The_Secret Soldier

by Jennifer Morey

  All she wanted to do was live a simple life here in Roaring Creek. Put Afghanistan behind her, forget her father’s involvement in her rescue and his apparent change of heart. Cullen, too, though there hadn’t been any sign of his leaving her mind. At least she had the bookstore to occupy her.

  As soon as she’d arrived back in town, she’d seen this old two-story building for sale and known exactly what she wanted to do. Books, and not the scientific kind, were a piece of her she’d abandoned on her way to proving her worthiness through achievements. She didn’t need to keep grabbing bulls by the horns. She could open a bookstore downstairs and live a simple life above it in this two-bedroom apartment. Just the thought alone gave her a boost of elation.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this? It’s only been a month.”

  Sabine turned to see her mother put a stack of plates into the kitchen cupboard, her shoulder-length red hair up in a clip.

  “I can’t live with you the rest of my life, Mom.”

  Mae reached for a stack of bowls and put them in the cupboard, with her green eyes glancing Sabine’s way. “I wouldn’t mind if you did. But maybe you should have at least stayed a while longer. You know, until you were sure.”

  “I’m as sure as I’m going to get.” Sabine put her fondue set in the cupboard above the refrigerator and stepped down from the stool. She moved to a box on the table. “You can’t protect me from everything.” Opening the box, she reached inside for a glass and began to unwrap it from the packing paper.

  “Charlotte and Camille are close by anyway,” her mother rationalized. Charlotte and Camille were twins who ran the local bakery. “If you need them, their house is just down the street.”

  “So are Elwin and Cloe and Buddy. I’ll be all right, Mom. Like you said, there are people close by. I live in town.”

  “I don’t like thinking of you all alone when you can’t sleep.”

  Reminded of the dream she’d had the night before, Sabine stared at the wineglass she was about to put away. It was the same dream she’d had in Kárpathos. Details seeped into her conscience even as she tried to ward them off. The knife. Samuel. Isma’il. The face of the beast.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Mae asked.

  Sabine shook her head. “It’s just a bad dream.”

  “Maybe if you tell me about it, they won’t wake you anymore.”

  Sabine held the wineglass tighter as the same sick feeling churned in her. In the dream, the beast turned to face her. It always started with the back of his head. There was something familiar about it. She went still.

  “Sabine?” She barely heard her mother.

  That was it! The beast turning…its face morphed into a man’s. Someone recognizable. Sabine’s heart raced.

  Isma’il.

  She saw him clearly for the first time. How his cold, beady eyes blazed a hateful gaze into hers. How his head turned to face Samuel, presenting the back of his head to her while he resumed the torture that had eventually killed her field partner. She couldn’t go there. Couldn’t remember that. It was too horrible. But another time came to her, when Isma’il walked away after one of his brutal beatings. The back of his head again.

  The back of his head.

  A chill spread through her skin. She’d seen it before. Her heart raced faster. No. No. It couldn’t be.

  “Sabine? Are you all right?” Her mother started to approach.

  Too overwhelmed with the horror of her realization, Sabine didn’t answer. She’d seen the back of Isma’il’s head before her abduction. Aden had met him in the village where she and Samuel were working. She remembered telling Samuel about it. And he’d thought it was odd. Had he known something?

  Aden had met with Isma’il.

  The glass she still held slipped from her hand and shattered on the cream-colored tile floor.

  Her mother gasped, watching Sabine with confused and deeply concerned eyes.

  Sabine put her hand on the kitchen countertop to support herself. She was dizzy with the realization that Aden had met with the man who’d killed Samuel.

  Or had he?

  Was she certain Isma’il was the man Aden had met? Or were her dreams out of proportion with reality?

  You couldn’t tell authorities anything that might help? The question Aden had asked when she’d first arrived home in Denver echoed in her mind. Was he relieved she hadn’t known why she’d been kidnapped?

  “Sabine, tell me what’s wrong.” Her mother’s voice penetrated her shock.

  Sabine lifted her hand to her forehead, hearing her own breathing and feeling her rapid pulse going helter-skelter. She shook her head. “I-I’m all right.” She knelt to clean up the broken glass.

  Her mother knelt with her, doing a poor job of covering her sob. But Sabine couldn’t summon the wherewithal to reassure her any further. She was too overwrought.

  What if her dream was not so far from the truth? What if Aden had known Isma’il? Someone had gone to great lengths to try to stop her rescue. Someone other than Isma’il and his men. Had Aden wanted her and Samuel to die?

  Prickles of dismay made Sabine even more sick to her stomach. Bile rose in her throat, and in the next instant she knew she was going to throw up. Rushing to the bathroom, she fell light-headed to her knees before the toilet. If Aden had known the man who’d slaughtered Samuel, had he known the reason for their abduction? Could he have prevented it?

  Sabine had dry heaves above the toilet. Samuel. Oh, God.

  Their kidnapping couldn’t have had anything to do with Aden’s dealings with Isma’il. It was too horrible to imagine. Yet, the helicopter that had come after them, and the attack in Egypt, made it plausible. Aden wouldn’t want anyone to know his connection to Isma’il.

  With a pale, trembling hand over her mouth, Sabine slumped onto her rear and leaned against the wall. She still felt so ill that it made her weak. She closed her eyes and struggled to make sense of it.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  Sabine opened her eyes like a spring had triggered them and froze, staring up at her mother. Mae stood in the doorway of the bathroom, anxiousness tight in her brow. The consequences had mattered very little after the first time she’d kissed Cullen. She’d reached out to him after her dream, but something stronger had led to the intimacy they’d shared.

  “No,” she answered her mother stiffly. “It isn’t that.” It couldn’t be, thank God. Having a baby would be the cruelest irony, following in her mother’s footsteps and raising a child on her own. At least she didn’t have to worry about that. At least that much about her and Cullen was different than her mother’s relationship with Noah.

  “Then what just happened here?”

  Sabine didn’t want to worry her mother if her suspicions were wrong. So she had a terrible dream…That wasn’t unusual given what she’d survived. She had to be sure before she started pointing her finger at Aden.

  “I was just thinking about Samuel,” she said, her mind still reeling.

  How could she confirm it was Isma’il whom Aden had met in the village? She’d never mentioned to the authorities that she’d seen Aden with a local villager. Nothing in the press revealed she knew anything about the reason for her abduction. She shouldn’t pose a threat to anyone. But what if Samuel had known something? It would have been so like him to protect her by not telling her anything. And Aden might have assumed she knew just as much as Samuel.

  Sabine drove into Denver, worrying if she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t comfortable going straight to Aden. What if her dream had nothing to do with reality? It could be a byproduct of her trauma. Maybe Samuel’s wife could tell her something. Maybe he’d said something to her about Aden. Anything that might give Sabine a clue, confirm or dispel what the dream suggested.

  She had to stop for directions at a gas station, but finally she made her way to Lisandra’s house on Cathay Street, a middleclass subdivision of Aurora, Colorado. The brick-and-beige-colored tri-level had mature landsc
aping and a big lot. Sabine parked in the driveway, glancing around her as she walked to the front door. Ringing the doorbell, she waited. Lisandra might not even be home. Sabine hadn’t called first.

  But the door swung open and Lisandra stood still, staring at Sabine, obviously recognizing her from media pictures. Her thick, dark hair was up in a messy clip, and her dark eyes looked weary and lost.

  “I’m sorry to stop by without calling you,” Sabine said.

  Lisandra opened the door wider. “Come in.”

  Sabine stepped inside, seeing a kitchen with hickory floors to her left, and a railing overlooking a spacious living room to her right.

  “I’m sorry about Samuel,” Sabine said, facing Lisandra. “He talked about you all the time.”

  Lisandra lowered her head. Her mouth pressed tight, as though struggling with emotion. After a moment she lifted her head again. “You didn’t have to come here and tell me that.”

  “Actually, there’s another reason I’m here.” She hesitated, uncertain about how much to tell her. Not much, that’s for sure. She didn’t want to put the woman in any danger. “Samuel said something just before we were kidnapped. I wondered if…I wondered…well, it may be nothing but I need to be sure.” She faltered for words.

  “What is it? What did he say? Please, tell me.”

  “He seemed to think Aden’s visits to the valley were odd. Did he ever say anything to you?”

  “What would Aden’s visits to the site have to do with your kidnapping?”

  “Maybe nothing. Samuel just thought it was odd, and I wondered if he had said anything to you. Maybe in one of his letters? Even if you didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  Disappointment dulled Lisandra’s eyes. “No. He never mentioned anything about Aden, on the phone or in any of his letters. Why? Do you think Aden knows something?”

  Sabine sighed with her own disappointment. “I don’t know. I may be reaching.”

  “No,” Lisandra quickly disagreed, touching Sabine’s forearm as though in emphasis. “If there’s anything that will help bring Samuel’s killers to justice, I’m glad to know you’ll try.”

  Sabine nodded and didn’t know what else to say.

  “Envirotech did send a package to me,” Lisandra said, dropping her hand.

  Sabine straightened as her alertness sharpened.

  “It came last week. It’s his belongings from…over there.” Her eyes took on a drawn look and her lower lip trembled. “I haven’t been able to open it yet, but maybe you’ll find something that will help you.”

  “Does Aden know it was sent?”

  “I don’t know. His name wasn’t on the return address. It was from one of the other contractors.”

  Would Aden have checked the contents first? Maybe he never had a chance. Maybe he hadn’t known the contractor had mailed it. Could she be so lucky…?

  Lisandra led her past a wall and up some stairs on the other side. At the first room, she stepped aside. “There’s a box in the closet.”

  Sabine sensed the woman’s tension. Without commenting or showing any notice, she went to the closet and started to root through the contents of the box.

  Other than clothes and other personal items, she found his backpack. She lifted that out and unzipped the opening. Reaching inside, she pulled out an empty water bottle, a change of clothes, an old granola bar and finally an orange field book. Samuel’s field book. He’d had it with him the day they were abducted. The contractor Lisandra mentioned must have been the one to find it and put it with Samuel’s things.

  She opened the front cover. Three pictures fell to the floor. She knelt and picked them up, staring with foreboding at the first. Two men she didn’t recognize stood inside a narrow, badly disintegrating building with hats hanging along one side. It looked like a hat shop in a filthy bazaar somewhere. She didn’t know where, only that it was somewhere in the Middle East. The second picture showed the men shaking hands. The third showed them walking toward the back of the hat shop.

  Tucking the pictures back in the field book, she leafed through the pages to make sure Samuel hadn’t written anything other than field notes. He hadn’t.

  She had no way of identifying the men in the photos, and the only person she knew who could she didn’t want to see.

  Sabine left Lisandra’s with Samuel’s field book, managing to avoid telling her about the photos. Outside, she noticed someone open the driver’s door of a white minivan. A spark of apprehension sent her pulse flying. But then the man lifted a camera and started shooting pictures. In an instant, she knew that stopping for directions at the gas station had cost her this. Now Aden would know she’d come to see Lisandra. Would he wonder why?

  She tried to hide the field book but feared it was already too late.

  “Excuse me, Ms. O’Clery!” the reporter shouted, hurrying toward her. “Whose house is this?”

  Sabine reached her Jeep and climbed in.

  “Did you meet your rescuer here?”

  She turned a glare on the reporter and shut the Jeep door.

  Revving the engine, she squealed the tires racing away. The reporter didn’t try to follow. A few minutes later, she drove onto Wilcox Street in Castle Rock, just off I-25, and found the brick building her father had rented. Parking, she noticed a dark green Civic in front of the building, one she’d seen parked outside her bookstore more than once, or one like it. No, it was the same one. It had a dented front left bumper and fender and a cracked windshield. She hesitated before walking toward the darkly tinted glass windows and doors of Noah’s new office.

  Noah opened the door before she got there, his face tense with lines of frustration. “Where have you been?” he demanded.

  She entered the building, not liking the fatherly concern she heard in his voice. The sound of remodeling under way echoed, banged and buzzed. A man with pitted skin and dark eyes leaned idly against a wall ahead of her. She tried to remember if she’d ever seen him before but couldn’t.

  She turned to her father. “Who is that?”

  “He’s supposed to keep an eye on you.”

  Sabine couldn’t believe it. “You have someone watching me?” A mercenary was watching her.

  “You weren’t supposed to leave Roaring Creek. You said you wouldn’t. He lost you on the way here. You don’t know how worried I’ve been.” Noah turned an accusatory glance on the man.

  The man raised his hands in protest. “It’s a long drive from Roaring Creek to Denver.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sabine rounded on Noah.

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “My own…” She narrowed her eyes as she began to piece things together. “Why do you have someone watching me? Do you know something?”

  “No, I—”

  “You know something and didn’t tell me.” Aggravated, she growled low in her throat. “Oh, that is so like you.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Then why are you having me followed?”

  “Where did you go?” her father demanded again, ignoring her temper.

  “Tell me why you feel I need protection first.”

  Noah signed in resignation. “You’re as stubborn as your mother.” He paused before he relented. “I still don’t know who tried to stop your rescue.”

  “But no one’s come after me here in the States. Why do you think anyone would?”

  “The media have done us a favor in that regard. It’s obvious you don’t know why you were kidnapped.”

  “Then I don’t need a bodyguard.”

  “I disagree. Until I know who’s behind your kidnapping, that’s how it’s going to be, Sabine.”

  She pointed her finger at him. “Don’t you talk to me like that. I’m not your daughter.”

  “You are my daughter, and whether you like it or not, I’m going to protect you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him again but held her tongue and lowered her hand.

  He looked down at the fiel
d book. “What’s that you’re holding? Where did you go just now?”

  She looked down at the book, then back up at her father. She had no choice other than to trust him with this. “I went to see Lisandra Barry. Envirotech sent her Samuel’s things. I found this among them.” She handed him the field book.

  He took it from her and turned. She followed him into a conference room, glancing at the man with pitted skin on her way. He stayed behind, a silent watcher. Her bodyguard. It frightened her to know her father thought she needed one.

  Inside the conference room, Noah closed the door and faced her. He opened the cover and found the photos, taking his time looking at each one. At last, he raised his head.

  “Do you know who these men are?”

  She shook her head. “That’s why I came here.” The only reason.

  He looked down at the top photo in his hand. “I’ve been to this bazaar before.”

  “In the photo?” Then she realized. Of course, in his active days as a mercenary, he’d been there.

  “It’s the Khyber Bazaar, not far from the Afghanistan border in Pakistan.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But as soon as I know something, I’ll tell you. I promise.”

  He was going to tell her? Noah? She was taken aback. And she believed him, which made her uneasy. It sneaked past her defenses and warmed her.

  “You told me you’d stay in Roaring Creek,” he said, repeating his earlier comment.

  “I…”

  “I need you to stay there, Sabine. No more driving alone down the mountain and into the city where anything can happen to you.”

  He seemed genuinely concerned. She wanted to tell him about her dream, but she stopped herself. It was too easy to fall into old patterns and trust him with her heart. The dream disturbed her too much. She wasn’t comfortable with him seeing that much of her emotions.