AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mara’s thoughts flew to the young man in question. So earnest. So polite. So eager to learn whatever she could teach him. She could not envision him as a terrorist, or even as someone with terrorist leanings. “What does that have to do with Zakhar? With me?”
“Maybe nothing. But we can’t take chances with your safety. By knowing everything we can about those around you we can plan accordingly, so we’ve read the dossiers the State Department compiled. And we continue to get updates.”
A sudden realization startled her. “Alec and Liam, too? They have read these secret reports on my students?”
“Of course. And not just your students. The faculty and staff here, too. Not to mention the people you brought with you from Zakhar.”
Mara covered her face with her palm and made a sound of distress. “I did not know,” she whispered. There was silence between them for a minute, then she glanced up sharply. “Does Andre know of this?”
Trace’s mouth twitched into a rueful smile. “It was his suggestion. Command, really, but couched in diplomatic terms. Even if he hadn’t raised the issue, though, I would have.”
“But why? I cannot believe...this is worse than the paparazzi. To spy on people. To pry into their private lives. To hold the sins of others against them.” Mara knew she was getting worked up, but this was something she had never imagined the only two men she loved in the whole world would have in common. Concern for her safety, yes, even a fierce desire to protect her. That she understood. But to go this far? To suspect everyone?
“Whose life can stand up to such intense scrutiny?” she demanded hotly.
“How did you know when we first met that I once spent six months in Zakhar?” Trace asked reasonably.
“That was—” Mara stopped short. She’d been about to say that was different, but she suddenly realized it really wasn’t. She remembered that even before she’d left Zakhar she’d read dossiers, complete with pictures, on all three men who would be guarding her, bare bones dossiers submitted by the US State Department but expanded by Zakhar’s secret intelligence service. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, hadn’t even considered that this was exactly what she was protesting against now.
But no one’s life is free of things they would rather keep private, she thought. Mine certainly is not. A wave of warm color surged into her cheeks as she remembered the intimate details of everything she and Trace had done at his cabin weeks ago. There is nothing to be ashamed of, she reminded herself sternly. We did nothing wrong. And yet, she knew she would not want anyone else to know about it. What they had done was personal. Private. A memory she cherished, but not one she wanted broadcast to the world. She didn’t even want it contained in some secret report that someone might read.
A thought came to her unbidden, and she blurted it out. “You did not...no,” she said, shaking her head as if she could make the thought go away by her denial.
“Didn’t what?”
“You would not,” Mara reassured herself and him. “You would not betray to anyone what we did in your cabin.” Trace stiffened but he didn’t respond, just looked at her from under his dark eyebrows, a forbidding expression on his face. She added quickly, “I am sorry. It is a despicable thing to accuse you of, and I know in my heart you would not.”
Trace still didn’t speak, and a little calmer now, Mara asked, “Is it even legal for your government to spy on its citizens this way? Zakhar, yes. This I understand. The citizens of Zakhar do have rights, but not the same rights as people in this country, and Andre would do whatever he needed to do to protect me. But that is Zakhar. So I must ask again. Is it legal to do this here?”
“No laws were broken.” He moved a step closer and slid his backpack from his shoulder onto the desk beside her. “Before 9/11 maybe, but not now. The world changed after 9/11, and our laws changed, too.”
Mara gazed up at him, regret in her eyes. “That was a terrible tragedy. But is not the loss of freedom, the loss of privacy, just as tragic?”
Trace laughed abruptly. “You want to debate US political policy, Princess? Discuss the nature and meaning of privacy and freedom as defined by the US Constitution?”
She shook her head. “No. I am Zakharian, and I have no right to criticize. It is just...” She searched for the words. “Some things should remain private. I do not like to think of people’s privacy being invaded.” She had suffered too much herself at the hands of the paparazzi and the tabloids over the years, had suffered too much over the loss of her own privacy to easily accept this invasion of privacy being perpetrated in her name.
