by Amey Zeigler
“Nope.”
“High school?”
He shrugged. “It’s not the same where I come from.”
“And where do you come from?”
“Not a yes or no question.”
Andy groaned. “He graduated top of his class in accounting, one of the most math intensive majors. You think you’re so hot and girls fall all over themselves for you.” Andy shook. “Well, let me tell you, Conner loved me.”
She readied to stand, but Christiaan stopped her, speaking more fiercely than he intended. “He’s an idiot because he left you.”
Andy’s eyebrows shot to her hairline, choking on his words.
Christiaan continued holding her gaze. “No intelligent guy, who had your love, would ever leave you.”
He stood, tossing his twigs away, dusting his hands.
Andy processed his statement.
“Are you so blind you can’t see the truth?” he said turning away. “He told you he was afraid. Yes, he was afraid. He was afraid you’d mingle with Tyrone and find out he was a bad guy. Then Conner would’ve had to choose between his loyalty to Imperium or to you. He just made his choice early. He was going to propose to you. But he didn’t choose you. For that, I say he was a damned fool.”
****
The afternoon sweltered on. Even under the shade, Andy was too hot. Christiaan checked the condensation from the plastic.
Picking up Andy’s previously unused urine sample cup she had in her bag, he offered Andy a drink. “Here,” he said.
“You first,” she said. He knocked it against his lips, then handed her the cup to drink. She wasn’t sure they were going to make it or get rescued. Either way, she had a gnawing feeling in her gut and it wasn’t from lack of food.
She broke out some breath mints she had in her purse and handed him one. “Only one calorie per piece,” she said with mock cheerfulness. For once she wished she carried more food in her bag.
“I hate just sitting here wasting time,” Christiaan said.
“If you go out there in this heat,” she checked a small thermometer. “You’ll die. Ninety degrees and it’s not even two yet.” Andy then noticed the Celsius line opposite the Fahrenheit. “Are you Canadian?”
“Nope.”
“German?”
“Nope.”
“British.”
“No.”
“Where are you from?”
“Not a yes or no question,” he sighed, “but I will answer it. Because we’re going to die out here.”
He said it with such a thick accent, Andy didn’t catch it at first.
“Where?”
This time he exaggerated the vowels in American. “South Africa.”
It was too unreal to be a lie. “Did you really live on a farm?”
He nodded. “Sugar cane farm, north of Durban. And yes, I did leave.”
“Were your parents really killed?”
His head lowered but his irritation did not. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Wrong side of politics.”
“And your grandparents?”
“I had to leave, Andy. You should’ve seen their expressions when I came home day after day, bloody lips, black eyes, and bruised shins from fighting. My grandma held me and cried, kissed my head, but I ignored her. I was angry and hurt. I couldn’t keep disappointing them.”
“So you left?”
“The first few nights on the streets in Durban I regretted leaving. Competing with the rats for food, sleeping among needles and the sounds of gunshots. I really thought I was going to die.”
“Why didn’t you go back?”
“The image of my grandma’s face, her disappointment every afternoon before I left. It haunts me. I didn’t want to tell you the truth, so I told you what was closest to the truth. Durban is like LA. Kansas was like our farm. If you had known from the start I was from South Africa it would have made you too suspicious to trust me. I shared the essence of the truth. I’m sorry, I did the best I could.”
The conversation slowed. The heat becoming unbearable, sweltering, silencing all talk.
When the sun started on the other side of the sky, Christiaan grew restless. “Why don’t we walk with the umbrella for shade? We’ll die here of thirst.”
Andy pointed north. “We’ll die out there,” she said, her tongue like a brick in her mouth. Heat waves blurred the horizon. Playing games or answering questions no longer distracted them.
“We’re going to die here!”
“But at least here we can collect some water.”
Andy trembled. There wasn’t enough water to live. They had to get to civilization.
****
At dusk, Andy packed their collection with weakened arms, every resource burned away. They continued despite thirst, a lack of food, and throbbing headaches.
They hiked all night near the road, until a pink glow illuminated the eastern sky, then they traveled farther from the road.
At ten, they set up camp. Christiaan dug a hole for the plastic, his shirt around his head like an Arab, his back bare, glistening, tanned. Andy couldn’t swallow, like she’d licked the desert floor. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. They huddled under the umbrella, the sun hurting her skin, her eyes aching from the constant brightness. By the afternoon, Andy checked the plastic, shared the trapped moisture, ripped it in half to make two. Andy no longer sweated.
Christiaan sat beside her, back bare, his shirt around his head. His cheeks were red, his lips cracked. The seraph nestled on his lower back expanded slowly with his breathing.
“Did you tell me all your secrets because we’re going to die anyway?” Andy asked, her ears ringing.
He faced her, a smile cracking his chap. “I have way more secrets than what I’ve told you. Don’t you have any secrets you want to share?”
She would’ve swallowed if she had any moisture left in her mouth. “If we’re going to die,” she said slowly. “I guess I should tell you my secrets. If you want to hear them.”
“I would love to know what a journalist has hidden.”
“Not really secrets. Dreams more like.”
“All right. Spill.”
Andy hesitated before beginning. “Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to join the CIA. I wanted to make a difference in the world. I guess doing the investigative journalist thing was the closest I could get.”
“Have you applied?”
“I go to their site a few times a week. Click on a few buttons, but I never hit Apply.”
“Why not?”
“They want a bachelor’s degree for one. I dropped out of university three years ago to start helping my dad with his investigative work and never graduated.”
“Experience is more important. You have that in spades.”
Andy cast him a doubtful glance. “They want SWAT team guys. Ex-Military.”
“I think outsmarting me, getting information from Carmen, escaping drug cartels and greedy mobsters certainly qualifies you.”
Andy smiled. Then she shrugged. “Besides, I have to keep doing this until my dad gets back.”
“You think he’s still alive?”
Andy paused, searching the hazy horizon. Her gut ached. “I don’t know. I hope so.” Then she dropped her head in a rare moment of humility. “You’re right. I’m just as bad as you. I lie, too. I don’t deserve to be in the CIA.”
Maybe he chuckled, maybe he snorted, Andy couldn’t tell but he leaned back, wrapping his arm under her, drawing her close.
“I think you’re pretty amazing, Andy Baker.”
“You, too.” Her chapped lips stung as she parted them in a smile. “You’re not ugly either,” she said, encouraged by his strong touch across her back.
He snorted. But he held her close.
“I mean. If we’re going to die, I should tell you.” Her face nestled into his chest, she was glad. She didn’t want to have to confess it to his face. “I really like you.”
He didn’
t speak, but drew her closer, kissing her on her head. The gesture warmed her, comforted her to be cradled in his arms as death sneaked closer. They were dying and yet, she had peace. She leaned into him. Her eyeballs were too dry to cry. Why did she wait until now to confess her feelings? Her whole heart belonged to him. Everything was clear.
“If this was how I’m going to die,” she said. “I’m glad it’s with you.”
Her skin stretched tight, like beef jerky, her thoughts incoherent. She slept sometimes and dreamed, weird nightmares of saying goodbye to Sandra, sometimes her father. “Thank you,” she said out loud, to Christiaan or Sandra or somebody in her dreams. Her voice was strangely far away.
“I love you, Andy.” Did she dream it? She wasn’t sure her lips could even part to ask. She dreamed more. Zippers. Flush toilets. Noisy buses.
A plane.
An engine roared in the sky.
She opened her eyes against the blowing dust, and threw back the umbrella startling Christiaan. “What the…?” he said, squinting at her.
Dizzy, she searched the sky, wondering if she was crazy or delusional. Her ears rang, but the sound was true. There in the midst of gathering blue was a little spec of gray.
Andy searched through her bag with her diminished strength.
“What are you doing?” Christiaan asked.
Andy rummaged until she found an old relic left over from dating Conner. A mix CD he made for her. She kept forgetting to take it out of her purse. She used crystalline case.
Andy signaled with the reflective surface until the plane circled closer and landed, blowing up clouds of dust.
With great effort, Christiaan stood next to her. “What if it’s the drug cartel? What if it’s the policía?”
“At this point either of those would be more welcome than death.” She squinted as the door slid open of the single prop, and out jumped a man in a suit.
“Oh no,” she said as a dark skinned, dark headed man in a suit jumped out. “We’ve signaled the cartel.”
As he approached he smiled too white teeth and said, “We’ve been searching the desert. Luckily, we found you.”
And with his words, Andy passed out.
****
Bobby didn’t struggle for breath. Not anymore. The plastic chest tube still protruded from his chest, but the heartbeat was gone. For almost two excruciating weeks, Hazel sat by Bobby’s side. Even after the surgeon had removed a damaged lobe, Bobby gasped and rasped for air, the blood filling his lungs. It had to be drained. As she sat through it all, silent, steady, courageous, optimistic even, hating the man who killed Bobby even more.
Hazel peered at Bobby, almost unrecognizable now, his face ashen, eyes wide and free of pain. The doctors shook their heads, murmuring apologies to her.
Pneumonia.
Not at all a glorious way to die. Not for Bobby. An ache choked her breath.
Hazel bowed her head when the doctors covered Bobby’s body with a sheet. Her hopes, her dreams, her future, dashed. No promenade down the aisle in her designer Vera. No kiss from the father of the bride. No first dance. No celebration. No wedding toast.
All of Hazel’s planning, all the money spent on decorations, flowers, wasted.
Flowers. Yes, there would be flowers. Wreaths of lilies, not a bursting bouquet of gardenias.
But Hazel didn’t cry. She planned. A man had used Bobby as a body shield, a man she planned to find and make suffer. Hazel planned and executed on a large scale.
Chapter Sixteen
Once on the single prop plane, Christiaan attended to Andy’s medical attention first. Ears ringing, muscles aching from carrying her into the shaded and air-conditioned cockpit, he dropped Andy’s IV line, the man in the suit handing him a clear bag of fluid.
“Thanks, Antonio,” he said, taking the lines, trying to focus, his mind a fuzzy blur.
“Let me do it. You help yourself,” Antonio said with his lilting accent, wrapping Andy’s IV with tape. “Boss doesn’t want you to die.”
Christiaan’s head spun, especially since he usually only pretended to drink his share of the water in the desert. Christiaan swabbed his vein and stuck in an IV. A few heartbeats later, his heart rate slowed, his skin loosened, his muscles relaxed.
“How did you find us?” he asked as he leaned back against the seat, buckling in. Antonio jumped in, signaling to Christiaan to put on his headset.
“I’ll let Boss tell you.”
“You were following us? I thought we had an agreement.”
“Boss couldn’t let you go completely off the grid, you know how it goes. But we lost you when you left the bus.”
Christiaan glanced nervously at Andy, still passed out on the seat next to him as they prepared for takeoff among the sagebrush and cactus. Christiaan frowned behind Antonio’s back, fitting the headset over his ears and adjusting the mic over his lips.
“Are we called in, then?” Christiaan asked through the headset.
“For now. Until we decide where we are at.” Empty space echoed in his ears. “Did you get it?”
Through the window, Christiaan stared at the small spots of green dotting the desert sod growing smaller and smaller as they rose into the air. Relieved, he patted Andy’s bag. “Something,” he said, grateful Andy insisted on carrying them in her red bag. He checked her color, glad she was reviving. “But it’s not what we thought it was.”
“We’ll let the Boss examine it and make a decision.”
Christiaan sat back, his body relaxing the first time since he’d left Boston, his mind drifting to the schematics, wishing he knew more scientific German. The lulling sound of the propeller relaxed him. Leaning back, he’d hoped they’d seen the last of the Habanero Cartel.
He woke when the pilot asked for silence in his headset. He listened to the control tower for clearance.
****
Andy woke glancing over the small airport, questioning with her gaze. Christiaan only smiled tightly. Once they landed, border control cleared them with some papers the man in the suit showed them. Andy figured they were faked.
“What’s the plan?” she asked Christiaan.
“We’re meeting up with my people.”
“Truthfully this time?”
Christiaan smiled. “It’s time to get some answers to your questions.”
A man Christiaan called Antonio led them to another flight to St. Louis on which Andy mostly slept after downing airport junk food as if it were a lobster dinner, and slobbering all over Christiaan in her sleep.
Starting their approach to land, Andy’s heart fluttered as she studied the river and the web of streets still far below. Tyrone had a bone to pick with her. He was out there, on the alert. But Andy couldn’t give up now and hide. She had to persevere. Meeting up with Christiaan’s team would give her more information, at least a change of wardrobe. From what she’d seen so far, they all were extremely well-dressed.
From the airport, they drove Antonio’s car to a warehouse out by the river. With low-lying cloud cover, the day pressed on them, cooler and humid. The gray dampened Andy’s mood, too.
Antonio left the two of them alone outside.
Christiaan stuffed his hands into his pockets, his flight jacket accentuating his broad shoulders. He paused before opening the door for Andy. They entered in the nondescript building with florescent lights and gray doors.
“Okay, my boss is in there.” He pointed to a room at the end of the hall with double doors.
Now she would finally be in the loop, trusted. She hated being in the dark, wondering, always wondering. The florescent lights made his scars white, contrasting sharply with his tanned skin. A four days’ growth of stubble still dotted his chin. His lips no longer chapped.
They shared something in the desert. It had to be more than ramblings of heat stroke. Maybe now was the time to get answers for more than just one question. Or to tell him what lived in her heart.
“Christiaan, before we go in there—”
“
Andy, I wanted to ask you,” he paused.
Andy’s heart leaped. He was going to confess, too. Maybe they could run away and leave the converters and Conner and Scott and all the other mess behind.
He continued. “They want to know if you know anyone on the local police force you trust.”
Andy frowned, biting back disappointment. Oh, yes, the mission must go on. “There is only one person I know who doesn’t care about money or being bribed.”
“Who?”
“Fred.”
“Okay, we may need to connect with him. Also…” he hesitated, glancing over her shoulder. “You may have to go into the Witness Protection Program.”
“Why?”
“If you testify, they’ll come after you.”
“They’ll be in jail. They can’t get me.”
“You think so? I know many men in jail with influential arms extending far beyond the borders of their confinement. Do you think a prison will stop them from taking their revenge on you?”
Andy’s heart lunged, tightening. The thought haunted her. “I can be careful. I can use disguises.”
Christiaan grew passionate. “For the rest of your life? You’ll need a new Social, a new name, not just for you, but for your family. They will come after you, kill you. Or your loved ones. They will take them away, kill them or make them suffer. It’s the price you pay. They will make you suffer until everything you hold most dear is either destroyed or theirs.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you understand? Brad and Conner didn’t want to be the ones to rat out Imperium. They left it to you. Death was the easy way out. Connor is a piece of crap. You were going to take all the fall. No, you aren’t evil. You cannot understand evil.”
“And you understand evil?” Andy asked in a small voice.
He didn’t respond for a few heartbeats. “Just promise me you’ll be safe.”
“I will,” she said.
“Promise. In a sentence.”
“I will be safe.”
Christiaan sighed with relief. “Before we go in there…” He paused. He sounded tired, fed up or annoyed.
Andy anticipated he was going to say something about the time they spent in the desert. Andy wanted to make the first break. “Before we go in there,” Andy halted, “I should explain what I said out in the desert―” He hadn’t yet said anything about her confession of love. Andy didn’t even know if the words had been audible. Now, Andy wished she hadn’t said anything.
