Page 83 of Strangers in Love

We were makingour way from the van to the club when my chest started to get tight. It wasn’t the pace we were setting, sneaking from shadow to shadow. I wasn’tthatout of shape. Then noises began to get that hollow sound I knew too well.

I thought I’d be safe from flashbacks because we wouldn’t be in the actual place where the ambush had taken place, and now I knew how stupid that’d been of me to think. If I had flashbacks at home, nowhere near here, I wasn’t safe anywhere. Especially when I was surrounded by the same culture, the people speaking the same language I’d heard that day.

I couldn’t close my eyes and focus on my breathing like I did back home if this happened. I needed something else to calm me, to ground me. I tried to think about how I was going to finally get some justice for Leo and the others, but that just made me think more about that day, made the past creep closer. I needed something else.

Even as I thought it, the answer was there.

Blonde hair so pale that it was almost white. Eyes the light green of Granny Smith apples. Fair skin that was as soft as it was beautiful. A woman who was delicate but still strong enough to survive. Compassionate enough to want to save others even when it put her own life at risk. Stubborn. Passionate.

The panic faded, and the tightness in my chest eased. If she’d just been some fling, just casual sex, the thought of her shouldn’t have been enough to bring me back from the edge of a flashback. It shouldn’t have made me steady.

I didn’t have the time or energy to think it through right now, though. I pushed the thoughts to the back of my mind to deal with later. If nothing else, there’d be a long flight home with plenty of time to torment myself for how much I’d fucked up.

A hand signal from Cain said that it was go time. My nerves were steady, my mind in that place where all I saw was the mission. Senses sharpened by adrenaline, it was time to make things as right as we could. The rest of the world could wait until we were done and on our way home.

Before I entered the building behind Bruce, I took a moment to think one final thing.

This is for you, Leo.

Fifty-Five

Aline

Most people’sfavorite holidays were either Christmas or Halloween, but not mine. Mine had always been Thanksgiving. I loved buying people gifts, giving out candy, and even the whole Easter basket thing, but there was something about a time of celebration that was about appreciating what you had rather than thinking about what you were giving or getting.

It wasn’t some pious, high-minded thing that I liked to say so that people would think I was a good person. I genuinely enjoyed spending a day with my family, eating and talking and laughing. Appreciating all the things we’d worked for, the blessings we’d been given.

Every year, even when Freedom and I had been in college, we’d make a point of coming home Tuesday night so that we could spend Wednesday making all the recipes that could keep overnight or the things we could pre-prepare like the turkey. Unlike a lot of our peers, both Freedom and I not only knew how to cook, but we were good at itandenjoyed it.

Actually, it was a family thing. We’d heard the story a million times. How most people expected models to eat absolutely nothing, maybe to even hate food, so every time Mom had gone to dinner with someone, she’d felt obligated to eat something light and pick at it. And then this cocky real estate mogul promised her a date she’d remember.

She’d taken a chance, and he’d taken her to a cooking class. The first of two classes a week, for four weeks, class. She’d been impressed both with his confidence in technically scheduling them eight dates instead of the single one she’d agreed to and the fact that he’d chosen food as the focus of their dates. Similar classes had been their anniversary dates ever since, and baking together had been a family event for as long as I could remember.

Thanksgiving dinner.

Christmas cookies.

Once we were in college, we’d had to schedule times to come home for things like that, but we’d never missed a day we’d planned to bake. Neither of us.

I was beginning to wonder if today would be the first. Freedom had been in Stanford all week, doing some work for her advisor, Dr. Ipres. At least that was what I assumed she’d been doing. We hadn’t really talked much after I’d come back from Eoin’s hotel room Friday morning, and she’d left Saturday morning. She hadn’t been cold, exactly, but there’d been no conversations. She’d promised to be back today, but it was noon, and she wasn’t here yet.

Mom and Dad didn’t seem concerned, but they’d honestly been watching me so closely that I’d been having a hard time figuring out what they were thinking in the first place. They seemed happy enough sitting at the table, discussing all the seasonings they planned to use on the turkey.

Me, I was making the filling for the pumpkin pie.

As I worked, I listened to my parents talking, the low hum of the news in the background. I was working at keeping my mind completely and blissfully blank when something caught my attention.

“…among the dozen hostages rescued are Dr. Hammond O’Keefe from Signature Care Emergency Center in Houston, Texas, and Dana Warner, an RN, who had been in Iran dispensing medical treatment when they were taken.”

I turned toward the television, feeling like I was in some sort of dream. There, on the screen, looking battered but clean and smiling, were Hammond and Dana. They were in what looked like a hospital, but the lettering across the bottom of the screen said they were at the US Embassy in Iraq, which probably meant they were getting medical treatment at the Embassy.

“…a private team who has not been named. The survivors came from all over the Middle East and were in the process of being sold…”

Sold.

They’d been ‘in the process of beingsold.’

The audio cut to what Hammond was saying, and I refocused.“…not entirely sure what happened to another young woman who’d been held with us in Iran, only that she’d been taken out by one of the guards. Then, we heard shooting and yelling. Nothing happened for a few hours, and then a handful of men with guns came in and said we’d been sold to them.”

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