Jack Mars - Recall Zero

Zero winced. He knew what she was going to say and wished she wouldn’t.

“I’m ovulating.”

He didn’t respond for a long moment, long enough to realize that the silence was becoming uncomfortable as it yawned between them.

When they first moved in together, they had agreed that neither of them was terribly interested in marriage. Kids were not even on his radar. But Maria was only two years younger than him; she was rapidly approaching forty. There was no longer a snooze button on her biological alarm clock. At first she would just casually mention it in conversation, but then she ceased her birth control regiment. She started keeping keen track of her cycle.

Still, they’d never actually sat down and discussed it. It was as if Maria simply assumed that since he’d done it twice before, he would want to be a father again. Though he never said it aloud, he secretly suspected that was why she hadn’t pushed for him to return to the agency, or even to teaching. She liked him where he was because it meant there would be someone to care for a baby.

How can it be , he wondered bitterly, that my life as an unemployed civilian could be more complicated than as a covert agent?

He’d waited too long to reply, and when he finally did it sounded forced and lame. “I think,” he said at last, “that we should put a pin in that for now.”

He felt her arms fall away from around his waist and hastily added, “Just until we get past this visit. Then we’ll talk, and we’ll decide—”

“To wait longer.” She practically spat the words out, and when he turned to face her she was staring at the carpet in undisguised disappointment.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Yes, it is.

“I just think it warrants a serious discussion,” he said.

So I can man up enough to admit I don’t want it.

“We should at least deal with what’s in front of us first.”

Like the fact that the two children I already raised hate me.

“Yeah,” Maria agreed quietly. “You’re right. We’ll wait longer.” She turned and headed out of the bedroom.

“Maria, wait…”

“I have to finish dinner.” He heard her footfalls on the stairs and cursed himself under his breath for mishandling that so badly. It was pretty much par for the course in his life lately.

Then the doorbell rang. The sound of it sent an electric tingle through his nervous system.

He heard the front door open. Maria’s cheerful voice: “Hi! It’s so good to see you. Come in, come in.”

She was here. Suddenly Zero’s feet felt like lead weights. He didn’t want to go downstairs. Didn’t want to face this.

“And you must be Greg…” Maria said.

Greg? Who the hell is Greg? Suddenly he found the willpower to move. One stair at a time, she slowly came into sight. It had only been a few months since he’d last seen her, but still she took his breath away.

Maya was eighteen now, no longer a child, and it was showing more rapidly than he cared to admit. When they’d met for lunch the past summer, her hair was still long and curled into the military-requisite donut bun, but she had since had it cut shorter, a pixie cut, short on the sides and back and sweeping across her forehead, accentuating her lean face, which was growing mature and angular. She looked stronger, the muscles in her arms developing, small but dense.

She was looking more like him every day, while he was looking and feeling less like himself every day.

Maya glanced up at him as he came down the stairs. “Hi.” It was a passive greeting, not bright but not flat. Neutral. Like someone greeting a stranger.

“Hi, Maya.” He moved in to hug her and the slightest hint of apprehension shadowed her face. He settled for a half-embrace, one arm around her shoulders while her hand patted his back once. “You look… you look well.”

“I am.” She cleared her throat and addressed the elephant in the room. “This is Greg.”

The boy, if he could be called that, stepped forward and stuck out an enthusiastic hand. “Mr. Lawson, a pleasure to meet you, sir.” He was tall, six-two, with short blond hair and perfect teeth and tanned arms that were testing the limits of his polo shirt’s sleeves.

He looked like the high school quarterback.

“Uh, nice to meet you too, Greg.” Zero shook the kid’s hand. Greg had a firm grip, firmer than was necessary.

Zero disliked him immediately. “You’re a, uh, friend of Maya’s from school?”

“Boyfriend,” Maya said unflinchingly.

This guy? Zero disliked him even more now. His smile, his teeth. He found himself incensed with jealousy. This grinning idiot was close to his daughter. Closer than Zero was allowed to be.

“What are we all standing around here for? Come in, please.” Maria closed the door and led them toward the living room. “Have a seat. Dinner isn’t quite done yet. Can I get you something to drink?”

They responded, but Zero didn’t hear it. He was too busy examining this relative stranger in his house—and he didn’t mean Greg. Maya was flourishing into a young woman, with her new hair and pressed clothes and boyfriend and school and career trajectory… and he wasn’t a part of it. Not any of it.

Despite everything that had happened, Maya hadn’t deterred from the goal she had set for herself almost two years earlier. She wanted to be a CIA agent—more than that, she wanted to become the youngest agent in the CIA’s history. But it had nothing to do with following in her father’s footsteps. She had been through some harrowing experiences of her own, chief among them being kidnapped by a psychopathic assassin and handed over to a human trafficking ring, and she wanted to be among the protectors who would keep such things from happening to other young women.

After testing out of her senior year of high school, and unbeknownst to Zero, Maya applied to the military academy West Point. Even though her grades were excellent, she had no ROTC experience and no plans for military service, and therefore wouldn’t have made the most attractive candidate. But she had a plan for that too.

In an act of cunning and guile that foreshadowed an illustrious career in covert operations, Maya went over her father’s head to fellow agent (and friend) Todd Strickland. Through him, and under the pretense of being Agent Zero’s daughter, she managed to secure a letter of recommendation from then-president Eli Pierson, who thought he was doing Zero a personal favor. She was accepted into West Point, and moved to New York before the end of that first summer after discovering the truth about her mother.

Zero found out all of this while she was packing her bags. By then it was too late to stop her, though not for lack of trying. But no amount of pleading would dissuade her.

She was in her second year now, and even though the ties between father and daughter were nearly severed, Maria kept tabs on Maya as best she could and updated Zero. He knew that she was top of her class, excelling in everything she did, and earning admiration from the faculty. He knew that she was heading toward great things.

He just wished that it wasn’t the same career path that had gotten her mother killed and ruined the relationship with her father.

“So.” Greg cleared his throat, sitting beside Maya on the sofa while Zero sat across from them in a recliner. “Maya tells me you’re an accountant?”

Zero smiled thinly. Of course Maya would choose such a bland occupation as his cover. “That’s right,” he said. “Corporate finance.”

“That’s… interesting.” Greg forced a smile in return.

What a sycophant. What does she see in this guy? “And what about you, Greg?” he asked. “What do you plan to do? Become an officer?”