INVITING FIRE (A Sydney Rye Novel, #6) (5 page)

There were two cameras. One over my bed looking toward the door and the other over the door looking toward my bed. The video was in gray scale and there was no audio but Dan had set up it up so I could watch the two feeds in split screen. The file opened where I'd left off. Mulberry was sitting next to my bed, holding my hand while I slept. He looked much bigger than me on the small screen. His shoulders broad and arms thick compared to my slight silhouette under the covers. I always thought we were closer to the same size.

Leaning toward the screen I stared at my face. My eyes darted under my lids but I didn't wake up. The pixilated world the video contained was all a mystery to me. The phone rang then and I jumped involuntarily, my heart rate speeding up, like I'd been caught doing something bad. I grabbed the receiver and answered. It was Mulberry. "Hey," he said, his voice low.

I sat back in the chair squeezing my eyes shut. The sound of his voice brought up more for me than seeing him on the screen. We hadn't touched each other since I’d arrived in Costa Rica. He'd been busy running Joyful Justice and I had encouraged him to stay away. "How you doing?" he asked.

I couldn't answer. The memory of our last embrace, right after my escape from Fortress Global’s headquarters, swirled across my vision. The possibility I'd felt for us then seemed like a silly dream, no more real to me than the visual on the screen. Malina's death helped to seal the fears that had stopped me from calling him, begging him to come and hold me. What if he died? Or me? It was important not to depend on anyone too much. Blue nudged my arm and I looked over at him. He sat and wagged his tail against the tile floor. I ignored the voice in my head warning me that Blue was mortal, too.

"Sydney, you there?" Mulberry said in his deep rumble.

"Yes, sorry," I said. "I'm okay, you know me," I said trying to smile. "I always survive. How are you?"

"Upset," he said and I heard his voice catch. Pain lanced through my chest and I felt tears welling in my eyes. "I'm really going to miss her," he said.

"Me, too," I managed.

"Merl said there is going to be a memorial tonight."

"Did he?" I said. "I've been asleep."

"You must be exhausted."

"No, I'm fine, you don't need to worry about me," I said, making my voice strong, forcing a calm coldness to spread through my veins. "I'm going to make this right."

Mulberry didn't answer right away. We stayed on the phone, listening to each other breathe for a moment longer. Then I heard Cynthia in the living room. "I better go," I said.

"Yeah, me too," Mulberry said. "I—" he paused.

"I'll talk to you soon," I said, and hung up the phone.

C
ynthia didn't notice me when I opened my door and stepped into the living room. She was sitting on one of the two couches watching her computer on the coffee table. I could only see the back of her head and the screen. We'd been living together for a month while Cynthia helped Merl with the final details of our animal perimeter. She was the best in the world, Merl told me. She started in the U.S Navy and now was freelance. I'd enjoyed living with her. Stories of training dolphins to guard borders were always interesting. Her methods were revolutionary and I respected the hell out of her.

At 45, Cynthia was tan and lithe, kept in shape with Pilates and a strict vegetarian diet. She was shorter than me but her confidence was intimidating. Cynthia wore her wavy chestnut hair loose this evening. I looked past her to a report from CNN playing on her computer screen, recognizing the aerial shot. The smoldering ruins of a building and pickup truck in the middle of cow pastures.

The news anchor's voice played over the dramatic footage. "Seventeen bodies in total were found on the grounds. Three in a shallow grave, three in the fields, and eleven in and around the building and pickup truck. It is still unclear what happened here but some people are comparing it to the 2010 San Fernando massacre where 72 immigrants were killed by the Los Zetas drug cartel." The screen cut to a woman standing in the field out of view of the destruction. "Some fear that this is more evidence of the increasing cartel influence in Costa Rica."

The screen split and the anchor we'd only heard before appeared on the right side of the screen, staring into the camera with piercing blue eyes. "Explain that to me a little more Maria, seems to me like no one survived this."

"Well, we don't know that at this time. It looks like something went wrong here. Perhaps some of the prisoners rose up against their captors," the woman in the field answered him. As she spoke a truck trundled past her headed for the crime scene.

"Pause that," I said.

Cynthia turned and saw me for the first time. "Oh sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's fine, I was awake," I said, coming around to the front of the couch. "Back it up. I want a better look at that truck in the last shot."

Cynthia leaned forward and did as I asked. She hit play as the truck entered the screen. When the passenger side window was in view I paused it and then advanced the screen slowly. Cynthia watched my face, I could feel her gaze, searching to see how hard grief's grip was around my heart. I concentrated on the screen. At first I couldn't see the man's face but there was a moment when the sunlight illuminated the interior of the cab. I paused the video again. "You know him?" Cynthia asked.

"I think so," I said, staring at the dark haired, confident man who rested his elbow on the open window. "That's Declan Doyle."

"Who?"

"He, I, um." I stopped to gather my thoughts. "I knew him in New York. He was the cop who first questioned me after I found Joseph Saperstein's body and we dated, briefly."

But when I told him the truth about Kurt Jessup, the city’s murderous mayor, he said I should run. He told me there was no way I'd ever find justice. I smiled thinking about how wrong he'd been. But what was he doing in Costa Rica? Headed to my crime scene? Last I'd heard he'd been promoted to detective, in the wake of Mulberry's "early retirement." That was four years ago though.

"Weird coincidence?" Cynthia said.

"Something like that," I said hitting play. The news continued as I sat back into the cushions of the couch.

"Tell me, Maria," the blue-eyed anchor said. "We've heard reports that Joyful Justice might be involved, is that possible?"

"Well John, while video confessions appear to be a calling card of the Joyful Justice, as you know their symbol and name have turned up in a number of incidents where there were no corresponding videos." The screen showed a photo from a different scene, another blackened wall, Joyful Justice scrawled into the soot.

Anita, a reporter I'd met in Goa when she was working on a story about child trafficking, handled Joyful Justice's public relations. It was important that our image not become confused. After all, it wasn't hard to think of us as just a bunch of terrorists. The only thing that separated us from the bad guys was our purpose. And isn't that what every terrorist thinks? Don't they all just believe so damn hard that they are right? I'd seen Anita kill a man. Naked and chained to his bed she choked the life out of him. This wasn't revenge to Anita, it was survival—and it was justice. I wondered as I looked at the image on the screen if it was one of her messages. Or just our echo.

The feed cut back to the woman in the field. "At this time John, there is nothing to tie Joyful Justice to this incident."

The screen returned to the anchor again. "They’re known to target 'bad guys'," he made quote marks with his fingers, “so doesn’t this seem like their handiwork?”

Maria looked a little uncomfortable with the question. A breeze blew through the frame and pushed a lock of her long hair over the microphone. "I think it's safe to say John, that whatever was happening here was criminal, but there is no evidence at this time that Joyful Justice was involved."

"Even though this looks like something they would do?" John pushed.

Maria frowned and a small line formed between her eyebrows. "I can't speculate on that, John."

"All right," he smiled. "Moving on..." The clip ended and silence filled the living room.

"I'm sorry about Malina," Cynthia said.

I nodded. "Me too. What time is the memorial?" I asked.

"9 pm. Want to walk over together?"

"Sure," I said. I heard my phone ringing. Cynthia looked toward my room and I stood to go answer it.

Anita was on the line. "Sydney," she said, sounding almost breathless.

"How are you?" I asked, sitting in my chair staring at my darkened computer screen.

"Fine," she said. "I'm so sorry about Malina."

I nodded and felt my throat tighten. Blue came over and rested his head on my knee. "Me too," I said. "How long do you think it will take for them to identify the bodies?"

"It won't be easy," she said. "It's possible that the families will never know what happened to them."

"What about Malina's family?"

"I didn't know them, did you?"

"No," I said. "We never talked about our pasts." I felt emotion pulling at me and sat forward. "Do we have copy cats?" I asked. Anita didn't answer right away. "I'm going to take that as a yes."

"Listen," Anita said, her voice calm. "This is a fluid thing. We don't control every action taken in justice's name. Lots of people are taking their fates into their own hands without our help."

"Just our inspiration."

"Something like that."

T
he memorial was held in what Merl called the mess hall. But where we gathered to eat and socialize was more of a banquet room. Surrounded by large, covered decks the space sat on a rise, its view encompassing the valley below. Tonight the sky was clear, the moon large and white, casting a blue tinge over the dark sky, obscuring the stars with its glow. The jungle below shone silver green.

Long tables ran the width of the space. Enough seating for 100. The tables were almost full tonight. Mostly women, the majority young and strong. However, some men and a few gray heads mingled among the group. Skin of every shade, eyes of every tone. And plenty of scars. Everyone wore dark T-shirts tucked into cargo pants which were then tucked into tightly laced boots. I'd learned to appreciate this "uniform" (which was based off Merl's own personal style) the first time I saw a giant spider climbing up my leg and realized it had to get to my neck before finding an opening in my clothing.

The outfit wasn't the only thing the group had in common. Everyone under this roof, fuck, every person for a hundred miles had one thing in common. They believed that with their actions, they were saving somebody. From the moment they woke, all day long, until they drifted off to sleep there was conviction and purpose. Ex-convicts, former slaves, teachers, doctors, former law enforcement, the list went on. They all came to this cause, to Joyful Justice, because they were addicted to heroism.

I shared their obsession, but there was a distance between me and the rest of the group. Everyone knew who I was, or at least strongly suspected, but they called me Sydney and never hinted at my resemblance to the young woman who'd inspired all this. They treated me with a reverence I did not deserve but did little to dissuade. I'd been sick when I arrived. Almost unable to cross the room without stumbling. I'd felt weak but never alone.

When I lived in New York, I was surrounded by strangers, all busy doing their things. Where did they go in those outfits? What was their story? Their purpose? It was a mystery to me. I figured most worked in offices. Some, I imagined, were in corners, flooded with light and filled with sleek furniture. Clean desks that looked unused but from which the world was ruled. Others I pictured in cubicles where photos of the occupant’s life shared space with expense reports, and other color-coded graphs. A chaos of information, cliché in my imagination. Something out of a Dilbert cartoon.

Never in my life had I understood the motivations and daily lives of so many people. We were here to fight, to win at all costs, we were here because the world needed us. At least that was the theory.

Moken, a sea gypsy from Southern Thailand came up next to me and squeezed my arm. "You okay, Sydney Rye?" she asked. Moken killed the man who stole her daughter. When she found him with the young girl's lifeless body, Moken destroyed him. It was considered one of the most vicious crimes Thailand had ever seen. But by the time they found his decimated corpse Moken was out of Thai waters and beyond the reach of anyone. She worked for years on fishing vessels as a cook, defending herself viciously. Moken kept a blade on her at all times. You’d never even see it before the final cut.

“Thanks, Moken," I said, putting my hand over hers. "I'm okay," I gave her a lopsided smile. She smiled back. One of her front teeth was gold. She was short with strong, broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a face that showed about thirty years of serious living. Nothing but sun and wind could beat that kind of patina into the skin.

"Come sit with Barry and me," she suggested, pulling on my arm. I followed her easily, Blue and Cynthia trailing after us. Originally from New York City, Barry had worked undercover in the police gang unit for years. He was eventually fired, or let go, or asked to resign, or just moved on from it, depending on what mood he was in when he told you the story. But the reason was always the same.
Honey, I was born to sing and dance like Tina Turner and nothing in this world could stop me,
is how Barry put it.

Tonight he was dressed in a black dress that fell to just above his knees. The material was clingy and showed off every curve Barry had, which was way more than Tina Turner. But once you got to his legs the resemblance was clear. The man had calves just like Tina. His wig was also black, with copper streaks. It bounced as he stood up to hug me. He smelled like cigarettes and lavender. His embrace was feminine in its fierceness.

A hush fell over the gathering as Merl stepped to the front of the room. He didn't need a microphone. Silence fell and Merl spoke. "We are here to remember our friend, Malina." He looked around the room making eye contact. Finding my gaze he continued, "Her name will be added to those that we have lost." His eyes moved on. "That may make us question our resolve. How many will die? Will this ever end?" he asked, his voice low but crystal clear. "I don't have an answer for the first. As for the second, the answer is no. It won't end. We are waging a timeless war. I don't know how many of us will die in battle. But we will all die. And there will always be justice to seek."