Marc Cameron - Act of Terror

The damp cold of Kim’s fuming across the narrow aisle pushed away any thoughts of sleep. He could feel her stare, heavy, like a pile of bricks dumped on his chest. He opened his eyes, glancing sideways without turning his head. He’d been right.

“Who are you, Jericho Quinn?” Her voice was hushed, pitiful.

Quinn pushed the button to raise his seatback. Some things you couldn’t take lying down.

Kim leaned across, whispering so as not to wake Mattie. “You know the worst part?”

Jericho sighed, defeated. “I can only imagine.”

“You’ve ruined me for any kind of relationship with normal guys.” Tears pressed from her lashes. It would have been funny had her words not been so deadly serious. “I tried to date Bryce Adams, the manager at the credit union,” she sobbed. “… but he bored me out of my skull.

He’d never been the particularly jealous type, but the thought of his ex-wife dating another man made Quinn want to kick Bryce Adams in the nuts and beat him over the head with an axe handle.

“And then it dawned on me-” Kim smacked herself in the forehead with an open hand. “I suddenly realized I’m only interested in cops and firemen… It’s like I have some sort of battered-woman syndrome

… but I’m the kind who goes for adrenaline junkies instead of bullies.” She sniffed, hanging her head. “What the hell have you done to me…?”

“Come on, Kimmie.” Quinn moved across the aisle. She stiffened when his hand brushed her shoulder. He was sure she would have pulled away but for fear of disturbing Mattie, asleep now in her lap.

Kim’s head suddenly snapped up, eyes probing like a CAT scan.

“I mean, seriously, Jer…” She threw up her hands. “What kind of OSI agent gets picked up in an unmarked jet and ordered back to Washington the same day someone tries to kill his family?”

“I-”

“Oh, please… just shut up.” Kim’s voice was a whispered hiss. “You’ll only lie. It was hard enough before-seeing that look in your eyes, only guessing how cruel you really were…” Her lips trembled as she spoke. “Now I’ve seen the things you’re capable of firsthand

… and so has Mattie.”

Quinn opened his mouth to speak, but Kim’s hand shot up, shushing him.

“Look,” she said with an air of clench-jawed finality that shocked even Quinn. “I know we owe you our lives. I know if it wasn’t for you, we would be dead…” Her voice trailed off, but her eyes grew cold and seething. “But, if it wasn’t for you, this never would have happened.”

Quinn wanted to explain, to tell her there had to be people like him in the world, but it all seemed too trite to say out loud. Instead, he just sat there and took it.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid…” Her chest began to heave with bitter sobs. “I… I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you back in.”

“Kim,” Quinn said softly, staring at her tiny hand. “Don’t…”

She turned away to stare toward the flight deck, sniffing into a tissue. He’d lived with her long enough to know that when she looked away like that no amount of talking would get through to her.

“I don’t know what it is you’re up to,” she whispered, still facing away. “I’m certain it’s something important-and I’m just as certain you’re good at it… But do me a favor and leave us out of it.”

She spun suddenly, her lips set in a tight line. “We’re divorced, Jericho. You need to start acting like it.”

Gaithersburg, Maryland 2310 hours

The two goldfish that were Ronnie Garcia’s sole dependents had miraculously figured out how to survive in a half a bowl of cloudy water feeding on their own poop. She sprinkled some shrimp flakes in the bowl and promised to change their water when she had a free minute. The fish tore after the food like little bug-eyed piranhas.

She stripped off her polo shirt and threw it in the corner. She’d not been close enough to the men she shot to get any back splatter of blood on her, but the smell of gunfire and human pain hung to the dark blue fabric of her slacks. She loosened the straps of her ballistic vest, feeling the sudden lightness as she lifted the bulky panels over her head. She threw the vest on top of the laundry pile and took out the wooden comb she’d worn to the White House, shaking loose her hair.

She, Veronica Garcia, had actually sat on a couch in the Oval Office and chatted with the president of the United States.

“Oh, Papa, if you could have seen me…”

The thought of it still sent a shiver down her back.

Then she remembered the killing.

She wished there was someone she could call, someone she could confide in. She gave a fleeting thought to calling her ex-husband, but quickly realized he would only make her feel worse in the long run.

In the end, she settled for a scalding shower. She stood under the water for a long time, leaning against the tile with both hands, hoping the heat would beat the memories of the day out of her body. She finally realized she really felt bad for not feeling bad enough and turned off the water.

The night was warm for Maryland in late September and she left her hair wet, hoping it would help her sleep a little cooler. She brushed her teeth, happy to feel clean again, and slipped into her favorite pair of stretchy yellow terrycloth sleeping shorts. She found a white tank top wadded up at the base of her dresser, sniffed it, and pronounced it clean enough to wear to bed. Collapsing back against the pillow, she flipped out the lamp… and stared up at the darkness, wide-eyed.

Memories of the day whirled inside her head like a cyclone. Gathering witness statements and after-action reports for the joint investigative team from the CIA and the FBI had taken hours after the last shot had been fired.

When she’d completed her reports, a trio of CIA shrinks had summoned her to a stark, white room to gauge her level of emotional and physical trauma. With just over seven years on the job, she’d never been involved in a shooting. It came as a shock to her interrogators that she wasn’t more bothered by it. It was a surprise to her as well, but the men she’d shot had deserved to die. They had been killing the very people she’d signed on to protect, so she’d killed them. It was that simple. She would never brag about it, but she would do it again if faced with the same circumstances-and then move on with her life. The Agency shrinks had looked at her sideways when she explained the way she felt, but in the end, they signed off, pronouncing her sane as anyone else at the CIA.

One doc in particular, an older, Freudian-looking man with a twitchy right eye, appeared to be genuinely disappointed she was not pulling her hair out and running off screaming into the woods.

The grilling had ended shortly before 7 P.M. Her supervisor sent her home on three days’ paid administrative leave-standard operating procedure after a shooting. She’d not even made it to her car before he called her cell to tell her to come in and put on a clean shirt. She’d been summoned to the White House.

Ronnie’s job at the CIA made her no stranger to important political figures, and she’d become extremely hard to impress. But a personal meeting with the president, where he sat, legs crossed and smiling, to offer her coffee and tell her how much he needed her help? That was so very different from watching him walk down the marble halls at Langley.

Now, locked awake in the darkness, she flipped on the light and kicked the down comforter off her feet. Even for a girl raised in the Caribbean, the evening was much too warm. She sighed, beating her head against the pillow. If her father could see her now, he’d roll over in his regulation communist grave.