Devin checked his watch on the way out: 5:35. Unless they were closer to DC than he’d guessed, that put him in heavy Beltway traffic on the ride from the office in Alexandria to his apartment in Hyattsville.
His estimate about the distance turned out to be pretty accurate. After a seventy-minute, light-traffic drive, and about a half hour inside the MINERVA headquarters building, he slumped into the leather driver’s seat of his SUV and took a few moments to think about how he’d go about skipping town. His dad would not be keen on the idea of packing a suitcase and heading straight to the airport this morning, later today, or even tomorrow, for no other reason than he “required more notice than that.” He could hear the words right now. His dad never rushed into things, or out of them.
He’d show up in a few days, which actually worked out better. Kari was a little more like herself when he wasn’t around. A lot more. Mom’s downward spiral had really done a number on her. Five years younger than Devin, she had been around for the worst of it, while he’d been away at college. He still felt guilty about that. He’d gone to school thirty minutes away, unaffected and mostly oblivious to their mother’s unraveling. Kari had spent her high school years struggling with their mother’s rapidly worsening psychosis and a just as swiftly dwindling collection of friends.
Falls Church, Virginia, was a small, densely packed community a few miles west of the National Mall, which put it just south of McClean, Virginia, home of the Central Intelligence Agency. Growing up, all Devin’s friends’ parents had either worked on Capitol Hill in high-visibility jobs or “for the government.” Most of the kids had known to stop asking questions when you got the generic answer. Even the new kids caught on, because word got around—even when it wasn’t supposed to. As it had with their mother.
Kari had pulled a Houdini after graduation and never looked back—more like she never came back. She had applied to schools on the West Coast and had gotten accepted to UCLA, spending nearly all her vacation time with friends and her summer quarters loading up on prerequisites. She had graduated in five years with a master of social welfare degree and had immediately been hired at a major nonprofit organization, where she’d worked nonstop for the past five years. She’d been home twice since leaving for college almost fifteen years ago. Dad had visited her at least once a year, usually with Devin. She wouldn’t let Mom visit and had seen her only once during the two times she made it back east. Mom had seemed to understand, or she hadn’t cared. It had gotten harder to tell over time, until he’d pretty much stopped seeing her, too. Devin didn’t want to think about it anymore.
He opened the compact nylon satchel he’d thrown on the passenger seat and removed his phone. MINERVA required them to leave all personal items behind during operations, especially electronics devices. At the start of each operation, they were given a slim wallet preloaded with a basic identification card and enough cash to fulfill their mission, an encrypted and presumably untraceable smartphone, and any additional personal gear deemed necessary by the operation leader. They handed in their phones and wallets before departing for the mission staging area and retrieved them upon return.
Devin pressed the power button and set the phone on the seat before starting the SUV. He shifted into reverse and checked the backup camera. All clear. The last thing he needed, while his fortune somewhat shined at MINERVA, was to back over one of his colleagues. Shea would undoubtedly interpret that as the unceremonious end to his good luck streak.
The phone caught his eye before he let his foot off the brake. The home screen was filled with missed-call notifications and text messages. He put the vehicle in park and grabbed the phone. Jesus. His dad had called and left voice mails seven times in the past two hours. He found text messages buried between the call notifications.
PLEASE CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS. VERY IMPORTANT.
SERIOUSLY. NEED YOU TO CALL ME RIGHT AWAY.
DEVIN. CALL ME NOW!
DEVIN. I’M AT YOUR APARTMENT! WHERE ARE YOU!
JUST CALL ME. SOMETHING HAPPENED. I’M PARKED AT YOUR PLACE.
HEADING HOME. CALL ME OR COME BY ASAP!
IT’S ABOUT HELEN. PLEASE CALL.
Of course it was. It was always about her—though this sounded entirely different. His dad rarely overreacted to her antics, or anything for that matter. Devin had seen him frazzled once, maybe twice, since as far back as he could remember. And Mom had given him plenty of opportunities to lose his shit. He must have been one hell of an analyst at the CIA. A voice of reason in a troubled world, even as his own world fell apart. Respected enough that they kept him on for three years after dismissing Helen, which got him to thirty years of service and a full pension annuity.