Will was moving closer, and Sophia took another step back.
“After I realized our mistake,” Penny continued. “We tried to make it friendlier by picking the flowers. Marla had already emptied the ketchup bottle, so we decided to put it on the ground and add a picture of a hot dog. Instead of looking like a mortal wound, now it looks like he spilled ketchup on his shirt.” She laughed heartily then took a deep breath followed by a hum.
Sophia stared at the receiver in her hand, a scowl creasing her face. She meant to count all the way to ten before she spoke, but by the time she said three in her head, she was spitting out, “Get it off my driveway.” The numbness of being woken up and finding the strange display was wearing off, quickly replaced with a healthy dose of anger. Sophia took a third step back and looked behind her, realizing how far she was from her front door. “I mean it, Penny. Today. Before I get home.” She was using her mommy voice. The one she thought would get the job done. Sophia held up a hand like a stop sign, hoping Will would stay where he was. “I have to go,” she told Penny, punching the raised button on the old-fashioned cordless handset.
“I’m sorry your sleep was disturbed last night.” She grabbed the hem of her shirt again. “I saw the police lights.”
“They woke you up?” Will asked from the middle of the cul-de-sac.
“Insomnia.” Sophia pulled her shirt a little lower.
Will’s gaze followed the move. His face flashed red. “Oh dear,” he said, working to find another place to focus his eyes, finally coming to rest on her roofline. “Goodbye.” He turned abruptly and quick-stepped back to his Volvo.
Sophia stood still until Will was well down the road, then got herself back inside. Upstairs, the gentle chimes that were supposed to rouse her from her dreams in a natural, Zen-like way had reached the point of insistence. She took the stairs two at a time to turn the alarm off before the noise woke her boys. She needed a little extra time getting ready today. She wouldn’t be working from home in her usual shorts and t-shirt. Today, she was supposed to do a presentation with her research partner Nadia at Iniquus, the security firm that was assigned to keep them safe. As Sophia adjusted the water temperature in the shower, she wondered if that security would extend to keeping her safe from crazy neighbors.
She cut the water off again when she heard her phone ringing. This time when she picked it up, she heard five staccato beeps instead of her neighbor’s overly enthusiastic voice. She hung up and moved downstairs to her office. She placed her cellphone in front of her, pulled up a map on the computer, opened the code generator on her keychain, and waited.
When the call came in, Sophia read off the alphanumeric code instead of answering with a hello. “938BCK868.”
“You have information?”
“I believe I’ve found what you’re looking for.”
“Coordinates?”
Sophia listed them off and the phone clicked, leaving her with dead air.
2
Sophia
Monday morning
Sophia pulled up to the Willow Tree Learning Center just as the Sesame Street alphabet song was hitting its crescendo. She slid the car into park and climbed from behind the wheel. She wasn’t used to tottering in high heels with pointy toes. With her suit jacket draped across the passenger seat, she felt like a grown up today. Well, at least the kind of grown up who didn’t play in sandboxes for a living. In her line of work as an archaeologist, it was rare that she wore anything that required dry-cleaning. At least her pencil skirt was made with Spandex, and she could maneuver the kids out of their car seats with ease.
Somehow, Sophia had made it this far without further morning mishaps, though Chance’s eyes looked a little glassy to her as she pulled him into her arms. Sophia pressed a kiss onto his forehead to check for a fever. “You doing okay, sweetie?” she asked as he reached out to play with her earring. He didn’t answer, and she was distracted from her concern by Turner. Her soon to be four-year-old had learned to undo his own seatbelt which was both a blessing and a worry. He clambered past her and his younger brother and was racing for the front door of his school with joyful whoops. Sophia scrambled to catch up with him, grabbing the boys’ backpacks and slamming the door shut on her way.
Sophia thought back to the moms in her neighborhood, and for a melancholy moment, imagined how nice it would be to stay at home and mother her kids. Or at least have a choice in the matter. But she had been widowed right after her twenty-fourth birthday. She was all her boys had. In whispered promises while they slept, Sophia swore she would be their rock. She would do anything and everything she had to do to give them a good life. And today, that meant standing up in front of a bunch of strangers and talking about her work. That thought set Sophia’s anxiety skyward. Her fingers shook as she signed the boys in for the day. Her hands were clammy as she rubbed their backs and gave them each a last kiss before leaving. “Learn wonderful things,” she called as they skipped off to join their friends.
Exhausted and jittery wasn’t a fabulous combination; it made her skin buzz. Sophia prayed her deodorant could hold up to the challenge. She second-guessed her choice of a blue satin blouse as she wobbled back to her car, knowing it would show perspiration badly. She was going to throw the blouse and these darned shoes in the trash as soon as she got home. Sophia checked the time on her cellphone and decided she could stop for a cup of tea for her trek through the morning traffic jam. Luckily, Iniquus wasn’t too far from her house, on the Virginia side of the Potomac; she wouldn’t have to tangle herself up on the capital city streets.
Sophia turned off the CD of cringe-worthy kiddy songs and clicked on the radio. As she scanned for something with an upbeat tempo to distract her from her nerves, she stopped at a man announcing that this morning, Mrs. Murphy of Harrisonburg opened the door to let her dachshund in from his romp in the woods, and he dragged in a pair of pants with a pelvic girdle still inside. She found other leg bones as she followed his path. Police were investigating. “Huh,” Sophia said out loud. “And I thought my morning was going badly. At least that’s not me with a stray femur in my yard.” She clicked on her blinker and turned right into the parking lot.
Here, only two blocks away from Willow Tree, was her one almost daily indulgence. A little family-run doughnut shop that brewed fragrant cups of chai that always had a way of making her feel loved. The mother, who ran the cash register, would sometimes squeeze Sophia’s hand as she handed her the change and say, “It’s going to be okay.” Sophia had convinced herself that this silver-haired lady was a soothsayer, and she’d read Sophia’s fortune in that morning’s tea leaves. Sophia just had to hang on until the magical moment when things would be okay. This morning, Sophia was disappointed that it was the daughter who took her money, so she didn’t get a pre-presentation pep talk.
As Sophia rounded the corner on her way back to the car, she popped the lid off her cup to blow coolness across the surface while she walked. She climbed into her car before she took the first tentative sip of scalding liquid and decided it would have to wait. A burned tongue would make speaking clearly at this morning’s presentation that much harder. And this was going to be difficult enough as it was. Sophia glanced in her side mirror to a see a rotund man working his way toward the sidewalk. She pulled her door partially shut so he could squeeze on by. As he stepped onto the curb, he lurched sideways, catching himself on her car, shaking it. Chai sloshed across Sophia’s lap. Screaming in pain, Sophia grabbed the door handle and leapt from the car. She let the cup fall to the ground and yanked her skirt—sopping wet with blistering hot tea—down to get it away from her skin.
The obese man righted himself and bobbed his way into the shop without a backward glance. With her skirt around her ankles, Sophia leaned over to examine the red streaks running across her thighs. Her blouse just covered her now-damp panties.
A man called out to her, “Are you okay?” as he hustled over.
“This is becoming a theme for today,” Sophia m
umbled, as she reached for the hem of her blouse and pulled it down for modesty’s sake.
The man had his focus on her thighs. “Jeez, you’re pretty badly burned. Do you need a ride to the hospital? Should I call an ambulance?”
Sophia kicked out of her skirt. She answered with a shake of her head. Her focus was on trying not to cry and add mascara running down her cheeks to her problems. Burns or no burns, she had a speech to give in a few minutes.
“Hang on, I have some cream in my first aid kit.”
Sophia picked up her winter-white skirt, now stained chai brown. She turned to take in the puddle on her front seat. The clock on her dash said she was running late for the meeting. Tears glazed her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She wouldn’t cry a single tear. Not a single one. Sophia gritted her teeth as she pulled her gym bag from the back seat and unrolled her yoga pants. At least they were solid black. They’d have to do.
The man was back by her side as Sophia yanked off her shoes to get dressed. He held up a can of lidocaine. “This should help.” He held it out for her.
“Yes, thank you.” As Sophia sprayed her thighs, she realized that this was truly the stuff of nightmares. While she’d tried to survive against the power of an evil universe last night, she could just as easily have had this surreal dream, standing half-dressed in a parking lot, handing the spray can to a stranger so he could get the back of her legs. Thank goodness there was nothing pervy or seedy about this guy. In her mind, she decided he was a first responder of some kind, and he was out of uniform but still felt compelled to help. She reached down and gingerly yanked her pants into place.
The stranger handed her the can. “I bet you’ll need a touchup before the day is through.”
She took it gratefully, wondering what the right thing to say in a situation like this was. “You’ve earned yourself a boxful of good karma.” She extended her hand to shake his.
“Perfect. I was running kind of low on it.” He grinned and loped off, as if seeing a woman disrobe in a parking lot was an everyday occurrence.
Sophia reached for the blankie scrunched in Turner’s car seat to use as a barrier between the puddle in the driver’s seat and her pants. She put her car in gear and pressed on the gas. Chancing a ticket with her aggressive driving, she fought through traffic to get to Iniquus. She needed to get there on time, looking crisp, cool, and professional. After all, first impressions were impossible to unwind.
3
Sophia
Monday a.m.
Titus Kane, Panther Force Commander, scowled at the men who had assembled in the meeting room. Sophia and Nadia sat off to the side outside his direct view. Sophia found him thoroughly intimidating. His uniform of gray camouflage battle fatigues, and a compression shirt that showed off every bulge and ripple of his muscles, plus the sheer size of him—he felt lethal. Since he oversaw their security team, that should be comforting, Sophia reminded herself. But it wasn’t. There was something about this man, beyond his scowl and authoritative tone, that made Sophia feel like he was a hunter, and she might be his next meal. This man was not her friend or protector. She knew on a cellular level, from the moment he had scanned her with assessing scrutiny, that she was somehow in danger.
As Commander Kane looked over a note someone had handed him, his men sat at attention. Kane obviously garnered their utmost respect. Sophia’s mind scrambled down various pathways to find a reason why her alarm bells were clanging. The only thing she could settle on was that the lidocaine had worn off and her thighs were screaming.
“Gentlemen.” Titus stalked to the front of the Panther Force war room—that was the name stenciled on the door. It seemed an appropriate title, after all, her job was a kind of war and these were the soldiers who were supposed to help her in her fight. “Panther Force has been assigned a new case. We are tasked with security concerns for The Ancient Artifact and Cultural Preservation Society, or AACP, an International organization with the mandate to discover and protect the world’s treasures.” He paused as his team scribbled the name onto their notes. “Our assignment will be to develop security teams at various global archaeological sites where the relics are most at risk of being destroyed or plundered.” He fisted his hands and planted his knuckles on the table, leaning his weight forward, sweeping his gaze over his teammates, stopping short to exclude Nadia and Sophia. “To that end, in the host countries, we will be using local assets whom we vet and train,” he said. “Iniquus will directly provide security for the American scientists who are involved as they travel to the remote areas. While we’ll have Iniquus operatives available to fill our ranks on the personal security teams, it will be Panther Force who takes the lead. It’s a very interesting case, as you will soon learn.” Now he stood and stared straight at the two women.
Nadia reached under the table and squeezed Sophia’s thigh. Sophia winced with pain and lifted her friend’s hand and rubbed it softly, hoping to give them both a little courage as they wilted under the commander’s glare.
“To that end, may I present Dr. Nadia Dajani and Dr. Sophia Abadi, who are here representing their employers to give us a better understanding of what they do and how we can best support their work.”
Releasing Nadia’s hand, Sophia put on the guise of an Egyptian queen here to explain the state of affairs to her loyal subjects. It was a ploy she’d used at the university to make it through her presentations. Sophia refused to look in Commander Kane’s direction as she moved regally to the front of the room.
“Thank you.” Sophia picked up the remote that would start the PowerPoint presentation. She looked to her right. “Could we dim the lights, please?”
An operative in the front row rose and moved toward the wall, exposing his teammate who had been hidden from her original sweep of the room’s occupants. Sophia found herself eye to eye with Brian Ackerman. Sophia had thought Brian was a distant memory, someone she’d never see again. He looked back at her with an inscrutable gaze that had Sophia taking a quick step sideways to rebalance herself. Caught off guard, she let her long black hair fall across her face, hiding behind the thick waves as she worked to manage her emotions. She spun back toward the screen. Today was turning out to be a Monday on steroids. She wondered if the universe was pranking her like her neighbors. She didn’t find any of this funny.
It’s a freaking small world, Sophia thought, brushing her hair out of her eyes, knowing that she already looked like she’d just tumbled out of bed. She reached for a water bottle and swirled a mouthful of cool wetness around her mouth while she checked to make sure the first image was correct. Her heart was beating way too fast. She had already been suffering from an extra helping of anxiety. And now, here was Brian.
She glanced quickly over his way to see if he’d caught her nervous reaction. He had leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest without the smallest glimmer of discomfort. Or recognition for that matter. Huh. Maybe she was mistaken. He could be a doppelganger. Or maybe she’d been staring at computer screens so long that she needed glasses. Sophia forced herself to believe that. Mind games were a powerful tool she used to get through life’s challenges. She compelled herself to smile at the room of men with their soldier-like demeanors.
“Gentlemen,” she began, steeling herself as she drew their attention. She knew this was the hardest part. Once she got talking about her work, her stress would ease. She loved her job and loved that she made a difference to human history. “We’ll be working closely together, so please feel free to call me Sophia and my partner Nadia.” Sophia’s ribs felt tightly corseted, preventing her from taking in enough air. It made her already husky voice sound deeper. Breathless. Sultry. And oh, so out of place in this meeting room full of alpha males. She was glad that the darkened room would help hide her blush. “Our PhD titles sound pretentious, but really what we do for a living is play in the dirt and find wonderful things.” She pressed the button to show a picture of her and Nadia at a dig site, covered with filth and sweat,
shielding their faces as a camel spat on them.
Low chuckles rumbled across the room
“Not glamorous, but certainly very interesting.”
By the men’s smiling responses and relaxing body postures, Sophia knew the self-deprecating photo did the trick. It plucked them out of their ivory tower and made them accessible. She and Nadia had agreed that this would be the best tactic. They wanted to be among peers—avoiding the sterile relationship they both felt led to the death of their colleague in Iraq when his security team had to prioritize who and what they could save. He hadn’t been at the top of the list.
Sophia switched to a picture of an astronaut floating in space, which threw her body squarely back into this morning’s nightmare. Fear itched over her scalp, but Sophia drew her smile a little wider, a little brighter. “Actually, Nadia and I are Space Archaeologists.”
“Has anyone heard about this?” Nadia asked and scanned for affirmation. Getting none, she said, “It’s a fairly new area of research. It used to be that a space archaeologist did research-based studies of items made by humans that are now floating around in space. They document those items as part of our human cultural heritage. But in the case of Sophia and I, we use satellite imagery to find possible dig sites of ancient cultures. We also use the data to protect locations we are already aware of. We can see looting happening almost in real time. We sit in front of computers each day here in Northern Virginia doing our research in the comfort of our climate-controlled office, instead of digging in the Middle Eastern sand under one-hundred-thirty-degree heat.” She nodded at Sophia to continue.
Sophia changed the picture to one from Giza, the Sphinx haloed by a full moon in a velvet-blue sky. “Our first discovery was a pyramid buried under a modern Egyptian city that, over time, was built on top of it.” She pressed the button to reveal a lush mountainside. “As well as hidden caves in Slovakia where art from World War II had been hidden by the Nazis. Those finds let us know that we had a formidable tool to protect world antiquities. Right now, because of the global temperature changes, we are at an acute risk of losing many of our yet undiscovered cultural sites to rising sea waters, at the same time as other sites are emerging from beneath the glaciers. There is a sense of immediacy in our need to discover and plot the locations of our shared human heritage.”
Dead and Gone Page 41
