by Lisa Ladew
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Edge of the Heat 0.5
Vivian’s First Love
by Lisa Ladew
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or organizations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Copyright © 2015 Lisa Ladew All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1
Southern California
Two years ago
Vivian Dashell picked up another shirt off the pile, eyed it critically, then folded it neatly and tucked it into her suitcase. She didn’t want to over pack but she always liked to be prepared for any eventuality. She was supposed to be going to Westwood Harbor to find her birth family, and who knew how long that was going to take, how many weeks or even months she would be there for? She was just sorry she’d never done it before now, before she was forced to. Her hands slipped to her stomach and pressed lightly. She imagined she could feel the traitor tumor that was entwining in there, and would eventually cut off the blood supply to her organs if she didn’t treat it. That’s what the trip to Westwood Harbor was for, to find her family, dig into their medical backgrounds, and get back to her doctor so the medical community could come up with a treatment plan that would have the best chance of eliminating the tumor without destroying her ability to have children someday.
Vivian knew she could adopt. Her parents had adopted her and they loved her like she was their own. She would have no problem adopting if it came to that. But she did love babies and she wanted a household full of them someday, when the time was right, when she had found the perfect man. Vivian laughed to herself lightly. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in ages, she was technically sick and about to undergo cancer treatment, and here she was daydreaming about being pregnant. No harm in being optimistic, she thought. I could meet the perfect man on this trip. Someone kind and thoughtful, handsome and family-minded. She laughed at herself again. With my luck he’ll end up being related to me.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her friend Misty breezing into her bedroom and plopping two more suitcases on the bed. “Here they are!”
“Thanks, Misty,” Vivian said, measuring the suitcases in her mind. Would they be enough?
“Sure. I still can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow. I’m going to miss you.”
Vivian stopped measuring and opened her arms. Misty hugged her tight. “I’m going to miss you too.”
The hug was long and meaningful. Misty and Vivian had been friends for almost a decade now, since their third year in college. They’d had the same major, and both had been hired by the same company after graduation. Misty turned away finally, tears in her eyes. She walked to Vivian’s dresser and looked at the pictures on it. Vivian sighed and grabbed another shirt. “It won’t be forever. Maybe only a few weeks, or a month and I’ll be back.”
Misty turned and looked at her strangely. “You promise?”
Vivian opened her mouth to promise, then found she couldn’t do it. What if she found family in Westwood Harbor? What if she even found her twin sister? “Well…”
Misty turned back to the dresser, nodding slightly. She knew. Vivian watched her back sadly and couldn’t think of anything to say. Misty picked up a picture from the dresser. “Who’s this?” she asked, her voice quiet.
Vivian knew what picture it was from across the room. “That was a trip Dad and I took to Uzbekistan when I was seventeen - almost eighteen. I was thinking about becoming a diplomat and I begged daddy to take me with him on his foreign services trip. Plus it meant I got to miss school for two weeks.”
Misty turned to her again. “This is you?”
Vivian laughed at the incredulity in her friend’s voice. “Yeah, I hadn’t lost my baby fat yet.”
Misty pulled the picture close to her face and stared at it. “Wow! It doesn’t look like you at all!”
Vivian knew. She’d been a late bloomer. Her parents had insisted she was beautiful from the day they’d picked her up at the hospital in Westwood Harbor, but Vivian knew the boys hadn’t found her beautiful until after high school when she’d finally lost her painful shyness and the baby fat. Except for one boy, she thought with an uncharacteristic pang of wistfulness about one of her experiences on that trip.
Misty turned the picture over, and Vivian knew she’d felt the patch on the back. “What’s this?” she said, pulling it out of the clip that held it tight to the picture.
Vivian plucked it out of Misty’s fingers and rubbed it between her hands. Did she want to share the story of the patch? She hadn’t thought about what had happened that night in years. She couldn’t even remember what the boy (man) had looked like, really. Just that he had been strong and solid and saved her life and had been her first love, even though she’d only known him for a few short hours.
She looked at her friend solemnly, then handed the patch back. She’d never shared this story with anyone but her mother. And even her mother didn’t know all of it. But it felt right to share this final thing with her friend now, on the eve of their separation.
“It’s a long story. Awful in parts. Wonderful in others. You really want to hear it?”
Misty eyed her back, perhaps sensing the solemnity of the moment. “Yeah,” she said, running her fingers over the army-green patch with the raised black star and sword on it.
Vivian thought hard about where to start, and knew it really had to be when the planes flew into the buildings.
Chapter 2
“My dad and I flew out there on September 10th, 2001.”
Misty’s mouth dropped open. “But that was the day before -”
“The day before 9/11, yeah. I’ll never forget being stuck on the other side of the world during that horrible day. We were actually stuck too, since the planes were shut down for three days.”
“Why were you there?”
“My dad was sent there on a diplomatic mission. The president of Uzbekistan was trying to get U.S. support in his country, because the Taliban had already tried to assassinate him. My dad was supposed to try to work out what he wanted and what we could provide. Then, after 9/11, we were sitting in our hotel rooms, devastated, when we got word that he needed to stay for longer, because suddenly Uzbekistan was going to be instrumental in the war on terrorism, and the U.S. needed flyover rights, and maybe even a base there. I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to get home as soon as possible, but no one knew when the planes would start flying again.”
Vivian took a deep breath, remembering back to that deep feeling of sorrow and division she had felt, missing and mourning for her home so deeply.
“So I had to stay. Instantly, Daddy was thrust into meetings almost twenty-four hours a day. All I did was watch the news. I cried and cried and never slept or ate. Finally, daddy came to me and said I had to get out of the room. He said the planes were flying again and I was going to fly home without him the next day. I was terrified to fly by myself, but I wanted to be home so badly I knew I had to go. He said there was a memorial dinner that night at the embassy and he wanted me to attend. It was going to be black tie, but extremely high security. There had been rumblings in the country that the Taliban knew the country was in talk with the U.S., and the insurgents that were already in the country were planning something big against any Americans they could find, and th
e local government. I didn’t want to go but Daddy assured me we would be fine. He said an elite U.S. Army special forces unit was being sent in to guard us. He said I would be safer there than in the hotel room. So I dried my tears, brushed my hair, put on a dress, and went with him.”
Misty grimaced. “I’m trying to imagine having to go to an event two days after 9/11. I think I was still home glued to the TV and feeling like the world as we knew it was over.”
Vivian nodded fiercely. “Exactly! And it was my eighteenth birthday. I sat in my chair and I don’t think I heard a word of what was going on. I didn’t eat anything. I just zoned out. I just wanted to be home. The dinner was long and stuffy and awful.”
Vivian leaned her head back and tried to remember exactly when she had known something was wrong. She recalled the sights and sounds and smells of the large room they were in, and remembered the man next to her had said … had said what? Vivian concentrated as hard as she could and found her world infiltrated by the memory, as if she were once again just turning eighteen and missing her torn home.
Chapter 3
“Bu otishmalar bo’ldi?” the tall, Persian-looking man in the tuxedo said as he half-stood, his head whipping around towards the double exit doors that led into the hallway of the embassy. Vivian looked that way and ran through her limited Uzbek to try to figure out what he had said. Gunfire, she thought. Or maybe shooter. She had heard the popping noise too, but it sounded flat, too unimportant to be gunfire. Everyone in the room was keyed up though, on edge, and it wasn’t just because of the heat of the room. The air conditioner was working overtime but not cooling anything. Vivian quickly marked the exits, not wanting to be caught if there was some sort of panicked stampeded. But her dad, she couldn’t run out without him either. She looked towards the podium where he was supposed to be the next speaker. She didn’t see him anywhere.
Vivian looked towards the exits once more. The room was large, with at least thirty tables and close to a hundred chairs placed inside. The ceiling was domed and there were balconies all around the room in a circle. There were exits up there, she was sure, but she didn’t know how to get to the balconies. All she saw were two sets of double doors behind her. She looked towards the podium again. There had to be an exit that way, and that’s the way she would go if people started running. She had to find her father.
A man stepped out onto the balcony directly above her and the entire room gasped in unison. A woman screamed in the corner. Vivian’s heart went wild and she almost bolted from her chair. The man looked rather short and unassuming, with dark hair and a thick, black beard. He was wearing a gray tunic and he held his hands below the level of the balcony, so no one could see them. Vivian looked about the room for security and saw several military guards in regular army fatigues materialize suddenly, all of them carrying massive, scary-looking guns. The man at the balcony laughed derisively and spoke in a commanding voice in a language Vivian didn’t recognize. Then she recognized the word Americans. The soldier closest to her shouldered his gun and aimed it at the man and that’s when the room erupted. Screams sounded from all corners of the room instantaneously and everyone at her table got up and ran for the exit at the same time. Vivian jumped out of her chair, preparing to run, but she saw three people run into each other and fall to the ground in a heap, a few feet from her, then she saw more people run right over the top of them.
Sounds of gunfire ripped through the room and the screaming got louder. Vivian dropped to her knees and crawled under her table. This was bad. This was very, very bad, and she had no idea where her father was.
The terror in the room reached new heights as several more automatic weapons began firing. People yelled in languages Vivian had never heard before. People screamed and sobbed and yelled to be let out. Vivian lifted up the tablecloth and peeked towards the exits. Piles of dinner-goers all in their best dresses and tuxedos lined up at the doors, pushing and screaming. The doors must have been locked from the outside. Vivian watched, wide-eyed and terrified as a man ran past her table, then fell over and clutched at his leg. Was he shot? He was. She could see blood flowing from his calf. As she watched, another bolus of blood flew from his other leg. He writhed in pain and tried to crawl under the table next to her. Vivian wanted to go to him, but she knew she’d be the next one to be shot if she did.
Vivian tried to see where the soldiers were, but all she could see was the people trying to get out the door. She crawled to the other side of the table and carefully lifted the tablecloth a couple of inches. She dropped to the ground and put her eye to the hole, so she could look up at the balcony without drawing attention to herself. Now there were five men in tunics up there. They all had guns. They weren’t indiscriminately mowing down the crowd with them, thank goodness. Instead, they seemed to be watching the corners of the room and shooting only when there was something to shoot at. The soldiers probably. As she watched, a bloom of red exploded on the shoulder of one of them. He yelled and staggered backwards, clutching his shoulder. Vivian’s face contorted in fear and distress. She was in the middle of a real live firefight and at any moment the table she was under could be peppered with bullets.
Vivian heard a great cracking sound and crawled back to the other side of the circular table, trying not to catch her knees on her long black dress, which was probably now filthy - not that it mattered. One of the doors had finally been busted open and people were streaming out. At least the ones that weren’t on the floor trampled or shot. Vivian looked longingly at the people escaping, and wondered if she would be allowed to run for it, or if someone would shoot her in the back if she tried. She debated kicking off her heels - there was no way to run in heels. But what if there was broken glass somewhere? The sound of gunfire in the room doubled, then trebled and Vivian ducked her head, then pulled herself into a ball, only her eyes peeking out. She couldn’t run now.
Vivian gasped and pulled back as a soldier appeared out of nowhere in front of her. At least she thought he was a soldier. He was wearing a dark uniform, darker than what the other soldiers were wearing, plus black Army boots, and his face and hands were completely camouflaged with green and black face paint. His uniform was ripped on one arm and had a splash of mud on the thigh, nothing like the neatly-pressed uniforms of the soldiers she’d seen earlier. His dark eyes flashed with purpose, but his hair was longer than she thought soldiers wore it. Much longer. It hung almost to his shoulders. He also wore a neatly-trimmed beard. Even it was smeared with camouflage paint though. She searched his uniform, looking for some insignia that would tell her he was American, but she found nothing except an enigmatic patch. No name tag, no rank, and the dark star being pierced by a sword on his right arm didn’t tell her anything. He had a gun holstered on one thigh and a large, wicked-looking knife holstered on the other. He looked young. So very heart-stoppingly young and strong. She doubted he was more than a couple of years older than she was. He crawled past her, seeing her, motioning to her to stay put, but not stopping. His target was the man on the ground who had been shot in the leg and was trying to hide under the next table.
The soldier said something in the man’s ear and the man nodded, his face pinched and sweating. He tried to crawl away with the soldier but collapsed in pain. The soldier grabbed him by the back of his suit jacket and dragged him across the tiled floor. Vivian looked after them, her heart in her throat, wanting to follow them. She saw holes being torn in the tablecloths all around them and knew they were being shot at. The sight filled her with terror and froze her to the floor.
She watched as the soldier pulled the man out of her sight, then she dropped the tablecloth and curled up into a ball again. Why was this happening? How did these gunmen get in here? And how was she going to get away? Vivian felt panic beating firmly at her throat and chest and took a deep breath. The panic was telling her to just run for it, just try to make it to the door. Surely they wouldn’t shoot her. Surely it was her best chance. But another part of her said to just wait it out
where she was. She was safest under there.
As the two parts of her mind raged, Vivian heard a huge slamming noise towards the balcony. Men yelled but the gunfire never slowed. She crawled that way and peeked out. One of the men from the balcony had pitched over the side and landed on a table, smashing it, his sightless eyes now staring at the ceiling forever. She tore her gaze away from the dead man and peered up at the balcony. Only two men were left up there. As she watched, blood sprayed from one of them and he fell backwards. Vivian squeezed her eyes shut, then forced herself to open them again. She looked up and saw the last man had dropped below the protection of the wooden railing. Bullets slammed into it where he’d just been, opening holes in the plaster. Vivian wondered if they were going through and reaching their target, but then she saw two hands shoot up. Now the man was spraying bullets wildly into the room. One of his hands turned red and the gun shot across the room. Someone had been able to shoot the gun right out of his hands! Vivian crawled towards the other end of the table and peeked out again. What she saw filled her with hope that she might actually survive. Another soldier, dressed just like the one who had pulled the man across the floor, was on the balcony on this side of the room, rifle in hand, watching the far balcony carefully.
The sounds of gunfire in the room stopped all at once and Vivian heard her ears ringing. Fear for her father and herself suddenly swelled inside her and she scrambled out from under the tablecloth. To her left, she caught movement, and whipped her head that way. Her soldier, the one who had motioned to her, was fifteen feet away, on his hands and knees, his eyes wide, his hands telling her to go back, go back. Vivian crawled slowly backwards, her heart pounding madly in her throat. The gunshots started again and Vivian jerked backwards under the table cloth, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes. She peeked out and saw booted feet swarm the room. But they weren’t Army issue boots, just regular hiking boots. Vivian flinched and pulled back farther under the table.