Chapter 12

After Justice and Sandesh had checked into their hotel, they made their way across Jordan to Zaatari. Their transportation, an old pickup truck, drove alongside the Zaatari refugee camp. Layered with sand and trash and plastered with Arabic graffiti, Zaatari sprawled across the desert in a seemingly endless expansion.

The city-camp was sloppy and beautiful in places. Well tended and ignored. Serene and damning. Crude and artistic. And inside, a hundred thousand minds worked and reworked the tragedies, pressures, boredom, and inequalities of mounting displacement. Metal trailers used to house people, homemade shacks, and rectangular buildings with sheeted windows pressed up against miles of fencing topped with barbwire.

Above all of it stood the trunks of electrical poles, brown, skeletal fingers draped in black wires, crisscrossing dry roads that connected districts housing refugees, fatigued fighters, aid workers, and camp organizers.

To Justice, it all looked like a threat. She’d been told they needed to pass through security to get into the camp, but on this long, dry road, she could see many open places to enter and leave. A thousand porous places to take advantage of people already victimized by circumstance.

Feeling too much like a war tourist, she turned her eyes away as the old pickup bounced along the road. Warm air rushed through, pushed strands of hair from her ponytail and fluttered it across her face.

The cab of the old pickup smelled like figs and antiseptic. Stuffed into the back seat between Sandesh and a box of figs, Justice readjusted her legs with a swoosh from her cargo pants. Sandesh readjusted as well.

Good to see she wasn’t the only hyperaware one. Because, really, could there be any man more suited to wearing sunglasses? Doubtful. The desert wasn’t the only thing hot around here.

Add to that desert-sand sweatpants that rode low on his lean hips and accented his, uhm, very nice equipment. A dark-blue shirt tight against his chest, sleeves rolled up on biceps that didn’t need to flex to be flexed. And sexy, almost-a-beard stubble. A girl couldn’t help wanting to fan herself.

His sunglasses blocked the sun and her curious stares, but she could see his nerves. See the soldier coming out as they drove the road parting this bleak, impoverished desert. Their Jordanian contact, Salma, had already explained that there were gangs inside and very dangerous areas within the twelve districts.

And that explained Sandesh’s weird rules thing on the plane.

She wasn’t mad. She got it. He thought she did PR for a living. And badly at that. Besides, it worked for her. She didn’t want to be tied to his mission. Ultimately, she needed to be at the hotel—not the hotel she and Sandesh had booked rooms at. No, the hotel where the Brothers Grim were staying. Sandesh’s rules had given her the opportunity she’d needed to make an appearance at the camp and move on.

But he probably thought she was pissed. She might be if she wasn’t planning on blatantly ignoring his warnings. And if she didn’t feel so damn guilty.

Guilty for using him. Guilty for involving him. Guilty for kissing him when she knew she was using him, the IPT, and Salma. But he’d just been so damn cute. Wanting to take care of her. As if she needed him to. So funny. Well, he had good intentions.

And damn, what right did Sandesh have to smell so good in this heat? The musk of him made her want to lean closer. Lick.

That might get a bit awkward. Especially with Salma—the Jordanian woman who’d created Salma’s Gems—and their driver, her teenage grandson, in the front seat.

Things were awkward enough. No one really spoke as the dry desert air whooshed through the windows. Sandesh was busy texting his partner at the IPT, a guy named Victor. There had been a flood in the Midwest of the United States and Victor was organizing volunteers and aid, already working with local centers to supply water and clothing.

The IPT seemed incredibly well organized. Which was the point Sandesh had first made when they’d met. It was easier to organize military personnel used to hitting the road at a moment’s notice.

She put her hand on the seat to steady herself as the truck bounced to a halt at the inspection station outside of Zaatari Refugee Camp. About time. How would Sandesh make that drive every day? Although, really, it probably wouldn’t be every day. The mission would have Sandesh traveling to different areas. Throw a stone in Jordan, and you were likely to hit a Syrian refugee.

Her heart tapped Morse code against her chest at the sight of the guards, even though she’d been told not to worry about getting herself and her gun inside.

Entering legally meant a lot of rules, but there were a lot of ways around those rules. Money, basically.

Many men paid to enter illegally to look for girls they’d “marry” and then discard when they were done. Or “marry” off into sexual slavery.

That was why scum like Aamir and Walid were here, to take advantage. It was so huge. No wonder so many women and orphaned girls fell through the cracks, despite the monumental effort of aid organizations, Syrian vigilante groups, and the Jordanians.

After Salma spoke with a guard, they were waved through. Justice relaxed. Let out a breath. Both she and Sandesh were armed. She watched Sandesh’s hand, which had been fisted at his side, release.

They bounced into the camp and proceeded slowly down rangy streets and past flapping tents, trailers, and individually constructed buildings, nailed together with sheets of metal and topped with corrugated scraps.

The white-and-tan UN Refugee Agency tents, trailers, and buildings were dusted with sand, but her eyes caught the bright garments and splashes of colors along these duller patches.

Color was everywhere. It was in the laundry drying on lines. Splashes of red and blue in hanging painted wooden signs. The trailers themselves had been painted bright and bold. Different colors in the fruit at produce stands, in the awnings of market trailers, in pink rows of plastic sandals on display, and the elaborately colored women’s veils.

They turned right and traveled down a wide dirt road with people slow to get out of their way. As he drove, Salma’s grandson called out to a few people in greeting. You simply did not rush in a desert.

Now that the truck had slowed, allowing conversation, Salma turned toward Justice and Sandesh. She was a small woman, bent forward, as if fighting against an unseen wind. She had brown eyes and a white hijab tucked around her face, and a traditional dark-blue dress or abaya.

She pointed out where the French had set up a hospital on a bustling street filled with one-story buildings, trailers turned into stores, and open fruit stands. “The aid workers call this the Champs-Élysées, like the street in Paris, but most who live here call it simply Market Street.”

Market Street. Big difference from the one in Philly. This one smelled like humans and cooked zucchini, not car exhaust and steel. People milled about on the long dirt road. Most paid no attention to the truck until it was nearly upon them. Then they moved out of the way with a casual, almost disinterested stride.

Wires hung in snarled knots and strands on electrical poles were awkwardly congested in places. Atop some of the trailer homes sat satellite dishes.

Besides the slam of hammers on metal from repairs and construction, the wind made the most noise as it blew through the open truck windows. “I thought it would be noisier.”

Salma laughed. “You expected bombs? Gunshots and screams?”

Actually, she had. Salma shook her head. “You will hear those things. And laughter. And prayer. And songs of joy and wails of grief. You will see streaks of aircraft across the blue sky. And plumes of distant smoke. There are many good people here stuck in a very bad situation. People who not too long ago lived a much different life.”

Justice nodded and looked out at the tents and trailers and briskly erected buildings that stretched for miles. Sandesh seemed to take it all in, asking relevant questions about the organization and the needs of the women in Salma’s care.

A few streets over, through the rows of trailers, she glimpsed children playing soccer.

Others filled water jugs from a huge red tank, and still others played along the street. A girl, no older than nine, carried a baby on her hip. “There are so many kids here. Kids caring for kids.”

Salma’s almond-brown eyes flicked down, adjusted something in the front seat as the driver steered past people. “Yes. Many orphans. Which makes it easier for those who wish to take them.”

A sick sort of anger fisted in Justice’s stomach. Trying to save the women and girls was one thing, but stopping the hands—at least one of the biggest ones—that kept snatching them away was another. She wouldn’t fail. She would not.

Which meant she had to snap some photos here, interview a couple of women, and make her excuses, because—as Momma would undoubtedly remind her—reconnaissance always comes first.