She was wondering if she should try to find Serena and head back to the dorm when she heard a scream from across the room, then heard someone shout FIRE! For a moment, she didn’t understand. She was drunk, yes, very drunk, but the yells and screams got through to her vodka-soaked brain, and suddenly everyone was shoving toward the front doors. Smoke was gushing out of the kitchen into the common room, getting thicker. Mia automatically pulled her shirt over her nose, looked frantically around for Serena. Where was she? They’d danced together not more than a half an hour ago. Or was it longer? Mia couldn’t remember, her brain wasn’t on reality time. She’d been laughing at a joke she couldn’t remember.
Mia yelled, “Serena!” but she didn’t see Serena. She was being pushed forward toward the front of the frat house in the middle of a stampede. She stumbled, and an arm grabbed her and half dragged her outside, out of the chaos. She was dizzy, the world upside down or maybe sideways, and her stomach revolted. She leaned over and threw up into a bush until she was light-headed. She clutched her stomach, closed her eyes, and let herself fall over onto her side. She heard sirens, heard students shouting, felt the fear heavy in the very air around her. She staggered to her feet and leaned against an oak tree, coughing, trying to get her head on straight. She saw firefighters pour off fire trucks, train their hoses on the frat house. She saw cop cars, from the town and from campus security, heard more shouts, a high-pitched scream. It was like a fantastical movie. She saw Judy Harkins, one of her study partners, stumble by and Mia caught her. “Judy, have you seen Serena?”
“Serena?” Judy was so drunk she crumpled to the ground, pulling Mia back down with her.
An older cop came by, pulled them to their feet, and herded them back toward their dorm. Mia said over and over, “Please, Officer, I have to go back. I have to find Serena, she might still be in there. I have to—”
The cop said in a father’s voice, “We’ll get in there as soon as we can and find her, don’t worry. The best thing you can do to help us is get yourselves to bed. It might be smart not to do anything like this again, you think?”
There were no casualties from the frat fire, but the cops couldn’t find Serena. No one could find Serena. She was simply gone.
3
Olivia
Balad Military Hospital
Balad, Iraq
Near the Tigris River
Present, seven years later
Her name was Olivia and she was alive. She could feel her chest rhythmically lift and fall, the quiet pull of her own breath. She didn’t know where she was, but it didn’t seem important. She felt cradled in a thick heavy thick fog that seemed to breathe with her. She knew there was something beyond the fog; she heard disembodied voices speaking above her, and her name. She saw jumbled images, some blurred, some stark, faces flashing by, set and hard, and movement, so much movement. She didn’t resist them, she wanted to absorb each of them, so she let them settle in and roll like a home movie on a scratchy old projector.
She was with her team in Sumar, Iran, a city devastated in an Iraqi chemical attack many years before, desolate still. The few people she saw looked at them with apathy, even though the team was heavily armed. There were four of them, all wearing dark brown fatigues and caps, assault rifles strapped across their backs, magazines X’ed across their chests like banditos, grenades, Semtex, and timers strapped to their waists. She saw three canteens of water hanging from her belt, a sat phone snug in her breast pocket. She knew there were satellites overhead, watching them, always watching.
The film rolled on, jerky, starting and stalling, and there was no sound, only harsh images of a bleak plateau with the Zagros Mountains beyond, overwhelming with their stark, jagged outcrops of rocks spearing into the sky. Her teammates were talking but she couldn’t hear them, couldn’t remember what they’d said.
She wanted to see the film through, understand all those images, and wondered if she could be in charge, become the narrator. So she whispered into the fog, “We’re trotting along in a single file at a steady brisk pace, but it’s so hot it’s hard to breathe. Soon all of us are panting, pausing often to drink. I feel sweat running down my back, sticky and hot, feel my body protesting the steady climb over the endless jagged rocks and scattered boulders, loose underfoot, ready to twist or break an ankle. I try to avoid thick ugly brambles with their sharp thorns to rake to the bone, raise my hand to warn the others to be careful. At least if anyone’s looking for us, it will be hard to pick us out from our surroundings, we blend so well. I wonder how it can still be so hot when it should be dark in an hour.
“I hear a noise. It’s my sat phone beeping and I raise my hand. Everyone stops, and I see them bending over, breathing deep, drinking water like camels. The static is fierce, but I hear our station chief saying Hashem, the man we’re here to take out with us, is on the run, Iranian soldiers in pursuit. I wonder how they could know he was here, be on him so fast, but I know if he can only get to us, we might still get him back to Sumar and to the Iraqi border under the cover of night.”
The film stalled, she felt her head swimming, but she needed to go on.
“I must find a high rock to see exactly how close Hashem is to us, how close the soldiers are to him. I know they want to kill him, and so does he. I hear the whomp whomp of helicopters in the distance. My heart jumps. They could kill us all in a second if they see us. At least there’s only one track through the Zagros Mountains large enough for vehicles of any kind, and Hashem is well north of it.
“I climb up a jagged mess of boulders, slip into a narrow crevice, and raise my binoculars. All I see is bleak and hostile land, full of impossible cliffs and narrow passages and plunging drops into rock-strewn gullies. I see Hashem. He’s dressed like a herdsman, his robe flapping as he runs, highlighted by the setting sun behind me. I don’t think he’ll make it.
“There’s a beep again—my sat phone. All I hear is ABORT. I pretend there’s static and flip off the phone. We all realize there’s been a breach, the Iranian soldiers know we’re here, but we agree we’re not going to let Hashem be taken. We run all out, we’re only fifty yards away, but it’s tough going. The soldiers see us and fire, their bullets kicking up dirt and rocks all around us. We dive for cover and fire back, trying to keep the soldiers pinned back to give Hashem a chance to get to us. Bullets ricochet off the rocks around us, and the noise of the automatic weapons is deafening. It’s hard to breathe the dust is so thick.
“Hashem is close, he’s nearly to us when he’s hit and he falls. Mike’s closest. He runs to him, throws him over his shoulder while the three of us cover them, changing magazines and firing again and again, kicking up air full of dirt and flying shards of rock. Mike runs back through a narrow gully toward the plateau, and we follow, firing as we run. I run to Mike and try to help stanch the horrible wound in Hashem’s chest. I wonder why he wasn’t shot in the back since he was running away from them. I suppose he must have turned to see how far back they were, and a soldier nailed him. He’s heaving, blood bubbling out of his mouth, but he’s desperately trying to talk, and Mike and I both lean closer. But I know it’s no good. I hear Andi yelling at me and I have to leave Mike and scramble up to higher ground to join them, and we take cover behind a mess of boulders until we can see the first of the soldiers follow us into the narrow gully single file. We fire and several fall. They can’t reach us that way. They back off.
“I mold Semtex, flatten it into a crevice of a rock, set a three-minute timer, and let it roll down into the gully. I see Mike running with Hashem over his shoulder, and I see Higgs and Andi, their faces smeared with dirt, their eyes hard and clear, and we run all out after Mike. Bullets slam into a boulder next to me, close, too close. I feel a rock chip strike my arm, and I stumble. I hear the explosion—hear screams and shouts and I know the Semtex has done its job. Andi helps me up and we keep running, bent nearly double. The helicopter sounds closer, but it’s getting dark, and I’m afraid they might have trouble seeing us. Mik
e yells our man is dead but he’s not going to leave him and Higgs yells, ‘RPG!’
“I see the grenade coming, hear Mike’s shout, and then there’s white, so much white it’s blinding and I can’t see anything else, can’t hear anything. There’s only noise, like a film feed slapping a projector wheel that keeps whirling.”
Olivia didn’t realize her heart rate and blood pressure were spiking, didn’t realize her monitors and medical staff were making that noise, close to her, very close.
4
Mia
One Lincoln Plaza
New York, New York
Monday, late afternoon, mid-March
Mia Briscoe’s heart still leaped with pleasure when she looked out her eighteenth-floor living room window to the stretch of Central Park below, even after seeing it daily for three years. It didn’t matter the leafless trees hunkered down, brown and forlorn against blasts of arctic air. To Mia, the park looked magnificent, no matter the season. It was this view that had sold her on her junior one-bedroom apartment—thank you, Mom, Dad, for helping with the down payment. She saw a good dozen serious runners, their heads down, putting in their miles though it was thirty degrees, with snow threatening. To Mia, thirty degrees meant keeping her sweats and warm socks on, with a space heater next to her desk.
She smiled, realized she’d never been more hopeful about her future, and happy in her present. Well, she’d be happier still when Travis got back from his two-month stint overseeing the construction of international headquarters for Lohman Pierce in Zurich. As one of the lead structural architects, it was his responsibility to ensure everything that was done met Swiss code requirements, and that meant his staying in Zurich on-site six days a week. They were down to eighteen days until he came home, both of them counting. If the project didn’t run over, Travis had promised skiing, or even better, Bermuda, to stretch out on the beach when he returned. He’d found a gym in Zurich to unwind in after the long hours on the job site, a good thing since if he didn’t work out regularly, he tended to lose weight. She smiled, remembering when she’d met her perfect mate on the second floor of Bloomingdale’s, shopping for his mother’s birthday. She’d helped him pick out a sexy teddy, loaded with lace, which, Travis had told her, would have his mom drooling. From Bloomies, they’d had coffee, which had led to movies, dinners, and the recognition they were meant for each other. Both sets of parents were on board, which was good. And so here they were, six months later.
She sighed. Even if Travis got back on time, that lovely trip probably wasn’t going to happen now, but for the best of reasons. Milo, her boss at the Guardian, had assigned her that very day to cover a newcomer, Alexander Talbot Harrington, in his run for mayor. It would be her first dive as a reporter into the political deep end of a campaign that was already heating up. She’d spent much of her day researching Harrington, and despite the three very proper names, which in his case really did mean pots of old money, she was finding him interesting. He was the scion of the wealthy Boston Harringtons, multigenerational owners of the First Street Corporation, an international banking firm touting roots that went back to the National Bank, founded in 1792. Yes, old, old money and clout, political and otherwise. He’d headed up the New York branch of the family business for the past five-plus years, but when he declared his candidacy for office, he handed the reins to his operational VP for the duration of his campaign, and beyond, if he won. Tonight was to be his biggest fundraiser, and Milo had gotten Mia invited.
Her cell belted out “Bad Henry” by Thorny. It was Travis.
It burst right out of her. “Travis, have I got some news for you!”
He laughed. “Let me guess. I know you’re not pregnant unless you’ve kicked me to the curb and found someone else. I know you weren’t fired or your folks would have called me, and best of all, come Tuesday, we’ll be down to seventeen days and counting. And wonder of wonders, it looks like everything’s on schedule, which means, of course, the American on-site architect is really amazing at his job, able to corral all the wild hares, otherwise known as contractors and their minions. Well, for the most part.”
Mia laughed, too. “Okay, tell me how you’re doing with the Taj Mahal. Really, it’s all on schedule? And what do you mean, most part?”
She heard him sigh. “So far. I speak French and my German doesn’t totally suck, but when the head contractor, Gottfried Himmler, wants something I don’t want to approve, he speaks fast to try to trip me up.”
“No need to flatten him, maybe just take him behind the porta potty and explain how things are done in the US if someone doesn’t cooperate.”
“Haven’t yet, but I do speak back to him in English, lots of idioms, just as fast. We’ve got this stalemate going.”
“So no whips or chains required?”
“It was close once, but I appealed to his perfectionist side.”
“Is it as cold there as it is here?”
“Colder, maybe. It’s snowing a blizzard here in Zurich and all I can think about is you in a bikini on the beach in Bermuda. Now tell me this news that nearly has you dancing around.”
“I’m going to be covering Alex Harrington in his race for New York City mayor.”
“Harrington—never heard of him.”
“I hadn’t either. He’s a newcomer, young for politics, only thirty-four. He’s got old Boston wealth behind him. He went to Bennington Prep and Harvard and then became the director of his family’s New York branch office of the First Street Corporation. Evidently, he’s been active politically, working his way up to this. He’s got the physical side covered, he’s tall, good-looking, charming, and evidently not stupid. I have a feeling I won’t be seeing him stumble over his feet or say something tactless.”
“With that pedigree and deep pockets, he could maybe have a chance since the mayor’s termed out, but I wouldn’t bet on it; he’s got some stiff competition. So what exactly will you be doing?”
“I’m heading to his big fundraiser tonight to meet him, set up a time for an interview. Then I’ll grill him to his toes, find out all his secrets.”
Travis laughed. “If he’s a good politician, good luck with that. Imagine, a Bostonian running for New York City mayor. That’s pretty crazy, Mia. I mean, the Red Sox or the Yankees? How’s he going to straddle that one? Or even if he’s a New Yorker? How long has he lived in the city?”
“Hmm, maybe six years, around that. After I’ve researched him, I’ll know the month and day he moved here.”
“Well, Hillary Clinton managed to snag a New York Senate seat when her home was Arkansas. But then again, she had powerful backing and overflowing coffers. More power to him, if he can pull it off.”
Mia chewed on her lip. “Travis, the thing is, I don’t know if I’m going to be free to go to Bermuda in seventeen days. We’ll see.” She stared down at her watch. “Oops, gotta go, Travis. I’ve got to put on my little black dress and go out into the frozen tundra. I love you and I fully expect you to avoid all those pretty fräuleins.”
He said, “At least I can dream about lying on the beach with you, rubbing sunscreen all over you. I wonder if you can go topless in Bermuda.”
She laughed. “Pervert. It’s so cold here it makes me shiver to even think about a bikini.”
After she disconnected, Mia changed into her dress, pulled her hair back from her face, twisted it up into a thick chignon, added a touch of mascara and lipstick, and decided it was as good as it would get. She pulled on her stiletto-heeled black boots and stylish black wool coat her mom and dad had given her for Christmas, and took one final look in the mirror. She grinned at her reflection. “Yeah, baby, you’re the reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper.”
She called downstairs so a taxi would be waiting to take her to the Harrington fundraiser at the plush Cabot Hotel.
5
Mia
The Cabot Hotel on East Seventy-Fifth was one of the special few New York hotels Travis admired. He thought the art deco style, lovingl
y restored, still made its discreet statement—we cater only to the wealthy and provide anything-they-want service.
Mia was politely asked her name, checked off on a list, and joined a group of invitees in the massive red, white, and blue–garlanded ballroom with matching red, white, and blue balloons hugging the high ceiling, a clever touch. What a relief the American flag wasn’t black and vomit brown. She saw a free bar meant to lighten fingers reaching for checkbooks, tables of clever finger foods including tiny tacos that immediately made her hungry, and an eight-piece band playing mellow background music. Everything was set for Alex Talbot Harrington to present himself.
Mia estimated five hundred guests were roaming around the huge ballroom, dressed to kill, most drinking, all in fine spirits. Liquor flowed, and Mia wondered what the final bar tab would be. It boggled her mind.
She figured Harrington, with his family’s support and reputed bottomless pockets, didn’t much need tonight’s contributions, capped as they were, for the campaign. He needed these fundraisers for the exposure, the publicity, the opportunity to meet the movers and the shakers, people he was smart enough to know he needed badly as a newcomer.
She worked the room, seeking out people’s impressions of Alex Talbot Harrington, came across a couple of social media hounds she’d locked horns with a couple of months before and would like to gullet.
The music stopped, conversation died out, and Cory Hughes, Harrington’s campaign manager, stepped to the microphone and introduced the candidate. Alexander Talbot Harrington stepped onto the stage to loud applause. He had to raise the microphone because he was tall, and wasn’t that lucky for him. Mia set her iPhone to record so she could focus on him. He was good-looking in person, with fine chiseled features and a square jaw, all the physical endowments a successful politician could need. He smiled and began speaking. She was struck by his lovely, distinctive voice, with only a trace of the Boston Brahmin accent, and wondered how long he’d worked at blending it with New York–speak. He came across a bit like another J. F. Kennedy, but easier on a New Yorker’s ear. His speech itself was smooth enough, self-deprecating at the right places. He obviously had good writers. He acknowledged he was young, an outsider to New York City government, and apologized, with a smile, for being from Boston, and he just about managed to turn those New York negatives into positives. He focused not on partisanship, but on solutions for the city’s festering problems, left unsolved for too long by the current administration. He said little of real substance, and Mia wasn’t surprised when the few specific positions he took were greeted with applause since the room was filled with like-minded people. After ten minutes, he grinned at the room and stepped back to thunderous applause.
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