by Teresa Hill
Her father had invited the man's family to dinner in an attempt to be normal when nothing was, because Amanda barely left the house, saw anyone or spoke to anyone. Amanda hadn't wanted to have dinner with strangers, but she'd forced herself and found the McRaes to be nice, kind people. Emma McRae had acted refreshingly normal with Amanda, something few people could manage since her story—of being caught in the uprising in Buhkai—had been big news in the U.S.
Most people stared, like she might break apart at any moment.
But a woman who could look Amanda in the eye, smile and make normal conversation over dinner? That was a woman Amanda wanted to know, and maybe one she wanted for a therapist.
So, she claimed she wanted to take a drive and soon found herself on the quiet streets of downtown Baxter, Ohio, and soon after that, in Emma's comfortable office, with a fire in the fireplace and big, comfy, overstuffed chairs.
"So, you said you were thinking about finding a new therapist?" Emma asked.
Amanda nodded.
"What can I tell you, to help you decide whether you might be comfortable working with me? Although first, I should tell you that it seems like Sam and your father have become friends."
"I know. I'm glad he has someone to talk to. Is that a problem?"
"Not to me. I won't talk about the things we discuss with anyone. But there may be things your father tells Sam, things Sam might mention in front of me that I wouldn't otherwise know, because of their friendship. And of course, there's Will. He's pretty closed-mouthed about everything, but since he's home now and practically a part of the family—"
"Wait," Amanda said. "Who's Will?"
Emma fell silent for a moment, then said, "There are things you don't remember about being rescued?"
Amanda nodded. "Or about what happened in the school. Who's Will?"
"Uhh... Tell me what you do remember."
"I have flashes of images and sounds, and I have these fears...." Her voice broke. "It's like I remember all of the fear, but I don't remember exactly what caused it, and I keep trying to piece it all together in my head, but I can't. It's like the memories are in my mind somewhere, but I can't get to that part of my brain. Does that make any sense?"
"It does. You had a head injury?" Emma looked at the small patch of very short hair, which had been shaved in the hospital, and maybe the scar, sometimes covered up by her long hair, sometimes not.
"Yes. The neurosurgeon said it's not uncommon to have short-term memory loss of events from just before to soon after an injury like that, for physical reasons. My first therapist said the same thing is possible for psychological reasons."
"That's right. It's the brain's way of protecting us from memories that are particularly traumatic, possibly too painful for us to process."
"No one's sure which is the cause in my case."
"Well, if it's psychological, it's exactly what you said. The memories are still there, but it's like they're locked away from you. I know it doesn't seem possible that information could be inside your own head, and you not know it, but it happens."
"But the memories come back?"
"Possibly, with time. I've worked with people who had repressed memories. I don't know what, if anything you might have heard about my own background, but I've dealt with some... not repressed memories, but repressed emotions and fears of my own. And I've seen people I love deal with them, too. Which I tell you only in case it helps you feel more comfortable with me."
"It does. Thank you." Amanda felt hopeful for the first time in a long time. Maybe Emma did truly understand. "The therapist my father chose for me—and I feel like an idiot saying that, but I was in no shape to find one myself at that point—feels strongly that I should wait and let the memories come back on their own."
"I can't say I disagree with that," Emma said, "but I know it can also be frustrating and frightening."
"You do understand." It was such a relief. "I feel like it's not really over because I don't know what happened, that I have things I need to deal with that I don't even know about yet. Don't you think I should know?"
"I'm not sure," Emma said. "I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear, but I'd need some time with you before I made a decision about that."
Amanda sighed. "That's fair. Frustrating, but fair. I've said that to the therapist I'm seeing now, and I don't think she hears me. And I don't feel like I'm getting better as fast as I should. I felt so comfortable with you at dinner. Thank you for that, for not acting weird around me and for not staring. I hate that. Not that I go out often since... it happened."
Emma nodded. "How long has it been? Six weeks?"
"Seven."
"It's really not that long, although I'm sure it feels much longer. Recovery is a process. It takes time, Amanda. I can't tell you exactly how much time. No one can. But I don't want you to have unrealistic expectations, either, that if you'd had a different therapist, you might have made more progress by now."
Amanda almost started to cry. The feeling just came over her at times. One minute she was fine, and the next, she was sobbing. Like her tears were on a hair-trigger now, which her doctor said was also normal.
"I just... have to feel better," Amanda said. "I have to. I can't stay in this place, feeling this bad. I feel so out of control."
"I know. I promise, I do," Emma said with a kind, understanding smile. "What else can I tell you? What else do you want to tell me?"
"I want to tell you everything," Amanda said. "I like you. I want to work with you. Will you work with me?"
"Yes, I will."
"Thank you." Amanda felt so much better. She'd made a decision. She wasn't helpless after all. Surely that was progress. "Oh, you never told me... Who's Will?"
Chapter 2
Baxter, Ohio
January 16th
Sam opened the front door to the big Victorian he and Rachel called home. James Warren stood there, alone in the dark, his expression bleak.
"Sorry about this, but I need a favor. A big one."
"Your daughter?" Sam asked.
James nodded grimly.
"Come on in."
In the kitchen at the back of the house, Sam quickly started a pot of coffee, then turned back to the ambassador. "What happened?"
"See for yourself." Warren handed Sam a tablet computer.
A video popped up and started to play. Sam saw blurry, shaky images of armed men storming a building.
"That's the school where my daughter teaches."
God. Sam wasn't sure he'd be able to walk or talk if one of his daughters was in a situation like that. "I'm so sorry, James. Do you have any news about her?"
"Not yet. This just happened."
Sam kept watching. Kids came running out here and there. Little terrified-looking kids. A few adults. No one who looked like a young American woman.
"How old is she?"
"Twenty-six. She has long, blonde hair, but I made her dye it darker so she wouldn't stand out so much over there. I don't see her in this video. I've studied every angle, believe me."
"Do you know she was at the school when this happened?"
"Normally, she would be at that time. Classes start at eight. She gets there at about seven-forty. This happened at eight-twelve. They're eight hours ahead of us, so two hours and eighteen minutes ago."
"Any footage from other exit points?"
"None that I've found yet. Until I got here, I've been living in front of Al Jazeera. It airs more news about the region than anybody."
"Have the men who stormed the building said what they want?"
"No."
"You think this is part of the uprising? Or something else?"
"No way to know, but a lot of the country's current leaders send their kids there. Probably, the best that I can hope for is that she's a hostage. And that they haven't figured out she's an American or a former American ambassador's daughter. It would make her even more of a target."
"Yes, it would," Sam said. "But
the U.S. government won't just leave your daughter there, right? We go in and get Americans out when things get dangerous in other countries."
"Maybe. It depends on a lot of factors. I've been in an embassy when things go bad, Sam. It takes time for the U.S. to decide what to do, even longer to execute a plan."
"Oh."
"Plus, there's no telling what Buhkai will do. If whoever's in charge now decides to go in with his own soldiers to try to end this, I don't even want to think about how badly that could go."
"Of course. You want me to call Will?"
James nodded. "He's already there. The longer they have Amanda—"
"I understand."
"Who's he with, Sam? I need to know."
"He's a Master Chief Petty Officer with the SEAL teams, last he said. I don't even know how many times he's been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, plus places he can't tell me about."
"Good. That's what I need. Someone with that kind of experience. Have you heard anything from him since we talked?"
"No. Not for lack of trying. But I'll try again. Right now."
* * *
Baxter, Ohio
Seven weeks later
"Will is..." Emma hesitated. "Sam and Rachel would say he's part of the family, but Will wouldn't."
"My father told me Sam knew someone in the military who helped rescue me. That was Will?"
Emma looked very uncomfortable, but finally said, "I won't lie to you, Amanda. Yes, that was Will."
"And he's here? In town? Now?"
"He is," Emma admitted.
She had put on what Amanda considered that serious-therapist-face for the first time. "And you're not going to tell me his last name or how to find him, are you?"
"Not after spending less than an hour with you."
"But he's here, and he should know a lot of what happened to me. Doesn't he?"
"I don't know. He doesn't talk about his missions. Most of the time Sam and Rachel don't even know where he is."
"Missions? So, he's a soldier?"
"Sailor, he'd tell you. He's Navy. I suspect much of what he does is classified. He's that closed-mouth about it. I wouldn't have known he was involved in your rescue if Sam and Rachel hadn't been so worried about him. They were as glued to the TV as your father was, waiting for news together."
"So, Will was actually there in Buhkai?"
"Yes, I remember Sam saying they'd gotten word that you and Will were safely out of Buhkai airspace. So, I assume he was either on the ground or in a plane. Or a helicopter that got you out of there."
Amanda closed her eyes. Did she remember flying? The sensation of speeding forward and rising smoothly like she was in a plane? Or the more direct, unsteady sensation of being in a helicopter? It always seemed to her like they had such a precarious hold on staying in the air.
Up.
They'd gone almost straight up, she thought, seeming to remember the noise. Helicopters were so loud.
And hands... She felt hands all over her, scaring her...
She opened her eyes, rattled and unable to hide it.
"And that's why we talk about potential conflicts of interest," Emma said. "All that about Will, even mentioning his name? That's not something another therapist would have known."
"I know. I'm sorry. I didn't expect anything like this from you. But I want to talk to him. Will you help me do that? One day?"
"Maybe. We have a lot to discuss first."
They agreed on an appointment in two days, and Amanda felt like she'd actually accomplished something already, like Emma was going to help her. Like one day, Amanda might actually feel normal again.
It was the first time she'd believed that since she'd woken up in a hospital in Germany with her father at her side, looking like he'd aged a decade. Just the sight of him had scared her half to death. Most everything had been scary and confusing ever since.
But today, she felt better.
Today, she had hope.
She also had a name of someone who was in Buhkai with her.
Will.
* * *
Buhkai, Africa
January 16th
The connection crackled with all the distance between them, but Will thought Sam said, "Are you still in Buhkai?"
What the hell?
"Yes."
"Good. I need a favor. A big one—"
"Wait, are you guys okay? Rachel? Emma? Zach? Grace? Emma's kids?"
"Yeah. Sorry—"
"Jesus, Sam. You said there was some kind of emergency." And then Will was embarrassed, thinking of what he sounded like, not at all the cool, calm special operative that he was. What the hell was the matter with him?
"I'm sorry. I should have made it clear that everybody in the family's okay. But I've got a friend whose daughter is probably one of the hostages in the school in Buhkai—"
"What?"
"One of the rebel groups stormed a school this morning in the capitol of Buhkai. You don't know anything about that?"
"I'm not in the capitol. I'm out in the sticks, although I bet that's why some of the guys with me took off a few minutes ago. Go ahead. Tell me."
"I'm putting you on speaker. The man with me is former U.S. ambassador James Warren."
A former U.S. ambassador's daughter had been taken hostage in a school in Buhkai?
Jesus Christ, this was bad.
* * *
Baxter, Ohio
Seven weeks later
Amanda was obsessed with finding him. Will.
Someone here in town had been in Buhkai with her and could tell her so much of what she couldn't remember.
At least, she hoped he could. Someone had to. It was driving her crazy.
All she knew about him was his first name, that he was somehow connected to the McRaes, and that he was in the Navy, Special Ops, she'd think, because her rescue was the kind of mission they handled. Thankfully, Baxter had only about ten thousand people.
It became a quest for her.
Find Will.
He didn't make it easy. She didn't expect any Special Ops guy to have a Facebook page or appear on any social media, but it was fast and easy to check, so she did. Will, William, Bill, Billy, plus Baxter, Ohio, plus Navy SEAL. No hits on those searches.
She backed up to what she knew about the McRaes from the time her father had invited them to dinner.
Sam and his brother, Rye, who was also Sam's adopted daughter Emma's husband, owned a construction company that specialized in renovating older homes. Rachel was a well-known stained-glass artist whose work often appeared in the Victorians the construction company renovated.
Sam and Rachel's son, Zach, was a lawyer and activist working to end the death penalty for juveniles, and his wife, Julie, handled public relations for the Chamber of Commerce.
She hadn't yet met their youngest daughter, Grace, also an artist, who was in France with her French-American artist husband, whose father had died recently.
In a town as small as Baxter, it wasn't hard to find people who knew the family. She forced herself out onto the streets, browsed in downtown shops and had lunch at the old-fashioned diner on Main. Lingering over coffee, she chatted up the waitresses, saying she knew the McRaes, and then steering the conversation to Will. What was he doing these days? She'd heard he was back in town.
One problem... People stared, tried to figure out how they knew her. Her face had been plastered all over the news for a while. Some were curious. Some obviously felt sorry for her. Some were horrified by what had happened to her.
She really didn't need that. One afternoon, she spotted a hair salon, walked in and told the stylist she was sick of her hair, of the length, the style, the dark color she had used at her father's urging before she went to Buhkai.
And that visit turned out to be what finally got her to Will. The hairdresser knew where he was.
Bryn said cryptically that you were supposed to call first to get the address, because someone had broken in. But she had driven a client
there once, so she knew where the shelter was. Bryn added that Will would understand, because of his mother, and that it was good that Amanda was getting help.
She thought Amanda was a battered woman.
An understandable mistake, given the way Amanda still moved gingerly because of her sore ribs and had a patch of really short hair where her head had been shaved so the neurosurgeon could drill holes in her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. She was so nervous about actually finding Will that it might well have looked like fear to Bryn.
But what would a soldier be doing at a battered women's shelter?
She was going to find out.
Within minutes of leaving the salon, Amanda was parked on a pretty, tree-lined street of big houses in what seemed like a perfectly normal neighborhood.
Amanda stared at her house for a while. She did her breathing exercises to calm down a bit, gave herself a long pep talk, and then said a few ugly words to herself about how cowardly she had become—all to get herself out of the car.
Her heart was racing, but that wasn't unusual these days. She felt hot all over, and her skin went tingly in a bad way. It was like she wasn't completely in charge of her body. It wouldn't do what she asked it to do—walk, at the moment—and there was some kind of disconnection between her mind and the rest of her.
Panic and a bit of dissociation, Emma called it.
No doubt, there'd been a point recently when she really hadn't wanted to be in her own body. But she could fight through that, too.
She climbed the four porch steps and rang the bell.
No one answered, and she thought the world was playing some kind of trick on her, to have brought her all this way, only to have this man not be here or not be willing to speak to her. And yes, she knew how ridiculous that sounded, but the world had really been messing with her lately.
Then the big, solid front door swung open, and there he was.
All the breath went out of her body. She took one look at him—through the thin mesh and sturdy bars of the screen door still between them—and then had to look down at the floor. Her feelings were so intense, just seeing him was too much at first.