by Fiona Quinn
I shouldn’t compare grief. That’s what Avril tells me. She should know; she’s got that Harvard psychiatry degree.
But I still do.
Maybe I couldn’t shake the terror and nightmares about Angel because I didn’t have with him what I had with my parents. I didn’t have time. I didn’t have a well of memories to draw from. I barely had anything at all except that three weeks when I felt the relief of finding a lost part of me. Like I was a piece of a broken dish, and I’d been glued back together the way I belonged.
Avril has some ideas about that. She didn’t want to detract from my time with Angel, but she wanted me to consider the psychological stress I was under. My mentor, Spyder McGraw, suddenly went off on an assignment. My mom died right after. A few months further along, my home, my belongings, my community was destroyed. And there was Angel. Avril wanted me to consider that the draw and pull I felt might have been influenced by these other tragedies.
Avril wasn’t there. Didn’t feel what I felt when I saw Angel that first time.
I got her point. She thought the grief I felt over Angel was the compilation of all my grieves stitched together into a quilt of loss.
That Angel was the vessel in which I stored all my pain.
Maybe.
“…saying?” Striker asked.
“Sorry, my mind drifted. What was that?”
“What is Avril saying?”
I didn’t want to tell him what she was saying. I didn’t like what she was saying.
He waited patiently.
“She sees a correlate between our setting a wedding date and the onset of this new spate of nightmares.”
He nodded.
“She thinks that our planning our wedding is percolating old fears.”
His thumb brushed back and forth over my hand, a gesture he used to soothe me and help me feel supported. “What do you think?”
“That doesn’t feel right to me. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. We’ve been engaged for a year now. It’s not like we’re rushing into anything. We’re living together. We’re working together. You’ve been off grid on missions. Why would our setting a June wedding date percolate my fears?”
“Something to do with bringing our marriage into focus?” He reached up and combed my hair from my face and tucked the strand behind my ear. “Perhaps when we were engaged, it was a commitment that you felt comfortable with and now that there’s a date for the wedding and we’re letting your Kitchen Grandmothers know so we can fly them in… There are probably a lot emotions mixed with seeing them, joy along with grief of when you lost your community as your apartment complex burned to the ground. You keep yelling about the flames. Inferno. Hell. That you’re burning up. So that’s one thing. The other is that you call out that you need to save Angel. The apartment building was exploded by Frith and Wilson at the behest of Indigo. I hope you don’t feel guilty for the actions of someone else. Actions that you knew nothing about and couldn’t have stopped.”
I pursed my lips. “I have a plan that might help me. It’s unconventional. But nothing else seems to be working.”
He canted his head. “Is this a secret?”
“Not really. I’m going to talk to Miriam to see if she has any psychic techniques, and I’m going to talk to General Elliot about going to see the Galaxy operatives. I don’t have permission, so I don’t know if that will work out.”
“If you think it’ll help, you absolutely should do that. Maybe you need more time before the wedding? There’s no pressure from my end, Chica.” He caught my chin, so I’d look him in the eyes. “Believe me, I only want you happy. I don’t need an officiant standing in front of me pronouncing anything. I don’t need a piece of paper from the government. My commitment to you is forged of stronger things.”
“I know.” I leaned forward, laying my head on his chest, my hands on his shoulders. “Mine too.”
He wrapped his hands around mine. His voice was soft when he said, “I’m going to bring up something that I’m going to admit scares me.”
I brought my head up. Nothing scared Striker.
“I thought maybe going to the funeral for Tony Branson might have been a trigger.” His fear sent a shadow across his moss green eyes.
“Tragic.” I frowned. “Heart wrenching. His daughter. His wife. Watching them at his funeral.” I opened my mouth and let out a long sigh. “They lost so much when he decided he couldn’t anymore.” I frowned and looked into the tree line finding solace. “When his little girls, Riley and Charlotte, were overwhelmed in the church and I brought them to my house—Riley looks so much like her dad, her mom would see Tony in her face every day. In that moment, I wished I had Angel’s baby so he could live on. But then I thought about Riley and Charlotte both growing up without their dad. And I think about how Indigo targeted me. What might he have done to my child?” I turned and leaned back against Striker.
“That’s an interesting thing to say.” He wrapped and arm around me and combed his fingers through my hair. “We’ve talked about children and building a family, but that was something that would happen years down the line.” He kissed the top of my head and stopped to breathe me in. “Have you been thinking about becoming a mom? Are you worried our jobs might endanger our children?”
“It’s something to weigh when we get to a point where we think it’s the right time. I’ll be twenty-three when we’re married. To be honest, I don’t feel a compulsion to pop out babies. I was thinking that might be part of my life when we’re older. Now, since we’re talking truths to each other.”
“As we always should.”
“Yes, always,” I repeated. It was a vow we made to each other when we decided to marry. At least what truths we could share without breaking security protocol. “You brought up Tony’s funeral. I think you’re afraid to come home some day and find that, like Tony, I’ve decided I can’t anymore and have committed suicide.”
“It’s a fair fear to have. You have PTSD and suicide is a distinct possibility.”
“It is.” I felt the energy run through Striker’s body like a whip of electricity. “But I’ve never given it a single thought. I’ve never imagined how I would do it, when I would do it, if I would do it. It’s not part of what’s going on for me. Though I will tell you, I signed a contract with Avril that stipulates that I must tell her if I ever did start thinking in that direction. Or if I ever thought that I was in too much pain to keep going.”
He shifted around to sit me up and turned me to face him. “Why did she have you do that?”
“It’s her normal protocol with people with brain trauma or PTSD.” I gave a little shrug. I didn’t want him to make a big deal about it. “I could sign the same contract with you. The ‘do no self-harm until I make the call’ contract.”
I tipped back and angled my chin up to watch his face. The muscles in his jaw tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened, like he was chewing on the thought. He was working hard at his stoic mask.
“How afraid are you when you go away on a mission that I’ll hurt myself while you’re gone. Be truthful.”
“I’m terrified,” he said as an exhale.
“Because of something specific about me or because of the friends and colleagues that you’ve lost?”
“Both. I know too many strong men and women who just couldn’t anymore.”
“I’m a distraction.”
“Since the moment I walked into your hospital room to take you to the safe house, yes.”
“One that takes your mind off your work? Because Striker, you know that puts you and our team in danger. I can’t have that.” I shook my index finger at him. “I won’t have that.”
“There’s nothing you can do about the way I feel.”
“Except to get better so you aren’t worried.” My finger was held up in the air like a weapon I was brandishing.
“Okay, stop.” He wrapped his hand around my finger and put my palm over his heart. “You can’t get better because you want to. This
isn’t a wish-it-away condition any more than cancer or heart disease. You’re doing what you can.”
I swallowed. What he was saying was true. But I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to be strong enough that I could conquer my brain. But medical science says that’s not how this worked.
“I have boxes,” Striker said. “You know that. That’s how my brain works. When I’m on task that’s all I see, hear, or think.”
“But when you have down time?”
“Then I love you and worry.”
“I’m so sorry.” Tears glazed my vision.
He used his fingers to tip my head back. “Go to Puerto Rico. Hug Abuela Rosa.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Let’s keep talking. I know you don’t want to burden me, so you keep this stuff for Avril.” He stood, taking hold of my hand as we started back toward the path. “But I want to be the one you turn to. I want to understand what you’re going through and support you.”
And I just wanted some peace.
Chapter Eighteen
Striker went to fill out reports on the Princess of Monaco and to work with the team on their security research for the Poland trip.
I went to the Puzzle room to check in with Sophia. She’d sent me a text to call her.
I looked into the computer camera. “Hey there. Thanks for taking the video call. How are the boys this morning?”
“Rowdy. They woke up buzzing with energy. Their poor nursery school teachers.” She curled up on her desk chair, one foot on the seat, one tucked under her hip. “I made some calls for you last night. We’re going to have to wait while they work their ways to the right ears. I was very circumspect. You don’t need to worry. I was just asking for connections in the area.”
“Thank you.” I pulled my hair up off my neck, quickly securing it with a ponytail holder. I’d already kicked off my shoes and was barefoot beneath my desk. I was in thinking mode. “I was reading some articles last night looking for success stories to see how they found their missing people,” I said.
“I bet you didn’t find any success stories.”
“No. I found some ISIS wives from Europe and the States who are in refugee camps who want to come home. There were also some articles about the children of the ISIS fighters being stateless.”
“That might help you to be able to get the kids home without as much red tape.”
“I came up with a search possibility, I’m just going to throw it out to you and see what your take on it is.”
“Okay,” Sophia said.
“There was an Australian nurse that was captured. There are people who say they saw this woman over the years. Every time she’s been spotted, it’s been in connection with a hospital or a clinic. And then I thought, the woman that I’m looking for has a specialty in saving lands from desertification. I looked up the processes that are effective in the Middle East, and I saw that there are good results with something called ‘permaculture.’ When I look at the footprint of a small permaculture area, it seems to be distinctive.”
“It is, though, I don’t remember ever seeing it in my satellite images.” Tipping her head, she added, “I also wasn’t looking for them.”
“I would imagine that if Kaylie were somewhere for a period of time—not nomadic—that she might set up these systems as a way to survive by procuring food, keeping herself busy, even proving her worth in case her life was threatened.”
“Agreed.” Sophia turned her head as she scribbled on her pad. “It’s what I’d do. When I get overwhelmed, I try to make at least one thing visibly better. It helps.” She laid down her pen and smiled into the camera. “I’ll look up the schematics and give it to the computer to learn. I imagine that I’ll need all the variants along a continuum from newly dug or constructed to a permaculture area that’s been in existence for many years.” She picked up an earthenware mug that was probably filled with her ubiquitous chai.
“As many as seven years.”
Sophia focused on the wall and blinked as she had her private thoughts. “Seven is a long time,” she said under her breath.
“Agreed.”
She took a sip from her mug and set it down. “Last night on the border of Iraq and Syria, the ISIS militants publicly executed nineteen young Yazidi women. They were teenagers put into iron cages and burned to death. Their crime was that after they were taken as slaves, these girls refused to have sex with the ISIS fighters.”
“Horrific.” It was actually so far from my understanding of how humans should treat each other that I couldn’t perceive that as real. Even having experienced inhuman behavior, I still couldn’t imagine anyone setting me on fire.
“I have so much compassion for Kaylie and what she must have gone through to stay alive. Sometimes not fighting leaves you alive to fight another day. I can’t imagine the thoughts those girls must have had. The decision making. Last night, when I was talking to my colleague, and they were telling me the story of the girls, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be thrown into a cage and lit on fire.”
“Don’t do that,” I warned. “Don’t go there with your brain.”
“Knowing what I know. Seeing what I see…” she said. “I’ll admit the plight of those girls lit my night with terror. Brian said he was going to stay here every night he’s not on duty, so I can take the sleep meds. He’s afraid that my work is triggering my PTSD. He worries about me having another seizure. What Brian doesn’t fully understand is that I have a drive to help these people in every possible way I can help them. Things would be worse for me if I tried to stop.” She picked up her mug and sipped again. “It’s like I was just saying about making one small thing better. One tiny piece of progress. I’m hoping that I can get you something that helps Kaylie. It’ll do both you and me a lot of good beyond what it does for her and her family. It’s a kind of hope.”
Melody Foley had talked about hope and how much it hurt. While I would do everything in my power to help Kaylie, I wasn’t sure I should add hope to that mix.
I sat quietly to give Sophia time to decide how she wanted our conversation to go.
“In talking to my colleagues, trying to figure out what might have happened in Nigeria that would land Kaylie in Syria, I thought of one person in particular. This is a man who works in finances. He sees the transactions of men selling women. He told me that the Boko Haram leader in Nigeria swore an oath of allegiance to ISIS. The oath said they would support ISIS in times of difficulty and prosperity.”
“I read that. It was about the same time frame that Kaylie disappeared.”
“When you mentioned the permaculture food cultivation, I’m reminded of a story a colleague told me a long time ago. It could be significant.”
“Can I tape this?” I reached toward the button.
“Yes, sure. Ready?”
“With your permission Dr. Sophia Abadi, I am making an audio-only recording of the story you heard from an unnamed colleague.”
“You have my permission. Let me look at the notes I wrote down last night. The notes are about the time period Kaylie was in Nigeria, but they have a bearing on my story.” She reached out and tapped her keyboard. Her eyes raced back and forth across the screen as she read to herself.
“This information came from my discussion with the financier. He’s asking some quiet questions to see if he has resources in the area where Kaylie’s baby was last identified.” She reached up and scratched the front of her thick black hair. Her eyes shifted their focus from the camera to reading the screen. “I guess I’ll get to this in a second.” She leaned forward and her face filled my screen. “When you mentioned permaculture, this story came back to me. A colleague of my father’s was visiting the United States a few years ago, and I went to his hotel for dinner. They were from northern Iraq. His wife was raving about a tomato she once ate. She said that she’d never had such a delicious tomato before or after. It was a beautiful jewel of a tomato. The skin was perfectly ruby red and warm from the sun. When she bit into it, the juices squirted
from her mouth and dripped down her chin. She remembered the taste and how delighted she was. She said the tomato came from an unusual garden, one the wife had never seen before. Rock walls, deep ditches between the trees, leafy awnings to protect the plants. She wanted her husband to construct such and oasis for her.”
“Do you remember who told you this story? Can we call them for more information?”
“Sadly, he and his family were killed by ISIS. I can tell you what I remember. Listening to his wife’s delight in this tomato gave me a very clear image, and there too was the African connection which I rarely deal with.”
She bit her upper lip. “Back to the history part. In Nigeria. Polygamy was not recognized as a civil marriage up until 2000. In southern Nigeria, it’s not recognized, but in many of the northern states, they’ve voted to follow Sharia law. Under this law, a man can take as many as four wives as long as he treats them equally. He can also have a fifth wife to whom he’s not married and whom he does not have to treat equally. These are his slaves. My colleague, the one who is in finance, said that the government officials wished for fifth-wives.”
“Plural?”
“A fifth wife is merely the term to call your slave, you can have as many fifth wives as you’d like.”
“Understood.” I leaned forward in anticipation.
“That’s the background for this next part of the tomato story. My colleague’s wife sought out the woman who had raised such a luscious tomato. She was a fifth-wife in that household.” Sophia stopped talking for a moment to take a sip of her drink, and leaned back in her chair, cradling the mug against her. “The story goes like this, the government official who wanted fifth-wives sent out a team to gather women from the countryside. Men to work the fields and women to serve him in his home. The team followed his orders, they found a group of people, captured them and drove them, in the back of two trucks, to the border of Zamifara, Nigeria and Niger. These trucks were ambushed by men in uniform.”