by Penny Reid
It was after midnight when I pulled into Fiona’s dorm parking lot. Using the phone outside the lobby, I picked up the receiver and dialed her room number. Before it connected, one of the girls from her floor recognized me from my visit last week and permitted me entrance to the building.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the elevator with her to the fourth floor.
“No problem,” she said, sounding dazed. I studied her for a long moment. She’d been crying. Crying and walking around in a daze struck me as an appropriate response to the horrors of the day.
Appropriate, but completely unhelpful.
I scowled at her back as we exited the lift and I stepped quickly to Fiona’s dorm room.
As the resident advisor (RA), she wasn’t required to share a room or a suite. But the RA’s quarters were located in the center of the floor. She was afforded very little privacy. I preferred her visits to Houston, where we could be completely alone, where she wasn’t frequently sought out by college co-eds for her conversation and sage advice. The constant interruptions grated. I wanted her—time, attention, and focus—for myself.
I rapped quickly on her door, then tried the handle. It was unlocked. I frowned, irritated with her lack of security, but then realized why she’d left it open as soon as I peeked inside.
Girls. Crying. Everywhere.
Aghast, I stared at the sad figures. They were clustered on her couch, huddled by the hallway, floundering on the floor. And Fiona was moving from group to group, pouring tea. I watched her for a long moment, listened as she served wise words of consolation and encouragement.
“The best course of action is to channel these feelings into something constructive,” she was saying, smoothing her arm down the shoulder of a young blonde woman. “Be sad. Be angry. But don’t be silent. Find ways to help, seek out opportunities to make a difference. Otherwise all this emotion will yield only helplessness.”
“It’s such a senseless tragedy,” someone said with an achingly hollow voice.
Fiona frowned thoughtfully, having not yet discovered my intrusion. “It was sensible to someone. It was planned and executed with meticulous and cold efficiency. Allowing our emotions to dictate our response is understandable, but unwise. We should be looking for ways to solve the problem of terrorist cells, not give them more hate-fuel for their fire.”
She was the voice of passionate reason in a storm of muddled misunderstanding. An optimist realist.
God Almighty, I loved this woman.
“Fe,” I called, watching her start, her wide eyes swinging to mine.
She blinked, momentarily baffled.
And then she smiled for the barest of seconds.
And then her face crumpled.
“Oh, Greg . . .” The words were unsteady and her chin wobbled. Her usually bright eyes were dim, rimmed with anxiety, worry, and fear.
My stomach dropped and I saw what I’d been blind to just moments prior. Fiona was being brave for these young girls, proving herself to be a source of strength. She’d likely been handing out advice, offering a strong shoulder to cry upon, all day.
I crossed to her, stepping over the legs littering my path, and opened my arms. “Come here.”
She nodded, not allowing a single tear to fall, and placed the teapot on a nearby table as she moved to me. I seized her in my arms, cursing when I felt her tremble.
“What are you doing here?” Her tone was both strained and relieved.
“I’ve come to marry you,” I announced, more loudly than was strictly necessary. The space fell into a perplexed silence, followed by a low hum of startled excitement. I took the opportunity to guide her out of the room and into the hallway.
Once there, I whispered, “The world might be ending. As such I’m here to rescue you and worship your body.”
I felt her huff a laugh just before she buried her face against my chest. I pressed my back against the hallway wall and gathered her against me once more.
“I needed you today.” She sniffled. Her hands gripped fistfuls of my shirt and her voice was muffled.
“I needed you, too.” I tilted my head backward and waited until she lifted her eyes to mine. “Marry me. Tonight. Or early tomorrow at the latest. We’ll honeymoon here, in Iowa. I’ll find the most romantic bomb shelter in the state.”
“Yes!” She smiled up at me, beaming. “Yes, yes, yes! That sounds wonderful.”
“We’ll dine on sardine sandwiches and brain soup.”
She laughed again, though it also resembled a sob. “Yes, okay. Finally.”
“Good.” I kissed her nose, then rubbed mine against it. “But first we must get rid of these hangers-on. Do you want me to pull a fire alarm?”
“No.” She sighed and frowned, as though suddenly remembering the thirty or more young girls in her room. “No. Instead I need you to help me. Help me help them.”
Fiona’s exquisite eyes, abounding with faith and love and hope—all for me—captivated and subdued my selfish instincts. I acquiesced, because she needed me. So we stayed and helped, talking of thoughts and feelings until the wee hours of the morning. Accomplishing with philosophy what could not be readily accomplished through making and doing.
And the next day, accompanied by thirty or so hastily dressed bridesmaids and no groomsmen, we were married at city hall.
CHAPTER 13
S: Looking forward to having a lovely beer with my lady tonight.
R: You mean, you look forward to having a beer with your lovely lady, not the other way around.
S: I mean, I’m looking forward to having a mediocre beer with my beautiful lovely woman because essentially everything else is bang average in comparison to you.
.
-Somerled and Rosie
Email Exchange
Brisbane, Australia
Dating 18 months
~Present Day~
*Fiona*
We fit on the cot, but just barely.
When I awoke I was sprawled over his body, my head over his heart, his fingers playing in my still-damp hair and clutching my lower back.
“Go back to sleep.” His voice was alert, like he hadn’t yet rested. “It’s only one.”
I squinted until the dim room came into focus. He’d turned off the overhead lights save one. “You need to sleep, too. Let me take a shift.”
“You would deprive me the joy of watching you sleep?”
I squeezed him and was about to tell him he was sweet.
But then he said, “You know that’s why I married you, right?”
“So you could watch me sleep?”
“Basically. Being married is the only time I can say or do that sort of stuff and not sound like a stalker.”
“You still sound like a stalker.”
His chest shook with a rumbly laugh and his fingers danced over my neck. “Good. Glad I haven’t lost my touch.”
I shifted to his other side and bent my knee, folding my hands over his chest and peering up at him. “Since you’re up, and I’m up—”
He smirked, lifting a single eyebrow and saying suggestively, “Gooooo on.”
I grinned and opened my mouth to respond, but he interrupted me again.
“Please tell me you want to knit an afghan. I’ve been dying to try out my new set of sharp Hiya circulars.”
I was astonished he’d gleaned enough about knitting terminology to say, set of sharp Hiya circulars; nevertheless, I ignored this surprising information and pressed forward. “No. I want you to tell me what happened after you drugged me.”
He grimaced, and I felt his abdominal muscles tighten, like he felt the words on a visceral level. “Do you have to say it like that? It sounds so untoward.”
“You did drug me, Greg.”
“I know. But can’t we frame it differently? How about we say I poked you?”
“That makes it sound like we had sex.”
“We did have sex.” I heard the smug smile in his voice.
“You know what I mean.
And I’m not going to use the word poke for both drugging and sex. You can see why that wouldn’t be a good idea. I don’t want to request a poke and have you spike my coffee with Ketamine, misunderstanding the request.”
“Fine. But for the record, I would always assume you meant sex.”
“Getting back to the original question, what happened after you drugged me?”
“First you need to know what happened when we were captured.”
“Okay, start there.”
Greg’s chest rose and fell with an expansive breath and his hand smoothed down the length of my back, settling possessively on my backside.
His eyes grew unfocused as he recalled the memory. “They swarmed the boat, boarded, and immediately cuffed our hands and feet, duct-taped our legs together and arms to our sides. They were more concerned about us escaping than about us knowing where we were going. I was propped up in a seat and was able to look out the window when they transported us. I mentally mapped the route.”
“I thought you had a bag over your head?”
“They didn’t put that on until they suspected I was a US citizen. Regardless, I saw the route they took and knew where we were, more or less.”
“So you knew which direction to take when you left the building?”
“Yes, with the help of your guidance. I left out the east door—like you recommended—but I didn’t take the trail. I walked south.”
Greg went on to explain that my suspicion had been correct; the structure where they’d been held had been an illegal oil refinery. He’d recognized the need to find and follow the siphoning pipe. It would (and did) lead him to the main oil line.
“The company is supposed to keep the main products line secure, especially since it’s not buried, but siphoning offshoots aren’t unusual. Opportunists—and by opportunists I mean thieves—tap into the mainline and steal the oil. They refine it and sell it. Nautical Oil will look the other way as long as it isn’t too much, unless it cuts into their bottom line. But the problem is these siphoning taps aren’t well made, they spill oil all over the place. And these illegal refineries are even worse, wrecking local ecosystems, polluting water supplies. It’s a bloody mess.”
Greg described how the oil company maintained postings along the line, small houses where sentinels were supposed to be stationed to guard the line. But he’d discovered over the last two months that the company couldn’t keep trained personnel in these positions. The sentinels would either be bribed to look the other way, or be terrorized by local thugs until they left.
He’d carried me three miles until he’d found one of the postings. Then he’d broken into the house.
“It wasn’t abandoned. The sentinel inside—a man, about my age—was asleep.”
“What did you do?” My stomach clenched as I braced for bad news. I’d been so careful to subdue the guards rather than leave a body count.
I’d discovered years ago the problem with marrying a Marine—or a former Marine—was that his answer to everything was usually brutal focus, and single-minded, comprehensive annihilation.
Is that a spider? Shoot it.
Your phone isn’t working? Smash it with a sledgehammer.
Your mother is making you crazy? Drop a house on her, and her little dog too.
Whatever you do, commit to the set course. Never hesitate. Never falter.
“I knocked him out with your wee dart gun, tied him up, gagged him, and stuffed him under his bed. Then I stole his clothes, food rations, and his car. But first I took a much needed shower.”
I grimaced. “I hope somebody finds him.”
“They will. The siphon line was right next to his post. He had to be working with the same greedy bastards that abducted me.”
Now I cared less whether anyone found him.
“I stuck around for an hour or so, and I . . .” He paused, glanced at me then away.
“What? What did you do?”
Greg cleared his throat. “Mostly I hoped you would wake up. Ultimately, though, I decided we couldn’t wait; we had to move. I grabbed what I could and took off, using only back roads.”
Why would the guards allow him to see the route? This detail was troubling; felt like more confirmation his captors had no plans to return him—or any of the others—alive.
He was inspecting a spot on my shoulder, rubbing his thumb back and forth; he leaned forward and kissed it. “You have a new freckle here.”
I examined my husband, my eyes narrowing on him. He appeared to be relaxed, drowsy even. Now was as good a time as any.
“We need to talk about the other hostages.”
He closed his eyes and grew rigid beneath me. “Don’t give me that look.”
“What look? Your eyes are closed, you can’t see me.”
“I feel the look. It’s the Fiona death stare of cruel disappointment.”
“I have a cruel disappointed look?”
“Yes. It’s like getting a spanking, and not the good kind.”
“We need to talk about them. They’re not safe.”
His earlier softness disappeared. “They’ll be fine.”
“What if they’re not?”
“They will be. Kidnappings are a business down here. Pirates take advantage of the European Union’s lax laws on ransoming.” He opened his eyes and shrugged. “They negotiate all the time; the pirates get paid, the hostages are released. As long as these groups can reliably make money off abducting EU citizens, and the citizens are released unharmed, they’ll keep doing it. It’s a vicious cycle.”
“Alex seemed to think that the ransom was a red herring. That they had no plans to release you even if we paid the ransom.”
Greg stewed in this new information for a long moment, looking confused. “He said that?”
“Yes. He did.”
I went on to explain Alex’s theory about the corrupt government faction and how he’d “retrieved” the information from the CIA.
Greg grew very still, a surfeit of emotions passing over his features. I could see his level of discontent rising, as was his regret.
“Bollocks.” He pulled his fingers through his hair, and then rubbed his forehead, obviously speaking and thinking in tandem, “Still, it wouldn’t have mattered. We had to leave them.”
“But why?” I pushed myself up, straddled him, and crossed my arms. “I could have gotten everyone out.”
“First of all, two of them were injured.” His gaze swept over my body and he peeled my arms from my chest. “One broke his leg when we were captured, and the other was shot in the calf two days ago while trying to escape. The bullet passed right through, but he couldn’t walk. Even if we’d tried to take them with us, we would have had to leave those two behind. But even if they’d all been mobile, we wouldn’t have made it. These guys, they’re not subtle guys. They’re used to working on a rig, not sneaking through a prison.”
I absorbed this information, sending a selfish prayer of thanks Greg hadn’t been injured, that he’d been able to walk unassisted.
“You thought it was—and pardon the expression—a run of the mill kidnapping?”
His sigh was flavored heavily with self-recrimination. “I should have known. They let us see the route. They were more concerned with us escaping than anything else. I should have known.”
I waited until he was quiet, staring into space, before stating what I hoped he was thinking. “We have to go back and get them.”
“Someone does, I agree . . .” Greg hesitated, his gaze unfocussed. His mouth curved into a grave line as he amended, “I agree, and I just hope it’s not too late.”
***
Alex messaged at 06:00 with instructions for a video chat. Ten minutes later we were looking at his and Sandra’s smiling faces.
“It’s so good to see you! I’ve bitten off all my fingernails due to worry. See?” Sandra was sitting on Alex’s lap and she showed us her nails. “I’m not usually a worrier, but you had me worried.”
“How are
Grace and Jack?” I was leaning over Greg’s shoulder, too wound up in knots to sit.
“They’re doing really well. Alex and I took them to the Natural History Museum yesterday then out for pizza. Jack ate just as much pizza as Alex. You need to enter him into a contest or something.”
“What about Quinn, Dan, and Marie? Are they out of the country yet?” Greg tugged on my hand, bringing me around him, and pulling me to his lap. He rubbed soothing circles on my back.
Alex’s smile disappeared. “Not yet.”
Sandra twisted and glanced at her husband. “Is this my cue to exit?”
His face was devoid of emotion and he shrugged. “Whatever you want to do.”
She stared at him for a beat, and then pushed to her feet. “I think I’ll hover in the background, eavesdrop and try not to freak out.”
“It’s good to see your face, Sandra.” I leaned forward, wanting another glimpse of my friend and the normalcy of home.
She bent at the waist and blew me a kiss. “You too, my beautiful friend. Please come home soon.”
I nodded, but was unable to speak. I hadn’t been prepared for the intensity of my homesickness.
As soon as Sandra faded into the background, Greg asked, “What’s going on with Quinn? Why haven’t they left yet?”
“They’ve been delayed. Some bullshit excuse about their entry visas. Immigration is claiming they applied for a tourist when they should have filled out the paperwork for a business visa.”
A spike of alarm and guilt cinched my throat. “Where are they? Have they been taken into custody?”
“No. They’re still at the resort. I think having Marie there saved Dan and Quinn a trip to detainment. The Chicago Sun has been all over her updates and her first article was picked up by the Associated Press.”
Greg and I glanced at each other and he asked the question I was thinking. “What article? What did she write?”
“She wrote an international news piece about the kidnapping, heavily implying Nautical Oil was behind it. Their shares tanked—excuse the pun—yesterday, and in the last twenty-four hours the pundits on CNN, Fox News, etcetera have picked it up. They really like that Greg is a former Marine.”