Page 3 of Don't Look Back

She took a long, slow breath.Today, I am a Valkyrie.

Well, except she wasn’t a Valkyrie. Not really. She was a consultant for Friday Morning Valkyries, but she’d never taken Morgan’s defense classes, or Freya’s tradecraft training. She didn’t have the security clearance of all therealValkyries. She didn’t travel abroad and run down artifact traffickers. Her fieldwork was limited to archives on the East Coast.

Until a few weeks ago, she couldn’t get either the security clearance or passport necessary for being a Valkyrie. But with help from the State Department, she had finally obtained a little blue book of freedom. The security-clearance part would come later. It was enough to have an actual passport.

And tomorrow, she’d get her very first stamp.

That thought centered her. Eased the queasiness in her stomach.

I am going to Malta.

She climbed from her car and smiled at the NAVFAC—Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command—employee who’d escorted her onto the base and then politely waited in the parking lot for her to get over her minor panic attack before entering the building.

“Sorry. Got a text I needed to reply to,” she lied. Hopefully, he hadn’t been watching her and seen she wasn’t using her phone.

“No problem. We’ve got an hour before the first session.”

It took fifteen minutes to get the projector to work with the prepared presentation Diana had sent her. She then ran through the slides and accompanying notes. It was familiar information, but she was glad Diana taught classes on the regular, because the notes were detailed enough that Kira wouldn’t get stuck wondering why there was a slide of Indiana Jones in a refrigerator without the accompanying point that was being made, even though the joke should be obvious.

She smiled at the silly meme. She didn’t expect it from Diana, who always seemed so serious. But then, Kira and Diana met over serious circumstances, so it might be their brief history and not the woman’s personality.

Students filed in minutes before the start time. They all wore fatigues of one kind or another. The slightly different patterns and cut probably indicated which branch of the military they were from. Little Creek was part of a joint base run by the Navy, but the other part, Fort Story, was Army. Plus, Norfolk wasn’t far, and, for all she knew, personnel from there had also been assigned to one of these training sessions.

This was the kickoff for a series of trainings Diana had proposed to the Department of Defense. Her depth of experience in the Middle East and knowledge of the artifact trafficking world—and recent acclaim for identifying and taking down a terrorist leader—would be a big draw for students who might otherwise grumble at being forced to take the class.

They’d be disappointed when they learned they were being taught by an understudy. Hence, Kira’s nerves.

As expected, there were grumbles when she introduced herself, but they dissipated when she explained Diana was recovering from an emergency appendectomy.

A student in the front row raised his hand. She hadn’t planned to take questions until after each topic was covered, but she hadn’t begun yet, so she nodded for him to proceed.

“Are you the same Dr. Hanson who was abducted in connection with Dr. Edwards and the terrorist leader Makram Rafiq?”

Her throat went dry. She should have expected this. It was strange that she hadn’t. The trial for the two men who’d abducted her would likely begin in the fall and was surfacing again on the news as legal dominos lined up. Her abduction had been a side story to the bigger, horrific crimes committed by the terrorist leader and his American accomplices, but she’d had her share of media attention, especially back in December and January.

She nodded and said, “I’m not able to discuss the events of last December any more than Diana could if she were here. Trials are pending, and we won’t do anything to jeopardize the prosecution.” She picked up the remote to start the presentation. “We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s begin.”

The first session went well enough. During her lunch break she texted Diana to tell her things were going fine and ask how she was feeling.

The reply came from Diana’s boyfriend, Lieutenant Chris Flyte.

Chris

Thanks, Kira. D is sleeping but doing better today. So thankful you could step in.

Kira

Of course.

It had been an ordeal to arrange these workshops. A last-minute cancellation for the very first session could have doomed the contract, and Diana had moved to Virginia Beach to be with Chris. Any work she could get locally was a bonus.

Saw some posts in the base chats that tagged you and the news reports from Dec. Hope that wasn’t an issue.

Everyone was so careful around Kira’s mental state. With good reason. She’d just been starting to process what had happened in December when her dad suffered a massive stroke. He was hospitalized for nearly a month. Three weeks after returning home to Kira’s care, just when they thought he was through the worst and had a good chance of recovering most of his speech and mobility, he died suddenly in his sleep.

She gave Chris the same answer she’d been giving everyone the last few months.

I’m fine.

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