Girl of Vengeance (38 page)

“By
whom
?”

“Prince Roshan of Saudi Arabia.”

After the lights were switched off, all Dylan could see was the faint emergency light down the hall, flooding through the square, barred hole in the door.

Dylan had once, as a teenager, spent a memorable night in a holding cell in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta as a result of a series of stupid decisions by him and his friends. No charges had been filed. A few years later, he spent a nightmarish night in the New York City jail. In that case charges were filed: after a drunken ex-boyfriend sexually assaulted Alex, Dylan had attacked him.

In both cases, the jails were old. They smelled of oil and grease and sweat. The odor of men who paced like caged animals, mixed with urine and vomit.

This was different. For one thing it was clean. Before the lights had gone out, he’d seen clearly that the concrete floor and steel walls were without blemish, the walls painted a grayish white, and the floor dark grey. The bed actually had linens, though the blanket was rough wool, something close to an Army blanket. He could live with that.

At least he was alone and he’d been able to call Alex. They’d given him that. Predictably she’d been distraught, and he’d only had a few minutes to speak before he was told to get off the phone. He supposed that was better than nothing.

He was restless, raging that he wasn’t out there to protect his wife and her sisters. By the end of the interviews, he had been sure that they were going to let him go. Kelly had become more and more friendly, his body language clear that he believed Dylan. Smith seemed to stay more on the fence, but even she didn’t seem as menacing by the end of the interrogation.

He needed to get out of here. Dylan had paced the room. He’d walked back and forth until his feet were exhausted, then lay on the bed, tossing and turning.

It wasn’t the jail on his mind, or even the danger.

Instead, his mind kept turning back to the conversation he’d had with Alex days ago.

Maybe you should consider AA like your mom?

I can’t do all that God stuff. You know that.

He couldn’t. Because Dylan wanted nothing to do with a God who would allow children to be slaughtered. A God who allowed war, who allowed terrorists to destroy buildings and kill thousands of people. Dylan didn’t want the God of his parents. Capricious. Sometimes overly harsh, sometimes overly permissive. They were drunks, until his mom cleaned up her act. She’d thrown Dylan’s dad out and never saw him again.

Occasionally—especially when he was recovering from his injuries after the war—Dylan wondered what had happened to his father. But he’d never wondered enough to do anything about it. He’d never sought him out. He’d never done much of anything to change it, because he knew that his dad was still sick.

As was Dylan.

He couldn’t hide it anymore. He couldn’t hide
from
it. Since Ray’s death he had been slowly sliding off into oblivion. At first it was one drink, then two, then two weeks later he was drinking to quell his anxiety and pain. He didn’t get
drunk.
He didn’t lose his capacity or ability to function. But after six months, he’d started drinking occasionally even in the morning.

Dylan knew what that meant. He’d turned into a drunk. He’d turned into his father.

Maybe you should consider AA like your mom?

It wasn’t that simple. He knew a little about AA. After all, his mother had joined when he was still a teenager. They’d gone to war more than once after she cleaned up—she knew he was still drinking then and pushed him hard to quit. Eventually he had. But he never joined AA. Their emphasis on spiritual development and belief in God seemed little more than a cult to Dylan. His mother and father—drunk and erratic as they were—had at one time regularly dragged Dylan to church, before they fell apart completely. He didn’t remember much from those days—he’d been very young. But he did remember the talk about hell.
Lots
of talk about hell. You’ll go to hell for this and go to hell for that. You’ll go to hell if you don’t believe, you’ll go to hell if you don’t believe
enough
, you’ll go to hell if you lie or cheat or steal or have sex or touch yourself or drink or dance too much or vote Democrat or make friends with people with brown skin.

Dylan wasn’t interested in that kind of a God, and when his mother started harping about
love
and how her “Higher Power” had set her free from the bondage of drink, he’d just turned away. He didn’t want to hear it.

But Dylan was beginning to wonder. Because in recent weeks he’d found himself more and more often staring into the bottom of a bottle. And for the last two weeks, ever since he and Alex had boarded a train for Washington, he’d found himself constantly craving a drink. Or four. It wasn’t the tension and stress. He’d learned how to handle that in the Army. You just buckle down and keep going, no matter how much it hurts.

No. It was something more. He’d spent his whole life wrestling with feelings that he wasn’t worth anything. That he’d never amount to anything. Every time he came into contact with Alex’s family, it underscored that inferiority. Her sisters were scientists and ran their own companies and even the youngest was brilliantly talented. No wonder Alex’s parents looked down their noses at him.

His old therapist at the VA had taught him mindfulness exercises, meditations he could do when he sat still and focused inward. Dylan had struggled with that for months. He’d get deeper and deeper, last longer and longer, but finally he felt like he pierced through and saw right into his center.

He didn’t like what he saw. Inside Dylan Paris was a gaping wound, a hole. He’d once filled that hole with alcohol, then with overwork when he went back to school. He’d filled it with his concentration on being a soldier. And, unfortunately, he’d filled it with another person. With Alex. When he lost her, or thought he had, while he was in Afghanistan, it felt like his world had ended.

He loved Alex, and he would have done anything for her. But he’d slowly come to realize that she couldn’t fill that hole either. And so he’d begun drinking again. He knew it wouldn’t heal that raw wound. Nothing could do that. But it served as an anesthetic, for at least a little while.

Maybe his mother and Alex were right. But he didn’t see how he could do it. He’d had quite enough of shame and self-hate. An angry, vengeful God on top of that?

He lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, barely illuminated from the hallway. In a day or two at most, maybe a week, he’d be out of here. He’d done nothing but defend his family, and once that sank in they would let him go.

Dylan was afraid of when that came. He was afraid of what he would do when he got out. Because for the last twenty-four hours since he was taken into custody outside the British Embassy, he’d thought far less about Alex than he had thought about getting his hands on a bottle.

Ray would be disgusted. He could almost imagine him, sitting across the cell from him, leaning forward, and saying,
Get up, Paris. Your girl loves you and deserves better.

He was right. But Dylan didn’t know how he was going to do it on his own.

He
couldn’t
do it on his own.

So Dylan Paris groaned as he got out of the bed. And for the first time in his life, he got on his knees. The floor was cold, the concrete unforgiving, and his knees and ankles hurt, especially the one that had sustained such heavy injures in Afghanistan.

Dylan closed his eyes and whispered, “I don’t know what I’m doing here, but if you’re really out there, and you really give a shit, then I … need … help.” He began to shake. He felt a heaving in his stomach and the wound in his heart, the gaping hole felt exposed, naked. It felt
dirty.
It felt like
shame.

“Please,” he whispered. Then he slid down to the floor, overwhelmed with grief, grief for his childhood, grief for the violence he’d witnessed in Afghanistan, but most of all, grief for Roberts and Weber and even Hicks and above all, grief for Ray Sherman. His best friend and confidante and the only person other than Alex he’d ever trusted.

In truth, he’d trusted Ray more than Alex. And as the pain washed over him, he found himself, for the first time, weeping for the loss of his friend.

Sarah Thompson sat in a chair next to the window of the hotel, looking out at Vancouver Harbor.

Initially they’d had some difficulty getting the suite. None of them had any credit cards except Andrea, who had a pocket full of pre-paid gift cards. After another attack, they didn’t want to be in a traceable location anyway. But after the credit card fiasco the immigration officer who had temporarily approved Adelina’s asylum request, Liam Tremblay, stepped in. The hotel opened its doors wide after that.

They were staying in a spacious suite, with a common living area and two bedrooms. Sarah and Andrea slept in one room, Jessica and Adelina in the other.

Now, as the sun slowly rose, the sky pink above the harbor, the buildings reflected in the water below, Sarah waited impatiently for Eddie to wake up and text her. He’d worked third shift the night before, so it would likely be some hours. It wasn’t even nine in the morning back in Washington.

While she waited, she scrolled on her phone, commenting on the Facebook and Instagram feeds of her friends from San Francisco; friends she’d effectively lost when the accident happened. Instead of going home for her senior year, she’d stayed on the East coast and home schooled. Even the homeschooling had fallen to the side when her mother went back to the West Coast after Christmas. Sarah didn’t know if she was going to graduate high school this year or not. She might have to go back and spend another year in school.

That was fine. She’d still stay in Bethesda. She was eighteen now, and her parents couldn’t say squat about it, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to leave Carrie behind. Or Eddie. If she had to go back to school she’d do it at Bethesda Chevy Chase, where Julia had gone
her
senior year, and maybe she’d kick some ass for her sister.

The opening, then closing of a door alerted Sarah.

It was her mother. Adelina Thompson walked out of the bedroom with a worn and sad expression on her face. She looked around, saw Sarah, and approached.

“Coffee’s made,” Sarah whispered.

Her mother did a detour, pouring herself a cup of coffee, then sat down in the chair next to Sarah.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” her mother said.

“Yeah. It is.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but for Sarah, it was a little weird. All her life, her mother had directed everything. Sit here. Stand there. Wear this. Play that instrument. Sometimes Sarah had resented her mother, raged against her. But that was all washed away when her mother sat in bed with her, holding her as Sarah cried out in savage pain from her knee to her shin, desperately waiting for the time to come when she could take her morphine again.

Sarah spoke first. “How is Jessica?”

“She’s recovering. The doctors were going to release her yesterday anyway, even if we hadn’t been attacked. She’ll always be at risk for another stroke, but … she’ll recover.”

Sarah ran her fingers through her hair and said, “No … I mean … how is she
doing?
”

Adelina smiled. “You always get to the heart of things, don’t you?”

Sarah shook her head. “Not always. I didn’t know anything was wrong with Jessica. I didn’t know … anything at all.”

Adelina reached over and took her daughter’s hand. “She’s doing better. In her heart. In her head. She hates me, but not as much as she hates herself. She’s grieving for her girlfriend. But she didn’t have a chance to properly grieve, because she was all alone.”

“I don’t think she hates you.”

Her mother grimaced. “That’s sweet of you to say, but it’s not true. It’s okay. I did my best to protect you all. I failed. But I did everything I could.”

“I know,” Sarah said. She squeezed her mother’s hand. “I
know.
”

Adelina’s eyes widened a little, and she blinked, hard.

Sarah spoke again. “What can I do? For her?”

The answer wasn’t what she had hoped for. “We pray. We love her. I’m going to accept the immunity offer. Saturday we’ll fly to Washington. Then we take her home and let her know how much she means to us.”

Sarah said, “I hate what he did to you. I
hate
him.”

Adelina whispered, “No. Don’t hate … if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have you.”