I Am Justice

by Diana Muñoz Stewart

  Cooper Ramsey. A drug addict, narcissist with a poor work history. Hard to believe he was related to her. He was. Proved by paternity test two years ago.

  Time to press his buttons and scare him away. Again. “Are you ever going to tell me who gave you the money to come here?”

  He distributed his weight from side to side, rocking like a child. He shook his head. The line of his mouth tightened. Genuine fear blanketed his eyes.

  Yep. It was always the same.

  Two years ago, Cooper had been living in California. Out of the blue, he’d boarded a plane for Pennsylvania. He’d landed, gotten in a cab, and come straight here.

  The day before he’d boarded that plane, he’d had fourteen dollars in his bank account. She’d checked. He had no credit cards. No credit.

  Someone had bought him that ticket.

  Momma swore that it hadn’t been her. And though Justice had investigated, she’d turned up nothing.

  She waved him off like shooing a fly. “Go home, Coop. I have no idea why you keep coming here.”

  He flinched as if her tone was as solid as a missile. His brown eyes carried their usual misty gleam. It reminded her of that old commercial with the American Indian sitting horseback over pollution.

  Blinking his eyes, he pulled the Indian head nickel medallion from around his neck. He held it out to her.

  She stared at it. No way was she touching that thing.

  A runnel of confusion gathered the earthy skin of his broad brow. “Your birthday’s coming up.”

  The hair on her neck stood on end. High alert sounded. Adrenaline flooded into her system. “My birthday isn’t for weeks.”

  He frowned. “I wanted you to have it.” His voice was low. His slacker shoulders slumped. He opened the medallion. A locket?

  He urged her to take it. Swallowing her irritation, she leaned forward. Inside were two small and faded photos.

  One of her mother at twenty-five or so, right before she’d died. God, she’d been beautiful. A blue-eyed, blond-haired woman who looked nothing like Justice but everything like…Hope. The other photo was of Hope and her, arms over each other’s shoulders.

  Justice reached out and took the locket.

  She brought it closer, hunched over it. She fought the lump in her throat and the tears behind her eyes.

  “Happy birthday, Justice. Love you.”

  The muscles in Justice’s shoulder blades snapped to attention, unbending her posture. An image of her child self as she clung to Cooper’s long legs, begged him, “Please take us. Please. Daddy! Don’t leave us here. Please!” slammed through her.

  He’d shaken her off the way you’d shake off dust.

  Her heart stiffened to stone in her chest.

  “Stop coming here.” Awash in memories, she turned and walked away.

  If Mukta hadn’t saved her… A flash of that dark basement, being tied to the chair, the tape across her mouth, and the roiling hunger.

  She held the locket to her chest, as if to defend her brittle heart from even the thought. Not everyone was lucky. Not everyone had such a savior.

  No. Some got left behind. And that’s why she was about to board that plane to Jordan. She had to remember that. Remember that the men who’d killed Hope still needed to pay.

  Chapter 9

  The emergency text had come while Sandesh had been making his way to the airport. His gut was still clenched with worry.

  The driveway leading onto the Mason Center grounds wound through pristine lawns and aged oaks. It reminded Sandesh of driving onto the grounds of a cemetery. He shuddered. So much of his mother had been lost already. Five years ago, at fifty-three, she’d developed early-onset Alzheimer’s. Sandesh had been stunned. Angered.

  The woman had worked hard her entire life, never took a sick day, and rarely complained. She didn’t deserve this fate.

  He pulled up to the main building and parked in his designated spot. His father had paid extra for the spot, and though it galled, it had come in handy. More than once.

  He jammed his F-150 into park, flung open the door, and shut it backhanded as his feet had already begun to stride forward.

  He raced up the nursing home’s front steps, and the security guard buzzed him through with a nod. No formalities. No checking of ID. It must be bad.

  He heard her before he saw her. Her voice, shrill and bitter, echoed through the hall like smoke from a raging fire. “You bitch! You bitch!”

  He pushed back the ache, the simultaneous loss and anger and fear. He rounded the corner. The woman who had soothed his cuts, taken him to football practice, and told him he had a “lovely” singing voice when he couldn’t carry a tune stood trembling in front of the doorway to her suite. Her thin, blue shift showed a frail and wiry form. They had a hard time getting Ella to eat these days. Her hands shook as she brandished a worn teddy bear. She held the matted brown bear, which normally she’d coo and sing to as if a child, as a shield of sorts.

  She screeched at two women and one man—the nurses alongside the twenty-four-hour personal caregiver his father had hired. Paying for her caregivers and for her to be in this premiere facility was his father’s last-ditch effort to make up for his emotional abuse.

  The staff spoke in soothing tones, tried to break through the fog of delusion by playing into the delusion.

  Today, as with most freak-outs, his mother played dueling roles on the drama loop. Both the tormentor and the tormented. The screeching bitch comments were a memory of his father. His father had never been a violent man, just a cunning manipulator and an aggressive, demeaning prick.

  A deadly combination.

  If he’d always been loud and angry, she would’ve dismissed him, but his father would alternate between faint praise, openly criticizing, and carefully constructed manipulations meant to destroy her confidence and wheedle at her independence.

  Even after his father had divorced his mother—claiming she was a drag on his success—she had never recovered her sense of self. Mostly because just as she’d begun to accurately assess what he’d done to her, what she’d continued to do to herself long after he’d divorced her, she’d gotten sick.

  For a long time, Sandesh had hated his father. Not just for abandoning them and living in Hong Kong for twenty years, but for always seeking the aggressive way forward, even in conversation with those he should’ve cared for.

  The only reason he had any contact with his father now was because he’d recognized the same angry tendencies in himself. It was hard to hate someone when you understood them.

  Sandesh neared with his hands out. “Ella, that’s a fine baby you have there.”

  The male nurse cleared his throat, almost apologetically. “We already tried that.”

  Sandesh ignored him. “He reminds me of you. Your son.”

  His mother jolted, as if she’d physically slammed from some other place back into her body, into awareness. She looked down, clearly realizing she held the teddy bear—her baby—as a shield.

  She began to shake. Her eyes cleared, then misted with the slow buildup of tears as she clutched the bear to her chest. Her blue, watery eyes flew to his face. “Is it okay? Is it okay?”

  His heart buckled under. “It’s okay, dear. It’s always okay between us.”

  Her face twitched as tremors, aftershocks of awareness, pinched the muscles beneath her too-pale skin. He understood.

  She’d been trapped beneath the cold ground of her disease, pressed beneath its weight, and now surfaced from that crushing depth to reacquaint herself with the bright world above. It must hurt.

  He reached her, wrapped a protective and sturdy arm around her delicate and thin shoulders. He drew her to him, like a tiny bird in need of great care.

  He looked back at the nurse. “Please get her something to drink. Apple juice.”

  The male
nurse gave him an appreciative nod and left.

  The first female attendant, the one personally paid to sit with his mother, looked abashed. “Would you like me to contact her private physician, Mr. Ross?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And I believe the first visitor coming in my absence, my buddy Victor, will be stopping in tonight. Make sure the guards know.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I already have.”

  Good. That was something. Oh so gently, he led his mother’s trembling and broken body back into her suite. She clung to him, pressed the ragged, stuffed bear between them. He led her past the last nurse—a twentysomething female who worked at the facility. The woman smiled at him, then checked out his ass with a wink.

  What an idiot.

  Chapter 10

  Except for the flat-screen TV showing world news, the only lights on in the private plane marked the galley, an outlet at the conference table, and along the cabin floor. But Justice knew well the sounds and sights of a nightmare.

  She watched helplessly as Sandesh’s body twitched and jerked in the prone seat next to hers.

  Should she wake him? Would he be upset? He’d definitely be startled. But how many nights had she wished someone would pull her out of her damn nightmare?

  To her, to people who had the same nightmare for decades, the notion that dreams weren’t real was little consolation. Not when they felt like torture. She placed a hand on Sandesh’s strong forearm arm, squeezed.

  He jolted awake, gasping for breath. He sat forward, clicked his footrest down, jerked his arm away, and hacked into his hand.

  With the light from the television glancing across his blond hair, he looked over at her. His eyes were still uncertain, still back there, in whatever place had held him.

  Justice leaned forward, careful not to touch. He smelled of sweat and fear. “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t answer her. He rubbed a hand across his face.

  “Do you want to talk about it? The dream?”

  He dropped his hand. “No.”

  He said the word like a wall. A do-not-cross, guard-dog-on-duty, enter-at-your-own-risk wall. She got it. And she didn’t need him to tell her his dream, but she wanted him to know she got it. Somehow, it mattered to her.

  He pushed aside the blanket on his lap, looked as if he considered getting up, but settled for adjusting the vent. Cool air flowed out.

  She fingered the headset in her lap. She worked a kink from her neck and spoke without lifting her head. “I have this bad dream all the time.”

  He let out a breath, as if he couldn’t deal with her trying to compare her “bad dream” with his nightmare. She wanted to keep her mouth shut, wanted to let him think he was alone, so she wouldn’t have to share. But he was like her. He knew about nightmares. And she couldn’t let it go.

  “I’m little. A child. A man is holding me down. He’s so heavy. So heavy it hurts. He has his hand over my mouth. I guess to keep me from screaming. I can’t breathe. I’m little, and he’s cut off my nose as well as my mouth. It’s a dream. But I can’t wake up. I can’t breathe. And I can’t wake up.”

  The explosive power of her words suddenly felt wrong, rash, stupid, like a punch to her gut. She took in deep, heavy breaths.

  Beside her, she could feel him go still. Rage-filled still. Deadly still. “Justice, did someone hurt you? Did something like that happen to you?”

  “No.” She lifted her head, let out a breath. She didn’t want him to think that. “It was Hope. My biological sister. She died saving me from that. Our maternal grandmother, an utterly crazy woman, let some very sick men make kiddie bondage films in her basement. My father gave us to her for drug money.”

  He looked away. She could see the tension in his jaw, as if he fought for control.

  Fuck. What had she been thinking? She’d tossed her pain out there like a live grenade. And it had exploded the peace of the cabin. Even as the quiet, smooth sound of the jet slicing through the sky continued to brush the plane’s hull.

  He waited a long moment, enough time for her to regret again her compulsive decision to share, before he softly asked, “How do you wake from the nightmare?”

  She shuddered. “I pray. I mean, at first I fight and struggle and thrash. Bite. Nothing works. I’m not a religious person. At all. But when I give in and pray, something in that prayer lifts me.”

  She paused, fiddled with the tiny red light on one of the earphones of the headset in her lap. “The waking is the worst part. Because I know exactly how she must’ve felt. And that…”

  Her voice was so low the wind against the plane almost carried it away. “My prayers didn’t work for Hope.”

  Silence. She returned her eyes to him. It was an invitation for him to talk if he wanted. A way of her saying, See. I do understand.

  He nodded. “Thanks, Justice. For sharing. For waking me. I’m gonna leave it there. Okay?”

  He reached out as if to put his hand on top of hers. His hand hovered, as if waiting for her to reject him for not sharing his story. She didn’t. Would never.

  She flipped her hand over. He dropped his hand into hers, threaded his fingers with hers. His hand was warm, covering, and strong. Her body heated from head to toe.

  Her mind filled with bold images of their lips colliding, him dragging her into his seat, into his lap. Hands tearing at clothes. Mouths and tongues searching.

  “Justice.” One word, but that tone, the invitation was there.

  Justice pushed back and closed her eyes. She wanted to answer him, wanted to engage in some hot, steamy sex. But she wanted to screw Sandesh, not his charity. And not her mission. Getting involved with him would complicate things. He might feel a greater need to keep tabs on her, diverting his time from his work, endangering himself in something he knew nothing about. She might worry more for his safety and feel even more guilt. No. She had to stay clear, focus on her job, and let him focus on his work.

  Maybe when this was over they could sleep together. Definitely when this was over. But not before. Until they were safely back, she wouldn’t, couldn’t sleep with him.

  She kept her eyes closed. She could feel him watching her, waiting for her as her body drifted into a sleep layered with long, slow dreams of him and her.

  Chapter 11

  Mukta had been good to her word. After they landed in Amman, the customs official had entered the private plane, smiled, spoke kindly to him and Justice, stamped their documents, and left. Unbelievable.

  He stowed his passport and multi-entrance visa inside his backpack, hit Send on the response to a non-urgent email from his mother’s care center, stowed his laptop, and slipped out from behind the round, wooden conference table.

  From across the cabin, he caught Justice. Her midnight-dark eyes stared up at him. He smiled at her. She returned to checking her emails or text or whatever had her interest on her cell.

  Instant agitation trod its muddy shitkickers down his spine. She’d been distant since waking this morning.

  He didn’t know what her problem was. They’d seemed to connect last night and shared, well, a moment. It shouldn’t bother him, but it did. Worse, he was about to get himself in more trouble. He walked over to where she sat. “We need to go over some rules.”

  Her eyebrows and eyes rose. She lowered her phone and put it into her backpack. “Rules?”

  He’d handled military knives with a less sharp edge than the one she’d put on that word. Maybe he could’ve chosen a better word. “Let’s call them guidelines. And not even my guidelines. More like the country’s guidelines.”

  “Like?”

  “Jordan is normally safe, but these aren’t normal times. Amman is flooded with refugees. Not all are innocent. Don’t leave the hotel without me. When we’re working at Zaatari, keep a low profile, let me know where you are. Don’t wander around without me.”

  He waited
for her to argue. He waited for her to tell him to shove his rules up his ass. Her face said that was exactly what she was thinking. And, honestly, he wouldn’t blame her.

  “So the Grand Hyatt in Amman is now like a Taliban hut in Afghanistan?”

  “There are a lot of people here. Not just Jordanians. Not just people playing by the rules. This area is in flux. So if I’m eighty klicks away in Zaatari or even working with Salma within Amman, you’re pretty much on your own. Try to have some situational awareness.”

  She let out a breath deep enough to knock over a tombstone. “I get it. In fact, I was thinking that after our initial inspection of the camp, I’d leave you to work with Salma. I know you’ll be doing a lot of traveling, and I don’t want to get in the way.”

  Okay. She was definitely mad. Well, she’d have to cope. He held out a hand. “You ready?”

  Her eyes rose, pinned him with midnight pleas and hot sighs. He wanted to drop to his knees, kiss her lips, find her center, and pull free every soft and needy sound.

  After a moment, she took his hand. A surge of electric lust shot up his arm and increased his urge to kiss her. Did she feel it? How could she not?

  Justice stepped closer. Yep, she felt it. She lifted onto her toes. The space between them heated to Death Valley temperatures. His breath came out hot and loud.

  She pressed her front to his, grabbed his waist, pulled him flush against her. He grew instantly hard. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. She kissed his lips, opened her mouth against his.

  He pushed his tongue inside her mouth, explored her wet warmth. She ground herself against him, moaned so deeply it cut off all other sound, but the driving yes, yes, yes in his chest.

  Then she stepped back. Shrugged in apology. “Let’s keep this PG while we’re here. I don’t want to get caught up in anything that could mess things up for you.”

  A slap of disappointment hit him in the gut. What had just happened? “That’s fine with me.”

  Huge lie. Growing bigger by the minute.