Freedom Does Matter (Mercenaries Book 2) (42 page)

Derek wasn’t hiding, but they had to speak three times to get the conference set up. As a result, Go Shen and Elena, ready for a new assignment, joined them on Ian’s lanai. Shen’s laptop rested on the glass table; everyone took seats within view of the screen.

“Good afternoon, Derek,” Ian said. “How are you?”

“Meh. Kevin said this is about the phone at the ‘otel?”

“Indeed. What can you tell us?”

“One new bit. That U.S. phone number’s registered to a Billy America.”

Ian stared at the screen a long moment before moving. He looked around the table; his incredulous look was mirrored in everyone’s face. “Really?”

“Really. I’ve already asked Else for information on ‘im. We should know more…” He glanced at his watch. “Well, not till Monday, now.”

Ian nodded, although he had no pleasure in it. After a few minutes thought, he said, “You found no clue as to the owner of the phone?”

“Not yet. Sorry. I didn’t think to ask after it till late Friday.”

“No matter. But we should know on Monday?”

“Unless there’s something funny about it, yeah. Else probably won’t have anything on the America bloke till morning your time, though.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Day Forty-three - Minnesota

ALONE AT THE KITCHEN TABLE about nine-thirty Friday morning, Beckie decided to re-enter the world. The two days since Jean-Luc dropped her off had been taken mostly by sleep, mixed with commiserating with Melissa about Mike’s stone-headedness concerning marriage and college. She planned to make sure the conversation she’d had with Mike stuck. As she considered approaches, her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, except that it was from the group Ian’s team used. “Hello?”

“Beckie? Hi! It’s Amy. You remember? Amy Arden—”

“Yes!” She wished Amy could enjoy her smile through the phone. “I remember. For sure I remember,” she said a little more soberly.

“Yeah,” the girl said. “Well, since you… since you left kinda… abruptly… Anyway, Meili wanted to come up to visit. You are at home, right? In…”

“In Minnesota, yeah. Jean-Luc knows that.”

“Anyway, he’s gonna bring Meili up for a visit, and… and I thought…”

Beckie smiled at the obvious tension in Amy’s voice. Wish she’d Skyped me, so I could see it in her face. “Okay, Amy Rose, spit it out.” She guessed aloud, “Are you tagging along with Meili?”

“Yeah!” Amy cried. “And… if it’s okay, that is… I thought, since you told me to watch out for Noorah and Tahirah… Well, Mr. Fereré said there was plenty of room for them, too.”

“Guess I’d better tell Mom to buy more food. All
halal
, of course.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Never!” she said with a laugh, but Amy didn’t get the joke.

“Since Mom’s up to her eyeballs with something she didn’t want to talk about, Mrs. deVeel said she’d chaperone the three of us.”

“Oh? That seems—”

“Sure does. She volunteered when she heard me talking to Tahirah. She winked at me when she said she had… what did she say? ‘An ulterior motive.’ She said she’d explain to you when we get there.”

“And when does Jean-Luc think that will be?”

“About six, he said. He’s gotta go on and pick up Mr. Jamse and Mr. deVeel in New York— Oh, shit! Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Thanks for that bit of intelligence.”

Amy giggled. “I can maybe share some more when I get there.”

“I’ll welcome all of you with open arms! But watch the hugging. Still sore.”

Beckie caught her mother before she’d left the store. Next problem: where will they sleep? She called Melissa.

At quarter past six, Jean-Luc stopped the Gulfstream; while Beckie and Melissa watched, the stairs folded out of the fuselage and bumped on the ground. Amy bounded down the five steps first and ran to hug Beckie. Beckie’s muffled scream as her ribs were compressed threw Amy back, but only for a second. She threw Beckie a penitent look before she turned back to the plane; behind Meili, Tahirah followed Noorah down the steps and Beckie saw Shalin waiting her turn at the top.

“Great! No hugs, please. Jean-Luc, any problems?”

“No,
mademoiselle
. We cleared customs in Fort Lauderdale, as usual. Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies, is how the saying goes. I’ll leave you and get ready for my flight tomorrow morning.”

“Say hi to Ian and Kevin, please.”

“How shall I do that without…”

She grinned her special purpose evil-doing grin at him and he tipped his head in salute. “Now, ladies… Oh my God, we
are
all ladies!” Beckie stifled her laugh. “Gather ‘round.”

She introduced Melissa and explained how the guests would be divvied up. The two cars were quickly loaded; they were on the way.

At home, her mother had taken full advantage of the late afternoon sunshine to set the picnic table for everyone, now a dozen strong.

After the food had been put away, Noorah plucked Beckie’s sleeve to thank her and told her the group meal reminded her of home. Conversations continued outside, around the chimenea. Beckie’s dad brought kindling and wood, and for the next two hours, though the temperature was in the low fifties, the fire kept them toasty. The talk flowed as freely as the lightning bugs tracking across the yard.

But near eleven, Beckie noticed Noorah holding Tahirah, sound asleep. “Time to break it up and turn in,” she said. No one argued; everyone shared Tahirah’s weariness.

Once she’d settled the two Egyptian girls with Meili, who was familiar with everything, she set off for Melissa’s. Amy had stayed with her; she now sat beside her in the car, playing with the radio. “So much music!” she enthused.

Upstairs in Melissa’s home, Shalin had taken one of the two spare rooms, so Beckie only had to decide whether she would bunk with Melissa or with Amy. Before that momentous decision had been made, however, Shalin came out of her room and took Beckie’s arm.

“I promised you an explanation. Shall we talk?”

“Sure. Here?”

Shalin frowned. “I’m not sure the others should hear.”

“Will it hurt them? Lissa and I share almost everything—”

“Not Ian or Mike!”

“Right! But most everything else. And I’m sure Amy will weasel it out of me. Tickling would be the best choice,” she said in an aside. “But not too hard, I’m a trained professional, you know.”

“Okay,” Shalin said. Again, Beckie recognized an adult sigh of resignation. “No, I don’t think hearing this will put them at risk.

“When Amy and the others went to Nassau a couple of weeks ago, I went along as chaperone, but also so I could visit a friend who is Imam at the Islamic Center. While we talked, he told me a terrible story about Alisha, his sister.” Shalin looked around, then sat on the end of the bed. Everyone grouped around her, on the floor, beside her on the bed and Beckie pulled over the desk chair.

“There’s a lot of history that’s not important now. In sum, the two are close as brother and sister. They lived in London until about two years ago, when they took different situations. He took the position at the Center and Alisha took a chair with the Kansas City Orchestra. She plays several instruments, he said.”

“Is it a renowned orchestra?” Beckie asked. “I haven’t heard of it, but I’m not really into classical.”

“I don’t know. He said it wasn’t the Symphony.” She sighed. “That doesn’t matter. What does matter…” Shalin’s fists clenched. This won’t be good, Beckie thought. “What does matter… earlier this summer, she was raped on the street. She’d finally told him about it.”

“Did they get the guy? The rapist?” Beckie stared at Amy as the girl fired off her questions. Is she trying to avoid the fact by focusing on the perp? Beckie glanced at Melissa; her friend looked as shocked as she.

“Yes, but—”

“Kansas is one of the places you never want to be raped in,” Melissa said. “Not that any place is good, but some are worse.”

“More like it’s one of the worst places to be a woman in,” Beckie added. “I swear, I don’t know how they can elect people like that.”

Both Shalin and Amy stared at them with surprise, though Shalin’s glance had less shock.

“So,” Beckie said, “how is she now?”

“Well, it’s what Melissa was saying. She’s been trying to get an abortion ever since she tested positive and it’s just no, no, no. You want to have this baby; it’s the right thing to do.”

“Wait, must be a guy telling her this. Isn’t that one of the classic lines? ‘You know you want it.’”

“From what she told him on the phone, it’s everyone. The big church in town’s behind it. They’re so strongly anti-abortion that they’ve gotten the legislature to pass every law they can to make the procedure harder to obtain. So far, she can’t get past the last hurdle, a clean vaginal ultrasound, since she’s not far enough along to have one done on the abdomen.

“I told him I’d visit her and see what we can do.”

“Well, Jean-Luc can probably add Kansas City to our return itinerary.” Beckie did some quick calculations in her head. “But it’ll be…”

“Jean-Luc said Monday at the earliest,” Shalin said, agreeing. “It’d be too much to try and do it before then, anyway. And Meili wanted to stay the weekend.”

“Yeah. I better spend time with her tomorrow. She’s been super nice about not getting any time with me over the past couple months.”

Shalin nodded. “She also helped Xia a lot with Nasir.”

“Noorah has news for you, too,” Amy said. “No,” she protested as Beckie started to speak. “She can tell you. It won’t go bad over night!”

“Okay. It’s well into tomorrow,” Beckie said. “Lissa, I’m gonna stay here.” She put on the evil face again, making sure Amy could see it. “I’ll get Miss Amy Rose to tell me everything… Eeee-verything!”

The others, except Amy, laughed as they left.

“Don’t worry, Amy,” Beckie said once the door closed. “I won’t force you to break any confidences.”

“It’s not that so much as it is, it’s her news. She should tell you. But…” Amy’s face now had an expression of delight and mischief such as Beckie’d not seen for some time. “Mr. Jamse came by the house the other night. The day you left.” She made a little smirk. “I might have… eavesdropped. A little.”

The idea filled Beckie with anticipation. “Cool! What did they talk about?”

“Well, first he told Mom he and Mr. deVeel were going to Tel Aviv. Mr. Fereré was going to fly them to New York and Boynton booked El Al on to Tel Aviv. He didn’t say why—”

Beckie was connecting their trip to Tel Aviv with the drinks she and Kevin had had with Roni Shalev in London. “I think I know why they were going. It doesn’t matter to us; Alisha’s our concern now. If she still needs help.”

Amy nodded; she still had a smug look on her face. “And then he asked about you and the little… set-to you and Mom had after she played that sick joke on you. First, she resigned—I was out in the hall crying silently. For all the shit I have to take, I don’t want to go anywhere else. Specially if it involves living normal! Well, he kind of laughed before she told him why, but after, he refused and said he didn’t think she’d even made a mistake. And even if it was—”

“It is
so
outweighed by everything else she does,” Beckie concluded.

“That’s what he said. So I’m thinkin’ Abby and me are okay!”

“Better keep that under wraps till you’re a little older.”

“Mom said whatever works for me is okay with her, so now I just gotta convince Abby.”

“And Ian. Since you’ll never hide it from him.” She allowed a dark note of warning to creep in, wanting Amy to take this seriously.

“Yeah. Well, with Abby away, that’s not a problem. But what you should know is Mom stuck up for you big time, telling him… What did she say? ‘You didn’t get a decorative China doll to keep on a shelf, Ian. Beckie wants to work, same as you.’ Then she reminded him he’d sent you home before and he should remember what happened. I don’t know what that meant.”

“It’s okay, I do.” She smiled. “Com’ere.” She pulled Amy into a close embrace. “Thanks.” She grinned up into the girl’s face. “Give your mom a hug from me when you see her.”

Amy pulled a long face before agreeing.