by Mark Powell
“Who did?”
“They did, Reed. The big they, the only they so far as you’re concerned.”
“Aida.”
“You’re not in love, are you?”
“The professor sent her?”
“They want your father, Reed. That’s the one your so-called brothers are after.”
“Who sent her?”
“Little shoulda-coulda straight from the American academy of undereating. How could you possibly imagine she’s a convert? She’s too gamine,” Stone said. “That eating disorder of hers. In its infancy but you have to give it time, right, let it come into its own. I counsel patience.”
“You stay away from her.”
“They’re going to get your father, Reed, and they’re going to get him through you. That’s the plan. Except they aren’t. They’re going to be locked in some basement cell and forgotten, which is exactly what the professor wants. But look at this.” He held Reed’s new identity. “You don’t have to be a part of it. Right here, right now, you can walk away. Start a new life.”
“Leave her out of this.”
“Leave her out? She’s a goddamn FBI agent.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What do you think the professor is?”
“You shut your mouth.”
“You think he’s Captain Jihadi the Terrible or something? He’s a Fed, and right now he’s running the largest sting east of the Rio Grande.”
“No.”
“He’s FBI and he doesn’t love you, Reed. He’s using you. They all are.”
“No.”
“Then take out that phone of yours and call him.”
“You shut your mouth.”
“Take out your phone and call him if you don’t believe me. Ask the motherfucker yourself.”
Reed was silent. His hand had loosened and fallen from Stone’s throat without his realizing it.
“He’s using you. But you can walk away.”
“I’ll kill you, Jimmy.”
“Listen to me, Reed. You can walk.”
“I kill you right here if you don’t shut your mouth.”
“Good, because the worst thing you could do would be to forgive me. The world needs confirmation: you’re a monster. They couldn’t bear your forgiveness.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Forgiveness doesn’t compute.”
“Shut up.”
“I wish I could,” Stone said. “But like you, I answer to a higher power.”
When he pointed one finger at the sky it was as much a gesture of defiance as obedience. It was a ballsy thing, and reluctantly Reed found he liked the man. So when he kicked the shit out of Jimmy Stone it wasn’t personal. He kicked the shit out of Stone wholly as a matter of principle, knowing that when the man got up he would walk Reed into the safe house, and Reed, given enough time, would walk himself out. Reed would walk himself back into the war.
His war.
Because that’s what it was now. It was his.
*
A week later he was at the gym. It sat behind a strip mall on a four-lane highway, a three-story building of glass and brushed steel, a wall of lower windows beaded from the indoor pool. Reed sat in the car and waited. It was Jimmy Stone’s car, the ancient Camry, but he hadn’t seen Stone—he hadn’t seen anyone—since Stone had shown up several days ago with John Maynard, the depressive counselor who was meant to convince Reed of something, even if Reed had no idea what.
Since then Reed’s only communication with the outside world had been his call to the professor, but that, he knew, was enough. Sometimes life’s purpose can be revealed in a single moment. Or two moments, in this case: Maynard’s visit, and Reed’s discovering the truth of Maynard’s life. Which revealed the truth of Reed’s too.
It had taken three days of calling, three days of the phone ringing and ringing, and then suddenly, on the third day, the professor picked up.
“Reed, what a pleasant surprise.”
But Reed had no time for niceties. He told him what Stone had said, the accusations he made against Professor Hadawi, against Aida.
“The FBI? And you actually believed him? He’s lying to you, Reed. He’s the one with the government. Tell me where you are?”
But instead of telling him, Reed asked about the other man who had visited, John Maynard, the counselor with his tale of woe and regret. The dead wife, the lost daughter. The irrevocable nature of certain acts.
“He said he could help me.”
“Help you, this Maynard? I know John Maynard. He told you about his wife, did he. Well, that’s a true story, Reed. You should believe it. But did he tell you the rest?”
“What rest?”
“Tell me where you are, Reed. Let me help you.”
He was alone in the lake house, but he didn’t tell the professor that. He had found the money hidden in the kitchen ceiling, a dense shrink-wrapped brick. He had revived the engine of the Camry in the shed. The pistol he’d taken from the camp was still in his bag.
“Reed?”
“What rest?”
“Tell me where you are?”
“Tell me what you’re talking about first. What rest?”
“I’m talking about what he did to our brothers. He’s one of them, Reed. Listen to me. Do you have a computer, do have access to the Internet? I want you to look something up.”
“Just tell me.”
“I want you to know it for yourself, and after you know it you call me back and I’ll come get you. I want you to write down these words.”
“All right.”
“Are you ready? Write these down, Reed.”
“I’m ready.”
“One: Global Solutions. Two: Peter Keyes. That’s K-e-y-e-s. Are you writing this down? Three: black site. Write it down, Reed. Four: torture. Put them all in a search together. And then add John Maynard’s name. And then add James Stone. Are you there, Reed? Reed?”
“I’m here.”
“Write down the name Hassan Natashe and then go look for yourself. Then you call me back and tell me what you believe.”
And he did, he looked it up, he read everything he could find. Articles about John Maynard’s book and Keyes’s death. Hassan Natashe and all the rumors of a place called Site Nine. But when he was finished he didn’t call the professor, he kept searching, but searching for something different now.
It took only a moment to find Maynard’s profile at Garrison College. Reed sized him as big but soft. It was good to know these things. Not that he thought it would come to that, but you needed that baseline knowledge. Maybe six-three and thick. All the weight in his chest. Heart-attack weight. A man who spent his days gliding around in an Aeron chair telling folks how to live. If he went down, if Reed had need to take him down, it would happen quickly and resolutely. Hook the lead leg and leverage your momentum, get a forearm across the carotid. There would be a single piggish squeal and then nothing. But it wasn’t Maynard he was after.
He kept looking and found photographs of Maynard’s new wife and family. He found a home address and mapped it. And then, without actually intending it, he found Maynard’s daughter, he found Kayla, and knew instantly this was what he was after.
On the drive to Kayla Maynard’s gym he stopped at a Hardee’s drive-through and for the first time since the professor had driven him to the camp Reed had taken out the phone Jimmy Stone had given him and allowed the camera to glide over the menu, the window, an expanse of bill-boarded highway. A moment of geographical striptease for Jimmy, a moment of flirtation because where was Hardee’s down here except everywhere? Let Jimmy wonder. Let Jimmy know that Reed was fucking with him. First one fast-food joint and now another.
He ate his burger while he waited for her.
Now and then, she wandered across the check-in counter and into his field of view, framed by fliers for Zumba and a Race for the Cure 5K. It was easy enough to recognize her; he’d already been through her Facebook page and those of several of her fr
iends.
When she came back into view he got out of the car and crossed the parking lot. He was in sweats and had shaved the scruff of beard he had allowed to repopulate his face. He didn’t need to hide. It wasn’t at all like those early days at AltKombat. It wasn’t like those days in New York, either. He was nothing but confidence, nothing but a wide smile and dark eyes. Everything else—the shame, the stuttering, the devotion to Aida and Allah—had dissolved somewhere between the moment he kicked the shit out of Jimmy Stone outside the lake house and found Kayla Maynard online.
He put his gym bag on the counter and smiled.
She was in yoga leggings and a hoodie, a small star tattooed on her right wrist, one ear pierced twice. Cute, very cute, the scar no more than a surgeon’s blade.
“Hi, may I help you?”
“I hope so,” he said. “I’d like to get a membership.”
“Oh, wonderful. Have you been in before?”
“First time.”
“Absolutely wonderful. Can I show you around?”
“Not even necessary.”
“We have a pool, a spinning room. Weights, of course.”
His smile was high-voltage—it would not wane—and she was smiling back. It amazed him, how happy she seemed. He took out the fake driver’s license and a fold of Stone’s cash.
“So maybe a tour?”
“Totally unnecessary,” he said. “I’ve already checked everything out online and I know exactly what I want.”
Part Four
He Who Made the Lamb
32.
Kayla sat in the parking lot of the Smoky Mountain Outlet Center beside the Ann Taylor Factory Store and waited. It was almost nine and the Black Friday crowds had just started to lessen, the four A.M.-ers beginning to wane and flag, trudging back to their cars with bags hooked over their forearms, throwing away their Starbucks, calling husbands to make sure the kids had breakfast. Flocks of mothers and sister and girlfriends, attractive women in their leggings and Pinterest-worthy boots. Kayla watched their solemn egress with some relief, a little less manic with every big SUV that pulled onto the highway.
The place was still crowded, the parking lot still near capacity, but it felt more manageable now and that was what she was waiting for. She’d been in the car since before eight, drinking coffee and trying to get control of herself. Somewhere here was Tess Maynard, her father’s wife and Kayla’s—could this actually be true?—maybe Kayla’s stepmother, if that wasn’t too weird a thing to imagine which, yeah, it pretty much was. Particularly since there was less than a decade between them in age.
They were planning to meet by the central fountain at nine.
Kayla was on Thanksgiving break from school, but had to trade shifts at the gym in order to make it happen. So she would work the desk from four to midnight tonight and then be back at work the following morning at six. It was worth it.
She knew about her father’s family, had even met Tess and the two boys—Laurie wasn’t yet born then—at Kayla’s grandparents. That day had been a happy accident and it had thrilled everyone, she thought, but her dad. Her dad had hovered over everything, moving to some corner and then moving out again, hands floating but never actually touching. As if he were stranded halfway between the need to act and the need to disappear. Which, of course, he had been.
Kayla was sympathetic. She knew how awkward it was for him, how apologetic it made him, how that sense of lingering unrealized apology confused him.
She regretted that.
She regretted that because she loved him, and also because she held nothing against him. She was sure of that. Not even in some buried Freudian chamber was there any trace of resentment. That he had another life, that she had another life—she had long since accepted that, and was happy with it. She loved her life, loved her grandparents, loved her friends. In a way she wasn’t sure she fully understood, she knew she loved her dad’s new family, too. Loved them without necessarily needing to be a part of them. Still, it would be nice to be acknowledged as a daughter, and not some inconvenient reminder of tragedy.
She cranked the car and let the heat blow on her hands and feet. The window had iced again so when her hands were warm she let the defrost blow until the glass cleared and it no longer appeared as broken, because broken glass—the shattered windshield that holds, but only just—that wasn’t exactly the place she wanted her thoughts to go this morning.
It was seven minutes till nine.
Time to get out, probably, but she didn’t want to seem too eager. Her fear was that Tess had contacted her out of guilt and the entire day was an act of Christian mercy, a bit of charity that would only serve to embarrass them both. It was possible the day’s theme was Poor Kayla. She knew, too, that if it was she wouldn’t say anything, just suck it up and smile and be polite. But God! What she was hoping for was friendship. It was a dangerous thing to hope, but why not? What did she have to lose really?
Their meeting, she told herself, meant nothing.
She wrote to her father and every third or so letter he sent a check. For over a year she waited for the accompanying letter and then for months she waited for the accompanying note, just a note. Hope you can use this. It could be as simple as that. It could be purely instructional: Deposit to savings or use for school. But all she had were the checks, the scrawl of his signature, the amount and date. Even the addresses on the envelopes were typed, as if the whole thing was done by a machine, some automated process about which her father had only a passing awareness.
Yet she kept writing him.
Not for the money. There had been a point when she realized that no message was forthcoming, only the checks, and she had paused then because she needed to be certain of her motives. Was she writing him for the money? She wasn’t. It was another thing she was sure of. She was writing him because he was her father and to know he would touch and read the paper now in her hands was the only form of connection she could imagine. E-mails wouldn’t do, and she could bear the thought of calling him no more than she knew he could bear the thought of answering.
Years ago he had asked if she would like to attend Garrison. She had declined, and not because of his presence. She simply hadn’t cared to go. She’d been on campus once with a friend and while it was lovely, nestled—the absolute right word was nestled—in the mountains, she knew instantly she didn’t belong. Everyone was tan. Everyone looked as if they played tennis and volunteered for obscure political campaigns, studied abroad in fascinating if insolvent nations.
Excepting the awkward day at her grandparents, that was their last real-life conversation, to the extent it could even be called such. So she wrote to him, and given his not writing back it became a sort of spiritual exercise. Writing to her father was like praying to Jehovah, some Old Testament God about whom there were legends and stories, but all the legends and stories were old. Nothing had been heard for generations.
Two minutes till nine.
Time to go.
She checked herself in the rear-view mirror, her hair, her makeup (she almost never wore makeup but wore it today).
She touched her scar.
At one point not touching her scar had been an act of discipline in her life. Not touching her scar meant not allowing the lightest brush of a fingertip to sink her into the past which inevitably propelled her into the future. Not this future, but a sort of what-if in which even the best parts of her life seemed a little less shiny than they might otherwise have been. But the truth was, she liked the way it felt. It was the thinnest of filaments, a spider’s web tangling her lips, a soft parabola you had to be almost kissing to see. And because of that—its presence, but its nearly hidden presence, as she thought of it—because of that it was not just her, but a more intimate form of her. A glimmer of light—as it sometimes appeared in photographs—that was purest Kayla. Which was, she knew, ridiculous. But also, she knew this too, the sort of tortured logic necessary to any nine-year-old who goes mouth-first into the windshield whil
e beside you your mother goes mouth-first through the windshield.
She fingered her hair back behind her ears, and in doing so let her hand glide across one cheek.
Nine-oh-one.
Past time to go.
She walked by the stores with their signs for DOORBUSTERS and BOGO, the crowds almost exclusively female, pack-like in their behavior. It was more a party than a seasonal duty: they were out with friends, the children were at home, there wasn’t a man in sight. They were laughing and texting and tapping on Pandora’s window jewelry display as if they might wake this ring or that tennis bracelet.
Kayla walked quickly, weaving through the clusters of women, past the opening doors of warm air and chai vanilla soy candles, the meadow of perfume counters, the leather of a shoe store. When she rounded the corner past Fossil and Dressbarn, she saw Tess almost immediately, standing by the empty fountain in a white toboggan and camel’s hair coat. She had a tremendous mouth, the sort of wide-lipped look that you read about enviously in the sort of magazines that lined the grocery store checkout lane—HOW TO GET THAT SEXY ANGELINA POUT—and Kayla watched her tremendous mouth spread into a tremendous smile. She was prettier than Kayla remembered, and at the sight of her Kayla felt her heart both leap and sink, which was another piece of wisdom granted to the damaged preteen: how supple the human heart.
Kayla reminded herself it meant nothing, really, their meeting.
“Kayla?” She was coming toward her, arms out. “Oh my God.”
“Hi.”
“I’m so happy to see you. I am so, so happy.”
They were hugging then, Tess’s arms squeezing her harder than Kayla had ever thought possible. So tight Kayla had to remind herself their meeting meant nothing. And then she told herself that again: it means nothing, Kayla. Don’t get your hopes up. But her hopes were up, and because of them, she was crying, very softly, onto the shoulder of Tess’s coat.
33.