Page 52 of Wired Courage

“The only reason you’re alive at all is that I hope the CIA has a rough interrogation plan for you, and a long incarceration without possibility of due process.” Sophie tugged a chair over and sat down facing her mother. “Let’s clear the air, shall we? You stole my daughter from me when she was twelve hours old. Why?”

“I thought the baby might be a match for the crown prince’s bone marrow.” Pim Wat shrugged, but embarrassment heated her neck.Saying these things aloud sounded bad. “We were going to take you, but you delivered earlier than scheduled. Momi was easier to move than you would have been. I’m sure Armita told you all of this.”

“And when Momi wasn’t a match?” Pink stained Sophie’s tawny cheeks as she flushed with emotion. “You kept my daughter anyway. With not even a word to me. Didn’t even offer any kind of deal or ransom—you juststoleher.”

“What can I say? I wanted a ‘do-over’ as they say in America.” Pim Wat tilted her head, eyeing Sophie. “I discovered that I had . . . regrets. About you. About our relationship. And Momi is a pretty baby. She will grow up to be a beautiful woman. As you were, before that scar ruined your face.”

Sophie clapped a hand to the cheek that had been rebuilt with prosthetics and a skin graft. “Oh, you are so cruel, Mother! It makes it easier for me to hand you over to people who will not treat you gently.”

“I was only speaking the truth. People can’t handle the truth.” Pim Wat shook her head. “I will always be your mother. I gave you life. That is the truth, and you owe me for that.”

“No, Mother. I paid that debt in blood, long ago.” Sophie rose to her feet. “I just wanted to have this little chat and tell you, so you can think about it, that all of this death and drama was unnecessary. I would have come to Thailand, gone to a hospital, and donated bone marrow for the Prince—if you’d only asked me.” Sophie’s honey-brown gaze bored into Pim Wat’s. “You assume everyone is like you and needs to be coerced. Some of us still have a conscience, and simple compassion, especially for children.” Sophie blew out a breath. “I, too, have regrets about our relationship. I regret all the love, care, and obedience I gave you, without question, for so many years.” Sophie picked up the roll of duct tape resting on the counter and ripped off a piece. “Any last words, Mother?”

“I’m sorry, Sophie Malee.” Pim Wat’s eyes welled up, and she wasn’t in control of the wetness that spilled over to run down her cheeks. “I am not like other people, the Master tells me—but knowing you makes me wish that I was.”

“Thanks for the apology,” Sophie said. “I accept it on behalf of the men you killed. And it changes nothing.”

The tape sealed Pim Wat’s mouth, but she had nothing more to say, anyway.

The increasingwhump whump whumpsound of an approaching helicopter made Sophie hurry to undo the ropes binding Pim Wat to the chair. “Your time with us has come to an end, Mother.”

Fear cast a chill over Pim Wat for the first time, and so did regrets that she couldn’t name, couldn’t explain, and could do nothing about. “My, how the mighty have fallen,” her sister had mocked her, yesterday in the garden. “You get to go to prison and be tortured, just like you’ve done to so many others.”

Tears continued to soak the tape on Pim Wat’s face. Her body felt like lead. Her heart beat with heavy thuds. What was this? Grief?What a strange and terrible feeling. . . Sophie tugged Pim Wat, feet dragging, through the house and toward the steep flight of exterior stairs leading down from the upper story.

“Come on. The CIA doesn’t have all day.” Sophie held Pim Wat’s arm in one hand, and the banister in the other—and tugged her forward. “Let’s go.”

The CIA.

Guantánamo.

Torture lay ahead, regret lay behind.

Pim Wat pitched forward, her arm wrenching out of Sophie’s grip.

Maybe she even jumped—did it matter?

She fell with a cry that never escaped, trapped by the tape on her mouth—but that scream echoed in her mind as she felt the hard edge of the steep wooden step as it came up to meet her helpless, bound body.

Pim Wat bounced down the stairs, every sharp edge biting into soft flesh and breaking bones. She felt every crushing blow dealt by inertia and gravity until the very last step, at the bottom.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Day Twenty-Eight

Armita held the baby close against her shoulder. Momi’s warm weight felt like both an anchor and a buoy, lifting her and holding her in place at the same time. She rubbed the infant’s back, murmuring softly into the tiny pink ear.

Her eyes tracked the two CIA agents as they carefully loaded Pim Wat’s body onto a sturdy garden lattice Malee had hastily removed from the house and covered with towels.

Her former mistress was still alive, but barely. Pim Wat looked small and broken lying there on the makeshift stretcher, her face an unrecognizable mess of blood and long black hair. Armita watched Sophie cover her mother gently with a comforter from the house as a large older white man directed the agents in loading the makeshift stretcher onto the helicopter, parked in a vacant lot on the other side of Malee’s house.

Had Pim Wat jumped? Had Sophie pushed her? Or had she merely tripped, as was so dangerous with one’s hands behind her back?

No one would know the real answer to that but Sophie and her mother.

Malee approached, her face swollen from crying, her cheeks shiny with tears. “Give me the baby. I don’t want her frightened by the noise from the helicopter.”

Armita let the child go reluctantly. Malee hurried into the house clutching the baby tightly, and closed its bright, painted door.

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