Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down (27 page)

“Geoffrey.”

She was inside. Had he forgotten to lock the door after the FedEx man left?

“Geoffrey, I’m here.”

He did not respond.

“Geoffrey?”

Suddenly the lights flickered again. Then they blinked out. Black. The place was dead black. Not a stray photon in the room. Not even any light seepage from the outside. The whole neighborhood was out.

“Geoffrey, please come down.”

He heard himself whimper, frozen in black, completely disoriented in his own bedroom, unable to move.

“I know you’re there.”

The next moment, the lights flickered back on.

“Come down and see what I’ve got.”

He didn’t answer. His brain still felt stunned.

“Geoffrey.”

The lights were back on, and he took several deep breaths to compose himself.

“Shall I come up?”

“No.”

“In the living room.”

After a few moments, he felt centered again and crept his way out of the bedroom and down, the creaking of the stairs sounding
like bones snapping. The only other sound was that of the furnace kicking on. At the bottom, the foyer overhead burned. The living room was still dark because the lamps had not been turned on. He inched his way to the entrance and braced himself against the frame.

She was in there, standing by the dead fireplace. Her long black shearling defining her form in negative. “Surprise.”

His forehead was an aspic of fear. “I know what you want,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I know what you’re planning.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

Her voice was barely audible. Over her shoulder hung her case. He could not see her hands. But in the foyer light he could see the white oval of her face. A weird grin distorted her features.

Satisfaction. Fulfillment. Retribution.

“I didn’t think you’d guess.” She removed the shoulder bag and began to open it.

“I know who you are,” he said. His fingers were nearly bloodless with cold. “I know.”

“Of course, but you can’t imagine—”

But she never finished her sentence. Without thought, he pulled the gun from his back pocket and shot her three times. She collapsed to the floor without a sound.

He snapped on the lamp. The bullets had hit her face, reducing it to a bloodied mess.

He pulled the shoulder bag from under her and tore it open.

Inside was his copy of the fully executed contract and clipped to it a bank check for $20,000. Also hard-bound copies of his books that she had wanted him to autograph for her and her parents for Christmas next week. And a sheet with her ending:
He takes his own life.

His neighbors must have heard gunshots, because sometime later he heard sirens wailing their approach.

As he sat there, looking down at the blasted red pulp of her face, he thought,
Well, we got our bloody surprise ending.

Then he shot himself in the head.

With her speculative thriller
Capital Offense,
Kathleen Antrim leveraged an intimate knowledge of today’s political landscape to send tremors through the Washington beltway and her readers. Unafraid of ruffling feathers attached to some very powerful government arms, Kathleen’s work as an award-winning journalist gave her a firsthand look at the mechanisms of official power, and insight into where they might steer our future.

A dystopian tomorrow is under investigation in “Through a Veil Darkly,” a timely story that taps into our secret fears and hidden biases. Kathleen shows us how a tense political climate can evolve into an environment where even murder can be justified and patriotic.

I
t’s time to kill my husband. Izaan Bekkar. The forty-eighth president of the United States.

I suppose assassination is the correct term. No matter. It’s my responsibility. Once done, I’ll be a hero. Go figure. Only in America, where killing for religious reasons is deemed sacrilegious. Hypocrites, every damn one of them.

I’m alone now, sitting in my room. Outside, trees bare as brooms claw at my window, just as Izaan’s deception scrapes at my raw conscience. A winter wind rattles the thick pane of glass. My only comfort comes from thoughts of retribution and the monotonous
drip…drip…drip
of a leaky faucet. I’ve listened to that torturous sound ever since Izaan locked me up. It’s all I have for entertainment. I’ve noticed that its pitch is different at night—more baritone—than in the afternoon, when the water sings like a soprano.

Interesting what we notice when alone.

A digital clock reads 4:49 a.m.

Eleven minutes before the morning call to prayer. Five hours
and eleven minutes before my meeting with Dr. Truman North. Fourteen hours and eleven minutes until lights out and another sleepless night.

There are people, like the self-righteous Dr. North, who want me to accept their version of my predicament. But I silently refuse, and play along. I’ll do anything to guarantee my release from this hell.

The key is the burqa.

My life didn’t start in a burqa.

But it may end in one.

I stood backstage, listening, wearing a navy St. John suit that Izaan bought for me.

“America is on the brink of destruction,” Izaan boomed to a packed auditorium.

Network and cable news cameras focused on his keen blue eyes and crisp, angular features. “Global warming. Oil dependence. Nuclear war. America needs leadership she can believe in.”

Izaan ran his life and his campaign on high-octane fear. Constituents guzzled his message. When he swerved for emphasis, they leaned into his turn. He’d brake for effect, and they’d relax. He’d race his cadence, their hearts seemed to pound.

“That’s why, at your insistence, I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”

The crowd roared their approval.

He beamed, pausing for effect, his ego swelling from their admiration. Like a snake charmer he wooed them, just as he’d wooed me years before.

After a few moments, the crowd calmed.

“It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to the love of my life. My wife. My partner. Sylvia Bekkar.”

I dutifully walked onto the stage and gripped his hand. Strobes flashed. He raised our clasped fingers high in the air. My heart soared at his touch. Gentle and loving. Together we left the stage and greeted con
stituents at the rope line. Afterward, as I tumbled over the edge of false impressions into a cold reality, staffers swept me out of the way.

“You ooze charisma,” the campaign manager told Izaan, patting him on the back.

I watched as Izaan pushed past him and headed for the campaign bus. And so it went, stop after stop, month after month. Izaan’s poll numbers rose. My spirits fell. Slowly, Izaan’s mask of confident composure shattered under the pressure. Nervous glances over his shoulder escalated once we were issued Secret Service.

“Get them away from me,” he ordered, pointing at the agents posted outside the campaign bus. “I don’t need government spies watching my every move.”

“They’re here for your protection,” an advisor said.

Izaan leveled him with a glare. “I know their claims. I also know the truth.”

The campaign manager pulled Izaan inside the bus. “Are you all right?”

Izaan held up a document. “You hand me sacrilege like this and call it a speech?” He tore it in two. “Then you ask if I’m all right? Leave, before I fire you.”

Drunk on the prospect of riding their horse into the White House, the staff attributed Izaan’s outbursts to exhaustion.

“I don’t care what the hell you need to do, just get him through the election,” I overheard the campaign manager say to a deputy. “We’ll deal with him after November.”

Fools.

A day later, we were back home for a night. I entered Izaan’s bedroom to check on him, determined to show him that I cared, that I wanted to be a part of his life. Our life.

He emerged from his bathroom wearing only a towel. “What are you doing in here? Snooping around?”

“I—”

He grabbed a handful of my red hair. “Filthy American whore. Tempting me. Is this what you want?” He dropped his towel, revealing his naked muscular frame. “Is it?”

I said nothing.

He yanked my head back, his face inches from mine. “You want to know my secrets.”

I fought against crying. “You’re hurting me.”

“What are you?” he asked in a voice as soft as a caress.

“Please. I love—”

He jerked my hair again.

I grabbed his arm. “I’m a—”

“Say it.”

“Filthy whore.” I spit the words at him. “I’m a filthy whore.”

“This is what happens to whores.”

He shoved me facedown on the bed. I scrambled for safety. He caught my foot, knocked me to the floor, then wrenched my nightgown up over my head, tangling my face and arms in the silk, pinning me down.

A knock on the door. “You all right, sir?”

Secret Service.

Izaan slammed his palm over my mouth.

I writhed for air.

“Leave me be,” Izaan yelled.

Footsteps retreated.

He held me down, thrusting his hatred into me. For days afterward, my body ached and his words replayed in my mind like a stale song. I’d seen his anger before. Felt its wrath. But this was different, raw and exposed.

Drip…drip…drip.

I plotted to leave him. Later. After the campaign. He was under so much pressure. He didn’t mean it. He loved me. Needed me. I couldn’t leave. A continuous loop of rationalization circled around my mind coming back to the same awful conclusion. He was the force that held my world together, and without him, I’d spin out of control.

“‘You may hate a thing although it is good for you, and love a thing although it is bad for you,’” Izaan would say.

I didn’t know from where the quote originated, but it nagged at me, made me wonder.

November loomed.

Izaan won.

Nonstop news coverage of the most recent beheading in the Middle East wound my anxiety into a tangled knot. Forty-eight hours after the election, Izaan’s staff showed up at our home. Izaan jerked me to my feet, his fingers digging into my arm. He turned me to face men I’d never seen before and insisted that I look them in the eye.

“‘Men have status above women.’” Another of those quotes. “‘Good women are obedient.’”

“What are you talking about?”

With forefinger and thumb, he wrenched my chin around to face his all-male staff. I dropped my gaze. He smiled. Then he ordered them to scour our home, to cleanse it of the world of the infidel. Nothing unclean would follow us to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Infidel? I’d never heard him utter this word before.

He smacked the side of my head. I reeled. Humiliation stained my cheeks. His men ripped the designer wardrobe from my closet. I suddenly realized that they were the costumes of a disposable prop: me. I fought Izaan as he dragged me to the cellar.

“You’ve learned so little.”

He shoved me next to the old incinerator. Radiating heat singed the hair on my arm and snapped at my skin. They fed my wardrobe into the flames, reducing the clothing he’d taught me to wear to ashes. They incinerated the lifestyle he’d insisted I master in order to project the flawless image of a model American couple: the next president and first lady of the United States of America.

Photographs of our smiling faces at our wedding, political events and holidays were burned, along with books, bibles, magazines and artwork.
Only pictures of Izaan—without my presence, or that of any other woman—were kept. Beyond tears, I stood speechless. I’d kept his secret. Helped him build a secular image that America would swallow.

“Do you see how it is now?” he asked. “Do you see what we worked so hard to achieve? Now this country will be led to Allah.”

Then I knew.

The Quran.

His quotes were paraphrased from the Quran.

I met his gaze.

He would pay.

Only one bag accompanied me to Washington and the Hay Adams Hotel. Demoralized, I donned Izaan’s latest demand—a burqa. The top of the burqa was shaped like a pillbox hat. From there, black fabric fell in a deliberately formless shape to the floor. The only other detail was the mesh veil that hid my face and eyes. Tears slashed mascara across my cheeks.

The burqa gripped me in a bone-crushing depression. It devoured my peripheral vision and my self-respect. The veil distorted my perception. Through it, even the brightly upholstered chairs and ornately carved bed of the hotel appeared worn and worthless.

Reality, terrifying and ugly as a cobra about to strike, snapped into focus. Thoughts flew at me from a thousand broken places. I wanted to scream. If I started, I wouldn’t stop. I needed to think.

To act.

A high-pitched ringing grew in my ears, and buzzed through my brain like a menacing swarm of bees. I walked into my bathroom and retrieved the prescription Izaan demanded I take.

I stared at the bottle.

Until now, he controlled me, inside and out. His precious pills were supposed to help with the ringing, my depression and everything else. They didn’t. When I took them, I felt submerged beneath the world, slogging upstream against a relentless current. Detached and passive.

I studied the label. What was really in the bottle?

I unscrewed the top and dumped the entire contents into the toilet.

Izaan would be furious.

I was delighted.

Water swirled around the bowl, sucking the venomous capsules into the vortex, siphoning them down the drain, just as I’d been sucked into the dizzying eddy of Izaan’s deception.

Secret Service Agent Frank Harrigan knocked on my door. “It’s time.”

I fought to find a smile, but instead I found hate and clung to it.

I greeted Frank.

The burqa so impaired my vision that I caught my hip on the door handle as I exited my room.

Frank ignored my clumsiness.

I massaged the pain.

He escorted me through the halls to my husband’s temporary headquarters at the Hay Adams, across from the White House. It was a suite, of course, for U.S. President-Elect Izaan Bekkar. Heat built up beneath the burqa. My head itched. Perspiration clung to the back of my neck. Anxiety raced in my chest, seemingly appropriate for a warrior going into battle. A bead of sweat trickled over my temple.

Frank ushered me into Izaan’s temporary office. Arms crossed over his chest, Frank took up his post in the back of the room. I sat on the couch across from Izaan, who aimed that smile at me, the one that blinded everyone to the truth. Everyone that is, except me.

“You look nice in your burqa.”

“Islamo-fascist bastard.”

He shook his head in tight, controlled movements.

“They’ll impeach you.” I kept my words short. Chatter and questions agitated Izaan, provoked his paranoia.

“Impeach?” His gaze narrowed, hard and dark. He leaned toward me and glared with laserlike intensity. “The first amendment protects religious freedom.”

“But it won’t protect you from the people when they learn their president is a radical Islamist.”

“You’ve got to let go of this, Sylvia. It will destroy you.”

A small victory. He was angry.

“Do you understand me?”

I smiled.

He sucked a deep breath. “How are you?”

Interesting. A change of strategy. Act like you care. Try to keep the wife happy.