Chapter Ten
Kira
“I heard about the robbery. It was a scary situation. But you look fine,” Lula said, tucking her foot under her hip so she could face Kira on the couch. “Are you fine?”
Lula La Roe was using that searching gaze of hers, the one she used when she was working under her CIA alias Johnna White, the one that could shapeshift into whatever was needed in the moment. Lula had chameleon-like qualities.
“The robbery?” Kira asked, tossing one of the throw pillows out of her way to slide deeper into the corner of her couch. “How did you hear that I was involved?”
“Ty called me and asked me to check on you with my psychology hat on and see if you needed anything with my friendship hat on.”
“That’s right, I mentioned to him this morning that you were stopping by for a quick visit,” Kira said, jumping up. “I’m getting an iced chai. Can I get you anything?” She called over her shoulder. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m good. Maybe a glass of water, thank you.” Lula swiveled to watch Kira escape into her kitchen. “Ty said he didn’t want to leave you, but he had orders.”
“Of course. I get all that. Nothing happened to me except I peed myself a little.” Kira banged the cupboard shut and loudly put two glasses on the counter.
“Understandable.” Lula lifted her voice so it would travel into the kitchen.
“I was scared, of course. At first, I thought they were ICE officers all dressed up in their camo and balaclavas with their MOLLE bags and rifles.” Kira pulled the fridge open, reaching in for the carton of chai and the pitcher of water, and set them on the counter.
“Then I realized they were criminals. I was pretty angry with him.” She shut the fridge. “I’m still angry at him.”
“Him who?” There was confusion in Lula’s voice. “Him, Ty?”
Kira twisted around the wall so Lula could see her. “He shoved me—and I mean shoved me—away from him and sent Rory to stand by me like a weapon.” She moved back into the kitchen to pour the drinks and put the containers away.
Lula waited until Kira came back to the living room and stretched the glass of water and napkin out to her before she said, “Ty shoving you makes perfect sense. Look at Ty. He’s big, fit, and he’s a war-hardened man.
Any man walking into the situation would make a man like that their first mark out of self-preservation. ”
Kira set her glass on a coaster on the side table. “That’s what I thought. That’s exactly what I thought.” She plopped onto the sofa. “So why shove me to the side?” Kira leaned aggressively toward Lula.
“Because if they were going to shoot, they’d shoot him first. And he wanted you out of that shot.”
Kira closed her eyes, remembering what it was like to be in the D.C.
ballroom when the terrorists shot London in the back of the head.
London had been standing there wide-eyed, frozen in fear, then an echoing bang, and her eyes slid shut, and her body melted onto the ground.
No one was allowed to go forward to help.
How could someone help anyway? What do you do when someone you love is shot in the head at point-blank range?
It took a long moment before Kira could open her eyes again and say, “Not if I was standing in front of him.”
Lula tilted her head. “What?”
“If I stood in front of Ty and Rory, if Ty wrapped his arms around me, then we’d be a couple. We were a unit. He wouldn’t have been some lone soldier boy ready to leap. If I were in front of him, he couldn’t have leaped.”
Lula scowled.
“Ty pushed me away to protect me. He was willing to take a bullet to protect me. But he didn’t let me stand in front of him to give him cover and possibly avert any shots at all.”
Lula pinched her face together, then pinched her nose as if an allergen had just flown into her face. When she blinked her eyes back open, she said, “You have a good point.”
“Of course I do. It’s the same principle as when the terrorists attacked.”
“Are you thinking of the Davidsons’ D.C. party now?”
“Yes.”
“That makes sense,” Lula said. “Of course you would be. A band of armed men. You were stunningly brave when you spoke to the terrorists. Ty was not thrilled that you focused attention on yourself. You didn’t need to answer their questions.”
“But I did because they wouldn’t have stopped asking the question had I not.
And what would they have done to the hostages?
Shot at us like they did London until we told them what they wanted to know?
They wanted Lynx. Lynx wasn’t there. Tell them.
It’s a ridiculously simple solution, just like at the jewelry shop. ”
“You are a smart cookie.” Lula sent her a conspiratorial smile. “Are you sure you don’t have intelligence training under your belt, and you’ve been playing me all this time?
“You were scared, weren’t you?” Kira whispered. “The night of the terror attack, your training didn’t protect you from being scared, did it?”
“Terrified. Of course I was.” Lula reached down to her water glass, lifted it, took a sip, then cradled it on her lap.
“It was terrible from start to finish. And then, London … when her husband William passed out, I thought he might be having a heart attack, and I thought he deserved it. I hoped he’d rot in hell because I was sure everything that happened was because he burned the wrong person along the way. ”
“The papers said that the men weren’t terrorists at all. Terrorists are people who do violence to affect some kind of societal change or to make a political point. It said that the men in the ballroom were thugs for hire just wanting to empty the guests’ bank accounts into an offshore bank.”
“They were terrorists,” Lula said with conviction. “If they were paid by terrorists to commit a crime that created terror, then they, too, are terrorists. Listen to me, not the paper. I hunt terrorists for a living.”
“You think it was a target on William? But he’d just flown in from Tanzania. Does he have people attacking him all the time, and London didn’t tell me?”
“No, and I don’t know who hired them or why. We’ll know better when they finally end up in the courtroom. Listen, my point is that I understand your anger in a frightening situation like the one you faced today. I was so angry at the Davidson attack that I wanted William to die.”
Kira scowled at her. “That’s pretty angry.”
“I still wake up with those images in my head.” Lula reached over to put her glass back on the ground.
“We need trees. Old trees with deep roots. When I’ve been through something terrible, if I sit on the roots and ask the tree for help, I imagine that the bad energy flows down through me and the tree takes that energy and drives it deep into the ground where it gets buried. ” She stood.
“Imagine if a storm blows so hard it uproots that tree, then those terrible feelings are in the air.”
“Exactly. That’s why I never sit on the same old tree in the same woods. It would be like building a nuclear bomb.” Lula reached out her hand. “Come on, stand up. Here we go. There’s the park right up the street.”
“The rottweiler park with the fence to be leaped?” Kira asked, standing and walking toward the door, snagging her keys from the key bowl and dropping them into her hobo bag.
“It worked out pretty well for you, and a girl can dream.” Lula trailed behind Kira out the door. “Listen, if you see a hero leaping, I need you to promise me you’ll fade into the background, so I get my shot at love, too.”
Kira thought there was something a bit wistful running as the undercurrent to Lula’s teasing.
As they walked down the sidewalk of Kira’s peaceful suburban neighborhood, Lula said, “I get that you’re upset with Ty today. Anyone would be. You definitely should be. But in general,” Lula asked, “you and Ty are doing well?”
“We’re in therapy.” Kira pointed to the right, then turned the corner, taking the shortcut to the park.
“Look, I think we can both agree that, as a whole and throughout time, men think of their wealth and contentment first and are willing to use the women in their lives to get where they want to go, no matter the pain it would place on the women. Those themes are very much part of the literature that I’ve studied in my academic career and have been translating of late.
Uncle Nadir did it to me. And so did Ty just in a slightly different way, and the goal in Ty’s case wasn’t personal, it was national security. ”
“These are interesting times,” Lula said on a sigh. “Everything is moving very quickly. Norms might shift as it pertains to the relationship men have with women. I have hope.”
“Sure. Well, it’s a big world. There are lots of norms.”
“Not to get too much in your business.” Lula reached into her bag and pulled out a chocolate bar, unwrapping it. “But is the couple's therapy helping?” She handed half to Kira, then took a bite out of her own piece.
Kira thought this chocolate was just another tactic from Lula’s impressive bag of CIA tricks that she used when she was calling herself Johnna White.
Sure, she did it for the greater good. But Kira was starting to get the impression that Lula was doing whatever she was doing now, not out of friendship but for a specific goal.
Something work-related?
Kira walked a few paces, biting into the chocolate and finding it tasteless even though it was her favorite kind.
Maybe it wasn’t work-related.
Maybe she had a pang of regret for manipulating Kira and calling her a friend when, in reality, Kira was a mission.
Maybe Lula wanted to assure herself that things were turning out all right and her karma wasn’t tainted.
Kira’s therapist had brought it up during their sessions that perhaps Kira was hurt by Lula’s manipulation as much as she was angry with the others who used her.