Pawn (Ironclad Bodyguards 1)

by Molly Joseph

  “I should have been there,” Grace cried, turning her face into Sam’s neck.

  “It would have been harder for him if you were there. You were doing what he wanted. Being brave. Winning.”

  She looked back down at the email. Immune system overwhelmed. Accelerated respiratory distress. Loss of consciousness and gradual organ failure, which proved catastrophic in a patient of his years. Mrs. Ferlander talked just like a nurse, and then Grace thought, of course she was a nurse. Zeke had gotten her a bodyguard from Ironclad who spoke Arabic. Why wouldn’t he hire a housekeeper from Ironclad who was also a nurse? Zeke knew he was sick. He’d been sick for years now.

  Mr. Valshemnik took his last breath just after noon on March twelfth. He expired peacefully, without pain. Yesterday. He’d expired yesterday, probably the same time she’d been rolling around with Sam in bed. Now there was no more Zeke in her world, no more wise father and mentor, no more tuning fork pitched perfectly to her song.

  “I need to go home,” she said, curling again into Sam’s chest. “I need to go home.”

  Except there was no home to go to, because Zeke was the only home she’d ever had.

  *** *** ***

  Sam held it together, because he had to, for Gracie.

  Another chartered jet, another cabal of government agents scurrying around like spiders on a web, all to get her back in time for Zeke’s funeral. A quiet landing in New York. Grace was able to go home and be among her things, the detritus of her life with Zeke. She had all of two hours to spend with his ghost before the news trucks showed up outside the building.

  Liam and Mem stayed with Sam, so there were extra hands to man the door, and extra eyes to field the security reports. Threats continued to pour in from Saudi extremists and armchair misogynists, not that any of those threats reached Grace’s ears. They acted as her wall of protection, her cone of silence. Even if they had warned her about the threats on her life, it wouldn’t have mattered. She was fully preoccupied with surviving Zeke’s funeral, and processing the suddenness of his death.

  Zeke’s extended family had taken over his final arrangements. The funeral was traditional, Jewish, no viewing, just a graveside service in Hebrew. They were livid about the news crews at the cemetery, and asked Grace if she would leave so they could conduct the ceremony in peace. That was the moment Sam almost, finally, lost it.

  But Liam knew how to talk to people. He wasn’t like Sam, a rough-edged ex-soldier used to accomplishing things by force. Liam smoothed and manipulated, and politely corrected things until they were right. Grace was able to stand in front at the service with Zeke’s family, and stare down into the gaping hole of dirt where her friend and adoptive father would be buried, and say her own prayers while the ritual played out around her. She looked so small and alone in her black dress and sweater, and her too-big glasses. Sam stood fifty feet away with Liam and Mem, doing his best to block the shots of the cameras behind him.

  “What will you do now?” Liam asked.

  He looked over at his boss. Until this moment, the man hadn’t said anything about his and Grace’s illicit relationship. He’d only watched, with reserved tolerance, as Sam did all the things a lover would do for a mourning partner.

  “I always intended to resign,” Sam said. “I know client relationships are against company policy.”

  “Against company policy?” Liam made a sound, a harsh sort of grunt. “They aren’t just against company policy. It’s morally wrong to get involved with a client. It troubles me to think you might have taken advantage of someone very needy, and very isolated.”

  “I didn’t mean to... I tried not to... I had no intention of this happening. Of anything happening. It just…happened.”

  “I’ve heard that before.” Liam’s words were angry, but his tone and expression were utterly blank. Sam couldn’t tell anything by looking at him. Complete poker face.

  “I fell in love,” Sam admitted as the silence stretched out. “I can’t say why, or when, or how it happened, but I’m in love with her. I’ll turn in my Ironclad credentials and give back the money she paid me.”

  “It’s not a matter of the money. Well, it is, but it’s more than that.”

  Sam finally saw an expression he recognized. Concern.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Liam asked. “You can’t leave her, not anytime in the immediate future. I hope it’s true that you’re in love with her. I hope you figure out that ‘why.’ Because if it turns out you were only playing with her—”

  “I wasn’t playing. I never played. I would never—” He swallowed hard. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “When it is like that,” said Liam, “I get really angry. When my employees take advantage of their position in order to fuck around with a client—”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  He said it too loudly. Someone in the back of the funeral turned to look at them. Sam’s hands curled into fists as he held Liam’s gaze. He wasn’t used to looking up at anyone, but he looked up at Liam, who was at least three inches taller than him. It didn’t matter. Sam’s heart was sincere.

  “I know what I did was wrong,” he said. “But I couldn’t not do it. I fell in love. It wasn’t something I could control, and I would have resigned, but I couldn’t have trusted anyone else to protect her. No offense, but I couldn’t. It had to be me. It still has to be me.”

  Liam studied him a long time before he finally nodded. “Okay. It needs to be you. But are you too close now? Are you still thinking? Paying attention?”

  “I’m paying attention every second of every day. I have been, since the morning I met her.” It was true. He’d fallen for Grace as soon as he shared her space, as soon as he looked in her eyes and saw her complexity and vulnerability. There was never anything he could have done to head it off.

  Liam frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. The funeral was breaking up. The reporters and cameras surged forward, the ones soulless and brazen enough to crash a family funeral. Between the three of them, they managed to shield Grace from the onslaught and secure her in the car. She was silent, withdrawn. Over the past couple of days, she seemed to have cried herself out. She slumped against Sam’s arm and stared out the window at the cold, gray sky.

  “Okay?” he asked, taking her hand.

  She shrugged as the car turned west toward Brooklyn. As they were heading into downtown, they were overtaken by police cars with howling sirens. Mem, Liam, and Sam fished out their phones. The texts started to arrive about fifteen seconds later. Intruder at the building. Possible explosives. Bomb squad reporting.

  Unsafe area.

  Drive on.

  Liam rubbed his eyes. “Where can she go?”

  “A hotel?” Mem suggested.

  “It has to be somewhere she won’t be seen.”

  “What’s happening?” asked Grace.

  “A problem at the apartment.” Sam stroked her hair out of her red-rimmed eyes. “We have to go somewhere else.” The car pulled into an open spot, as Liam and Mem’s fingers buzzed over their phones.

  “It has to be somewhere private, in a quiet neighborhood,” said Liam.

  “I know a place we can go. It’s near Battery Park.” Sam typed the address into Liam’s phone. “It’s my mother’s apartment,” he said in a lower voice. “Don’t share the location, not even with QueenOps. I think that’s how they keep finding her.”

  “I think you’re right.” Liam told the driver to wait, and they all climbed out. Grace looked dazed as Sam flagged down a passing taxi. “Don’t worry,” Liam said to her. “Mem and I are going to see what’s happening at your place. Sam’s going to take you somewhere safer for now.”

  Sam stuck her in the back of the taxi and directed the driver to take a circuitous route to Battery Park City. He realized that, again, they’d be without their belongings, their luggage. They were cross-continental refugees, fleeing from endless dangers.

  “I’m tired,” said Grace. “I just want to go h
ome.”

  “I know, baby.” He put an arm around her. “We are going home. My home. Don’t you want to see where I grew up?”

  He said it brightly, like this was some fun adventure. He hoped his mother hadn’t moved in the last few years. He hoped she wouldn’t slam the door in his face when he got there, her traitorous son with his missing heritage. Those missing letters, the “l” and the “i” neatly excised from the name she’d chosen.

  They arrived in his neighborhood before he was really ready to be there. He told the driver to stop a couple blocks away from his mother’s street. Spy games. The man, an Arab, quite possibly recognized who he had in his cab. Sam gave him a generous tip and prayed he had a heart. They needed some heart right now, some fortune, some kind of break. Sam led Grace into the lobby of an adjacent building until the cab was gone, held her close to calm her, and then took her across the avenue to his old block.

  “Are we in danger?” she asked, when he told her to keep her head down.

  “I don’t think so. I just don’t want you to be recognized. Hold my hand.”

  It was a newer neighborhood than Zeke’s, with tall buildings and busy parks. He led her along familiar streets until they got to his mother’s building. He took a deep breath and scanned the panel of doorbells, and buzzed upstairs.

  He gripped Grace’s hand as they waited for a response. There was a long, excruciating silence while he thought, She’s moved. She’s left. She’s not home.

  I shouldn’t be here anyway.

  Then her voice crackled over the speaker. “Who’s there?”

  “Mama,” he said. That was the only word he could force past the emotion in his throat, but it must have been enough. The lock thumped and the door opened, and he pulled Grace inside with him to the elevators. By the time the door opened on the fifth floor, she was waiting, a scent, a memory, the real thing, his mother reaching out to him in her silk robes and her bright blue hijab.

  “Salim!” she cried. “Salim!”

  He let go of Grace for a moment, leaned down and surrendered himself to his mother’s embrace. There was none of the reproach he’d feared, no frowns or rejection, only hysterical crying, which hurt so much worse.

  “Salim.” She pulled back and touched his face as if she couldn’t believe he was there. “You’re home. O Allah, you are home again. Praise God in his goodness.” She said a prayer in Arabic, tangled with tears as she clutched at his coat.

  He laid his wet cheek against hers. “Mama. Ana aasef jidan. Forgive me.” She smelled the same, of perfume and cloves. Her hair was a little more gray. “Please accept my deepest apologies,” he whispered, “and forgive your worthless and miserable son.”

  Chapter Fourteen: Angry and Confused

  “Few things are as psychologically brutal as chess.” —Garry Kasparov

  Grace was exhausted and sad, and tired of being a fugitive. Mr. Mem had come under cover of night with their suitcases again, a silent specter who could slip in and out of shadows without anyone ever knowing he was there. He had taken her hand and murmured, “Have strength,” before he disappeared. But she had no strength. She felt empty and wrung out from Zeke’s death. She wanted to quit, not just chess, but everything.

  And now, when she needed him most, Sam had withdrawn from her. Oh, he was there beside her in his mother’s cramped, brightly colored living room, but he was caught up in his own dramas. His sister came from across town, and a brother who looked just like Sam, only younger. Sam introduced her as his client, which hurt her feelings a little, but this was already, apparently, a fraught homecoming. Grace didn’t ask where Sam’s father was.

  His mother cooked, and sliced bread and fresh vegetables, and put plates and silverware in Grace’s hands when she wandered around, not knowing what to do. Grace set the table with Sam’s help, and then the whole family sat at dinner together. They spoke English most of the time, for Grace’s benefit, but they called Sam “Salim,” and sometimes lapsed into Arabic without thinking. His mother cried without sound the entire time, tears squeezing from her beautiful, dark eyes. Even when she was animated and happy, the wetness still lingered in the lines of her face.

  Grace thought she might be like her, crying forever, even when she was feeling other emotions, because the sadness covered everything. Sam told his family what he’d done since he left the military, about his work with Ironclad, about Grace’s trip to Dubai. He spoke in Arabic then, and this time she knew it wasn’t accidental, that he intentionally didn’t want her to hear.

  But she wasn’t stupid. She knew, from the looks his family gave her, what he was saying. There are death threats. People want to kill her, and she’s just lost her closest friend, a man who was like her father. Please don’t tell anyone she’s here.

  His mother made a sign of dismay, or perhaps a sign of blessing. “You will be safe here,” she said to Grace. “You will always be safe here, as long as you need.”

  “Thank you,” Grace said, and she meant it. In some way, his mother seemed a reincarnation of Zeke, warm and caring and fiercely protective. In that way, she also seemed a lot like her son.

  From what Grace could figure out, Sam hadn’t been home in a long time. Some family feud, perhaps related to him changing his name. Salim. He’d never told her that was his real name. She went into the bathroom to whisper it to herself a few times, trying to get used to the foreign sound of it on her lips. As close as they were, she hadn’t really known him, only known what he chose to reveal to her. Later, after his brother and sister left, and his mother went to bed, she asked him, “Why didn’t you tell me your name was Salim?”

  “It’s not Salim. I changed it.”

  Jetlag made them angsty, and grouchy. Sam was still withdrawn. She studied his profile as he sprawled back against the couch, barricaded by cushions. He looked very Arab here in his mother’s home.

  “I changed it because of people’s prejudice,” he said after a moment. “I was tired of people making assumptions that I must be a radical Muslim, or a terrorist.”

  “But your last name was Knight. You’re half white.”

  “That doesn’t matter when your first name’s Salim. People see what they want to see.”

  Maybe that was a push at her. She’d assumed he was white, with naturally tan skin. She’d never analyzed the shape and color of his eyes, or imagined his chiseled, distinctive profile was anything other than exceptionally handsome Caucasian good looks.

  “You could have braved it out,” she said to push back at him. “You could have stayed Salim, and done your good works, and joined the Army and fought for your country, and changed people’s minds. You could have made it easier for the other Salims of the world. You could have influenced people the way I’m trying to do.”

  He didn’t look at her, but she saw his eyes narrow. “You didn’t care anything about influencing people until now. You said that didn’t matter to you.”

  She picked at a snag on the couch. “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

  He put a hand over her fingers, dislodged the bit of thread and smoothed it back against the cushion. “Anyway, it’s not the same.”

  “How isn’t it the same?”

  “I can change my name. You can’t change that you’re a woman.”

  “That has nothing to do with it, Salim.”

  His phone lit up in the half light, and he glanced down at it. A string of messages came through. He read them and said nothing. All this time he’d kept her out of the loop, and she’d appreciated not knowing. Now it irritated her.

  “What’s happening?”

  He made a gesture that could have meant anything, and set his phone back on the floor. “The State Department doesn’t want you in New York. They don’t want you in the U.S., with all the media. They’re talking about a place for you to go until all this dies down.”

  “Why aren’t they talking to me about where I want to go?”

  “Because you don’t get to make the decision.” He rubbed his eyes. �
��They’re consulting with Liam.”

  “Tell Liam anything cold is out of the question. Tell him I want to go to some tropical island and bake in the sun.”

  That, at last, brought a ghost of a smile. He picked up his phone and tapped out a message, and hit send. “We’ll see what they say.”

  His head was so close to her hand. She wanted to reach out and touch his hair. He’d made love to her mere days ago, passionate, connected love, and now he seemed so far away. It made her angry. She felt like she’d lost him on top of everything else. Or, no. She felt she’d lost her trust in him.

  His name was Salim, not Sam. Even if he’d had it legally changed.

  “Did you know Zeke had the flu?” she asked. She knew she shouldn’t do this. She didn’t want to know, but she had to know. “When we were in Dubai, while I was playing the match, did you know how sick he was?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I didn’t know he was going to die.”

  “Did you know he had the flu?”

  He turned to her in consternation. “Please, Grace. I can’t do this right now.”

  “Just tell me the truth. Did you know?”

  “I knew, but I didn’t think he was going to die. He told me not to tell you. He wanted you to focus on the match.”

  “And you listened to him? You kept it a secret from me?”

  “It wasn’t keeping a secret,” he said. “It was obeying a client’s request. He was the one who hired me. Not you.”

  “But you’re the one who said you loved me, and if you loved me, you should have told me.”

  He closed his eyes and ran a hand down over his face. “I understand that you’re angry and sad, that everything’s blowing up for you right now. But don’t do this. Don’t blow us up too.”

  “I just wish you’d told me—”

  “Why? So you could forfeit the match and fly home against his wishes, and sit beside him and watch him die? That’s exactly what he didn’t want, Gracie. You of all people should understand that.” He snapped his mouth shut, levered himself up on his long legs and sat next to her on the couch. He took her in his arms and held her close. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for snapping at you. Forgive me.”