Paradise Falls (24 page)

Jacob had gone quiet. She expected him to boast about killing Elliot or James or something like that. Instead he said,

“It all jumbles together. I must have hit my head. It’s hard to remember. There were six of us, in an MRAP.”

“What’s that?”

“Mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle. Armored against bombs. Except this one. The insurgents took a big wad of explosives, and put a copper plate against it like this,” he clapped his hands together. “Then when it went off, it sent a molten chunk of copper flying at the vehicle. It was like a giant put his fist through it. Rolled it over, killed the two guys sitting next to me. If I’d been sitting two feet to the left I’d have been killed instantly. I don’t know how I survived. I took a wound in my side.

“The blast ruptured the tanks. It takes a very specific set of conditions for diesel fuel to catch on fire, but it did. The whole thing went up,
whump
. It was like an oven. My squad leader was strapped in the front, screaming, half his face burning. All I could think of was to get out. I crawled out through the hole, and a bullet hit me here,” he touched his shoulder. “I don’t remember what happened after that.

“I woke up on a slab. My shoulder was bandaged, they gave me IV saline or something, they’d even stitched me up in a few places where I must have been hit with some shrapnel. I laid there for days. They fed me baby food, or something. The doctor did. His name was Bayati al-Abbadai. Faisal’s father.”

Jennifer nodded.

“When I was well enough to sit up, they brought the doc in. Two of
them
and their leader. They were all wearing masks, black cloths over their faces. The leader had a silver pendant he wore around his neck on a chain. A pair of fangs. That’s what they called themselves,
Al Anyaab
, the fangs. He was The Fang, I guess. He showed me this knife,” he made a crooked motion with his fingers, “a big sharp knife, like a linoleum knife or something like that. I remember exactly what it looked like. It had a horn grip and the blade was like a mirror, and I could see the sharpness of the edge.

“He came over to me and he nicked my shoulder with it. I watched the blood roll down my arm and he turned the blade in front of my face, and he asked me a question in plain English.”

“What?”

Jacob was silent for a long time. Finally his whole body heaved with the effort of speaking.

“‘One of you is going to be cut,’” he said, “‘you or the doctor. You will choose, or I will kill you both.’ I didn’t want to. They made me pick.”

Jennifer grasped his arm. “You-“
 

“No,” he whimpered, his voice so small she could barely hear him. “I said ‘cut him, cut him, not me,
not me
, I begged them to cut him instead. I didn’t know where I was anymore. I wanted my Mom and Dad and my sister. I wanted to go home. I pleaded with them, and he stopped me. He put his hand over my mouth to shut me up. Then he said ‘for your cowardice, you will be the one who is cut.’”

Jennifer covered her mouth. Jacob looked away from her.

“They made me wait three days before they started. My stomach, first. The cuts were deep enough to bleed and
hurt
, but not cut through my abdominal wall. Cross-hatches, lines, patterns, over and over. They left the doc in the room with me, and after… after I tried to have them do that to him instead of me, he kept patching me up. He kept my wounds clean, stitched me up if he could. When my stomach and chest were too torn up for anymore, they made me lay on my old wounds and carved up my back, whipped me. Then my legs…”

He was quiet for a while.

“We talked. I kept asking the Doc why, why are you helping me after what I did, and he told me he used to work for the regime. He was a personal doctor for Uday Hussein, not
the
personal doctor but one of them. He told me some of the things he saw, that those people did. The torture. He told me how he stood by and watched it all and never said a word. I talked to him and told him about my family, about Paradise Falls, I probably even talked about you.”

Jacob shuddered.

“Close to the end, he whispered the codes to me. Told me he’d overheard them, that somehow
they
knew and took him prisoner, trying to squeeze the information out of him. He told me that on the day of judgement he would stand before God and to explain why he’d stood by, a doctor, and let evil things happen to innocent people. Then he told me that I would stand before Him, and He would ask me what I did after I was given my life. I asked him what he meant, and he told me that it was providence that I wasn’t instantly killed in the blast, that they kept me alive, that God had a purpose for me and was guiding me to it. A day later, the bombs fell. The Brits found me, like I told you before. I made it. He didn’t.”

His head sank, and a wretched sound bubbled out of him. “I’m a coward.”

“You’re not,” said Jennifer. “Jacob, you can’t blame yourself for that. They were going to torture you either way.”

“That isn’t the point,” said Jacob. He looked right at her. “Your mother’s cruelty isn’t what bothers you is it? What bothers you is that you think she might have been right.”

Jennifer flinched.

“She was wrong,” he added, quickly, “Dead wrong. Listen to me. What happened to you is not your fault, at all. It’s Elliot’s. He had you marked from the minute you walked into that party. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“You still can’t stop blaming yourself, though.”

She looked away.

“You’re right,” she murmured.

“Franklin saved you. Is that how…”

She shook her head. “No. I was forbidden to see him, and he was forbidden to see me. I don’t know if he followed me to the same college on purpose, but we met up again there and started hanging out with each other. Neither of us could really afford to go on dates. Franklin’s father covered his education and all, but he didn’t get whatever he wanted the way Elliot did. His father expected him to spend all of his time studying. I was just broke, but we spent a lot of time together. When we announced we were getting married, that was it. His own father threw him out of the house and my mother wouldn’t speak to me. Katie was starting college soon, so I was fine with that. We would all be free of her. I found a job at the high school and we moved back here. Franklin would commute and take distance courses to finish his law degree.”

“He was a lawyer?”

“Studying to be one. He had some kind of project he was working on, he said it was very important but he never shared much of it with me.” She sighed. “Jacob… we didn’t have a happy marriage.”

“What?”

“It was fun at first, but we were more like we were good friends that lived together.” She twisted her ring around her finger. “I wasn’t a good wife. I’m not good with, ah, you know. Physical stuff. Touching.”

“I see,” said Jacob.

“You really don’t,” she said. “The only time I ever took all my clothes off in front of my husband was our wedding night, and we… I couldn’t do it. I had a panic attack and ended up sleeping on the floor. We never… after that
I
tried, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. I loved him, and I owed it to him.”

“Owed it to him?”

She looked at the floor.

“Because he saved me.”

Jacob didn’t say anything.

“I…” she struggled to find the words. “I can’t help thinking he didn’t
know
. That he thought I rejected him. Died thinking I rejected him. He was so distant before the end.”

She shoved her head in her hands and sobbed. “I don’t want to be like this. I can’t just turn it off.”

“I know how that feels,” said Jacob.

He sat up.

“There he is.”

Jennifer scrubbed the stray tears away from her eyes. The blond haired boy just walked out of the bar, with two girls.

10.

As the little Honda pulled out, Jennifer waited for Jacob to follow. She was about to say something when he finally started the car and pulled out. Blondie’s little car was the only one on the road. Jacob didn’t put the headlights on, and Jennifer eyed Jacob. He gave her a look, nodded, and followed. The little car pulled into the parking lot of the Port Carol Motor Court, on the far side of town. The dingy little motel had ten rooms, sprouting from the side of an old house like a tumor. Jacob slowed enough for Jennifer to spot the boy leading his girls to room six, but Jacob kept going.

“Where- “

He turned around and pulled back into the lot at the far end. When he shut off the car, he handed her the keys.

“You’re my wheelman,” he said. “I’m going to be carrying him. You’ll have to drive. You up to it?”

“Wait, we’re going to kidnap him?”

Jacob sighed. “We’re going to hold him prisoner and interrogate him. There’s a difference.”

“What difference?”

He shook his head a little. “Do you want to bring the people who killed those kids to justice? One of them is in that hotel room right now.”

Jennifer pulled her mask ove her face.

Jacob pulled his mask down and surveyed the motel. The other rooms were dark, and only Blondie’s car was out in the lot. Jacob straightened, drew something from his belt, and wedged it next to the doorknob on Blondie’s door, and took a few steps back. He covered his ears and Jennifer did the same. A low
whump
sent splinters flying out across the sidewalk, and the door swung open.

Jacob moved like lightning. Jennifer had to sprint, ignoring her protesting leg, to keep up.

Blondie was already stripped to the waist, and the two girls on the bed. The room was filthy, strewn with vials. There was a grimy coffee cup full of syringes and cigarette butts on the nightstand, next to a big automatic pistol and a ludicrously ornate bong shaped like a grinning skull.
 

Blondie went for the gun, sputtering and shouting, and Jacob flicked out his hand and a knife whipped through the air. The blade slid right through Blondie’s hand with a sickening wet sound, and a spray of dark blood hit the wall. He grabbed his hand and shrieked, loud and girlish, as Jacob picked up the pistol and tossed it to Jennifer.

One of the girls, a wasted, drawn looking thing with glass eyes, just curled up on the bed. The other came at Jacob in a shrieking mass of bleached blood hair and long fingernails. He glanced at her and just folded out of the way, turned and seized her arm and bounced her down onto the bed. She pushed back against the other one, and they both stared at him with big wide eyes.

Blondie was on the floor, clutching his bleeding hand. He started to pull at the knife that was still stuck through his palm.

“Don’t do that,” said Jacob.

“Fuck you-“ Blondie hissed.

Jacob kicked him in the ribs and he went down, hard. He started to roll, and froze when he saw Jennifer aiming down his own gun. She glanced at Jacob. He turned to the girls.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” the more conscious one said. “Look, mister, we didn’t-“

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He glanced at Blondie. “I’m going to hurt him. What were you doing at that bar?”

“We work there,” she said. “We’re waitresses.”

Waitresses,
Jennifer thought.
Right.

Jacob’s voice softened. “Where are you from?”

“Cherry Hill,” said the girl.

Blondie eyed Jennifer, hard. He started to reach behind his back with his good hand.

“Don’t move,” Jennifer said, calmly, and thumbed back the hammer. Blondie froze.

Jacob looked down at him. “You. Get on your knees.”

Slowly, Blondie got up, kneeling next to Jacob. Jacob didn’t move a muscle for a good half minute, then pistoned his fist into Blondie’s forehead, sending the back of his head cracking against the edge of the nightstand. He slid to the floor, clutching his head and whimpering. Jacob looked at the girls. Jennifer tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Blondie was bleeding profusely from his forehead and hand, and his boyish face was a mask of terror. He wasn’t much older than the two girls.

He killed Krystal.

“You’re coming with us,” Jacob said, to the girl.

“What?”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” said Jennifer. “We’re going to help you.”

“Go get the car,” Jacob said, to Jennifer.
 

She nodded and gave him the pistol. He kept it trained on Blondie while she darted outside, over to the car, and puled it up beside Blondie’s hatchback. Driving a car felt a little weird, but it was like riding a bicycle. After a few seconds, it felt natural enough.

She got out and Jacob had Blondie by the arms, now bound behind his back with a zip tie. Jennifer pushed past into the room, where the girls were huddled on the bed. She tugged at her mask, tempted to pull it off, but left it down. The girls looked over her shoulder.

Jacob shoved a protesting, sputtering Blondie into the trunk of the car. Jacob closed it with a thump, ignoring the screaming and thumping from inside.

“You’re coming with us,” he said to the girls.

“We didn’t see anything,” the girl protested. “We won’t tell nobody.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Jacob. “Come with us.”

He stuck the pistol through his belt, behind his back. Jennifer gingerly took the girl by the wrist.

“What’s your name, hon?”

“Cherry,” she said.

“Your real name, sweetie.”
 

“Sarah. Who are you?”

“Good samaritans,” said Jacob. He took the other girl, just scooped up her stick-thin frame in his arms. She was so thin Jennifer thought she’d have been able to carry the girl herself.

Jennifer guided Sarah into the back seat. Jacob lowered the other girl in beside her, resting her head on Sarah’s shoulder. As Jacob got in the front, Jennifer got in the back seat with the two girls as Jacob slipped out of the lot and started driving. Jennifer glanced at him, and he met her eyes in the rear view mirror. She didn’t need to see his face to feel the fury.

By the sounds, Blondie was flopping around in the trunk. Jacob stomped on the brakes, pitching everyone in the car forward, a savage grin on his face as Blondie loudly thumped around in the trunk.