by Lisa Unger
“What about Dax?” she asked.
“He’ll be fine,” Jeffrey said, turning to look at her.
“How did he know where we were?”
“Lydia,” he said. “Over the years I’ve learned that, with Dax, the fewer questions you ask the better.”
She frowned at him. “What kind of answer is that?”
“He saved our asses, right? He got us out of there. What more do you need to know?”
She looked at him, incredulous. “You’re kidding, right?”
He didn’t say anything, took a drink of his Corona and avoided her eyes.
Then, “It’s none of our business.”
She was quiet for a second. “So that’s what he does? He works for one of those Privatized Military Companies? So was he working for them tonight or was he working with us?”
Dax had never really answered her and now Jeffrey was being equally tight-lipped. She got the idea that he knew more than he was telling her and the thought made her crazy.
“So we’re going to start keeping things from each other now?” she asked.
Jeffrey turned his eyes on her.
“No, Lydia,” he said, softly. He reached for her hand. “I know as much about what he does as you do. But I know Dax. I trust him. I trust his friendship. And I figure if he needs to hold certain things back from us, then maybe it’s for our safety or for his. That’s okay with me.”
Her heart fluttered a little as a dark form emerged beside Jeffrey, stepping around from the side of the building. She stood quickly and then saw that it was Dax as he stepped into the light.
“But it’s not okay with you, is it, Lydia?” he said quietly, holding her eyes.
She sat back down and looked away from him. She was glad to see him, glad they’d let him go, but there was something between them now that prevented her from being entirely comfortable with him in the way she’d always been.
Jeffrey handed Dax a beer. He pulled up one of the plastic chairs and straddled it like he was mounting a horse. He popped the lid with his hand even though it required a bottle opener.
“We got what we came for, right? What are we still doing here?” he said.
“Waiting for you, for one,” said Jeffrey. “And we told the ATF we’d stick around for a while.”
“Fuck the ATF,” said Dax, taking a long swig of his beer and drinking nearly a third of it down. “Let’s get that girl home where she belongs. It’s done, right?”
Lydia looked at him. It was done. They’d come looking for Lily and they’d found her. She told them what had happened to her and now she was safe. The ATF and supposedly the FBI got what they wanted, the scene that allowed them to go into The New Day and the publicity that would follow would take care of the rest of the organization. This cult that had been stealing people’s will and all their money was finished… or at least mortally wounded. But it didn’t feel finished, not to Lydia. There were giant holes, myriad unanswered questions. She could sense them, even if she couldn’t exactly verbalize what was bothering her.
“Dax, how did you find us? How did you get us out of there?”
“Someone wanted us out of the way,” said Jeffrey. “Hence the fall down the hole and waking up in a cell.”
“Same thing happened to me. Only when I woke up, the door was open and I was still armed.”
“So what happened?” said Jeffrey, leaning forward in his chair.
“I left the cell and went looking for the caves Grimm mentioned. I found them, saw the weapons stored there. I mean, we’re talking like an arsenal that would make the U.S. Army proud. Unreal.
“I heard an explosion then, some gunfire. I came to the surface and the Feds were running all over the place, buildings were burning. I figured that there had been some kind of screw-up and I was out of luck. I came to get the two of you.”
Lydia shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. I thought the whole point was that the FBI couldn’t go in after Rhames. That’s why they secretly supported Lily; that’s why they came to see us. Why was the ATF able to go in? Why didn’t Grimm just piggyback on their investigation? According to Hunt, they had the compound under surveillance in preparation for the raid.”
“Maybe Grimm didn’t know. Government agencies are notorious for not communicating with each other,” said Dax, reaching for the last Corona from the six-pack by Jeffrey’s feet.
“Right,” said Jeff slowly. “But it makes more sense if Grimm doesn’t actually work for the FBI, that he works for someone else with their own agenda for getting to Rhames.”
Lydia thought about it for a second, looked at Dax.
“So we got duped?” she said.
“We were going in anyway,” answered Jeffrey.
“What difference does it make?” asked Dax. “We got your girl. We’re all alive and kicking. Let’s go.”
“I still don’t understand how you found us and how you got us out.”
“Not your problem. Just be glad I did.”
Not my problem, thought Lydia. She looked at Dax but his face was blank. She took another sip of her warm beer and wondered if she’d ever know the whole story behind what happened to them tonight-or if she was going to have to add that to the list of unanswered questions in her life. She glanced behind her at the sleeping form on the hotel-room bed. Lily was the whole reason they’d come and she was safe now. It was over.
Twenty-Eight
She fired blind through the blizzard of glass and missed the guy completely. He kept coming. A shot fired from his weapon whipped past her so close and so fast that she thought it drew blood without touching her, blowing a cannon-sized hole in the windshield, then in the seat beside her. She looked down at Matt; he was pale and out cold but she could see his shallow breathing. But her mind was clear; panic had left her. As their assailant ratcheted the gun, bringing more ammunition to the chamber, she scrambled from the car and went around the hood. Inside the vehicle, she knew, she was a sitting duck. From outside, she could protect them both better.
“Put your gun on the ground and your hands in the air,” she yelled ridiculously. “I’m a police officer and the sirens you hear are coming this way.”
He answered her by putting another round into the car. The Explorer jerked with the impact and she held on tight to her Glock. She’d fired four rounds already, which meant she had thirteen left. She lay on the ground and saw his feet beside the Explorer, right beside the back driver’s side where Mount lay wounded and helpless.
Then, “Stand where I can see you and I won’t kill your partner,” he said, his voice calm, hard and rough as the engine of a semi. “I’m standing over him with the barrel of my gun to his head.”
Every nerve ending in her body felt like it had been electrified and all she could hear was the sound of her heart hammering in her ears.
“Okay,” she said, her breathing so labored she was having trouble speaking. She fought to keep the fear out of her voice. “Put your gun on the ground and I’ll move where you can see me.”
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “That’s gonna happen.”
She heard him ratchet the gun again as she moved onto her belly and held her Glock in front of her. She heard the sirens growing louder; they were still too far to help her. She was on her own. She fired at his ankles, a nearly impossible shot. But he had a big ankle and she had good aim and the night filled with the sound of him screaming, high pitched and girlish, frantic with agony. She fired again, clipping his other leg for good measure. She heard the gun go off as he fell and then landed on the concrete. She was on her feet before he hit the dirt and then she heard the sirens louder and closer. She felt something like relief pulse through her.
“Mount,” she yelled as she came around behind him, her gun trained in front of her. The guy didn’t look as big or as tough lying on the ground writhing in pain. She held the Glock in his direction as she came around his side and kicked his gun away. It slid across the gravel of the shoulder, out of his reach.
>
She made a mistake then. She looked away from the road and from the man lying there and into the window where Mount lay very still, too still. She yelled his name again and reached a hand in to feel his pulse.
She never even saw the other van come up from the other direction until shots fractured the night with sound and light. She felt an impossible impact and then a terrible burning in her shoulder, her leg, her arm. She opened fire with her own gun, putting holes in the side of the van. The man on the road reached for his gun and she put a round in his chest. He fell flat and motionless, eyes staring.
Then she was falling. The van was speeding off and the sirens were loud; she could see their red and blue glow. Before the van was out of sight, she saw a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair at the wheel. And beside her was a young man. It was a face she recognized but could not place. Then there was black.
Part Three Found
Stones and flowers on the ground,
We are lost and we are found,
But love is gonna save us…
– BEN BENASSI AND THE BIZ
Twenty-Nine
The box sat waiting for her when they returned home from bringing Lily back to her mother. Dax drove the Land Rover back to New York. Lydia, Jeffrey, and Lily had boarded a plane in Tampa in the interest of getting Lily back to her mother as quickly as possible. It was midmorning by the time they stepped from the elevator onto the bleached wood floor of their loft.
They’d been up all night. But Lydia didn’t even take her coat off; she went straight to the kitchen for a box cutter, then strode over to the box and slashed at its taped center. Her eyes were heavy and her body ached with fatigue and from the fall she’d taken. She would have liked to climb into bed but now was the time; if she didn’t look inside the box this morning, she never would. She had a gift for avoidance but she didn’t want to do that this time. To turn her back on what could be inside those cardboard walls would be like turning her back on a part of herself.
“Do you want me to go?” asked Jeffrey, taking off his coat. She turned to look at him. There had been times in their past together when she would have pushed him away, asked him to leave so that she could experience her emotions the only way she knew how, alone. She saw the worried uncertainty in his face and she felt a wash of sadness; she’d often treated him badly and the memory of it hurt her.
“No,” she said. “Stay with me.”
He smiled at her and sank into the couch. She knelt on the floor near his legs, leaned into the box. Inside were stacks of large leather photo albums, color faded, edges frayed with age. On top rested a single letter. There were five albums in total. She lifted one out at a time and stacked them on the floor between her and Jeffrey. He leaned in, resting his forearms on his thighs.
She sat on the floor beside Jeffrey, her shoulder resting against his leg. She took the letter in her hand, and broke the seal, unfolded the single page inside. The handwriting was thick and uncertain, the author pressing so hard in places that the ink pooled and blotched. She read the words aloud so that Jeffrey could hear.
Dear Lydia,
You can probably guess the kind of man I am, if you don’t already know from the letters I’ve sent you over the years. I have no reason to think you’ve ever read any of them. Maybe you just threw them in the trash unopened; or maybe they were kept from you. I know your grandparents aren’t especially fond of me. Never were. Can’t blame them really. There’s a voice inside of me that tells me you’ve never seen them. You’re a curious one, I know. I don’t think you could have stayed away, had you known I’d been trying to reach you.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, I guess I’ve taken leave of this place. I can’t say I’m sorry to go. When you’ve spent most of your life making a mess of things, trying in your own pathetic way to clean up and then making even more mess, it starts to get a bit wearing. I don’t imagine anyone will be shedding any tears. Not you, certainly. Not your half-sister, Estrellita or her mother Jaynie.
Some of the biggest mistakes I made involved your mother. I’d say, though you probably won’t believe me, that she was the great love of my life. Life with Jaynie was a lot easier, don’t get me wrong. Though I eventually screwed that up, too. But the love I felt for your mother… nothing ever came close to that again. Her death haunts me still today. I ask myself the question I know you must have asked yourself a thousand times. If I had stayed, would she still be with us? If I had been a different kind of husband and father, where would we all be? I think about her every night, remember her as she was when I married her. There are photos of the three of us enclosed that I know you’ve never seen. And I’m willing to bet that the woman there will be unrecognizable. When I met her, she was funny and full of passion, a prankster and a lover and there was this light inside her. I’ll admit to you that I’m the one that snuffed out that light with my cruelty and irresponsibility. And then when it was gone, I couldn’t bear to see her burned out and empty. I left her and you. But, Lydia, trust me, it was my loss. I truly believe you were better off without me.
I’m leaving these albums to you so that you can see that your mother and I shared happy times. That I held you in my arms and loved you like a father should. That as a family, we knew great joy for a short time. And most importantly, that I was always a part of your life whether you knew it or not.
I could tell you how sorry I am and try to convince you of how much I love you. I could tell you that I’ve lived my life in regret for all the mistakes I’ve made. But instead I’ll tell you the only thing I’ve learned for sure about this life:
The past disappears into the air like smoke. We might catch its scent when the wind shifts but it is irretrievable, no matter how long we gaze after it wishing. The bad thing about this is that sometimes the consequences, the charred remains of our lives cannot be repaired. The good thing is, smoke can’t bind you. It can’t hold you prisoner. Only rage and regret can do that. You always can move forward, whether you deserve to or not.
Your father,
Arthur James Tavernier
The air in the apartment seemed heavy and silent when Lydia stopped reading. She waited for tears that didn’t come, then she reached for one of the photo albums and moved up on the couch beside Jeffrey. She felt his eyes and turned to meet them.
“How are you doing?” he asked, putting an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in and putting his lips on her forehead.
She shook her head slowly, sank into him.
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling a little numb. “Sad, I suppose. But okay.”
He nodded. She flipped the lid of the photo album, one side resting on her lap, the other resting on Jeffrey. The photos were black and white, darkened and yellowing with age. But there was something so beautiful about them, about the happy couple captured there.
Her mother laughed in the arms of a fair, handsome man with light eyes and a wide, generous smile. She leaned her head against his shoulder, her mouth open, her eyes moist with her happiness.
Marion Strong straddled a motorcycle, a young woman flirting with whomever held the camera, her hands on the grips, her eyes half-lidded. Sexy, mischievous, the light her father had mentioned blasting out of her like klieg.
There were others like this; her father had been right. The woman in the photographs was nothing like the woman Lydia knew. She was dancing, she was laughing with abandon, she was sexy and flirting with the man she loved. The woman Lydia had known had been exacting and sometimes cold, never cruel, always loving, but uncompromising and strict. Surely, she’d never been young the way the woman in the photographs was young, she’d never known that kind of joy or abandon.
Tavernier held a dark-haired child with storm-cloud eyes. The little girl had her tiny arms wrapped around his neck, her head against his face. They both showed wide smiles for the camera. He was movie-star handsome with beautiful pronounced cheekbones and a strong ridge of a nose. In his eyes she saw a great capacity for humor.
She was glad to know her mother had been happy once and sad to never have witnessed it firsthand; she was glad that her mother had loved her father but sorry Marion had never shared the happy times with her. She flipped the page.
The later photos in the album showed Lydia from a distance: Lydia outside the church at her first communion, looking sweet and gazing up at her mother from beneath a veil; Lydia’s high-school graduation, where she stood on the stage, looking too thin and not smiling at all. He’d been there for all those things, standing apart in the crowd, taking pictures for an album. The thought made her tired, sad, and a little angry that he’d always been within reach. That’s when the frustrated feeling of regret came and settled in her bones.
Lydia flipped through a few more pages and then shut the cover. She gazed at the pile of letters on the table. It was too much, the pain in her chest, the ache in her head. Too much lost that could never be found. She placed the book on the table and turned to her husband. She put her hands on his face, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him. She put her lips to his and breathed him in.
“You can finish tomorrow,” he said softly. He bent and lifted the album from her lap and stacked it on top of the others.
“I love you,” she whispered. He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. He stood and pulled her to her feet. They walked upstairs to their bedroom and made love until the present drowned out the past and until Lydia remembered that she was not a lost girl, but a woman found and claimed by herself.
Thirty
He looked older and very tired in the dim blue light of the room. And she’d never seen him look so sad. He sat uncomfortably on a vinyl chair with metal arms, slouching, his chin resting on the knuckles of one hand and he stared out a window that looked out only into blackness that she could tell. She could see orange light coming in from under the doorjamb and she felt terrible pain in her arm, her head, her throat. She was aware then of a low beeping, distant voices, a peal of laughter somewhere outside.