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“We don’t have to.”
“You’re saying this is like a one-shot deal?”
“I’m saying that if I need you, I’ll find you,” he said. “I already said you’re not that difficult to track.”
“Not in a foreign country where I don’t want to get lost and don’t know anywhere,” she said. “I could disappear in the US, if I wanted to.”
He got up to retrieve a water bottle from the dresser. “Tell that to my brother. He tracked you and your mom down. He ever tell you how?”
She shook her head, rolling onto her back. Daire. His letter was still fresh in her mind. After receiving it the previous day, she’d written back. But her worry was still potent.
“I have to believe I’ll get back there,” she said. “If I let myself dwell on the possibility that I could be here for much longer…”
It didn’t bear thinking about. Being taken somewhere against her will was bad. Being kept there was infuriating. But having freedom that she couldn’t do anything with… Some days it was enough to make her consider jumping off a building. The possibility of running back to Daire was one of her favorite and most vivid fantasies.
Usually, if it snuck in during the day, she’d do whatever she could to chase it away. But at night, in her dreams, they’d been reunited more times than she could count, and in oh so many different, equally salacious, ways.
“Seven klicks west of the beta site, there’s a spot where Harry used to take us fishing.”
“Okay,” she said, swaying his way when he appeared in her peripheral vision to sit on the bed again. “This a nice father, son story?”
He breathed out and smiled. “There’s a rocky outcrop at the base of the highest ridge. Above the grassy bank of the lake. We called it the Ammo Dump because they look like a bunch of different caliber bullets dumped on a few mortar rounds… Anyway…” Tess rolled onto her side again, tucking both hands under her head to listen. “Daire lived there for like a year when he was nine.”
“He lived there?”
Styx nodded. “Harry came down every day they didn’t have missions to train him. Even if he wasn’t there, Harry gave him instructions to follow. Dutiful little soldier always did as told.”
“Alone?” she asked, sitting up in shock. “Harry just left him out there?”
“It was just after you and your mom left Olympus. Things were real strained between Z and H then. Expectations on Daire went through the roof. Harry was frustrated, angry, grieving.”
The story wasn’t going in a good direction. “Harry took it out on Daire,” she whispered.
“Drilled him harder than ever before.”
No wonder Daire hated her. She’d distracted his father, been dubbed the light of his world, and Daire got the thrashing after she vanished from both of their lives.
“Being exiled must have killed him,” she said, doubting there was a worse punishment he could endure.
“Harry doesn’t show his feelings in any way even close to traditional. Putting Daire out there, forcing him to survive on his own… He couldn’t stand to see the boy he loved, his son, sinking deeper into the Olympus abyss. Harry wanted him out of it. Wanted both of them out… He didn’t know how to save either of them. His accord to save you and your mom made it impossible for him to leave. Not that anyone ever did before or since… It included Daire. He could’ve left with you and Carrie, but he chose to stay.”
“With his father,” she said, appreciating the insight into the men’s rocky relationship.
“With Olympus,” Styx said, gulping from the bottle and then putting it down on the nightstand. “You know Harry left to live with you and Carrie when you were about six months old?” She nodded. “That wasn’t sanctioned, he just went… and tried to take Daire. They were walking out, would’ve been gone, free, if Daire hadn’t asked so many questions. When he found out Harry didn’t intend to go back, Daire refused to leave the compound. They got in a fight and Garrick found them… Harry knew the risk, knew what he was doing… Walking away without Daire, that was something neither of them ever got over.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Olympus isn’t the paradise you seem to think it is. You talk about saving it, about building it back up… I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Its mission is to make the world a better place,” she said. “To save lives.”
“Yeah,” he said with a semi-nod. “Sometimes. Other times we’re influencing politics or the stock market. We’re maneuvering our guy into the top spot of some Fortune 500. Yeah, we take out rebels in third world nations who are terrorizing or killing local people. But we also divert aid to areas where our connections are strongest. We liberate abductees, but we assassinate adversaries too. Daire takes his work seriously, all of it. And God knows Harry saved my sorry ass. But sometimes I wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
“If Daire had walked out instead of fighting him, where would they be now? What would they have achieved?”
“Zeus would’ve tracked us eventually.”
