Happily Ever Ninja (Knitting in the City #5)

by Penny Reid

  “And so gosh-darn handsome!” Sandra hollered from someplace unseen.

  “And you have cute kids. People care about other people with cute kids,” Alex added distractedly.

  “What do Jack and Grace have to do with this?” I leaned forward unthinkingly, blocking Greg from the screen.

  “Oh yeah, sorry. Marie used a picture of Greg with Grace and Jack, Chicago Former Marine Abducted by Nautical Oil Pirates—that’s the name of the article that ran Friday.” Alex read from a newspaper next to his laptop then lifted it up so Greg and I could see. “But the picture she used was taken a while ago and she didn’t use their names, just Greg’s. I don’t think Jack and Grace will be easily recognized.”

  He was right. The picture was taken over four years ago and the kids looked a good deal different. Still, Greg’s name was splashed all over the place. I hated to think Grace and Jack would find out about the abduction from someone other than me.

  “I think Nautical Oil Pirates has a nice ring to it. They should sponsor a Pittsburg hockey team,” Greg said absentmindedly, pulling me away from the screen so he could see the newspaper.

  “As long as the media is focusing on the story, Quinn, Dan, and Marie are relatively safe.” Alex set the paper down and crossed his arms. “If something were to happen to them, the US would have to step in on some level. These oil privateers want less scrutiny, not the CIA poking around.”

  Both Greg and I stiffened at Alex’s use of the word poking. I wondered which kind of poking he was thinking about.

  “Alex, there’s another problem. We didn’t rescue the other captives, I didn’t give Fiona the chance.”

  Greg’s arm squeezed me around the waist and I took it as a symbolic you were right and I’m sorry squeeze. I leaned back and against him in a symbolic thank you for your apology, now let’s figure this out together lean.

  “Yeah, can’t say I blame you. If Sandra showed up trying to rescue me from an illegal oil refinery in Nigeria, I’d likely gag her and remove her by force.”

  “Gagging would be important.” Again Sandra’s voice carried to the call from some unseen place. “Because you’d get an earful from me.”

  I felt Greg’s smile against my hair.

  Alex smirked and continued, “So, I checked on the other hostages when you messaged last. Looks like they were moved and the building where you were held had been abandoned, or at least I can’t find any signs of life other than the refinery workers. I’m still trying to figure out where they were taken. But, even if we found them, you should consider the possibility that another rescue attempt is a lost cause. You won’t be able to break them out this time because their captors will be expecting it.”

  I felt Greg shift in his seat before he asked, “What if we had leverage?”

  “What kind of leverage?”

  “Lots of money, and . . . something else.”

  Alex’s eyebrows curved upward with curiosity and I turned to look at my husband.

  “Lots of money?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

  A glimmer of something imbued Alex’s voice, resembling enjoyment, but not quite. “Define whose lots of money and how much?”

  “I’m not sure whose money it is, precisely.” Greg split his attention between both Alex and me. “I’m guessing it’s money from the illegal refineries, and usually that leads back to corrupt government factions and/or extremist groups. But it’s at least a million, if not more.”

  “So you want to take their money and ransom it back to them? In exchange for the hostages?” I connected the dots and turned back to Alex.

  Greg nodded. “When I was scouting the mainline postings last month I found large quantities of cash in several of the abandoned sentinel houses, all US denominations. Obviously I didn’t touch it, but all together I estimate it’s at least a million.”

  “Can you move it?” Alex asked. “How large are the denominations?”

  “We can move it. They’re in stacks of hundreds. But I’d like a different car.”

  Alex frowned, but acquiesced. “I’ll try to figure something out. So, Greg, what’s the something else?”

  “What?”

  “Earlier you said you had leverage, ‘lots of money and something else’.”

  I felt Greg’s chest expand at my back, and his arms tightened around me. “Ah yes. About that . . .”

  Greg fell silent. When he didn’t continue after several seconds, I twisted to face him again. I found him pressing his lips together, like he had a secret and dreaded having to share it.

  “What did you do?”

  “I may have,” he tossed his head from side to side in a considering motion before finally admitting, “I may have rigged the refinery to explode.”

  It took me a full minute to recover from his statement, that he may have rigged the refinery to explode. When I finally found my voice I said, “Start from the beginning.”

  “I added acetone to their spliced line.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning . . . it’s highly probable that the refinery will explode.”

  “Greg!”

  “I know, I know.” He lifted both his hands as though surrendering.

  “Greg!”

  “I’m not sorry. These are the wankers who have been stealing from the people of Nigeria for decades, not to mention ruining farmland, fragile ecosystems, and terrorizing innocent civilians. People are left with no usable water. No water means no fish, no farmland. And no fish and no farmland means no food.” He lowered his hands and wrapped his arms around me. “Yes, it was a small refinery—as far as refineries go—but it was impressively large for an illegal operation. And it was obvious to me that they’d invested a good deal of money in its construction. Extensive automation, latest technology.”

  “I didn’t see any impressive technology. The place looked dilapidated, like it was falling down,” I countered.

  “You wouldn’t have, not the way you entered the building. When they brought us in it was through new control rooms.”

  I glared at him. I heard Alex clear his throat. Seconds ticked by.

  Greg glared back, but ultimately he broke the stalemate. “I was angry and I wanted to make sure I hit them where it hurt.”

  “But where did you get the acetone?”

  “At the sentinel house by the mainline where I stole the Jeep. There were drums of it in the garage. Acetone is used to clean up soil after oil spills, specifically a hexane-acetone solvent mixture. I’m guessing he had such a large quantity in order to hastily remove environmental evidence of the spliced line.”

  “So you did what exactly?”

  “I rolled the drums out and emptied them into the line. At the time, I estimated it would take seventy-two hours to reach the refinery, betting that they’d move the hostages once they awoke and discovered me missing. I calculated the fluid mechanics while you were asleep and the number is closer to seventy-eight hours.”

  Alex’s stifled laughter met my ears and I glanced at the computer screen, found him bent to the side, covering his mouth with his hand, his shoulders shaking.

  Of course Alex would find this hilarious. Of course.

  Of course.

  I crossed my arms and continued questioning my husband. “Acetone is volatile and flammable, but how can you be sure it will ignite?”

  “When you refine crude oil, you use a distillation tower. The crude oil goes through a heating furnace or a boiler on its way to the tower, and temperatures are in excess of one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Acetone auto ignites at just under nine hundred degrees.”

  I gazed at him with wonder. “So as soon as the acetone moves through the boiler. . . ?”

  His eyes brightened with excitement, like a little kid who has just discovered firecrackers. “Kaboom.”

  “Kaboom?” I parroted.

  Greg made a mushroom cloud motion with his hands, his grin widening. “Big kaboom.”

  “Big kaboom? Is that the technical term?” Bot
h Greg and I turned our attention back to the screen, finding Sandra’s face filling the window. “See, this is why I won’t let you play with Alex, Greg. He likes to blow things up figuratively, and you like to blow things up literally,” she chided.

  Alex was still smiling as he gently pushed her out of the way, “I like to blow things up literally, too.”

  “All men do.” She sounded exasperated.

  We needed to get back on track. “How much time do we have left? Before the acetone reaches the refinery?”

  “Thirty-six hours, give or take.”

  “How are we supposed to get a message to these people in thirty-six hours?”

  “Leave that to me,” Alex said, no longer looking at the camera. He must’ve minimized our window because I could see that he was typing and reading and clicking. “We need to be able to stay in contact. Do you still have the phone?”

  “Yes, but the solar charger was lost,” I reminded them.

  “I’ll arrange for a different car and have a compatible charger placed under the driver’s seat. Give me an hour and we’ll touch base again. But I’ll need more time to send the message about the refinery, I’ll say you planted a bomb, but leave it vague, and channel it through the CIA. Hopefully this will distract them from the sentinel houses so you can grab the stashes of money.”

  “Sounds good. We’ll pick up the new car and go to the sentinel houses, collect the money while they’re distracted.” Greg’s large hand moved in a slow, caressing, absentminded circle on my lower back.

  Alex nodded his agreement. “Then we’ll leverage the money for the hostages, get Quinn and company out of Nigeria, and figure out how to get you two on a Red Star flight bound for the EU or Caribbean.”

  I felt both Greg’s perfunctory nod and his pinch of my bottom as he said, “I vote Caribbean.”

  ***

  “Do you need more time?”

  I paused checking our weapons and counting the remaining rounds to meet my husband’s gaze. We were packing as we waited for Alex’s next call. Greg stood before me, dressed in another of his weird sports shirts, his hands on his hips. My gaze lingered on the text of the T-shirt, 2014 New York Rangers Stanley Cup Champions.

  “More time for what?”

  “Do you need more time? To think about that thing we discussed?”

  “What thing? And I’m pretty sure the Los Angeles Kings won the Stanley Cup in 2014. What is with all the bizarre shirts?”

  Greg glanced at his chest, his hand automatically coming to the letters. “Oh, don’t you know? Africa is where all the leftover clothes go from the USA. When sports teams play for a championship, both sets of T-shirts are printed so they’ll be ready immediately, to meet demand. When a team loses, the T-shirts advertising their non-existent win are sent to Africa.”

  I did not know this random bit of trivia. “Huh . . .”

  “I make it my mission to find all the alternate reality shirts I can find. It makes me feel like I’m living in a different dimension, where the Rangers beat the Kings and the Red Socks never won the World Series.”

  “You’re the only person on the planet who wasn’t cheering for the Red Socks in 2004.”

  “Not true. There are about one million St. Louis Cardinals fans who would disagree. But back to my original question—are we in agreement, about you freezing me out? No more making decisions without me? Yes?”

  I considered my husband for a long moment while he stared at me expectantly, his hands on his hips. I hadn’t finished mulling over all the issues.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes it is. Just stop doing it.”

  “I can’t. Not when you cause turmoil with your mandates.”

  “I don’t cause turmoil. I cause only happiness rainbows and shoeboxes of delight wherever I go.”

  I pressed my lips together and waited for him to recognize the ridiculousness of his last statement. When he continued to gaze at me blankly, I said, “You don’t want Jack to play soccer.”

  “He can play soccer, if Grace also plays soccer. End of discussion.”

  I started to wave my hand through the air, then remembered I was holding the gun. I lowered my hand, deciding that waving a gun around during an argument wasn’t the best way to encourage polite discourse.

  “See? That’s what I mean. Why can’t Jack just play soccer? You make these decrees that make no sense and can’t be applied in real life.”

  “They make perfect sense.”

  I ignored that statement, because . . . because. Because it was patently false and deserved to be ignored.

  “You don’t have to live it, Greg. You come home for weeks, a month if we’re lucky. You’re not there every day, watching Jack practice in his room, bouncing the ball all over the apartment, taking it with us to the park every single time we go. He watches soccer on television, rewatches matches on YouTube. He wants to play, and you’re being unfair.”

  “Like I said, he can play. If Grace also plays.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she needs to be pushed beyond the boundaries forced on little girls by society. Our culture tells women they need to wear pink, and base their self-worth on looks, and need rescuing, and that’s bullshit. We have to rally against—”

  “The modern machinery of patriarchal oppression, yes. Yes, I know. But she is five years old, Greg. And Jack is eight. Can’t we just let them be five and eight? Can’t we give them a normal childhood? Why does everything have to be a statement?”

  “Is it the soccer you’re objecting to?” Greg’s gaze grew scrutinizing, suspicious. “Or is it something else?”

  “I don’t object to the soccer, if she wanted to play then I’d be all for it. But she doesn’t and I don’t want to force her, or punish Jack as a byproduct.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. Are you sure you aren’t making this about you?”

  I frowned at him, waited for him to explain. He didn’t. He continued to examine me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your childhood wasn’t normal.”

  “So what?” I shrugged, feeling unaccountably irritated by the direction of this conversation. “Neither was yours.”

  “You know what I mean, and it’s not the same. I grew up going to a posh boarding school, which is normal for a subset of the population. But you grew up practicing gymnastics six to eight hours a day. That’s normal for maybe two hundred people in the world. By all accounts, your giftedness in gymnastics might be called a rare disease. Are you sure your desire to give Grace and Jack a normal childhood isn’t about you overcompensating for what you missed? What you lost? Rather than what’s in their best interest?”

  I straightened my back, lifting my chin, leveling him with an incendiary stare. With measured coolness, I responded, “No. I’m not.”

  He seemed to be deliberating my words—and me—as though attempting to navigate a minefield.

  “Now, darling—”

  “Don’t call me darling.”

  “Why not?”

  I kept my voice monotone. “Because it’s manipulative. You only do it when you’re trying to get your way. And I’m tired of being manipulated by you.”

  He flinched, frowning, but his tone was combative as he challenged, “Did I hit a nerve?”

  “Yes, of course you hit a nerve, but you were trying to. You just flat-out accused me of raising our children without their best interest at heart. You are being spiteful and mean, and I don’t deserve that kind of treatment.”

  “Fe—”

  “I am your wife. I love you. I love our children. I do my best. I’m not perfect. This is not a debate about who is wrong and who is right. I agree, we need to come to a consensus together. But you are being a bully, and it needs to stop.”

  Greg snapped his mouth shut, and the muscle of his jaw ticked. We watched each other, exchanging wary stares across the length of the bunker. The longer the silence stretched, the harder I had to fight my ing
rained urge to apologize.

  But then the laptop dinged, interrupting our standoff. Greg gave me one last hard look—one that promised we were not yet finished with the current topic—and moved to the table. I set the gun down, I hadn’t realized I was still holding it, and crossed to stand next to him as he accepted Alex’s call.

  “Okay, here’s what we got.” Alex began speaking as soon as the video connected. “I will have a truck—four-wheel drive—waiting for you in five hours. You need to get to the outskirts of Enugu. There will be a compatible charger under the driver’s seat, as we discussed. Once you secure the money, get to the airfield by midnight the day after tomorrow. I’m IM-ing you the directions to the truck and the airfield now.”

  “We’re leaving the country before the hostages are released?” I started to cross my arms over my chest, but Greg reached for my hand. Not looking at me, he laced our fingers together, then brought my knuckles to his lips, absentmindedly brushing soft kisses against my skin.

  It occurred to me in that moment: marriage is an ultimate sport in emotional multitasking. I’m never only mad at Greg. I’m mad and madly in love; angry and concerned for his wellbeing; he frustrates and delights me in the same second. We were arguing, but we were still a team.

  “Yes. Once the money is secured, there isn’t any reason for you to stay. Negotiations can occur without you having to be in the country. Once they release the hostages to their embassies, we’ll tell them where the money is,” Alex explained. “But I’ll need you to booby-trap it.”

  Greg glanced at me, then back to Alex. “The money? You want me to booby-trap the money?”

  “Yep. Just in case they don’t follow through.”

  Greg nodded. “Okay. Sounds like fun.”

  I rolled my eyes but smiled. Part of me loved that booby-trapping millions of dollars with explosives was Greg’s idea of fun. Maybe one day he would teach our children how to booby-trap millions of dollars, because if they didn’t learn about it at home, they would just learn about it on the streets.

  “Also, the mail carrier flight will take you through Egypt. From there you’ll be unpacked and will take a FedEx carrier to the Cayman Islands.” Alex read from a screen to his right.