Finding North (44 page)

Chapter
Thirty

“
They do?”

“
Sure,” Hector James said.
“I wanted to get one, but Dad won’t let me. When I’m eighteen, I’m
going to get a big sunflower, like yours.”

While she’d like to think
he wanted one because of her, Hector James was a deeply personal
and practical boy. If he wanted the tattoo, it was for some special
reason of his own.

“
Why?” Alex
asked.

“
It looks like wings,”
Hector James said.

He folded the scan of the
Serbian map’s compass rose. The pedals of the flower looked like
feathers.

“
Plus, mom liked it,”
Hector James said.

“
You saw this sunflower
when you lived with your mom?” Alex asked.

“
This one. With the eye,”
Hector James pointed to her scanned copy of the ancient compass
rose. “Mom had a pin that she wore on her sweaters. She used to
wear it all the time. I think Dad gave it to her, but I don’t know
that. Isn’t that why you have the tattoo? Because of
Dad?”

Alex shook her
head.

“
Why do you have the
tattoo?” Hector James asked.

“
I don’t know,” Alex said.
“Something I don’t remember.”

Hector James nodded. Alex
made hot chocolate, while Hector James looked around her
office.

“
Look at that,” Hector
James picked up the cardholder. “You figured it out.”

Alex smiled.

“
Know why I’m up?” Hector
James asked.

“
You met someone special,
and you don’t know what to do about it?” Alex asked.

Hector James’ mouth fell
open with surprise.

“
How’d you know?” he
asked.

“
I know what your dad
looked like when he was confused about your mom,” Alex said. “We
met when he was only a few years older than you are
now.”

She held out a mug of hot
chocolate for him.

“
Hey, you made some for
yourself,” Hector James said.

She smiled. Because he was
too big to sit in her lap now, Alex had replaced her two armchairs
with a small loveseat. He sat down next to her. She brought her
laptop over in case he wanted to see the slide shows.

“
The thing
is . . .” Hector James took a drink of cocoa. “I was
going to ask Jesse . . . Is he still
here?”

“
He left,” Alex said. “But
I can get him back.”

“
Well, let me ask you
first,” Hector James said. “Don’t you think Mom will be mad if I
grow up? I guess that sounds stupid, ’cuz I can’t really stop it,
but . . .”

“
I know what you mean,”
Alex said. “She died when you were ten, and you’re not ten anymore.
Are you hurting her by moving on? Growing up?”

Hector James
nodded.

“
I know how that feels,”
Alex said.

“
I don’t want to leave
her,” Hector James said.

“
It feels like you’re
betraying her,” Alex nodded.

“
Betraying her.” Hector
James sniffed and looked away. “I don’t want to betray
Mom.”

Tears formed in his eyes,
and he leaned against Alex.

“
I still miss her so
much,” Hector James said. “I tell her my whole day start to finish,
like I did when she was . . . here. Every night.
Before bed. I tell her. I miss her as much as I did
when . . .”

Alex blew on her hot cocoa
and waited for him to continue.

“
I don’t want to lose
her,” Hector James said in a low voice. “But
sometimes . . . I get so caught up in my life that I
don’t remember how sad I am.”

Hector James
nodded.

“
I’m ’sposed to be sad for
the rest of my life,” Hector James said. “But sometimes I’m not
sad, and I feel guilty.”

“
Me, too,” Hermes said
from the door. He ran into the room. The small boy squeezed onto
the couch on the other side of Alex. She gave him her cocoa, which
he drank down in a steady series of gulps. “Sometimes I don’t feel
sad at all, but I still miss Mommy . . . I don’ want
to hurt Mommy’s feelings. She’d be so sad if she thought
I . . .”

Hermes sniffed and started
to cry. Hector James began to cry. Alex put her arms over the boys’
shoulders and let them cry in her lap.

She’d never found an
answer to their question for herself. She wasn’t sure what to do
except listen and love them. She rubbed their backs and let them
cry. When the boys stopped crying, Alex leaned over to look at
them. Hermes had cried himself to sleep. Hector James was staring
straight forward. He gave her a little smile when he saw that she
was looking at him.

“
I wanted to ask Jesse if
Mom would be mad,” Hector James said.

“
Jesse?” Alex asked the
air. He appeared in front of them. He pointed to the boys, and Alex
shrugged. “Hector James wants to know if Dahlia would be mad if he
grew up.”

“
And didn’t miss her all
the time,” Hector James said. “Wasn’t sad, like crying, all the
time. Would that hurt her feelings?”

“
No,” Jesse said. “I think
it would make her happy. It makes me happy to see my kids living
their lives even if it means they are leaving me
behind.”

“
That’s weird,” Hector
James said. “The air kind of sparkled.”

Alex nodded.

“
What did he say?” Hector
James asked.

“
He said it would make her
really happy,” Alex said.

“
Why?” Hector James
asked.

“
Because she loved you,”
Alex said. “She wanted you to be happy in your life.”

“
Because she gave you
life,” Jesse said. “She wants you to enjoy it, live it
well.”

“
What did he say?” Hector
James asked.

“
He said that your mother
gave you life,” Alex said. “She wants you to live it, enjoy it,
have fun, be happy.”

“
Like a present,” Hector
James nodded. “If I’m sad all the time, I’m kinda not appreciating
her present.”

“
Right,” Alex said. “I
think that, by remembering your mom, missing her, you get to carry
her with you.”

“
Like in my
pocket?”

“
Exactly,” Alex said. “You
get to spend your whole life with her because you love her. She’s a
part of you, so she’s a part of your life.”

Hector James hugged
Alex.

“
Do you want to talk about
Patrice?” Alex asked.

Hector James’s eyes went
wide, and he gave a fast shake of his head. He blushed bright red.
He drank his cocoa to avoid looking at her.

“
When you’re ready,” Alex
said. He nodded but didn’t look at her. “Do you want to see the
pictures?”

“
Just the happy ones,”
Hector James said. “The ones with mom.”

Alex smiled. She leaned
over Hermes to get her laptop. She started the slideshow and set
the laptop on Hector James’s lap. She’d recently added some old
photographs of Troy and Dahlia when they were in high school.
Hector James grinned at his parents goofing around and smiled at
the images of the happy times he’d spent with his mother. After a
few minutes, he was asleep.

Alex took the laptop from
him. She was about to close it when she realized she could look at
Hank Zutterberg’s reports. She wiggled her hand around in her
pajama bottoms’ pocket trapped under Hermes’ head. She was able to
grab the drive with the very tips of her fingers and not wake the
child. She stuck it into her laptop.

Like something out of a
movie, a square box came up on the screen and said
“scanning . . .” The dots extended for each second.
The webcam on her laptop flashed on. Alex reached for the USB drive
to pull it out when the box said, “Scanning complete. Viewer
approved.”

Alex blinked.

“
Welcome, Alexandra
Hargreaves,” the square read. “Click here to see files.”

Alex clicked. A directory
opened with a list of thirty-three dated document files — one a
week, with an extra file on October 8
^th
. Alex clicked that file
first.

Zutterberg thought she was
dead. Alex winced. The file included a series of images Zutterberg
said he bought from the man who brokered the assault. Alex thought
something was different in these photos from the photos Joseph had
taken, but she wasn’t sure what. She leaned in to see if Paul was
wearing those mysterious dress shoes. She couldn’t tell from the
photo. She closed the file and went to the earliest file in his
listing.

One at a time, Alex opened
Zutterberg’s files. She was pleasantly surprised that his notes
were thorough and thoughtful. He had assigned a team of four men
and one woman to help him track Alex. She noted their names so she
could talk to them individually.

Each report contained
photos of Alex and the team. Although he’d documented her time with
John or Max, he had kindly not included photos of their private
time. Alex had to drag herself away from the laughing photos of the
team.

He and his team were there
when she’d rescued Matthew and Colin. They’d locked down the
entrances for the Fey Special Forces Team when everything went
south. Alex winced. He noted that she had single-handedly killed
almost every one of the captors. He guessed that the entire episode
was a set-up from the beginning. At the end of that report, he’d
noted that the team was so skilled that someone needed to catch
them in a place where they felt safe to cause them “any real
harm.”

He had photos of Alex and
Jesse in the CIA hospital in Costa Rica. Alex grimaced at the
photos of each of the men who’d been captives. She’d forgotten how
gaunt and sick Matthew had been. Her stomach turned over when she
saw Colin. Upset, she closed the file.

Looking across the office,
she gathered her courage and opened the file again.

She had assumed the next
report would cover their rescue of Cee Cee Joiner, but the next
report was about a trip to Serbia. They’d heard that Cee Cee was
looking for oil leases from the Naftna Industrija Srbije, the
Serbian national oil company. The Fey Special Forces Team had
followed him to Kosovo. Because Alex and Jesse didn’t want to
relive old memories of Kosovo, they’d taken off to see the oldest
church in Serbia, the Church of the Saint Apostles Peter and Paul.
The church was located in Stari Ras, the first capital of the
medieval state of Raška, near modern Novi Pazar. According to
Zutterberg’s report, the trip was about four hours one way by car.
They’d had to travel through Montenegro and then return to Serbia
to reach the mountainous Stari Ras.

“
Do you remember going to
Stari Ras in Serbia?” Hoping not to wake the boys, Alex whispered
to Jesse.

“
I remember the church,”
Jesse nodded. “Uh . . . The Church of the Saint
Apostles Peter and Paul. There are amazing frescoes there. It’s a
part of the UNESCO Heritage site. Stari Ras, Petrova church, and a
monastery . . .”

“
Zutterberg says it’s
called ‘Sopoćani,’” she said. “It’s west of Novi Pazar by ten miles
or so.”

“
Right,” Jesse said.
“Deserted in the thirteenth century. The roof fell in or something
like that. The monks were there when we visited. They’d come back
to rebuild the monastery. You don’t remember?”

Alex shook her
head.

“
Both the church and the
monastery were in that book.”

“
The one from the
bookstore?” Alex asked.

Jesse nodded.

“
Wow,” Alex said. She
scowled. “I wonder what I did with the book.”

“
It should be here in a
day or so,” Jesse said. “Dusty secure-shipped it and the beekeeping
book from Paris.”

“
That’s right,” Alex
nodded. “I gave it to Dusty to ship.”

“
You don’t remember Stari
Ras?” Jesse asked again.

Alex shook her
head.

“
You’ll remember this,”
Jesse said. “You have to hike up to Stari Ras from the road. It was
an easy hike. We’d stopped on the road. We had gone about five
minutes when we saw what we thought were cliff
dwellings.”

“
Cliff
dwellings . . .” Alex squinted as a vague image came
back to her. “They weren’t cave dwellings, though.”

“
Right,” Jesse said. “I
knew you would remember that part. It was the cave of the monastery
of Archangel Michael.”

“
But it looked like cave
dwellings,” Alex nodded. “I remember. But I feel
scared . . . something happened. Not there,
but . . . Do you remember anything?”

“
What does Zutterberg
say?” Jesse asked. His head went up and down in a nod.

Alex looked down at the
laptop.

“
Let’s see — we left about
midday and started back to Kosovo,” Alex said. “When we were in
Montenegro the first time, we saw a honey stand. Beekeepers. We
stopped on our way to Novi Pazar, but it was too early. They
weren’t open yet. Do you remember that?”