T. Bunn - The Great Divide

Marcus paused, then continued more slowly, “There is another risk. Filing the charges might have the opposite effect. New Horizons might decide it is in their best interests to get rid of any evidence.”

He did not say more. Just stared across the glass-topped table. And waited.

It was Alma who erupted. Alma Hall, one of the most composed and distinguished ladies Marcus had ever met, now utterly unraveled. “What else are they doing to my Gloria now? You know what that FBI man told me? He was contacting our embassy! You know where the embassy is? Beijing! You know how far that is from my Gloria? Two thousand miles!”

Marcus glanced at her husband, who said simply, “You already know how I’m thinking.”

Austin’s quiet tone steadied his wife. She looked at him. “You agree with me?”

“There’s too much danger in waiting.” This Austin said to them both. “We need to strike the best we can.”

Alma gathered up her husband’s hand in both of hers, shifting it over so she could clench it in her lap. Hold it tight. She said to Marcus, “What will you do?”

“With your permission, I will leave here and drive straight to the federal courthouse in Raleigh. On your behalf I am filing a civil action against New Horizons and unnamed Chinese partners.” His voice sounded strong in his own ears. Professional. Lacking any hint of the apprehension he felt inside. “The charges are false imprisonment, labor and human-rights abuses, and intentional infliction of emotional and physical distress.”

Marcus slid the folders across to them. “One of these is for me, another for the court, the last contains your copy. The first page is a letter of agreement assigning me the role of counsel. Because there is an issue called diversity of citizenship, where our legal action holds national and international dimensions, this is a federal case. I am asking for both compensatory and punitive damages. You need to read all this carefully.”

“No I don’t.” Austin Hall extricated his hand and flipped open the folder. “Let me borrow your pen.”

“Mr. Hall-”

“Call me Austin and give me your pen. Time enough for reading later.”

Marcus relented. “You need to sign all the copies. You too, Alma.”

Austin scribbled and shoved the folders aside with angry jerks. Alma watched him, one hand on his arm, and said quietly, “I lay in bed all last night listening to my Gloria cry for help. You go do this, Marcus. Do it now.”

The only reason Marcus heard Kirsten’s arrival at all was because he was listening to the night chorus outside his open window. The first sound was a faint hint upon the boundary of hearing, a swish across the lawn, a scrape upon his stairs. For some reason, it only occurred to him much later that the noise might have warned of coming danger. As though on some level far beyond the realm of sight and sound, he knew the noise heralded something good.

He arrived on his front veranda in time to see nothing but a blond head bobbing into the night. Then he spotted the box resting by the door, and understood. Marcus bounded down the stairs and out across the lawn, calling softly, “Kirsten!”

She spun around. For one brief instant, the streetlight illuminated a different Kirsten, one of soft angles and tremulous needs. Then the hand gripping her throat lowered, and the harsh angry tone returned to her voice and her features. “Don’t sneak up like that!”

He found no need to point out that she had done the sneaking. “Sorry.”

“I just wanted to drop off some more data on New Horizons.”

She said nothing more as he fell in beside her, perhaps because the night was so still and so dark, perhaps because she was ashamed that she had parked two houses down instead of pulling into his drive. “Did you file the case?”

“I just got back a couple of hours ago.”

“Everything go all right?”

“It’s a pretty surefire procedure. I dropped the papers through the courthouse mail slot.”

Kirsten halted by a nondescript Nissan. She fitted in the key and pulled up the trunk, revealing two more boxes. “I don’t know why I brought this stuff down from Washington. All along I figured you were going to drop everything. Just like that other lawyer.”

Marcus realized it was the only apology she was ever going to offer. He hefted one of the crates, surprisingly light for its size. “A friend of mine pointed out that some cases are won even when they’re lost.”

For some reason the words caused her gaze to become even more revealing. But she said nothing, merely lifted the final box and waited for Marcus to reach out and shut the trunk. Together they crossed the lawn, the house yellow-red and welcoming ahead of them. Kirsten said, “Alma told me this was your grandparents’ house.”

“And mine. It’s the only home I ever knew.” Strange how the night and this closed woman could open him. “My parents weren’t much into parenting. They drank. My dad left when I was nine, just didn’t come home one day. My mom lasted about a year longer, then one night I woke up and heard her screaming on the phone at her mom, my grandmother. Telling her how she couldn’t take it, couldn’t raise me, either my grandma came for me or she was leaving me in an orphanage.”

The response was so quiet he almost missed it. “That’s terrible.”

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” The words were stripped of all pain by the night, and emerged so matter-of-fact that Marcus did not even question why he was speaking at all. “My grandpa had suffered a stroke a year or so earlier. He couldn’t get around anymore, so I started helping out the day I arrived. He’d built this house for my grandmother back when times were good. She loved this place. Wouldn’t ever think of selling it, not even when we were down to living off my grandpa’s Social Security check and what we could raise in our backyard garden. But my grandmother was one of those women who just made everything all right. I don’t know how else to describe her.”

He climbed the front stairs, lost in the memory of how good it had been to come home and find on the other side of that screen door an old woman who always cared. Quiet and loving and strong and always there for him.

Only when he dropped his case on top of the first box did he realize Kirsten had not climbed the steps. Marcus turned back, and quietly asked, “What happened to your family, Kirsten?”

“My parents were killed in an automobile accident.” She managed the first step, did not give any notice to his coming down and taking the box from her arms. Just stood there holding the night. “I’d met Gloria about four months earlier. She helped me. So much.”

He dropped the box by the others and returned to her. “And now you’re trying to help her.”

Kirsten reacted as though slapped, wheeling about, eyes focused now and flashing. She opened her mouth, shut it hard, said simply, “I have to go.”

Marcus watched her turn and vanish into the night, wondering about the sounds filling the air. His heart seemed to hum a silver chord he had not heard in so long he could not even think of what it meant.

But the night was not done with him yet.

Marcus wrestled over the information Kirsten had deposited until almost dawn. With every passing hour his mood shifted, from astonishment to outrage to morbid curiosity. At half past four he had done all he could, save for one final call. He looked through his personal directory, came up with the name of a process server he had used in the past, a former federal agent based in Washington, D.C. He did not bother about the time. Process servers were known to live without the regular habits that governed the rest of mankind.