Just This Once

by Diana X Dunn

  Now he smiled at her defensive gesture. He quickly folded his arms over his chest as a sign that he wouldn’t touch her again. “Such a shame, and I was really looking forward to getting to know you better.” The look in his eyes suggested that he was hoping to turn their fledgling friendship something altogether more intimate, and Sienna felt a strong flash of desire that she quickly squelched.

  “Let me walk you to the transport station, at least. You shouldn’t really be walking around this neighborhood on your own at night,” Alex said.

  Sienna had no doubts about her ability to look after herself, but she knew that the character she was playing would feel less secure. If she were honest with herself, she didn’t mind a bit more time in Alex’s company, either.

  “All right then, but straight to the station and then it is goodbye.”

  Alex only smiled and followed her as she marched determinedly out of the back room, though the dark bar, and out the front door.

  Once they’d reached the sidewalk outside, he quickly matched his pace to hers. Then, as a drunken twenty-something stumbled out of another bar and nearly knocked her down as he crashed against her, Alex offered his arm. She took it gratefully as they weaved their way through the crowds of drunk and disorderly people. While she could look after herself, it was sometimes nice to have someone else to look after her. It happened rarely enough in her life.

  At the transport station, Sienna swiped her wrist past the reader and bought a ticket to Meadville. She had a hotel room waiting for her there, booked in another name.

  “Thanks again for dinner,” she told him, beginning to walk away toward the waiting transport.

  “You haven’t given me your number,” he reminded her mildly, sounding as if it scarcely mattered to him.

  “Oh sorry.” Sienna found a card in her bag. The card had all of Sienna Madison’s contact details on it. “Here you are. Let me know what you find out about real food in Meadville.” She handed the card to him.

  He caught her hand. Staring into her eyes, he raised it to his lips. Sienna fought hard against temptation. The man was gorgeous and she felt a connection with him that was foreign to her. Keeping her distance was second nature, normally.

  She drew a deep and only slightly shaky breath and pulled her hand away. “Call me,” she muttered thickly as she turned and jumped into the transport.

  “Oh, I will definitely call you,” he said behind her. “Definitely.”

  Three

  The morning was gloomy and the skies threatened snow as Sienna caught the transport from Meadville back into Erie at nine. She wasn’t meeting with Reverend Snow until three o’clock, but she didn’t want to risk being stuck in Meadville if the snow began to pile up. Transport drivers were notorious for using any possible excuse to cancel services.

  She spent most of the day at a ubiquitous shopping mall, wandering from chain store to chain store browsing through clothes she didn’t like and trying on shoes she had no intention of buying. She ate lunch in the large anonymous food court, chewing through a few bites of a stale artificial sandwich before giving up and downing one of her usual FADS bars.

  Another hour of pointless shopping after lunch and Sienna had had enough. Her brain was screaming with frustration at the tediousness of the day. Shopping was an activity that held absolutely no appeal for her. A specialist wing of her agency knew all of her measurements and preferences. When she needed anything, she simply sent them a message requesting tops or bottoms or underwear and something appropriate was delivered. The only time she ever spent in stores was when she was undercover and needed to be there.

  Sienna would be early for her meeting with Reverend Snow, she had decided. The woman would be eager to talk to the man and find out more about the church. Accordingly, she rang the bell at the small house across from the church at ten minutes to three. A woman that Sienna recognized from file photos as Reverend Snow’s wife opened the door promptly.

  As she said her hellos, she studied the woman framed in the doorway. She looked older than Sienna had expected from those photos, older than her seventy-plus years, but she was still reassuringly plump and motherly looking, as a minister’s wife should be. Her hair was gray and piled into a disorderly bun atop her head, but her eyes shone a bright green that Sienna assumed was artificially enhanced.

  “Oh, you must be the young woman that Jacob said was coming at three.” The woman glanced behind her at a clock that was just visible from the doorway. Sienna immediately launched into her prepared script.

  “I’m so sorry that I’m early,” she began, looking up, down and everywhere, to cover her pretend embarrassment. “I’ve spent the whole day arguing with myself, not knowing whether I should come or not. Now I’ve arrived early and I’m probably interrupting something. I’m so sorry, maybe I should just go.”

  The woman only smiled kindly, as Sienna had expected. “You must come in, of course. I’m sure Jacob will be right with you.”

  She led Sienna in the door and straight into a small sitting room that was packed with furniture, trinkets, and oddments. Sienna stopped for a moment to stare at the overcrowded space.

  The woman next to her watched her reaction and then laughed lightly. “Yes,” she said, looking around herself now. “I suppose it is a bit much when you see it for the first time. We have collected rather a lot of, well, stuff, I guess you would call it, over the years.”

  “Are you Reverend Snow’s wife, then?” Sienna asked in a timid tone.

  “Oh yes, sorry. I didn’t introduce myself, did I? I’m Dorothy Snow.”

  “How long have you been married, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Oh, forty-odd years, I suppose.” The woman answered carelessly as if it was something she rarely thought about. The answer tied in with what Sienna already knew about the couple.

  Before she could ask any more questions, Mrs. Snow spoke again. “Now sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll tell Jacob you’re here. I only answered the door so quickly because I was on my way out, you see. Jacob prefers privacy when he meets with his parishioners.”

  “Oh, you mustn’t leave on my account.” Sienna spoke politely, all the while hoping that the woman would leave. She definitely preferred privacy for the conversation that was to come.

  “I have some grocery shopping to get done, anyway.” Dorothy assured her. “The house is so small that you might not feel free to open your heart or share your troubles if I were underfoot.”

  “Well, it was nice to meet you anyway.” Sienna murmured, aware that if the meeting went as planned she was about to destroy this woman’s comfortable life.

  “I hope you have a good talk with Jacob. He is very good at what he does.” Dorothy smiled brightly and then headed toward the back of the house.

  A moment later she bustled back. “Jacob won’t be a minute. He knows you’re here,” she told Sienna before she left the room again. A few seconds later Sienna heard the front door open and close.

  She sat down in the most comfortable looking chair and studied the room around her. It was a small space and it was jammed to capacity with things. A longer study of the space did nothing to dispel her initial impression. There looked to be at least one of every imaginable knick-knack, trinket, or tchotchke in the tiny room, but there were no photographs, either printed or electronically displayed. Similarly there were no video display units or even a video screen for watching the news or the latest comedy programs. She supposed they might have their video screen in another room, but a comfortable family home would usually have family photographs in a room like this, and their absence was striking as far as Sienna was concerned.

  Sienna idly picked up a small trinket from the table next to her and turned it slowly in her hands. The base said “St. Jude” and she studied the image of the saint as if looking for clues to the nature of its owner. As footsteps approached, she set it back down gently where she had found it and stood and looked toward the doorway.

  Reverend Snow
was dressed casually today, in comfortable trousers and a woolly sweater that looked homemade. He greeted Sienna with a broad smile. “Where would you prefer to have our chat?” he asked. “The sitting room is more comfortable, but the office is more formal.”

  “Perhaps the office would be better,” Sienna replied, eager to see more of the house.

  She followed him down the short corridor toward another small room, this one at the back of the house. She had only a moment to glance into a tiny and apparently spotlessly clean kitchen before he ushered her into his office. Again, the room was claustrophobically full of stuff. Two small chairs had been placed in front of a small desk with another, slightly larger, chair behind it.

  The only flat surface in the room not covered by things was the chair behind the desk. The desk itself was buried under an avalanche of books, papers, and used coffee mugs. The rest of the room was stuffed full of bookshelves and cupboards that were filled to overflowing. Every surface had piles of books and papers covering them. Statues of saints and various other knick-knacks filled any free space that was left, and Sienna wondered briefly if the sitting room might have been a better choice. The air in the room was stale from endlessly recirculating through the heating system, and Sienna could see piles of dust along many of the shelves and across the tops of the books.

  Reverend Snow grunted as he dropped down into the chair behind the desk and then grinned apologetically at Sienna. “Just clear off one of the chairs and have a seat,” he told her, gesturing at the chairs in front of him. “I don’t let the wife in here very often, you see, so it doesn’t get cleaned up as much as it should.”

  Sienna had to agree with that, as she piled the books from one of the chairs onto the other one. Still, she wasn’t here to study his housekeeping. She sat down finally and smiled innocently at the man she needed to interrogate. This should be fun, she thought as she waited for him to begin.

  “So now, you’re thinking about becoming a Christian? Is that correct?” Reverend Snow began exactly as Sienna had expected.

  “Yes,” Sienna looked at him and then looked away, all confused embarrassment. “I have been thinking about for some time, but I’m not sure.”

  “Well, my child, often, especially as we grow up and then grow older, we begin to seek answers to questions that we didn’t consider when we were young. Christianity can provide answers and a way of life to those that are willing to seek it out and embrace it.”

  “How did you find Christianity?” Sienna asked, curiously. “Were you raised in a Christian family or did you find it later?”

  Reverend Snow narrowed his eyes for a moment. He seemed momentarily suspicious of her, but the look and his doubts seemed to fade quickly and he answered.

  “I wasn’t raised in a Christian family, no. My family wasn’t Christian or Anti-Religionist, although that term didn’t exist when I was young. They simply weren’t particularly interested in religion. My grandmother was nominally a member of the Lutheran church in my hometown, but she only went on Christmas and Easter and her children and grandchildren rarely did even that much.”

  “I see,” Sienna murmured as the man fell silent, presumably lost in his memories.

  “I came to religion later,” he continued. “After the horrors of the Wars of Religion and the Eco-Wars, I found that I needed something else in my life. Something to help me forget about the things I’d seen, and indeed had taken part in, during that terrible period.”

  “Taken part in?” Sienna tried to act curious without tipping her hand just yet. She wondered how much Jacob Snow would admit to before he realized that she’d known his entire life story before she had arrived.

  The man waved a hand. “It was all so long ago,” he told her, shaking his head. “I can’t believe now how much time has passed. I was only a child, younger than you are now during the Eco-Wars. I was barely eighteen when things were at their worst.”

  The man sat, lost in his memories again while Sienna studied him. He had already told her everything she felt she needed in order to verify his identity.

  He shook his head again. “You can’t begin to understand what the world was like in those days. The planet was warming and weather was getting increasingly extreme. There were hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and famine. Religion had all but died out after the Wars of Religion. Where it still existed it was forced underground as countries and governments banned religious worship to try to prevent further religious upheavals. People had nothing to turn to as the world burned. Before the Terrashield was put into place to stabilize the weather, everyone thought that Earth was doomed.”

  Sienna knew her history well and she knew he was telling the truth about what life had been like all those years ago. That didn’t excuse his behavior in any way.

  Reverend Snow continued. “Nearly everyone on the planet took part on some level. Even me. I protested at the Pittsburgh Power Station Rally, I marched on Washington at the Eco March, and I listened and believed what Harry McCain said right up until he threatened to blow everything up with a nuclear bomb.”

  Sienna nodded. The story as he told it, was compelling.

  “When it was all over, when the fighting and the marching and the protesting stopped, I found I felt empty inside. Christianity filled that gap for me. I found God, and later the ministry, and even later still my wife. But I’m babbling on about my journey and we should be talking about yours.”

  Sienna studied him, considering him carefully, wondering how much to push and when. “So you protested? And marched?” she asked, putting amazement in her voice. “I’ve read the official history, of course, but I’ve heard that things were actually much worse than the official history tells us. I’ve heard that most protests turned violent, innocent people were slaughtered, and anarchy reigned throughout much of the planet.”

  Reverend Snow frowned. “It was much worse than what you can read about in the official accounts. It was very terrible, but it led me to God, so for that I am grateful.”

  “And you never actually encountered any violence? You just marched and protested?” Sienna pushed him now, ready to catch him when he began to lie.

  “I’m not sure that I like where this conversation is going, young lady,” the man told her in a stern voice. “I thought you wanted to talk about faith and religion. I’ve told you about my journey to God, to help you to understand that finding faith is a process. I don’t want to talk about myself any further.”

  Sienna smiled, what he wanted was completely unimportant to her. “So your experiences in the wars, they led you to God?”

  “Yes, and I think that is quite enough about me.” The man’s voice was steady and determined.

  Sienna shook her head. “Or is it possible that God, or at least your pretended belief in him, provided you with an easy hiding place?”

  He managed to look confused for a moment, and Sienna wondered briefly if she had misjudged him.

  “Hiding place?” he questioned, avoiding her eyes. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “You marched and protested and then found God. That is the story you’ve told me. I think you might have left a few things out of that rather touching narrative, don’t you?” Her voice was hard now, the softening accent gone.

  “I think maybe you should leave.” Reverend Snow started to stand but Sienna’s firm headshake sent him back into his chair.

  He sank back into his seat and appealed to her. “What do you want? Who are you? Who do you work for?” His eyes met hers and she saw defeat and terror in them. She knew for certain then that she had the right man.

  “Perhaps you would like to tell me a bit more about your actions during the Eco-Wars?”

  Reverend Snow now sat up straight in his chair and met her eyes. He looked determined to stay strong. “I assume that you are a member of the Eco Crimes Task Force,” he said resignedly, naming a group whose sole objective was finding and punishing the leaders and members of the various eco-terrorist organizations that had been acti
ve during the Eco-Wars.

  “You are welcome to assume what you like.” Sienna answered.

  Reverend Snow frowned now. ECTF members were known to be almost obsessively proud of what they did. If Sienna had worked for them, she would have been quick to acknowledge it. Everyone who had belonged to any eco-terrorist organization had reason to fear them. Reverend Snow had probably been expecting them to knock on his door for years.

  “Who do you work for?” he questioned, his voice shaking now.

  “The last time I checked, you were on the wanted list in fourteen different countries in the world. That means fourteen different governments could be paying my wages. The Eco Crimes Task Force is only one of at least half a dozen groups of enthusiastic amateurs who hunt down war criminals and any one of them could be behind my being here. Of course, there could simply be personal reasons why I’ve hunted you down. Perhaps you shot my grandmother as she drove to work one day or blew up the car factory where my grandfather’s brother worked. Anyway, there is still a substantial price on your head, isn’t there, James Slidell?”

  The man behind the desk shuddered violently as she spoke his name, the one he hadn’t used for nearly sixty years. Sienna noted the reaction as she continued. “Bringing you to justice could make me a great deal of money, if nothing else.”

  “But you aren’t in it for the money, are you?” he asked. Sienna knew that the man had totally misjudged her thus far. Perhaps he thought now that he was beginning to understand her. “I could give you as much money as you would get for turning me in, just to walk away.” He threw out the offer, but he didn’t sound as if he thought she would accept it.

  “I’m not in this for the money.” Sienna shook her head. “Let’s just say I want to see justice served.”

  “It was all such a long time ago,” he protested. “I was only a child.”

  “You were eighteen when you blew up a car factory in Detroit, an adult in the eyes of the law.”