Finding North (2 page)

Her father leaned forward
and pulled the article from the knife.

“
That’s the
Stars and Stripes
article about the two of you deciphering the code on the
CIA’s ridiculous Kryptos statue,” the wife said. “You were
twelve.”

“
The last two lines, sir,”
Max said.

“‘
What’s your daughter’s
next trick?’ this reporter asked,” the man read. “‘She’s going to
solve the riddle of Linear A.’”

“
What are they talking
about?” the wife asked.

“
They’re trying to kill
you because they think you’ve deciphered Linear A?” the man
asked.

“
That is correct, sir,”
she said.

“
As you know, they have
killed
every
other person who has gotten close to solving the riddle,” her
brother said. “A fact you’ve repeated often enough.”

“
Even knowing that, you
chose to tell the world that a child,
your
child, had solved the puzzle,”
she said.

“
But then, we know that we
are not
your
children,” her brother said.

“
Great way to get rid of
the bastards,” she said. “And the entire Fey Special Forces
Team.”

The man was so surprised
that he gawked at her.

“
We’d like you to decline
our invitation for today,” her brother said. “You are ill
today.”

“
And no longer welcome in
our home,” she said.

“
Or lives,” her brother
said.

“
We’re taking a break,”
she said.

“
We don’t want to see you
for a while,” her brother said.

“
We do not understand your
callous disregard for our safety,” she said.

“
And it is a risk
we
are not willing to
take with our children,” her brother said.

“
Oh, no, you don’t,” his
wife said. “This is Christmas. You are not going to pull some
bullshit and disrupt
my
holiday. I have new grandchildren. I
deserve
to enjoy them on
the holidays. It is my right!”

Her brother gave a tight
military turn, which she imitated. They walked out of the room. She
was closing the door when she heard her father let out something
between a hiccup and a sob.

“
It was a joke,” he said.
“It was a joke.”

“
Surely they’re not
serious,” his wife said.

She closed the bedroom
door, and the lock automatically engaged with a “click.” They
silently ran from the house. They were in the car driving home when
she made a sound similar to her father’s. Her brother pulled the
SUV over to the curb.

They fell into each
other’s arms and wept.

F

Chapter
One

Four and a half months
later

Sunday morning

May 15 — 4:55 a.m.
MDT

Denver Recreation Center,
Denver, Colorado

Lieutenant Colonel
Alexandra “The Fey” Hargreaves pulled her swimming cap onto her
head and walked out of the locker room to the swimming pool. Two
weeks after the last surgery on her right shoulder blade, she was
informed that she was not fit for duty. Her right arm was too
unstable, and the lack of mobility in her right shoulder and chest
impaired her ability to fight. While she would have relished more
time at home, she had found Josef Yakovlev’s copy of
The Gadfly
and its
mysterious notes in Linear A, last Christmas. Her life, and the
lives of those she loved, rested in her capacity to translate
Linear A.

She had to get fit for
duty.

She’d been able to build
strength in her arm and chest through weight lifting. But
increasing her flexibility and mobility was harder. The chest wound
and subsequent surgeries had destroyed her fine motor skills. When
her colleague, US Navy Captain Vince Hutchins, had suggested
swimming, she’d used her connections to get into the rec center
before it opened. Her superior officer, Colonel Howard Gordon, had
insisted on guards, and she had asked Vince to help her train. Of
course, the military guards had gossiped, and, less than a month
after she’d started in the pool, other well-vetted, high-profile
people in the intelligence and government communities began showing
up to work out.

Alex had really liked
having the facility to herself.

As she neared the pool,
she braced herself for a wave of irritation. A month or so ago, a
man had started swimming in what she’d come to think of as “her”
pool. He used a snorkel and a large facemask, so she’d never seen
his face. His white hair and military-trim body told her that he
was someone to be reckoned with. Through some basic spy work, she
managed to get his DNA. She’d asked her partner, Homeland Security
Agent Arthur “Raz” Rasmussen, to check him out. When Raz said he
was clean, she tried to think of ways to get the man out of the
pool.

Nothing had
worked.

“
He’s a good focus for
your frustration,” Vince had said. “You hate being injured, so you
now hate swimming. Rather than hate swimming, you hate
him.”

She had sneered at him.
Vince laughed. Having been her roommate at Walter Reed, he was not
intimidated by her anger or attitude. Instead, he’d told her to do
another lap with the Styrofoam pull-buoy wedged between her thighs.
He’d been here for every early-morning swim workout, except
today’s.

Vince and his wife, Emily,
were having family portraits taken this morning. Their eldest
daughter Amelia had made the Colorado Girls’ Soccer team again, and
their family had been selected to be the subject of an article
about the team. Vince couldn’t be in both places at the same
time.

Today, she was on her
own.

Today, she could hate this
other swimmer as much as she wanted.

Vince had left her with a
complete workout: one thousand meters using the kickboard to work
her hips and legs, and one thousand meters using a pull-buoy to
work her arms and back. Repeat three times. No swimming.

She wasn’t strong enough
to put the kicking and arm strokes together for swimming. Not yet.
He’d given her a stern look, and she had nodded to acknowledge his
wisdom. She had just
barely
passed her shooting tests. She didn’t want to
injure herself and have to start over.

So, she’d left her warm
bed, her gorgeous husband, and five-month-old babies to be here in
this pool. She may as well get it over with. She set her kickboard
and pull-buoy down on the end and slipped into the water. Like
every morning this week, the water seemed to match the
near-freezing temperatures and snow outside. She started across the
water.

The water workouts had
greatly improved the mobility in her hips. She moved with relative
ease until the water didn’t seem so very cold. A thousand yards
down, she took the foam pull-buoy and put it between her legs.
Straightening her goggles, she stretched out her arms in a slow,
painful crawl. One length of the pool became two laps, and the pain
in her right shoulder began to ease.

She was off work to
celebrate her babies’ five-month birthday. Her twins were a
precious gift, given by her old friend, Nazo, with her last breath.
If she had to say so, they were perfect in every way. She couldn’t
imagine her life without them. She just had to finish this workout,
shower, and head home for breakfast. If she was lucky, she’d catch
her husband, Dr. John Kelly Drayson, when he returned from his run.
She smiled. They had become more inventive in the ways they stole
time to be together. She grinned and wondered what John would come
up with today.

She touched the end of the
lane and turned around. In her excitement to get home, she grazed
her head against the cement end when she turned. Her right hand
scraped against the lip of the pool. A lifetime of martial-arts
training kicked in, and she pressed out a sharp breath against the
pain. She pushed off against the edge of the pool.

She turned her head to
take a breath, but she was still underwater. Her throat spasmed
against the flood of water. Unable to breathe, she tried to reach
the surface.

It was too far to
go.

Her throat closed, and,
with all hope of oxygen gone, the fight left her.

She saw her cricket
sitting on the bottom of the pool. He waved his red umbrella at
her. Her body dropped like a stone to meet him in the underwater
silence of the deep end of the pool.

She heard the tinny ping
of someone jumping into the water. She heard another tinny ping
when a second person hit the water.

But her eyes were locked
on her cricket.

“
Why?” she asked
him.

“
Is there ever a ‘why’?”
he replied.

Images from the first time
she’d met him flashed through her mind. She had been sitting in a
pool of blood in the Fey Special Forces Team storage vault under
the streets of Paris when he’d come to take her. Outside of brief
flashes, she hadn’t seen him again until last Thanksgiving, when
she was stabbed by her martial-arts mentor — and friend — Steve
Pershing.

A flash of movement caught
her eye. The spirits of her beloved departed friends lined the
walls of the pool. She saw Sergeant Larry Flagg, Dahlia Jasper, her
friend Yvonne, Captain Heath Wheeler, and the Fey Special Forces
Team — Charlie, Tommy, Scott, Dean, Jax, Paul, Nathan, Dwight,
Mike, and her best friend, Jesse Abreu. Even Cooper had made it
this morning. Alex smiled.

At least she wouldn’t be
alone.

In the last three months,
since discovering Josef Yakovlev’s copy of
The Gadfly
, she’d been ridiculously
alone. She and her identical twin brother, Max, had worked day and
night to try to decode the riddle of Linear A. They worked
separately so that no one would realize what they were doing. She’d
given the project every moment she could spare. Between feeding the
twins in the wee hours of the morning and late nights with Linear
A, she’d barely seen her friends. Her housemates rotated around her
in their busy lives. As a way of shielding them from risk, she’d
also spent very little time with her team.

And her father, her
companion in every mystery since the moment she was born, was out
of her life, probably forever.

Alex reached out for the
cricket’s hand.

The cricket smiled at
her.

“
You do better work when
you collaborate,” the cricket said.

“
What?”

“
Take the hand,” the
cricket said.

She grabbed on to the hand
in front of her.

Chapter
Two

She was rising through the
water. Her beloved dead friends waved and saluted her as she rose
past them. Her ears heard the silent sound of the spirits
whispering, “I love you.”

She reached her hand out
to them.

In a whoosh, she was
caught by another hand. An arm went around her waist.

Light flooded her
eyes!

Sound battered her
ears!

Her senses flooded.
Someone shouted orders. Men’s voices, talking all at once, echoed
against the pool ceiling.

She sputtered and coughed
so violently that she went back under, but the strong arm around
her didn’t let go. Another strong person came to her other side.
They moved through the water.

She was on the deck of the
pool. Her coughing brought up water while her breath sucked it back
into her lungs. Someone turned her on her side. The water ran out
of her mouth. She threw up a stomach full of pool water.

She drew a breath, and
then another.

“
Just an accident,” she
heard a man’s voice say. “ . . .happens
sometimes.”

That must be the man who
swam laps. She tried to look, but someone kept her on her
side.

“
Don’t get up yet, sir,”
said a voice she recognized as the female Marine who guarded the
pool. The soldier’s long, dark hair was in her face, and her
uniform was wet. She pulled off Alex’s goggles. Alex blinked. “Give
yourself a minute, sir. We sent for a doc.”

Alex focused on calming
the spasms in her airways and the heaving in her stomach. A doctor
arrived with a series of questions. Who had saved her? How long was
she under?

She recognized the voice
that answered. When she tried to look, the female Marine held her
in place.

“
You’ll take
responsibility for . . .” the doctor asked her
rescuer.

“
Of course,” the man
said.

The doctor leaned into her
face. She recognized him as the doctor who traveled with one of the
ex-Presidents. He returned her smile of recognition and then gave
her a fast workup.

“
Alex needs a hospital,”
the ex-President’s doctor said. “You’ll need a round of antibiotics
and . . .”