“So you don’t know where he is?” the man asks, with some urgency.
“What do you mean?” Kathryn answers into the phone, soap bubbles dripping off her hand into the kitchen sink. “You scheduled his offshore job. He told me he’d be gone for a week or so.”
“You better call him, and find out where he’s at,” the man abruptly hangs up.
Kathryn dries her hands and calls her husband’s phone number. She had just spoken to him yesterday. Without ringing, the phone immediately transfers to her husband’s voicemail. “Hello, this is Rashid Siddique, please leave me a message.”
She does not.
Irritated, she dials again. These oil platforms too far offshore for good phone reception always frustrate her. As her husband’s voice again tells her to leave a message, she hears a knock at the door. He must be home already. “Did you forget your keys?” she shouts through the door. She smoothes an errant blonde hair, smells her wrists, clicks her tongue at her unperfumed skin.
She opens the door wide, only to find a man dressed in a suit, his expression humorless.
“Hello?” She closes the door back down to a few inches.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he checks the number on the outside of the door. “I’m looking for Mrs. Siddique.”
“I am Mrs. Siddique.”
He scans her face. “Yes. Mrs. Siddique, I’d like to ask you a few questions.” He flashes her a badge. “Agent Roberts, FBI.”
“Why are you here?” she closes the door a little more.
“Rashid Siddique is your husband?”
“You seem to know that already.”
“Where is he right now?”
“Working.”
When she fails to elaborate, he raises his hand, opening his fingers to reveal a ring, a yellow band of gold resting on his palm. She can just make out an inscription on the inside of the ring.
“I think you recognize this ring, Mrs. Siddique?”
The blood drains from her face. “Where did you get that?”
“At the site of the freeway bombing,” he says.
“The freeway bombing?”
“I think you’d better let me come in.”