by Lisa Hughey
He lay his palm over my heart.
And I was lost.
Was it any wonder I was willing to give up everything for him...for our baby?
“It’s funny because they raised me, groomed me, and guided me.” And yeah, I know they loved me but it had been a very distant love. Their love for each other was so encompassing...they’d had an epic story.
They were a Christian and a Jew married in a time when they still had segregated beaches, one for Christians, one for Jews. Now that I knew they’d come from Germany where religious tension was far worse, it only underscored the difficult reality of their relationship. They’d been completely solid.
“They were a unit, and I changed their lifestyle.”
“What does that have to do with Carson?”
“He saved me.” And he’d set the foundation for who I was today. The feeling in my gut was unshakeable. “Trust me.”
He rolled onto his back, curving his arm to prop up his head. “I do trust you.”
And I knew he was giving me a gift. “You promise? No matter what?” Reflexively, I brushed my fingers against my throat. But of course, the amulet was gone.
“Wait here.” He vaulted out of bed, and I was thankful for the reprieve. I watched the play of muscle in his butt as he retrieved something from his pants pocket.
Jordan walked back toward me, his sex swaying with each step. But that isn’t what held my attention, it was the look shining from his eyes.
He leaned over to tie the leather around my neck. The familiar weight of my mother’s amber settled on my throat. I curled my fingers around the carved scarab, my heart thudding in my chest.
“I...stole this from your dresser after you left. Carried it with me, everywhere.” Jordan admitted as he slid back in beside me. “I kept thinking that if I kept it safe, I could keep you safe.”
Moisture pooled in my eyes, and love gripped my throat.
“Hey, it worked.” I blinked.
Jordan rolled on top of me, caging my body with his, covering me, his expression fierce. “Know this. I will not let him hurt you.”
“Ditto.”
And I prayed he’d understand.
FORTY-FOUR
October 20th
2:18 AM
Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
The Lincoln Memorial was deserted.
They were in place at the base of Lincoln’s statue, waiting for the senator to arrive.
They'd let the senator think he was meeting only with Carson. Jordan flicked a glance at his watch, and wondered if the old goat would be on time. Would he be curious enough to arrive as soon as possible, or would he execute a power play and make the peon wait?
Carson had enticed the senator with information about Staci, indicating he didn’t want to share with the authorities until after talking to the senator. He intimated the intel was something the senator needed to hear first before the knowledge went on the record.
Carson specifically told the senator to come alone, but Jordan was sure the senator would have at least one bodyguard with him. Cynically, Jordan wondered what the esteemed senator’s wife thought about him taking a meeting at two o’clock in the morning.
She probably thought he was diddling an aide.
Jordan knew the old goat didn’t have any other illegitimate kids because right after Jordan's birth, the senator had a vasectomy.
The dick.
All his life, Jordan tried to forget about his father, and most of the time he succeeded. He had little contact with the man over the years. Contact was always initiated by the senator, except for the first disastrous time Jordan had wanted to meet his father and tracked him down in his congressional office after hours.
Since then Jordan avoided him at all costs.
His distaste for everything the man stood for was absolute. If he could eradicate his father’s DNA from his body he would be happy.
Fortunately he had his mother and aunt to counteract the poison of his father’s legacy.
“You can be anything you want,” his mother used to say fiercely. So fiercely, he’d always believed it.
Jordan was unbelievably proud of her. She’d had a hard life, come from Mexico to work in the United States, and when she'd gotten pregnant, she'd been disowned by her family, frowned upon by the church, and still managed to succeed.
If anyone had asked Jordan a week ago if he’d ever want to confront his father about anything, he’d have said absolutely not.
But as he stood in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln’s marble throne, a surety of purpose blanketed him. Justice would finally be served.
And he would be the one to deliver it.
They heard the clicking of his father’s heels. Staci tightened subtly. Carson relaxed. And Jordan knew what he had to do.
“Change of plan,” he said softly. “I’ll do the talking.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Carson whispered.
Jordan held up his palm before Staci could speak. “I have to do this.”
She threaded her fingers through his and brushed his knuckles with her lips before letting go and fading into the shadows.
A solid lump of dread settled in his stomach. But using his HRT training, he settled into his zone.
This moment was his cold zero. The point at which your zero target and the cold bore of your rifle meet. That first perfect shot. And he wasn’t going to miss.
Jordan stepped closer to the edge of the shadows just as his father walked up the final step. Standing underneath the mural representing angels and truth, Jordan’s body would be visible but not his face.
Jordan searched behind the senator looking for his backup.
But no one was there.
They had set up the meet after they arrived at the monument. Since then, no one else had approached, so unless the senator had brought along snipers--doubtful--they were safe.
Jordan didn’t want to take any chances with Staci’s safety. But she had a right to her own answers and her own justice.
“Really, Black, was this necessary?”
“It was.” Jordan stepped out into the light, revealing his face.
“Ramirez?” His father never called Jordan by his first name, as if he could distance himself from the truth of Jordan’s existence.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you were--” The senator shifted gears quickly, understanding he’d given something away, and put facts together. “I didn’t realize you were acquainted with Black.”
“Didn’t realize you were keeping track of me that closely.”
“Why are you here?” The senator stiffened. “And where is Carson Black?”
“I have questions and I want answers,” Jordan ordered, using a hard voice.
“This conversation is over.”
When he was younger, Jordan had a sort of sick fascination with his father. He’d studied him: His schooling, his career path, his social moves, even his way of dress.
“Why were you in the press conference regarding Staci Grant?”
“That traitor?”
Jordan knew exactly how to stick it to the senator. All those hours of analyzing him, dissecting his behavior were going to pay off spectacularly. “She’s no traitor. She works for the CIA.”
The senator snorted. “She doesn’t work for the CIA. She recruits terrorists.”
“Perhaps you should have done your homework, Dick.” Jordan contradicted him, “She’s a NOC officer for the CIA.”
The senator paled, actually fell back a step as if by retreating he could deny Jordan’s words. “You...you’re serious.”
“Oh yeah.” A combination of triumph and fury bubbled through him. “Who authorized the release of her information? Intel of that magnitude is vetted high up.”
“Your information is flawed,” the senator said resolutely. “I saw the documentation on her activities. She’s been recruiting--”
“For our government.” Unbelievable. The old man was stil
l trying to defend his position. “Who authorized the press conference?”
“I was just there for effect.”
Trying to snag some of the publicity for his own gain. “Who?”
The senator blustered, “Major Vandenburg took care of everything. He had the appropriate paperwork and approvals.”
Major Vandenburg again. “Why would he have it in for Staci?”
The senator frowned, his face barely moving. He must have had a recent Botox injection. “You’re mistaken.”
“Face facts. You’ve been used.” Either that or he was one hell of an actor.
The senator shook his head, firm in his beliefs. “She was recruiting in Afghanistan.”
“She was working for UNOCHA. They facilitate the de-mining of rural areas in countries like Afghanistan.” Jordan hammered. “A cause you purportedly support.”
“This is ridiculous.” The senator pivoted on his five-hundred-dollar Cole Haan’s. “I’ll get this straightened out. I’d suggest if you are associating with this woman you disentangle immediately.”
Jordan was as entangled as it got.
His anger built, his heart pounding, pulse beating.
As if she knew, he was at his breaking point, Staci stepped out of the shadows. “We can’t let you leave just yet, Senator.”
Senator Jordan whirled around. “You!” The weapon in her hands made him falter.
“You won’t shoot me,” he said imperiously.
“I have nothing left to lose,” Staci said calmly, her hand steady and her eyes serious. “You made sure of that. I’m as good as dead. Frankly unless I get this mess straightened out, I don’t care who I take with me.”
She smiled then and Jordan was thankful she wasn’t pissed at him anymore.
The senator paled but held his ground. His hand in his pocket, he fiddled nervously with change.
“Hands out of your pockets, sir,” she sneered.
She cocked the trigger and the senator complied, quickly.
“Do you know who you talking to? I’m the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. You can’t touch me.”
“It’s like our own personal town hall meeting.” She derided. “Would that be the same committee who ordered the execution of innocent war refugees in 1995?”
The senator ignored her question, his gaze focused on the weapon. “If you shoot me, they’ll go after your family.”
“I don’t have any family, you bastard.” Staci took a menacing step forward. “You killed them.”
“That’s utterly ridiculous. I didn’t kill anyone.”
Carson stepped out of the shadows on the other side of Lincoln. “Actually, you did.”
“Black. You are here.”
“I told you I needed to talk to you,” Carson said calmly.
The senator put on a smarmy smile usually reserved for the press. “Can you take care of these people?”
“I’d be happy to,” Carson said easily. “But first, go ahead and answer their questions.”
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
Jordan’s temper was starting to roil. The senator didn’t give a rat’s ass about what he’d done. “Why’d you order the deaths of those people?”
The senator paused. “It was a security risk we couldn’t afford.”
“In 1995, you were just appointed. So how did you make the decision?” Staci asked.
“Most of our committee was down with the flu,” the senator said slowly, finally realizing how truly tenuous his position was. “There were only three of us in session, and we needed to act quickly. So we decided to err on the side of caution.”
And he thought nothing of it?
“You destroyed ten families.” Staci’s aim was rock-steady as she held the weapon pointed straight at his rotten heart.
He took a step back toward the eighty small steps leading down and away. But he was trapped. There was no way to go down quickly without breaking his neck.
“Why did you have me followed?” Jordan bit out.
The senator tightened his lips, and his head canted to the side for an instant. “I didn’t.”
Jordan knew he was lying. He didn’t like the way the senator kept looking behind him. He cautiously eased his weapon from the holster so that he would not jeopardize Staci. Thinking carefully, moving slowly, he thumbed off the safety and started shifting towards his future.
A cold calm reason settled in his mind. “How can we clear up this mess? Why did Vandenburg call the press conference about Staci?”
“National Security.” The senator blinked, looked at the gun in Jordan’s hand. “You won’t shoot me.”
“I trained with weapons every day for fifteen years. I have a near perfect kill shot, I rarely miss, and I am really, really pissed off.”
"What do you want?" The senator demanded.
The only sound in the still air of the night was the harsh rasp of Jordan’s breath. “Call off the dogs on Staci.”
“I can’t do that.” He dismissed the order with a flick of his hand.
“Do it.”
The senator said, “You’re wasting your breath.”
Time seemed to slow. The rush of the wind along the deserted monument, the skitter of leaves across the white marble floor, the frozen tableau of the four of them, stuck in a pattern without a way out, unless Jordan changed the rules.
“Do it or I’ll go to the press.” Jordan breathed in the frigid Fall air letting the cold cleanse his lungs. “The senator who runs on a campaign of family values tried to kill his own son, his own illegitimate son?”
“I never....” But the senator trailed off.
“You gave my mother money to have an abortion, another strike against that whole family values platform you pride yourself on, and your wife dismissed my mother from your household.”
Jordan took a step closer to look into the senator’s eyes. To let the man who’d been nothing more than a sperm donor see his contempt and disgust. “And despite the hardship your family caused her, she still managed to triumph.”
Every word was a vindication of the distress and anguish this man had wreaked on Jordan’s family.
“I’ll be goddamned if I let you sorry excuse for a man destroy Staci Grant’s life because of your fucking ego and inefficiencies.”
The senator opened and closed his mouth like lobbyist caught with a bribe in his hand.
“The life of a good woman, a woman with values and honor and integrity.”
Jordan realized Staci had all of those qualities in abundance. Perhaps he didn’t always approve of her methods. But her motives and objectives were just. Unlike his father, whose only motivation was self-serving. He would not let the senator ruin her life.
“All the qualities that you should have and don’t. Fix it.”
“There’s no way to do that without coming off like a total fool.”
“It won’t be the first time.”
“I....”
“Don’t worry, Richard.” Major Vandenburg stepped into the light, a small pistol in his hands. It looked suspiciously like the missing Sig Sauer P229 from Staci's Bahamas house.
Fuck.
The senator, damn him, relaxed. This was what he’d been waiting for.
Vandenburg took a step closer. “I’ll take care of this. Go on home.”
FORTY-FIVE
“Major!” The senator feigned surprise, eyebrows raised in polite inquiry. “What are you doing here?”
Scumbag. Clearly, Senator Jordan had called the major.
“He’s going to try kill me,” I said.
That wiped the smile off the senator’s face.
Major Vandenburg sneered. “I’m going to succeed.”
“I’d really like to know why,” I asked pleasantly as if inquiring about the high cost of Army toilet seats rather than speaking about my death.
“You’re a public danger.” The major bared his teeth. “Don’t you watch television?”
We were in a V patte
rn, Carson on my left, me in the middle, Jordan on my right. I was directly across from the senator. Major Vandenburg was behind and a little to the right of the senator, closer to Jordan than Carson.
I was the furthest away, but the Major had a clear line of sight to me. He was also only three feet away from the steps.
Jordan had the best angle of trajectory for hitting the major, but first dammit, I really wanted to know why this guy wanted to kill me.
“Why?”
“You were in Zaman Khalili’s village.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you see?”
“Poverty, evidence of U.S. dollars coming in, the kids had pencils and the adults had boxes of supplies.”
“When you escaped from prison?”
“A lot of landmines.”
“Jesus, after all this, all the worry, stress and extra work you caused me and you didn’t even notice.”
I scrolled through my memories of the village.
Then it hit me. I’d seen poppy fields. With harvested plants. Not destroyed.
“So you had me put in prison?”
“You were the only American on that team.” The major spit a giant glob of mucus onto the floor, reminding me of Fariya, when she showed her contempt for Zaman Khalili.
And I suddenly realized, she had known.
She had known the U.S. military was using her village, using her family. That’s why she’d freed me. She wanted it stopped. Wanted the drug harvesting and trafficking to stop.
Jordan glanced down at the puddle of spit and smiled wickedly. I knew exactly what he was thinking. DNA evidence to tie the major to this meeting.
“And then it all went to shit when I found out you worked for the CIA. Dammit.”
“The CIA?” the senator looked horrified. “She, you, oh, my dear Lord. You knew?”
Yeah. Idiot. You fucked up. I smirked. “So what exactly are you doing in Afghanistan?”
Vandenburg replied, “We give the villages the army money from CERP, the Commanders’ Emergency Relief Program, we give them supplies through the Civil Affairs Division, and then instead of destroying the poppy fields, they harvest the poppies and we split the profits.”
“What about the Taliban?”
“We protect them from the Taliban.” He paused. “They’re happy to work with us because they get money, supplies and half the profits.”
