marathon while he followed in a car, eating and drinking water I’d begged for.
“It’s good to hear you say that.” I wanted to continue the conversation, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to respond to that statement.
It wasn’t because my father and I had nothing to talk about or that I was surprised to have my allegedly dead father in my life. Frankly, the thrill of having a secret father was gone: my mother told me the truth about my father when I was eight, and ever since then I’d been more than happy to have him around the few times he was able to visit.
My father came to visit once every three or four months. He’d wake me up in the middle of the night, and we’d sit and talk for hours. Sometimes he’d stay for months, but other times he had to leave minutes after he arrived.
During his long-term stays, we tried to act as if we were a normal family, as if he were always around. We’d go ice-skating, he’d help me with my schoolwork, and he even taught me how to play the piano. He had loved music when he was young. One time when he came home several months ago, there had been a problem with my mother’s car. He and I decided to fix it for her, but when we were done, the car wouldn’t even start. We still laugh about that.
The longest time I’d ever spent with him was three months, during a vacation at a remote resort in Mexico. We were away from everything and all the distractions, and I had loved it.
Today, however, I was nervous because I knew what awaited me at the end of our car ride. One disadvantage of being in the CIA was the fact that he had enemies and would always have them, enemies that he had to protect my mother and me from, so that what happened years ago wouldn’t repeat itself.
My father’s fear of either me or my mom getting hurt again had driven him to hire Logan to train me, so I could protect myself if anything were to happen while he was away. I was thirteen when he came to visit with Logan. My father told me that although I was watched twenty four hours a day by my live-in bodyguards, he needed to be sure that I’d be able to defend myself if his safety got compromised again and if someone found out the truth about my mother and me. From that day onward, Logan trained me in combat, guns, archery, and anything else he thought I’d need to survive if I were kidnapped.
I seriously doubted I’d get kidnapped because my bodyguards followed me everywhere I went: the only place Felix and Ben didn’t follow me to was, well, school.
“Are you nervous?” my father asked, and again I made the effort to turn to him and keep a conversation going. My father looked different every time I saw him. Scanning him now, he appeared to have lost weight. A bandage tightly circled his left bicep.
“I’m all right,” I lied. All right was the last thing I was.
I should have stayed home with my mother. She didn’t want anything to do with training and the CIA. She even told me I could stay home with her if I didn’t want to come out with my father. I couldn’t tell her I wanted to stay because I knew she, too, wanted me to be able to defend myself if something were to happen.
The road we were on led to a CIA training center somewhere east of San Francisco. Logan took me there once a month so I could practice my skills and use the advanced training facility they had. Shooting paper targets and soda cans at the back of our house was nothing compared to the CIA’s technologically advanced targets. Sometimes, I faked being ill just to get out of going, but Logan always saw through my pretense.
“You know you didn’t have to agree to come with me.” My father had sensed the deceit in my voice. “We could have stayed home and played a game of cards or watched football—I hear Jake and Danny talked you into becoming a fan of football.” It was amazing sometimes how much my father knew about my life, especially since he was never home. But then again, I could hardly be surprised, not when I knew that the gold wristwatch I wore twenty-four-seven had