard about what happened, I told my roommate I was coming down for a surprise visit, and here I am.”

He gripped the steering wheel. The silence between them hung like—well, like the Board of Directors of Acevedo, come to think of it.

“I'm ashamed,” she said. “And I feel guilty. I thought I wanted excitement. And now I have blood on my hands.” She looked out the window. “Where are we going?”

“I'm taking you in to Zeta,” he said. “That's the only place I know you'll be safe for now.”

“I get to go
into
Zeta?” she asked. That excitement, in spite of everything. He hated that tone in her voice.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Today you do.”

A
lex held her breath as she stepped through the door to Zeta headquarters.

She knew she was here as a visitor. This was where her father could keep her safe, and he'd whisk her away as soon as the danger had passed or he could find some safer corner to stuff her in.

But at that moment, it felt like stepping into a new life.

It was more than she'd ever imagined. The optical scanners in the parking garage, the security elevators, the hallway that opened up into the high-ceilinged War Room, overlooked by Diana Bloch's office, that suspended box of frosted glass. She imagined everyone sitting around that table during a crisis, under Bloch's able leadership, as she assigned missions.

She was so excited she could scream.

She was met with concerned stares from people she didn't recognize. Then, a familiar face: impeccable maroon suit jacket over a silk blouse, hair in a neat bun with not a lock out of place, prim and muted makeup, and a look of pure steel.

Diana Bloch.

“Hello, Alex,” she said. “It's wonderful to see you again.”

The last time had been over coffee, when Bloch had offered Alex a sort of traineeship at Zeta, which her father had nixed, forcing her to go to college instead.

Her father now spoke to the Zeta director in low tones, and by Bloch's intermittent glances at her Alex could guess what the subject was.

“Hi,” said a woman of about thirty, with bangs and black-framed glasses and a round face. The shape of her eyes and nose suggested she was part Asian. “I'm Karen. It's nice to meet you.” Her intonations were off, not from a foreign accent, but from someone who maybe understood numbers better than she did people.

Her father and Bloch seemed to come to a resolution, and the Zeta Director approached her. “Alex, we need you to tell us everything about your involvement with this . . . activist group.”

Alex felt a twinge of shame. She had known this was coming. Though she was looking forward to relating some things with pride, she did not relish the prospect of having to rehash every stupid thing she did over the past couple of weeks.

Bloch sensed her hesitation but didn't get why. “We're not the police,” she said. “We're not here to incriminate you. We just need to know so that we can fight these people.”

No use putting it off. “When do we get started?”

They sat her in a room with a mirror covering the upper half of one wall and a camera set up on a tripod. A man with a supercilious manner who introduced himself as Paul Kirby sat across from her. He tried, Alex noticed, to hide his receding hairline by combing his wispy blond hair forward.

“I'm going to ask you some questions. Are you comfortable with that, Alex?”

“Yes,” she said in her best all-business voice. “Do I need to look into the camera?”

“Wonderful,” he said. “First, I'd like you to tell us, from the beginning, everything you remember about your contact with the Ekklesia.”

She pretended her father was not watching through the mirror in front of her. “Hold on to your butts,” she said. “It's a long story.”

M
organ stood and watched through the two-way mirror as Alex told her story. He cringed as she related each risky decision, each juncture that had brought her deeper into her current quagmire. He felt the urge to whisk her away, to hide her where no one would find her and she'd be protected from everything.

“I'll tell you one thing,” said Bloch, sitting to his left, farther back from the window. “She's a remarkable young woman.”

She was. Of course she was.

“I don't want to tell you how to raise your daughter—”

“Then don't.”

He sensed her presence at his side. “I'll tell you a story then,” said Bloch. “Of when I was young.”

“Hard to believe you were ever young.”

Morgan kept his eyes on Alex. He knew the story, but he was still proud of her composure in telling it, her poise under hard circumstances.

“I was a wild thing,” Bloch continued. “My father wouldn't let me out of the house after six p.m. No boys, no sleepovers, no outings with friends.” The resentment in her tone was palpable. “So I snuck out at night. I lied about where I went. I talked to boys on the phone under the covers and he would yell at me about the phone bill.”

“Teenage rebellion isn't really the same as—”

“I'm not finished,” she said. “I was smart enough not to challenge him directly while I was a minor. But I saved up, and the day I turned eighteen, I cashed out my bank account, hopped into my much older boyfriend's car, and left.”

Morgan turned his chair so he'd face her. “Let me guess. Things went sour, you came back, you and your father had a tearful reconciliation where you thanked him for caring and he promised he'd be more lenient?”

“No.” Her eyes were blank as she submerged herself in the memory. “I never went back. I didn't see him for years after that. My life got real bad for a time. Things could have gone a very different way.” She sniffled. Were those tears in her eyes? “But eventually, out of money and tired of a bad relationship, I got serious. Got a job, enrolled in community college, studied hard. No government agency would have me with my history, but I went into the private sector and attracted the attention of the right people.” She seemed to return to the present now. “I turned it around, but I live with the consequences of that period of my life to this day.”

Morgan rolled his eyes. Vulnerable as she had made herself, he still got a vibe of barefaced manipulation from the story. “What's the lesson of this little morality tale?”

“My dad didn't let me have a boyfriend, so I went out and got the worst boyfriend I could find. You don't let Alex pursue her calling—”

“I get it,” he said. “The answer is still no.”

Bloch laid her hand on Morgan's shoulder. “You can't stop her. The harder you squeeze, the more she'll squirm. And when she gets free, she won't come back.”

He shook off her grasp. “I don't care.”

“With that kind of wits, guts, and spunk, think of what she could do under our guidance, with our resources.”

“I contacted a journalist,” Alex was saying. “That was my way of telling the story without my direct involvement.”

“My daughter,” he said, through gritted teeth, “is going to have a safe,
normal
life, do you understand?”

“That may not be possible anymore.”

Morgan ground his teeth and watched as Alex narrated how she had put laxatives in an Acevedo executive's coffee in order to install spyware on his computer.

Bloch got up from her chair. Morgan watched as she left the viewing room and opened the door to the interrogation room.

“Alex, that will be all for now,” she said. “Except for one last question: do you still have active contacts in the organization?”

“I do. The man who gave me the mission, who called himself Polemarch. I can get in touch with him through a secure deep web messaging service.”

“Could you show us how?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful. Alex, I'd like to make a proposition. At the moment, you stand as our strongest link to this organization.”

Seeing where this was going, Morgan sprang from his chair in the observation room.

“I'd like you to help us ID him, run surveillance, and hopefully smoke out the—”

Morgan burst into the room. “This is not happening.”

“Morgan, this is an opportunity,” said Bloch. “Alexandra is in the unique position to—”

“No,” said Morgan. He brandished his index finger in her face. “No!”

“Dad, stop. This is my decision.” Then, to Bloch: “What would I have to do?”

Bloch was unfazed by Morgan's anger. “Set up a meeting with this man and go. That's it. We'd be responsible for the rest.”

“So I would be bait.”

“Chum in the water to attract the shark,” said Morgan. “Don't even think about it.”

“What other choice do we have, Dad?”

“What if they've already figured out who I am? What if they've already connected me to you?”

“They've killed more than twenty people and it's partly my fault,” she said. “Dad, I need to do this.”

“I won't let you.”

“Morgan,” said Bloch. “Alex is an adult. She can make her own choices.”

“I'll fight you,” said Morgan. “I'll go up against all of Zeta and anyone else who gets in my way.”

“What about me?” asked Alex. “Will you fight me? I'm going to do this, whether you like it or not.”

Who was this Alex, so bold, standing up to him like this? She had her chin raised, her chest out, and it seemed like she was taller than him. He saw, then, something magnificent about his daughter.

He was also furious. He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Morgan made his way into the gym, which was dark and abandoned. He slammed into the punching bag, pummeling it as hard as he could with bare hands until he left bloody spots on the red leather.

Morgan sat down on the edge of the ring, panting. Only then did he notice that Lily was standing silhouetted by the door.

“I heard about what's happening with Alex. I gathered you wouldn't be too happy.”

“She has no idea what she's getting herself into.”

“Nobody ever does, Morgan. Did you? I didn't. But would you have done things differently?”

“Wouldn't you?”

Her right hand rose to her bruised neck. “No,” she said. “I don't think I would.”

“If she gave college a chance—gave a normal life a real chance—I think she'd feel the same.”

“I think she did give normal life a chance,” said Lily. “It made her miserable, until something extraordinary found her.”

A light flickered out in the hallway.

“She's your kid whether you like it or not,” said Lily, standing up. “You can try to stop her and fail, or you can be a part of her life and try to steer her in the best direction you can.” She walked away, her footsteps echoing against the wooden floor, stopping at the door. “It can get pretty hard to figure out on your own.”

With that, she left him alone, in the dark.

 

Morgan returned to find Alex in the War Room, talking to Lincoln Shepard. Bloch stood at the corner of the table, arms crossed.

“I've wired your phone so that you can receive calls down here,” Shepard told her. All of Zeta was built inside a Faraday cage, which provided protection against wireless surveillance and EMP attacks, but which came with its own drawbacks. “The signal's going to be relayed through a tower in Andover, so that anyone who might be monitoring the call will think you're home or thereabouts.”

Shepard caught sight of Morgan and pushed with his feet, rolling away to give him and Alex privacy. But Bloch did not look away.

“Look,” he told his daughter, “I can't stop you from doing this. Or the next stupid thing you decide to do. I can't fight you on this right now, because there's nothing I can do that won't make this worse. So I think what I—”

A phone rang—Alex's. She held up a finger to Morgan and walked over to the table, holding the screen up so she could see.

“It's him. My friend Simon.”

“Remember what we talked about,” said Bloch. “He can't know we're listening in.”

Alex nodded.

“Earphones, everyone,” Shepard said, holding out Bluetooth headsets. Morgan took one and heard the hum of the phone's ringing. All eyes turned to Alex.

“I got this.” She picked up the call.

Morgan heard a boy's voice through the headset. “Hey, where are you? Katie said you left.”

“Came down to visit my parents. Sorry, I should have told you, but with everything, I forgot I was even coming. I had to run to catch my bus.”

“Are you sure this was the best time to go?”

“They'd get suspicious if I didn't show,” she said, picking at the fingernails on her left hand. “Believe me, it was the best thing I could do.”

“Are you feeling better about the whole thing?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I was just a bit freaked. Once I had a little time to let things settle down, things seemed right again.”

No sign of the lie in her tone.
The kid is good
, Morgan admitted to himself, a chill running down his spine. Was he responsible for this? Had he raised her to be someone who could tell a convincing lie at the drop of a hat?

Had he raised her to be like him?

“Happy to hear it,” said Simon. “I just got a message.
He
wants to meet with you.”

“Just me?”

“I met with him today already,” he said. “It was supposed to be the both of us, but—”

“I get it,” said Alex. “Just give me a time and a place.”