by Steven James
At last she handed me the box, and I slid it into my pocket. “Anyway,” I said, “that’s why I stopped by. I just wanted, one more time, to make sure that you’re cool with-”
“Patrick.” Tessa had chosen a parental tone. “It’s been almost two years since Mom died. You have a life to live. Lien-hua is great. I couldn’t ask for a cooler stepmom.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a light kiss on the forehead.
“You gonna tell her about DC?”
“Yes.”
“A new adventure.”
“That’s right.”
A small silence. I saw her tapping her leg. “Hey,” she said, “did Amber ever teach you that game of hers, Guess the Plot?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, you watch, like, a little snippet of a movie and then you try to guess the rest of the story. I was just thinking… you, Lien-hua, me-if this were a movie, how it would end.”
“And?” I said, somewhat apprehensively.
“It looks like the guy finally gets the girl.”
“That’s my kind of story. What about the precocious teenager? Does she live happily ever after with the dashing and brave geospatial investigator and his exotically beautiful kickboxing bride?”
Tessa looked at me with mock incredulity. “You’re dashing and brave, she’s exotically beautiful, and I’m precocious?”
“In an endearing, fetching sort of way.”
“Humph.” She folded her arms but wasn’t really angry. “Well, I think maybe she stops having trouble falling asleep.”
“Really?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“This is turning out to be the kind of ending I like.”
“But as far as living ‘happily ever after,’ let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t happen?”
“Yeah, I mean, just sitting around being happy all the time? Boring. I’m more into an ongoing adventure kind of thing.”
I patted her arm. “Don’t worry. I’m sure something bad will happen soon enough to keep things interesting.”
Then I left to go ask Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang for her hand in marriage.
In his motel room, Alexei Chekov addressed the six envelopes.
Each contained over $150,000, all of the money he had left from his trip to Wisconsin.
As a small way of showing recompense for the death of their husbands, he left one envelope to Mia Ellory, the deputy’s wife, another to Annette Clarke, the wife of the truck driver he had killed. The third envelope he addressed to Erin Collet, because he had attacked her and allowed her father to die; the fourth was for Kayla Tatum, for mental duress suffered during her abduction and captivity; the fifth, for the maid who would find his body tomorrow. The final envelope contained enough money to pay for cleaning up the motel room.
Then, Alexei sat at the desk and carefully wrote a note to each of the women expressing his deep regret for the pain and grief he’d brought into their lives.
Lien-hua was already waiting for me outside the front door in the lightly falling snow. Quietly, I took her mittened hand and we left the house, choosing the trail that led past the woodshed and toward the forest. Faint light from the patio glowed around us, gently illuminating the peaceful winter landscape.
After a few moments of silence she said, “I spoke with Director Wellington today. Asked her whatever happened to Terry Manoji.”
Margaret was not the most forthcoming person I knew. “And how did that go?”
“She said, and I quote, ‘My counterpart at the CIA has assured me that Terry Manoji will no longer be a threat of any kind to the United States of America.’”
“No longer a threat of any kind, huh? And what does that mean, exactly?”
“Well, I asked her that too, and she just said that in the scope of her conversation with CIA Director O’Dell, some things were left unsaid and some things were left unasked.”
“Aha.” I still wasn’t completely clear on why Margaret hadn’t been more available the night everything went down last week. Two days ago she’d curtly told me that the missile crisis was not the only disaster she was trying to avert at the time. It was hard for me to believe that there could’ve been anything as pressing as what we were dealing with, but she let it go at that.
Lien-hua and I took a few steps. I watched the snow swirl around us, thought of how I was going to do this. She said, “What do you think ever happened with Chekov?”
“Well, he was going to kill his wife’s murderer. I can’t help but wonder if he might’ve just gone ahead and kept his word.”
I thought of Tessa’s probing question at the hospital last week: “Apart from forgiveness, can you think of any way of dealing with your wrongs that doesn’t involve some form of denial or negotiation?”
The question had been on my mind a lot over the last few days as we wrapped up these cases, as I considered all the crimes that Terry, Cassandra, Jake, and Alexei had committed. And in the background, always in the background, casting a long, thin shadow across the last fourteen years of my life, Richard Devin Basque and the women he’d killed.
Can you think of a way…?
And I still had to answer Tessa’s question “no.”
If you don’t find forgiveness, you’ll never end up with peace, just get lost in a maze of comforting excuses.
A maze I decided I was not going to enter.
I felt Lien-hua reposition her hand in mine, grasp my fingers more tightly. “So have you decided?” she asked. “About teaching at the Academy again?”
“I’m going to take the job.”
“So you’ll be moving to DC?”
“Yup.”
“Well, then, we’ll be neighbors.”
“I hope not.”
“What?”
We stopped walking and stood on the edge of the night, snow falling lightly around us. “Lien-hua, do you remember how, in that ELF tunnel, I told you there was something I wanted to ask you?”
“Yes.”
“And you made me wait until all that was over?”
“Yes.”
“And then, when I was about to climb up that shaft, I sort of said I was going to marry you, and that’s why I wasn’t about to fall-because I’d miss out on that?”
“I think I recall something along those lines.”
I took out the ring box.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Pat,” she said, drawing a mitten-covered hand to her mouth.
“Lien-hua…” I brushed a snow-dabbed strand of hair from the side of her face. “Since the first time I met you I’ve been under your spell. You’re beautiful in all the ways that matter most, and the more I get to know you the deeper I fall in love with you. I’d do anything for you and I want to spend the rest of my life by your side. Lien-hua, would you marry me? Would you be my bride? My queen?”
She said nothing at first but then threw her arms around me, leaned up on her toes, drew herself close, pressed her lips against mine.
And said yes.
There is a fate worse than death.
The discovery that you’re the one who killed the person you love the most. How do you deal with that kind of knowledge? That deep a sin?
Alexei raised the Rossi, placed the end of the barrel against his temple, and, in his mother tongue, Russian, counted down the last five seconds of his life.
Pyat’…
He would finally be reunited with Tatiana again.
Chetyre…
Justice meted out against her murderer.
Tri…
The pain of loss fading into night.
Dva…
Alexei closed his eyes.
Odin Valkyrie opened his eyes.
Lowered the gun.
Then breathed in deeply, savoring the moment, the feeling of air filling his lungs, the thumping beat of his heart in his chest, proving, proving, proving that he was alive. Yes, alive.
And finally, alone.
There was only one min
d, one psyche, now.
Only one.
Valkyrie-the dark angel who decides who will live and who will die on the battlefield of life.
He went to the dresser, ripped open the envelopes, slid out the money, and destroyed the handwritten notes to the women.
Then Valkyrie began to pack his things.
After finding a doctor to treat his shoulder, he had some unfinished business to attend to in Pakistan concerning a certain Abdul Razzaq Muhammad, a man who had failed to transfer $100,000,000 to the offshore account Terry Manoji had opened, the one Valkyrie had obtained the password to and had planned all along to siphon the funds from.
Yes, a trip to Pakistan, and then…
Who knows?
The future would be wide open and bold with possibilities.
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Document version: 3
Document creation date: 17.10.2011
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