by Jan Thompson
“Wow! Two jobs!” Jonas put up four fingers. “I’m going to be rich!”
“Rich in heavenly things,” Marie corrected him.
“What’s the other job?”
“Will you keep an eye on your daddy? He needs you.” Marie got to her feet and patted Jonas’s head.
“One eye?” Jonas asked. “What about the other eye?”
“What?”
“You said to keep one eye on Daddy. What do I do with the other eye?”
Marie glanced at Logan, who didn’t say a word. Keenan was also watching her trying to respond to this child. “Let me rephrase that. Will you take care of Daddy while I’m at work?”
“Sure!” Jonas spread out his hands. “He doesn’t have a job. Mostly he sits and stares out the window.”
Logan coughed.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Keenan said and exited the door.
“Does he?” Marie held Jonas’s hand and walked him to the front door.
“Yep! Maybe I can share my two jobs with him.” Jonas looked at Logan. “Daddy, do you need a job?”
Logan kept a straight face. “You got one for me?”
“It pays a lot!”
“Does it?”
“Uh-huh. Mommy’s going to come home to check on us, so we better behave.”
Logan glanced at Mrs. Ping.
The nanny took Jonas’s hand from Marie. “I bought five flavors of ice cream, but they don’t have vanilla. Can you believe it?”
“Wow!” Jonas jumped up and down. “Five favors! Five favors! Can I have all five?”
“If Mommy and Daddy say you can,” Mrs. Ping replied.
Marie looked at Logan. “Oh, I don’t know. Five in one sitting? I mean, cavities and all.”
Logan pretended to think deeply.
“Daddy, please? I have to eat them now before they melt!”
“What do you think, Mommy?” Logan asked Marie.
“Maybe only today. Then he can spread out each flavor for the rest of the week.”
“That makes sense.” Logan nodded. “All right, go with Mrs. Ping. Let her scoop them out for you, okay?”
“Thank you! Bye!” Jonas was skipping away in the direction of the kitchen, as Mrs. Ping tried to keep up with him.
“So easily distracted,” Marie said.
“Who would think we’d lost to ice cream.” Logan shook his head.
“Don’t use it as a treatment,” Marie warned. “I don’t want him to become overweight.”
“He wears it off playing with his friends. I’m thinking he should play soccer or something soon. Get all that energy out of his system.”
“Soccer?” Marie was alarmed. “Haven’t you heard of brain injuries?”
“You mean football?”
“Both. Let him play something more benign.”
“Like what?”
“Piano or something.”
“Piano? No one has played our Steinway grand since you left.” Logan reached for Marie’s hand. “You’ll have to come home so that we can discuss it.”
“About sports?” Marie let Logan pull her gently toward him.
“And other things…” Logan nuzzled her hair.
“What other things?”
“I don’t know. We’ll think of something.” Logan held her. “I miss you already.”
I miss you too.
Marie couldn’t say it. She didn’t want to get his hopes up. She could not assure him that she would return from the battlefield against Buchanan.
She made a note to herself to update her will, just in case.
Chapter Forty-Five
Marie fanned herself with a manila folder under the ceiling fan that had stopped working an hour ago. Someone was supposed to bring in box fans to help circulate the air in the stuffy operational center, but until then, they had turned down the partially working air conditioner.
The crowd of Mendenhall Security support personnel all around Marie in the giant room made it worse, as their collective body heat rose and swirled and assaulted her sensitive nose every minute. If she hadn’t left her face mask in her hotel room, she’d be wearing it.
Sweat beaded on Marie’s forehead and neck. She could use a glass of ice-cold water, but nobody had the time to go get her something. The refrigerator in the break room was broken, and no one was allowed to come and go from this location until Operation Buchanan was over.
The city of Benghazi was just outside the building, and Marie was sure they sold ice-cold water somewhere out there in the market. That seemed to be all she dreamed of, even though it was supposed to be ninety-something degrees this afternoon.
Not hotter than in here.
She reached for her cotton shirt she had discarded. The soaked-through shirt was hanging over the empty seat back next to hers—a seat vacated by Esperanza Diaz-Mendenhall, who had inserted herself into the fray only moments before.
Marie wiped her face with the shirt. It smelled of her own sweat and perfume. A bad combination for such a hot July day. Her sleeveless blouse stuck to her bra and torso.
Her manila folder fanned only hot air on her face. She felt faint.
Maybe if I go to the hallway…
Slowly, Marie got up. She walked past a bank of windows that were shut and sealed like the seams of a casket. She felt no breeze at all. Somewhere north of this building, the Gulf of Sidra danced in the wind of the Mediterranean.
While we are dying in this tomb…
Her hand reached for the window latch, even as her mind knew it was forbidden. Cracking a window would let the entire region of Cyrenaica know that the Americans had arrived—albeit to excise their common enemy, that arms dealer extraordinaire, that had evaded authorities for five years and ran with global terrorists such as Molyneux, evil personified.
How could Buchanan have been so elusive?
His coat of many colors had given him nine lives. Originally from South Africa, his father was Scottish and his mother of unknown origins. How Buchanan ended up as a businessman in the Middle East, dining with sultans, princes, and heads of state, was anyone’s guess.
The love of money, maybe?
Soon, he moved on from state dinners to backroom breakfasts with Yemeni terrorists, bartering oil and gold for bullets and missile launches.
Then he wandered into the lair of one Molyneux—and that was how he ended up on the radar of the FBI and INTERPOL, inside their operation to capture the elusive terrorist before she blew up yet another city.
Assigned to translate in situ, Marie was caught up in that web of intrigue involving FBI agents in deep undercover, although her involvement resulted in new friends, among whom was Esperanza.
Thank God for Esperanza!
The widowed security specialist had done so much for her family, to keep them safe in Atlanta while Marie was busy at work and could not protect them herself. When all this was over, Marie could go home to protect her family herself.
Home?
Family?
Did I just hear myself say that?
She shut the door behind her and leaned on the plaster wall. It was cool to the touch. When she felt warm, she moved a foot to the right and leaned against the wall again, to siphon heat off the wall. She knew she looked weird, but she was feeling very hot right now.
She stared down the hallway.
Half the lights were out.
Why?
She turned her face the other way. No one was there.
It was eerily quiet.
I’m overthinking again.
Marie closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, Esperanza was standing in front of her, waving a bottle of cold water at her.
“Thank you! Thank you!” Marie grabbed the plastic bottle and drank it.
“You’re aware that you’re drinking micro-plastic,” Esperanza said.
“Or die?”
“Good point.”
“What’s the situation?” Marie placed the bottle against her cheeks and neck, lett
ing the cold condensation on the wall of the plastic cool her down.
“We’re still waiting.”
“Waiting. That’s all we do, it seems.”
Esperanza nodded. “This will be over soon, and you’ll be with your family again in no time.”
“I have to tell Logan.” I wish I could tell him everything.
“Not what’s in the past, but you can if you work for me.” Esperanza tilted her head. “Made your decision yet?”
Marie sipped water slowly.
If it hadn’t been for Esperanza, INTERPOL would not have known that the private investigator whom Logan sent to Europe to find Marie had entangled himself with Buchanan. The PI had seen an opportunity to make a quick buck, and nearly lost his life in the process. He could never tell anyone what really happened three years before in Europe. It explained the lack of forthrightness the PI had with the man who had hired him and paid for all his expenses.
Once again, Logan would be left in the dark.
Yet, he and Marie had Esperanza to thank for their safety. It had been Esperanza who had sent a decoy to throw off the real scent of Marie’s whereabouts, leading the PI to dead ends.
Now Marie knew that Esperanza had done all that as a gesture of good faith.
And a carrot to get Marie to work for Mendenhall Security.
Two months after the PI went home to the United States, they lost Buchanan again. Marie filed for divorce to distance herself from Logan and her beloved son. Using the divorce settlement, she paid Esperanza’s company to protect Jonas and Logan for a year—until word came to her that Buchanan was killed in Yemen.
Two years later, Marie found out on their family cruise in Alaska that the news of Buchanan’s death had been false.
Esperanza’s secure phone buzzed. “What? Who?”
Marie finished drinking her water. Maybe she shouldn’t have gulped it down, but whatever. She turned to return to the operational center as Esperanza was still on the phone, but the latter stopped her.
She hung up. “Your ex-husband relayed a message to my office in Misty Mountain.”
“Logan?” Marie asked.
“Is there another ex I don’t know about?” Esperanza asked.
“What does he want?” Marie didn’t know why Logan would try to contact her, but she recalled the last day they had been together, when he told her he missed her already. They were standing on the foyer of his house on Paces Ferry in Atlanta.
“He wants to know how to send you a care package,” Esperanza said.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. The man’s in love.”
Marie didn’t know how to respond to that. “You got that out of a phone message?”
“You must have had a good time on the cruise—aside from the incidents.”
“Before Buchanan showed up and ruined our party.” Marie breathed in deeply.
“We’re going to take care of him. Don’t you worry.”
At the end of the hallway, a door opened and about four or five people in combat gear marched in.
“Our reinforcements have arrived.” Esperanza went to greet them.
MI5.
Marie knew that the United Kingdom Security Service was after Molyneux. Buchanan was secondary to them. Even the United States Central Intelligence Agency thought that Buchanan would eventually give up Molyneux.
I fear they will all make a deal with Buchanan and let him go.
Marie’s family would never be safe until Buchanan was behind bars or dead.
Perhaps Zaid’s people would not let Buchanan go.
Marie began to pray.
Chapter Forty-Six
Crack!
“What’s that?” Marie pressed her headset against her ears. The sound didn’t repeat.
“Did you hear that?” she asked her colleagues in the operational center. This corner of the room was filled with translators and analysts with far more time in the battlefield than she had, but Esperanza had put Marie in charge because the head translator was out there with Esperanza.
The people nearest her shook their heads.
Crack-crack-crack!
“There!” Marie said.
“Got it.”
Finally. Maybe we need better equipment.
Marie was already on to the next step, but she could not get hold of the team across the street. “Eldorado? Come in, Eldorado?”
Team Eldorado did not respond.
Marie tried another channel. Still nothing.
Lord, please keep everybody safe.
She knew it was a blanket prayer, but that was all she could say right now. Even if she simply called to God, she knew that God would read her mind and hear her prayer. God was powerful like that. He knew all things, saw all things, heard all things.
Marie glanced at the next person over. Her screen was at least fifty-two inches, and she was tracking Team Eldorado through the live cam attached to the videographer embedded with Esperanza.
Marie’s screen was filled with sound waves—
She heard a voice speaking Arabic.
She turned up the audio. Heard that voice again. More Arabic.
She hit the replay button and isolated the single sentence.
And she recognized him.
Zaid.
On the raid? No way.
“Someone get me Espy now!” Marie shouted.
In her headset, she heard more gunfire.
Distant explosions.
A crackle on Marie’s headset startled her.
“Mikonos? Come in, Mikonos!” It was Esperanza.
Before Esperanza could say a word, Marie jumped in. “Espy, I heard Zaid’s voice.”
“What?”
“Where are you?”
“We retreated around the corner. Can’t get in.”
It wasn’t Marie’s place to respond, but she was thinking that the MI5 reinforcement didn’t seem to help if Esperanza couldn’t get into the building to extricate Buchanan himself—that was, if he was really in there.
They had been chasing Buchanan across the Middle East and North Africa since that day his voice appeared in Marie’s stateroom on the cruise ship in Alaska. More than seven weeks later, intel led them to Libya. And here they were in Benghazi, a place of bad memories for the Americans.
The sounds of gunfire subsided.
“We’re going back in,” Esperanza said. “You sure about Zaid?”
“Tell him I say hello.” Marie prayed again for the safety of the team.
She leaned to her right, and her colleague made room at her workstation for Marie to watch the live camera.
Onscreen, Esperanza crossed the street in that dusty old town, straight toward Buchanan—if he was there at all.
The area had turned into a dystopian dust bowl few dared wander into in the last few years, more so than in decades past. The country was lost to anarchy, and the United States had pretty much abandoned it. In this nest of terrorists, Buchanan had found kindred spirits.
Buchanan had managed to bribe his way through the wasteland, dug into a safe hovel, and waited for a break in the dark clouds over him.
Radio silence.
All they had was video with no sound.
Marie’s eyes were on the screen. It was hard to see much since the body cam was on the last person in the back. She tried to spot Zaid and his team.
Would Omar be there too or was he with Aliyah and Abdul back home? Since the Victoria Police had successfully rescued both of them from the abductors in June in the short car chase, Aliyah’s husband had ordered the entire entourage to go home. Zaid had told Esperanza that much.
Marie couldn’t imagine what the interaction was like between Esperanza and Zaid, two competitive alpha leaders.
But why would Zaid be in Benghazi at all? Wasn’t his role simply as a bodyguard to the young prince and his mother?
Shots rang out.
The screen went dark. It could mean many things—including perhaps that the translator had lost his body cam. Or
that he was injured.
Marie prayed again. It was all she could do.
Praying was an automatic thing for her these days. She had prayed so much since she left Jonas, left Logan, left Atlanta. While they were in good hands with Mendenhall Security keeping them safe, Marie couldn’t help but wish that she were there with them.
Praying was her only reprieve.
Well, truly, God was her only reprieve.
There was no communication from Team Eldorado for the next ten minutes until Marie heard Esperanza over her headset. She assumed everyone else heard her too.
“Looks like Buchanan.” Esperanza’s voice was calm. “A DNA test will confirm it.”
The entire room cheered.
“Don’t celebrate yet. He’s still alive,” Esperanza said. “Hey Marie?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Zaid says hello.”
So he was there. Marie was quite confident they had really gotten Buchanan if Zaid was on it. That man seemed to be just as determined as Esperanza—if not more so—to get Buchanan.
Marie prayed that the worst was over. If they caught Buchanan, Esperanza would make sure he went to trial. If Zaid had anything to do with it, Buchanan was as good as dead.
All Marie could think of right now was Jonas. There was no doubt in her mind that if Buchanan escaped or was released, he would come after more than just Marie next time. He would come after her entire family.
If anything happened to Jonas, both she and Logan would be devastated.
If anything happened to Logan, Jonas would be fatherless. It would break Jonas’s heart.
And mine too.
Yes, mine too.
Chapter Forty-Seven
One month later, Logan found Jonas praying in his playroom. He was sitting among his toy cars and trucks, surrounded by tracks that meandered all over the floor.
“God, keep Mommy safe and Daddy sane.” His voice was soft, almost in a whisper, but Logan heard him nonetheless.
Sane?
Where did Jonas learn that word?
Then again, Logan would be lying if he didn’t admit that he was losing his sanity not being able to see Marie. She had been gone for two and a half months.
I miss her as though I would never see her again.
