Sam got out of the man’s way, quickly, and so efficiently that he had removed himself from the viewing room completely.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa . . .”
Sam had a good ten-second lead on Jasper, storming down the hall toward the brightly lit glass, guards, and the metal detector archways of the compound’s main entrance.
“Sam, come on! Stop!”
Jasper’s pace picked up into a jog, his footfalls echoing off the walls, and getting louder until he felt that familiar slap on his shoulder. “Come on, man. You’re cracking up. Get a fucking hold of yourself.”
“I know.”
“You’re giving us a bad name.”
“I know . . .”
“Jackson pulled a lot strings to get you in there.”
“It’s over,” Sam said. “He’s gonna fire me.”
“Hey,” Jasper said, slowing him down. “He wouldn’t have sent me out here if that was the case.”
Sam looked at him “No. He would have sent Tansy.”
“He believes in you, Sam.”
Sam was nodding.
“Just don’t fuck it up.”
“You don’t consider that fucking it up?”
“Forget about that. Go home. Rest. Take care of your girl.”
Sam cocked his head at the word, at “his.” He hadn’t officially told anyone, but . . .
“What?” Jasper said. “You think I couldn’t figure that out? It doesn’t take a behavioral scientist to put that one together.”
Sam smiled. “Guess not.”
They started walking again, much slower. They passed security and left, back at the bright, fresh air.
“So,” Jasper said. “Are we good?”
Sam kept walking, replaying the whole thing in his mind.
“Sam?”
“I think this was a dry run, Jasper.”
“A dry run?”
“A drill. That substance they used, it could have been a dispersal agent. An experiment to track how it would spread in a large, populated area.”
“You really think terrorists are conducting scientific experiments?”
“Yes. They have an unlimited number of fanatics willing to die for the cause. Think of them like lab rats in an experiment.”
“They’re definitely some kind of rat.” Jasper paused, as if he was waiting for Sam to laugh or even smile. “Look, Sam, I’m serious about you taking some time off.”
“I already did. I slept last night.”
“For how many hours?”
Sam scratched the side of his neck, thinking about it.
“Sam, I think you need to sleep for a whole day.”
He couldn’t take that much time off the case. With the way the events were unfolding, the speed of new discoveries, he’d be light years behind.
“I’m gonna swing by your room tonight,” Jasper said. “You need a checkup. We’ll do some bloodwork.”
“Alright, alright,” Sam said, nodding. “I’ll get some sleep.”
His medic smiled.
17
Clara
In the beginning, it was hard to measure the improvements. They would happen in the slowest, most drawn-out increments. It took that whole first day for the fever to subside. But in the following two days, the improvements came by the hour. Starting with her cognition, the fever giving way to cool, clear-headed thought patterns, Clara’s real personality coming back. She and the nurses held a little celebration when she was back to full cognitive capacity. No more forgotten names of nurses. No more hallucinations at 3 a.m. Non-fever Clara, a new favorite of the nurses, was using her call button a lot less often.
By the second day she had become physically independent, getting her mobility back. Even her cardio, or at least what she could muster from a few laps around her floor. She had felt none of the tightness or the burning from her “cardio” in that courtyard.
Now she was practically speed-walking her way out of the hospital, pushing open the glass door with a rush of adrenaline. She needed to be outside and free again in the fresh air. She had spent far too much time in the stale, medically circulated oxygen of the hospital. Far too long lying down. Far too long a victim. Clara emerged in the pristine afternoon sunshine, and she was a new woman.
Bren would be first to meet the new Clara, partly because Clara’s car had been driven back home by her, and also because—while she felt amazing—she knew that she looked like hell. She’d already put Sam through enough. He didn’t need to see that part of her. Clara planned to go home and take a three-hour shower before she could even think of meeting up with Sam. She’d be sure to fit, somewhere in there, a three-hour hug with Molly.
Still waiting for her ride, the thought of her daughter and taking a shower made her painfully impatient. The nervous energy got her walking circles around the small shuttle-bus terminal right outside the main doors. She walked lap after lap, probably looking like an escapee from the mental ward. On each lap, on the road side of the terminal, she would peer down the street, hoping to see her car zooming up, hoping Bren would come and take her the hell away from this place.
But on each lap, nothing.
Very soon after, she had resigned herself to sitting and looking anywhere but the road. It was something similar to watching a pot of water come to a boil . . . until its white foam roiled over the lid and sizzled onto the stovetop.
Her boiling water had arrived. Her hot date, Sam.
He had parked along the curb, driver’s window rolled own, his grin lit up by the low afternoon sun. In a sexy drawl he asked, “Looking for a ride?”
Clara rushed toward his car without a word. There was nothing to say. Nothing to do except dive into his arms after he’d gotten out. He picked her up, lifting her, swinging her around in a 180. He was surprisingly rough with her, but it was all the better. She might have been sick for a day, but it didn’t turn her into porcelain.
Sam seemed so excited, squeezing her and asking, “How do you feel?!”
“I’m just . . .” Her smile made it hard to form the words right.
He laughed and said, “What?”
“I’m just so glad to see you.”
“You’re glad to see me? I didn’t think it would ever happen again. I thought you were . . . I dunno . . .”
“Nah,” she said.
“Yeah, I did.” His smile faded a little. “I thought that was it.”
She shrugged. “Surprise?”
When they finally broke their embrace, Clara noticed a news van pulling up and parking behind Sam’s car.
“Uh-oh,” he said, watching another arrive from the opposite direction, parking across the street. “Here come the vultures.”
“You wanna help a girl escape?”
Sam opened Clara’s door and helped her in, the whole time looking around, head on a swivel, likely looking out for more incoming platoons of paparazzi.
“We seriously just made it,” he said, sliding into his seat and starting the engine. “Any later and they would’ve started up with the interviews. They know what you look like.”
“How?”
“You made the news.”
Clara didn’t like knowing that. “How?”
He chuckled a little, shaking his head as he pulled the car out of the parking space. “It was how I found what hospital you were at. So I guess we owe them a little gratitude. Who would ever think the fifth estate would actually serve the people?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ah, never mind.”
She reached up and flipped his sun visor, getting a brief but frightening look at her face. “Holy Jesus.”
“What?” She turned to Sam and found him looking in his rearview. “What, are they following us now?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “Never mind.”
She had expected her appearance to be altered in some way from the incident, and from spending days in a hospital. That was a given. But the face staring back at her had the pale hollownes
s of someone who had survived something.
While Sam drove, she had the time to study his face more carefully, too. She watched him closely as he focused on merging onto the highway. He’d undergone some transformation, too. And like hers, it was not for the best. But she rather liked it that way, the two of them carrying the scars of survival, a little more depth to an already burgeoning array of stress lines. The most astonishing thing about Sam was his eyes, the dark circles around them. Even when the sun shone on his face, they still resembled black pits of worry.
“So, how have you been?” she asked. “You’ve been sleeping okay?”
“Why?”
“Because it looks like you’ve been on a three-day heroin binge.”
“Speak for yourself,” he said, laughing. “It looks like you’ve joined me.”
“I’ve got an excuse. What’s yours?”
Sam’s laughter quickly died off, and in the following silence she almost felt bad about it.
“Clara, I was right with you in the hospital. Even when I wasn’t.”
“I know.” She knew how much sleep he’d missed, how many more of those stress wrinkles she was responsible for. “Sam?”
“Clara?”
“I think you look hot.”
Sam laughed.
“Yeah.” She placed a hand on his thigh. “Remember that edgy, junkie look that was so popular with models in the nineties?”
“Yeah. Where did that go?”
“I don’t know. I think they all died.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I know. Aren’t we?” She moved her hand up higher, squeezing a mound of his quadricep muscle between her thumb and index finger.
He took a deep breath, and then made another lane change, to the off-ramp.
“Where are you going?” She laughed, a little nervously now. “Where are you taking me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Anywhere.”
A moment later they had pulled off the road and into a dirt parking lot behind a gas station.
“Sam, I think you’re taking that junkie comment too literally.”
One of his hands undid his seat belt while the other shifted the car into park. Clara wasn’t sure what was happening, but she liked the developments. She liked where he was heading, especially his leaning over to her, his sleep-deprived face suddenly looking bright and refreshed, and hungry.
“Sam?”
He stopped midway to her. “What?”
“I just got out of a hospital. I’m pretty gross.”
He shrugged.
“I might be contagious.”
“I might be, too. I was there in the courtyard.”
“But you weren’t fully exposed.”
He smiled. “Then fully expose me.”
Clara let her own seat belt go with a click, but before she could slip it off, he’d already shifted over and straddled the center console, already wrapping an arm around her and moving in—albeit very awkwardly—for a kiss.
She closed her eyes when they met, feeling his wet warmth at her mouth. The weight of his body, too, slightly off balance and still sitting and leaning into her awkwardly. But she liked it. She loved his efforts, his desperation. She’d loved everything he’d done in the past several days for her and Molly. And now this, and whatever else life had in store for them.
“What’s this?” Clara asked, watching her daughter in mild bewilderment. “Is this something new?”
Molly had been dancing a lot more than Clara had ever remembered, her little girl flying through the house as if in some invisible musical, up and down the stairs and back again with arm flails and head tosses, wrapping everything up in one big dramatic swan dive onto the La-Z-Boy recliner.
Clara shot a nervous glance to Bren. “Please tell me it’s just sugar and not permanent.”
Molly crawled off the recliner and was now on her hands and knees, crawling across the carpet, crawling over to Clara.
“I think she’s just happy you’re home,” Bren said.
“I think she’s absolutely insane.” Clara reached down to give Molly a hand off the floor. “Isn’t that right, Molly?”
Molly ignored the hand and just grappled her little fingers around Clara’s ankles, holding on tight, head down, turning herself into dead weight.
“She’s not letting you go,” Bren said, laughing.
“Good girl, Molly,” Sam said. “Don’t ever let her go.”
Clara shot Sam a dirty look before bending her knees and squatting, meeting her daughter on the ground, eye level, kiss level. “You’re never ever gonna let me go, huh?”
Molly’s face turned up from the carpet and a devilish smile emerged.
“Aww,” Clara said. “There’s my little psycho.”
Molly nodded emphatically.
“I missed you. You missed me?”
Still nodding.
“Give me a kiss?”
Molly smooched her face and then bolted back up to her feet so that the show could resume.
“I’m sure she’ll wear herself out,” Bren said as the show moved into another room. “It’s the only way I could get her to sleep last night, her knowing you were coming home and everything. She just about blew a gasket with all the singing and dancing.” Bren laughed. “I almost blew one, too, waiting for it to end.”
The show had continued to fade further away, getting a little muffled and distant.
“I have to soak it all up,” Clara said with a sigh. “Gotta enjoy it now while it lasts.”
“Nah,” Bren said. “Take your time.”
“I feel like I’ve aged twenty-five years from this shit. Molly too, probably. Pretty soon she’ll go the way of all teenaged daughters and not want to have anything to do with me.”
“Nah,” Bren said again. She was being polite.
“By the way, guys, thank you so much for not having some crazy surprise welcome-home party thing. I mean, it would have been a nice gesture and everything, but—”
“Oh, well, that reminds me,” Bren said.
“No . . .”
“Yep,” Sam said, nodding, grinning. “We’ve got a little something for you.”
“What is it?”
“Just a little something. Follow us to the dining room?”
“Come on guys . . .” Clara walked hesitantly behind Bren and Sam. At each step, she felt more dread for what was behind the dining room door. “I just want to take a shower and then go to bed forever. I’m serious.”
“Straight through here,” Sam said, holding open the door.
“No,” Clara said again, this time feeling her voice fading as her mental capacity went toward a slow acceptance of her fate with a surprise party. And then the quick preparation to be social and present, and to not look like a corpse.
“Surprise!”
18
Sam
Sam wasn’t looking at the surprise, but at Clara’s reaction to the little trick they’d just played. He stepped ahead of her so he could look back at her face as it brightened in open-mouthed amazement. She held her hand to her forehead and said nothing as Molly, dressed in the dazzling red and green sequins of her Christmas parade uniform, marched in place with high bouncing knees, one hand holding a baton, the other eternally jazz-handing.
“Oh, my God,” Clara squealed. “Look at her!”
It was a little something Sam and Bren had cooked up, the two of them, along with Molly, picking up her uniform the previous day from her school. It was the missing ingredient for Molly’s parade prep. She’d done weeks of after-school practice in boring, normal clothes, and, as she confessed, hadn’t felt very merry about it. But that costume, in all of its ridiculousness, was just the distraction she and Bren had needed. And now, this little private show for Mommy, which Sam had hoped to be another helpful distraction. Another way of saying, “life goes on.” Marching on.
The smiling Molly, now twirling the baton in her hand, seemed to exude another message. That not only did her Mommy�
��s life go on, but that they could have some crazy, stupid fun along the way.
“ . . .Go Molly. Go Molly. Go Molly . . .”
Molly tossed the tumbling baton high into the air as she spun around, the baton almost touching the ceiling before it tumbled down and into her hand at the great applause of the crowd.
When Sam looked back at the parade’s guest of honor, her face was wet. She was crying, smile-crying.
“Oh, my God,” she said again, rushing up to Molly when the show had ended. The two embraced tightly, Clara lifting up the little girl and leaning back with their hug so that her little toes only just touched the carpet. When Clara put her back down, she turned to the two architects of the surprise. “Ignore my tears. I’m just so happy it wasn’t a surprise party.” But her wiping at her eyes seemed to suggest another reason.
Sam felt better that at least one loose end had been taken care of. Clara was safe. A family reunited. He was on the road, after figuring it was the right time to leave and let Clara recover in peace at home. But he still had a few worries of his own. Sam hoped a check-in with Dave at Gulf A&M might make sleeping that night a little easier. So far, he’d only been able to pass out after the sedating effects of a beer and an allergy pill, in direct opposition to Jasper’s warning about mixing the two. It would be nice if he could figure out a natural sleeping pill, the result of some hard work that could finally lead to at least a sense of finality. When he solved the mystery currently plaguing him, Sam would get the best sleep he’d ever had.
At A&M, the campus protests had been waging on, their numbers and intensity ratcheted up from the mosque burning, and now the supposed terrorist attack. Sam listened to the chants and speeches as he walked through the campus. He wanted to give them a chance, try to be open to the message of the latest rally. Their prerogative now was to rally against the possibility of anti-Muslim backlash, taking a proactive stance. Essentially, protesting something that hadn’t even happened yet.
But then he thought about the mosque. He hoped so much for the sake of humanity that it wouldn’t be repeated now after the terrorist attack. Maybe proactive gestures were indeed necessary.
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 99