Bad Seed

“Because you supposedly have a job to do. How can you do that job if you don’t have a home base to do it at?”

“Why did you come to town again?”

“To check up on you, Graham. You have a nasty habit of falling off the face of the planet. I see you still have that truck.”

“Had the tags changed and replaced. Not a problem,” I said. “And if you can track me, so can they.”

“Hardly. I haven’t worked for the CIA for three months now.”

“What?” I asked.

“Yeah. Got tired of their shit too. Too many missions failing for no reason and with no one giving any straight answers,” he said.

“Well, damn.”

“Went through their whole ‘we gotta debrief you so you don’t say shit’ thing and then got the hell outta dodge.”

“Where you set up now?” I asked.

“I’m working on it. DC isn’t my kind of area for long-term shit, but it’s got some nice wooded areas around it.”

“Forever the mountain man.”

“Says the man with a beard four inches long.”

“Don’t like it, don’t look at it,” I said.

“Kind of hard not to. I mean, it’s impressive.”

Our food came, and we shot the shit, updating each other on our lives. I didn’t have much to talk about, and Daniel was a motor-mouth. That’s how I preferred it.

“Sounds like you got a mission of your own,” I said when he finished telling all the reasons he’d stopped trusting the Agency.

“I’m working on it,” Daniel said. “But not like you are.”

“Still got your old contacts?”

“Always,” he said.

“When I get myself … immersed, think you could do me a few favors?”

I watched a mischievous grin spread across Daniel’s cheek as he picked up a french fry.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

CHAPTER 3

CINDY

Lillian’s first day of kindergarten arrived, and she kept trying on all her new outfits. She came running out and twirled around in them like she did when we went shopping the day before. Every time she smiled at me, her eyes would sparkle, and I’d be reminded that her father wasn’t here to witness how excited his princess was to go to school like a ‘big girl’.

He would’ve been so proud of her, of how grown up she looked in all her dresses. He would’ve praised her for putting her shoes on the right feet and getting her legs in the right pant holes. That had always been his task, getting her to dress herself. He’d been adamant about it because of how it helped her coordination.

And she was dressing herself as if it had never been an issue.

“How about this one, Mommy?”

I looked up and saw Lillian walk into the room wearing my favorite dress of hers. It had a ribbon around her waist tied off into a bow, and the fabric was a beautiful blue and pink and yellow floral print. She had on some blue flats with yellow socks, and she was holding a pink bow in her hand for me to put in her hair.