Chapter 6
Honey was ready for dinner and met up with her group downstairs. As she walked to the restaurant, her phone pinged again. She frowned, wondering who now? There was a ten-and-a-half-hour-time difference from here to home. She clicked on her cell phone as one of the men jokingly laughed, “What’s the matter? Can’t leave your lover alone for a couple hours to have dinner with us?”
David glanced at her, a question in his eyes. “Something I should know about?”
She smiled but didn’t answer. It was Erick checking in. She sent a quick text back. You don’t have to check in. I’m fine.
The response came in quickly yet again. I will keep checking.
Fine, but I thought you had something better to do with your life.
I do. Maybe you’re part of it.
Why? Want to get your Mustang smashed again? She wondered if she’d gone too far.
No, this time I’ll see you coming.
She winced. Maybe that was fair after all. She sent back another response. Laszlo is looking out for me. You don’t have to.
It took a little longer to get a response this time. She frowned, wondering if he would bother.
Then he sent back Are you staying with him?
No, of course not.
Good.
Why?
It was a good thing she stuck with the group, otherwise she would have walked off the pavement. David tucked an arm around her shoulders to keep her closer. She smiled and murmured, “Thanks.” She was struggling to text and walk. Lots of people managed it but not her. She preferred to sit down and focus on one thing at a time.
Finally they walked into the restaurant, and she thought maybe she should tell Erick what she was doing. She glanced around. The interior of the restaurant was darker, the atmosphere for dining was not café style. It was nicer. She sent a quick message. Going inside for dinner. At a restaurant with a group of workshop attendees.
Good. Watch your back.
“Watch your own,” she snapped aloud. David looked at her abruptly, and she winced. “Sorry, didn’t realize I was speaking out loud. It’s just a friend.” She waggled her phone in the air.
“Must be quite a friend.” He laughed. “Don’t you love that? We spend so much of our time texting now that it’s almost like we’ve forgotten what face-to-face conversations are all about.”
It was hard to argue with that. She put away her phone and sat down at the table. When the waiter brought their ordered drinks, she looked around and thought she caught sight of Laszlo. She frowned, turned back again and wondered if he was following her. She didn’t have his cell number, which was too damn bad because, if he was following her, she’d have something to say to him. But she did have Erick’s. She sent him a text. Is Laszlo following me?
I don’t know. Is he?
No idea. I thought I saw him.
Maybe you did.
She gave a half snort and turned her attention to the menu. She shouldn’t be upset if he was tailing her. At least he was trying to keep her safe.
Unable to help herself, she cast a second glance around the restaurant. She wasn’t sure why she had thought she had seen Laszlo; she caught no sign of him now. And, if somebody had been following her, she thought he’d do a better job than getting caught at it. It left a trail of unease when she couldn’t find him again.
She sent Erick another text. No sign of him.
Then forget about it.
Throughout the evening she kept looking around. There was no reason for it, but the hairs on the back of her neck said something was wrong. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she pulled out her phone and asked Erick, Are you in trouble?
No.
Okay. But the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up.
Where’s Laszlo?
How the hell would I know? She dropped the phone back in her lap and returned to the dinner table conversation.
David kept a close eye on her.
She knew she wasn’t being a very good companion, but everything just felt so very wrong. She also wondered why she felt Erick was the person she should contact. What the hell? She’d never had anything to do with him before yesterday. At least outside of the car accident.
“Everything okay?” David, who was from Kabul, leaned toward her, his voice quiet and worried. “Sounds like you and who, … Erick? Are having problems?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Just the usual.”
“Ah, relationships are not always perfect.”
Yet his voice had changed, as if he’d accepted someone was in her life. Even though she knew otherwise, if it helped put her relationship with David on a neutral footing, that was fine with her.
The rest of dinner finished on a lighter note. She had no more texts from Erick, and she didn’t see any sign of anyone else. But that didn’t mean they weren’t here. And, because of that, she couldn’t let it go.
After dinner the group moved to the bar at the hotel lounge. She wanted to stay as part of the group rather than chance going up to her room alone. She wished she’d gotten Laszlo’s contact number. But she hadn’t. And that was a mistake. She wished she could check in with him, ask if her room was clear. She’d had such a great day, and now all her worries had returned. She had two drinks with her friends, then made her excuses and headed up to her room.
When she reached the lobby, it was empty. The lights were lowered, and gentle music played from unseen speakers. It was a really nice hotel, and she had enjoyed every minute of it, as long as she could discount the time when a gunman was in her room. And, of course, she hadn’t contacted the police. That was a negative for her too.
What if he hurt somebody else? What if she could have saved them if she had contacted law enforcement? But she didn’t know what would happen to her if she did bring up something like that.
She moved quietly toward the stairs. For some reason she didn’t like the look of the elevator when it opened beside her. It was empty, but it was almost ghostly. As if the perfect timing for her to enter was more a case of perfect timing for somebody to snatch her. Hating the direction of her thoughts but unable to get them out of her mind, she started up the stairs, realizing, of course, she was in high heels. Not the best thing.
After the first floor, she settled into a natural rhythm and was on her way up to the second when the lights went out. She froze and instinctively crouched down, hiding against the wall. No way to look up and see if anybody was there without giving away her position. But she no longer felt quite so good about her decision to take the stairs.
She raced up the last few steps and opened the door to the second floor. In the hall, she saw several groups of people walking to and from the elevator, some going to their rooms, others going to the lobby. She joined the group going down. When they hit the lobby, she got in the elevator and pressed the button to the fourth floor to send the elevator back up again. She made sure the door closed, leaving her alone inside. She could’ve done this in the first place. Swallowing hard she pulled her arms in, hugging her chest as she went up to her floor.
When the door opened, the hallway was in an odd darkness. She frowned. It was early evening, and the dark carpet cast a weird half-light without the lights on. There were windows at the far end but it appeared they’d been covered up with curtains. Why? Nervous, she whispered, “Hell no.”
Just as the double doors started to close, a man stepped inside. She froze. But he just smiled at her and hit the lobby button. “What happened to the lights?” she asked, her voice coming out more as a squeak.
The man shrugged. “I figured it was just the hallway running lights for the evening.”
She frowned. “I was on the second floor, and it was much brighter.”
“If you’re worried, go talk to the receptionist.”
At the lobby he hopped back out, and she followed automatically. She stopped, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now. A bellman in the lobby pushed a luggage rack before him. She walked over to him and said, “Are the lights supposed to be out on the fourth floor?”
He frowned. “I’m coming up with luggage now. Let’s go take a look.”
Relieved to not be alone, she stepped into the same elevator with him, and they went up to the fourth floor.
When the double doors opened, he said in surprise, “No, this isn’t normal.”
She smiled but noted the lighting didn’t appear so ominous now. In fact, it wasn’t quite so dark either. She’d let her imagination get the best of her. “Oh, I was wondering what was going on. And then wondered if this was normal.”
He shook his head and moved the luggage down the hall toward her room. She stopped at her door and said, “Thanks.”
He nodded. “I’ll get this fixed as soon as I get this luggage into the room.”
She used her key to open her door, and, while he was still in the hall, she pushed the door open and waited. She heard a tiny voice inside and froze. And then she recognized it. Laszlo. She closed the door, turned on the light and raced in.
Laszlo lay on her bed, his shirt bloody, his face banged up.
She raced toward him, gasping, “Oh, my God! What happened?”
He opened up puffy eyes and tried to smile. “I met the wrong person in the back alley.”
“Just one?”
A half gurgle came out of his mouth. He sat up with great effort. “No, three.”
She nodded. She had her phone out, took a picture of his face and sent it to Erick.
Laszlo frowned at her. “What did you just do?”
“I sent your friends a photo. And now we need to take care of you.” She went into the bathroom, dampened a washcloth with warm water and came back. Moving gently, she dabbed the blood off his face so she could see how bad the cuts were. “Looks like you took a hard right into your face. That eye will be pretty black in a couple days.”
“It was a left. The right was the jaw.”
When she was done cleaning his face and washing most of the blood out of his hair, she hadn’t found any head injury. She glanced at his bloody shirt. “There’s blood on your chest. Are you hurt somewhere else other than your face?”
He stood, opened his shirt, and she could see his ribs had taken quite a beating, as had his gut. But there were no cuts.
“So the other blood isn’t yours?”
“No, it’s theirs.” There was a grim satisfaction in his tone as he answered her.
She nodded. Just then her phone rang. She answered it, tucking it on her shoulder up to her ear. It was Erick. “What the hell happened to Laszlo?”
“Three men in an alleyway,” she said in a curt tone. “I don’t know any more than that. You talk to him.” And she handed her phone to Laszlo.
With his shirt off, she did a quick inspection of his back and checked his ribs. She wasn’t a medical doctor; she was a dentist, but she certainly understood injuries. It looked like he had one cracked rib. She checked the rest of him, but very little blood was found on his legs or feet, and he appeared to be moving just fine. So it was mostly his face.
While he talked to Erick, she went back to the bathroom to rinse the washcloth. Then she returned and cleaned up his hair a little bit more. “You could use some stitches on that cut along your hairline.”
He gave her a flat stare.
She rolled her eyes. “I presume that means you won’t be going to a doctor?”
He shook his head.
She walked to her bag. One thing about being a dentist: she was never without a small medical kit, and that included superfine floss. That would do the job of holding his torn skin together. She figured she could put in a couple stitches to hold it until it healed, making it a less ugly scar.
She opened the mini bar, and took out a bottle of vodka. She quickly dabbed some on the washcloth and then cleaned the wound.
He roared. And spun away. She shrugged. “A little late. I’m done.”
Glaring, he turned back to his phone call. While he talked to Erick, she half listened to the conversation and threaded the needle, and again without warning, pinched his skin. When he yelped, she just looked at him and said, “You’re the one who wouldn’t go to a doctor.”
He glared at her. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Putting in three stitches.”
“Oh.” He glanced at the open bar by her desk. “You want to get me a drink before you do any more then?”
“No, you can have something after I’m done.”
He swore under his breath.
Through the phone she could hear Erick chuckling. “Glad to see she’s taking care of you, Laszlo.”
“Your girlfriend is a meanie,” Laszlo snapped. “You should be the one looking after her. Not me.”
“I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Sure you’re not,” Laszlo snorted.
She tied off a second stitch. He just glared at her. He refused to yelp anymore. He would wait in stony silence for her to be done.
Finally she finished the third one, cutting off the end near his hair. She studied her handiwork and nodded. “That will heal faster. But you’ll have to get the stitches out.”
“So what good are they then?” he asked in exasperation. “They’ll tear apart the skin and leave an open wound.”
“Not if you let the cut heal first,” she snapped. She put away her stuff and headed to the minibar. “What do you want?”
“Whiskey.”
Not being much of a fan of hard liquor, she had to look at a couple bottles first. Then she found one, pulled it out, opened it and handed it to him. He gave her a hard look and threw back the tiny bottle, emptying the contents.
“If you need more than that,” she said with a smile, “we’re going to your minibar.”
He grinned. “I’ll be fine. Feel free to get another bottle if you want, but you’re not wasting any more on my injury.” He handed her phone back. “Erick wants to talk to you.”
She groaned. “What’s up, Erick?”
“So your instincts were right.”
She froze and thought about it and then nodded slowly. “Possibly. I was feeling something was off all afternoon.”
“You were right. From now on, I want you to stay with Laszlo.”
“Who died and made you boss?” she snapped. Beside her Laszlo chuckled. She glared at him.
Laszlo shrugged. “Like I said, the two of you should be together.”
“You didn’t say that at all,” she snapped. “You said that I was his girlfriend, which I’m not.”
“Did you just say you wanted to be my girlfriend?” Erick asked, perplexed.
“Hell no. The whole lot of you are nuts.”
A voice in the background yelled, “Hey, I resent that.”
She rolled her eyes. “There’s four of you, and you’re all certifiable.”
Erick chuckled. “We can deal with your status in my life when I get back.”
“When is that?”
“Soon, I hope. We’ll finish up our questioning, then head back. With any luck we’ll be there by late morning.”
She rolled her eyes again. “You don’t have to come back on my account.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” Erick laughed. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll see a lot more of me coming up, so just smile and pretend like you’re happy.”
“Like hell.”
“I think you protest too much,” he said almost gleefully.
She groaned. “Are you done?”
“Yeah, for the moment. I’ll probably call you back in a little bit.”
“Why?”
“Just so I can say good-night.” And he hung up.
She stared at the phone. “Why the hell are you in my life?”
And that’s when Laszlo started to laugh for real.
She stood, hands on her hips and glared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Erick often has that effect on people. You might as well get used to it.”
Erick turned to face Cade and Talon. “Laszlo was attacked.”
The two men stared at him in shock. Cade asked, “Do we know for sure it’s related to us?”
Erick shrugged. “No way to tell at this point. He didn’t recognize his attackers. Honey stitched him up, and they’ll stay together until we get back. He doesn’t want to leave her alone in case the attackers tracked him back to the hotel and her.”
Cade shook his head. “We’re almost at the village. I suggest we ask our questions and then head for the hotel.”
Erick pocketed his phone and hopped back into the front of the jeep. They’d stopped at the hill above the village, so they could survey the comings and goings below. This was their second trip through. When they initially came this morning, it had been too early to question the locals. Erick needed their cooperation, not to instill fear in them.
They drove toward the village, studying the houses sprawled on both sides of the road winding its way more or less through the middle. Several old men were seated at a table out on the edge of the road. They were playing some kind of a game. Talon brought the vehicle to a stop beside them. The men got up, but nobody spoke English. Not sure he believed them, Erick wandered through the village, trying to find somebody he could talk to.
A young boy sat on a boulder. Erick asked him if he spoke English. The little boy shook his head, but he pointed to a house beside him. Erick walked over and knocked. A man somewhere around his age stepped out with a frown on his face. Erick asked if he spoke English.
“Yes, I do. I spent several years in England and Europe.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the door. “What do you need?”
Erick explained quietly about how he’d been in the military vehicle that had blown up several years ago.
The man nodded. “I remember hearing about that. It was the talk of the village for all of a day.”
Erick couldn’t understand that. Every place had gossip, and then it blew over, but he doubted it was over quite so fast, unless they had accidents like that all the time. But, because it was a military vehicle, he doubted the conversation was pleasant. “We were looking to see if anybody was here who we could talk to about that time.”
“Why?”
Erick tried for a look of innocence. “There were some suggestions that the attack had been deliberate. And, if that’s the case, I’d like to find out some history as to anyone who might know who or why.”
The man crossed his arms over his chest as he surveyed Erick’s face. “What difference does it make now?”
“Not a whole lot. But it’s hard to go on with your life when you’re still stuck back at a time when you might have been betrayed.”
“Nobody here betrayed you,” the young man said in a hard voice.
Erick held up his hand. “I’m not thinking they did. I think it was one of our own men who might have done it.”
The young man’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Oh, now that’s not good. Are you sure you want to know the truth?”
“I do. Whether I like the answers or not. I think it’s always easier to deal with them when you know the truth.”
The two men stared at each other for a moment, then the other man’s gaze shifted over his head as he contemplated who might have been around back then. “Not everybody will want to talk to you.”
“I know that. Is there anybody here who isn’t against the military?”
“Everybody is pretty ambivalent at this point. It has been both good and bad.”
“True.”
He straightened from the door frame and motioned to the way they had come into town. “Ahmed might speak with you.”
“He was there then?”
“Better yet, he was up on the hill. He often sits up there in the mornings. He’s the one who told us what happened.”
Erick’s stomach knotted with hope. “I’d really like to hear what he has to say, what he saw at the time.”
The man held out his hand and said, “I’m Peter. Or rather that’s the easiest form of my name to use.”
Erick shook his hand. “I’m Erick.”
They walked back toward the last house. Erick turned to call Talon and Cade.
Peter looked at him and asked, “Who are they?”
“They were with me in the vehicle.”
Peter whistled. “You guys are lucky to be alive, from the way I heard it.”
“We’re alive, but we’re all missing limbs. We spent two years of our life recovering from surgeries and injuries.”
Peter nodded. “That wasn’t a small land mine.”
“According to what we heard, it was an antitank land mine. Very specialized.”
Peter frowned. “Who the hell would get access to something like that?” Erick shot him a look, and Peter winced.
“Right, you’re afraid it was one of your own men.” He shook his head. “That would suck, man.”
At the last house he knocked on the door, and in a rapid-fire language Erick couldn’t understand, Peter spoke to somebody inside. An old man opened the door and stepped out. Peter talked to him again, motioning at Erick, Cade and Talon.
The old man nodded his head slowly. He spoke quietly, motioning with his hands where he’d been as Peter translated. “He said he was up on the hill where he likes to sit and to wait for his days to end. He saw the truck coming.”
Erick listened as he spoke about the truck coming, then blowing up right in front of him.
Peter said, “At that point he was trying to get down off his hillside, but another truck was coming in from the other side of the village. After the explosion it raced to their side as if they’d just seen what happened.”
Erick knew that was true too. “There should have been a third one as well.”
“He said several trucks arrived within thirty minutes to help you, and he knew there was nothing he could do. It had been bad. He saw bodies and metal come from the vehicle, flying all over the place. Even now the skeleton of what was done lies out in the wasteland.”
Erick also knew that was true. He’d just spent time there. “Did he see anybody there before us? Did he see anybody plant the mine?”
Peter asked his questions, and the old man answered, shaking his head. And then he spoke again. Peter listened quietly and then turned to Erick. “He goes there every day. It wasn’t a normal route. Nobody traveled or had reason to travel that way.”
“So he didn’t see who might have planted the mine?”
Peter shook his head. “He doesn’t know. And he didn’t see anybody do so.”
“Were there any strangers in the village around that time? Did you see anybody driving through the area in the weeks before the truck blew up?”
They waited patiently as Peter once again translated the questions back to the older man. The man nodded. Erick leaned forward slightly.
Peter turned to him. “There were other military groups around at that time. And some that looked like they were military, but he didn’t believe them.”
Erick settled back on his heels. Soldiers for hire were everywhere. They gave a good impression for the untrained eye, but, in most cases, they still couldn’t quite pull it off. “I don’t suppose he remembers anything specific about any of them, does he?”
Again the conversation went back and forth in front of them. Erick waited, wishing like hell he knew the language. This wasn’t the time to leave information to be badly translated or to be missed and lost completely in the translation.
He watched as Talon turned his head ever-so-slightly, and Erick realized his phone was out and he was recording the conversation. Inside, he smiled. Smart. At least that way they could get somebody else to make sure the translation was being done accurately. Tesla could have that done in seconds. She was magic with anything techy.
Finally Peter turned back to Erick. “One man was supertall and skinny, with really big ears. Ahmed remembered thinking it was like the American cartoon that he’d seen when he was younger. Something about an elephant.” Peter laughed. “I think he means Dumbo. Other than that, another man whose nose was obviously broken, and he was bald. He looked like he’d been a fighter at one time. He was very thickset.”
After hearing the description, Erick pulled out a small notebook and jotted down a few of the prominent features. Thank God for that taped record. They could refer back to it. He asked a few more questions and then asked, “Is there anything else he can add? Was there anything else unusual that day, even after the event? Did somebody come back and take a look?”
The local men talked for a few more minutes, then Peter turned back to Erick. “He said vehicles came out in the afternoon. Pictures were taken. Some of the artifacts were taken away. But mostly it was a grim scene, and already by then the heavy winds and the sand had covered up a lot.”
Erick tried to rephrase the question in a couple different ways, hoping to shake loose some different answers, but it kept getting repeated, the translation the same. He knew Talon was still recording, and that was good because they would double-check that translation afterward.
Just then the old man grabbed Peter’s arm and said something. Peter leaned forward, questioned him again, and the old man repeated what he’d said.
Then Peter turned to Erick. “Another vehicle came later that day. Two men. He’d gone home himself. And then in the evening he went back out, upset at the day’s events, wanting to find his center of peace again. He said, when he was up there, he saw another vehicle. Two men got out, walked the area, took a couple photos, got in the vehicle, turned around and went back the way they came. Since then he hasn’t seen anybody.” Peter shrugged. “He didn’t recognize the men.”
“What about the strangers in the village before the accident? Does he have anything to add about them?”
Peter turned back to the old guy, and the discussion ensued once again. But when the old man nodded, Erick noted a few of the things he said. Ahmed hadn’t added much, but anything was more than they had. He tried to pin him down on dates, time of day, how many men, the type of vehicle. But it all came back to an old jeep, probably old military issue, but they were common around here.
“Two men. Both dressed as military but not. He did say their attitude set them apart as well as their dress. They were sloppy, wore mismatched clothing. Military clothing but not up to the daily inspections of current military. They also carried several machine guns.”
Erick certainly understood what he meant by not up to inspection but also the machine guns meant not standard military. But when he went on to explain about the attitude, the cockiness and arrogance, Erick could see what the man was saying even more. These men were either rebels or mercenaries. Finally, with nothing else to ask, Erick turned to Cade and Talon with a raised eyebrow.
Talon shrugged. “What I really want to know is who placed the land mine there.”
Peter spoke one more time, but the old guy just shrugged. He obviously didn’t have anything more to offer.
At that point Cade said, “Thank you for your cooperation, Peter, and thank him for his assistance.”
The three of them walked back toward their jeep. When he heard something harsh, Erick turned to see the old man and Peter arguing fiercely. He nudged the other two. “What do you make of that?”
They were almost at the jeep. Cade said, “Either he’s pissed off Peter brought us to him, or he really didn’t like the translation.”
One of the four men playing at the small table in front of them cackled and said, “He didn’t like the translation.”
“Ahmed speaks English?” Erick asked. He narrowed his gaze, studying the man’s features.
The man in front of him nodded. “But not well. Like all of us, we speak a little. We understand more.”
Interesting point. Erick understood and filed that note away for later. He asked the man who had laughed, “Do you know anything about the accident that happened here two years ago? Where the military truck was blown up?”
The old man shrugged. “Bad day. Bad day for everyone that day.”
“Why?”
Words spilled off in a spat of the same language Ahmed was speaking. He checked to see Talon was once again recording. He could only hope that by speaking in their own tongue they were telling more of the truth than Erick and his buddies were getting through the translation. When he was done, Erick nodded, smiled and thanked the man.
The three of them got into the vehicle, turned it around and headed out the village the way they’d entered. As they drove past Ahmed’s house, there was no sign of Peter, but Ahmed stood in the open doorway. When he saw the men, he clapped his hand over his mouth and then stepped inside.
Silence fell inside the jeep.
“Any idea what he meant by that?” Talon asked.
“Something about don’t ask me any more questions?” Cade hazarded a guess.
Erick said, his voice hard, “I doubt it. More like, keep your mouth shut.”
“So, we’re not to say where we got the information from? Or we should stop asking questions?”
Erick’s hard gaze went from one to the other. “Both.”