Page 22 of Nothing to Fear

“No need. I can drive my dad’s van.” She lowered her head. Chocolate-brown wisps of hair stroked her cheeks. He itched to sweep them from her face and smooth them into place.

“Nobody drives Betty but me.” Her father ate another painful bite of food.

“I’ve been leaving at five to work on the program.” Still, she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Gideon wanted to slug himself for messing with her emotions. The cause was just, the method proven to produce results, yet he felt lower than pond scum. And not the stuff that floated at the top but the sludge at the bottom.

He opened the door. “Can we make it eight?” The garage where her car had been taken opened at six. He wanted to be sure the inspection was thorough.

“Okay.” She finally looked up, her gaze crashing into his. The unguarded look on her face, the beautiful honesty in her expression, took hold of him like a prisoner.

His judgment was clouded, and his presence was only doing damage. He needed to get out of there, away from her. Gideon stepped across the threshold.

“Good night.” He closed the door, took long strides to his car, and peeled off.

Hurrying away after reeling her in rubbed him all kinds of wrong. Guilt and self-loathing knotted in his chest. Tomorrow, he’d talk to her and at the very least give a better apology.

He drove to the storage unit he’d opened while Kelli was alive and believed he still worked for the CIA, since the existence of the Gray Box was classified. Whenever he’d come home with injuries, she’d ask questions and search his things. His heavily filtered answers pushed their marriage from troubled to terminal—although the demise was probably inevitable the moment he’d agreed to marry Kelli. With her dogged determination, it was only a matter of time before she’d find his go bag hidden in the house, so he’d moved it to the storage unit.

Every operative had a go bag with international passports in different names and cash in a variety of currencies. Sometimes missions kicked off with no notice, and one had to be ready.

After Kelli’s death, he let her parents take what they wanted of hers, and Maddox had helped him sort through the rest of Kelli’s things. But he’d kept her Jeep exactly as she’d left it. Guilt plagued him for not giving her the life she’d expected. She never wanted to live in the Beltway with the oppressive traffic, hitched to a civil servant. Never even wanted the Jeep.

He parked in front of the climate-controlled storage facility. Musty air circulated inside the dim corridors. His unit sat at the intersection of two rows in the middle of the building, giving him two routes to access it.

Motion-activated lights flickered on as he passed. He punched in the code to the lock, opened his unit, and slid the metal door closed behind him.

He hadn’t been here in months. Since her death, each visit stung a little less. He rifled through reams of folders in boxes until he found the right one and fished out the police report.

Willow’s accident nagged at him. One way or another, he was going to get to the bottom of it. With the file in hand, he locked up and drove home.

Inside his townhouse, he pulled off his boots and grabbed a German beer from the wide assortment lined up in the fridge. Most nights since Kelli died, he needed an Ambien to sleep. One pill equaled three hours, four if he also knocked back a couple of beers.

His job never kept him up at night; compartmentalization was the key. But seeing how much Kelli had despised what he stood for, how far she’d gone to disrespect him, and knowing if he’d only let her go—or never married her—she’d still be alive…that denied him peace of mind.

Crossing into the living room, he eyed the metronome sitting dead center on the bookshelf. A memento of his past, keeping him rooted in purpose.

Taking a swig of ice-cold hefeweizen, he plopped on the sofa and opened the police file. No Ambien tonight. He needed to be up early, and before hitting the sack, he wanted to get through this and research the autism spectrum disorder to learn more.

Gritty details and graphic pictures in the file chipped away at old wounds, making his gut burn. Kelli and her lover’s blood alcohol count indicated they’d had drinks but weren’t inebriated. His truck’s antilock braking system light and brake warning lights had both engaged, but the vehicle had never been examined for a mechanical malfunction. At the time, the initial ugly facts had spelled out what’d happened, and he’d been shredded by the news. But if he’d scanned the report, maybe he would’ve had the vehicle inspected and discovered something far more nefarious. Now there was no way to know.

If someone had tampered with his vehicle after the Daedalus op, the same person might’ve sabotaged Willow’s.

He was overlooking a vital detail about that mission, something bigger than a flash drive he’d failed to recover. Once he figured out what it was, things might make more sense.

08

Wolf Trap, Virginia

Friday, July 5, 7:55 a.m. EDT

Willow sat on the front stoop, waiting for Gideon, too restless to enjoy the tepid breeze. Anxiety ticked through her over the hours wasted when she should’ve been working.

Gray Box field officers lazed in around nine and drifted out no later than three when not on an assignment. During missions, they worked as long and hard as necessary, sometimes around the clock. It was an unspoken rule that’d taken her a while to learn.

Understanding the rules, particularly social ones, and remembering them was a hundred times harder than learning how to write code. Ivy had assured her after high school, everything would get easier. But it’d only gotten more challenging.

By sixteen, she’d tested out of high school early, and at Princeton, it’d taken her two months to have a conversation that lasted longer than two minutes with her roommate, Hayley. She’d been nice, did most of the chatting, and Willow didn’t mind doing her math assignments. Hayley dragged her to parties, where the music had always been too loud and Willow lurked in the corner, examining gestures, dissecting what others talked about so she didn’t do or say the wrong thing. It had been exhausting.