He wasn’t always there, though. It was a sign of her lunacy that she longed for a non-existent man to save her from her non-existent enemies in her dreams.
To add to her horror, lately her dreams came to her in the middle of the day, in the form of delusions. She would suddenly zone out and hear voices. Men’s voices, indistinct, yet filled with menace. Gunshots and bombs going off. Oppressive heat and fear.
She would suddenly find herself standing stock-still, heart pounding with terror, her mind completely taken over by jolting, horrifying images that were always just at the edge of comprehension.
It was somehow worse than the nightmares, because she could be anywhere. In a supermarket, walking to the library, pottering around the house. There would be no warning. She would simply plunge into a deep hole of horror and have to climb out on her own, shaking and sweaty and terrified.
Claire rubbed her forehead. The Headache was starting. Headache One, thank God. She had a whole classification system of headaches, from One to Five. One was a throbbing pain behind her eyes that at times made her dizzy. Dizzier. She always felt dizzy.
But a Headache One was something she could live with, even function with, after a fashion. She’d done her shopping, cleaned the house, and even worked on a translation with a One. Twos, Threes, and Fours were headaches in increasing scales of pain, and by the time a Four came around, her life stopped.
A Five… she shuddered. She hadn’t had a Five in months and hoped desperately her Five days were behind her. A Five made her long for the peace of death.
Don’t think of it. Her little mantra. Ommm don’tthinkofit ommm. A refrain that ran through her days. Don’t think of the headaches, don’t think of the months lost to a coma, don’t think of her beloved friend Marie, not even a heap of mildewed bones buried in the jungle because they’d never found her body. Not even her DNA. She’d just gone missing and had never been found again.
Above all, don’t think of her father. Dead of heartbreak.
One of the many horrifying things about her situation was that she couldn’t remember a thing about the blast that had taken her life away.
Her last clear memory was of a reception at the French Embassy, where she’d had a lot of fun fending off the French Chargé d’Affaires’s amorous advances. He’d been charming and erudite and handsome, though, of course, married. He’d taken his defeat with immense good grace and she felt she might even have made a friend.
After that, nothing. The reception had been on the 18th of November. The blast had been on the 25th, Thanksgiving.
She had read all about it, when she could read again. The first time she could read without getting dizzy, however, had been in late March.
Way before that, in December, had been the phone call from Marie’s sister, Aba. Her father had taken the call while she was in a coma, but he hadn’t told her about it. She’d found out on her own, eliminating phone messages. Her father had been hopeless about electronics and the message tape had been full.
Claire could remember it exactly as if it had happened yesterday. A sunny day in March, sunny enough to make her want to get up out of the wheelchair and walk into the garden, just for a moment. She hadn’t though, because the recorded message had knocked the breath right out of her.
She could remember the light falling onto her father’s desk in a bright elongated yellow rectangle. Her finger pressing the Replay button over and over, listening to the messages then deleting them. Straightening up as she recognized Aba’s voice.
She’d liked Aba, Marie’s sister, a well-known physician, almost as much as she’d liked Marie, and she’d been invited several times to the home Aba shared with her journalist husband.
She’d never heard that tone from Aba before, though. Low and hostile, filled with anger.
Claire, I’m sure you’re now safe and sound after your father came to take you back home to the States. Marie didn’t make it, though. We buried her last week. Or rather, we held a funeral ceremony, because we never found the body. I lost my sister because of you, and I will never forgive and never forget. She insisted on going back for you. I tried to talk her out of it—why risk her life for yours? But I couldn’t stop her, and now her blood is on your head. I hope you choke on it.
Claire had never heard such venom, such hatred directed her way. What made it so awful was that she had no idea what Aba was talking about. She didn’t remember anything about that day, nothing at all. How had she put Marie in danger? How had she got her killed?
Claire had tracked down Aba’s home number. She must have left a hundred messages, but Aba never called back.
Claire knew the bare facts. The rebel Red Army had invaded Laka on Thanksgiving Day and had blown the Embassy up, causing immense damage, but taking no lives except, perhaps, for Marie Diur, FN. No one knew for sure.
And, of course, leaving her with only a shell of a life.
The Embassy staff had been at the Ambassador’s residence and the Marines at Marine House. Claire had no idea at all why she hadn’t been celebrating Thanksgiving at the Ambassador’s residence, though she intensely disliked him and his vicious wife.
She’d probably had a report to write, though it was now lost in the blast and in the traumatized corridors of her brain.
Blowing up the US Embassy had been a really stupid thing for the Red Army to do, because the US government then poured billions into shoring up the Makongan government—which in her opinion wasn’t much better than the Red Army itself—turning it into both a US protectorate, and an enormous marshalling yard for military and medical aid funnelled into West Africa.
Claire had read about the bombing and the aftermath as if reading any other mission report of a colleague’s posting. She remembered nothing. That day and the week before the bombing was a complete blank. Not to mention the three months of coma afterwards.
There was a huge, gaping hole in her life, and sometimes she felt it was going to suck her right down into it until she fell to the bottom and disappeared into the dark, dank depths.
Restless, Claire stood and paced the living room. It took her a while to cross it, it was so big. The entire house was big, much too big for a single woman.
Not for the first time, she thought of selling it, buying a condo somewhere… but where? It would be stupid to sell in Safety Harbor just to buy again here. Boston? She hadn’t lived there since she was 15 years old. There was nothing there for her. Washington D.C.? It might make some sense. Most of her translation clients lived in Washington, though being close to her employers wouldn’t make much difference. She did all her work by e-mail.
Living in Washington would remind her of all that she’d lost in the blast. Her father, her friend, her job, her life. She’d loved her job as a DIA analyst. She’d delighted in her analytical skills, meeting the challenges head-on, knowing that every time she solved a puzzle, however minor, it was one more brick in the wall keeping her country safe. She’d felt part of something big and important. Hard and necessary.
Those days were gone, forever. Who wanted an analyst who sometimes couldn’t tell up from down? Who got dizzy spells and was visited nightly in her sleep by monsters?
She was lucky she had a knack for translating and was slowly building up a clientele. She worked from home. Her clients didn’t have to know that dizzy spells rendered her useless several hours a day, or that sometimes she had to go lie down with a headache that made her nauseous.
All they cared about was that she deliver accurate translations by deadline, and she did. They didn’t see her, and they didn’t have to know that she was a barely-functioning being.
Oh God, she was so sick of this. Sick of herself. Sick of her weaknesses and uncertainties. Maybe if she had somebody to talk to, she could have an hour of peace in her head. But who?
She had nobody in Safety Harbor. She’d left when she was 17 for college and had come back only for brief visits.
Her entire career had been spent travelling, living for a year or two
at a posting, then moving on. The best friend she’d made at work had been Marie, and she was dead. By Claire’s own hand, according to Marie’s sister.
She’d spent the past year here, it was true, but three months of that year had simply disappeared into the maw of a coma. And when she’d finally surfaced, just learning to walk again and function at the most basic level had eaten up everything she had. No time or energy for making friends. Simply surviving had robbed every ounce of energy in her. So no, there wasn’t anyone to talk to.
The house was empty and completely silent. It was a street closed to non-residential traffic, and there weren’t even sounds of cars driving by outside.
The silence was oppressive, like a living, heavy weight pressing in on her chest. The large house was so still, it was the equivalent of an above-ground tomb. Exactly like her father’s coffin, only bigger.
The large band around her chest that had dogged her days since waking up from the coma tightened, making it hard to breathe.
It was so damned quiet. As if she were the last human on earth.
All of a sudden, Claire knew she needed to hear human voices the way she needed air. The silence was like a dark hole, waiting to gobble her up, pull her down into an endless, airless cavern. She couldn’t stand the silence for one more second. Even canned noise would be better than this emptiness.
With a shaking hand, she picked up the remote and cycled through the channels. Weather, reruns, a romantic comedy she’d already seen and which reminded her of how solitary and unfunny her life was, reality show, weather, reality show, cooking show, sports, weather, reality show… God, a reality show in a convent?
She shuddered and kept on flipping. Talk show, sports, weather… her thumb was growing tired. Finally, she found CNN. The music and logo for the news hour came up and she settled in, hoping to distract herself. It was no good. Israel, Palestine, bombing in Paris, possible serial killer in Portland, Oregon. This wasn’t distracting her, it was pulling her deeper into her slippery black hole.
She picked up the remote again. Thank God for remotes, she thought, not for the first time, because she didn’t have the energy to get up and switch the TV off.
A young woman came on, pretty, dark-haired. Breaking News glowed red at the top of the screen. On the chyron was written Katie Maroney, Washington, D.C.
An American Hero tracked along the bottom in bright red letters.
Claire stayed her hand. OK, a hero. That was good. Right now, she needed to hear about a hero.
It was snowing in D.C., tiny flakes spinning in the wind. Claire shivered in sympathy. It must have been freezing in Washington, but the reporter was wearing a low-cut jacket, and when the camera pulled back to reveal the smoky ruins of a townhouse behind her, a short skirt.
Claire winced. She’d have frozen to death with that outfit on in the snow. How could the woman not be turning blue from the cold?
The camera followed as Katie Maroney walked over to a broad-shouldered man, back to the camera, a dun-colored blanket covering his head and pooling around his shoulders.
To one side, a fire truck was the center of activity for at least ten firefighters in gear and protective helmets. An enormous hose spewed a streaming silver arc of water into the townhouse, causing huge clouds of smoke to billow up.
“This is Katie Maroney for CNN. We’re reporting to you live from near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.,” she announced breathlessly. “This afternoon an electrical fire broke out in a townhouse where Mr. and Mrs. Everett Hines and their children, Sally, 3, and Michael, 5, live. Mr. Hines had gone out for milk when a fire broke out on the ground floor, burning out the electricity and telephone lines. Mrs. Hines’ cell phone was broken and there was no way to call 911. Mrs. Hines leaned out of the third-story window and screamed for help. And help, miraculously, came. We have some video footage of the rescue filmed by an onlooker and we’re cutting to that right now.”
Claire leaned forward. A woman and two small children. Oh God, she prayed, let this have a happy ending.
The camera cut to shaky, grainy footage taken from a cell. A woman leaned out of a third-story balcony, screaming for help, smoke billowing out from all the windows.
There were excited noises as onlookers shouted for help. Claire could hear one man calling 911. But nobody made a move until a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man, dressed in jeans and a leather bomber jacket too light for the weather rounded the corner.
The phone camera somehow knew to follow him. The man in the bomber jacket took in the situation and in a flash ripped off his jacket, wrapped it around his head and plunged into the burning building.
Claire watched, riveted, breath caught in her chest.
Screams and cries of—Oh my God! and Will you look at that? What felt like a million years later, but must have been only a minute, the man burst out of the front door with two screaming children in his arms. Live, red-gold flames were visible through the open door and the cell phone recorded the crackling sounds of the flames and the loud thump as part of a wall crumpled in a billow of fire and smoke.
The cell phone followed the man as he thrust the children into waiting hands and ran back into the building, ignoring the cries of are you crazy? and it’s too late! and it’s going to collapse, man!
Sirens wailed as the fire truck and several police cars finally arrived. A dozen people clustered around the fire chief, screaming that there were two people trapped inside the collapsing building. The jerky tape was catching the chief directing his men when someone screamed, and the cell phone was whipped back to the building so fast it made Claire nauseous.
She watched the grainy, shaky footage, feeling time stop. It was as if everything were happening in slow motion. The broad-shouldered man appeared in the doorway, limned by the hellish fire behind him, holding a woman wrapped in a blanket in his arms. Fire licked greedily at his feet, climbed his trousers, but he didn’t seem to notice. He carried the woman forward until eager arms took her and she was placed on a stretcher, and only then did he fall to his knees.
The grainy footage cut off and the pretty face of Katie Maroney filled the screen once more. Her voice overrode all of the other voices, and a microphone was thrust into the man’s face. “That was an amazing rescue! What a hero!” she gushed. “What’s your name, sir?”
The man’s voice was deep, but weak with pain and exhaustion. His head was hanging down as he gasped in air. He was covered in black soot.
“Gunnery Sergeant Weston. USMC.” He frowned, shaking his head, wheezing for breath. “Not… Gunnery Sergeant. Not… in the Marines any more. Daniel Weston.”
Claire frowned. That name…
“Well, Daniel Weston, what do you do for a living?” The reporter seemed to be totally unaware that the heroic man was in pain. Claire would have batted away the microphone and told the woman to go to hell, but apparently the man had better manners than she did.
“Have… security consulting business.”
“Well,” Maroney purred, smiling flirtatiously at the burned, exhausted man, “your wife is going to be very proud of you today, Mr. Weston.”
He shook his head again. Two paramedics lifted him up onto a stretcher. He took in a big gasp of air. Maroney’s microphone followed him for a moment. “Not… married,” he said as the paramedics put an oxygen mask on him then carried him away.
With a catlike smile, Katie Maroney turned to the camera. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. Former Marine Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Weston, man of the hour. A hero who ran into a burning building twice to save a mother and her two children. And ladies…” She leaned closer to the lens with a conspiratorial smile and a wink. “He’s built, he’s a hero, he owns his own company and he’s single. What on earth are you waiting for?”
Marine… Daniel Weston. Claire blinked, the fog in her head parting for a moment. The name was somehow familiar. How could it be familiar?
A thumbnail photo in the upper left-hand corner, clearly taken from footag
e during the rescue, expanded until it filled the TV screen. Daniel Weston, the chyron said along the bottom. Security consultant.
Claire gasped, moving closer to the big TV screen, heart pounding. The dark hair was longer, the cheeks more hollowed, as if he’d lost weight. But she knew this man. Somehow she knew him.
And suddenly, she remembered how she knew him.
Frantic, Claire rushed into the library, feverishly pulling open drawers, pawing through paperwork until she found what she was looking for.
A big red folder with press clippings about the Embassy bombing. She leafed through clipping after clipping, not caring that some fell to the floor. Finally she found what she was looking for—a print-out of the Laka Embassy staff as of November of last year. And on the second page, there he was.
Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Weston. Detachment Commander of the Marine Security Guard. He’d arrived a week before the bombing. The day of the French Embassy reception.
Claire had no memory of him at the Laka Embassy, none whatsoever. Somehow, the clouds in her mind had parted enough so that she’d known where to look for him. Was her memory returning? Had she had dealings with him in her lost week?
Ordinarily, the Marine Security Guards were just… there. In all her postings, the Marines had lived their own, separate lives. They lived in Marine House, and though they were at all official functions as guards, they never socialized.
But somehow this Daniel Weston’s path had crossed hers.
The print-out shook in her hand. She studied the photograph the way ancient seers studied runes. He looked much younger in the official photo than on TV, though of course during the interview he’d just rushed into a raging fire twice and doubtless had been suffering from smoke inhalation.
In the staff photo, he had the high-and-tight Marine haircut—they didn’t call them whitewalls for nothing—and a chest full of medals on his dress uniform jacket. She could read the medals as easily as she could read the newspapers. They weren’t medals handed out for showing up on time or having polished brightwork on his uniform. They were serious medals for serious acts of heroism. This Daniel Weston had been a good Marine, one of the best.
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