Target Zero. Джек Марс

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СКАЧАТЬ by the arm back to the closet and began rooting through his clothes. “Jeez, Dad, you dress like you’re eighty…”

      “What was that?”

      “Nothing!” she called back. “Ah. Here.” She pulled out a black sport coat—the only one he owned. “Wear this, with something gray under it. Or white. A T-shirt or a polo. Get rid of the dad-pants and put on some jeans. Dark ones. Slim fit.”

      At the behest of his daughter, he changed his outfit while she waited in the hall. He supposed he should get used to this bizarre role reversal, he thought. One moment he was the overprotective father; the next he was caving in the face of his challenging, astute daughter.

      “Much better,” Maya said as he presented himself anew. “You almost look like you’re ready for a date.”

      “Thank you,” he said, “and this isn’t a date.”

      “You keep saying that. But you’re going for dinner and drinks with a mysterious woman that you claim is an old friend, even though you’ve never mentioned her and we’ve never met her…”

      “She is an old friend—”

      “And, I might add,” Maya said over him, “she’s quite attractive. We saw her get off the plane in Dulles. So if either of you are looking for something more than ‘old friends,’ this is a date.”

      “Good god, you and I are not talking about that.” Reid winced. But in his mind, he was panicking slightly. She’s right. This is a date. He had been doing so many mental gymnastics lately that he hadn’t paused long enough to consider what “dinner and drinks” really meant to a pair of single adults. “Fine,” he admitted, “let’s just say it’s a date. Um… what do I do?”

      “You’re asking me? I’m not exactly an expert.” Maya grinned. “Talk to her. Get to know her better. And please, try your best to be interesting.”

      Reid scoffed and shook his head. “Excuse me, but I am plenty interesting. How many people do you know that can give an entire oral history of the Bulavin Rebellion?”

      “Only one.” Maya rolled her eyes. “And do not give this woman an entire oral history of the Bulavin Rebellion.”

      Reid chuckled and hugged his daughter.

      “You’ll be fine,” she assured him.

      “You will too,” he said. “I’m going to call Mr. Thompson to come by for a while…”

      “Dad, no!” Maya pulled away from his embrace. “Come on. I’m sixteen. I can watch Sara for a couple of hours.”

      “Maya, you know how important it is to me that you two aren’t alone—”

      “Dad, he smells like motor oil, and all he wants to talk about is ‘the good ol’ days’ with the Marines,” she said exasperatedly. “Nothing is going to happen. We’re going to eat pizza and watch a movie. Sara will be in bed before you’re back. We’ll be fine.”

      “I still think that Mr. Thompson should come—”

      “He can spy through the window like he usually does. We’ll be okay. I promise. We have a great security system, and deadbolts on all the doors, and I know about the gun near the front door—”

      “Maya!” Reid exclaimed. How did she know about that? “Do not mess with that, do you understand?”

      “I’m not going to touch it,” she said. “I’m just saying. I know it’s there. Please. Let me prove I can do this.”

      Reid didn’t like the idea of the girls being alone in the house, not at all, but she was practically begging. “Tell me the escape plan,” he said.

      “The whole thing?!” she protested.

      “The whole thing.”

      “Fine.” She flipped her hair over a shoulder, as she often did when she was annoyed. Her eyes rolled to the ceiling as she recited, monotone, the plan that Reid had enacted shortly upon their arrival in the new house. “If anyone comes to the front door, I should first make sure the alarm is armed, and the deadbolt and chain lock are on. Then I check the peephole to see if it’s someone I know. If it’s not, I call Mr. Thompson and have him investigate first.”

      “And if it is?” he prompted.

      “If it’s someone I know,” Maya rattled on, “I check the side window—carefully—to see if there is anyone else with them. If there is, I call Mr. Thompson to come over and investigate.”

      “And if someone tries to force their way in?”

      “Then we get down to the basement and go into the exercise room,” she recited. One of the first renovations Reid had made, upon moving in, was to have the door to the small room in the basement replaced with one with a steel core. It had three heavy deadbolts and aluminum alloy hinges. It was bulletproof and fireproof, and the CIA tech that had installed it claimed it would take a dozen SWAT battering rams to knock it down. It effectively turned the small exercise room into a makeshift panic room.

      “And then?” he asked.

      “We call Mr. Thompson first,” she said. “And then nine-one-one. If we forget our cell phones or can’t get to them, there’s a landline in the basement preprogrammed with his number.”

      “And if someone breaks in, and you can’t get to the basement?”

      “Then we go to the nearest available exit,” Maya droned. “Once outside, we make as much noise as possible.”

      Thompson was a lot of things, but hard of hearing was not one of them. One night Reid and the girls had the TV on too loud while watching an action movie, and Thompson came running at the sound of what he thought might have been suppressed gunshots.

      “But we should always have our phones with us, in case we need to make a call once we’re somewhere safe.”

      Reid nodded approvingly. She had recited the entire plan—except one small, yet crucial, part. “You forgot something.”

      “No, I didn’t.” She frowned.

      “Once you’re somewhere safe, and after you call Thompson and the authorities…?”

      “Oh, right. Then we call you right away and let you know what’s happened.”

      “Okay.”

      “Okay?” Maya raised an eyebrow. “Okay as in, you’ll let us be on our own for once?”

      He still didn’t like it. But it was only for a couple of hours, and Thompson would be right next door. “Yes,” he said finally.

      Maya breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. We’ll be fine, I swear it.” She hugged him again, briefly. She turned to head back downstairs, but then thought of something else. “Can I get away with just one more question?”

      “Sure. But I can’t promise I’ll tell you the answer.”

      “Are you going to start… traveling, again?”

      “Oh.” Once СКАЧАТЬ