by Fiona Quinn
“Your wombats?”
“Some are wombats. Not everyone can be a wombat.”
“Right, some have to be the koalas.” T-Rex stood, placing the pad and pen on the table by the senator’s head. “Okay. What have you got there?”
“I wanted to watch this again, this time looking for a clue about her present condition.”
“Catatonic?”
“I’m not going there. Not.” She stopped and sucked in a lungful of air.
“What were you thinking just then?”
Remi caught T-Rex’s gaze and whispered, “What if she dies? And we’re in here in the heat with her body for days.”
“Yeah, let’s not go there.” T-Rex rounded the bed and sat down on the ground with her. “Will you show me your video?”
Remi turned and cuddled into T-Rex’s arms, allowing them to watch the screen at the same time. Remi oriented him, “I’m at the bar. Ty had taken Rory up to sniff the senator’s room. Havoc is over there in the corner. I’m not sure where you were at this point.”
The tape played of the senator slurring over her scotch. Though Winner’s advanced prep told T-Rex that the senator had a high alcohol tolerance, and Blankenship’s bar tab that night only showed three drinks.
Blankenship flourished the glass toward Remi. “I am the only woman on my committee. You know why?”
“There aren’t many women in the Senate, and they’re spread thin?”
“There aren’t many of us broads around. And you know what? That’s a darned shame. I mean, look at the men I serve with. Look at Senator Chuck Billings, falling in love with a whistleblower, having an affair. Then that self-centered son of a gun dragged his poor wife out to stand beside him while he gave a press conference. ‘See? If my wife can stand with me after I screwed her over—'” She swirled her glass through the air. “‘Then you too can get screwed over by me and appreciate my being honest about it.’” Blankenship sneered. “Did you see his wife’s face when he was extolling the virtues of his dead mistress? Dead. Probably his fault, though. I can’t say that for sure. Something snaky about that whole story. Got himself re-elected, though. I’ve got a running theory on why that happened.”
The camera jostled.
“Can you share that theory?” Remi asked.
“I’m trying to picture…picture myself in that guy’s shoes. Senator Billings. They think, ‘Man, I want to have an affair with a woman half my age with huge boobas like that woman had.’” Senator Blankenship shook her head with a tsk tsk tsk. “How she walked upright, I have no idea. If I had boobs like that—” The senator put her hands under her C cup breasts, lifted, and juggled them for a moment.
Remi paused the video. “She’s not drunk unless she pre-drank before I saw her. That’s her first glass that I saw. Just seconds prior to this, she seemed—not fine, but better than this. I think she forgot she was talking in front of her aid and a reporter. Diamond was trying to warn her off and wasn’t successful.” She tapped the video back on.
“Yeah, if I had boobs like that, I’d need a wheelbarrow.” She looped her finger through the air like she was prepping a lasso for a throw. “But men think, ‘I’d like to have an affair and have my wife suffer in silence.’ Well…that’s probably unfair. They probably don’t want their wives to actually suffer. Just be silent. And accepting. Let the man dip his dick in any slick spot he’d like to stick it, and then the wife towels it off and pats him on the head.”
The three fell silent as the bartender swiped a rag over the bar then stepped back out of the frame.
Remi shifted on her thighs back and forth. “The bent of the conversation was uncomfortable,” Remi told T-Rex. “Not so much the substance, the substance had…substance. For someone who was a political reporter, studying the women in Congress’s views on their male counterparts’ unethical behaviors would be interesting. Liu would know whom to hand that story to. But the delivery was off. Strange. I didn’t put it together with a medical crisis. I’m not sure, other than showing you this video, how I could have helped her. I mean…what could you have done?”
“Not much,” T-Rex whispered as Blankenship spoke on the video again.
“Then there’s the other one. Senator St. Clair. Ethical by comparison. But still a hot mess. They blew up the prep school where his grandkids went.”
“Wait. What?” Diamond said, leaning forward.
“The terrorists blew up that grade school in Maryland,” Senator Blankenship clarified.
“St. Basil’s Preparatory School in Bethesda?” Remi asked. T-Rex could hear excitement inch into her voice. Like she’d hooked a fish and now needed to reel it in.
“That’s the one.”
“I know there was a terror attack there. I didn’t know it was tied to the senator. Could you tell me about that?” Remi asked. Open-ended like the CIA had taught Echo Force to use in interrogations.
“It’s not classified. But it would be a strain to find the information. Nobody knows to go looking for it because of St. Clair’s grandkids. It’s called a what…a lion’s kidnapping?”
“Tiger kidnapping?” The angle of the phone changed. Remi had pitched forward with concentration.
“That’s the one.”
“I knew that the children went missing—there was the AMBER Alert,” Diamond said. “But the story I read was that the children had been ill, and because there was a miscommunication, they thought the kids were missing, but it wasn’t so. They were found fine. Senator Blankenship, those children weren’t kidnapped. Perhaps you’re conflating—"
“Nope. That’s not the story. The kids were kidnapped to force St. Clair to vote a certain way on a bill to get it out of Senate Arm’s Committee—which it failed to do because it was crap legislation. They kidnapped the schoolteacher too. Suzy-Q. No. Suzy…”
“The one that was on vacation to get away from the news feeds after she saved her students?” Diamond asked. “Suz Molloy. She was on vacation, Senator.”
Blankenship shook her head. “They went to her house and kidnapped Molloy to go take care of the kids. Some ploy to draw everyone in the wrong direction. Six-year-old twins. They’re down there in some jungle near Brazil. The teacher, Suz Molloy… Blankenship stared unblinking for an overly long time. Like she was stuck and needed to reboot. Remi must have been thinking the same thing at the time. She reached out and touched the senator’s arm.
“South America,” the senator continued on as if nothing bizarre had just happened. “Lucky for all of them, the teacher was dating an ex-SEAL, now working for a group called Iniquus. Heard of them?”
“Yes,” Remi whispered.
“He went looking for her. Found them. Saved them. Brought the kids back. Having convinced the kids that they had been on a great adventure with ‘Captain Jack.’” She waggled jazz hands in the air. “The kids are hunky-dory. Even with the kids’ lives on the line, their grandpa voted against what the terrorists told him to vote ‘yes’ for. Cajones. Maybe. Not sure what to make of that.” Blankenship swallowed down her drink. “But before that SEAL guy found them and saved the three, I asked the Secret Service about the likelihood that they’d come home again. They said the kids were dead one way or the other. Lion kidnappings never end well. You do what you’re told, and they dispose of their victims. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. Personally, I might consider a bullet in my brain before I had to make a choice about my grandbabies that way.” She held her hand like a gun and said, “Pckew,” when she put it under her chin.
“You have grandkids?” Remi asked, confused.
“Dogs. I’ve got a passel of dogs, and horses, and cows. The cows, they’re good eats.” She froze again.
“That’s about it.” Remi turned off the phone. “She sat there in silence, and I couldn’t get her talking again.”
“That could be in a script for some thriller.”
“I don’t write for entertainment value.”
“I know that.” His words were meant to be a balm.
He hoped Remi knew he was listening deeply.
“You heard what she was saying about St. Clair? It all can just seem dirty and desperate. Corrupt. Insane. Angry. Smelling of feces, blowflies, and death.”
“And yet you’re not deterred.”
“Hope floats.” She shrugged. “I keep hoping. I don’t have a choice about doing my job—any more than you do.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Remi
Sunday, Beirut, Lebanon
T-Rex had told her they should sleep as much as possible. Conservation of bodily resources blah, blah, blah.
Remi thought about the stories she’d read of submariners who were trapped and waiting for rescue, how they’d lay very still and breathe as slowly as possible, trying to conserve what air was available. People pant when they’re terrified, and it sucks up the air quickly.
That was not her problem. Air was available. It made her nervous for T-Rex to say that they were reserving liquids and calories. How long did he think rescue might take? Right or wrong, they were with a United States senator. Surely, there would be extra effort paid to get her out fast.
Remi had napped off and on throughout the day.
She was awake in the dim yellow glow of her chem-light. She was surprised the light was still useful almost thirteen hours after she snapped it on.
She and T-Rex were lying on their sides, staring at each other.
He swiped his fingers through her hair. “What are you thinking about?”
“Adrenaline,” she whispered. “I’m so used to it flowing through my veins that when I try to stop. Just stop. Just…” She shook her head. “I was thinking about what I’d like to do when I’m out of here. Where I might like to go. I was considering a vacation. Normal feels odd. Uncomfortable. Sitting on a beach and drinking a mai tai—what a strange thing to do. Unless a great white shark is going to rear up on his tail and saunter out of the waves, then that cocktail and the sand between my toes would be fine. My system, my biology, has learned to run on a different fuel.”
“Adrenaline.”
T-Rex had said they should keep their talking to a minimum to preserve the water in their systems. Remi guessed that the body humidified the vocal cords to speak or some such thing. Talking calmed her. So she’d have to risk dry-mouth. “I don’t feel adrenaline anymore. What I feel is when it’s not there.”
“You need to detox.”
“Like with a kale shake?”
“If you’d said spinach, I’d say that would counter the detoxification process.”
“What? This sounds vaguely like our wombat conversation.”
He lifted his brows.
They paused for a long moment. “I get it,” Remi finally said. “It’s a Popeye reference. If I was downing the spinach, it was so I could pop a muscle and go fight. Kale it is.”
Another long pause.
“Remi, I know these circumstances would be hard for anyone, but you have it worse. You told me this is one of your issues.”
“One of them.”
“Stop. I guess I’d feel like I could help better if I knew where your claustrophobia came from and what to avoid.”
“Oh, easy. Avoid getting trapped.” She barked out a cough. The dust in the room was pervasive. “I’m all right telling you. I’ve told a few people, and it didn’t make anything worse.” She let her gaze take in what she could of the room. “Of course, I was never in a situation like this.”
She picked up the glow stick and gave it a waggle. In her imagination, that excited the chemical reaction, and it glowed a little brighter. “I don’t tell stories for free.”
“Okay, what’s the price?”
“My painful memory for one of yours. Only, you go first.”
“All right. Here we go. When my wife was killed, I was off-grid. We’d dropped into the area via parachutes, and we were supposed to hump ourselves back out. Three weeks. My commander decided not to tell me about her death because they couldn’t get us out, and I needed to lead my men. When I got back to base, they called me in and told me they’d arranged for me to fly home and deal with the circumstances. My wife had been in a refrigerator drawer all that time.” He was staring at his hands. “Jess never wanted to be a body. She’d made me promise her that the second she was declared deceased, I’d head her straight over for cremation. There was something about her being a corpse that wigged her out. So I swore to her, I’d protect her. And yet, it was the worst thing that could happen. She was autopsied and then the drawer.”
“Does it haunt you?”
“Does she haunt me?” T-Rex asked back.
Remi sat still—the void was where people revealed themselves.
“We used to like to go out to the fields and park, lay in the back of my truck, look up at the stars and just hold hands and feel peace. We had some beautiful nights exploring each other out there. I see her in the stars. Feel her out there watching me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. A deal is a deal.”
“Yup, you told me yours. Here’s mine: A Furniture Story. When I was little, we had gone up north to upstate New York to visit my grandmother. One of grandma’s friends had passed away, and the family wanted to get rid of the dining room set. My parents bought it and decided that they wouldn’t shell out any more money to rent some kind of trailer or something to bring that dining set home. Instead, they were just going to put it in the back of my dad's van. This wasn’t a family minivan. To understand this story, you have to picture a commercial van with no windows in the back. My dad had figured out a way to make it dual purpose. He needed it for work to carry paint and ladders, wood, and construction materials. But it was also a family vehicle.”
T-Rex pinched at his nose, focusing on her with a wrinkled brow.
“He went to the junkyard and got an old bench seat from a car that had wrecked. He made a wooden base for it, and he stuck it in the van. My older sister had a lot of mental health issues. She was a violent kid on lots of medications. I tried to just keep out of her way. She was the one who got that bench seat to herself.”
“The bench seat on the wooden base. How did your dad attach it into the van to make it safe?”
“He didn’t,” Remi said.
“What?”
“He didn’t. It was just set inside the van. And strangely, they insisted that she buckle herself to it. If there were to be an accident, that bench with my sister would fly around the interior of the van. I was always very nervous about that.”
“Where did you sit?”
“Normally? Dad had these metal brackets on either side of the van. A piece of plywood fit between them. He put a foam pad on top of that and a carpet to make a van-wide sized bed, reaching from the back doors to just behind the bench seat. My brother and I were to lie on that bed.”
“With no restraints.”
“None. And it was gross. My dad had a bunch of affairs. Apparently, they’d just screw around in the van. I found spermicidal cream canisters back there all the time. Just gross to think of my dad back there humping.”
“I’d imagine. How old are you in this story?”
“Somewhere around eight or nine. So my cheapskate father put the board for the bed down on the floor of the van. Then he figured out how to get all of the various dining set pieces in there. When we were loading up, there were still pieces out on the driveway. Dad said, ‘that’s your space in there.’ He pointed at a little cave on the left. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I’m not getting in there.’ That didn’t go over well with my dad.” Remi thought back to the physical altercation and how he’d picke
d her up and shoved her into the space while she screamed for help. People had shown up to stare, but no one did anything.
“In order to fit into the space, I had to curl up in the fetal position. Then, my dad packed in the rest of the furniture. My brother got in. And dad closed the back doors.”
“How long was the ride?”
“Nine hours.”
“What?”
“Nine hours. My legs had gone numb. I was hot and sweating. There was so little air. I kept thinking that no one would think to look for me in the middle of the furniture puzzle if there were an accident. I’d be towed off and put in one of those metal crushers.” Remi gave a whole-body convulsion.
T-Rex grabbed her and pulled her into his arms.
“My brother’s spot was a lot more open and comfortable. He thought it was funny that I was crying. He kept poking his finger into the only gap—the one I thought of as my breathing hole. I asked him to stop. Begged him to. He kept poking. Poking. Poking. Finally, I balled up my fist and punched my hand through the hole. I hit him square in the nose, and blood shot out everywhere.”
T-Rex was rocking her like a baby as she whispered her story.
“My dad yanked the van over to the side of the road. The furniture shifted, and my space was even smaller. He came around back and opened the doors, pulled out the chairs, grabbed my ankle, and dragged me out too. I was so relieved to be out of there, though I couldn’t stand because I had no circulation in my legs. Dad was beating me on the side of the road. A punishment for punching my brother. I thought someone’s going to pull over and rescue me. They’re going to put me in their car and drive me off, and my dad will never hit me again.” She took in a breath. “But naw. No one stopped, or honked, or anything. He shoved me back into the space, loaded up the furniture, and we started home. I plotted. When we traveled, we were allowed to go to the bathroom while my dad filled the tank with gas. I thought, ‘I’ll go to the bathroom and ask someone for help.’ But when we stopped, my dad didn’t let me out.”