Chapter Seventeen
Kira
Kira now knew exactly where her internal beacon was leading her as she blindly roamed the dark highway. She was headed straight to Fort Bragg.
It made perfect sense even if Ty wasn’t there. She had the long-term pass that allowed her to move through the gate with a scan of her card, then she could head to Ty’s house, where it was safe from stalkers and interrogators-for-hire.
People, after all, couldn’t just drive onto a military base. A group of trained soldiers with rifles would hold Uncle Nadir’s goons at bay.
She could sleep at Ty’s.
She would stay until Ty came home, even if it was weeks away, and then ask him what to do.
Heck, she could marry him, move onto the base, and stay there forever, maybe never leave.
Ty wasn’t reupping. He would be on base for two more months, and he had no specific plans for where he’d go next, but still ...
Yes, being married might be safer. And two months was something.
She knew that was just wild thinking.
If she were going to marry Ty for safety, she would have done it as soon as he asked her when they got back from Tanzania.
But the fort was safe. People couldn’t just go in. It took a lot of hoop-jumping and background checks in order to have the long-term pass that allowed her to go to his house.
She was forty-five minutes away from the safety of the gate.
While Kira was vigilantly looking for people who might be following her, she had her radio playing loudly, so loudly that she couldn’t hear the thoughts running through her mind.
She was not Lula, and she was most certainly not Ty.
She wasn’t London’s step-daughter, Christen, with her hotshot, low-flying, superhero moves, who married an American war hero, Gator, who got his name from barehanded fighting everything from terrorists to swamp alligators.
Yet, somehow, Kira had surrounded herself with people whose powers and capabilities defied imagination. And who was she?
She was an academic. A romantic.
Her nervous system wasn’t set to titanium like the wives of Ty’s Unit brothers.
Kira felt soft around everyone in that world.
She felt like tissue paper in comparison.
Ty said that wasn’t true. When London’s dog was attacked, Kira snatched the puppy off the ground and stared down a growling Rottweiler.
“That takes guts,” he’d said. In Tanzania, she was the steady one that everyone looked to.
In the D.C. attack, she’d stood up and answered the terrorist’s questions when Ty wanted her to be silent and small to avoid attention.
And she’d held her ground against her family for a decade of constant pressure.
“You,” Ty said, tipping her head back, brushing the strands of her long hair out of her face, and kissing her with such gentleness, “you are strong when you need to be. But not everyone has to be a warrior. I am in awe of your tender spirit, of the kind eyes you focus on everyone around you.”
And she’d agreed with his assessment that she simply was made to be something else. The world needed all kinds.
But a little skill right about now would be enormously helpful.
And here she was, Fort Bragg. She’d made it. She was safe.
There was a line at the guardhouse, which was surprising.
Concrete barriers were placed in a serpentine pattern, the kind that forced cars to slow to a crawl as they funneled the vehicles forward.
Kira knew from one of their friend’s embassies in Qatar that security chose that configuration to stop suicidal drivers from plowing through the front door and detonating their vehicles.
This wasn’t the usual setup that she’d moved through in her past visits.
Kira glanced at the clock, and it was after two. Maybe this was what they did at night.
As she edged closer, Kira saw that they had sniffer dogs out. And there seemed to be more guards than usual. The soldiers dressed in what Ty called “full kit” with body armor and helmets. These weren’t the standard MP patrol uniforms.
Maybe they chose the late hours for a training exercise?
The process was slow, and Kira was fine with that. She was safely under watchful, capable eyes.
Each car moved on through the gate; it was fine.
She was going to be fine.
Now, it was her turn to ease forward.
Kira turned on her interior lights and had her ID ready to hand out.
The dogs moved up to sniff her vehicle. The guard scanned her pass and handed it back, “I’m sorry, ma’am, the base is on heightened security. We’re admitting mission-essential personnel only.”
“Heightened security?” Kira asked, accepting the pass from the guard and dropping it onto her lap. “I’m going to my fiancé’s house.” That was quasi true. It was true enough.
When Kira was waiting for intelligence to clear her for the long-term pass, Ty had to come to the gate to escort her. He wasn’t here; was she willing to wake up one of the Echo wives? Was that even a possibility?
“Should I have someone come down to the gate to escort me?” Kira’s lungs tightened with anxiety.
She thought that signs of distress would make her look culpable in this situation.
She reached for normal, slowing her breath so she didn’t pant, letting her lips feel dry instead of slicking her tongue over them.
“If there’s a military member who can prove the necessity of your entrance,” the guard responded.
No, Kira didn’t know a military member on base at that moment who would come and prove her presence necessary. The fort was necessary for her safety; she was not necessary to the fort.
“That’s not the case,” Kira admitted.
Another guard finished a mirror sweep of her vehicle before allowing her to drive forward to make a U-turn and leave.
Kira had never been turned away at the Fort Bragg gates.
Why now?
If she was making this personal, conspiratorial even, Kira had a story in her imagination. The people who watched her or the people who wanted to interrogate her had made a call from a burner phone.
It seemed an easy way to keep someone out. Even if the person accepting the call didn’t believe there was an actual threat, they’d need to act “as if” until something could be resolved, right?
Lula could probably find out. As soon as Lula called, Kira would ask her if there was a bomb scare, and if it happened around one o’clock-ish when Kira got on the highway heading to Bragg. Any earlier and it would have nothing to do with her.
Kira very much wanted this to have nothing to do with her.
This had to do with her, and Kira knew it from the tinnitus ringing in her ears so loudly that she was getting nauseated with vertigo.
Driving a short distance, far enough away that Kira wouldn’t make any of the MPs nervous, close enough that if she screamed, the dogs, at least, might hear and react, she slowed to a crawl.
After scanning the edge of the road to see if any cars had pulled off to the side, waiting for her ejection from the fort, so they could follow her to her next destination, Kira pulled off the side of the road.
There, Kira searched the internet for information about the fort’s alert status, and finding none, she next looked for an all-night doughnut shop near the police station.
“Yes, Lula,” she said to the emptiness around her, “that is something I read in a book.” She put her car in gear. “But it seems reasonable, right?”
This time, as she drove, she kept the radio off. She needed all her senses primed as she followed the blue line on her app toward lights and people.
“Zero dark thirty” was what Ty called the time between midnight and break of dawn.
So damned cut and dagger sounding.
Dangerous sounding.
Why were there so many people out at this time of night?
Every passing car, every headlight moving up from behind, made Kira sweat. She reached out, turned off the heat, then cracked the window to let the bright night chill brush her cheek.
Her blood throbbed in her ears, mixing with the high-pitched squeal of tinnitus, and Kira felt like she was trapped at a nightmare concert of heavy drumbeats and audio feedback.
She didn’t know how to turn the volume down on her ears, and equally on her sense of paranoia.
London sent the note. Kira had no idea when it was written, or whether London had misheard or misinterpreted the conversation that she’d relayed.
If her own body didn’t seem to conspire, if her own thoughts weren’t aligning, Kira would be much more likely to go sit in a hospital emergency room or a bus depot or somewhere else safe and impersonal to wait for daylight to steady her.
She’d been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours, Kira reminded herself.
An armed robbery was a lot.
To set that experience on a shelf and discount it simply because she’d walked out unscathed wasn’t the right way to handle the situation.
Add in a spy, an estranged friend’s warning, and the augury ring, and, of course, her nervous system was a dumpster fire.
As Kira pulled into the parking lot of the all-night doughnut shop, she peered through the plate-glass window. The shop was empty except for the server at the front counter. Inside her car, with the engine running, Kira felt like she had more options.
After rolling through the drive-through for coffee and a cinnamon roll, Kira parked behind a tree, nose out, so she could watch the road.
The fat and sugar from her roll did the trick, soothing her nerves. The rolls weren’t nearly as good as the ones that Ty and Rory had brought her yesterday morning, but still, a carb was often a crutch that Kira leaned on.
And the decaf tasted warm and comforting, probably because Kira associated coffee with friendship. She could use a friend right then.
Kira opened her phone. It was three in the morning.
Who did she know that she could call at three in the morning?
Scrolling through her contacts, Kira stopped on C.
Christen Davidson Rochambeau—or D-Day as she liked to call herself—was William’s daughter and therefore London’s daughter-in-law, which London found insane because both Kira and London were younger than Christen by a couple of years.
Though it was more common in Kira’s family and amongst their Qatari friends, it had set up a strange dynamic for London.
Christen … Kira hadn’t talked to Christen since her marriage to Gator almost two years before.
Would Christen know what Kira should do?
Probably not.
Christen was a pilot for special operators. In fact, by happenstance, Christen had piloted the mission Ty was on when Lula went to meet him and fly Ty and Rory on the CIA plane to Durham, where he was ordered to make Kira fall in love with him.
Was that what Kira knew?
Did Uncle Nadir know that Ty was on Delta Force?
Did they know Lula was in the mix when Omar was killed?
Or maybe it was what Kira knew about Christen and Lula spying? She didn’t actually know anything. She had a story in her head.
Christen and Lula, along with their friend Johnna Red, had joined the retreat that Kira had put together for William and her uncle.
Now that Kira knew Lula worked for the CIA, Kira assumed that the three women had gone to spy on Christen’s father.
That was when Lula met London and befriended her, and then befriended Kira.
Kira had to believe that Lula wanted a foot in the door to watch what that group was up to in a world of geopolitics and the manipulation of the world order.
Spies had infiltrated her family compound: was that what she knew?
To protect Ty, Lula, and Christen, Kira would take that knowledge to the grave with her, she vowed.
But then Kira remembered the depiction of torture on the movie screen and the SERE training shown on TV. “Did you do that, Ty?”
Of course, he’d done that.
When she’d asked, Ty took her into his arms and cuddled her. “It’s good for a man to test his limits,” he’d whispered into her hair as she’d clung to him.
Kira wasn’t up to that.
Even if Christen had no advice to give Kira about staying out of the interrogator’s reach, Kira had to call and warn Christen.
Kira’s thumb tapped the telephone icon.
They weren’t friends, but Kira still had hopes that Christen would take the call, despite the hour, and that Kira wouldn’t have to leave a voicemail about something so delicate.
To Kira’s relief, Christen answered on the second ring, sounding wide awake.
Kira kept it brief, saying only what she knew without saying how she knew it. And explaining why she thought that Christen might be in danger, too. Or maybe not. She didn’t know what the interrogators wanted to ask Kira about. “But,” she finished lamely, “I thought I should give you a heads up.”
“Where’s Ty?” Christen asked.
“On a mission.” Kira took another moment to explain getting turned away at Fort Bragg. “I’m out of ideas of where to go to be safe. I thought you could give me the next step.”
“You’re doing fine, Kira.” Over the phone, Kira heard the click of a light switch turning on. “Absolutely, I can tell you what to do next. Go to the airport. You’re at Fort Bragg?”
“Yes. Well, the donut shop near Fort Bragg.”
“Drive to Charlotte, that’s a hub, and it will have frequent direct flights into D.C.
At the airport, buy the first ticket to Washington you can get.
I don’t care if you have to sit in the latrine,” Christen said.
“I want you on the very first flight out. Text me your flight number. Someone will meet you at the airport.”
“Someone?” Kira whispered.
“A good guy will meet you at the airport. Okay, Kira?”
“Yes,” she exhaled the word, and it was formed of air alone.
“Watch for tails. Kira, do what you need to do to keep someone from tapping your bumper on the highway. Break laws. Drive like a lunatic if necessary.”
“What?” Kira gasped. “Okay.”
“Go now. Drive now.” Christen’s words were a command.
She cleared her throat to try the word again, “Yes.” Kira flicked on her headlights. “Yes, I’ll let you know when I get to Charlotte. Thank you, Christen. Good night.”
After tapping the button to end the conversation, Kira pulled up directions to the airport, put her car into gear, and rolled forward.
One thing was for sure: Kira didn’t feel safe sitting still anymore.
Or driving her car.
“Or breathing,” she whispered to herself as her tires bumped over the curb and she headed back to the highway.