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