by Fiona Quinn
“He had lots of money, and he wasn’t concerned about spending it, so it must have come from somewhere where money wasn’t an issue. That’s not how the agencies work. This must have been a private organization. I figured he was an operative with Omega, and they needed to find out what Spyder knew about Sylanos in order to safeguard their piggy bank, and they needed to find Spyder so they could tap him.”
“By tap you mean…?”
“Kill him.” Maria shifted around in her seat.
“And Lexi figured into this how?”
“As bait, as close as I can figure it. The Man was frustrated one day, yelling at me over the phone, and he said something like, ‘What’s it going to take to get him back? Her funeral? I can arrange that.’ He was not a nice man. I was deeply afraid of him.” Maria sat silently for a long time. She rubbed her hands through her hair, down her pants, over her stomach. “After he came to my house that time, I figured I should do like Beth did – pack and run – but I only had the money The Man had given me. It wasn’t going to last very long. I needed to get Julio out of prison.”
As Maria was speaking, Dalton was let back in the door, and he must have heard that last little bit because he said, “So you could get to his stash?”
Maria was quiet for a long minute. “Well, anyway, that’s when I thought that Lexi would be a good trade for Julio, and I made my plan. I had to go quick before The Man got to her first. I hired Hector. We took her to Florida. I knew a burro who would fly her to Honduras for not much money.”
“The Man got to her first? Or Omega?” Axel asked.
Maria looked like she was really trying. Her eyebrows came together, making deep wrinkles across her brow. Her lips pursed and skewed to the side. “I don’t know. Maybe the Man was Omega. Maybe not.”
“You kidnapped Lexi and sent her to Tito Alejandro,” Axel’s voice shifted. The quiet in Axel’s voice sounded deadly.
Maria shot a startled glance at Axel. I didn’t know if it was from his using the right name for her uncle, or that she was reading Axel’s mood, too. I bet it was palpable. I wouldn’t want to be sitting in a locked room with him at that moment.
Maria’s hands came protectively to her throat.
Twenty-Four
I woke up to stormy skies. I didn’t expect Laura today – some kind of a family obligation. She e-mailed me a list of things she wanted me to accomplish: the treadmill at a slight incline, holding on to the sidebars, weightlifting, stretching. She was ambitious for me.
Chris attached the e-stims to my back. As I lay there with muscles contracting, I could hear the rain pattering on the roof. It was a sleepy kind of day. I had decided to let the case filter through my subconscious. I needed to figure out the next steps.
“You get a break after this cycle.” Chris handed me the machine so I could adjust the amount of zap I could stand.
“I wonder what Cookie’s making for lunch. I heard him singing in the kitchen this morning. He’s in a good mood.”
“For once,” Chris snorted. “I bet I can guess the menu - peanut butter smoothies.”
I wrinkled my nose. “It’s a napping kind of day. I think I might crawl into bed after lunch and look in my box.”
“What kind of box?” he asked.
“My mail that came in while I was away. They put it all in a box and brought it to me.”
He grimaced. “The only mail I get is bills.”
“I hope there isn’t anything like that in there. I’ll go home to a financial mess.”
I curled like a slug on my bed. Outside, Thor was in battle mode. He threw bolts of lightning and stomped angry feet, making us mortals feel the full wrath of the god. A lesser house would shake with the concussions in the air. Striker’s fortress stood solid.
I rolled over as streaks of lightning reflected in the water. The rain had stopped. This reminded me of the storm over the Isle de la Juventude when I landed on my flight to freedom to refuel. I had used a drug runner’s landing strip, far from any population, cut out of a pine forest on the top of a mountain. By the time I landed, the storm raged in full fury. I hunkered down in the back of the plane with the meager supplies that Franco gathered for me and waited. It was a lonely kind of waiting. I had been waiting for weeks and months in the prison. You would think that I’d be used to it. It was torturous to be so close to freedom. So close! If the storm hadn’t stopped me. . .
What if the storm hadn’t stopped me? I would have flown home to the US. I would have been none-the-wiser about Omega’s contract. Frith wouldn’t have given Iniquus the heads up. I would be right back in prison, only worse. Rendition with final tap? Shit.
While I cursed the storm at the time, and I even cursed fate for obstructing me, I guessed I should feel gratitude that nature conspired to keep me safe.
Huh. Wasn’t that a selfish as hell way to reflect on that storm? All those people who suffered. All those people who died. And it actually flashed through my brain that Mother Nature organized herself to save me. How narcissistic was that?
I carefully gathered up the box and placed it on my bed. I concluded that the bravery that I needed to confront the contents of that box wasn’t so much about me, and my brokenhearted homesickness. It was more about my pangs of remorse for causing pain to the people I cared about.
If someone I knew were kidnapped, I’d probably feel horror and anxiety, sadness, powerlessness. It would add layers of emotions, much more jumbled, if someone decided to go with a kidnapper to protect me or mine. Gratitude. Guilt. I’m sure that Sarah woke up every day burdened by this. That was who Sarah was — tenderhearted and kind.
I pulled out Ruby’s handprint and pushed the knife memories aside. Ruby was a bliss baby. The Zen-dumpling of all babies. When I missed my husband Angel – engulfed by my loneliness and fears for him — Ruby would sit in my lap, and her calm would wash those awful emotions away.
Given the chance, I would absolutely have put my safety on the line for my Ruby. But it didn’t really play out that way. The truth was that I endangered Ruby. Her heart was under the knife so Maria could capture me. If I had not been there, Ruby would never have been threatened. I wasn’t a hero here – I was the villain.
I laid the mauve paper to the side, heart sick. Next in the pile were two construction paper art projects that had a lot to do with dried beans. These were from Fletcher and Colin, the Murphy twins. I have known them since they were newborns. I even cooked for their christening. I couldn’t quite make out the designs the boys were going for. The glue wasn’t doing an exceptional job of holding the weight of the elbow macaroni, and now I had a meal’s worth of dried foods on my bed.
There were some letters asking me to continue donating to my charities, The Wounded Warrior Project, SPCA, Smile Train, and JDRF. Striker had noted on each piece the amounts of the donations he had made in my name. Very generous donations. God, I loved him.
Please be safe. Please rescue that family and come home to me.
And that led me to a letter written by my seven-year-old neighbor, Jilly-bean. I started donating to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation after her diagnosis. The whole neighborhood had rallied around her. We walked together at the annual fundraiser, wearing our matching purple t-shirts, with a picture of Jilly messing around with my guitar. I loved that. I loved that whole day. The sense of community and caring. Jilly loved it, too. She was the princess, a small recompense for everything this terrible disease did to her little seven-year-old body.
Jilly wrote to me that she had a new British lab puppy from my friend Cathy at the Millers’ Kennel where Beetle and Bella had got their start. Cathy had trained two dogs to do diabetes alert: one for Jilly, and one for her friend’s grandson, Patrick. Jilly said that she had named her puppy Hope. That was a wonderful name for a diabetic alert dog. It was nice that Jilly would feel safer with the dog working for her — that now Jilly-bean had help.
As I read down, Jilly explained that she had named her puppy Hope because she was th
inking of me, and was hoping every day that I was okay, and that I could come home soon.
That last part started a boo-hoo festival to beat all boo-hoo festivals. I admit I was more than a little out of control. This was like weepy PMS to the tenth power. It felt horrible.
Chris and Deep burst into my room. I waggled the sheet of blue paper with the sparkly fairy at the top towards Deep so he knew I wasn’t injured or in physical pain. He took it from my hand and read it over.
“Yeah,” he said “When we heard that, we all got choked up. Gater needed to go for a run. He was gone near half the day before he came back.”
Chris handed me a box of tissues and a glass of water. He stood at the end of my bed, shifting from one foot to the other, not nearly as comfortable around my tears as Deep was.
I blew one last time into my tissue. My emotions back under control. Deep reached over, put the artwork and letters back in the box, closed it up, and moved it to the table. “That’s enough for today. It’s dinner time.”
“What, already?” I glanced at the clock. Sure enough, six on the dot.
Cookie had made a pot roast with roasted root vegetables, sourdough bread, a big green salad, and a bowl of grapes. It was exactly the right thing to eat on a stormy night when the wind wolf howled and bent the pine trees. Nana Kate would have approved.
Since we were running on the solar battery back-up, we didn’t have to worry about the electricity going out. At home, I liked it when the lights went out. I liked the sudden jolt from modernity. I would light jar candles, and fill the room with the fragrance of sage and lemongrass while I read from a paperback and listened to the storm brew.
I shoveled up a bite of roast and wondered where Striker was with a big sigh.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Deep said.
I looked over at him, and realized my fork was dangling in my fingers. “What’s that?” I put the bite into my mouth.
“Striker,” he smirked.
“Mmn. It would have been nice if you’d turned psychic a few months ago. Helpful even,” I said.
“Doesn’t take a psychic to read your mind when you think about Striker.” Chris clapped a hand over his mouth, and his eyes got huge with a, “Did I really just talk to my superior that way?” kind of look. Andy laughed behind the screen he made with his napkin.
“You’re okay, Chris. I’m not offended or surprised.” I looked over at Deep. “Have you heard anything?”
“I was on my way to your room to tell you when I heard the emotion explosion.”
“My doctor said it might take a while to regulate my moods after the head trauma.”
“Understood. Striker and the team are stateside. Gater said to turn on the national news at 6:30. The family’s going to make a statement about their rescue and return – thank all the heroes over at Iniquus,” Deep winked.
“Ten minutes.” Chris went to turn on the TV. Andy moved my plate to the other side of the table, and carried my chair there for me so I could watch and eat at the same time.
The news reporter’s face filled the screen:
“Today came the end of a black hearted love story, which seems inexplicable. Julio Rodriguez was housed here in the maximum security facility within Nelson Federal Prison in Nelson, Florida.” The news reporter gestured with an open palm, à la Vanna White, at the low industrial-looking building behind her, and walked to the left so the signage came into view. “Held on terrorism charges – sentenced to life in prison.”
The report cut to video of Julio walking shackled into his trial, protesters outside the courthouse, and his lawyer expressing his frustration and inability to mount a proper defense since Julio was unwilling to communicate. The image cut back to the reporter now standing at a three-quarter angle beside a lovely tree, with the leaves framing her brunette hair.
“For six months Julio’s wife, Maria Rodriguez, came to visit him every Sunday, and still Julio never said a word. It turns out that birds of a feather do indeed flock together, and Maria was soon to become a jailbird herself. Maria was being held at Bellington Correctional Facility for Women in Bellington, Florida, not thirty minutes up I75, awaiting her trial on kidnapping and murder charges. Last night, within the same hour, the couple committed suicide, each by hanging themselves in their cell on ripped sheets. The couple had had no communication since last March. Was this a suicide pack? Had they decided prior to their arrests the date and time that they would die? Or was this a miracle as the hearts of two people, deeply in love, spoke through time and space? I guess we will never know the answers to the hows or whys of this great, criminal love story, so reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde. It was Bonnie who wrote before her death: ‘Someday they will go down together: And they will bury them side by side./To a few it means grief,/To the law it’s relief,/But it’s death to Bonnie and Clyde.’”
“Oh my god!” I gasped, not only at the news of Maria and Julio’s deaths, but the idea that a great love story played out in this reporter’s mind.
Randy hunched his shoulders, snickering.
Deep waved at us to be quiet. “Shhh, I want to hear this train wreck.”
“Today, it was death to Maria and Julio. This is Michelle Thompson in Nelson, Florida.”
“Excellent report, Michelle. Thank you. When we come back, we’ll have more breaking news, stay tuned.” A Tide commercial filled the screen. Deep muted the TV.
“When did you guys find out that Julio and Maria were dead?”
“I had no idea. Axel. . .” Deep’s cellphone vibrated. It was Striker. Deep put him on speaker.
“Are you watching the news?” Striker’s voice rose from the phone.
“Yeah, man,” Deep answered. “Gater told us the family was doing a victory lap on national news. We just turned it on to see what they had to say and instead we hear that Julio and Maria are the new Bonnie and Clyde.”
Striker snorted. “That woman is nuts. Lynx, they took your queen and rook.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I said.
“What’s Axel saying about Brody?” Striker asked.
“Axel got caught behind a five-car pileup Sunday and missed Brody at the prison. His ATF buddy was incommunicado, so Axel had no backup. We missed the opportunity,” Deep said.
My eyes widened. This was the first I was hearing about this. “A huge miss. No more Julio? No more reason for a Brody visit,” I said.
“I’ll leave Gater down here to find him.” Striker didn’t seem to be phased by this piece of bad luck. “Gater has some pals from his Marine days in that area. He’ll track Brody down.” Confident. I wasn’t so sure, but I crossed my fingers under the table to add a little good luck juju to the situation.
“Striker, Gater may be looking for a needle in the wrong haystack. Remember that Maria flew down to Florida every week. Brody could live anywhere.”
“Deep, go back and check commercial flights into Orlando, just in case,” Striker said. “Brody wasn’t being paid by an organization; this was from Maria’s pockets. I don’t think we need to worry about private planes and municipal airports. Check motel logs. We know he’s not staying at Maria’s apartment. We had that staked out after Maria’s arrest. She was evicted as soon as she missed her first month’s payment,” Striker said.
“Yes, sir,” Deep replied in soldier-mode.
“Why wasn’t Brody picked up before all this?” I directed my voice towards where Deep’s phone lay on the table.
“Glitch. We had no way of knowing that someone was going in to visit Julio. When we did our research, only Maria showed up on his approved visitation list,” Striker admitted.
Hell of a glitch. But to be honest, I would probably have missed it too, since the target was Maria, not Julio. “I think we need to get to Brody before someone else gets to Brody,” I said.
“Agreed. We’re on it,” Striker said.
We? Wait. I wanted Striker to come home. I needed to tell him. . .
Twenty-Five
The clock face glowed
two AM when Beetle and Bella welcomed Striker home, whimpering, and clattering around his heels. As I slowly shuffled down the hall, I saw Striker on the ground, wrestling with the dogs, The girls licked at his face as they jumped back and forth over him, trying to find a new spot to kiss.
Now or never, I told myself. I slid-clunked my way into the room. Striker had plenty of time to untangle himself, wipe his face off with his shirt sleeve, and start towards me. But before he could say anything, I yelled, “I LOVE YOU.”
Striker stopped mid-stride, threw his head back and gave a full-throated laugh. He pitched himself forward with his hands on his knees and gasped for air.
My mouth formed a hard, tight line. My eyes narrowed. I waited for the hilarity to calm down. I hated it when people laughed at me. “My saying I love you is not funny.”
“It is if you’re standing in my shoes.” He put his hands around the front bar of my walker and leaned in to give me a kiss. I moved back so he’d miss and raised my eyebrows in a question mark.
“I’ve seen that face about a thousand times — a soldier headed into a life or death battle. Were you in your room, psyching yourself up?”
I turned, looked toward my door, and turned back at Striker with chagrin. I worked my mouth open and shut a few times until words formed. “That didn’t work out quite the way I had imagined it.”
Striker folded me into a hug, my walker compressed between us. “Understood.” He kissed the top of my head. “Why don’t you try again?”
I nodded into his chest, took a deep breath and tilted my head back so I could see his eyes. “I love you.”
Striker wasn’t out and out laughing at me; he was sort of quietly in his mind laughing. I could tell from the merriness that danced flecks of gold over the moss green of his eyes and the tears that clung to his eyelashes.
“My, my, my Miss Lexi, then I guess we’d better get married and make some babies so Deep can be a godfather.”
“I guess we probably should.” I smacked at him. “Deep’s had a conversation with you.”
