Christen
Monday, Singapore
They had been cleared at the hospital. The guys on the boat had done an outstanding job getting them warmed and rehydrated. The doctors said they’d followed protocol to the letter. “Go home. Get some sleep. Give your bodies some time to recover. If you’re having trouble sleeping, or with anxiety. I encourage you to see a mental health care professional.” He shook their hands.
A nurse held out a clipboard, and they each scrawled their signatures across the discharge papers. They were a little lost as they walked out of the hospital room. Gator was wearing board shorts and flip flops that weren’t quite his size. She had on a Size XXXL t-shirt that she wore like a trash bag with a pair of flip flops that were way too big. They looked like homeless people. And they were of sorts. No ID, no money, no plan. They were headed for outside, so they could talk. Getting in touch with Iniquus was top of their priority list.
They moved toward the emergency department exit when Johnna rounded the corner. She stopped in her tracks and stared at them. “Holy fucking shit,” she said. “It’s true.” She walked up between them, turned one-eighty, wrapped a hand through each of their arms, and started walking back out the door to a waiting cab.
That was it.
The only thing she said. “Holy fucking shit.” Christen thought that summed things up pretty well.
Christen looked her over. She was pale despite her tan. She was cut and bruised, but otherwise looked fine.
“Tell me about Blaze,” Gator said as she reached for the taxi door handle. He was braced to hear his bad news.
“He’s pissed. He took a blow to the head and is being monitored. He ended up with a pretty bad concussion. The doctors won’t release him, and your company has ordered him to stay put.” She pulled the door wide and brushed her hand through the air to tell them to get in. “I told him you guys were safe and sound. I’m not sure he believed me. But, he’ll see for himself soon enough.”
Christen scooted in to the far side. The marrow of her bones was tired. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling energetic again. She thought back to Nick of Time and his story about the SAS going hand to hand for four hours with the militants. They took a day to recoup, then got up and went to work. Yeah, but she was in the water for some twenty-two hours. She probably deserved a little longer recuperation.
They drove in silence.
Christen stared out the window. She’d lived to see another day. Go figure. She leaned forward to catch Gator’s eye and send him a smile. But he didn’t turn his head her way. Huh.
She wanted to reach for his hand, but he’d crossed his arms over his chest and was tucked in tight. True, he was sitting in the back seat of the cab and he was a big guy without a lot of space. But still…
When the taxi stopped, it was at a house in an upper-class neighborhood with a tall wall around it and an electrically powered gate. The gate swung open and the taxi stopped in the drive.
Johnna and Gator both did a sweep to check the area. Christen figured if she was supposed to have died, she would have done it last night.
She wanted to go in and get the debrief over with.
***
There was no one in the place. Though it looked like someone lived there. Johnna gestured to the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m sort of in shock from the events. I was released from the hospital the same time you were.”
Christen leaned forward.
“It was dehydration from vomiting, bruising from the storm, and I wanted to get a tox report on my blood to see what Karl fed us. It certainly wasn’t Dramamine like he said it was.” She turned to Gator. “I was aware enough to know you lashed me to the bed, and that you made rounds to check on things. I will be writing that into my report. Above and beyond. Truly appreciated.” She was nodding along with her words. Emphasizing them in a way her tired voice wasn’t able to. “If I’d been left alone to my own devices, I honestly don’t think I would have made it through the night. I would have either drowned in my own puke, or I would have been tossed around the cabin like a rag doll. Thank you.” She looked from one to the other. “You look like shit. But I’m told you’re medically stable.”
“Yes,” they said simultaneously. They’d slept the whole way to Singapore, but Christen didn’t think she’d recover until she’d slept for a week.
“I’m sorry to press you. We think there’s a small window. Your team at Iniquus are anxious. I’m not sure they believe you’re safe.”
She reached over to the laptop and pulled a keystroke randomizer from her pocket and put the code in. Up on the television in front of them came what looked like a planning room. Four faces pressed forward.
Christen recognized Nutsbe.
“I asked you not to lose the contact lens. You told me I could trust you with it,” he said.
She offered him a weak smile in return. She wasn’t up to banter.
Gator said, “This is D-day, my swim buddy. D-day, on your left is Jack McCullen, team second in command, then my commander, Striker Rheas, and that there’s Lynx. She’s the one I told you about. Lynx—” he said and his voice caught and broke.
“Don’t you dare,” she said and emotions caught hold of her face. Her muscles tensed against it, but her skin flamed pink as tears filled her eyes. She brushed her hands over her face as if to rearrange it into the stoicism of the men. She was wholly unsuccessful. “I know. I know all about it. All of it. The rattlesnake. The cliff. The pledge. I know. But right now, you’re safe and so is D-day. So far so good. We’ll figure things out one step at a time.”
That was cryptic as hell. But one thing that wasn’t a mystery was that these two loved each other deeply. Only, it wasn’t the kind of love she’d been afraid they shared. This one felt like a deep accord, a long and intense friendship. Bigger than family. But not his wife. By the way Striker turned to her and rubbed a hand up and down her arm, and the loving gratitude he got in return – that was the committed couple relationship. Christen was relieved. A little.
If Gator would just look at her. He hadn’t looked at her since the drink on the boat.
Nutsbe tapped at his computer and the scene changed: there were white boards covered in colored magic marker behind a table with a row of chairs. Now it looked to Christen like she was attending a business meeting.
“I wanted to share some of the puzzle pieces I’ve been putting together.” Lynx was really young looking, early twenties, maybe. She had long blond hair and a sweet, girl next door kind of feel to her. In no way did she look like she should have as much power as she obviously held in that room. It made Christen curious.
“The pressing question is what happened on the yacht, why were Johnna and Christen drugged?” Lynx asked. “Why was Christen thrown into the water? And to get there, I want to start at the widest part of the funnel of activity that ended up with Christen and Gator in the water.”
Damned. Every single person in the room was looking at her like she was about to show them the holy grail. Something about this woman had earned their respect. Big time.
“Perfect,” Johnna said.
“There are four kidnapping/terrorist events that we are looking at prior to the attack on Christen Davidson. One in Paraguay. Steve Finley from the FBI.” She stopped and looked at her watch. “I expect him here any second.” She looked at the door, then continued. “Steve was able to identify one of the leaders of Paraguayan kidnapping crime as Gregor Zoric, also called Medved’, or the Bear. To that end, Christen picked up a conversation in Arabic between Gregor, Nadir and the sheik, and we translated. Gregor said, ‘The sanctions bill died in the US Senate committee, as we knew it would after we lost our leverage.’” Lynx was reading from her board. She turned toward the camera. “The leverage being the students who were kidnapped and the committee leader being their grandfather.” She turned back to the board. “Nadir responded, ‘I’m not sure how to work around this obstacle. But we’ll have to find a way.’ Gregor answered, ‘Yes. A very surprising turn of events. If my instructions had been followed to the letter, all would have gone as planned. The persons who made the decisions to include the teacher have been punished.’” Lynx let her gaze take in all the listeners. “We believe the teacher he’s referring to is Suz Malloy. Okay? That’s crime number one, then the Bowman kidnapping is two. Three, the Ngorongoro terror attack and kidnapping the scientists. We’ll get to those in a second.”
“And four?” Striker asked.
“An attempted kidnapping of William Davidson, Christen’s father,” Lynx said.
“Wait,” Striker said, “I thought he was the person of interest.”
“He was,” Lynx said “And he may still be. But we learned some very interesting things from Christen’s foray into the spy game.”