Proof

Chapter 2

The stark difference between this time and all the other times Alex had traveled the road from Phoenix to Athena tore at the very core of her. Before, she had always approached this passage with joy, anticipating the turn onto Olympus Road, knowing that soon after she’d reach Script Pass, the road to Athena, all the while eagerly awaiting another new year of school. But now…

She shook her head, trying to clear it as she drove behind the black van that was serving as a hearse for Rainy’s body. She knew she was tired, she’d been up nearly all night, but adrenaline was still pumping and she knew from past experience just how far it would carry her. She was all right for a while yet.

Once she was through the Phoenix metro area, Alex slipped her headset over her right ear and hit the speed dial number on her cell for Christine Evans at Athena. Christine answered on the second ring. Alex gave her only the essentials over the cell connection. She was bringing Rainy home, and would need a place to stay for a while.

“Of course,” Christine said instantly. “Everything’s open until the first, including your old dorm if you want it. After that you can stay with me, or in one of the guest houses. We won’t have any families or guests visiting for the first month.”

Alex knew that was standard, to give new students time to settle in to the school routine without interruption. Those 6:30 a.m. reveilles were a shock for some students, as the hot, dry climate was for others, and the acclimatization to both took time.

“That’s fine. I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

“Which will be?”

“I just cleared the Phoenix city limits, so I’m about a half hour out. But I’ll be…securing things at the morgue in Athens first.”

The former army captain didn’t miss the inference. She also didn’t make the mistake of pursuing it in a cell conversation that could be monitored. “I see. I should expect you in the early evening, then?”

“Probably. I’ll call you.”

“All right.” There was a pause. “Alex?”

“Yes?”

“It will be good to spend time with you. I just wish the circumstances were different.”

“No more than I,” Alex said fervently.

After the call Alex tried to think of other things. Of how strange this place had seemed to her east-coast eyes the first time she’d come here. Used to the rolling green hills of northern Virginia and the time-worn mountains of the east coast, she’d found the dry desert flatness and jagged peaks as strange as any moonscape.

She’d initially wondered why on earth they’d located the school here, when they’d had the entire country to choose from. She’d even asked her grandfather, Charles Forsythe, one of the founders and main backers of Athena, why they’d picked that spot. And had asked it, she’d much later realized, with all the arrogance of a teenager who was certain she knew it all.

He’d told her that they’d chosen this place for all the reasons she thought it was a bad choice. She hadn’t understood then, but eventually she’d realized the wisdom of the selection.

And she had come to love it for its own kind of stark, harsh beauty, and to respect it for what it had to teach the women of Athena about reality and survival and the incontrovertible facts of nature and life. It had become their sanctuary even as it was their proving ground. Being dropped in the wilds of the White Tank Mountains with minimal supplies and told to find your way back had a way of teaching you a new perspective.

But she doubted there was any perspective to be gained in this case. There had been no one in her life quite like Rainy. And there never would be again. There had been only five years age difference between them, but at times Rainy had seemed as much a mother figure as an older sister. Perhaps, Alex had thought more than once, because her own mother had been so cool and distant.

She’d felt closer to Rainy than even her own blood sibling. She loved her big brother, Bennington, dearly, but he also had the knack of irritating the heck out of her more than anyone else ever could. In fact, she’d felt closer to Rainy than any of her family except her grandfather Charles, or G.C., as she’d called him since childhood. It was a nickname her mother had despised, which of course had guaranteed Alex would use it as often as possible.

Alex reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed the bottle of spring water she’d tucked inside the large shoulder bag she used as both purse and briefcase. And holster, if it came to that. The bag had a special outside-access pocket for her duty weapon concealed between the two divided sections.

She took a long drink, knowing that keeping hydrated in this desert climate was crucial. She’d been gone long enough to have lost some of her adaptive abilities to this kind of arid heat; Washington D.C. was beyond hot in the summer, but arid was not a frequently used adjective there. She was thankful the new FBI crime lab was in Quantico; the proximity to the Potomac gave a bit of relief when the capital itself was sweltering.

The black van in front of her changed lanes to go around a slow-moving truck, and Alex had to wait for a break between vehicles to follow. There hadn’t been this much traffic when she’d attended Athena, either, she thought. She’d graduated just thirteen years ago, but the roads between Phoenix and Athens had been a lot emptier then. Traffic would thin out the closer she got, but still, there was a marked difference.

Not for the first time she was grateful to the people, including her grandfather, who had had the vision for Athena. The late Arizona senator Marion Gracelyn had begun it, and it had evolved from her initial idea of a military-type academy just for women into the much bigger, more far-reaching thing it was now, an institution dedicated to helping women take their rightful place in a world that was still very much run by men.

When she’d first arrived, after the trek through a strange land to a strange place, she’d been wondering why she’d worked so hard to come here. She’d known it was expected of her, the Forsythe fortune having helped found the school. But as seventh grade and the time to go to the school she hadn’t chosen neared, she had rebelled against this set future even as it closed in on her, purposely refusing to do her schoolwork and messing around during national testing. Only the awful disappointment of her beloved grandfather had shaken her off her mutinous course and sent her back to work.

As it was, she’d lost a year and had come to Athena as an eighth grader. She’d been assigned an orientation group with seventh-grade girls who would become the Cassandras. The age difference had made for problems in itself, but Rainy had straightened that out as she had straightened them all out.

She had been the force that had brought them together, had taken the young girls they had been and transformed them into a cohesive unit of smart, capable, skilled women who could handle anything thrown their way.

Alex blinked rapidly as tears blurred her vision. This was impossible. It just could not be happening. She could not be driving back to Athena behind a van carrying Rainy’s body.

Her cell phone rang, startling her. She’d forgotten it was still in her lap. She glanced at the caller ID, considered letting it go to voice mail, then chided herself for being a coward. She flipped the phone open.

“Hello, Emerson.”

“Alexandra.”

Emerson Howland, Alex’s fiancé, was the only person on the planet besides her mother who called her that. Even her grandfather called her Alex. Emerson’s manner sometimes made her feel as if the age gap between them was even greater than twelve years. But he had told her once he thought Alexandra a lovely name, so she’d finally given up trying to break him of the habit. She admired so much about him—the man’s work was, after all, saving others—that it seemed a petty thing to nag him about.

She waited for him to speak. He seemed to be waiting for her to do the same. She was never sure if it was some kind of power thing on his end, or simply that generation’s deep, inbred, sometimes cool politeness that marked his every interaction.

She found she was in no mood for that, either. “You called me,” she pointed out.

There was a pause, just long enough for her to consider how snippy she’d sounded. But before she could say anything, he spoke again.

“Your mother says hello.”

“Oh?”

She stopped herself from pointing out that her mother had her number if she wanted to say hello. Not likely, she knew. Odd, when her own mother would rather speak to Alex’s fiancé than her. But then, her upper-crust mother highly approved of Emerson. In fact, she usually seemed happier to see him than her own daughter on those occasions they were together—which came as infrequently as Alex could manage.

“Yes, I dropped some flowers off at the house today. For her birthday.”

Drat. I forgot. I’ll have to send something. Fast.

“That was thoughtful,” she said into the phone. “I’m sure she appreciated it.”

Funny how he remembered her mother’s birthday, and her mother remembered his, while the woman could barely bestir herself to remember her own daughter’s. But if that daughter forgot hers…

“She mentioned she hadn’t heard from you.” He paused, but she said nothing. She had long ago stopped responding to her mother’s guilt-laden efforts at what she called communication. “So…how are you?” This time he sounded as if he really wanted to know.

“About like you’d expect.”

“I am sorry, Alexandra. I know she was a dear friend.”

She felt bad about her snappishness. “Thank you, Emerson. I’m just a little edgy.”

“I should go. I have a meeting.”

“The triple valve replacement?” she asked, expressing an interest she didn’t really feel.

“Yes. The surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. We’re optimistic about the final result.”

She was certain he had reason to be. Emerson was one of the premier cardiac surgeons in the country, and his skill in saving lives and his willingness to travel anywhere to do it were two of the things she loved about him.

“Good luck, then.”

There was an awkward moment of silence followed by perfunctory goodbyes. They had never done that very well, as if each of them felt there should be more said but neither knew what it was.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Relationships were so much more complex then the trails of evidence she loved to analyze, dissect and follow to an inarguable conclusion.

She thought about what she’d seen in the cold storage room when she’d gone back in to look at the scene and resecure Rainy before she’d contacted anyone about the intruder. She’d found no trace evidence, and hadn’t had the means to check for fingerprints. But there had been a gurney near Rainy’s body. And on that gurney an empty black body bag.

And she wondered if his plan hadn’t been to tamper with Rainy’s body, but to steal it.

Alex didn’t protest when Christine pressed a glass of wine into her hands. She knew she was on edge, now that she was here and the task at hand had been accomplished. Rainy’s body was secured in Athens’s small morgue and was being watched over by an off-duty officer hand-selected by Kayla. Alex had forced herself to leave and get some food and rest, knowing she was in no shape to act or think clearly in any technical area.

Besides, the doctor Christine had called in would not be available until tomorrow. So, in the morning she would head to the morgue and get her questions answered. Those that had answers, anyway.

Alex looked at the woman who had been the heart and soul of Athena for over two decades. Christine had built the crucial part of Athena from the beginning, had searched out and handpicked the staff of instructors, carefully assessing each for not just their intelligence and aptitude for teaching, but for their ability to understand and dedicate themselves to Athena’s cause.

It was that last that had eliminated more candidates than anything else. Not everyone had the mind-set to work for the most state-of-the-art college-prep school for women in the country. When you threw in some of the more controversial subjects in the program of study, it made the selection process even more delicate. Not everyone agreed with Athena’s stated goal, the empowerment of women in America. In all areas. It was Christine’s job to weed out those who couldn’t come to Athena with the wholehearted desire to make it possible for her students to achieve what was now so difficult simply because they were women.

Christine also made the final choices of the students, selecting only the best and brightest in both academics and athletics. Those few who met her standards were sent invitations to attend Athena Academy. In fact, a stack of folders was on the coffee table in front of her, and Alex knew Christine was going through them, familiarizing herself with each of the thirty or so new students who would be entering the academy. She was careful to welcome each new arrival by name when she first saw them. Athena, she always said, was an intimidating place, and she wanted to be sure each girl knew she was expected and wanted. That it was not simply that the student was lucky to be here, but also that Athena was lucky to have her.

And Alex was just rattled enough tonight to ask something that had been living in the back of her mind for years, ever since she had realized how truly hard one of those invitations was to get.

“Why did I get asked to Athena?”

Christine blinked. She turned her head slightly, as she did when she wanted to study something or someone carefully. She’d been blinded in her left eye in a training exercise, which had resulted in her retirement from military service. But it was also why she’d ended up running Athena, so she’d often said she had no complaints. Even at sixty-one she could still keep up with most of the rigorous training at Athena, and she ran the weaponry, horsemanship and survival courses herself. She even taught Arabic.

“You were asked,” Christine said after a moment, “because you deserved to be asked.”

“It wasn’t because of my grandfather?”

Christine leaned back in her chair. She took a sip from her own glass of wine. “You know what Athena is all about. Do you really think we support nepotism? That we would take someone who didn’t qualify simply because they had a relative who is on the board?”

“No,” Alex admitted. “I know the school takes nothing with any strings attached. But—”

“And even if we did,” Christine went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “no one graduates here without having earned it. Fully and completely.”

“But you go by federal and state test scores, and mine had plummeted,” Alex said. “My whole average, in everything, took a big hit the year before I came to Athena.”

“We only begin the selection process with those scores,” Christine corrected her mildly. “And, independently of your grandfather, you had come to our attention long before that year when you decided to resist.”

Alex colored slightly. Christine smiled.

“Did you think you were the only rebel we ever took on? The only one who purposely messed up, just to spoil everyone’s expectations?”

Alex shook her head, feeling a bit sheepish. “I guess I didn’t think about it at all.”

“And you,” Christine said, gesturing toward Alex with her glass, “had the highest set of expectations imaginable placed on you, with your grandfather being a founder, on the board and a primary financial backer of Athena.”

“It was just that nobody asked me what I wanted to do,” she said, suddenly feeling compelled to explain that year of rebellion when she’d refused to work at all. “It was like it was a given I’d come to Athena, whether I wanted to or not.” She grimaced. “So I set out to make that impossible, just to show them.”

It was the only time in her life she’d intentionally done something she knew would hurt or disappoint her grandfather. And although he’d gently forgiven her and told her he understood, she still regretted it.

“We know how to look beyond rebellion,” Christine said. “In fact, we often look for it. A strong spirit and will are also essential here.” Then, in a seeming non sequitur, Christine asked, “How is Emerson?”

Alex blinked. “Fine, I suppose. I talked to him earlier today.”

If Christine thought it odd that she hadn’t mentioned the man she was supposed to marry since she’d arrived, it didn’t show in her face. And Alex wondered if there had been a point to this seeming change of subject, if Christine was implying that Emerson and a woman of strong spirit and will were a questionable match. The woman had met Emerson once, when she’d made a trip to D.C. and they had gotten together for dinner and introductions. But Christine was better than anyone Alex had ever known, inside the FBI or out, at sizing people up quickly. And she was rarely wrong.

Christine studied Alex for a moment, her expression softening. When she spoke, it was on the previous subject. “Do you regret giving in?”

Alex drew back sharply. “And coming to Athena? Of course not!”

“You seemed to, at first. I know you had a hard time, being older than the other Cassandras.”

“I was a pain in the butt,” Alex said bluntly. “I know everyone thought I was snooty and aloof because of my background, because I was a Forsythe, but really I was just…ambivalent about the whole thing.”

“And now?”

“Athena was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wouldn’t trade coming here, and what I learned here, for anything.”

Her voice had grown rather fierce, and it made Christine smile. “We’re changing the world, Alex. Slowly, but with each graduating class, we’re showing humankind just how much women are capable of, given the same training and opportunities men have.”

Alex thought about what Christine had said later, as she lay in bed. She was in the guest house closest to the mountains, which she had picked for its relative isolation. She’d originally intended to sleep in her old dorm room, but the memories were far too strong there, the hole left by Rainy’s death too ragged and fresh for her to stay. It was in that room that they’d made the Cassandra promise, the pledge to come if any of the others needed them, no questions asked.

We’re changing the world…

She rolled onto her side, punching a hollow for her head in the pillow. Were they? Really? It didn’t seem that way sometimes. The man she’d encountered in the morgue seemed living proof of that. But Josie Lockworth, a fellow Cassandra, had always said they had to look at the bigger picture. Alex had valued Josie’s words because she felt that Josie could really relate to her background, Josie’s father having been both a supporter of the building of Athena and not coincidentally the director of the CIA at the time. Alex supposed that butting her head against that thickest of glass ceilings, that of the military establishment, had made Josie more aware that changes like this took not years but decades, generations.

She changed to her other side, kicking off the sheet and thin blanket.

Maybe that’s what they were doing, she thought. Changing the long-term, bigger picture. Each woman they put in a position denied to women before meant a younger generation of men and women grew up with the idea that it was normal. Which cleared the way to the next step. And then the next.

Alex sat up with a disgusted sigh. She’d expected to be asleep before she had time to think about anything, especially after being up since two that morning and having a full meal and a glass of wine. But here she was, wide-awake, unable to shut off her mind.

Never one to resort to chemical sleep aids, she rolled out of bed and dressed in jeans, running shoes and a white knit tank top. At night, at least, she didn’t have to pour sunscreen on the pale skin that went with her hair.

She stepped outside, the shock of heat hitting her. In D.C., it got hot, seemed hotter because of the humidity, but it generally cooled off at least some at night. Here, at this time of year, it wasn’t unusual to be out at 2:00 a.m. in temperatures near ninety. Fortunately it wasn’t that hot now, but it was still enough to bring on memories of hot summer nights at Athena.

She needed no flashlight. She knew these grounds as well as she knew her house in Alexandria, a D.C. suburb. Off to her right she saw lights on in Christine’s bungalow, where Christine was no doubt still working in preparation for the incoming students. To her left was the library, and in front of that, beyond the parking lot, was the dorm building she’d avoided tonight.

She stopped walking and looked at the two-story building that had once been a spa of the sort that rich people who had picked up certain addictions went to for treatment. It had been converted into an efficient and pleasant, if no longer quite so luxurious, fifty-room dormitory.

She turned and looked up at the mountains behind her, at the view she’d had from her dorm room’s balcony for her entire stay at Athena. More than once she’d slept out there so that she could wake to see the first rays of the sun paint the stark landscape that had once been so strange to her.

She made her way past the library to the science labs, then wandered toward the main building that housed the classrooms, offices and auditorium. She’d been awed by the options presented at Athena, at the chances to study things never offered in a regular school—the local high school didn’t run to martial arts, cryptology, weapons and criminal profiling in addition to lock picking, nor did they encourage students to intern with the FBI, CIA or other agency of choice.

Moved by an emotion born of her discussion with Christine and her thoughts afterward, she walked to the front entrance of the school. She went on to Script Pass, the only road that led to Athena. She turned and looked back, past the fountain and flowers at the center of the circular drive, over the lawn in front of the main building, up to the dark shapes of the mountains beyond. In the moonlight it all had an ethereal silver glow.