“How does it feel?” Lauren asked, her hand busy with manipulating the probe attached to my right leg and her blonde head busy with checking my responses on the portable computer in front of her.
“Fine,” I replied, I felt a tiny prickling feeling on my right toe when she delivered a shock wave.
“Can you elaborate? Is it a fine feeling or is it finer than the last time you were here?”
I pressed my leg down on the probe as she delivered another wave and I felt it, stronger this time. “It’s definitely stronger and it feels like a thousand bolts just zoomed up from my right toe to my knee.”
“Good. That’s what I want to hear.” She pushed the computer with her foot and stepped closer to the exam table where I was currently sitting up, with the electromagnetic probes stuck on both of my legs. “You’re making a lot of progress. Pretty soon you’ll be able to gain eighty percent of the feeling in your right leg and I’d say about sixty-five percent on your left leg.”
I nodded, “Are we done?”
“Yes. You’re good to go,” she quipped, grabbing a pen from her white coat and taking a hold of what I assumed was my chart. “When are you flying back?”
“Today. Ten hundred.”
“Good time, not too early.” Her green eyes looked up from my chart for a second, “I don’t suppose you’d want to have a breakfast with me and Jude before you leave?”
Jude was her fiancé.
“I could, but I need to make sure everything’s okay in LA first, and I got a few things to take care of before I leave.” Liam had already updated me before I went inside the hospital building. I’d instructed him that cell signal got really shitty inside the Naval Medical Center so he had given me a quick rundown of the status of Athena’s tail. So far, they hadn’t made a move and honestly, my nerves were just a tad spiky since I had no idea why they were going after her. The most obvious connection was her father’s position. But what exactly were they planning to do to her?
Kidnapping? Ransom? Insurance?
All three wouldn’t be happening under my watch.
“Who is she?” Lauren’s question came out of left field as she started to remove my leg probes.
I’d never been the type to discuss my job, during and after the Navy. “You’re not my psychiatrist, Laur.”
I didn’t have a psychiatrist.
“Thank God.” She laughed, her eyes gentle, she added, “So who is she?”
“How do you know it’s a she?” I remarked and slowly stood up. After being instructed to sit in various positions for an hour and a half, it takes a while for the feeling in both of my legs to return, and I had to make sure that I wouldn’t just flop on the floor to my ass, so I took my time standing up.
“Because your heart rate spiked up when you talked about L.A.” Her grin was a full-blown smile now.
“I’d never take you for a gossip,” I shook my head, while I wiped off the slimy shit that she put on my legs and started to grab my jeans. “I didn’t know they taught paparazzi skills in med school.”
“Doctors are the best sources of gossip. We can tell when you’re upset because your blood pressure goes high, when you’re happy because your endorphins activate a CNS response, and I can definitely tell you have a woman in mind because right now, you are starting to blush.”
“I don’t blush.” I lightly sneered, but I could definitely feel my ears heating up.
“So Worthington, who is she?”
I stared at her for a second and flexed my neck, Lauren’s actually a good friend. She had helped me a lot in my recovery and as great a surgeon as she was, she was a pain in the butt and a sister I never had. “She is a college student. She is my detail, my job.”
“Huh.”
“What now?”
“Nothing.” She lifted her shoulders and her eyes turned towards the door.
“What?” I asked again. “It sounds like there’s not nothing to your nothing. There’s something in there.”
“Nothing Worthington.” When her eyes caught mine, I saw the humor in them. She was laughing silently.
“What’s so funny?” I commented, following her footsteps as we stepped outside the exam room. I slowed my strides so she could keep up. What Lauren lacked in height, she more than compensated for in her brains and personality. She was one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the country. She was barely starting out in her career when I was assigned to her as a clinical case. I largely attributed the unprecedented progress I had to her and so did thousands of my fellow Vets.
“You’re going to be late for your flight.” The unvoiced laughter trailed her words.
“I’m going to tell Jude that you didn’t vote in the past two elections.” I was not above blackmail. I’d met Jude twice and he was a good guy but boy, was he passionate about politics and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. “Let’s see what he says about that.”
“You won’t.” I had purposely walked faster so now she had to catch up.
“Okay.” I pretended to step forward and with her tiny arms she pulled me to the side, a group of men and women in white coats passing us by.
“It just amuses me that when I asked you about her, you sounded like you were giving me reasons on why you shouldn’t be thinking of her. I quote, ‘She’s a college student. She’s a job.’”
“Well she is,” I justified even when I saw no need.
“I asked who she is not what she is.” Her face looked as if she was in on a little secret that she meant to keep to herself. “What’s her name?”
“Athena,” I replied, my eyes straying to the white wall behind Lauren.
“Like the Greek goddess?”
I shook my head to the affirmative. “Yeah.”
“Pretty lady?”
I didn’t say anything.
Her blonde brows lifted and her mouth let out a loud gasp, “You like her.”
My mouth was immobile, my face a statue.
“College student, huh?” The side of her mouth lifted, “You know, Worthington, you’re not that old. You’re younger than my boss who’s fifty and his wife just turned twenty-eight.”
My mother taught me not to smack women, but if she hadn’t, I would definitely have smacked Lauren in the head. “I’m not that old.”
“Exactly. My point.” Her face twitched in glee, “You’re a healthy twenty-nine-year-old who’s been through so much.”
“She’s my job,” I countered, I wasn’t entertaining any of Lauren’s matchmaking skills, but I just felt that I had to say it.
“So? She won’t be your job forever,” she reasoned, holding the clipboard she was carrying on her left hand closer to her chest. “Although…”
“What now?”
“If she’s as beautiful as her name, I’m sure there’s a lot of college boys who are around the same age as her and would love to date her.”
She was picking on a sore that wasn’t there.
Maybe.
It was making my eye twitch a little.
When I looked down, my hands were clamped tightly together.
“You’re going to be late for your flight, Worthington.” It was quite transparent that she was changing the topic.
I nodded, “Yeah, I gotta get going.”
“I’ll see you in four months.” She opened her arms and I returned her embrace. My visits were now less frequent. I could actually come in every six months, but it was vital to her research that she saw me every hundred twenty days. It was based on the calculations that her team had done about nerve regeneration and neuropathy. I was only too happy to help them out.
We were about to go on our separate ways in front of the hospital lobby, when Lauren questioned, “What color are her eyes, Worthington?”
“Emerald green on a good day,” I said, remembering just how green they were when Athena was happy. “Whiskey brown on some days.”
“You’re in trouble, old man.”
Her tinkling laugh followed me all the way to Norfolk.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts. The captain has now turned on the seatbelt sign…”
I settled into my seat and clicked on the seatbelt. My connecting flight was delayed due to aircraft maintenance. I texted Liam that I was finally on my way back after staying put at O’Hare for an hour and a half.
Four and a half hours was a long time away, but I had a truckload of intel to sift through and now was as good a time as any.
“Would you like some coffee, tea, or soda, sir?” A sweet-faced, motherly flight attendant asked.
I replied, “Water please. Can you give me the whole bottle? Unopened?”
I didn’t drink anything other than water on flights. At higher altitudes, the body needed more water to keep it hydrated. I was used to drinking gallons of water while I was a SEAL and doubled the amount when we were on missions at over 10,000 feet. Old habits hardly ever died.
“Here you go.” As the flight attendant handed me the water bottle, I gave her a nod, “Thanks.”
The flight was only half full so there were a lot of seats empty. No one was in front of me and no one was behind me.
I fired up my laptop and began to read through the hundreds of pages of documents that Tony sent. He used an algorithm to determine if the intel was good enough for me to investigate and it looked like he had been busy these past three days.
Why was Flores hooked up with two notorious gang members from Colombia?
He barely had a lick on real life and now he was hanging out with enforcers of a drug dynasty?
Why were they sent to guard Athena?
What did they want with her?
So many questions with no answers in sight.
I stared outside the plane’s window and caught a glimpse of the Willis Tower, aka Sears Tower. Athena would have loved to stand on the sky deck of the 110-storey building. It was on her bucket list – one she’d written when she was thirteen. It was included in her files.
Liam reported to me every day. Athena attended her classes, ran across the field, met with her friends, and went back to her dorm. The only thing out of the ordinary was last night when she’d had dinner with Mario and Denton. She usually didn’t go out the night before Visual Journalism because it was her earliest class. Denton must have been real convincing.
Denton. The college basketball star.
He liked Athena.
But he was too chicken to date her.
I’d seen the way he looked at her – the extra stolen glances he took when she was busy writing notes for their class together, the constant offers for lunch or dinner, and the extra amount of time he took when he walked her to her classes.
The kicker was – Athena liked him too. I could tell from the way she laughed when he was around, the extra glow and added length of time she laughed – I mean, the dude couldn’t be that funny but yeah, she seemed to laugh a lot when he was around. Dyan often teased Athena to give it up to Denton, something that I shouldn’t have heard because it was during a private conversation between the two of them, but surveillance was non-selective. It picked up on everything.
If Denton asked Athena out, she’d go without blinking twice.
Why did the thought of the two of them being together leave a nasty feeling in my mouth?
She was my job.
After the threat was neutralized, I’d go on my way and she’d graduate college in a few years and become a successful journalist.
She wouldn’t miss me following her around.
She’d be happy that I wouldn’t be snooping into her business and that she’d gain the freedom she always dreamed of.
She’d travel the world and watch the sun rise and set in exotic locales.
She’d have a great life and once in a blue moon, she’d maybe think of me if she ever happened to come into contact with something that reminded her of me.
In another life, maybe I could have explored this growing attraction that even Lauren, who had never met her, had picked up on.
But I wasn’t living another life.
I was living in now.
And now was not the time to dwell on it.
Not even for a second.
Alvaro.
The name stood out from the intel I was scanning through.
Right eye scarred from a machete fight with his cousin. Colombia’s second most wanted man. He had a bounty of two million dollars, equivalent to Colombian pesos with a lot of zeros. Tony was right. The Intel he’d sent me was extremely important.
Alvaro was the link between the San Salvador rookie goons and the Colombian smugglers. He recruited Flores.
Why?
I typed in the code to enter the Department of Defense’s backdoor site, one that only level three security clearance can obtain.
I’d been kept active on this even as I became a private contractor since my current job was ensuring the safety of a national treasure, even of higher importance than the POTUS. Presidents can be replaced. Men like Joseph Bridges could not be easily exchanged for another.
The Wi-Fi in the plane was strong enough for me to link through the site and access the data that I needed.
As the image of Alvaro came into view, a cold chill started to wrap around me.
The photo showed Alvaro sitting on a metal chair overlooking a coffee plantation. To his left were two of the men who were following Athena and to his right was a short guy, his back was facing the camera, number one on Colombia’s top ten most wanted.
Felipe Jairo David.
Known to his followers as El Padre del Pueblo.
Known to his only daughter as Papa.
I’d never met him in person.
But I’d seen pictures of him, up close and personal.
She had them stored on her phone, photos that often included her and her family.
In my twenty-nine years of being on this Earth, I had loved two women.
My first love will always be my mother. She carried me for over nine months and gave life to me. That kind of love needed no explanation.
And my second love, the one that would always hold a candle in my forgotten heart, was a girl named Caterina.
Caterina David.
Felipe’s one and only daughter, his princess.
It’s been said that the past had a way of haunting back into the present.
Well fuck.
My nightmare just wormed itself into becoming a reality.
Only this time, I could not afford to lose.
I lost once. And I’d lost so much.
This was one war I had to win.
Because if I did, I knew, in the deepest core of my soul, nothing alive would remain inside of me.