Jet 03: Vengeance

by Russell Blake

  After the disaster in Thailand, she’d fled the country and decided on South America rather than anywhere closer to Asia. There were too many bad memories associated with Matt’s death, and she wanted a change of scenery. After a day on the web scanning for possible destinations she’d decided on Montevideo – the descriptions were glowing, and she didn’t know anyone within two thousand miles. Perfect for her purposes.

  The fifty million dollars in diamonds Matt had entrusted to her care were safely ensconced in a nearby safe deposit box at the largest bank in Uruguay, and she’d been able to access her account with the ten million dollars from her Thailand adventure by wiring chunks to her local bank a few blocks away. She still had a million and a half in the operational account Matt had given her, but she hesitated to use it, preferring to save it for emergencies.

  Magdalena had been recommended to her by the real estate agent who had helped her find a home, and she’d been a godsend from the first day. She’d agreed to move in and now lived downstairs in the en-suite servants’ quarters – a typical amenity for homes of that era in Uruguay. Her children grown and living their own lives, Magdalena had seemed grateful for the chance to help with a toddler – Jet suspected that it brought back fond memories from her past – and she was wonderful with Hannah, who adored her.

  “I want to take Hannah to the mall today. She’s growing so fast, it’s time for new shoes,” Jet called to Magdalena while munching on her croissant. Jet poked a finger into Hannah’s plump side, and she squealed with delight.

  “Do I need to come with you?”

  “Whatever you want. Do you have a lot to do here?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay. I’ve been meaning to do something about the back yard, and it’s not going to fix itself. Are you sure you don’t need me for anything with Hannah?”

  “I have it covered. I’m pretty sure I can handle a trip to the mall without help,” Jet assured her, finishing the croissant with a flourish and waggling her eyebrows at Hannah.

  “Very well, then. I’ll get to it as soon as I finish with the living room. Do you want breakfast?” Magdalena asked.

  “No, the croissants are enough. Although I see no reason not to have another cup of coffee. I got some at the bakery, but it’s never the same as home-made…”

  “Nothing ever is. I made a fresh pot. I’ll pour you a cup.”

  “No, no. Do what you need to do. I’ll get my own.”

  Hannah was making a complete mess of her area, which was expected. She hadn’t yet mastered getting most of the food into her mouth, and she would barely tolerate Jet feeding her – already, she had an independent streak that defined most of her interactions, although she was less reluctant with Magdalena.

  The townhouse was a find: centrally located and huge, with three bedrooms upstairs, servants’ quarters downstairs, and a sprawling layout. The rent was pricey by Uruguay standards, but about half of what a similar place would have cost in most European cities – and Jet had to keep reminding herself that money was no longer a concern.

  That had taken her a little psychological adjustment. She had never been materialistic and tended to be frugal, given the choice. It was part of her efficiency drive, which colored everything she did – efficiency in motion, in action, and in living. But she was a rich woman now, by any measure, although the entire thing seemed surrealistic. The numbers involved were so vast to her they defied belief.

  Still, her training had taught her to never own anything. Rent, don’t buy, was her rule, especially when she might have to disappear from whatever life she’d assumed at a moment’s notice.

  And so it was that she rented her home and took taxis everywhere rather than braving the traffic with her own vehicle. At some point she would get a car, but in a city like Montevideo it was hardly necessary, and she couldn’t see the point to adding another responsibility to her load.

  Jet checked her watch. It would be an hour before the stores opened, so she had plenty of time to rinse off and get to the mall. She had made a play-date with several of the other mothers she had met at the botanical gardens, and their thrice weekly get-togethers were a high point of Hannah’s week.

  “Magdalena, could you watch Hannah while I take a shower? I’ll be about twenty minutes or so.”

  “Of course. I’ll be right in.”

  “Thanks,” Jet called out, moving to the kitchen to get her cup of coffee.

  When Magdalena materialized in the dining room, Jet went upstairs and stripped off her wet exercise clothes, noting a few scraped areas from the morning’s contest. Parkour was her favorite part of her exercise routine, and she was glad she’d been able to resume the sport when she moved. There were plenty of half-finished buildings or vacant commercial areas in which to free run – Uruguay had been affected by the financial downturn just like everywhere else. She’d been pushing herself as she rediscovered all the moves and muscles she’d developed over years of practice, and had been pleasantly surprised that the locals had a small but enthusiastic group that shared her passion.

  The discipline was part gymnastics, part sheer athleticism, and part daredevil, and she supposed that she was getting a little past her prime, judging by the average age of the kids she’d met running her favorite courses. Even at twenty-eight, after a run like this morning’s she felt ancient, in spite of her bravado in the moment.

  Naked, she twisted the worn bronze handles and waited for the creaky pipes to deliver warm water and considered her reflection in the full-length mirror. Not so bad for an over-the-hill mom, she supposed – seven percent body fat, six-pack abs, and a gymnast’s build – a testament to her training and her daily ritual of several hours of grueling workout, rain or shine.

  The routine, as she thought of it, was a tie to her past, but one she was unwilling to cut. Her fitness had saved her more than once, and it would be a cold day when she lapsed and got lazy.

  Steam rose from behind the shower curtain, and she adjusted the flow to something approaching comfortable and then stepped under the spray.

  It was all so hard to believe. Here she was, in a country she’d never visited, wealthy beyond her wildest fantasies, with a daughter she’d thought dead at the beginning of the year...and her biggest concerns were shoe shopping and visiting with the local soccer moms.

  Life was strange.

  Jet scrubbed herself vigorously with soap and then lathered her short hair with a floral shampoo Magdalena had bought, and then rinsed herself off before stepping, dripping, onto the bath mat.

  She considered her reflection again as she ran a brush through her hair, now dyed dark brown, growing out from the severe short cut she’d had in Thailand.

  The thought of Thailand stopped her.

  It seemed so long ago, and yet it had only been ninety days since she’d been standing, watching the smoke from Matt’s ruined beach house curl lazily into the sky.

  An eternity, and yet the blink of an eye.

  So much had changed. She was a completely different person. Domesticated, at peace, Hannah her priority now that she didn’t have to run any more.

  Unlike Matt. Who had believed his time of hiding was over as well, but discovered by paying the ultimate price that the past never stays buried. He had obviously misjudged the lengths to which the CIA group he’d been battling would go to see him dead. A critical mistake – and one that Jet would never make.

  He had sounded so happy on their last couple of phone calls. Living on the beach in paradise, calm, his exile in the wilds of Myanmar’s jungles finally over.

  If only things had turned out differently…

  She finished brushing her hair and with it, her ruminations. No good would come from reliving the ugly events of her past. What was done was done, and nothing would bring the dead back.

  Perhaps it was best that they stayed buried.

  Now was her time to be with Hannah, in the moment, enjoying her childhood and celebrating the experience of motherhood. Waxing nost
algic over those that had passed on went nowhere good.

  Better to focus on the future.

  Because for Jet, and Hannah, the future had never looked brighter.

  Chapter 3

  Hannah wasn’t happy. Her face was scrunched up in a frown and she was pouting. The shoes she wanted, shiny patent-leather flats, had been nixed by Jet in favor of more sensible athletic shoes with Velcro straps for easy changing. But Hannah wasn’t a creature of practicality, and when she’d seen the other shoes she’d been adamant – the tennis shoes were fine, but the patent-leather flats were a necessity.

  Jet wasn’t in the mood to let a toddler dictate terms; she didn’t want her to get used to getting everything she wanted. There were boundaries, and sometimes the world failed to deliver on one’s desires. That was an important lesson if Jet was going to avoid raising a spoiled monster – which was a danger, given her impulse to lavish her daughter with everything she could think of. Memories of her past always intruded: her own childhood playing out, the death of her parents, the lack of nurturing thereafter, her foster father, the difficult times in orphanages…

  If she could give her daughter everything, why not? It wasn’t like she had to pinch pennies.

  The answer was obvious to her. Hannah was already spoiled rotten, attended to by her own servant; the pint-sized mistress of the house. Letting her run the show was not on the table. She’d wear the shoes Jet had selected and be happy about it.

  The clerk rang up the purchase and Jet paid cash, then took the oversized plastic bag with the shoe box in it and moved towards the entrance.

  Hannah dragged her feet as they departed the store, the air-conditioned cool washing over them once outside the storefront, and Jet felt the increasing resistance of a stalling Hannah against her hand as they walked away. Sensing trouble, she stopped and got down on one knee, bringing her face to eye-level with her daughter, whose head looked ready to explode with fury at not getting her way.

  “Sweetie, you just got new shoes. You have a play-date later. You’re out at the mall, having fun. Maybe we’ll find a toy you don’t have yet. Don’t be upset because you can’t have those shoes. They’re not what we were looking for today. We got what we needed,” Jet said reasonably, watching for a sign of surrender.

  “Hannah want.”

  “Yes, I know. But not today. Today we got the other pair.”

  Her face scrunched up as if Jet had misunderstood her demand.

  “Hannah…want...”

  “Well, maybe some other time, but not tod–”

  Hannah let loose with a shriek that rivaled a bullhorn for volume, reminding Jet of nothing so much as a locomotive locking its wheels after the emergency brake was engaged. Her face turned red…no, almost purple, and she screamed to wake the dead.

  Horrified, Jet looked around at the near empty mall, where a handful of early shoppers had stopped to see who was torturing their child. Hannah screamed again, an enraged screech that signaled a completely out-of-control toddler, and a pair of older women gave her a disapproving glare.

  “You stop screaming, now, Hannah, or so help me…” Jet warned.

  Hannah greeted her order with the loudest and rawest of her exclamations yet, an angry and abused sound that spoke to endless suffering, and stamped her feet on the floor to underscore her displeasure at having her wishes questioned.

  The first time this had happened, Jet hadn’t known what to do or how to react, but she’d quickly come up with an effective coping technique.

  With a lightning motion, she hoisted the plastic bag containing the new shoes and scooped Hannah up, clamping her hand over her mouth and hurrying to the nearest exit. The trick was to eliminate Hannah’s ability to disrupt. Once robbed of that power, she would invariably settle down. These sorts of tantrums only lasted a few minutes, and like hurricanes were violent and destructive but of short duration.

  Hannah struggled, further enraged at the ease with which her mother could physically bend her to her will, but it was no use. As stubborn as the little girl was, Jet had experience and superior strength on her side, and no small reserves of resolve herself. In this battle there would only be one winner. Jet thought of the technique as “crushing her spirit.” Hannah just needed to be reminded who was boss when she forgot.

  Howling into Jet’s hand, Hannah continued her tantrum until they were outside the mall, standing on the sidewalk, at which point Jet set her down and let her wear herself out. After a few more minutes of howling while her mother watched impassively, she tired and slowed from a banshee wail to sniffling, tears streaking her cheeks.

  “Are you done now? Or do you want to keep behaving like a baby?” Jet calmly asked. There was nothing Hannah hated more than being called a baby.

  Hannah kept crying, but the wind was out of her sails. Jet waited patiently for her to get hold of herself, ignoring the looks of curious pedestrians. Nothing existed in the universe except for Jet and Hannah, and they would make peace, one way or another.

  Eventually Hannah nodded and swiped at her face with her arm, brushing the tears away, the incident already passing, any memory of the shoes now fuzzy, as can be the case only with small children. Jet watched her struggling to regain her composure and felt her heart lurch. She was so decent and good, even after throwing a tantrum. In the end, she was simply too young to manage her emotions.

  “Are we finished? Everything better?” Jet asked, and Hannah nodded.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Good. Then let’s get a taxi and take you home so we can get ready to go play. How does that sound? Are you up for some playtime?”

  Hannah’s smile radiated happiness at the idea. Jet reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue.

  “Blow.”

  Jet held the tissue out and Hannah obligingly blew her nose into it.

  “All right. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Hannah grabbed Jet’s hand and pulled her towards the waiting cab line, pointing lest they be delayed from playtime any more than absolutely necessary, and Jet grinned to herself. If only she could return to a time where life was that simple.

  When they arrived at the taxi queue, a driver disengaged from the group of men loitering near the entrance and motioned to his car. He held the door open for them and then jogged around the front to the driver’s side before wedging himself behind the wheel and inquiring where they wanted to go. Jet gave him the address and he repeated it emphatically as he started the car, and then honked as he swung into traffic with hardly a glance at the oncoming vehicles.

  They watched the city fly by, Hannah on Jet’s lap so she could see, and Jet wondered again at what a miracle this whole experience had been. She had gone from being a lone wolf, struggling to get through each day with no more meaning to her existence than surviving another twenty-four hours, to being the caretaker of a little bundle of complexity for whom every moment brought new wonders.

  A bus roared beside them and the cabbie honked again, making an obscene gesture at the offending conveyance before cutting the bus off and accelerating past it.

  Hannah gave Jet a look. Even at her tender age she had picked up that some gestures were insulting, and when she moved her arm and clenched her fingers, trying to get them to form the same shape, Jet shook her head. That was all she needed – Hannah showing her playground friends the latest obscenity she’d learned while shopping with Mommy. Jet saw the internal struggle play across her angelic features, torn between obeying and the impish delight of forbidden fruit, and then Mom’s proximity decided it and she dropped her arm.

  Another small battle won.

  Jet relaxed and smiled.

  She’d take it.

  Chapter 4

  A gentle wind blew off the bay, rustling the tree tops with a fresh snap of chill on the unusually warm day. Seasons were reversed in the Southern hemisphere, and summer was the region’s winter, with temperatures averaging fifty degrees Fahrenheit in September. But today the cold had been broken by
an unseasonable warm front that had spiked the temperature all the way into the sixties – signaling that perhaps the worst of the cold was behind them for another year.

  Jet and Hannah walked hand in hand down the park path to where her friends were waiting, ready to destroy their clothes and get filthy in the blink of an eye. All part of the process, Jet had discovered, and at Hannah’s age there was scarcely any difference between the boys and the girls. Both genders seemed to delight in rolling around in the grass, clenching moist dirt, rubbing it all over each other, and generally undoing an hour of washing and preparation within moments of arriving.

  Jet saw Miriam and Daphne, two of the mothers she had befriended, sitting on one of the benches, chatting while their children, Paolo, Maricela, and Fortuna gamboled in the shade on the grass in front of them, chasing each other and squealing in playful excitement. Maricela was the oldest at three and a half, and her brother Paolo and her best friend in the world, Fortuna, were both two and a half. Fortunately for everyone, Paolo hadn’t gotten to the age yet where he didn’t want to play with girls, and he was happy to have company to cavort with, especially after weeks of being restricted to being indoors during the coldest months.

  Hannah’s eyes lit up when she saw her friends and, with a glance at her mother, released Jet’s hand and ran to join them, her toy-stuffed pink Hello Kitty backpack clutched tightly.

  “Ah, there you are. How are you, my dear?” Miriam greeted Jet as she approached, and both women rose and kissed her on the cheek, as was the local custom.

  “Good. We went shopping this morning and Hannah turned into Satan’s spawn for a while, but everything’s fine now.”