by Fiona Quinn
Brian crossed his arms over his chest, trying hard to keep the scowl off his face. “What’s the plan once they’re in custody?”
“The FBI are bringing them here. Titus and the three of us will be in the peanut gallery. We’ll be doing the videography and feeding information into Finley’s and Andersson’s ears so they can ask the right questions, in case we know something that one of the suspects is dithering over.”
“Who’s on the arrest warrants?” Thorn asked.
“Sophia, Nadia, and Jael. The goal is to keep Sophia in their pocket. Nadia and Jael are there to give information and to have on hand just in case we missed something big. The special agents will be following the tablet on its route to the buyer. Interestingly, Gilchrest’s jet happens to have a Dulles landing scheduled for this afternoon. The FBI is assuming the Gilchrest’s are the ones making the buy. After the transfer of the tablet, the FBI will scoop up the archaeology department, and also the folks on the Gilchrest plane. I’ve been assured there is no chance the FBI will be turning assets from anyone in that family. The best they’ll be able to do is score a lesser sentence based on useful intelligence.”
“That’s where the FBI plans to make their splash to warn other investors off buying relics and funding ISIS,” Thorn said. “They won’t need Nadia or Sophia for their anti-terror propaganda campaign.”
That gave Brian little peace. “All right.” He stood. “I’m off to Sophia’s to make sure the stalker doesn’t do something today that would stop Sophia from getting to her date with destiny on time. I’ll keep you guys in the loop. Let me know if anything comes up.”
***
Brian drove slowly into the neighborhood. He’d taken a tour to figure out who was on hand. The TV vans had lost interest after the eleven o’clock news when they reported that the FBI had saved the two children, and their mother was on her way to a Pennsylvania mental hospital. The kids were taken to the precinct where their dad met them to take them home. The disappearance of an Alzheimer’s patient was the icing on the cake, but this morning that story was stale.
It was a little after zero-nine-hundred hours. There was a group of searchers with their backpacks and orange shirts huddled under the tents in the pool parking lot. It looked like they were getting briefed on their search areas for the day. Brian headed over to Sophia’s house. He found her in shorts and rubber boots in her garden. Her car was pulled next to the house and the driveway was lined with the flats of flowers they had bought the night before. He took a moment to appreciate the view as she crawled on all fours to her next row.
Brian was glad as hell that he wasn’t going to be on hand when the FBI took her down. Coward. Brian had started many a morning knowing that people he cared about were going to get hurt, maybe not even survive the day. He’d jumped onto the backs of trucks fully aware that all hell was about to break loose. Orders were orders. Fate was fate. Shit was shit. This felt different. This felt like someone was carving his heart out of his chest with a dull blade. He knew he had to keep it together, watch for every opportunity to help Sophia, and at the same time make sure he was true to his mission.
He popped the car door open.
“Good morning.” Sophia’s smile was radiant. She had color in her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled.
“You look happy,” he said, his voice caught in his throat.
“It’s going to be a fabulous day. I’m so excited. Beautiful flowers, warm sun, Marla out of my life, Jael coming into town, and the culmination of a project that I’ve been working on for a very long time.” She stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time in years.”
Her dark brown eyes were velvety soft, and he thought, as he often did, of a beautiful doe with long lashes and a gentle heart. He was seeing Sophie the woman who’d walked into that bar, and not Sophia with her ties to ISIS. He was seeing a woman that he wanted to gather into his arms and hold, not the woman who was about to be shackled. Standing there framed in sunlight, she took his breath away.
A dog, barking off in the distance, broke the spell.
Brian pulled a padded envelope from his pocket and walked over to her. “Iniquus has a route for the bracelet. It needs to go out today before noon. It should be at the cave in the next twenty-four hours.”
Sophia blinked. “What? Are you serious?” She unhooked the clasp of the bracelet with shaking fingers.
“Are you ready to let it go?”
Sophia kissed it. “I’m sending you home. You’re going home, just like I promised. Now you hold up your end of the bargain,” she whispered to the ring. She held out the bracelet and dropped it into the envelope. Tears slid out from behind her tightly closed eyes. She was shaking, her breath coming in gulps. “Whew!” She fanned her face. “That was an unexpected reaction.”
Brian quietly sealed the envelope and put it back in his pocket. If he could do nothing else for her, he could at the very least free her from the idea that she’d been cursed. Maybe with a new mindset—a new perspective—she could make new choices for herself and her kids. He was just grateful he had the resources to get this done.
Sophia took a step toward him, and putting her hands on his arm for balance, rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she said, settling back on her feet and looking up through her lashes at him. “While you’re giving me a miracle this morning, all I can give you in return is coffee and a breakfast strudel.”
“Coffee?”
“I picked some up when I went to give the boys a kiss at their daycare and got myself some chai. It’s on the kitchen counter for you.”
“You knew I’d be here this morning?”
“Lucky guess.” She smiled at him. Her armor was falling away. Brian wasn’t sure that was such a great thing. She’d probably need it today.
Chapter Thirty
Sophia
Monday a.m.
The bracelet was off her wrist, packaged up, and headed for Syria. This was a day of miracles. Brian had done so much for her in such a short time. Her luck was changing. Her life was turning around. Marla was gone. No more flat tires. No more fear of being out in public. She would be able to take her boys up to the park to play. She’d be able to browse the grocery aisles and decide what fresh lovely things they could eat that night.
Jael was coming in with the tablet. The last time Sophia had seen Jael was when he’d saved them from the kidnappers and taken them on the back of his motorcycle to the US embassy. She had kept her promise and never told anyone she knew who he was. The tablet was the end of a long road they’d travelled together. Today, they’d get their well-earned prize. Today felt like success. The flowers she was planting were celebrating with her. She looked down the hill to where Brian was drinking his coffee on her steps and smiled.
She lugged a flat closer to her and picked up the next pot. Turning it upside-down, she carefully removed the plant. She held it in her left hand as she reached out to make a new hole.
Sophia’s trowel caught with the next plunge. She tried again, then scraped the dirt away from the roots that stopped her progress. She looked in the hole. I don’t remember there being irises here. Sophia reached down to pull them up. Holding the root in her hand, her brain stalled. Still not fully comprehending, a scream shrilled from her throat, filled the neighborhood, echoed off the houses, swelled into the trees.
Something tangled around her, gripped, and pulled her. When the scream ran out of fuel, she sucked a deep breath into her deflated lungs.
“Sophia what is it? What’s wrong?”
Her brain rubbed against the words as if they were braille, she could feel the texture of concern, but couldn’t make out how the raised dots formed sentences or thoughts. The one thing she could make out was that it was Brian’s voice. He shook her. Made her head bobble about.
“Look at me. Look in my eyes. What is going on?”
Sophia got it. She knew what he was saying. Okay, now it was her turn. She fought for some words
, but ended up pointing her finger at the iris roots in the hole she was digging.
He pushed her down until she was sitting on the curb, then pressed her head between her knees. “Stay there,” he commanded, quickly followed by a “Holy shit.”
Sophia’s hands were on the road. She pressed her knees against her head and stayed in the position Brian had folded her.
He was standing next to her with a hand on her shoulder. “This is Brian Ackerman, I believe we’ve found Mr. Rochester, the missing Alzheimer’s patient.” There was a long pause as he listened. “No ma’am, he’s deceased.”
Brian sat down behind her, wrapped his body around her and held her physically together while they waited for the police to arrive.
***
Thorn was sitting in her living room with the detectives, taking notes about what was being asked and answered. She was wrapped in a blanket, but still shook like a leaf. Brian sat shoulder to shoulder with her. It kept her in her body and kept her upright.
Their other liaison, Nutsbe, had swung by and picked up the package heading to Syria. How Brian had remembered that with all this going on was a miracle. But Brian had promised it would get to Iniquus in time for its journey home.
“Sir,” Thorn said. “Sophia was having trouble with someone puncturing her tires. We were able to get several samples of fingerprints from construction materials. After her flowers were stolen, Brainiack sent a trowel found on scene to our forensics lab. Sophia Abadi’s fingerprints were not on it. There was no sign that the tool was wiped, and fingerprints that match the construction materials were found. That evidence is available at Iniquus. We can’t identify the prints; they aren’t in our databases.”
Joe Rochester came back in the room. He was holding himself together pretty well for a guy whose dad had just turned up buried in a shallow grave in front of her house. The detective sent a speculative glance his way.
“I have a forensics app. If you’d like, we can rule Joe’s fingerprints out right away,” Thorn said.
“What?” Joe asked. “Yeah, let’s rule me out. I didn’t kill my dad and plant him in Sophia’s garden.”
Thorn swiped at his phone and brought up a fingerprint screen.
Sophia looked at the clock. “Am I under arrest?” she asked the detective.
“No, ma’am,” he replied. He’d been going over and over her story since this morning.
They’d had a break for the pizzas that Nutsbe had brought in. But time was ticking by. “I have to get ready for a meeting. A colleague is flying in from Turkey, and I’m supposed to meet him at Dulles. Excuse me.” She pushed the blanket from her shoulder and stood up. She turned toward Brian when she felt his eyes on her. The look she found was impossible to interpret but something was there. Something that made a shiver crawl up her back. A scalding hot shower is what I need. She wanted to wash this mess away. All of it.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sophia
Monday Afternoon
“You know, I’m an extremely brave person to be in the same car with you,” Nadia said as she wove over to the ramp that would funnel them to Dulles.
“Brave enough to have me in your car, not brave enough for me to do the driving.”
“I don’t see any reason to tempt fate. You’re like Sisyphus, only in your case, you push your boulders up the hill then you roll down to find another one waiting for you.”
“Mr. Rochester died and was buried before I handed over the ring to Brian. He said it would be back in the cave in less that twenty-four hours. I only have to hang on for twenty-one more hours and counting.”
“That mindset is nuts.”
“I can’t say I disagree. But by tomorrow, things in my life should improve—with or without the curse lifting.”
“Do you want to elaborate on that?” Nadia flicked a glance Sophia’s way.
“No. Not really. Look, there’s a spot right by the door. See? Already my luck is changing.”
Nadia glided smoothly into the spot and put the car in park. “That’s apophenia in reverse.”
“Ha! Who knew apophenia could go in reverse? Now, let’s go find Jael.”
There was no one in the well-appointed private hangar when they walked in. They milled around for a minute before a man in a blue uniform with a gold-winged pin and a name tag approached them and gave them directions to the meeting room where they could wait for the diplomatic envoy. The plane had landed ahead of schedule and was already on the runway.
“See? Good fortune,” Sophia said. They walked into a room that held a beautiful cherry table and well-padded armchairs. To the side there was a table laden with snacks, a bowl of fresh fruit, and a beverage station if one wanted a cup of coffee or some tea. Sophia was buzzing in happy anticipation.
“Nadia, after Jael takes off again, we need to go back to my house. I need to move the computers to your place for now. Get our equipment set up over there. I’ll pack some bags for me and the boys. I’m not staying at that house anymore.”
“But I thought the lawyer said you had to stay there until the trial.”
“She did, but that was before there was a dead body in my yard. I mean, it was crazy before, but this is getting into Twilight Zone territory. I won’t be staying there until the killer is found.”
“He could have died of natural causes and then someone just buried him. Like a dog who finds a bone.”
“Nadia, that is all kinds of messed up. Seriously.” Sophia felt the floor shift and the room start to oscillate. She’d managed to avoid a seizure through all of this and she couldn’t handle one now, just as Jael was arriving. Nadia’s hug stopped the spinning, and allowed her to focus on the concern in her friend’s eyes. Sophia fastened her consciousness onto the pressure of her friend’s hands, the smell of flowers in her hair. She worked to find things around her that her senses perceived in the here and now that could help keep her from slipping away. It was the technique she’d worked on in therapy. It had kept her seizure-free for over a year. In this last week, things had spiraled too fast, too frequently. She hadn’t had a chance to ground herself in the moment, her brain had slipped into its defensive posture and held her there.
Nadia reached out and arranged Sophia’s hair. “You can bunk with me until we find you a suitable place, but I don’t have room for you and the boys. You know that.”
“No, I’d never impose. I’m planning to get a motel room somewhere at least for the next few days—the trial is in one week. Then I’ll have more options.”
The door swung open, and there stood Jael with a grin across his face and his arms spread wide. Nadia was up and launching herself toward him. He lifted her off the ground and spun in circles with his head thrown back, laughing. He set Nadia back on her feet. She was flushed and happiness lit her eyes. Jael kept her tucked in his arms as he met Sophia’s gaze and winked.
“We did it.” He raised his arm, and Sophia high-fived him then laced her fingers with his.
“Thank you. This means everything to me.”
Nadia pulled back and turned from Jael to Sophia. “What does?”
“Oh, seeing Jael looking so well,” Sophia told Nadia, then turned her attention to Jael. “How was the trip?”
“Good. Too short. They’re refueling, changing pilots, and we’re heading right back to where we started from. Good thing the seats are comfortable enough for sleeping.” He peeked at the food table. “They didn’t feed us very well. Nadia, could I impose on you to make me a cup of tea? Perhaps a plate of something to eat?”
Nadia sent him a confused glance then went over to the snack station.
Jael leaned closer to Sophia’s ear. “The transfer of property has been made. I met Josh Gilchrest himself out on the tarmac. I watched them load it onto his corporate jet, I’m assuming they’re taking it to Tulsa.”
“It went through customs okay?”
“Not a hitch, your provenance was perfection.”
“Do you want cream and sugar in your tea?”
Nadia called over.
“Yes, please,” Jael said with a smile.
“The monies were transferred?”
Jael pulled out his phone and scrolled forward to the forms that Gilchrest had signed. He swiped his finger and showed the bank deposit in the off-shore account.
“So it’s done.”
“It’s in the bag.” Jael put his hand on her shoulder with a grin.
The door popped open and FBI SWAT stormed into the room. Jael pushed Sophia behind him as he took in the scene. The room swarmed with men in black battledress with automatic pistols in their hands. Jael, Sophia, and Nadia were grabbed and forced to the ground where they were frisked. Sophia’s arms were wrenched behind her back and cuffs were snapped into place. All she could think was that the police had decided she was guilty of killing Mr. Rochester. But why would they be arresting Jael and Nadia?
They were hauled out of the airport and each placed in a separate black SUV. Sophia had trouble negotiating the step up with her hands behind her back. The FBI guy helped get her in. As soon as she was in place, he held her securely against the seat with his forearm across her chest while a guy on the other side crawled in to shackle her ankles and attach the chain to a bar on the floor. Her arms behind her back were cramping at her shoulders due to their unnatural position. The man who had helped her in the car pulled the seatbelt into place and cinched it down tightly before he drew the balaclava off his head. He looked like just a normal guy without it. Someone who picked up his kids at daycare just like she did. Her boys were at the forefront of her thoughts. She’d promised to pick them up at daycare tonight. She’d have to find a way to get in touch with Lana.
Now that the door had been slammed into place, all Sophia could think was that if there were an accident and the engine caught on fire, she would be left to burn alive. She couldn’t imagine how excruciating it would be to burn to death.
