Joe just shook his head. He wouldn’t look at him.
“Who are you mad at? Me, Mary-Margaret, the military? Who, Joe? Your wife barely held it together after she heard about that video of Tucker’s beheading. It went viral before it was shut down, so of course she was thinking the worst. She was a mess when I talked to her, and I had to promise her you were okay. She needs to hear your voice.”
“Fine, I’ll call her. Will you leave it alone?” Joe shouted.
A few heads turned their way—a nurse, patients in other beds. Eric pulled the curtain to give them some privacy.
“No, I’m not going to leave it alone. Were you having an affair?” He hadn’t planned to say it like this, and he hoped he was wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything else to explain the way Joe had been acting. Sure, he’d been through hell, but Eric couldn’t understand why he was so distant with Mary-Margaret. They were so good together, they loved each other, and they were the couple that gave everyone hope.
Joe chuckled, but it didn’t sound happy. “No, I didn’t cheat on my wife.”
“But you thought about it.”
This time, Joe looked his way.
“I planned on sitting you down when you got back. You see, Mary-Margaret was starting to wonder if you were having an affair. She feels the distance between you, and that last Skype call, you gave her the wrong time. I told her it was just an oversight, but you don’t make those kind of mistakes.” He waited for Joe to say something. He could see him thinking and then gazing up at the ceiling.
Joe exhaled. “Do you know what it was like in that camp, first waking up in that cell with Tucker and not knowing what would happen to us, if we’d be tortured or left to rot or executed in some hellish manner? When they took him, I knew his time was up. I just lost it, but I couldn’t save him. Then I woke up in a bed, and Ayoud was there. Their leader, he could have been our neighbor. Do you know how they got so big, how they got all their support? Social media. He Facebooked Dunlop. We saw the messages. I was angry at her for bringing him in, for creating all this. For all of five seconds, I thought she deserved what she got, but she was just a victim, like the millions of others he and his group have contacted, have developed relationships with, have fooled.” Joe’s voice cracked. “He emailed my daughter.”
Eric wasn’t sure he’d heard Joe right. He let his hand fall away from his face. “I’m sorry, how could he…” He gestured, at a loss.
“He Facebooked her, made up a story. She believed he was over here with me. He sucked her in like how many others, and what the fuck was my wife doing during this time?” he shouted again, pounding the bed with his fist.
Okay, Eric was starting to get a better idea of what was really going on here, and he wasn’t sure how to respond. “You can’t go there, Joe. You know Mary-Margaret is a good mother. She’s there for your kids. There has to be some explanation,” he said—but he wondered how Janey had gotten the free time to access social media. Maybe Mary-Margaret had slipped up somewhere. He’d seen how stressed she was. He thought he’d better have a talk with Abby, too.
“Maybe you’re right,” Joe said. “She’s my kid. I’m her father, and I wasn’t there. Do you know what he would have done to her?” He wouldn’t look at Eric. He was staring at the ceiling.
“Hey, there’s no way he could have gotten her. No way,” Eric said. But he was starting to wonder if Joe was right.
“He could have gotten her. I realized, then, that he was capable. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is?”
Eric couldn’t answer. He was still trying to figure out why Joe seemed to think this man could just walk in and take his daughter.
“Before you guys showed, do you know, there were about a hundred or so teens, boys, who arrived? They’d all been seduced by him—from the US, Canada, Great Britain, the world. They didn’t have a fucking clue what they were getting themselves into. However he got them there, it worked. They were our lost, disillusioned youth. What does that say about our society, that we can’t even look after our own kids?”
“Whoa,” Eric said. “You’ve just come through some pretty heavy shit and seen some things no one should, but you’re alive, and the motherfuckers have been blown away. You’re being a little dramatic, Joe.”
“I don’t think so. I think everyone in this country needs to take a really hard look at home. And that fucker—I think only a fool would believe they’ve just wiped him out with that strike. He’s well financed, well stocked, and I’m telling you he had military intelligence, US weapons. He was better outfitted than our troops. He has boots on the ground in places we can’t even imagine. That one camp would have been one of many. He’s in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, who knows where else? And that’s only what I was able to piece together from my stay there. You cut off the snake’s head, but how many more grow back?”
Eric didn’t know how to answer that. Although the airstrike had taken out the camp, he also knew JILA had camps in other areas. Joe was right about that.
“How’s Grieger doing?” Joe asked. It was the first time Eric had seen compassion on his friend’s face since he got there.
“She’s been heavily sedated and was shipped home to Chicago to a military hospital. Her family’s there. She’s been put under suicide watch.”
Joe squeezed his eyes shut and turned away.
What could Eric say to Joe after seeing the wild, distraught woman? He’d been sickened when he heard the doctor report what she’d endured, her internal injuries and the stitches she’d needed from the brutality of the men raping her over and over. Her body would heal, but he wondered if her mind would.
“I understand now about Abby,” Joe said. “Eric, when she broke down, when she disappeared…I understand. Seeing what these monsters are doing to women—your wife is living with it. She deserves a medal for having survived that.”
Eric just watched Joe. He couldn’t speak about what had happened to Abby, not now. He, too, realized what she’d survived and how she was facing her fears, not hiding but getting through it. She wasn’t weak or fragile. He’d been so wrong, so terribly wrong, and he was ashamed for not understanding more. She was strong. She was a fighter. She was a rock.
“Call your wife,” Eric said. “Talk to your kids.” He had to clear his throat as he handed Joe the phone.
Joe stared at the pale receiver on the rotary phone and paused only a second before taking it and dialing.
Chapter 18
“Do you know why I want to talk to you?” Joe said. He was sitting on his daughter’s bed after waking her up. Even though she wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight or any time soon, this was a talk that couldn’t wait. He needed to speak his mind. He needed her to understand even if it meant scaring the hell out of her.
“Dad, I missed you. I was so scared you weren’t coming home.” She went into his arms, and he hugged her, breathing in her scent. Janey, his only daughter, was twelve, a baby. She didn’t have a clue how the world worked. He breathed her in and then pressed a kiss to her head, taking in the sight of her desktop computer in the corner. For a minute, he stared at it with loathing.
“Do you see that thing over there?” He pointed, and she turned her head.
“My computer?” She appeared confused.
“Do you understand what social media is, Janey, Facebook and all the other sites that connect you with the world?”
She shrugged. “Sure, I love Facebook. It’s fun. You get to go in and post pictures and tell everyone what’s going on with you, and all your friends comment, and we chat back and forth. It’s fun.”
“The problem is, Janey, that there are predators and bad people out there, and they use the Internet and social media to hurt people, to hurt kids. If you saw a stranger come up to you on the street, and he started talking to you and asked you to get in his car with him, would you do it?”
She gave him a look as if he should know better. “No, Dad, of course I wouldn’t.”
“That’s good. So wit
h Facebook, when you get a friend request from someone you don’t know, what do you do?”
This time, she appeared to think. “I sometimes accept them. It’s not a big deal.”
Joe wanted to shake her. He realized that giving her this computer without teaching her how to be Internet savvy was the same as sending her out into the world without protection. “Janey, I blame myself for this,” he said, “but you accepted a friend request from a bad man. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t, and that’s one of the biggest problems on social media today. Everyone is faceless and can say all kinds of things, lies. They can build a friendship with you, and, honey, they suck you into this big bad world. He would have hurt you. He was a monster, but the way he talked to you, you thought he was a friend and someone who knew me.”
He could feel her tremble. She actually appeared terrified. It wasn’t that he wanted to scare her, but he needed to put the fear of God into her so she understood what she’d done, how trusting she’d been. He needed to make sure it never happened again. “Until I’ve done my job and I’m convinced you understand the Internet, I’m packing up that computer. That goes for your brothers, too.” He rubbed her shoulders and watched as she stared at the computer again.
“The friend of yours who said he was your neighbor in camp…it was Avi, wasn’t it?”
Joe shook his head. “He was a very bad man who was going to hurt you,” he said as he held his daughter.
“Oh, Dad, I’m sorry!” Janey said, and she started crying. He felt horrible for hurting her like this, but he couldn’t get the vision out of his mind of what Ayoud had planned for his daughter, what they’d done to Grieger, and what had happened to Dunlop. No, he’d rather have her scared and paranoid than to ever be this careless again.
Joe sat with her until she fell asleep. Then, as he got up from the bed, covered her with her quilt, and started to the door, he noticed Mary-Margaret hovering there, waiting for him. Watching him. He held out his arms as he stepped closer, and she went into them. “Shh,” he whispered as she held tight, squeezing his shirt. He walked her into their bedroom. He’d missed the dark sleigh headboard, the clunky old dresser. Their bed.
“I missed you so much,” she said as she leaned against him. “I’m so sorry, Joe. I never thought for a moment she was accepting friend requests from strangers. If I’d known…”
Joe knew she’d been beside herself when he phoned. He hadn’t meant to tell her then, but he didn’t think it could wait until he got home. For the first time in his life, he felt that a real threat was sitting in his daughter’s room at home. Of course Mary-Margaret had blamed herself for not watching Janey closely. She’d relied on parental controls, not realizing the dangers lurking in other places.
“Hey, hey, it’s not all on you,” he said. It had been a long flight—rough, sobering, enough for him to realize that blaming his wife wasn’t the answer. He could see that, and he could feel how torn up she was. “I wasn’t here, either, but our kids are going to understand clearly that social media isn’t a toy. Until I’m convinced they’re using it safely, they’re all banned. Their computers are getting locked up.”
She pushed away, and he wondered for a moment if she was going to argue with him. Instead, she reached up and touched her lips to his. “I love you,” she said, “and I already disconnected the Internet.”
Joe forced a smile to his face, but he couldn’t muster a joyful feeling past the guilt of being home with his family after what had happened to Grieger and Dunlop. As he held Mary-Margaret, he sent out a prayer to end Grieger’s suffering, and he hoped for Dunlop’s sake that she was dead.
Chapter 19
Eric needed a minute as he stood outside his house in the dark. He’d watched as Joe carried his duffle bag, refusing all help, into his house, and Eric had stood there in the shadows when Mary-Margaret threw her arms around Joe’s neck. He had dropped his bag and just held her. Eric hoped Joe would pull it together to deal with the situation with his daughter, and Mary-Margaret, with a clearer head. But he knew, too, that after what he’d been through, he needed time. At least he was home, and his family would get the chance to say everything they needed to.
Eric opened his front door quietly so as not to wake Abby or the kids. He’d told her he was coming in late and asked her not to wait up. The house was dark except for a lamp in the living room and the soft overhead light on the stove. He shut the door and set down his bag, taking a breath and then letting it all out. There was a lot he was trying to understand, and he didn’t know how to get his head around it.
“Are you all right?”
He hadn’t seen Abby sitting in the corner of the living room, a blanket around her, curled up in a chair. She looked so tired, and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. He wondered if she’d been asleep.
“How come you’re still up?” He undid his coat and started toward her, and she stood up, dropping the blanket. She was still dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved peach shirt, but her feet were bare.
“I wanted to wait up for you.” She went into his arms as if that was where she belonged, and she leaned up and kissed him. He found it so easy to touch her, and he pulled her closer when she would have stepped away.
He breathed her in, and she pulled at something inside him. For the first time ever, he was humbled to be with her.
“Eric, I can’t breathe, you’re holding me so tight.”
“Sorry, baby.” He relaxed his arms a bit, allowing her to step back, but he didn’t let her go. He kept his hands on her shoulders and took in everything about her. She was beautiful, and she was his wife, and she’d suffered a horror he’d never understood before. Even after being over there and seeing Grieger and what had happened to her, he couldn’t truly understand what that did to a woman’s soul.
“What is it, Eric?” She was looking up at him through thick lashes. She was so beautiful—with her creamy, pale skin, her naturally blushing cheeks. He could see the worry in her expression by the way the skin puckered between her brows, and he reached out and caressed it until she relaxed.
He shook his head and swallowed.
“Is it that you don’t want to tell me, or you can’t tell me?” she asked.
He could see the acceptance in her deep blue eyes, an amazing pale shade, so vibrant. He knew she would understand whatever he had to say. She believed in him, she trusted him. For the first time, he felt as if he’d let her down.
“Come here.” He took her hand and led her to the sofa. He sat down and pulled her into his arms. “I just want to hold you for a minute.”
She sighed and snuggled in, her face resting on his chest. He could feel her breathing when she relaxed.
“I need to know how you were while I was gone,” he said. “Did you sleep, any nightmares?”
She sat up and slid around beside him, bringing her legs up and crossing them. He was still touching her, running his hand up her arm, sliding his fingers over her cheeks. She leaned in, closed her eyes for a minute before opening them again. “Honestly, it was hard, but I got through it. I woke a couple times. My heart was pounding, I was sweating, and it seemed so real, my nightmare. They always do. You’ve been there in bed with me when it happens, and you wake me from it and hold me in your arms and tell me everything is going to be okay, and it helps. It always is okay when you’re here, but you can’t always be here, and it’s selfish of me to expect―”
“Abby…” he started, and she put her hand over his mouth to stop him from saying anything else.
“I need to make you understand. I know about the video. I didn’t see it, but it was all over the base and all everyone talked about. Mary-Margaret was just beside herself with grief. It’s the first time I’ve seen her fall apart. We all have a breaking point, but we do get through it.” She reached for his hand and held it in her lap, and she seemed to be studying it as if she needed to burn it into her memory. “I reached my breaking point a year ago because I kept telling myself everything was okay and pushing
all those horrible memories and fears away. I avoided anything that would remind me of what happened, and the problem is that you can’t ignore it and hope it will go away. You have to face your fear. When I heard about the video, the beheading, the women being sold, I knew it would have been way worse than what I heard. I felt the chill and the anger and the fear, and I spent an afternoon just watching the kids and shaking. I couldn’t stop. But I picked up the phone, and I called Dr. Blaney, and he came right over.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I wasn’t here.” He didn’t know what else to say, being torn in two different directions, needing to go over there for Joe but also be here for Abby and his family. He couldn’t help feeling selfish.
“Eric, you can’t blame yourself. You couldn’t be here. And I was so done being angry at myself,” she said, giving him a shy smile.
He was stunned. He’d never realized she was angry with herself.
“Don’t look at me as if I was hiding something from you, because I never even admitted that to myself,” she said. “All those negative feelings, the anger, the shame, the guilt, feeling so alone when you’re gone…even sleeping was something I loathed any time you weren’t here. Looking at our bed and lying down, struggling to go to sleep, afraid of what would come when I did—so many times I just lay there wide awake, listening to the sounds in the house, the creaks, the ticking, the way the fridge makes that whirring sound that echoes at night.”
“The fridge makes a noise?”
She gave him an odd look. “Eric, the fridge has always made odd noises. It’s just that at night the sounds are different.”
Why hadn’t he heard that? He had to shake his head before he got up and checked, and for a moment he wondered if Abby was trying to sidetrack him. “Okay, what about Dr. Blaney? I don’t like the fact that you were here alone, having to go through this by yourself.”
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