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Naomi greeted him at the door with a smile. “Mac said you’d be here,” she said, welcoming him in. “But you don’t have to, you know. We’ll be fine.”
He smiled back. “No, someone does need to be here,” he disagreed. “Especially in light of what we learned today. Mac is one of the most paranoid people I know — but dang if he isn’t usually right.”
She laughed. “Come in then. I was reading in the courtyard — was that you I heard park back there? Would you like some iced tea?”
He hadn’t thought about her hearing him. “I’m sorry — hope I didn’t alarm you,” he apologized as he followed her to the kitchen. She poured him some iced tea and shook off his apology with a flip of her hand.
“When Kate still lived here, it mattered if a neighbor took the spot. But now, it doesn’t as much,” she said. “It’s not a problem.” She offered to take his jacket. He hesitated, then shrugged out of it. It was too hot of an afternoon for a jacket. The temperature LED sign at the bank had said 99 degrees. There were people sitting in cars in the parking lot with the air conditioning running waiting to see if it turned 100 degrees. A Seattle tradition.
“It needs to be in a closet,” he said quietly. “My gun is in the pocket. Not something that should be just left hung over a chair.”
She hesitated, then took the jacket, testing the weight curiously, and hung it in a closet by the front door. “Safe enough,” she said.
Rand followed her back out to the courtyard. He could see why Mac liked it. “Do you miss her — Kate, I mean?” he asked.
Naomi nodded with a half-shrug. “Of course I do,” she said. “But she visits almost daily. Still parks out back most days, actually. But I’m glad she found someone to love.”
“But not Mac,” Rand observed.
Naomi shook her head and laughed. “Oh my, those were some wild months,” she said. “In some ways I wish it had worked out.” She paused and tipped her head as she reflected. “Mac lifted her up and let her fly,” she said slowly. “You know those videos of people setting a bird free? They lift them up and fling them into the air, and the bird spreads its wings and flies. Mac valued Kate’s intelligence. She didn’t have to hide it with him, and yes, she did — does — at church. Sad, but she does, because she’s smart enough to know it would be easier that way. But Mac didn’t see why she would even want to do that. He saw her as an equal.”
She laughed, and it was almost a giggle — the sound of a woman who found life amusing. “You heard him last night, right? He got that puzzled look on his face when Tim said the man is the authority over a woman like Christ is over the church and blew a hole in the argument. And I can’t for the life of me see how Mac’s wrong.”
Rand laughed too. “It was a moment,” he agreed.
“We had a lot of those,” Naomi said. “When I think of Mac during those six months, that’s one of the expressions I remember best — and I’d think ‘uh-oh, here it comes.’ He was often puzzled by Christianity. I don’t think he’d had any previous exposure to it.”
She took a sip of iced tea. “He’d also get this blank, panicked look, and then I’d go rescue him. Usually it was because someone had cornered him and was earnestly sharing their testimony with him.” She laughed again and shook her head. “It was almost heartbreaking to watch him. He was trying to see if he could fit in — not convert, conversion would have been easier in many ways. But could he accept it all because he really liked Kate, and really wanted someone to make a home with. No. In the end, he just couldn’t do it. And he knew Kate wouldn’t leave the church — and he didn’t want her to.”
“Do you know what broke them up?” Rand asked, relaxing back in his chair. He hadn’t expected this topic, but it was nice just to sit in a garden, drink iced tea, and let a conversation wander as it would.
Naomi nodded. “Have you met Mac’s aunt Lindy Davis? She’s an art professor on campus. And she’s one of those larger-than-life people who is a part of a large group of faculty women on campus — artists, writers, scholars — who are unconventional, and even a bit in your face. I’d love to be a part of them, but I’m too quiet, too conventional. I encounter them at things, and they’re just wild to be around.” She looked a bit wistful. “So Mac and Kate had been seeing each other for four or five months before Mac took her home to meet his aunt. He’d been cautious about it, I think. His aunt is very important to him. Some of Lindy’s friends were coming over, and Mac took Kate to a dinner there. Kate wasn’t comfortable at all. In some ways she’s more conservative than I am. Just younger, I suppose. Anyway, when Mac invited her a second time, she turned him down. Eventually Mac asked her why. And Kate told him she would always accept Lindy because Mac loved her, but she had been raised to believe homosexuality was a sin. And it made her uncomfortable.”
“She told you about it?” Rand asked when she paused.
Naomi nodded. “And I knew it was over for the two of them. I had always known it wasn’t likely to work. But Mac was very respectful of Kate’s beliefs. He never pressured her for sex — she was quite amazed about that, actually. Because the Christian men she’d dated had pressured her — not for intercourse, so much, but....” Naomi stopped and laughed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this! You look at me with that sympathetic expression, and I just keep rattling on!”
Rand grinned at her. “Well, don’t stop now,” he teased. “You’re getting to the good stuff. So the heathen was more respectful than some of the upstanding Christian men?”
“They thought she should marry them, usually on the third date,” Naomi agreed. “And I guess I had been a bad role model — she wasn’t in any hurry to get married. She loved learning, loved teaching. And now she’s in the PhD program at U-Dub, and I’m so proud of her. But, honestly? If Mac hadn’t come into her life and lifted her up, I’m not sure she would have tried to do it.”
Rand had watched Mac with Angie, and he was much the same way with her. He wondered where he got that from? Well, a single mom, although crazy; an audacious aunt, and then working for Janet? Maybe he just didn’t realize not all women were like that.
“Sounds like you were a good role model,” Rand said. “You underestimate your influence. That the two of you would take Mac in is pretty astounding.”
“Kate had never met anyone like him,” Naomi said. “That validation he offered her was addictive. And he’s a good-looking man — let’s not discount that! But her discomfort with his aunt was a wake-up call for him. And he broke it off. Very kindly, I might add. She missed him, but she wasn’t devastated by it. She’d known Anthony, for a while, but I don’t think she saw him as a potential husband, until after Mac. In an odd way, it was like sleeping beauty — Mac woke her up.”
“But in this telling of it, she doesn’t marry the prince, but someone else?”
“And wisely so, although I wonder what she might have become if she’d stayed with Mac,” Naomi mused. “But she’s happy. Mac and Angie seem like a much better fit.”
“He treats her with that same respect,” he said. He told her about the Cascades, and he made her laugh.
Rand liked her laugh. “Mac works for Janet Andrews,” he said. “He’d have to appreciate strong women or he wouldn’t have survived.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Naomi said. “I heard all of the gossip when she was kidnapped. I vaguely remembered the old story.”
Rand frowned. “You haven’t met her? I think you two would hit it off.”
“I keep hoping Tim will bring her to Sunday dinner, one of these days. But so far, he hasn’t,” she said.
“Complex relationship there, but it seemed like they were working toward some kind of balance,” Rand offered. What he really wanted was the gossip. Well maybe he’d just ask.
“She loves him fiercely,” Naomi said. “And it’s hard not to respond to that kind of love. But it is forcing Tim to re-evaluate all of the stories he’s heard growing up. And that’s hard. Especially for him. His world is very black and white — good or evil, right or wrong. Very little gray. So he has a hard time with Jehovah’s Valley and the man who raised him turning out to be fallible.”
“But Janet?” he prompted. “How does the Christian community in Seattle see her? Did they know she was Rev. Brandt’s daughter? Do they know of Rev. Brandt for that matter.”
“Ah, gossip,” Naomi said rolling her eyes. “We gossip. Rev. Brandt was a folk hero; I guess that’s the way to describe him. But you have to realize people don’t leave Jehovah’s Valley, not permanently. They might go on to college — the community believes in education — but then they return, if not to the valley, to the surrounding towns. It was the assumption when Tim came here — they need a doctor. And it will be interesting to see if he does return. It’s very difficult to leave such a closed culture, Rand. The fact that Janet managed to do it? Yes, people knew. And disapproved.”
“They thought she should have stayed in Jehovah’s Valley,” Rand said slowly.
“Yes,” Naomi said. “A rocky start to a marriage, sure. And yes, she was young.” She considered it a moment. “Same age as Maiah, now that I think about it. And much like Maiah, I’d think — no exposure to modern American culture.”
Rand thought about Janet. A young girl, pregnant, defying family, church and God, to go to school. He pictured her as she was now, and there was no surprise that she could — would — do that. But picture her as Maiah? A shy, bright girl, in a world completely foreign to her? And Rand didn’t dismiss the comparison — Jehovah’s Valley was as different from Seattle as the Mae La refugee camp.
“But there were a number — a large number of people in the faith community who were outraged that one of their own, the daughter of the legendary Rev. Brandt, could betray everything they believe in,” Naomi continued. “And they used that to justify some horrible things.”
“Even the kidnapping?” Rand asked.
She hesitated. “For most people that, and firebombing her place, was a bridge too far,” she said slowly. “But even that was OK with some of them. By any means necessary, they’d say.”
Rand frowned. “What does that mean?” He thought it had to be scriptural.
“There are those who say that we should use ‘any means necessary’ to bring people to the Lord,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Of course they never mean what Jesus meant — feed the hungry, care for the sick, welcome the stranger. No. They’ll use it to justify kidnapping a woman or firebombing Planned Parenthood clinics.”
Rand laughed at her acerbic tone. “Not a fan, I take it?”
“No, they don’t see that it harms our witness when they’re that militant,” she said. “I want nothing to do with that. But Tim was attracted to it. Of course he was, given where he grew up. Now, he feels... a bit lost.”
“We need to make him hang out with Mac more,” Rand said, laughing again about last night.
“He sees Mac as a hero, actually,” Naomi said. “Not that he’d admit it.”
Rand laughed again. “Is he here? Is Maiah? I have some questions for her, actually.”
“They’re upstairs,” Naomi said. “Studying. I don’t usually encourage the boarders to be in each other’s rooms. But it makes me nervous to have Maiah be alone. No reason for it — she’s in the tower room on the third floor. But Tim seems to have appointed himself her guard.” She shrugged. “But all the boarders are home. I think the other two were talking about a church thing they were going to tonight. You are staying for dinner, right?”
“If you’ll have me,” Rand promised. He hesitated. He didn’t even know why he was uneasy, but he knew there was someone out there. “In fact, if you really would like to meet Janet, I could extend an invitation to Stan Warren — I work with him — and therefore to her too. Can dinner stretch that far?”
“There’s always food enough for a crowd, Rand,” she said. “I normally cook for 10 people every night. But yes, I’d love to have them join us. I met Agent Warren. It would be good to see him again — under less tense circumstances! Invite them, if you think they wouldn’t have other plans.” She looked at him narrowly. “You’re worried, aren’t you? You don’t think we’re safe?”
Rand did a gut-check. “I think they’ll come for Maiah,” he said finally. “Stan’s a good man to have at your back.”
She nodded. “Then invite him, and Janet. I’ll warn Tim. And I’ll get Maiah to come down and talk to you.”
Rand went to make his calls while Naomi went upstairs to get Maiah. Stan said he’d check with Janet, but to expect them at 6 p.m. for supper. Relieved, Rand went back out to the courtyard.
Maiah made his heart ache when she came out of the house. A slight young woman of mixed heritage? Not thinking about that, Rand reminded himself.
“You said your mother didn’t want your father to go,” he began. She nodded. “But he went anyway?”
Maiah nodded again. “He said he felt like he had to,” she said. “These people needed him, and he knew where they were. So he had to go.”
“Had he stopped his missions into Myanmar?” Rand asked. “When was the last one before this?”
She paused to consider it. “I am 17,” she said slowly. “Maybe three years ago? He was gone only a week, but Mama worried the whole time. But this time it was very hard. The church needs him! Without a pastor, there were disagreements and fights. And they wouldn’t listen to Mama. The deacons were rotating the sermons. But being a pastor is more than that.”
“Was your Mama worried he was dead?”
“Yes,” she whispered softly. “We both think he is dead. But then, why did these men come here after me?”
“That is the question I spent the day trying to answer,” Rand assured her. “And I think he must be alive. Don’t get your hopes up — eight months is a long time to be undercover, especially in the Burma border area.”
She nodded, unsurprised by his cautionary words. Well, she’d grown up in Mae La. Dear God, what had Samuel Fairchild been thinking? How could you love a child and yet raise them in those conditions when you had a choice?
And Samuel Fairchild did have a choice. He might not be able to return to the States, but he could have relocated within Thailand. Rand shook his head. And you’re one to talk, he admonished himself.
“When I was young, he was gone more often, and sometimes for longer than a week,” Maiah explained. “But usually he’d take someone or a couple of men with him. Training them to replace him in the work, Mama said. This time he went alone.”
Rand thought that might be significant, but he didn’t have enough pieces to make sense of it. Not yet.
He paused. Was he planning on making sense of that part of this whole thing? Protecting Maiah was one thing. Connecting the dots and busting the import company, sure. Even grabbing a couple of drug dealers who were leaning on a young exchange student. But Samuel Fairchild? He was not Rand’s problem.
Maiah excused herself, when Rand ran out of questions. He watched her go back into the house.
“You have such a wistful expression on your face when you look at her,” Naomi observed.
Rand smiled. “Yeah.” He paused, and started to push the memories away, as he always did. But then he looked at the woman sharing the patio table with him, and impulsively said, “She reminds me of what could have been.”
“Ah,” Naomi said wisely. “The What Could Have Beens.”
He laughed at that.
“Tell me,” she invited.
Rand grunted. “As much as I’m ticked off at Samuel Fairchild, I wasn’t all that much different than he was once,” he said ruefully.
Rand told her about enlisting, ending up in the Philippines, doing undercover work. She listened without judgment. Well, she’d been in that same mission field as her husband for a reason, he supposed. But she’d come home. Samuel Fairchild hadn’t.
There were some days when Rand wasn’t sure he had, either — not completely.
“I was 28, when I fell in love and got married,” Rand continued. “I knew I shouldn’t. Or, rather, if I did, I needed to get out of the military. At least take a desk job. But I was too cocky. Too addicted to the adrenaline rush of undercover work.”
He shook his head. It was hard to explain. People who had never gone undercover — never known that adrenaline rush — couldn’t understand what he meant. But it was literally like a drug addiction. “Adrenaline is addictive,” he added slowly. “And living undercover like that in a failed state like Burma? Your senses are heightened. You’re always alert. Your life is on the line, after all. And then you come home. And everything seems mundane. You can’t wait to get back out in the field again. And that’s not fair to a partner. I knew that. I’d seen other marriages fail. But I assured myself that my marriage would be different.”
“Was she a Filipina? How did you meet her?”
“She was a nurse,” Rand said. “They hauled me home in pieces after one mission and she was a nurse at the hospital where they patched me back together. And after I got out, I looked her up and asked her out.”
“Nurses have their own adrenaline rushes, I’m told,” Naomi said.
“And maybe that was part of the attraction. Here was a woman — she did ER work, and yes that’s an adrenaline-fused place — who understood. And she never suggested I give it up. Never nagged at me to take fewer missions. I loved her for it.”
He paused. He didn’t think he’d ever talked to anyone about this — not in years. His therapist. When had that been? More than a decade ago? He shook his head. “She died,” he said baldly. “She was pregnant, and she miscarried, and bled out before anyone found her. At home, and alone. I was undercover somewhere, and they couldn’t reach me. When I came home a week later, her parents had already come and taken the body. Bodies. I didn’t even get to go to her funeral. It seemed like she’d just left me, you know? I’d get drunk and wander the streets looking for her. Where did she go.”
There were tears in Naomi’s eyes. She looked at him, trying not to cry for him. He blinked back his own tears.
“The baby was a girl,” he whispered. “She’d probably be a little older than Maiah, and Maiah’s mother is Thai, not Filipino, but my daughter would probably have looked a lot like her.”
Naomi came around to his side of the table and pulled up a chair next to him. She rested her hand on his forearm. He stared at it.
“And you came home?” she asked.
“Not right away,” Rand answered. “Where was home? I hadn’t lived in the States in over a decade. No I stayed in, took more and more missions, stayed drunk most of the time I was in Manila. But I didn’t re-up when I hit my 20. Had a good commander who made me go. February of 2001. Had it been a year later, I would have ended up in Iraq instead. And I’d probably be dead. I almost went back in when 9/11 happened, but the DoD had mustered me out in D.C. and ordered me to therapy — they have this whole re-integration process for men like me. Too many suicides. Even with everything the military does do, suicides among veterans is high — really high.”
“And then? How did you end up in Seattle? I thought maybe you mustered out here,” Naomi asked. “A lot of military do.”
He nodded. The Puget Sound was full of military bases, and therefore, military and ex-military personnel. “No, in D.C., and I ended up at Georgetown, taking classes. Took one from a woman named Rebecca Nesbitt, who was also a specialist at the FBI. She thought I could have a future there. So when I graduated, I applied. Her recommendation carried a lot of weight, and I was hired. Ended up in Seattle.”
He smiled at her. “And when I saw the mountains, I knew I was home. I had never seen anything like them.”
“Never remarried?” She asked.
He shook his head.
“And now you’ve got another young woman to protect?” Naomi mused gently. “From the same bad guys you used to chase? Were you ever at Mae La?”
He shook his head again. “No, I didn’t go into Thailand much. They’d done their own work on controlling drugs. Used to be a part of the Golden Triangle — the drug center of Thailand, Burma and Laos. But Thailand has really cracked down on drugs. No I was in Laos, and sometimes in Burma. I know the area we’re talking about. It’s why Stan Warren suggested to Janet that Mac needed to talk to me about all of this.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“Mac wanted info. So Janet put out the word — she’s got an extensive network of sources, both here and in D.C.,” Rand explained. “And of course, one of those people is Stan. And Stan knows my background. So Mac called, asked for some backup and information. And here I am, smack in the middle of another one of his messes.”
She laughed. “Like the Cascades?” she teased.
“God I hope not,” he muttered. “That blew up in my face — literally. No, there it was my undercover operation, and he landed smack dab in the middle of it. I’d been undercover for months, and no one questioned it — I was a vet who liked to do guide work when Ken Bryson needed someone. Mac took all of four hours to put it together, and he comes up to me and says, ‘Does the name Rebecca Nesbitt mean anything to you?’”
“Your teacher? Why her?” she exclaimed.
“She is one of the foremost experts on religious extremism in the United States,” Rand said. “Mac had been using her as a source for his stories about the Planned Parenthood bombs. And that led to the white militias and an online guru named Sensei, the same man I was trying to take down. Small world, sometimes.”
“It is,” she agreed. She glanced up at the tower where Maiah’s room was. “It really is.”