A Fire in the Night

by Christopher Swann

  A short hike up between two dunes, sea oats waving in the breeze like feathered grasses, and then the beach opened before her, a wide stretch of sand that sloped gently down to the surf. The tide was out, leaving behind tidal pools like a strand of silver lakes. Down by the water a man jogged past with a golden retriever trotting behind, but otherwise the early-morning beach was empty, save for a man sitting in a beach chair halfway between the dunes and the surf, gazing out at the ocean. There was an empty chair next to him.

  Annalise made her way down to the chairs. “Coffee,” she said.

  Uncle Nick turned his head and smiled up at her. “Thanks,” he said. He took the mug of black coffee. Annalise sat in the empty chair. The few clouds on the horizon had started to glow, but the sun had not yet risen, and the western sky behind Nick and Annalise was still a dull, shadowed blue.

  “How’d you sleep?” she asked.

  “Better,” Nick said.

  “Define better.”

  “Three hours in a row without waking up. Only needed one pain pill.”

  “You walk this morning?”

  “Two miles.”

  “Don’t push yourself too hard.”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  They sat in comfortable silence. Far out on the water, a cargo ship inched its way toward Savannah.

  “School starts tomorrow,” Nick said.

  “Hmm,” Annalise said, sipping her coffee.

  “I liked the principal. She seemed competent.”

  “You mean the headmaster?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “It’s a private school. She’s the headmaster.”

  “Duly noted.” Nick looked at Annalise. “You excited about school?”

  Annalise shrugged. “It’s school. It’ll be good to get back into a routine. Meet new people.”

  “You talk to some of your friends from Tampa last night?”

  “Yeah, we FaceTimed last night. It’s just …”

  Nick waited. He’d learned, after a lot of trial and error, mostly error, that waiting was the best way with Annalise.

  Annalise pulled her legs up and hugged her knees. “It was fine, they were really nice and everything. But it’s not the same. I miss them. And … I miss Eric.”

  Nick nodded. She had cried when he told her that her boyfriend was dead.

  Annalise took a breath, then blew it out. “I miss Eric, and Mom and Dad, and … it’s like I’m afraid I’m going to forget them, like I’ll really lose them, you know?”

  Nick looked out at the water, the waves rolling endlessly forward and spilling on the sand. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. But you won’t.”

  Annalise glanced at her uncle. He looked calm enough, but she knew he still missed Aunt Ellie, that he always would. That was one side of Uncle Nick. But now, after the mountains, she knew another side of him, knew what kind of violence he was capable of. It had scared her, and he must have sensed it, because he’d been very careful to treat her gently since. She knew now that he would never hurt her, but he had parts inside that he kept closed and locked away from her, maybe even from himself.

  She leaned against him, and she felt him stiffen in surprise. But after a moment he lifted his arm and put it around her shoulders, and they sat that way, waiting for the sunrise.

  FOR THE FIRST time in months, Nick thought about the future.

  Annalise’s grandparents, Nora and Ed, had welcomed both of them into their home in Hilton Head without hesitation. Of course they would take in their granddaughter, but Nick was surprised by how they had welcomed him, a virtual stranger, the brother of their dead son-in-law. It was a good thing they had. He couldn’t stay in Cashiers, not even if he wanted to. While he had somewhat recovered from his injuries, living alone in a cabin in the mountains before he was fully healed wasn’t wise. And he didn’t want to think about Lettie every time he walked through his foyer, or be reminded constantly of the men he had been forced to kill in his own yard. It was time to let go, in more ways than one. And the look of relief on Annalise’s face when her grandparents had offered to take them both in had gone straight to his heart. She had wanted him to go with her. Nick had said he would find his own apartment, but Nora and Ed had insisted he move into their other guest room. Nick suspected they were also happy to have someone else to help with Annalise—if their lives were going to be disrupted by the sudden arrival of a teenager, what was one more person, especially a mostly functioning adult?

  His chest itched, but he resisted the urge to scratch. The bullet wounds were scarring nicely. He didn’t remember the soldiers from Bragg arriving the night he’d been shot, or his evac to the Highlands hospital. According to Nick’s surgeon, he had nearly coded twice, but barring pneumonia or some other infection, the surgeon had predicted Nick would make a full recovery.

  He had been in his hospital bed in Highlands when Joshua Sams came to visit, pushed in a wheelchair by an orderly. Sams’s left arm was in a sling. The orderly had wheeled Sams to the foot of Nick’s bed and engaged the brake, then left.

  “You look terrible,” Sams said, his voice weak but firm.

  Nick glanced down at himself, wired and tubed like a half-built cyborg. His own voice was a rasp. “I’m fucking fantastic.”

  “No doubt.” Sams managed a smile. He was pale and his hair was greasy and he needed a shave, but Nick found his smile a welcome sight.

  “Arm okay?” Nick asked.

  Sams nodded. “Lost a lot of blood, but I’ll live. They don’t think there’s any permanent nerve damage or anything.” He looked around the room, as if trying to find what he’d come to talk about.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” Nick said. “About Annalise.”

  Sams shrugged with his good shoulder. “She’s your family,” he said. “And looks like she’s innocent, anyway.” He took a breath, blew it out. He looked exhausted. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help her more. Sorry I couldn’t help Lettie.”

  Nick closed his eyes, grief forming a hard, cold ball in his stomach. He made himself open his eyes and look at Sams. “You did fine,” he said.

  “I don’t feel fine,” Sams said.

  “You shot and killed two people. If you weren’t bothered by it, that would be worse. Trust me.”

  “Are you bothered by it?”

  The words surprised both of them. Sams looked on the verge of apologizing when Nick cut him off. “Yes,” he said.

  Sams shook his head slowly. “How—” he began, then cleared his throat. “How do you live with it?”

  Nick felt a heavy weariness settle over him, everything starting to fade. The pain meds had kicked in. “Talk to someone about it,” he said. “Don’t keep it all inside. Then go jogging or play basketball. Climb a mountain. Something physical.”

  Sams looked at him, eyes both haunted and hopeful. “And then?”

  Nick struggled to finish before he passed out. “Then you make a place for it. And you leave it there.”

  THE NEXT DAY it was Chitrita Bhandari’s turn to visit. First two men in suits and earpieces appeared in Nick’s room over the protests of a nurse, and then Nick heard her heels clicking down the tiled hallway. She barged into the room in a swirl of golden orange sari and dark hair and indignation. “You have royally fucked the pooch, do you know that?” she said.

  “Why do all your insults have to do with fucking?”

  “I want to make sure you understand them.” Bhandari looked down at him in his hospital bed. “You look like shit.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I sound annoyed. Nine people dead, one sheriff’s deputy seriously wounded, and every law enforcement agency in western North Carolina asking what a heavily armed team of mercenaries wants with a retired professor of medieval studies.”

  “They didn’t ask about the Green Berets? Who came late, by the way.”

  She snorted. “And the Highlands police chief wanted to get up my ass about the flash drive you left with him. I practically had to get
the Supreme Court to demand he turn it over.”

  “You probably had to make a single phone call.” Nick shifted in his bed, wincing. Gunshots to the chest and abdomen were no joke. “You said nine dead?”

  “Your brother and his wife, your niece’s boyfriend, a local store owner, and five mercenaries, including the one your deputy friend shot in the library.”

  “Should be six.”

  “What six?”

  “Dead mercs.”

  “You mean the one you hit over the head with a fire extinguisher? He’s alive and in custody. Singing like a parakeet or a blue jay or whatever the fuck kind of bird sings.”

  “You mean canary. What about the one I left in the woods? Young kid. I hit him with a tire iron.”

  Bhandari stared at him. “They found the tire iron. And your phone. But there was no mercenary left in the woods.”

  Nick stared up at the ceiling, then shook his head. One loose end to worry about later. “So what’s wrong with the Ghawar oil field? That’s what’s on the flash drive, isn’t it?”

  Bhandari looked at the two men in suits and jerked her head in the direction of the hallway. Both men left the room, closing the door behind them. Bhandari took a step closer to Nick and lowered her voice. “Saudi Aramco depends on the Ghawar oil field, which means the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia depends on the Ghawar oil field. And Ghawar has the largest conventional reservoir of oil in the world.”

  “According to the Saudis.”

  Bhandari lifted an eyebrow. “Who have been very secretive about any information having to do with their oil production. Until a couple of years ago when they released a bond prospectus describing their production capacity, among other things. It confirmed what the Saudis have been saying forever—Ghawar can pump out oil for the next three and a half decades.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Unless someone lied,” Bhandari said.

  The statement hung overhead like smoke.

  “So the prospectus was false?” Nick asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Bhandari said. “I said Ghawar is exactly what the Saudis have been saying all along, unless someone lied. And just the suggestion of that could mean billions in stock market losses and more volatility in the Saudi kingdom and in the region in general.” She brushed lint off the sleeve of her sari. “There are Saudi technocrats who would like that to happen. They want the kingdom to change, to become more democratic. Reforms aren’t enough for them, so they want to burn it all down. They would make Iraq look like fucking Disneyland. Your brother had a reputation as a private contractor willing to take risks. Someone sent him information about Ghawar on a flash drive. They paid him half a million dollars to get it to the US government.”

  Nick shook his head. “And instead Jay tried to sell it to the highest bidder.”

  Bhandari said nothing.

  Nick licked his lips. He was so damn thirsty. “Have you been able to get the info off the flash drive yet?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “It’s going to have something to do with Halliwell Energy and production levels at Ghawar.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I’m good at figuring shit out, Rita. Halliwell’s got a billion-dollar contract with the Saudis. If anything on that flash drive could upset that, somebody at Halliwell would get mighty upset.”

  “Why not the Saudis?”

  Nick shook his head. “The Saudis would have just outbid everyone to get the flash drive back. Then my brother would have met with an unfortunate accident. My guess is some Halliwell executive went rogue, panicking about the thought of all those billions vanishing overnight. Look at how the mercs were paid. I want to know—”

  “You want to know fuck all,” Bhandari said. “You’re out of it now. Stay that way. Heal. Go relax on a beach. Spend some time with your niece.”

  Nick slowly grinned. “I’m right, aren’t I? You already know.”

  Bhandari scowled. “If you ask me a single thing about a certain deputy director of operations at Halliwell being taken in for questioning by the FBI, I’ll say ‘no comment’ and think even more poorly of you than I do right now.”

  Nick held the grin for a few more moments, and then it slid off his face. “Doesn’t matter,” he said flatly. “Doesn’t help Jay any.”

  Bhandari’s fierce scowl relaxed. “I’m sorry about your brother,” she said. “The best way to honor him is to take care of his daughter.” She nodded once, then turned for the door.

  “Rita?” Nick said.

  She paused and looked back over her shoulder.

  “Do you have kids?” Nick asked.

  Bhandari scowled again. “Two,” she said. “A son and a daughter.”

  Nick struggled to formulate his question. Finally he said, “How do you raise a teenage girl?”

  Bhandari’s laughter followed her out the door and down the hall.

  NOW, SITTING ON the beach with his arm around Annalise, Nick took in a lungful of air. He smelled the salt air, the deeper organic tang of dead fish, the coconut scent of suntan lotion. He took another breath. It smelled different from the mountains or the desert. The clouds on the horizon were beginning to blush, the sky shifting to blue.

  Beneath his arm, Annalise stirred. “Can I ask you something about Aunt Ellie?” she said.

  Nick kept his eyes on the waves rolling in. “Sure,” he said.

  “Was she okay with you being a spy?”

  Nick blinked. He hadn’t expected that question. “Not at first,” he said.

  Annalise glanced up at him. “What did she do when she found out?”

  Looking out over the waves at the coming dawn, Nick told her about that early morning in Cairo, when Ellie had caught him sneaking home at dawn. Annalise didn’t interrupt to ask questions. When he finished telling the story, Annalise thought about it for a few moments.

  “So she stayed,” she said.

  Nick nodded. “She stayed.”

  “She really loved you.”

  The words sliced cleanly through Nick’s heart. For a moment he couldn’t speak. “Yes,” he finally managed. “She really loved me.”

  Under his arm, Annalise sighed. “Good,” she said, and then fell silent.

  The clouds on the horizon now looked like they had been forged out of gold. A breeze blew off the sea, causing Nick’s eyes to water. Or maybe they were actual tears. But they weren’t from grief, not exactly. More from gratitude for having been loved by a woman he had not deserved. Perhaps all love was like that, an astonishment at one’s extraordinary fortune in finding someone who, despite all your failures, loved you anyway.

  A month ago, such thoughts might have led him to throw himself off the top of Whiteside Mountain. Now he was sitting on a beach with his newfound niece and merely weeping. He was getting better.

  You are, aren’t you? Ellie said.

  Uh-huh, he said.

  Don’t get shot again.

  Not planning on it.

  He could almost feel Ellie pause, sense her slow grin. We finally have our kid, she said.

  Beneath his arm, Annalise shifted to get more comfortable, her head against his chest. He left his arm around her shoulders, not yet ready to let go.

  A cloud of gulls wheeled overhead, one of them giving a sharp cry, and with that the earth turned and the sunlight rolled over the ocean, bright and almost painfully beautiful, the start of a new day.

  ALSO AVAILABLE BY CHRISTOPHER SWANN

  Never Turn Back

  Shadow of the Lions

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

  Christopher Swann is a graduate of Woodberry Forest School in Virginia. He earned a B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University, an M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from Georgia State University. He lives with his wife and two sons in Atlanta, where he is the English department chair at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School. Shadow of the Lions, published in 2017 by Algon
quin, was his debut novel.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Christopher Swann

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-756-5

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-757-2

  Cover design by Melanie Sun

  Printed in the United States.

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First Edition: September 2021

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