No Shelter (9 page)

Josh squeezes my hand again. “You’re happy for me, right, Holly? It means a lot to me that you get where I’m coming from.”
 

Still I try to smile and still I fail, just sitting there in my slacks and shirt, my hair pulled back in a ponytail.
 

“I mean, I wanted to tell you last night, before ... well, you know, but I just ... I could see you really wanted to do it and I figured I’d tell you later, and I guess it means I cheated on Dawn, but if she knew our arrangement and everything, I think she’d understand, even though I’m not going to tell her, I mean, of course I’m never going to tell her about last night, but if she—”
 

“Josh,” I say, and I can hardly recognize my own voice.
 

He looks at me, his eyebrow raised.
 

“It’s fine.”
 

“Really?”
 

“Yeah.” I pull my hand away, start to stand back up. “Now if you don’t mind, can you lock up when you leave? I have to go to work.”
 

15

The Hadden residence is a three-story colonial just outside of Arlington. It sits in a neighborhood with several other three-story homes, many that could be considered mansions, and on a clear autumn day, when the leaves have all fallen, you can stand in the Hadden’s backyard and see the tip of the Washington Monument.
 

I turn off Arbor Drive into their driveway a few minutes before seven. I park the car and hurry toward the backdoor. The backdoor lets into a foyer, the foyer into the kitchen. The moment I open the door Sylvia, standing at the dishwasher, turns to me and smiles.
 

“Good morning, Miss Holly.”
 

“Morning, Sylvia. How are you doing?”
 

Before Sylvia can answer, David and Casey shout my name in that singsong way of theirs. They’re at the kitchen table with their mother, Marilyn dressed in one of her smart business suits, skimming the
Post
while she takes deliberate bite after bite of her Special K.
 

I smile at Sylvia and touch her arm as I walk past her, the housekeeper going back to her duties, and then I’m at the table and Baron raises his old head off the floor, panting with his tongue lolling from the side and slapping his tail on the floor.
 

I lean down and give Baron a good scratch behind the ears, the hound closing his eyes and groaning with pleasure. Then I pull out the only remaining chair and sit down, smile at Casey beside me as she busily eats her bowl of Cheerios with her Big Bird spoon.
 

David says, “Holly, what happened to your face?”
 

Marilyn had nodded to me briefly before, but now she pulls down her newspaper, squints to give me a closer look. Forty-four years old, she looks ten years younger, this woman with high cheekbones and blond hair, who does yoga and pilates in what little spare time she has. She works as a grant writer and deals with mostly nonprofit organizations. If I were a normal person leading a normal life, I’d want to be just like her.
 

“Oh my,” Marilyn says, real concern in her voice. “That’s a nasty boo-boo. Are you okay?”
 

I touch my cheek. “Yes, I’m fine. Just had a little accident over the weekend.”
 

“Can I touch it?” David asks. He’s six years old and apparently acts just like every other boy his age, and while he can be a brat most times, I love the kid.
 

“David,” Marilyn says, turning back to her paper, “don’t be crass.”
 

Casey says, “What does crass mean?”
 

“It’s the green stuff outside, stupid,” David says.
 

“David,” Marilyn warns.
 

“Don’t call me stupid!” Casey says, tears already threatening in her blue eyes.
 

I turn to Casey just as Marilyn stands and turns to David. Marilyn does her stern mother thing while I do my gentle nanny thing. I smile at Casey and tell her she’s not stupid, of course she’s not. Then I widen my eyes, jerk my head back toward David, and whisper that if anyone’s stupid, it’s her brother.
 

Casey giggles, the tears forgotten.
 

Sylvia comes over to the table with a cup of coffee. “Here you are, Miss Holly, with cream just like you like. Would you care for anything else?”
 

“I’m good. Thanks, Sylvia.”
 

Sylvia smiles, nods and turns away, becomes part of the background like she’s paid to be.
 

Whatever Marilyn said to David, it seems to have had the proper effect. The boy has his head lowered, nods once, then twice. When Marilyn steps back she says, “Now, David, what do you have to say to your sister?”
 

He mumbles, “I’m sorry, Casey.”
 

Casey looks at me, the ghost of a smile on her soft face. I nod at her and she looks back at her brother across the table. “That’s okay.”
 

Marilyn is already sitting down, giving me that look of hers that says
Just wait until you get a pair of your own
. It must be a mother thing, something I’ve seen many times from other women, but the truth is I don’t plan on ever becoming a mother.
 

“Oh yeah, before I forget,” she says suddenly, looking back up at me. “Walter told me he’d like to see you when you got in. Something about this month’s pay.”
 

As far as Marilyn knows, all her husband ever talks to me about is my monthly rate. At the start she had wanted to hire someone with experience, who had a degree in child psychology and whatever else, but Walter had done his best to convince her that I would work out and while she had had trepidation at first, she now seems happy with me.
 

God only knows what she’d think if she knew I almost always carried a gun with me while I watched her children.
 

“Where is he?” I ask.
 

“He should be in his den. Don’t bother knocking. He’s expecting you.”
 

16

But I do knock. I knock and then I wait and then I knock again. Finally I hear Walter’s deep voice—“Come in”—and then I open the door and step inside.
 

Walter sits behind his large oak desk, typing at his laptop. The window is behind him, letting the morning light sprinkle in, making it impossible at first to see his face.
 

“Shut the door, Holly.”
 

I shut the door.
 

“Take a seat.”
 

“I’d rather stand.”
 

He looks up from his computer screen for the first time, giving me a hard look.
 

I return the hard look and say, “Let’s just get this over with.”
 

He stares at me for another moment, this man in his late fifties with intense eyes and somber face and gray hair shaved in a crew cut. He’s wearing his uniform with the three stars, and for an instant I’m reminded of the first time I met him and he only had two stars, the both of us on the other side of the world, when he walked into the room the MPs had locked me in after they arrested me.
 

Walter keeps staring, not saying anything, so I decide to break the silence.
 

“Going to the Pentagon today?”
 

“I have to make an appearance once in awhile. And apparently a known terrorist was hit in Las Vegas over the weekend. I need to be briefed on that.”
 

Walter typically wears suits; he only wears his uniform for special functions, meetings, or when he has debriefings at the Pentagon.
 

“Well?” I say after a moment.
 

“Well what?”
 

“Goddamn it, Walter.”
 

“Hmm.” He glances down at his screen, moves the cordless mouse around, then shuts the laptop. “‘Goddamn it, Walter.’ I guess that’s appropriate enough for the situation.”
 

“What do you want me to say? I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
 

He stands up, turns away from me, stares out the window with his hands behind his back.
 

“No, Holly, you didn’t fuck up. The mission was a success. The target was eliminated and the prize was recovered and brought home safely.”
 

“If I could go back and change things, I would.”
 

“Don’t be childish.”
 

“But—”
 

He turns away from the window suddenly. “Scooter is dead. There’s no changing that.”
 

“I never should have gone out there.”
 

“You mean Vegas or to that compound in the middle of the desert?”
 

I say nothing.
 

“We’ve been here before, Holly. At this same exact spot, this same exact conversation. And to be quite frank, I’m tired of telling you the same thing again and again.”
 

He moves around the desk, walks up to me and places his hands on my shoulders. This close I can smell his aftershave and the Listerine he’d gargled after brushing his teeth.
 

“You never used to be like this. You always followed the rules. You always knew not to involve yourself in anything but the mission. But ever since what happened two years ago you’ve been on this ... this gradual decline. I’ve tried to ignore it, hoping you’d wake up to reality, change back to what you used to be.”
 

I shift my eyes away from his. “And what did I used to be?”
 

“A great soldier.”
 

“Walter—”
 

“What was your ultimate goal in going out to that compound? Please, Holly, enlighten me.”
 

I’m quiet a moment, remembering the cold darkness, the sand crunching beneath my feet, the guards’ house and the ranch house and the rows and rows of cots, the sheets smelling of body odor and sweat and desperation.
 

In a very quiet voice I say, “I don’t know.”
 

“Okay,” Walter nods slowly, taking his hands away from my shoulders. He moves back to his desk and leans against it, crossing his arms. “So what you’re telling me now is that Scooter’s death was in vain. There was no ultimate purpose for what you were doing, so in his coming to give you backup, he essentially died for nothing. Now tell me—is my logic wrong?”
 

“Those girls were slaves out there.”
 

“I know they were, Holly. But so are a million other girls all over the world. And guess what—you can’t save all of them.”
 

“But—”
 

“Besides, you couldn’t even save the ones you tried to save Saturday night.”
 

I look at him again. “What?”
 

“Almost every single girl there was an illegal. When the police arrived, so did INS. Those girls were sent back to Mexico.”
 

I don’t say anything, letting this sink in. I’d figured as much but actually hearing the truth is still like a knife being inserted slowly into my heart. After Scooter had been shot, the thought of those girls had left my mind. Even Rosalina, left by herself in the Town Car on the other side of that rocky hill, had vanished and all I could think or care about was Scooter, dying in my arms.
 

“What about his parents?”
 

“What about them?”
 

“Do they know?”
 

“Of course they know. They know that early Saturday morning their son was driving home from a very late night at work. He must have dozed off behind the wheel and swerved off the road and struck a tree. Completely demolished the car, as well as the body inside.”
 

“That’s not fair.”
 

“What then would you consider fair? Should we tell them the truth? Should we tell them how their son was secretly working for a non-sanctioned government unit? That for the past seven years he has helped keep our country safe from terrorists? That he was in fact a hero?”
 

Walter takes a breath, slowly shakes his head.
 

“Those are all truths, Holly, something his parents would be very proud of but something they will never know. As far as they’re concerned, their son was just an ordinary citizen who did freelance web design. Nothing more, nothing less.”
 

“When’s his funeral?”
 

“Forget it.”
 

“Just tell me when.”
 

“It doesn’t matter. You were never part of his life. You have no reason to go to his funeral. You have no reason to mourn with his family.” He raises a finger at me. “And don’t get any stupid ideas, either. I will have surveillance there and if any of them even catches a whiff of your perfume you will be taken away in a matter of seconds.”
 

I cross my arms, glare back at him.
 

“You can’t blame yourself for this,” Walter says, his voice slow and deliberate. “Scooter made the decision to go out there just like Nova did.”
 

I glance down at the floor, glance back up at Walter. “So what happens now?”
 

“Regarding?”
 

“Regarding me and Nova.”
 

“Nova is on indefinite hiatus. At least until a new team is formed.”
 

“What about me?”
 

“What about you?”
 

“The new team isn’t going to include me?”
 

“Give me one good reason why it should.”
 

I say nothing, look away from him.
 

“Just as I thought.” He stands up straight and walks back around his desk, lowers himself down in his seat. He seems to think a moment, his mouth half-open, and then sighs. “Holly, what I’m going to say to you now comes from a friend and not from your superior.”