Andrew Gross - Reckless

“They would have killed me, Sheera, if I didn’t comply.”

“And they will kill you now that you have.”

He wanted to go over and sit next to her, his wife for all these years, the most treasured thing in his life. But he was sure she would just pull away. This had drawn a line between them. Maybe forever. “I’m so sorry. We’ll get to keep much of what we have. I know what it is to give this up.”

“To give this up?” She lifted her eyes and regarded him as if she was horrified. “You think for one second this is what I care about giving up? This house? Your fancy position? The things it has brought us?” From out in the hall, they heard the sounds of their boys playing. “It’s them. Amir and Ghassan. It’s their lives that matter to me. Will they now be targets? Will we live in fear the rest of our lives? Wherever we are…These are debts that don’t get forgiven, Marty.”

He glanced, empty of all hope, out the window. There was an unmarked car parked across the quiet street. “I’ll call Arthur,” he said, closing the drape. Their lawyer. “He can arrange some kind of deal.”

“It’s not about lawyers, Marty. Not this time.” She picked up one of Amir’s Transformer robots from the floor. She smiled and looked up at him. Resigned. Even forgiving. Tears flooding Sheera’s eyes, she held out the toy. “I think we made our choices long ago.”

Marty al-Bashir nodded. Tears in his eyes too. Tears of shame. Of fading hope for them. “We did, didn’t we, Sheera.”

Annie Fletcher picked out the set of spare keys to Ty’s house from where she knew he always left them, along the side of the house behind some flower tubs in a fake rock. She went up the stairs and let herself in.

The alarm signal beeped. She pressed in the code, 70794.

His daughter Jessie’s birthday.

Annie knew he wouldn’t mind. She’d let herself in many times before. The place looked clean and smelled fresh. It was a Saturday, and Elena, his cleaning lady, would have been in the day before. She was trying to find her gold hoop earnings, which were missing. She seemed to remember last leaving them on his night table when she’d stayed over a few nights before.

Before there suddenly seemed to be a widening gulf between them.

Maybe it had first begun with the attack on Jared. Ty had said maybe it was best if they kept apart for a while, for her safety, but Annie somehow felt that was Ty being Ty, maybe not wanting to face the truth, being noble. Or maybe, if she was honest, it had started some time well before. Maybe it went back to when they woke up in bed that Monday to the newscast of that family who was killed in town.

I knew her, he had said.

It was like something had changed in him since then.

She’d never pried. She’d never asked how. Or why. Never pushed him. That wasn’t her style. The last thing Annie would ever want was for someone to say that she was clingy. After all, they’d both agreed to keep things light.

From around town, he had told her. That was enough for her. He didn’t have to share everything with her. Though she may, in truth, have hoped that he would. She held a lot of things in herself-she’d left her own son out west until she could make a place for him here-and the truth was, while maybe she had fallen in love with Ty, just a bit, they weren’t exactly engaged.

He’d been away for four days, and she’d barely heard from him in that time. He said it was best that she didn’t know where he was going. But she had a clue. She had asked him, What are you getting involved in, Ty?

She had wanted to say, Okay, you don’t have to justify it with me, but in her heart, she worried. Worried something had happened. Somewhere. She worried he was getting himself into something over his head. He did that.

She worried something might have come between them. Something she couldn’t fight. Or even understand.

She went into the kitchen. Unable to help herself-what was it?-she put away a few dishes that Elena had left on the counter to dry. She almost tripped over a pair of running shoes. Then she went upstairs.

In the bedroom, she went over to the night table on the side of the bed she usually slept on, looking for her hoops. Damn. There was nothing on top. Where she thought they might be. Just a picture of Jessie and his boat, which Ty had just gotten out of dry dock-the Merrily.

She opened the drawer.

Nothing again. She sighed in disappointment. She had been sure they were there.

The room gave off an eerie feeling; it looked just like it had the last time she’d been there, a couple of nights before he’d left. They hadn’t made love that night. She’d felt something, distant, growing, separating them. And now he was gone.

Maybe it was just a stupid feeling. C’mon, Annie, what are you, ten?

It suddenly hit her that she should check on his dresser. There was a messy pile of photos, credit card receipts. Mail. Bills. Whatever came in, that’s where Ty threw it! If she didn’t want to intrude on his space, she would have organized it a hundred times.

In an ashtray, along with some loose change, were her gold hoops.

Hooray!

Annie wrapped them in a tissue and put them in her jacket. She was about to leave when something on the dresser caught her eye.

A voice inside her said to leave it alone. It’s Ty’s. Snooping’s not allowed. Another little voice urged her to take a look.

It was a photo. Left under the ashtray. Annie picked it up.

Her heart sank at what she saw.

Not so much because of who it was-it was a long time ago, and somehow, inside, she’d always had her suspicions.

As much as it was their relationship drifting away.

Her trust.

The photo was of Ty, smiling, a look on his face she had never seen when he was with her. On a bench. In a park. Other people around.

And next to him someone she recognized. Her head on his shoulder. Her hands wrapped around his arm. It didn’t make Annie jealous.

As much as it just hurt.

The woman’s face had been burned into her mind since the first day she saw it. On the TV. It was the one who had been killed. At that house.

April Glassman.

The car that came to take al-Bashir and his family into custody arrived at just before nine the next morning.

Overnight, Naomi had been on the phone with her team back in DC. The plan was to get him to a safe house in the country, where he would be debriefed by Naomi and representatives from the British government, then flown out of the country. They needed to do this quickly and without notice, before Hassani or anyone else could intervene.

Hauck and Naomi arrived at the house in Mayfair a half hour early. An unmarked car from Scotland Yard was stationed across the square, having watched over al-Bashir’s house during the night. Otherwise, the street was empty. Like any quiet Sunday morning. Robins chirped in the trees. One or two families stepped out, dressed up, on their way to church.

The fewer people involved, the better.

Naomi flashed her ID by the two policemen in the car. Then she went up the stairs and knocked on the red paneled door. Hauck stayed on the steps, watching the square. A few houses down, a mother was dragging her cranky, whining son into the family BMW 330i for what seemed like a Sunday outing.

Sheera al-Bashir answered the door. She was dressed in a black blazer and designer jeans. It was hard, Hauck thought, not to feel sadness for her and her family. They had done nothing wrong. She could have been any modern, attractive young mom, dragged into a whirlwind in just a day. Now everything was about to change for them. Until Hassani was in custody-and maybe even well beyond that-they would always have to live in fear that people would find them.