The Agent's Daughter (20 page)

“
There are bars on the
windows,” he said as he looked down at Melina. “We’re not going to
be leaving through them.”

He looked back out the window and scanned
the horizon.

“
It appears that we are on
the second floor of the building,” he said. “I can see downtown
Dallas about a mile away. From the direction of the sun, and the
look of the surrounding buildings, I would say we were just east of
downtown. On Elm or Canton Street.”

The area east of downtown started out in the
early part of the twentieth century as an industrial part of town.
Massive three and four story buildings were built to manufacture
everything from cars to hats. Then, smaller office and bank
buildings followed. But the manufacturing dried up after the Great
Depression, and the area fell into disrepair. The area had seen a
recent revival as artists and music venues had begun to move in,
and some of the buildings had even been turned into loft
apartments, but the majority of the buildings were old abandoned
relics.

Evan jumped down from the counter and walked
over to Melina.

“
Are you doing okay,
kiddo?”

“
Yeah, I guess,” she
said.

Evan took her in his arms and gave her a
hug. “I will get us out of here, I promise.”

The calmness of the moment was interrupted
by a loud noise that sounded like footsteps walking down a tiled
hallway. It sounded as clear as if the noise were coming from
within the room. Evan put his ear to the door, but the sound was
not coming from behind the door. Then he looked up. It was coming
from the vent in the ceiling.

“
What is that noise?”
Melina said, looking up at the vent.

“
It sounds like
footsteps,” Evan replied. “More than one person. Our friends must
be coming to check on us.”

Evan listened through the door again.

“
They are coming this
way,” he said. “Stand over by that wall.”

“
What are you going to
do?” Melina asked nervously.

“
I hope to get us out of
here,” he said, still concentrating on the door.

Melina stood her ground. “I want to
help.”

Evan turned toward her and gave her the
arched-brow look. She knew that look. Her dad only gave her that
look when she was trying to talk him into something, and he had
already made up his mind. Evan knew she had lethal fighting skills.
Skills he made sure that she had. But he wasn’t ready to watch her
put those skills to the test in a battle of life and death. Not
yet.

“
Over by that wall,” he
said pointing across the room. “Please.”

Melina frowned and then reluctantly walked
toward the wall. She was worried about her dad. She knew that he
did not have the advanced fighting training that she had. He was an
engineer.

“
I’ll be over here if you
need me,” she said as she got to the wall opposite the door. She
took a deep breath and assumed a fighting stance.

Evan looked around for anything that he
could use as a weapon. There was nothing in sight. He scanned the
shelves of the units against the wall again. Nothing. He opened the
cabinet next to the sink and looked on all of its shelves. On the
bottom shelf, there were several empty paint cans.

“
This will do,” Evan said
as he grabbed one of the paint cans and set it on the ground next
to the door. He positioned himself to the side of the door, behind
where it would open. He set his feet and raised his hands in a
fighting stance. Melina giggled in amusement at her dad. He must be
imitating what he has seen her do.

Evan looked toward Melina. “Don’t move and
when the door opens, don’t look over at me.”

The noise of the footsteps
became louder and louder in the vent until he could also hear the
steps through the door. Then the noise abruptly stopped. He watched
as the keyless deadbolt turned while it was being unlocked from the
other side.
Melina, unsure what her dad
was up to, still stood ready to jump in and help him.

The door opened into the room, and a man
dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans entered. He was carrying a
gun, which was drawn with a fully extended arm. He pointed it at
Melina as he entered the room. She fixed her gaze on the man.

“
Well, now,” the man said
to Melina as he walked toward her. “Look who’s awake.”

Evan waited for the man to emerge from
behind the door. When he saw the gun, he lunged forward with a
vicious chop to the man’s forearm, snapping it with a loud crack.
The gun dropped to the floor as the man yelled out in agony and
stumbled back out the door. As Evan expected, a second man came
through the doorway and made a move toward him. Evan picked up the
paint can off the ground and then tossed it high in the air in an
arc toward the man.

“
Catch!” he
said.

The man instinctively looked upward at the
can. Evan ran toward him and delivered a perfect side kick to the
man’s face that sent the man flying back out into the hall. Melina
looked at her dad with her mouth agape, not quite believing what
she had just seen.

Evan quickly turned around and bent down to
pick up the gun dropped by the first man when he heard a loud click
behind him. It was the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked.

“
I wouldn’t move if I were
you,” a voice behind him said. “I’ve got an itchy trigger
finger.”

Evan froze. In part because a person with a
gun was telling him not to move but mostly because the voice
sounded eerily familiar.

He looked over at Melina. She had left her
position against the wall and was now halfway to him. He put up his
hand toward her. “Stop. Don’t move kiddo.”

“
I figured this is how it
would go down,” the voice said. “That is why I waited in the
hallway.”

It couldn’t be, Evan thought. Not him. He
put his hands down at his sides, slowly stood up, and turned
around.

“
William Mason,” Evan
said.

“
Hello Evan,” William said
smiling. “I would say something clever like ‘Sooo, we meet again’,
but I just saw you this morning so that would be
stupid.”

Evan did not say anything. He just stood
there with a blank look on his face trying to process the turn of
events. Melina could not take it anymore. It did not matter that
William had a gun. She wanted to be by her dad’s side. She walked
toward him, trying not to make any sudden moves.

“
And you must be Melina,”
William said as he turned to her. “I’ve heard about
you.”

“
You know this guy?”
Melina said to her dad.

“
We work at the same
company,” Evan replied.

Melina looked at William and back at her
dad. “I’m confused. Why would a coworker of yours kidnap us? Did
you write some crappy software code?”

William looked at Melina confused, and then
threw his head back and laughed as a person would do if they had
just learned something both fascinating and entertaining.

“
I forgot,” William said
as he looked at Melina. “You are not
aware
. This is
delicious.”

“
Aware?” Melina
said.

“
Let me ask you
something,” William said to Melina. “What do you think that your
father does for a living?”

“
He’s a software engineer.
He writes code that goes into telecommunications
equipment.”

William looked over at Evan. “A software
engineer?”

Then he burst out laughing.

“
You told your daughter
that you are a software engineer! Of all the jobs that you could
have pretended to have, you chose software engineer? The biggest
geeks on the planet?”

More laughter.

“
That is priceless,”
William said, composing himself and looking back at Melina. “My
dear, your father can no more write software than he can flap his
arms and fly to the moon. He has a slightly different job. The
company we work for is a covert branch of the U.S. government
called the Executive Reconnaissance Agency. We work directly for
the President.”

“
President?” Melina asked.
“You mean like President of the United States?”

“
That’s right,” William
said. “Our organization is in charge of gathering intelligence from
within foreign countries on direct orders of the President of the
United States. Your father is one of our field agents. He is what
is known in popular culture as a spy.”

“
I don’t think so,” Melina
said, laughing at the absurdity. “Spies wear lots of white dinner
jackets and have weird skills, like knowing how to play baccarat
and they are excellent fighters. My dad is none of
that.”

“
Ah, yes,” William said.
“I cannot speak to his baccarat skills, and I have never seen him
in a white dinner jacket, but your father is a fifth degree
back-belt in taekwondo and ninth
dan
in krav maga. He speaks twelve
different languages, and he has been to more countries in the world
than I am sure you can name. The President asks your father
to-”

Melina interrupted again. “Are you off your
medication? You seem to be a bit delusional. My dad writes software
and works at Hadron Systems. I was just in his office this
afternoon.”

William gave a forced sigh like the
conversation had suddenly become burdensome.

“
Ask your father what the
meeting he went to this morning was about. Ask if the President
herself attended via videoconference,” he said as he looked at
Evan. “Surely he would not lie to his little girl about this. At
least, not anymore.”

Melina looked over at her dad. “Dad, help me
out here. Tell him that what he said is a little kooky.”

Evan turned away and looked upward with
closed eyes. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“
Dad?” she asked, trying
to prompt him.

“
I think you have your
answer,” William said.

Melina continued to look at her dad, hoping
that William was wrong. Evan opened his eyes and looked back at
Melina. His eyes were sad, and his mouth grimaced.

“
I am sorry, kiddo,” Evan
said. “This is not how I wanted you to find out.”

Melina sat down on the floor and put her
head in her hands, trying to sort through all that William had said
and what it meant.

“
Okay, William,” Evan said
as he turned to face him. “You’ve had your fun. Tell me what all
this is about. Why are we here?”

William frowned and started to pace the
floor. “Let’s just say that I have some outside business associates
that have been negatively affected by your recent activities
abroad.”

“
Outside business
associates?” Evan asked. “What do you mean, outside business
associates? Are you selling intelligence that the agency has
gathered? Or maybe some of the equipment from the tools
group?”

William laughed. “I’m not selling any
secrets, but you are not far off on that second one.”

“
So you have been selling
watches and other gadgets?” Evan said.

William drew close to Evan and lowered his
voice. “Hardly, Evan. Try, partially enriched uranium.”

Evan stood there motionless, staring at
William, not knowing quite what to say.

“
I understand your shock,
Evan,” William continued. “You see, I have supreme control over
both the small uranium storage vault in the tools lab and the
larger storage annex in New Mexico. Nobody but me knows exactly how
much total uranium the agency has in place.”

“
And you sold some of it?”
Evan said, raising his voice. “You are the source of the uranium
for Malazistan.”

“
They are amongst my
customers,” William said. “To answer your earlier question, you are
here because the Malaz asked me to send you to them. They want to
use you as a bargaining chip. They think that because you have a
deep knowledge of top-secret information, they can get the
President to back off on their nuclear program in exchange for your
return. They are sending a plane for you as we speak. It should be
here in the morning.”

“
But what about …” Evan
said.

William held up his hand. “I’m not the
chatty villain type. It is not in my best interest to tell you
anything further so I will leave it at that. All will be explained
later.”

William walked backward toward the door, not
taking his eyes off Evan and keeping the gun trained on him.

“
Try and get some sleep,”
William said as he paused in the doorway. “You have a big day
tomorrow.”

William slammed shut the door and locked it
from the outside. Evan stood still in the middle of the room as he
listened to the sound of footsteps moving away down the hall. At
first they could be heard through the door and then just in the
vents and finally they just faded away.

…………………………
.

Angela was in the kitchen making dinner for
Travis when she heard the phone ring.

“
Maybe that is your
father,” she said, relieved that she would hear from him at last.
“He and Melina should have arrived home hours ago.”

“
They probably stopped to
get something for Melina’s big date,” Travis said, after which he
made exaggerated kissing noises.

Angela smiled at Travis and picked up the
phone. “Hello?”

“
Hello. I’m calling for
Melina.”

Angela’s face changed as she realized that
neither Evan nor Melina was on the other end of the line.