“You didn’t send it back to Dr. Omar?”
“He died when a wall, damaged in the haboob, fell on him the day after the storm.” Sophia’s laugh was paper thin. “Who said archaeology was for the faint of heart? It’s a story right out of Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
She expected Brian to laugh with her. Expected him to say something like, “You’re a scientist, surely you don’t believe that hooey written on a clay slab.” Or any of the other million arguments she had made in her head. “Have you ever heard of apophenia?” she asked.
Brian canted his head. “That’s when people find the face of Jesus on their breakfast toast.”
“Ha! Yes, that’s true. Apophenia happens when the brain makes leaps of perceptions, connections, and causations, giving meaning to unrelated phenomena. What statisticians would call a type one error, a false positive. The story in my head that describes my life—since the time I slipped the ring on my finger up until this very moment—is absurd. It only sounds more ridiculous for saying it out loud. I worked very hard on being rational until the completely irrational happened.”
“Would you tell me about that? What happened?”
“It was a stormy night when things were going very badly last fall. Lana, Nadia, and I decided to chat with my grandmothers about it. What an eye-opening conversation that was.” Sophia looked toward her curio cabinet and decided not to tell him she’d been playing with a Ouija board. She’d probably said too much as it was. “I had a lovely goblet that was an heirloom. It broke during the last thunderstorm when you were over. I know it sounds silly, but that was a real loss. The glass had come over with my ancestors when they moved from Ireland to the United States. Something about the continuity of handing it down from generation to generation felt important.”
Brian ran his finger over the design on the ring. “Did you find where this belongs? Do you know the exact location of the grave?”
“Yes, I found it while I was working on my PhD.”
“Give me those coordinates.” Though his voice was its typical soft timbre, he was using his commander tone—here’s an order, act on it.
So she did. She knew those numbers by heart, but they were well within the lines of ISIS-held territory, and there was no way for her to get the ring back. Only terrorists were in that area, and of course, she had no contacts among them.
Sophia took a bite of her egg sandwich. It was hard to swallow. She was sitting next to Brian as he, in all earnestness, was on the phone with Iniquus, giving them the location of the Syrian cave and asking them to do a search of all available resources in that area to make a delivery. Inside, Sophia felt completely, sickeningly out of control.
Brian, with the phone still pressed to his ear, followed Sophia to the door when the bell rang, and she opened it up to the police.
The neighborhood was bedlam. Local TV vans crowded in with the FBI, who were interested in Marla, and the police, who were focused on finding Mr. Rochester. Thorn said the Search and Rescue team was setting up their trailer at the community pool parking lot, and cars were pouring in filled with volunteers. Thorn had needed to pay someone who lived in a neighborhood on the other side of the subdivision to let him park in their driveway. The police were trying to dissuade the looky-loos by posting “no street parking” signs and writing tickets. Thorn had hiked his way to her house.
Another knock sounded at her door and another set of people were there to write down the timeline and ask questions.
“Yes, last time I saw Mr. Rochester he was dressed in street clothes, a pair of khakis and a green polo.”
“Yes, he had shoes on. No, I didn’t notice what kind beyond brown.”
“Yes, the trackers can come in and look at the mud he left on my couch to try to get a shoe print to follow, not a problem.”
“Yes, it was hard on Joe.”
“Yes, Joe was distraught. But no, I have absolutely zero reason to think Joe did anything to hurt his father.”
She shut the door and turned to Thorn, “Some days I wish I drank, or at least kept an emergency bottle of liquor on hand.”
She left the men in her living room as she moved to her office to catch the phone call coming in. Sophia picked up the receiver, listened, and set it back down. She moved into the kitchen and turned the fan on her stove on as she pulled her keys from her pocket and read the alphanumeric code into her cell. “All good?”
“Everything is going accordingly. We received your provenance and have included it with the shipment. Jael has new information for you, but a small window. Can you meet him at Dulles at three p.m. your time?”
“Yes, Nadia and I can do that, no problem. Where should we meet?”
“The private jet terminal. Ask the concierge for the diplomatic flight out of Turkey.”
After Red hung up, Sophia called Nadia to tell her when Jael was coming in, then took a moment to catch her up on the craziness happening in her neighborhood. “I need to call Lana and have her keep the boys a little longer. It’s mayhem here, and I can’t see this letting up for a while. The dogs are super cute, but they’re working. Keeping the boys away from them would be a fight.”
“Do you want to spend the night here with me?” Nadia asked.
“I feel like I need to be with the computers overnight. Right now, I think I’m going to go to the nursery and buy some new flowers. Once everyone’s done trouncing over my lawn, I can get them in the ground.”
“Now, why would you do that?”
“Court is coming up, and one way or the other, I’m getting the heck out of here. As soon as the judge makes his decision, I’m putting a for sale sign in the yard. It can’t look like it does now, the curb appeal says, ‘stay the heck away, this place is hell.’”
“Planting pretty flowers might be construed as false advertising.”
“Absolutely. But I’m not planning on leaving a forwarding address. They’ll never find me to press charges. I may just go live on some desolate island somewhere where my only human contact is the boys and the internet.”
“Hard to get cable service on those uninhabited islands.”
“True. I may have to reconsider that plan. Right now, though, doesn’t it sound like Nirvana?”
“Speaking of which, we have our Boiling River dates. We need to leave July 3rd. I’ve already talked to Lana, and she’s ready to keep the boys for you.”
“Your sister is a saint and my savior.”
“Yeah, she likes to polish up her halo. She thinks it’s a good look on her.”
29
Brian
Monday a.m.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nutsbe said, checking his computer screen.
Brain and Thorn were settling into their seats with coffee. Today was the day. No one was happy.
“What’ve you got going on?” Thorn asked.
“The forensics report on the trowel Brainiack brought in last night. It’s the same fingerprints as the bolts that popped Sophia’s tires.”
Brian canted his head. “I thought you said those prints didn’t ping the computer. Marla’s prints—well, Betty Campbell’s—were in the FBI database.”
“And we would have gotten a hit if these were Betty’s, but they’re not. I’m doing a side by side right now, and they’re not even close. That means that while Betty was hissing in Sophia’s ear, threatening her, and trying to run her off the road, she was not popping her tires, and didn’t dig up her garden and move it to her own house.”
Thorn leaned forward. “Sophia has two people stalking her? Could it be Mr. Rochester? Or Pierre Richards?”
Nutsbe brought up more files. “No to Mr. Rochester. Checking Richards…and that would also be a no. Any other ideas?”
“Sophia’s life is kept deliberately small. Her kids. Lana. Nadia. And we can account for Nadia’s whereabouts, and for the most part Lana’s as well,” Thorn said. “Of course, a lot of times a stalker picks up on a victim for random reasons. Though Sophia eats dehydrated food and avoids
being seen in public. That leaves her chai shop, her daycare, and her colleagues whom she accesses on line—none of whom are close enough to have done this.”
“The whole thing is damned improbable.” Brian stared at the floor between his boots, searching who and what he knew of Sophia’s life. “I would have bet good money on Betty being culpable for it all. I guess we could have her minions trying to ingratiate themselves. There are two who are frequent fliers in the Marla/Betty crazy-club, Penny and Kay. I’ve met Kay. I’ve never seen Penny. And then there’s the Sheppards across the street. But Sophia says they try to keep their heads down just like she does. She doesn’t see Janice at all, except in the window or sometimes on the porch for coffee.”
“It’s off the charts, I’ll give you that. But it’s not going to matter for much longer.” Thorn scowled. “What’s the newest on the FBI playbook, Nutsbe? Have they said what they want to do? Are they going for headlines or the long game and turning Sophia?”
“They said they’re going to see how she behaves. If she’s forthcoming and helpful they might be able to work a deal. If she lawyers up and won’t answer their questions, they’ll go for the jugular. They’ll have folks in the airport in time for the Turkish jet. They’re hoping Jael isn’t flying in on diplomatic credentials. They’d like to pick him up for questioning. They’re going to be moving on him as delicately as they can. US relations are already stressed with Turkey and Israel. No one wants to start an international brouhaha.”
Brian crossed his arms over his chest, trying hard to keep the scowl off his face. “What’s the plan once they’re in custody?”
“The FBI are bringing them here. Titus and the three of us will be in the peanut gallery. We’ll be doing the videography and feeding information into Finley’s and Andersson’s ears so they can ask the right questions, in case we know something that one of the suspects is dithering over.”
“Who’s on the arrest warrants?” Thorn asked.
“Sophia, Nadia, and Jael. The goal is to keep Sophia in their pocket. Nadia and Jael are there to give information and to have on hand just in case we missed something big. The special agents will be following the tablet on its route to the buyer. Interestingly, Gilchrest’s jet happens to have a Dulles landing scheduled for this afternoon. The FBI is assuming the Gilchrest’s are the ones making the buy. After the transfer of the tablet, the FBI will scoop up the archaeology department, and also the folks on the Gilchrest plane. I’ve been assured there is no chance the FBI will be turning assets from anyone in that family. The best they’ll be able to do is score a lesser sentence based on useful intelligence.”
“That’s where the FBI plans to make their splash to warn other investors off buying relics and funding ISIS,” Thorn said. “They won’t need Nadia or Sophia for their anti-terror propaganda campaign.”
That gave Brian little peace. “All right.” He stood. “I’m off to Sophia’s to make sure the stalker doesn’t do something today that would stop Sophia from getting to her date with destiny on time. I’ll keep you guys in the loop. Let me know if anything comes up.”
Brian drove slowly into the neighborhood. He’d taken a tour to figure out who was on hand. The TV vans had lost interest after the eleven o’clock news when they reported that the FBI had saved the two children, and their mother was on her way to a Pennsylvania mental hospital. The kids were taken to the precinct where their dad met them to take them home. The disappearance of an Alzheimer’s patient was the icing on the cake, but this morning that story was stale.
It was a little after zero-nine-hundred hours. There was a group of searchers with their backpacks and orange shirts huddled under the tents in the pool parking lot. It looked like they were getting briefed on their search areas for the day. Brian headed over to Sophia’s house. He found her in shorts and rubber boots in her garden. Her car was pulled next to the house and the driveway was lined with the flats of flowers they had bought the night before. He took a moment to appreciate the view as she crawled on all fours to her next row.
Brian was glad as hell that he wasn’t going to be on hand when the FBI took her down. Coward. Brian had started many a morning knowing that people he cared about were going to get hurt, maybe not even survive the day. He’d jumped onto the backs of trucks fully aware that all hell was about to break loose. Orders were orders. Fate was fate. Shit was shit. This felt different. This felt like someone was carving his heart out of his chest with a dull blade. He knew he had to keep it together, watch for every opportunity to help Sophia, and at the same time make sure he was true to his mission.
He popped the car door open.
“Good morning.” Sophia’s smile was radiant. She had color in her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled.
“You look happy,” he said, his voice caught in his throat.
“It’s going to be a fabulous day. I’m so excited. Beautiful flowers, warm sun, Marla out of my life, Jael coming into town, and the culmination of a project that I’ve been working on for a very long time.” She stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time in years.”
Her dark brown eyes were velvety soft, and he thought, as he often did, of a beautiful doe with long lashes and a gentle heart. He was seeing Sophie the woman who’d walked into that bar, and not Sophia with her ties to ISIS. He was seeing a woman that he wanted to gather into his arms and hold, not the woman who was about to be shackled. Standing there framed in sunlight, she took his breath away.
A dog, barking off in the distance, broke the spell.
Brian pulled a padded envelope from his pocket and walked over to her. “Iniquus has a route for the bracelet. It needs to go out today before noon. It should be at the cave in the next twenty-four hours.”
Sophia blinked. “What? Are you serious?” She unhooked the clasp of the bracelet with shaking fingers.
“Are you ready to let it go?”
Sophia kissed it. “I’m sending you home. You’re going home, just like I promised. Now you hold up your end of the bargain,” she whispered to the ring. She held out the bracelet and dropped it into the envelope. Tears slid out from behind her tightly closed eyes. She was shaking, her breath coming in gulps. “Whew!” She fanned her face. “That was an unexpected reaction.”
Brian quietly sealed the envelope and put it back in his pocket. If he could do nothing else for her, he could at the very least free her from the idea that she’d been cursed. Maybe with a new mindset—a new perspective—she could make new choices for herself and her kids. He was just grateful he had the resources to get this done.
Sophia took a step toward him, and putting her hands on his arm for balance, rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she said, settling back on her feet and looking up through her lashes at him. “While you’re giving me a miracle this morning, all I can give you in return is coffee and a breakfast strudel.”
“Coffee?”
“I picked some up when I went to give the boys a kiss at their daycare and got myself some chai. It’s on the kitchen counter for you.”
“You knew I’d be here this morning?”
“Lucky guess.” She smiled at him. Her armor was falling away. Brian wasn’t sure that was such a great thing. She’d probably need it today.
30
Sophia
Monday a.m.
The bracelet was off her wrist, packaged up, and headed for Syria. This was a day of miracles. Brian had done so much for her in such a short time. Her luck was changing. Her life was turning around. Marla was gone. No more flat tires. No more fear of being out in public. She would be able to take her boys up to the park to play. She’d be able to browse the grocery aisles and decide what fresh, lovely things they could eat that night.
Jael was coming in with the tablet. The last time Sophia had seen Jael was when he’d saved them from the kidnappers and taken them on the back of his motorcycle to the US embassy. She had kept her promise and never told anyone she knew who he was. The t
ablet was the end of a long road they’d travelled together. Today, they’d get their well-earned prize. Today felt like success. The flowers she was planting were celebrating with her. She looked down the hill to where Brian was drinking his coffee on her steps and smiled.
She lugged a flat closer to her and picked up the next pot. Turning it upside-down, she carefully removed the plant. She held it in her left hand as she reached out to make a new hole.
Sophia’s trowel caught with the next plunge. She tried again, then scraped the dirt away from the roots that stopped her progress. She looked in the hole. I don’t remember there being irises here. Sophia reached down to pull them up. Holding the root in her hand, her brain stalled. Still not fully comprehending, a scream shrilled from her throat, filled the neighborhood, echoed off the houses, swelled into the trees.
Something tangled around her, gripped, and pulled her. When the scream ran out of fuel, she sucked a deep breath into her deflated lungs.
“Sophia what is it? What’s wrong?”
Her brain rubbed against the words as if they were braille, she could feel the texture of concern, but couldn’t make out how the raised dots formed sentences or thoughts. The one thing she could make out was that it was Brian’s voice. He shook her. Made her head bobble about.
“Look at me. Look in my eyes. What is going on?”
Sophia got it. She knew what he was saying. Okay, now it was her turn. She fought for some words, but ended up pointing her finger at the iris roots in the hole she was digging.
He pushed her down until she was sitting on the curb, then pressed her head between her knees. “Stay there,” he commanded, quickly followed by a “Holy shit.”
Sophia’s hands were on the road. She pressed her knees against her head and stayed in the position Brian had folded her.
He was standing next to her with a hand on her shoulder. “This is Brian Ackerman, I believe we’ve found Mr. Rochester, the missing Alzheimer’s patient.” There was a long pause as he listened. “No ma’am, he’s deceased.”
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