The First Read online

  “Keeper, She is back.”

  The old woman sat down. “Tell me.”

  He spoke and they all listened in eager silence. When he finished, they turned to look at the old woman, who remained silent, her head lowered.

  Suddenly she raised her head. “Is She protected?”

  “I have put Benjamin Laree, my most trusted man, in charge of Her protection. He has had people following Her since She left the cathedral. We have also managed to collect some information on Her through the hotel, and Benjamin himself has gone ahead of Her. He will be keeping an eye on Her, and will approach Her when the occasion allows. We are being careful not to draw unwarranted attention, of course.”

  “She must be kept safe. And She must be brought here. Now.”

  He bowed his head. “Yes, Keeper.”

  Chapter Three

  The black sedan drove through the iron gates. The house was small and not nearly as isolated as what the organization usually used, but then it was rented, and very recently at that—those charged with preparing it would only have been alerted at about the time he himself was called in, which wouldn’t have left them much time. The organization didn’t keep a permanent complex anywhere near this city, nor the kind of personnel it did in other places, because it couldn't be everywhere. Or at least, that was the official line. The truth was that those who had the say in it didn't want to draw any attention to where the woman was. Ideally she would live—and eventually die—here without anyone outside the organization ever knowing she’d ever been here. Or even that she was still alive. Ideally.

  He got out of the car and looked around him. Rented or not, the house was secure. Jennison worked fast. He nodded at a half-hidden camera and went in through the front door that unlocked automatically. He assumed that the man who was coming out of a side room toward him, his hand extended, was the one behind the outside camera.

  “Mr. Rhys, I'm Jason Neace. I'll be making sure you have everything you need while you're here.” The man chuckled. “Consider me your personal housekeeper, gofer, anything you need.”

  Kyle Rhys took the man in. Older than him, in his mid-thirties. Short, wiry, with a shock of brown hair. He disregarded the man's extended hand. “Then you received my list.”

  “Right down to business. Yes, Mr. Jennison said that too. Obey and don't ask questions. Hey, that's me.” Neace grinned. “This way.”

  He led the newcomer to the room he’d come from, where screens stood that showed the perimeter of the house, although evidently this Neace guy wasn't the man behind the camera after all. Another man was watching the screens, and Kyle could see on one of them that yet another was walking the perimeter fence.

  “Here.” Neace led Kyle to a long table along the wall, laid out with guns, ammunition, military issue binoculars, everything he might need for this mission. And all would be untraceable, it always was. The biometrically secure handheld that lay in the corner would contain the most recent information collected about the target within the short time they had since she'd been marked as active. “And there's a gray four-by-four in the garage. Older model, like you asked for, dead-end registration.”

  Kyle nodded, satisfied. This would do.

  By the time he finished preparing what he would need and finalized his plan, night had fallen, and the only indications of life in the house were a guard walking the perimeter with an alert-looking dog, and the light in the window of his second-floor bedroom. Kyle sat down on the couch near the bed and picked up the handheld again. The data came up. Because the organization was careful not to draw attention to the woman, it left her alone except to follow her location and to periodically check who she was in contact with, so there wasn't much new information about her. Where she lived and worked, neighbors and colleagues. No family, no husband or boyfriend in the picture. Good. That meant no one would get in his way. He read again carefully what little information there was and frowned. Normally he'd have someone follow the target to get more information about her habits, or preferably do so himself, however this time there was no time for that. But then, how hard could it be? Ironically, this was the easiest mission he'd ever had.

  An incoming alert appeared on the screen. He let the biometric identifier scan his eye again, unlocking another security layer, and the last missing item, the photo he was to be given only at the last moment, came up. He stared.

  Hours later the first light of the day peeked hesitantly into the room.

  He was still staring.

  The new day brought with it a calm breeze, without even a hint of autumn yet, not even here, on the balcony of her mid-rise apartment. She held her first cup of coffee of the day absently, her eyes on the city, the people below.

  The night before, she finally managed to push the thoughts of her trip to Rome out of her mind and will herself to sleep, but her sleep was plagued by vivid dreams. Just as it had been every night since she visited the cathedral in Rome. Those first nights, in her dreams she was standing in pitch dark, had been for a long time. It felt, she remembered, as if she'd been standing there, in the darkness, forever, waiting. Once in a while she would raise her head and look for a sign of anything—light, life. But the darkness seemed to swallow it all, drown her in its thick embrace, and she felt lost.

  She would wake up feeling confused. She'd never remembered her dreams before, and this was an unsettling experience for her. All the more so since the dreams resonated of something long gone, something she'd forgotten, something she knew she must remember. Eventually she would fall asleep again, only to find herself back in the darkness.

  But last night the dream changed. In the dark a light flickered. Small, weak, yet she could feel its warmth, beckoning. She walked toward it and it grew, pushing the darkness away until finally it enfolded her, filling her with something new, an energy, a strength deep within her. The light grew stronger and she closed her eyes against its brightness, raised her head to it, breathed it in. And then she heard a harmonious mix of soft voices saying, “Open your eyes,” and when she did she found she was part of a circle of women, dozens of women, all dressed with the same flowing white robes that held within them the infinite brilliance of the light, all looking at her with elated smiles. And although they did not utter a word she could hear their voices in her mind, see into theirs, as they welcomed her. As they spoke to her, telling her of times past, of destinies to be. As they showed her.

  We are one.

  She had awakened at dawn and had been out here since, watching the day brighten slowly with a light that mirrored the one in her dream, growing in strength as it did, full of a new promise as it was. The dream was real. She didn't know how she knew, she just did. She should have felt confusion, disbelief, fear perhaps. Instead, standing here in the light of a new day, she felt only calm.

  The sounds of the city now awake below seeped into her reverie. She sighed. It was time to get to work. Her research wouldn’t wait. She was on a sabbatical from the Center for Human Behavior, where she was an analyst as well as taught at the center's home university, which was also her alma mater. The sabbatical had been a carefully thought-out decision. For a while now she'd been increasingly restless, and this had been a chance for her to get away for a long enough time to sort herself out. She had no idea what was wrong. Her work at the center was challenging, and she enjoyed the course she was teaching at the university. It was the same course she herself took when she was a graduate student, and had become teaching assistant for when Professor Shell insisted on it after she'd given him hell during the semester she studied it, bombarding him with questions every chance she got. He’d asked her to take it over as soon as she'd completed her studies, when he'd also recruited her to the center. Professor Shell, now a trusted friend, a rare friend, was also the one to notice how preoccupied she’d become and the one to suggest that some time off might be just what she needed.

  She didn't tell him that this restlessness she'd been contending with had always been inside her, gnawing at her, alt
hough it was only just recently becoming too strong to disregard. Instead, she took his suggestion, thinking she would do some research she hadn’t had time for and hopefully get back on track, perhaps even return to pursue the doctorate he'd been pushing her toward. Except that she’d decided to start her sabbatical with that trip to Rome she now couldn’t shake off.

  She walked inside, made herself another cup of coffee, took it to her study, and sat down at her desk. Immediately behind her, windows stretched from floor to ceiling along the entire wall, so that when she turned toward it with her chair she could see the park stretch before her. The panorama of green below and the occasional bird flying by on the backdrop of endless skies helped her relax, kept her focused. The entire room, in fact, was designed to make her comfortable in her own little world, and she liked working here by herself, enjoyed the solitude, the peace and quiet.

  But more and more lately, she couldn’t do much more here than return in her mind to that place inside her she didn't seem to be able to reach, a place she'd been aware of since she was a child but had so far only been able to walk around in her mind, again and again, looking for some way in. She had a sense that whatever was hidden there was important, even crucial for her, but the years had not let her in.

  She could never give up, though—every piece of herself was too precious. She had no idea who she was, didn't know where she was born or who her parents were. She had grown up in foster homes that had no interest in her wellbeing, had no pity for this lost child, until she had finally managed to get away, make a life for herself. And these were her only childhood memories. It didn't stop her. She'd learned early on to survive. She was strong and smart and she'd made it through. She'd created her own identity, knew well the kind of person she was, relied on the personality that had taken her through life without losing that which she valued within herself along the way.

  She thought that perhaps that's where her fascination with traveling came from, her journeys to cities with an ancient past, people with a history, while she had none of her own. These people did not just exist in the present. They could, at any moment, look back to a past rich with detail, the past of their ancestors, of parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and many others before them. They could turn to memories and photos, share a story, a laugh and a cry, a life, with someone who was as part of their past as they themselves were. They belonged.

  She didn't. All she had were questions, and an unrelenting feeling that she was not where she was supposed to be, that she was a stranger in her own life. That and her first name, Aelia. That was hers, the only thing that belonged to her. Her last name, given to her by one of the many for whom she was just another unwanted child along the way, didn't. And so she didn’t used it unless she had to, treated it as an unavoidable formality.

  She turned her chair to face the park. So many questions and not a single answer. She had tried to research herself but found nothing except what she already knew. That there was nothing out there, no information about her, about who she might be. Nothing.

  She leaned back in the chair, her gaze distant. For all she knew, she didn't even exist.

  Across the park the sniper checked his aim. He was at the window of an empty apartment in a building not quite opposite the target’s. Perhaps not what he would choose if he had more time, but, because of the glass wall of the room she was in, he'd managed to position himself at an angle from which he could clearly see her.

  He had her on his sight from the moment she came into the room. He considered shooting her when she sat on the chair with her back to him—the bullet, he knew, would easily go through glass and upholstery. And he wouldn't miss. He never did. He shifted slightly, took careful aim, and began to squeeze the trigger. And then she turned toward the window.

  His finger fell off the trigger and he readjusted his aim. He now had full view of her face, which was framed by long black hair that flowed down under her shoulders, slightly pulled back. Even better, a shot to the forehead would be clean and immediate. His eye focused on her face, his finger began to squeeze the trigger again—

  And he faltered.

  He stared, mesmerized. He couldn't shoot. That is, he could, but . . . he couldn’t. Something about her, something that resonated deep within him, stopped him. He couldn't seem to—

  Her head turned slightly and she looked straight at him, her gray eyes intense on his through the aim of his rifle. But that was impossible, there was no way she could see him, no way she could know he was there.

  The target stood up and walked to the glass wall, her gaze never wavering, seeing what her eyes could not see.

  Kyle Rhys raised his head from the rifle and frowned, perplexed.

  Someone was watching her.

  Aelia could feel it, deep in that unknown place inside her. As deep as her reaction at the cathedral in Rome had been, although it didn't feel the same. This was different, more . . . what? Stronger. No, that's not all it was. She was confused. She couldn’t see this person, didn’t even know where he was, but he was, he felt, familiar. He. She was sure it was a man.

  And she was certain that she knew him. Somehow, in a way she could not begin to understand, she knew him.

  She stood there for a long moment, her palm flat against the window, as if trying to reach him, touch him. Her eyes closed, and she tried to search for him in her mind. Then she shook her head and opened her eyes, surprised at herself. What was she doing? She must be going mad, she—

  She stopped. He was gone. She couldn't feel him there anymore.

  Kyle got into the car, breathless, and threw the rifle case on the passenger seat. He was rattled. And he was never rattled. That was what made him so good at what he did. And he never hesitated when on the tail of a target. He had nerves of steel. He never faltered, and he never ever failed.

  And yet now he couldn't seem to get a grip on himself. What the hell happened there? She saw him. Hell, it had felt as if she was looking right into him.

  No, it was worse than that.

  He knew her.

  This was harder to push away. She wasn't in Rome, this wasn't some ancient city far removed from her own life, and there was no justifying what just happened. This was the reality she was familiar with, it was what anchored her, and here she was supposed to be as she always was. Herself. And yet right now she felt anything but herself. She felt as if the ground was shaking under her, and realized it hadn't really stopped shaking since her visit to the cathedral. That what happened just now was simply another highlight in whatever it was that it was now becoming clear was being unleashed deep within her.

  In an effort to protect herself, to keep herself anchored in the pragmatism that had helped her survive all these years, she tried to push it away, to convince herself that she was wrong, there was nothing, had been no one there. She tried to get some work done, but couldn't. Tried to control herself, not to think about whatever it was that was happening to her, but it was futile. After a while she went online, and for the thousandth time in her life made another desperate attempt to find some information about herself.

  About a child who had appeared from nowhere.

  Kyle’s instincts finally kicked in, and he drove away. He checked the rear-view mirror automatically. No one was following him, but then no one would. No one knew he was here, and this woman wasn't someone anyone would think would be targeted for killing. She was just an ordinary woman.

  Except that she wasn't, was she? Not for him. When he'd seen her photo for the first time only hours before, even then it had hit him. Not just her looks, nor the smile that played on her lips and was so readily reflected in her eyes, making him wonder who she was smiling at, who had taken the photo. No, it was something else, something hidden, something he couldn’t define, which pulled at his very core. Something that wasn't supposed to exist in him. He was always ice cold on the job, focused entirely on the target and its elimination. But sitting there, staring at this woman’s photo, fragments had surfaced, unbidd
en. Fragments of memories, of something long lost.

  Aware of the importance of this kill he had forced it all away, proceeding as planned. And yet just now, as he watched her from behind the scope of his rifle, saw her in real life, and as she reacted to him, impossibly so, the fragments surfaced again with an unexpected abruptness and fell into place, not nearly enough to form a clear picture but enough for something in him to awaken, and he felt—

  He shook his head, angrily brushing off his confusion, and focused on driving. Several miles down he pulled over and took out his phone.

  His call was answered after the first ring. “Is it done?”

  Kyle remained silent.

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Kyle, this is the most important mission I've ever given you, the most important mission of your life. It’s what you were made for. There's no turning back, you know that!” An uncharacteristically frantic edge slipped into Jennison's voice, and Kyle frowned.

  “And I will complete it,” he said. “But I need to know more. I need to know who she is.”

  Jennison’s voice hardened. “You have all the information you need. Finish the job.” And the line went dead.

  Kyle put the phone back in his jacket pocket, got out of the car, and walked to a coffee cart a distance away. He bought a cup of some strong black brew and stood for a while watching the people around him, going about their lives, normal lives the likes of which he never had, never would have. He then returned to the car, started it and drove back to where his target was. He would complete the mission.