The Lost Read Free

it was just about companionship and his lack thereof.
    “I married when I was about your age. It didn’t work out, but at first… It was worth it.” The smile on his father’s face confirmed just how fondly he recalled those early years with his ex-wife.
    “I have been feeling a little different lately,” heconfessed. After all, if he couldn’t be honest with his father, who could he confide in?
    “It’s time you weren’t so alone, Adam. Maybe you should start thinking about a wife. I’d even like some grandkids.”
    “Seriously, Dad,” Adam rebuked, but his father just smiled and teased with a dip of his head, “You are getting up in years. Maybe I can introduce you to her.”
    “I’ll think about it,” he said with a chuckle and heartily clapped his dad on the shoulder, appreciating the heart-to-heart.
    His father motioned toward the door of the breezeway with his hand and said, “I need to get back to work. How about I come by later tonight to firm things up?”
    In his father’s line of employment, long hours weren’t unusual. In fact, it was almost weird to have him near and available, since normally his undercover work took him far from home, often for months at a shot.
    “How are things at work?” Adam asked as he walked with his father across the breezeway connecting the SolTerra office building to the warehouse and laboratory facilities.
    “Fascinating, but also depressing.”
    The admission shocked Adam. Although he and Salvatore were close, his CIA father rarely discussed the details of his cases. In all the time that Adam could remember, his father had never provided information about an assignment, much less shown any emotion about one. Which made Adam wonder why this case was so different.
    “Depressing?” he speculated aloud, hoping to elicit more information.
    A tired shrug barely lifted the fabric of the ill-fitting suit over his father’s shoulders and was chased by a heavy, heartfelt sigh. “We lost another one.”
    Another death, Adam thought. As someone who lived with the specter of death every day…
    “I’m sorry. Death is never easy, is it?” He gently grasped Salvatore’s shoulder and squeezed it in condolence. As before, the hum of power beneath his hand as he touched his father tainted the heartfelt gesture.
    “No, it isn’t. I’ve got to run,” Salvatore replied, growing uneasy. After another hesitant embrace, his father hurried from the SolTerra offices, leaving Adam in the gleaming granite and steel lobby of the building.
    Alone except for the trio of security guards at the semicircular reception desk.
    Alone being a state with which Adam was well familiar.
    As he strolled to the elevators to return to his penthouse office, he wondered about his father’s latest mission and why he was so emotionally involved with it. Maybe over a birthday dinner later in the week he could pry more information from his dad and discover what was affecting him so profoundly.
    Adam headed to the elevator bank and up to his office. When he passed by the assorted cubicles filled with people at work, pride filled him, but couldn’t eliminate the emptiness within him. Much as he had confessed to Salvatore, he felt different. There was a hole in his center that seemed to expand each day, much as the summons of the energy surrounding him grew harder to ignore.
    At the door to his office, he forced a smile for his assistant. “Good morning, Sandy. I’m not to be disturbed,”he advised and entered his office. Striding to his desk, he plopped into the state-of-the-art ergonomic chair and waved his hand over a button built into a panel underneath the stainless steel surface. Without physically touching the button, he sent a gentle surge of power to trip the switch, lowering the shades built into the exterior windows together with those along the interior glass wall of his office, closing him off from the world.
    A world in which he really didn’t belong.
    With the natural daylight