Dark Star

by Roslyn Holcomb

  Thinking about his friend brought Tonya to mind and he took a moment to savor the memories of the last few days they’d had together. It was all too easy to drift away into memories of her silky skin and seductive smile. He forced himself to focus on the control panel and with more luck than skill he managed to dismantle the alarm to the basement door without triggering the whole system.

  Afterwards, he quickly unwound the detonator cord he’d wrapped around his ankles and removed a box of cigars from his backpack. He field-stripped the cigars to reveal the long, cylindrical blasting caps which were essential to his bomb-making plans. He pocketed the shredded tobacco so as to leave no trace of his activities in the area. The plastic explosive he’d concealed in the strap of his backpack was next. Funny how people always searched his backpack so carefully, but never examined the strap. Fortunately Semtex was quite pliable and easily hidden. After laying his materiel out on the basement floor, he quickly assembled all the bombs he’d need to bring the building down. Using his carefully disguised tools, he began planting explosives throughout the basement. Sweat dripped off his forehead as he focused with intense concentration on undermining the structure of the house. He had no intention of leaving so much as a timber standing. Nearly an hour later, he fastened the last wire and looked around the room to ensure there was no trace of his activities, then slipped back up the stairs.

  * * * * *

  “If I were any more bored I’d set my hair on fire.”

  “That’s a rather drastic solution to a short-term problem,” Deringer said.

  Tonya flopped down on the sofa. Nate had only been gone for a couple of days and she was slowly losing her mind from anxiety. Not knowing what was happening to him was maddening, and nothing could distract her from the endless fear. Deringer was seated in the big recliner Nate usually sat in. He was reading...Was that one of her books? She always felt a bit proud when she realized someone was reading something she’d written.

  “How are you liking the story? Smothered is probably my favorite thus far.”

  “Pretty good,” he said.

  “What do you think of the plot? Have you figured out who did it yet?” Nothing irked her more than people figuring out who did it before the end of the story.

  “No, and I never will if you keep chattering.”

  “Sorry. How do you survive here? No phone. No cable. No internet. I’m about to lose my mind.”

  “All those services leave footprints. We’ve got lots of books and movies.”

  She was too restless to read. Focusing was impossible when all she could think about was the danger Nate was in. “I know why you don’t have them, but I’m not in the mood for a movie. I need to know what’s going on. What’s happening to Nate?”

  “You want to know the unknowable.”

  “Have you done this type of thing before?”

  Deringer shrugged, a wary look in his silvery gray eyes.

  “Oh come on, Nate already told me what you guys do,” she said.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose as though suffering from a headache. “Yeah, I’ve done this before.”

  “So how does it work?” she persisted.

  “Each one is different.”

  “Do you ever speak more than five words?” she asked.

  “Not if I can help it, no. There you go, that was seven whole words,” he said.

  “If you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll sneak into your room in the middle of the night and cut your hair off.”

  “Damn, that’s cold,” he said with a chuckle. “And after I brought jelly beans for your evil ass too. Look it’s a simple plan. Nate’s finally been called to meet the Rooster. He’s going to get in, then blow him to hell if he can.”

  “He’s already told me that. Are they going to just let him walk in there with weapons?”

  “Of course not, but Nate’s an improviser. One of the best I’ve ever seen. He’ll find a way.”

  Tonya took comfort in that. Deringer probably couldn’t be bothered to lie, at least not to her. “Okay, so what about you?”

  “What about me?” The wary look was back.

  “How did you end up in this organization? How did you meet Nate? I read people very well and something tells me you come from money. Or at least class, which isn’t necessarily the same thing. Your accent is pure upper East Side prep school.”

  “Wow, you’re good. The Department would love to have you.”

  “I’ve heard enough about this Department to scare the living hell out of me; they’re the last people I’d ever work for, but I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you going to tell me? You’ll look funny bald.”

  Deringer put down the book with a sigh. “So you’re going to relieve your boredom by cross-examining me?”

  “Sure, why not? It beats burning my hair off. I know I’d look funny bald.”

  Deringer leaned back in his chair with a put-upon sigh. “I’m third generation ‘our kind of people’.”

  “So your folks vacation on the ‘the Vineyard’ and come from old money, huh?” He nodded. “So you are black.”

  “What the hell? Of course I’m black,” he said with a glare so menacing she moved back a couple of inches.

  “Well I wasn’t sure. You definitely fall under the racially ambiguous category.” She continued with a dismissive wave of her hand. “How did someone like you wind up doing stuff like this?”

  “How does anyone end up doing stuff like this? I was a stupid kid out to prove my blackness for all the folks out there that thought my light skin and money meant I was soft. I set out to be the baddest motherfucker on the block and almost ended up in federal prison.”

  Tonya winced. From his tone it was clear that this was an old issue with him. She shouldn’t have been so insensitive, especially since she’d taken quite a bit of heat over the years over the same thing. Not the money, of course, but the color issue resonated with her.

  “My mama always says all the bad Negroes are in jail or in hell.”

  “Nate said your mama was a smart lady. Anyway, I got caught up in some craziness and wound up in a world of trouble. The Department made me an offer. At the time it sounded better than groveling to my old man. Again.”

  “What did they want with you? Do you have special language skills too?”

  “No. No. I had a brief flirtation with radical Islam. “

  “You’re Muslim?”

  “Not anymore. I told you I was trying to find myself. I never really got involved in anything serious, but the Department is concerned about such groups being recruited as domestic terrorists. Especially in prisons, so I was a good link,” he leaned forward as he warmed up to the topic.

  “Are y’all sure this Department of yours isn’t a terrorist group? They sound more like Al Quaeda than any government agency I’ve ever heard of.”

  Deringer’s low chuckle was his only response for a long time. Then he continued. “Well, you have to join them to beat them, or at least use their methods. Anyway Nate saved my life on an assignment. We work well together. He’s the only human being I trust as I trust myself.”

  “He said the same thing about you.”

  Deringer nodded. “Have I entertained you sufficiently now?” he asked raising the book he’d been reading from his lap.

  “No, you still haven’t told me what you think of the plot? Have you read the others?”

  Deringer flopped back in the chair. Groaning he covered his face with the book. “Jesus, Nate what have you gotten me into?”

  * * * * *

  A few days later Tonya was in the living room working out to an exercise DVD. She wanted to go for a run on the beach, but Deringer insisted on accompanying her and she preferred to run alone. She’d just finished her last set of lunges when she suddenly became aware that he had entered the room from...somewhere. She was more than a bit annoyed at the man’s proclivity for sneaking up on her and was about to make a snide comment when
she noticed that his face was rigid and pale.

  “What is it? What’s wrong,” she asked through lips that had gone numb with fear.

  “We lost him. Nate’s dead,” Deringer said sounding as though the words burned his mouth.

  “What -- What are you talking about?” She heard the words but simply couldn’t comprehend their meaning. Nate. Dead. It was simply unfathomable. Tonya looked into the man’s tear-filled eyes. It was strange to see such raw emotion on his face when in the week since Nate left she’d come to see him as almost stoic.

  Deringer wiped a hand over his face, pressed his lips together then shook his head as though making a decision. “We have a contact. We know that Nate went into the Rooster’s compound, but he hasn’t come out. We’ve -- ” he closed his eyes for a couple of heartbeats and when he opened them again the pale gray orbs were swimming in tears. “We picked up some chatter that he’s been executed.”

  Tonya dropped down onto the sofa as it felt as though the floor had fallen away beneath her feet leaving her without footing. “Oh my God.” Her eyes burned. Her breath caught in her throat, but she couldn’t cry. She felt disoriented as though the world had turned on its axis leaving her floating in space. She stared at Deringer until she couldn’t see him anymore. All she could see was Nate’s cheeky grin as he walked out the door. A week. Seven days. One hundred and sixty eight hours. One week and her whole life had changed. Again.

  “Deringer?” she whispered through vocal chords that didn’t want to work.

  “Yes?”

  “Will you take me home? I need -- I need my mama,” she finally choked out.

  “I promised Nate I’d take care of you. Of course I’ll take you home.”

  Chapter Nine

  Returning to normalcy had taxed every bit of will Tonya had. It was desperately hard to deal with her old routine when all she wanted to do was climb in bed and stay there indefinitely. That wasn’t possible. Her disappearance had received an unprecedented amount of publicity. Free publicity. And her publicist was determined to exploit it for all it was worth.

  Before she left the island, Tonya called her mother and Callie. Both were waiting for her at the airport after the long flight. She simply collapsed into their arms and let them care for her from that point forward. She was surprised when Deringer stayed with them. She had assumed he would drop her off and leave; instead he followed them to luggage pick-up, forcing her to introduce him to her mother and friend.

  “Uh, Mr. Deringer -- ” her mother began. Tonya was too drained by grief to interfere though she knew her mother was bound to say something inappropriate.

  “Just Deringer is fine ma’am.”

  “May I ask who you are and what you’re doing with my daughter?” That snapped Tonya right out of her daze.

  “Mama! It’s a long story. I’ll explain later. Are you staying with us?” she directed her question to him.

  “I think that might be a good idea. I’m pretty sure everything is okay now, or I wouldn’t have brought you here. But you never know. Do you have a spare bedroom?” Deringer said.

  “What? Why can’t you go to a hotel?” her mother asked.

  “Mama -- ”

  “Well didn’t he kidnap you in the first place? How do we know he’s safe?”

  “Yes, he works -- worked with the kidnappers. But they had a good reason for kidnapping me. He can stay with me. He can have Callie’s old room. “

  Anita rolled her eyes at him, but said nothing more.

  For Tonya it was suddenly too much and she burst into tears. She had tried to sleep through the long flight but hadn’t been able to. Now she was too exhausted and grief-stricken to deal with anything more. Her mother immediately took her into her arms. That comforting embrace, her mother’s scent and the overwhelming love was just what she needed and Tonya let go.

  The rest of that day and several others were more or less a blur. She struggled not to think about Nate, but the harder she tried the more insistent the memories became. Now she, her mother and Callie sat at the kitchen table of her mother’s home while Tonya finally shared the details of what had happened to her. The kitchen’s goose-covered (or were they ducks?) eighties décor was oddly comforting and Tonya sipped her morning coffee at the well-loved kitchen table. It was odd that her mother was always so on point with fashion, but for some reason she’d never updated this room. Of course, she’d never been much of a cook so maybe she simply had no interest in the kitchen. Anita sat across from her, immaculate as usual, wearing a bright pink sundress that would probably look casual on anyone else. Callie, who was even more enormously pregnant, still glowed, but there were lines of worry around her eyes that hadn’t been there before. More than anything Tonya regretted frightening her loved ones.

  “Nate? Nate Randolph? Your old boyfriend? Why on earth would he kidnap you?” her mother asked.

  Tonya recited a very bare bones story, leaving out crucial details. Essentially she made it sound as though Nate was in regular law enforcement and the whole kidnapping was a legitimate police tactic.

  “So now Nate is dead?” Callie asked a faint tremor in her voice. Nate had been her friend too. Tonya knew all of this had come as something of a shock, and she wished she had some way to shield her friend.

  Tonya nodded, struggling to keep her grief off her face. She could tell she’d only partially succeeded as both women continued to look concerned.

  “I still don’t understand why this criminal dragged you into it,” Anita said.

  “I told you Mama, he wanted to use me as a lure.”

  “You must have been terrified,” Callie said.

  “I was at first, but not so much once I realized who was in my room.”

  “I can’t believe after all these years Nate came back -- ” Anita stopped talking as Tonya suddenly choked up.

  “Can we talk about something else? What’s been going on while I was gone?”

  “Well your disappearance caused quite an uproar. They’re saying you did it for publicity,” Callie said.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

  “It stirred up a ball of confusion, that’s for sure. Apparently your sales are through the roof. There’s a crazy internet rumor that there are clues to your whereabouts in the book,” Callie said.

  “Seriously? I was hardly a household name before this. I can’t believe anyone cared.”

  “Well you certainly are now. You even made the nightly news. It’s been insane around here,” Anita said. “In a way it was a good thing. All the reporters were such a distraction I didn’t have time to be afraid, so I could just focus on getting you back.”

  Not long after that Callie left to get back to her babies, besides this late in her pregnancy she tired easily and needed to conserve her energy. Tonya stood to refill their coffee cups. Being alone with her mother for the first time since her return was a bit unnerving, but she resumed her seat at the kitchen table anyway.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about Nate -- ” Tonya shook her head forcefully at her mother’s words. “But I know how much you loved that man and you must be grieving.”

  “Mama -- ”

  “I know you. You’re a strong woman, but you love deep and he was it for you, like your father was it for me.”

  Tonya stared at her mother in astonishment. “You never talk about him.”

  “I know, and that isn’t fair to you, but it hurts too much.”

  “I don’t really remember him,” Tonya choked out. Her emotions were all on the surface lately and it took very little to move her to tears.

  “You were only five when he died, it would be surprising if you remembered him. When he died there were times when I wished I’d died with him, but I had you. I’ve never loved another man, though.”

  “What? Then what have you been doing with Reuben all these years?” Tonya said, struggling to keep the rancor out of her tone.

  “Reuben is...I guess you could say he’s my security blanket. I think you forget that
I was very young when your daddy had that heart attack. He was almost twenty years older than me. It was quite a scandal, the high-faluting doctor and the lowly nurse’s assistant. He pulled me up from the gutter, sent me to nursing school, taught me pretty much everything I knew. When he died, I was totally and absolutely lost. I was terrified.”

  “You?”

  “Shocking isn’t it? But I was. I was all alone with a little girl, and had no idea what to do next. Reuben was a family friend and I leaned on him. I know you think he’s using me; the truth is I used him. Don’t get me wrong; I love him for being there for me. For supporting me all these years, but I don’t love him like I loved your daddy. The way you love Nate.”

  “Loved.”

  “No baby. Love doesn’t die just because the person you love dies. I’m a living testament to that. Love is eternal. Even so, you’re still a young woman, and I hope you will find someone else. You’re my only child. I’m still hoping for grandchildren, but you will always have Nate in your heart.”

  Tonya leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder as the tears ran down her cheeks. “Why haven’t we ever had this conversation?”

  “Because every time Reuben’s name is mentioned you bristle up like a feral cat, but I wanted you to know I understand how you feel.”

  The tears were coming faster now, and Tonya wanted to moan out loud as the pain welled up in her chest. “But what do I do now Mama? How do I get over it?”

  Her mother wrapped her arms around her in a close embrace. She kissed the top of Tonya’s head then said in a choked whisper, “You don’t get over it, baby. It gets better and you go on, but you don’t get over it.”

  Wondering where she would find the strength to go on or even if it was worth it, Tonya closed her eyes and let the grief flow over her. With every fiber of her being, she hoped her mother was right. Surely something that hurt this badly would eventually kill her.

  * * * * *

  “So what do you plan to tell your public?” Cecilia, her publicist asked.