CHAPTER FIVE
HAM’S WORLD HAD ROCKED, given out from under his feet long before the volcano blew. Long before the lift to the building tore from its axis and plunged toward the ground.
And long before he found himself trapped in the stone rubble of the ancient hotel building.
It started when Signe sat down at the table, just like that, and looked at him through her cat-eyed sunglasses. A white flowing scarf hid her head and face, and a linen cargo shirt rolled up at the elbows covered a tank. Her black cargo pants ended above flat tennis shoes.
Just in case she had to make a break for it, maybe.
And, no. She hadn’t known she was pregnant.
But yes, she’d been a CIA agent all along, and never told him.
He understood that, maybe, but as she sat there, cupping her coffee, not looking at him, her jaw a hard line, he had to drag up his words to Orion and cling to them.
“I’m going to forgive her.”
Please, God help me. Because he wanted to dispense forgiveness. At least in his head.
In his heart, the betrayal, the rejection roiled hot in his core.
It only made it worse that she wouldn’t even look at him. She stared at the sea, her blonde hair falling out of her scarf to whisper against her face. He could trace her profile in his sleep—her cute nose, those pretty lips, a light dusting of freckles that had nearly vanished. A pensive expression, always, but when she looked so mysterious and distant he wondered . . . well, maybe he’d been assuming he knew her.
Maybe he had never really known her.
To confirm it, he’d asked, subtly, if she still trusted him.
It almost felt appropriate that, right then, Etna decided to blow. Because he’d felt his own fury building in his chest. What did I do to you to make you walk—no, run—away?
But he never got that out because her horrified glance over his shoulder made him turn.
Instinct made him dive toward her. Pull her to himself, protect her.
They landed on the tile of the terrace and he’d curled himself around her as best he could. The building shook, tile cracking, breaking. A line fractured across the rooftop as smoke descended over them.
He hauled her up. “Run!” He grabbed her hand and spied the waitress headed for the stairway near the end of the building.
Then it occurred to him—
Volcano ash was deadly. Sulfuric, toxic. And if he remembered his history lessons of the Mount Saint Helens’s eruption, sometimes volcanoes spurted out a pyroclastic cloud of hot gas and rock. Leveling forests and maybe cities and certainly suffocating them—
They needed cover. He headed for the stairwell near the lifts, pulling Signe with him, then pushed her in front of him. “Go—go!”
A glance over his shoulder showed the mountain covered in black, thick smoke that was heading toward them.
The hotel was shaking so hard he nearly fell. They needed a windowless room—maybe a bathroom, or a closet or—
Except, if the ash didn’t kill them, the rubble might.
They also needed something to protect them.
He practically pushed Signe into the lift, hoping he hadn’t just killed them. “Get down!”
It was an old cage lift with a wooden box, maybe three feet square. But it had metal girders holding it up. Ham closed the wooden doors, then crouched over her, on his knees, his arms braced over her body against the wall.
Closed his eyes.
Oh God, keep us alive!
The lift shuddered, but yes, they might live through this.
Then, the light flickered out, the lift gave a lurch.
Falling!
He wanted to shout. Instead, he reached for Signe, pulled her to himself, and braced them both for the drop.
The lift stopped so fast, they bounced—maybe the emergency brakes kicking in—but he fell back, hitting the wall, Signe on top of him in the darkness.
She was gripping his shirt.
Roaring filled the compartment, the hint of wind, the smell of cement and dirt and sulfur.
“Close your eyes.” Maybe the ash wouldn’t find them here, but he didn’t know. He rolled them over and pushed their heads to the floor of the lift. “Put your hand over your mouth, breathe through your fingers.”
The building was still shaking, and he just dug in and started to breathe.
Oh God, don’t forget us!
The terrible howl continued, and around them, rocks and pebbles kept falling, pinging against the lift box.
He didn’t know how long they crouched there, listening to the building groan and shift, the wind moaning. He smelled smoke, a hint now of gas in the air.
Please let the electricity be off. The last thing they needed were live wires sparking into all that gas.
Finally, the building settled.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he got up.
“I think so.” But her voice trembled.
Ham dug his cell phone from his pocket and turned on the flashlight.
Beheld the destruction.
The lift had probably saved their lives, the antique metal casing dented in around the sides, splintering the wood, but still intact.
The electrical panel was dark—probably a good sign—but when he got up and tried the doors, they opened to a cement wall.
They were between floors, but he hadn’t a clue how far down. But he could touch the ceiling, and for right now, they weren’t moving.
He shined the light down at Signe.
She’d sat up, her scarf off her head, her shirt and hair grimy and covered in gray dust, her green eyes big as she stared at him. “What just happened?”
“Pompeii?”
She gave out a huff—half laugh, half disbelief. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I would have gone down the stairs.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We might be trapped in this thing forever.”
He probably shouldn’t have said that because his words turned her expression stricken.
She got up. “These old elevators have escape hatches on the top. Maybe we can climb out. If the shaft isn’t clogged.”
He directed his light up, scanned it across the panels. They’d just covered urban rescue scenarios, including elevator rescue, during his training in DC. But his guess was that no K9 was going to find them down here. “I think we probably need to sit tight for a bit and let that ash cloud disperse. It’s full of tephra, which are jagged edged particles—”
“I remember our Mount Saint Helens’s report, Ham. I think I wrote most of it.”
“I did the construction, thank you. We got an A.”
“Because of my report.”
“Ours was the only volcano that actually erupted.”
Just like that, he was back in the seventh grade, working on the volcano on his kitchen table, late at night, listening to Boyz II Men and wondering if it was possible to fall in love forever at the age of thirteen.
He couldn’t stop himself. “Signe, did you ever really love me?”
Her eyes were bright in the glow of his phone light. It flashed him to her expression the night he told her he was being shipped off to military school. Sort of desperate and pleading and hoping that he had the right answer for her. Only now it was him wondering what answer she would give him. Had she forgotten him? Or maybe he’d never been to her what she’d been to him.
“Ham,” she said softly, almost a whisper. “Of course I loved you. I loved you with everything inside of me, every cell of my body.”
He stilled, not sure what to do with her words. Or the past tense of them. But he didn’t want to ask the follow-up question—Do you love me now?
Instead, “What happened to you? All I remember is that we got married, we spent an amazing weekend together, and then I came back from my first deployment and you were gone. I know we talked about that, but then five years later I find you and again we spend the most amazing weekend together and then you’re gone. This time, I think you’re dead, but ten years later I find out you’re not dead and I have a child. What happened? Why didn’t you come back to me?”
She sighed then, and the defeat on her face shook him to the core. He’d never known Signe to be defeated. She was light and life and curiosity and a force to be reckoned with. But sitting there in the lift with ash covering her body, she turned into a ghost in front of him.
And right then . . . no, he didn’t know her at all.
“It’s a long story,” she said quietly.
He sank down, his back to the wall. “We’re not going anywhere. I’m listening.”
Jenny.
Orion had one thought as the world stopped shaking, as water sprayed from a broken line in the coffee shop, as people around him cried or screamed.
Get. To. Jenny.
He’d dived under a table with two women, both middle-aged, dark hair. Now, as he leaned up, he saw one bled from her arm, a jagged piece of glass embedded in the flesh of her bicep. The other woman curled into a ball, her knees up, her head down. When she looked up, blood dripped down her forehead from an open cut.
“Don’t move.” He scrambled out from under the table. Around the cafe, others had also taken refuge under tables or behind the counter. A few simply lay on the floor, hands over their heads. A couple young bucks were getting up and he pointed at the water spraying through the cafe. “Turn that off!”
Maybe they spoke English, or maybe they simply caught his meaning, because one of them scrambled over the counter.
The other turned to a young woman who was holding her bloody leg and crying.
Orion hit his feet and grabbed a couple cloth napkins that had spilled onto the floor. He came back to the women and pressed one to the woman’s head. “Hold this here.”
She nodded, her eyes wide, and he turned to the other woman, the one in the leopard shirt. The glass still protruded from her arm, and he couldn’t tell if it had nicked an artery.
He should probably wait until she could get to an ER before he removed it, but given the tragedy, even in this little coffee shop, that could be hours.
He held her arm, met her eyes. “Can I see it?”
She was a pretty woman, big brown eyes, olive skin, maybe midforties. “Si.”
He pulled back the skin around the wound and she whimpered. But it didn’t look that deep.
What he really needed was a way to stop blood flow, just in case.
She wore a scarf in her hair. He motioned to it and she nodded. Taking it off her, he put it around her arm, then grabbed a nearby butter knife and fashioned a tourniquet around her upper arm, above the wound.
“I’m going to take this out, okay?”
The other woman reached out and took her hand.
“I’m Orion. What’s your name?”
“Federica.”
“Okay, here we go. On three.”
He counted, and pulled on two. She cried out, and blood surged, but he pressed the cloth over the wound and tightened the tourniquet. The flow stopped. “Hold this on here until help arrives.” He tied off the tourniquet.
Federica grabbed his shirt. “Where are you going?”
“To find my girlfriend.” The words came out easy, as if nothing had changed between them.
Maybe, right now, nothing had.
So she didn’t want to marry him—right now, all that mattered was that she was alive and safe.
Orion pulled his cell phone from his pocket. No signal. Outside, sirens blared in the distance, a car alarm honking somewhere in the fog. Most of the windows in the coffee shop had shattered. Smoke darkened the streets.
Smoke filled with ash and volcanic debris. It might even be toxic. “Cover your mouths!” he said, the realization sinking in. He grabbed more napkins off the floor and tied one around his mouth, handed them out to the patrons now mending their wounds, trying their cell phones.
The water had stopped spurting, but the floor was slick and muddy with ash, coffee stirred into the mix. A barista had been scalded and one of the young bucks was pouring water over her hand and arm.
Orion stepped out into the street, trying to get his bearings. He couldn’t see the sky, the world gritty and dark. Ash layered the cars, the blue fruit truck parked in the street. Flowerpots lay smashed on the sidewalks, having toppled from balconies, and a couple buildings were cracked, terra-cotta roof tiles in broken piles along the road. The cobblestones had buckled, and the tables outside the cafe were flung over, glass from storefront windows scattered all the way down the street.
He had no idea which way to go. He pulled out his phone, pulled up his GPS, but it gave him nothing.
“Orion. Where are you going?”
Federica called to him from where she sat on the floor, through the space of the open glass.
“To my hotel. It’s on the harbor.”
Federica pointed to her right. “That way. Four or five blocks.”
He took off in a jog down the street. The air smelled of burned rubber, sulfuric and toxic. Water gushed from cracks in buildings onto the street, and overhead electric cables sparked.
His eyes burned and he stopped, leaned over, grabbing his knees. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to let them tear and cleanse out the rubble.
Please, Jenny, be okay.
He passed a couple buildings that were cracked, one leaning to its side, and one with its entire frontside crumbled onto the street. “Hello? Anyone here?” He stood at the edge of the rubble, not even sure where to start looking. He probably should have paid better attention during the urban SAR training they’d done in DC, but frankly he’d been too focused on, well, being angry.
Pouting, his father might have called it.
“Orion, can we talk?”
Jenny had come up to him at the airport, right before their flight to Amsterdam, and he’d barely looked up from his phone—he’d been listening to a podcast—and shook his head.
Shook. His. Stupid. Head.
No talking, just pouting, and now he felt sick.
Please, Jenny, be alive.
Overhead, the air was still clogged with a gassy current of ash and debris, the sidewalks littered with the carcasses of tree limbs, sand, rocks, stone, and dirt.
Covering his eyes, Orion stumbled over the debris of the house, back toward the harbor. He nearly tripped over a bicycle, toppled over on the ground, half buried in dust.
Bracing his hand on the buildings, he worked his way down the street.
He spotted a fire blazing from a building a block or so away. He picked up his speed, his heart thundering, but when he arrived, people were standing away from the burning house, a woman holding a baby in her arms, both of them grimy, enclosed in the embrace of an equally dirty man. They were quietly crying. The house had fallen in, the roof gone, the place ablaze.
A group of local men were spraying water onto a nearby home, trying to save it.
Orion’s eyes watered, his sight turning blurry.
He turned back toward the harbor—or what he hoped might be the harbor. If he found it, he could follow the shoreline all the way to the hotel.
He passed the church with the Madonna above the door and spotted a crack all the way up the outside wall. The bell tower had broken off at the top, a great splinter along the yellow stucco.
He turned and headed down the street, a straight shot down the hill to the harbor. An eerie quiet pervaded the air, something prickling his skin despite the chaos, the fire and smoke and reek of sulfur. As if something else were poised to attack, maybe another fiery blast, maybe an aftershock.
Maybe . . . and as he came out to the sea, the air clearing slightly, he saw it.
The sea was beginning to recede from shore, the water scraping over rocks as the harbor emptied. Sailboats were beached at their dockings, fishing boats dug into the sand, and farther out, at the mooring balls, a few sailors scrambled to put their dinghies down and motor to shore.
Tsunami. The earthquake from the volcano had ruptured the seabed somewhere and—
Orion broke out into a run. He was probably only a kilometer from the hotel, but he could make it.
He would make it.
Jenny’s room was on the third floor, so maybe she was safe, but if the hotel had collapsed, and she was trapped inside, she’d drown.
He ran down the middle of the road, past the castello, now in even more ruin, past a dry harbor of beached rowboats and whalers, past one of many long docks, the boats like horses tied up to a hitching post.
“Help!”
The voice rose over the expanse of water and the distant thunder and tripped Orion up. He nearly flattened on the road, but slowed enough to spot a man running toward shore through the shallow waters.
He’d abandoned his dinghy, held two kids, one in each arm as he fought the pull of the seabed.
Thirty feet out, his catamaran was being grounded by the vanishing water.
Orion glanced down the street and spotted the hotel. It looked mostly intact, but he couldn’t tell.
“Help!”
Aw, he couldn’t stop himself from turning, running off the road, onto the boardwalk, then down to shore. The man was still fifty yards away. “My wife is still on the boat with our daughter!”
Oh, perfect. And then, as if to add to the horror, a deep rumble tremored the air.
The roar of the sea, lifting, rushing toward them.
For a second, Orion was standing on the shore on a frigid day in January, watching his father trying to save his mother and little brother out of a raging, frozen river.
Yeah, he wasn’t going to stand by and watch another family be decimated.
Orion took off toward the man, yanking his feet out of the muck, the going too slow. He reached him, an American, given the Minnesota Vikings hat he wore over his long blond hair.
The man shoved his two sons—Orion guessed them to be about nine and seven years old—into Orion’s arms. “I gotta get back—”
Vikings looked at him, his gaze fierce. “My wife is back there, with our daughter. Keep my sons safe!”
Then he turned and fought his way through the muck toward the boat.
Shoot.
Orion spun toward shore and worked his way back, fighting to hold on to the boys, not looking behind him as the water raced toward him.
He reached the sand and put them down, gripped their hands, and sprinted up the beach, practically dragging them. He aimed for a set of brick stairs leading to higher ground.
He glanced out to sea.
The surge had reached the catamaran and lifted it, the foamy, violent front wave dislodging it from the seabed and pushing it along like a toy.
Orion reached the top of the stairs and for a second was caught by the sight of the entire seabed rising, the leading edge of the water overrunning the boats, grabbing them, pushing them to shore like litter.
Seagulls scattered, crying overhead.
The helplessness of it caught Orion around the chest, squeezed.
Sort of like when he’d seen Jenny standing in the parking lot.
He wanted to help. Wanted to be the one who carried her to shore, kept her safe.
Lord, keep us alive so we can find each other.
The sea hit the cement barrier of the castello with a terrible boom, the water careening toward land at a terrific speed.
He took off again, the boys clinging to him, crying.
And with everything Orion had inside him, he prayed for mercy.
For the first time in what seemed like ten years Signe felt safe. Which was entirely crazy because she wasn’t safe.
She was trapped in an elevator hovering somewhere between the first and fourth floors, the electricity off, sitting in the darkness with only a flashlight for light, pinned under the scrutiny of a man whose heart she’d broken.
If she were honest, this was more of an interrogation than a conversation between old friends, because Ham wasn’t exactly here on personal business. For all she knew, he worked for the CIA and was here to determine whether she was a patriot . . . or a terrorist.
And why not? She’d vanished from his life and, to the naked eye, joined a jihadist organization. Not to mention hid his daughter from him.
So, yes, he had every right to eye her with what looked like suspicion.
She’d stick to the facts. And really, that was all she could give him because if she let him take a good look at what was going on inside her head, or worse, her heart, well, yes, that would be a catastrophe of epic proportions.
As soon as this conversation was over—and they’d escaped their tomb—she would disappear. Because she still hadn’t figured out who he might be connected to, and who might have followed him, and frankly who might be waiting for them outside the elevator.
But right now, right this moment, she was safe. So she could give him the truth—or most of it.
“You need to let me get all the way to the end before you start shouting.”
His mouth opened. Then closed. And he nodded.
She ran her hands together. “Sort of reminds me of the times your stepmother would lock you in the cellar of your farmhouse. For one of your perceived infractions—probably you’d forgotten to clean the kitchen or take out the garbage or even simply not given her the right answer when she demanded it.”
She didn’t know why she led with that.
“She just liked to exert her power,” Ham said quietly. “Remind me that I wasn’t hers.”
For a moment, she wondered if he’d questioned whether Aggie was his. But maybe it wouldn’t matter to a man like Ham. He made everyone feel like they were under his wings.
“I never knew how you survived her abuse.”
“You,” he said quietly, then drew in a breath as if he hadn’t meant for that to escape. He looked away. “I’d be sitting in the darkness, singing a song to myself—”
“That’s right. You were always singing.”
“My mom’s hymns. I don’t know why, but it helped. And then, suddenly I’d hear your voice.” He met her eyes. “You kept me sane.”
You too. Because sometimes when . . . well, when she felt so afraid or alone she thought she might break in half, he was there. At least in her memories.
Oh, pull yourself together, Signe! She found a desperate smile. “I wanted to take a bolt cutter to the padlock.”
One side of his mouth ticked up, such a familiar half smile, her heart lurched.
“I reported your stepmother to my grandmother once, but that went nowhere.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. She was on the PTA board, and no one would have believed you. And, she loved Kelsey. It was just me who made her angry.”
“You were a good kid, Ham.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “This is about you.”
Right. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning. You mean when I was thirteen, the day that my grandfather died and I realized that I was alone?”
He drew in a breath.
And no, she hadn’t been alone. She’d had her grandmother, and Ham. But right then, she’d begun making plans to do something with her life. Be significant, leave her mark.
Yes, she should start there because then maybe he’d understand. “I was the perfect prey for the CIA.”
His mouth tightened around the edges. “When did they recruit you?”
“It was after we got married. You’d left and I was . . . well, I was afraid. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I knew your training was so dangerous and then you would be deployed, and I just couldn’t be the one waiting for you to die.”
“I know,” he said softly. “You told me all that. That’s why you joined the Peace Corps, right?”
“I wasn’t in the Peace Corps.” She drew in her breath, suddenly aware of her tower of lies. “I was deep into my first assignment by the time you found me in Chechnya.”
He drew up his legs and rested his hands over his knees. “I see.”
“Do you, Ham? Because you were out in the world doing amazing things. Jumping out of airplanes, learning how to scuba dive, preparing to go to war. But I’d watched airplanes slam into the World Trade Center too, and I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know how . . . and then suddenly I had a chance.”
“I don’t get it. You got so angry with me in Chechnya. Told me that you couldn’t be married to a SEAL. That you couldn’t watch me die. And then you go and do exactly the same thing.”
She sighed. “I didn’t want you to know what I was doing,” she said quietly. “I thought you’d try to stop me.”
“You’re right. I would have tried.”
“And then what, Ham? You would have dragged me across the world, to Virginia, or Pensacola, and then parked me on base so I could wait for you to come back? Like a little housewife—”
“Like my wife!” It was the first time he raised his voice to her.
Maybe she deserved it.
He drew in a breath, schooled his voice. “What was so wrong with that?”
“Nothing, except . . . I didn’t want that. I wanted what you had. To do something important with my life. To know that I didn’t waste it.”
Her last sentence hung out there, reverberating into her soul.
Maybe his too. “Like your mom did.”
She looked away from him. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So then you just left. No goodbyes—just . . . gone.” Again no accusation in his tone, but enough of truth in it for her to wince.
“I couldn’t say goodbye to you, Hamburglar. I knew you’d find me, though. And I dreaded the day you’d show up and talk me out of what I was doing.”
“Do you really think I could have done that?”
She gave a huff, half laughter, half incredulity. “Yes. Wasn’t that exactly what you tried to do when you found me in Chechnya? What our romantic getaway to Ukraine was all about?”
He looked away. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Then he met her eyes again. “You were doing something dangerous and I was afraid, and okay, yes, maybe I did try to talk you out of it. And I would have tried harder if I knew you were pregnant.”
His words landed like a knife in her chest.
She gritted her jaw against the ache. “I’m sorry I took your daughter from you. It wasn’t my intent. When Pavel Tsarnaev raided the camp, one of his men was shot. He took my friend Zara, and I didn’t know what to do so I went with her. She doctored the man at a house, and then I talked Tsarnaev into leaving her there in exchange for taking me.”
“I told him that I could look after the soldier—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Ham, you promised to hear the whole thing—”
“I take it back. Are you completely crazy?”
His response knocked her back.
“Tsarnaev was a terrorist. A jihadist and a militant Islamic. You know what they do to women in those camps—”
She folded her arms, glared at him, then looked away.
Maybe her actions calmed him down because he blew out a breath, ran his hands over his face. “Okay. Sorry. I just . . .” He stared at her then. “I found Zara. She said Tsarnaev had taken you, and I nearly lost my mind, okay? And now you’re saying you went with him willingly? Why?” His question hung in the air of the tiny compartment. “Why would you do that—”
“Because it was my job!” She cut her voice low. “I was tasked to infiltrate and find out what Tsarnaev knew—”
“Not by joining his terrorist camp!”
She held up her hand. “Listen. We knew Tsarnaev was planning something. And, like I told you, I was tasked to find out what. When he took me to his camp, I realized it was a much bigger event than we thought. It wasn’t just camp—it was practically a city. Three thousand soldiers, all training for jihad. And that was just one of his many camps. They were also using the place as a so-called retraining ground for captured American soldiers. At first I thought I could just smuggle out the location and save the POWs. I did, and some of them got away and were rescued. But then I realized there was a bigger plan. Tsarnaev was planning a number of terrorist attacks. It was only ten years out from 9/11 and I thought I could stop something bad from happening.”
He was listening now, his gaze hard on hers. Probably because he’d been the tip of the sword back then, still trying to hunt down the players in al-Qaeda.
“The first of Tsarnaev’s attacks happened in 2010, only not in America like I thought, but in Russia. In a Moscow subway. Tsarnaev sent two of his women as suicide bombers. I was shocked because I warned the CIA and thought they would stop it. But they didn’t. And that’s the first time I thought that maybe there was something wrong inside the company. Then less than a year later, one of his suicide bombers blew up Domodedovo Airport. Again, the CIA did nothing. A couple more attacks happened—the public transit system in 2013 and a hijack of an airplane in 2015, and finally the explosion in the St. Petersburg metro in April of 2017. All of them connected to Pavel Tsarnaev, and every single time I got word to the company, nothing happened. It was all in Russia, so maybe they didn’t want to get involved, but I started to wonder if the information wasn’t getting to the right people, or maybe the people I was reporting to were the wrong people.”
She had his attention, and his silence, now. “And that’s when I started plotting a way to get out.”
For a while, Ham had been sitting there, looking down and away from her. Now, he met her eyes. “And where was Aggie all this time?”
“She was with me. She was safe.”
It seemed like there was a question in his eyes, but she couldn’t bear to answer it.
Instead, “Tsarnaev knew I was valuable. Maybe he thought that someday he could ransom me, or maybe even exchange me for his captured people. So, I pretended I was a double agent and gave him information. The kind of information that hurt no one, but enough so that he could believe me.”
Ham was looking at her as if sorting through her words, trying to believe her.
“All this time I was learning Arabic, as well as German and French, and trying to understand his mindset. And Pavel liked Aggie. Something about her blonde hair intrigued him.”
He drew back. “Did he ever—”
“No. He never hurt her. I made sure of that.”
Ham’s jaw tightened.
“You need to know that if I ever felt Aggie wasn’t safe, I would have taken her and run.”
Please, believe me.
His sigh was audible. “So, then what happened? Why did you run?”
“About three years ago we had a visitor from America.”
“This person visited the terrorist camp?”
She nodded. “And about six months later I got access to Tsarnaev’s computer and I found a file.”
“The NOC list,” Ham said.
“Yes. And that’s when I started to unravel the plan.”
“What plan?”
She stared at him. Debated. Because while she trusted Ham, she couldn’t be sure who’d really sent him. So, she kept it cryptic. “The kind of plan that took down governments and rearranged world powers.”
He just stared at her.
“I think Tsarnaev bought the list in exchange for services rendered.”
“What kind of services?”
The smell of smoke had dissipated a little. “Maybe we should try to get out—”
“What kind of services, Sig?”
“The kind that involve political assassinations, okay?”
“Like a senator?”
“Or a Russian general.” Aw, maybe she’d told him too much. But it could be a test, right? “You heard about the attempted assassination of General Boris Stanislov, right?”
“Yes. Four months ago I was involved in an operation to rescue a woman who was named in his assassination attempt.”
Of course he was. She’d wondered how the woman—a CIA operative, according to the rumors—had walked away from the KGB.
Unless she was working with the Russians. But if Ham was involved . . .
“Do you think Tsarnaev had anything to do with the bombing attempt of White’s campaign event in Alaska?” he asked.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “But I did know that with the NOC list in Tsarnaev’s hands he could do anything with it. Hold on to it for leverage against the United States or sell it to the highest bidder—whatever served his purposes.” She paused. “And there were names on it that I didn’t want him to see.”
Ham’s voice was quiet. “Like yours.”
“And others. And I knew that if it got out into the world at large, people would die.”
“So why not just destroy it?”
“Every NOC list comes encrypted and can only be unlocked by the personal key of the handful of people in the world who have access to it. So if it was sold, it also came with the decryption key. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my hands on a decryption key, but the right people could decrypt it and match it with the code and . . .”
“Find the source. And discover the traitor in our government.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“If you had destroyed it, you and Aggie could have disappeared, and stayed safe.”
“And Tsarnaev’s plan would have still been enacted, and the traitors in the US government never brought to justice.”
Ham studied her. “Sig. Did you kill Pavel Tsarnaev?”
She made a face. “Technically he was alive when I left him. But I did leave him sleeping in his cabin and blew up his boat.”
He met her eyes and she met his.
“So that’s a yes.”
“I am not proud of—”
“I always said you were crazy brave. You still are.”
No crying. “No, Ham, I’m just . . . I’m just trying to keep ahead of my bad decisions. And just trying to make the next right one. I think you and Aggie are still in danger. I’m sure that whoever found me in Germany is still tracking me.” She paused. But she had to know. “Has she been in any danger since she came to you?”
It was the way he looked away, flinched.
“Oh no.” A fist squeezed her chest. “What happened?”
“Two months ago, while we were at the Mall of America, a Russian—we think he was part of the Bratva—tried to grab her. We got her back, but he died before we were able to question him.”
She pressed on her stomach, trying not to hurl. “I feared something like that would happen. I tried to cover her tracks. I left a note on her for the US Navy to call you. I knew you were out of the Navy, and I thought she’d be safer with you. How did the Russians find her?”
“Maybe it was me,” Ham said quietly. “I came to Italy looking for you. Maybe whoever was searching for you saw me . . . followed me home.”
“And snatched Aggie.”
“Yes. It was that night, too, that I called you on your burner phone.”
The phone she’d hid inside Aggie’s ratty unicorn. “Really?”
“Yes. Maybe they caught that signal. I don’t know, but . . . it could be how they tracked you down too.”
She drew in a breath. “Do you still have it?”
He nodded. “I tried to call you about a week ago. You didn’t answer.”
She wanted to lie and tell him that she hadn’t gotten the call. That she’d thrown the phone away before—
Aw, she’d never been any good at lying to Ham.
“I was running and I missed your call. Truth. But then, I didn’t want you to find me. So I dumped it.”
A beat, then, “Why, Signe?”
And she was just tired, and maybe a little frustrated, but, “Because of this! Because of this moment where I look at you and I realize that I’ve hurt you. And I hate it. I hate the fact that I did this to you, but I didn’t know what else to do, and I seem to never make the right choice. And I knew if I heard your voice I would . . .” No. She put a hand over her mouth.
“You would what?” he said softly.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter—”
“It does matter! It matters very much. I didn’t trek halfway across the road just to get this list from you. I came to bring you home, Sig. Home where you belong. With me and your daughter. Our family.”
Family. But she couldn’t allow herself to land there. Instead, she mustered up the woman who’d lived surrounded by hate for the last ten years, the one without hope. “Are you serious? You seriously think that we can be a family after everything—” She took a breath. “No, I can’t . . .”
He looked like he wanted to swear. Instead, he ran his hand across his head, took a breath. “Please explain this to me.”
And there he was. Quintessential Ham—calm, tucking all his emotions back inside.
Yes, well, his soft voice calmed her too. “Until I know that Aggie is safe, that this rogue CIA group or the Russians or whoever wants the list won’t come after her, I have to stay away.”
“That makes no sense,” Ham said. “Why wouldn’t they just use Aggie as leverage to force you to come in?”
“They can’t use her if they think I’m dead.”
He recoiled. “Sig . . . what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about vanishing. Faking my death—whatever it takes to make sure that Aggie is safe.” She met Ham’s eyes. “I’m not going home with you.”
His eyes sparked, and she rushed ahead before he could argue. “But can I give you this information with your solemn promise you will give it to the right people?”
His mouth tightened. “I’ll give it to Isaac White.”
“Can you trust him?”
He nodded. “But I’m not letting you go, Sig.”
“If you want our daughter to live, you will.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re not doing this again.” He held up his hands, then curled them into fists. “I love you, Sig. And I should have never let you walk out of my life. I’m not letting you go.”
Oh Ham. “You have to!” Her voice came out just as hot. “Because I haven’t endured everything I’ve gone through for the last ten years to fail at this. To let Pavel Tsarnaev take more, take everything from me. I refuse to let him win.”
Ham drew in a breath, and his voice tightened to a thread of horror. “Signe, just what did he take from you?” And something in his expression looked so wrecked, she had to look away.
Besides, she couldn’t breathe with the rush of answers.
No. She had to put the past behind her if she hoped to survive.
Still, a terrible silence echoed through the elevator, so long and deafening she knew Ham could hear her heart pounding against her ribs.
“Ham—”
A roar filled the silence. It thundered through the darkness, flooding over her, through her, overtaking her cells.
The lift began to shake. “Ham?”
Water seeped into the bottom, saturating the floor.
“Get up!” Ham scrambled to his feet, shining his light on the edges. “Oh no.”
“What?” She too stood up.
“Sometimes after volcanoes and earthquakes there are tidal waves.”
“Are you talking a tsunami?”
He handed her the phone. “We’ve got to get out of here or we’re going to drown.” He stood up and searched the top of the box, found a latch. He tried to open it, scattering pebbles and dirt into the compartment. “It’s stuck.” He turned to her. “We have to get up there. If I lift you, can you push the panel free?”
She nodded. He held out his clasped hands.
She stepped into them, her hands on his massive shoulders, and as if she weighed nothing, he picked her up. Setting her shoulder to the panel, she pushed on it. It moved and she wedged it open and pulled herself up.
“What do you see?”
He’d been right, the lift had protected them. Rubble had fallen around the outside of the box, but for the most part the shaft was open all the way to the top. Four rusty metal poles ran the length of the shaft, one on either side of the doors, and along the back. A wan light bled through the metal grates on the floor above. “I think we fell two floors down.”
The building had started to shake. She leaned down and put her hand out. “Can you reach my hand?”
“Get back,” he said. “And hang on to the cable in case the lift decides to break free.”
“What?”
But she did as she was told as Ham jumped, grabbing the edges of the opening. Then, like the super human that he was, he pulled himself up, barely wedging his shoulders through.
He grabbed the cable, testing it. “We need to climb this.” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, revealing the fact that he still had his SEAL physique, then ripped off the arms of his shirt.
He put his shirt back on. “Hold out your hands.”
She was too shocked to do anything but obey. He wrapped the fabric around her hands. “Can you do this?”
She met his gaze. “Yes. Of course.”
Just for a moment, she got a smile. A glimpse of the old Ham, the one who competed with her in gym class. The Ham who had taught her how to ride a horse, the one who’d been her best friend and told her he’d never forget her.
Clearly, he’d kept that promise.
Of course he kept that promise.
She looked away and grabbed the pole.
“Climb as fast as you can, Signe. Because I’m afraid this building is going to go down.”
She wrapped her hands around the cable and started to inch up. But she didn’t know what was more dangerous—the tsunami or the unforgettable pull Ham had on her heart.