by Alice Ward
Perhaps I’d made the biggest mistake of my life coming to Afghanistan. Perhaps I’d also made my last. It could be that Seth wasn’t even in the country. It could be that he was dead.
I’d never figured out just what I thought about the afterlife, never decided if I believed in Heaven or God. I’d been too busy with other things, too busy making money seven days a week and chasing the next thrill.
At least I’d had Seth. At least there had been those magical weeks. They’d saved me, changed me. I hadn’t even known I’d come to dislike the person I was. If I died, I would do so with gratitude in my heart.
I jumped when two of the men stepped forward and took me by the arms. Their fingers dug into my flesh as they roughly hauled me up and turned me around. With a giant push, they shoved me forward, and I fell, my hands scraping against the ground as terror became a living thing inside me.
The sound of metal sliding on metal filled the air, and although I knew very little about guns, I knew one had just been engaged. I closed my eyes and felt tears slide down my sweat streaked face.
It was over.
I’d been stupid and would pay the price for my recklessness.
“Quinn!”
I looked up as I heard the familiar voice, sure I was imagining it.
Seth.
He rushed in through the doorway, catapulting himself toward me as a sob escaped my mouth. I pushed myself up from the ground, forgetting about the men with guns surrounding us. His arms slipped around me and pulled me close. My face pressed into his shoulder, and I breathed in his scent, familiar but also changed. Sweat seeped through the fabric, but I clung to him anyway.
I couldn’t move. Thirty seconds before I had thought he might be dead. And now here he was, alive and in my arms.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his words almost as breathless as mine.
“Where were you?” I questioned at the same time, my words falling all over his in a jumbled heap.
He pulled back to look at me. With the bright light from outside shining behind him in the dark room, I could barely see his face. Just the edges of his jaw were visible.
Maybe it’s not really him. Maybe it’s a trick. Or he’s a ghost.
He took my hand and pulled me out of the hut. The men let us go. Out in the bright and delicious air, Seth laid both of his hands on my cheeks and looked directly in my face. His scruff had grown out and was nearly a full beard. Bags sat under his eyes, and his cheeks and forehead were darker, tanned by days in the sun.
“What are you doing here?” he asked again, harsher this time.
“I came to find you.” As I said it, I realized for the first time what a truly crazy plan it had been.
But it was also a crazy plan that had worked.
Seth took my hand. “Let’s get out of here.” He looked back at the tent. “Stay here. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”
He ducked into the tent, and I crept closer, trying to stay as small as possible. I heard raised voices, but couldn’t understand a word. Minutes passed as the argument continued and my worry grew with each passing second. What was happening? Had my presence made everything worse? I hated not knowing.
Inside, the voices grew softer, and I jumped when Seth stepped through the door. He offered me a tight smile and reached for my hand, pulling me behind him. We walked through tufts of grass and wove between houses in silence. Seth’s hand was in mine, our feet hitting the ground at the same pace, our breathing synced.
I couldn’t believe it.
He led me to an old Honda parked between two houses. “Climb in.”
I did as he said, relieved to have a replacement for the little blue car.
Seth climbed into the driver’s side, sighed, and turned to me. “I…”
I stared, wondering what he was going to say.
He winced like he was about to be struck. “I lied to you.”
“I know you did.”
“I wasn’t deployed.”
“I know.”
His jaw tensed. “I know you probably won’t understand why I came here, or why I lied to you. I’m not expecting you to, and I’m not expecting you to forgive me.”
I lifted my chin and forced him to look me straight in my eye. “I came here for you, didn’t I?”
He said nothing, just searched my eyes over and over.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said breathlessly. “How did you…? Why did you…?”
“I knew you weren’t deployed,” I explained. “I found out soon after your last email. Why did you stop writing?”
His throat worked up and down. “I was ashamed.”
I sighed. “Because of what you came here to do.”
Seth turned away from me and laid one arm across the steering wheel. His shoulders drooped.
“Seth,” I said softly. “Blaire told me about your sister. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
He peeked over at me, his eyes red. “What else do you know?”
“Not much else, although I talked to your dad. I went to your mom’s house, but she wasn’t there.” I pulled my legs up into the seat and tucked them against my chest. I’d left my bags behind at that house. I had no hope of finding it again, but I didn’t care. Nothing in them was so valuable it couldn’t be replaced. I had my wallet — a slim one I used for traveling — in my back pocket, which meant I could get out of the country easily enough.
“My father blames me,” Seth said, his body still angled away from me. “He blames me for her… for her dying.”
“It’s not your fault,” I rasped. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know what he’s said to you, but he’s awful if he made you feel that way.”
“I don’t know, Quinn. For a long time, I thought it was my fault.” He lifted his head and looked out across the dashboard. “And then I started changing my mind about it, telling myself I’d done everything I could. I told Emmy not to go, but she did it anyway.”
“You couldn’t watch her every second. She was a grown woman.”
He nodded begrudgingly. “Yeah, but even if I’d seen her slip out, what would I have done? Held her arms behind her back? Tied her up? Report her?” He shook his head. “She always did whatever she pleased. I just hoped things would work out. I figured they would because they always seemed to for her.”
“So you know you couldn’t have done anything. But why? Why did you come back here?”
“To find them,” he answered through gritted teeth. “To find them. I’d tried to forget for so long, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. Then I got a new tip and…” He lifted a shoulder, not needing to finish the sentence.
“Your dad had something to do with this, didn’t he? With you coming back here?”
Seth turned to me, the sadness there in his eyes again. He didn’t have to answer for me to know my assumption was spot on.
“Is this why it drives you crazy to see him? Because you know he’s just going to make you feel guilty. God…” My teeth ground together. “What an asshole.”
“He hasn’t exactly had an easy time himself,” Seth said. “He and my mother divorced after Emmy… died. He and I never got along, and then this…” He blew out a breath. “He probably doesn’t really have anyone, now that I think about it.”
“Still, he doesn’t have to treat you this way.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never told you about Emmy.”
I reached out to touch him for the first time since climbing in the car. My hand found his and I squeezed it tightly. “It’s all right. I get it now. Really.”
“This is why I couldn’t go through with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I saw my dad that last time, he was drunk, ranting and going on about how I should have done more, how I should have been smarter, taken more action. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I knew he was right. I knew it.”
“No.” I squeezed his hand tighter. “He wasn’t right.”
“And so I did the onl
y thing that made sense. I tried to drink myself into an oblivion. That’s what he always did, so maybe I needed to take a page out of his book. It didn’t work. Even when I was walking sideways and falling down, it didn’t work. I still couldn’t forget about what had happened. And I knew it wasn’t really my fault… but I also knew that I could have done better. I could have done more to stop Emmy from going, but I didn’t. And I just… I couldn’t take it anymore, Quinn. I got to your place, and that’s when I decided. I was going to go. I was going to find Emmy’s killers and do what I should have done four years ago.”
I couldn’t breathe. The way Seth spoke scared me. He’d become a person I didn’t recognize.
“And then I got here. They weren’t hard to find. I knew the name of the woman Emmy tried to help. I found her husband, found his brothers. They live here, in this very village.”
“So I was right. That’s why you’re here. You came to kill them.”
We locked eyes. “I didn’t.”
A sigh left my tense body.
“I didn’t do it,” he said again. “I couldn’t. When it came time… when I followed them to Kabul, I couldn’t do it. All I could think about was one thing. You.”
Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.
“How could I go through with it?” Seth asked. “What would the point be? I knew Emmy wouldn’t want it. I knew that if I took out those men, it would have repercussions I couldn’t fathom. Maybe they would be gone, but then what? Could I get away? Could I make it out of the country undetected, without anyone knowing what I’d done?” He grabbed at his hair and shook his head. “In the past, when I considered those things they didn’t matter. Sometimes I felt like I wouldn’t care whether I lived or died, as long as I got my revenge. But then I met you… and I knew I had something to live for. I had a reason to go back home. And Emmy would want that. She would want me to do that more than anything else.”
“She would,” I whispered through tears.
Seth reached up and wiped my cheek with his thumb.
I gasped. “But what are you doing here? You said you changed your mind. So, what are you doing in Tejen?”
“I’ve been helping the family of the woman my sister died trying to save.”
“Oh.”
“I had just driven back into town when I was flagged down and brought to the tent. They told me a woman was searching for me and…”
“And?”
“And I nearly had a fucking heart attack when I walked in and saw you there.”
A shudder ran through me as I thought about what might have happened had I fallen into the wrong hands.
“I was going to write you today,” Seth said. “To tell you that I was coming home and I had things to tell you. And then, to find you here…” His cheeks puffed as he exhaled. “I still can’t believe it. It’s too crazy.”
“Who were those men? The translator I hired said that strangers had been seen around here with guns. That’s why he’s not with me. He thought Tejen was too dangerous and he left.”
Seth nodded. “Those men in the hut live here. They’re kind of unofficial guards. Strangers were seen around here last week, so the village is kind of on high alert. You might have noticed some tension.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “So that’s why no one wanted to talk to me.”
Seth grabbed a set of keys from the dashboard and stuck them in the ignition. The engine roared to life, shaking our feet with its rumble. “You don’t exactly fit in.”
I looked down at the long sleeve cotton shirt that fit me about as well as a paper bag and snorted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
We didn’t talk as Seth drove us out of Tejen and back onto the main road.
“Where’s your stuff?” he asked after a few minutes.
“I don’t really have anything. It got, uh, left behind.”
“How did you get here?”
“I booked a jet for the day.”
He smiled at me. “Organizing a rescue mission in style, huh?”
“You know it.”
More and more tension left me as we drew closer to Kabul. Entering the city limits, we wound through blocks of one and two story houses. Seth seemed to know his way around the place easily, as if we were in Chicago. We passed an area with taller, office type buildings. There were a few signs in English advertising restaurants and, once, a “dance hall.”
Turning into a neighborhood, Seth veered onto a dirt side street and through a gate then parked behind a house. I searched the neighboring houses for any clue as to where we were but could recognize nothing. I could be one street or five miles away from the home I stayed in last night.
We climbed out, and Seth took my hand and led me to the back of the house. A door on the main level was flush with the yard, but he took me past it and up a set of exterior stairs to the second floor. Unlocking the door, Seth guided me inside then locked the door behind us. He flicked a wall switch, revealing a small tan colored room with a bed, a side table, and a small bookshelf. Seth’s suitcase sat in the corner of the room, his laptop resting on top of it.
“This is where I’ve been staying,” he explained, moving around me to stand in the middle of the small room.
I didn’t know what to say. A choking sound left my throat.
Seth’s eyes went wide. “Quinn…”
“I was so worried,” I gasped. “So worried. I thought you were dead.” The words came out with some grit, the accusatory tone dancing in the air. I couldn’t help it. I was relieved beyond belief to find him, yes, and back in Tejen, I’d been ready to let all transgressions go.
But seeing his computer sitting there, seeing the device that he could have so easily used to contact me, made me lose it. I got why he came to Afghanistan, why he was full of rage and a desire for revenge, but I didn’t get why he hadn’t bothered to shoot me an email to let me know he was still alive.
“I was going crazy,” I seethed. “I thought I might have lost you forever. I thought that maybe you were trapped somewhere, that someone was holding you hostage, that you were starving to death… I thought every possible awful thing, Seth!”
“Quinn,” he breathed, stepping forward to touch my wrist.
I jerked away from his hand and stepped back. “Don’t. Don’t touch me right now. I just… I just need a minute.”
Seth’s shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry. I know maybe that doesn’t mean a lot…”
I pressed my hands against my eyes to block out my vision. “I know you are,” I whispered. “And I understand what you’ve gone through. But I can’t help… I can’t help…” My voice failed me. I stood there with my hands pressed against my face and hoped I wouldn’t faint.
“I put you through hell,” Seth said quietly.
I dropped my hands to look at him again. “Yes… it’s not like you haven’t been through it yourself, but I don’t know…” I shook my head. “I thought I understood it, but now I don’t know if I do.”
Seth sighed and sat on the end of the bed. It squeaked under his weight. “I dragged you through hell with me. I wasn’t trying to.” He looked at me with imploring eyes. “Honestly, Quinn. I tried to leave you out of all of this. That’s why I didn’t tell you anything in Chicago.”
I nodded and sniffed, tears pressing at the backs of my eyeballs. “And then you stopped writing.”
He nodded at the floor. “That was a mistake. I hoped you would assume there was no internet at camp or that I was just busy. The closer the day came to making my move…” He looked up at me. “The more I realized how little I deserved you. How could I follow through with my plan and still think I was worthy of going back home to you? Writing those lies to you, telling you I was on a deployment when I wasn’t, seemed so unfair. I’d sit down to write you and my fingers just wouldn’t move. I couldn’t make them move.”
I stepped forward and took a seat next to him. “Of course you’re worthy of me, Seth. Don’t say that.”
His hand came up
and cupped the side of my face. “Maybe you’re too forgiving. Maybe you would be better off without me.”
“No.” I pressed my hand against his to keep it there, tight against my cheek. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to…”
“I know you weren’t, but I’m speaking honestly now. I have issues, Quinn. Maybe you would have an easier time if I wasn’t around. You could find a guy who’s not so fucked up. Normal people wouldn’t lead you to do what you just did, fly around the world on a wild goose chase.”
I pressed my fingertips to his. “It wasn’t a wild goose chase. I found you, didn’t I?”
One corner of his mouth ticked upwards. “By chance.” He exhaled harshly and looked away. “I found you, in the end. At least that’s one way you could look at it.”
“You’re right. It was by chance. A chance we were given. So, let’s take it as a sign.”
He looked back at me, the uncertainty waning somewhat in his eyes.
I swallowed and went on. “A sign that you and I need to be together.”
A long, long moment passed. Seth slowly nodded. “I’m going to try to be more open. I’m going to share more with you.”
I laughed. “There are more secrets?”
His lips pursed playfully. “The worst is over. I swear.”
“Even if it’s not…” I took his hand away from my cheek and kissed it. “I’ll still be by your side. I’ll be right there next to you through it all. Just don’t shut me out. Don’t push me away.”
Seth quickly shook his head. “I won’t. I won’t.” He kissed me. “I promise I won’t.” Another kiss. “You’re everything to me now, Quinn,” he whispered against my lips. “You’re the whole reason I couldn’t go through with all of this. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” I sighed against his mouth, a familiar heat rising in me. “I believe you.”
I sensed the fire in his body, as if our singular rising temperatures were reaching out and melding us together. I fit perfectly against his chest, between his arms, and when he nuzzled his face into my neck, there was nowhere else in the world I wanted to be.
His lips were on mine again, and his hands moved to the sides of my hips, running back and forth. I spread my hands on his chest, enjoying the bulge of his muscles through the fabric. He turned sideways on the bed and grabbed my waist, pulling me onto his lap facing him. I circled my legs around his back and looped my arms around his neck, not caring how sweaty and dirty I was.
