Cliff Ryder - The Ties That Bind

"But?" she pressed.

"I'd like to know the child," he said. "The baby. I don't…I mean I didn't have a father or a mother. I didn't have a family. I think it's better for kids to have that. I don't know what it means to be a father, but I'm willing to learn."

He stopped pacing and faced her. "What do you feel about me?" he asked quietly. "Do you love me, Tina? Have you fallen in love with me?"

The silence grew between them again for several minutes, then she said, "I think you're right, Jason. It's been too fast. I don't really know what I feel. I care about you, and I won't cut you out of the baby's life. I think we both need time."

He didn't reply right away. At least they were both being honest with each other. There'd been more than enough lies between them.

She looked at him thoughtfully for a minute, then said, "What do you fear?"

Startled, Jason said, "I'm not afraid of anything."

"Yes, you are," she said. "I'll ask you again, what do you fear? Think about it."

He did as she asked, and after a moment, he said, "Failure. Love. Family. All of it, I guess."

"Go on," she said.

"I don't know how to be good at what I do for a living, yet be the kind of man you deserve as a husband, if that's something you even want. If it's something I want. I don't know how to be a father — I never had one of my own."

She laughed lightly. "Do you think there's a manual or a book you can buy that will really teach you how to be a good husband or a good father?"

"If there was," he said, "I'd sure buy it. But the fact is that I'm…what I do for a living…it's not very good for a family."

"No," she admitted. "It isn't. That's why most of the Room 59 agents that are hired don't have one. The missions, if you will, don't mix. And families can become liabilities if your true identity is known."

He nodded. "And maybe that's why it would be better if I just…went away. If I never came back and the only thing you ever saw from me again was a check once a month."

"Is that what you want to do?"

"No," he said. "But I don't see a lot of other choices."

"As my grandfather says, there are always other choices."

"He's a good man," Jason said. "But I don't think he really understands what my work is." He looked at her, his gaze catching hers. "I don't think you really understood until you saw it up close."

Tina held her silence, thinking about his words, then she said, "You're right. I didn't understand. Not really."

"Why did you leave the Room 59 offices and come out here?" he asked. "You've got the talent, if not the full training, to do what many field agents do."

"It just wasn't my world," she said. "I would look at all this information — pictures, reports, videos — and think this can't be real. Yet they still wanted me to wring some kind of sense from it. And the problem was that it never made sense to me. I knew some of the field agents and would talk with them, but it never sank in that much of the carnage I was looking at belonged to them. It was like they owned it somehow. Does that make any sense?"

"Yes, it does," he said. "And we do own it. We have to."

"And that's why I left," she said. "I couldn't imagine a world where people would own that kind of behavior. Where they would kill someone else — another human being — without mercy. It wasn't the kind of place I wanted to live in, so…I left."

"And now I'm here. You know what I do. You've seen what I do."

"Yes," she said.

"So where does that leave us?" he asked. "Do you want me to stay?"

"To be honest, Jason, I don't know," she replied. "I've been lying here trying to figure it out for the past three or four days — however long I've been in here. I care for you, but what you do is dangerous. Every time you walked out the door, I'd be worried sick that you wouldn't come home to me, to our child. You talk about making the world safe, but the world is a big place. I don't know how you'd make us safe." She sobbed quietly, hitched a breath, then said, "I don't know what I want or what you should do."

He sighed. "I guess that makes two of us," he said. He looked at his watch. "I think we both need some time. I'm supposed to be catching a flight soon. Denny has a lot of questions that still need answering."

"I know, I know. The mission comes first," Tina said.

He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. "Sometimes, family is the mission."

"We'll see," she said, trying not to cry. "Stay in touch, okay?"

"I will," he said. "You can count on it."

Then he turned and walked out of her room.

Jason's flights took him back the way he'd come — from Nome to Anchorage, Anchorage to Seattle and Seattle back to Minneapolis. It was late when he arrived home, and rather than deal with Denny and Room 59 business right away, he tossed his suitcase on the sofa, his laptop on the desk, showered and crawled into bed.

He slept for almost ten hours, and woke no more certain about what to do in regards to Tina and their baby and his job than when he walked out of the hospital in Nome. He made himself coffee and ate a half a grapefruit and some toast, then did some light stretching. It was going to be a while before he was back to full strength again.

Once his morning routine was completed, he sat down at his desk and fired up his laptop. The glasses he used were right where he left them. He put them on and went through the log-in process that confirmed his identity.

Using his avatar, he entered the Room 59 offices and headed for Denny's door. He noticed several people giving him long, wondering looks as he passed through, but ignored them. He stopped in front of Denny's door and knocked politely.

"Come in, Jason," Denny called out.

Jason opened the door and stepped in, surprised to see that in addition to Denny, Kate was also present. "Shut the door, please," Kate said.

He did as she asked, and Denny motioned for him to sit down.

"How are you feeling?" his boss asked.

"I'm on the mend," Jason said. "I should be mission ready within a week or so."

Kate chuckled. "I think we can manage a little more downtime than that. You've had quite an adventure from what I understand."

Jason just nodded, then turned his attention to Denny. "You know what happened on the mission?"

"Yes," Denny said. "Kate and I were just discussing it. Under the circumstances, we're both very happy with how you handled things. There was a little cleanup involved with the locals, but Tanuk helped with a lot of that. And we've got a team down at the sub right now, and another looking over the plans. You did well. Congratulations."

"Thank you," Jason said. "So why do I feel like there's another shoe about to drop?"

"Isn't there always in our line of work?" Kate asked.

Jason couldn't help but laugh. "Yes, I suppose there is. What's this one?"

Kate leaned back in her chair, studying him carefully, then motioned for Denny to take the lead. "There is one complication from your trip that we have to address," he said.

"Tina," Jason replied. "And the baby."

Kate nodded. "That's the complication, by the way," she said. "Not the shoe. We'll get to that in a moment."

"I don't see how she enters into this," Jason said. "She works for the agency and from what I gather, you and Denny knew of her involvement from the beginning."

"No, no," Denny said. "That's not it, really. The complication is that — as you know — agents who have families tend to run into problems. We don't encourage it, and we prefer to hire people who don't have a wife or a husband and children to deal with. There are too many risks. When the mission gets personal, bad things can happen. They have in the past. Even the best agent can lose sight of what he or she is supposed to be doing if someone they care about is put at risk."