High Risk

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  * * *

  Mattias Ceder couldn’t take his eyes off Jill Lopez. There was some kind of light source behind her, and at certain moments it looked as if she were surrounded by a halo. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders in waves, and her long, ring-covered fingers were wrapped around the microphone. When she closed her eyes to hold a note, the hair on his arms stood on end.

  Christ Almighty.

  He knew who she was, of course; everyone who didn’t live under a rock or in a cave knew who Jill Lopez was.

  But he liked opera and classical music. Literature and theatre. Things that spoke to his intellect and made him into a better person. It was all about having good taste and an understanding of culture. Everything about Jill Lopez verged on the vulgar, too sexy, too intense.

  But this was the first time Mattias had ever heard her sing live.

  That voice. It was much darker than he expected. Deep and sensual. She filled every trite line about love and passion with meaning, made it resonate within him, as though he was the man who had left her, the man who made her search for love, the man she longed for. It was the pop equivalent of being mowed down by a steamroller. Not one note of it was false, not one feeling seemed fake.

  Once she was finished, Mattias didn’t even think to applaud. He was completely overwhelmed.

  “Your sister can really sing,” he heard Tom say to Ambra in what had to be the understatement of the century.

  Up onstage, Jill shook her hair again. She smiled and started singing along with the notes of a ballad. A song about a love that overcame both time and space. Mattias knew it was trash, low-brow culture, but listening to her was like being hauled through an emotional mangle.

  After yet another song, an uptempo tune that caused the energy in the room to simmer over, followed by a fierce round of applause, she came back over to them, beads of sweat on her chest and a swing in her step. She slumped down onto the bench beside him, and he caught a warm and fruity scent that reminded him of sun-kissed beaches, exotic spices. Mattias racked his brain for something suitably polite, distant, and socially acceptable to say.

  “Do you write your songs yourself?” he eventually asked. That would have to do.

  Jill pushed her hair from her face. Her skin was damp, and thick, dark wisps stuck to her décolletage.

  Mattias forced himself to look her in the eye.

  “I write everything myself. The lyrics and the music.”

  “So you studied music in college?”

  Jill laughed. “I can’t even read the music. I’m completely self-taught.”

  “You were fantastic,” he said honestly.

  “Thanks. Could you pass me some water?”

  She crossed her legs, and he followed the movement with his eyes. They were probably the most gorgeous legs he had ever seen. He poured her some water. She reached out and brushed against his hand, which was still holding the glass.

  Mattias pulled back—not quickly, as though he had felt something, but slowly, casually. He watched as she scrawled her autograph onto a napkin for a fan.

  “How long have you . . .” he began, but it was impossible to have a conversation with her. They were constantly being interrupted. She agreed to a couple of selfies, but then it was clear that she was getting tired. Mattias glanced at his watch—it was past midnight.

  “I need to go back to the hotel to sleep,” Ambra said, yawning behind her hand. “You going to stay and keep turning heads, or have you had enough attention for one evening?” she continued with a glance at her sister. It was hard to imagine two more different women.

  “You can never have enough attention,” Jill replied, but she seemed relieved. “I’ll go with you. So we have time to talk. I leave early tomorrow.”

  The women got up. Mattias and Tom did the same.

  Tom turned to Ambra. “Night,” he said in his usual, brusque way. Ambra shoved her hands into her back pockets and nodded in reply. Jill shook Tom’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said, and then she held out a hand to Mattias. He shook it. Her hand was a little sweaty but surprisingly strong. She left behind the scent of perfume. He was close to raising his hand to his nose to smell it. But Tom would have broken down in mocking laughter, and Mattias was glad he managed to stop himself in time.

  “What’s going on between you and Ambra?” he asked once they sat down again.

  “Nothing.”

  Lies. There was something between them. He’d just spent practically the whole evening stealing glances at her. “But you like her?”

  “I don’t think anything of her. She’s a journalist. I don’t like journalists.”

  “No,” Mattias agreed. Journalists could be difficult for men like them. “The sister was damn hot,” he said.

  “Guess so.”

  The noise level rose, someone started to sing a hard rock version of an ABBA song, and people were starting to undress over by the stage.

  “Enough socializing for me,” Tom said, getting to his feet. “You can drive.”

  * * *

  Mattias, who had barely drunk one beer, drove them back to Tom’s place.

  “I can check in to a hotel,” he halfheartedly offered. He was exhausted, had been on the go for almost forty-eight hours. He was also unexpectedly unsure of where he stood with Tom. He’d come to manipulate Tom, but it had also done him good to see him again, to talk almost like before.

  Tom shrugged. “You can stay, it’s a big house. But you’ll have to take care of yourself.”

  Mattias made up a bed using sheets from the closet in the guest bedroom. He undressed, folded his clothes, and placed everything in a neat pile.

  Tom disappeared to another part of the house after doing a quick sweep of the grounds. Mattias lay down. What a day. Seeing Tom. The club. Jill Lopez.

  He fought it for a minute or two before giving in. His hands moved beneath the covers. With a feeling of guilt, he recalled her almond-shaped eyes, luscious golden skin, ample curves. He jacked off, silently and efficiently, as though he were twenty again, back in the barracks.

  If no one knows it happened, it’s almost like it never did, he thought. But it still felt embarrassing.

  Chapter 15

  Tom woke the next morning, December 26, with his heart pounding in his chest. He opened his eyes and gasped for air as if he had just broken the surface after a long dive. Two seconds passed, and then he remembered where he was, remembered that he was no longer in captivity. Kiruna. House. Safety.

  Jesus Christ.

  He’d dreamed that they were hitting him. Over and over, abuse that lasted for hours. They had varied the method of torture from time to time. Even with blindfolded eyes, you learned to tell the difference between what they were using. Power cables. Canes. Fists.

  On shaking legs, he went out to the kitchen in an attempt to stave off the panic attack that was trying to break free. It wasn’t the first time that an incredibly realistic nightmare had set off an attack. He filled a glass with water, put it down on the countertop, and tried to take calm and steady breaths. Alcohol, which had dampened his anxiety so well last night, was essentially a poison that made the body launch an offensive in an attempt to stop it. As long as he was drunk, he could suppress the anxiety. But once the alcohol started to leave his body, each of his systems was ready and primed, meaning that the anxiety grew worse than before. It was a vicious, never-ending cycle. But he didn’t have the energy to worry about that right now. Instead, he stared out at the trees and the snow while he focused on his breathing. His alcohol consumption would have to be shelved away as just one more thing to feel guilty about, along with all the others.

  Outside the kitchen window, the snow glittered in the light of the full moon and he focused on the white landscape while waiting for his body to calm down. For a brief second, he considered a quick pick-me-up. The bottle of whisky was in the cupboard, and it would feel so good to lose himself in it. But it would also be the final proof that he had passed the limits o
f normal behavior. He drank a glass of water instead.

  The anxiety wouldn’t subside. Images from his dream flashed through his mind. Automatic weapons pressed against his forehead. Kicks to his belly, boots to his head. Cigarettes being stubbed out on his flesh.

  He rubbed his eyes, needed to try to think about something else. He’d been on the verge of a significant attack in the bar last night, he remembered. Talking with Ambra had helped. For the most part, it was hard work to have other people there when he felt so vulnerable, but there was something so damn calming about those green eyes, as though nothing shocked or scared her, as though she were a soldier who had been to war. Which was a ridiculous thought. Ambra Vinter was small and slim, about as far from a soldier as you could get. She’d looked pretty yesterday, albeit in her usual prickly way. She was like a porcupine, just cuter. He smiled at that. Thinking about Ambra helped. And now he remembered something she’d said. She was stuck in Kiruna, didn’t she say that? Something about a cancelled plane. What was she doing today—working? He refilled his glass, drank slowly, felt his body calm down. If the circumstances were different, he might have invited her for a coffee or a walk, he thought. Strange. It was so long since he’d thought about any woman other than Ellinor. But Ambra was fun to talk to, and she was sharp.

  He put down his glass. He hadn’t read a tabloid paper in so long, but he suddenly had the urge to read something she had written. So, after a quick shower, he went to his closet, dug out the laptop that had been lying there these past few weeks, sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, opened his web browser, and surfed to aftonbladet.se. He typed Ambra’s name into the search bar and hit Enter. The articles lined up, stretching back in time. He started from the beginning, preferring to be methodical.

  Tom had written many reports of his own over the years, and he’d completed the officer program, but he had never considered himself a particularly good writer. Ambra, on the other hand, she was incredibly good.

  The first of her articles was from a few years earlier. Back then, she worked primarily on the entertainment pages. Kept an eye on celebrities, wrote about society weddings and who was in a relationship with whom. He leaned back in his chair, struggled slightly to see her in the role of gossip columnist. Then there was a year of articles on different types of crime. Murders, assaults, disputes. Depressing reading about society’s worst side.

  He studied her byline picture from back then. Crossed arms and a serious face. In the years that followed, she had done a little of everything. Short articles about both domestic and foreign news. The occasional longer piece. Then her name began to appear beneath short, nondescript paragraphs about a wide variety of subjects. He got the feeling that something must have happened. A personal crisis, maybe? Hadn’t she mentioned something about not getting on with her boss? In her latest byline picture, she seemed even more serious, almost angry. Her dark hair was pulled back, there was practically no sign of her unruly curls. He studied the image for some time. Aside from the angry expression, she didn’t look much like herself. It wasn’t surprising he hadn’t recognized her. She was much prettier in reality. His eyes lingered on her face, and he remembered the way she looked last night, how he kissed her the night before. Their kiss was fantastic. The kind of kiss you remembered for years to come.

  Her latest article was the piece on Elsa Svensson and the sex camps, published that morning. It was long, personal, funny, and written in a tone he recognized. He could hear Ambra’s voice behind the words. He realized he was on the verge of a smile. It was okay that they’d ended up in the bar yesterday, he and Mattias. Because seeing Ambra had been fun.

  He shut the lid of his laptop and looked at the clock. Almost ten. Mattias was still sleeping.

  What the hell was he going to do about Mattias? It felt strange having him there. Strange and worryingly familiar. You developed a very particular type of relationship in the special forces, one unlike anything else. He and Mattias had been so cold that they’d shivered together, lain down in mud and lost the feeling in their feet while they watched their targets. Swum until they literally sobbed with exhaustion. Lost friends and saved each other’s lives. Under those circumstances, you grew close in a way an outsider would struggle to understand.

  Which meant that the betrayal, when it eventually came, was so much worse.

  They were deployed to Afghanistan in 2008. Both were fully trained, working as secret operatives. They would be there for six weeks, which was too damn short. It would be impossible to get anything done. But that kind of thing wasn’t up to them—they just went wherever they were told.

  They stayed in a camp with regular Swedish forces, an Afghan force, and a handful of Americans. The mood in the camp was low when they arrived. There had been plenty of losses but very few successes.

  “A Taliban leader is planning a suicide attack,” the commanding officer informed them during their briefing that evening.

  Tom and Mattias exchanged a look. They would be leaving immediately. Precisely how they wanted it.

  “We’re going to attack this building, to the right of the mosque.”

  They followed the group tasked with localizing and neutralizing the Taliban leader that night. They left in two helicopters, armed to the teeth, hanging from the sides. It was a complete cliché, but it was also pretty cool, sweeping across the town like that. Tom studied the map he kept in his chest pocket one last time. Frowned.

  “There are two mosques,” he said to Mattias. Their intel only mentioned one.

  “Is it the right building?” he asked the commanding officer.

  “We’re here,” someone suddenly said, and he never got an answer to his question. He shelved his anxiety. You couldn’t start causing trouble during an ongoing mission.

  They jumped from the helicopter, ran over to the house. On the agreed-upon signal, Tom kicked in the door.

  The assault force was made up of Tom, Mattias, and six other soldiers. There were guards outside and in the trees, and they had snipers positioned in strategic locations around the building.

  Tom had worked with many different nationalities and knew there were good guys and jerks in every group. The testosterone-fueled American he was paired up with that night, a man whose entire vocabulary seemed to consist of “fuck” and “asshole,” shouldn’t have been there.

  “You two. Right.” The commanding officer gestured with quick hand movements.

  “Fuck,” the American said, making a point to spit on the ground.

  Tom shook his head. He didn’t know this guy. It was like working with a live grenade. They went in. Heard a low mumbling over the radio, but nothing more. Everything they saw suggested it was an ordinary house they were storming. But Tom had a bad feeling about it and was just waiting for the mission to be aborted and for them to be ordered back to base.

  Suddenly, a small figure peeled away from a mattress on the floor. Tom saw the thin body through his night vision goggles. The whole mission felt wrong. It’s just a kid, this is an ordinary house, we’re in the wrong place, he had time to think before the American opened fire next to him, suddenly and without warning. Each of the soldiers was armed with automatic weapons. On default mode, those guns spat out six hundred bullets a minute, ten a second.

  The tiny body shuddered and was torn to pieces before Tom’s shocked eyes.

  He threw himself forward, shouting: “Stop, for fuck’s sake. Stop, it’s just a kid. Stop.”

  “All clear,” Tom heard over the radio. It was the wrong house, he was completely sure of it. He looked down at what was once a living child. All that was left was blood and scraps of flesh.

  “Withdraw,” the commanding officer ordered, and they left the building.

  When the helicopter landed back at base, Tom was so angry he could barely talk. He tore off his helmet, threw it to the ground along with his gun, and screamed at the American: “You bastard, he was just a kid!”

  The American spat on the ground. “Fucking what
ever. One less terrorist-to-be.”

  It was as though a black veil was drawn over Tom’s eyes. He launched himself at the American and managed to land one good right hook before the two men fell down the slope. They rolled around in the dust, hitting and kicking without any finesse, until they were finally pulled apart. Tom was blind with rage. Mattias hauled him back to their barracks.

  “He shot a kid. He’s a psychopath.”

  Mattias nodded and shoved him onto his bunk. “It was the wrong house. A fucking fiasco.”

  “It’s wrong. Completely wrong.”

  “I know. But you need to calm down.”

  The very next day, the Taliban managed to detonate a suicide bomb at a local market. Forty people died, the majority of them women, children, and the elderly.

  “If we attacked the right house, we could’ve stopped this,” Tom said bitterly to the Swedish operation commander, a lieutenant colonel he respected.

  “It was dark. We get bad intel sometimes. This is what happens. Let it go, Tom, for everyone’s sake,” the lieutenant colonel told him.

  He was right, of course. Inaccurate information was far from unusual. But Tom couldn’t drop what had happened. There was a difference between bad intel and dead children. He was a soldier, and there were certain rules you followed as a soldier, because otherwise you were no better than the Taliban, the jihadis, or any of the other terrorists they were fighting.

  There was right and there was wrong. That was what he believed and, ultimately, defended. Democracy. Freedom. What was right.

  Tom wrote a report about what happened. He sent it from Afghanistan, got back to work, and made sure to stay as far away from the American as he could.

  When Tom returned to Sweden, he asked for a meeting with the head of the army. His request was granted.

  “They asked me to call in a witness,” he said to Mattias. “Would you come?”