15. June 15th
JUNE 15TH
TB
What goes beyond the term “clusterfuck”?
He felt a headache coming on, and he didn’t get headaches. In fact, he couldn’t ever remember having one.
TB thought about returning to the conference room, but he needed a quiet place to think. His brain was in chaos trying to figure out how he was feeling, and it was a state he didn’t remember being in since that day in the Dizengoff Street diner when his entire world had been upended, never to be righted again.
October 25-30th, 1994
Micah
“I foundhim inside the restaurant, hiding in a supply closet. Tried looking for his parents, but no luck. I wasn’t sure what else to do.”
Standing in the entryway of the dilapidated building, Micah’s eyes were round in fear. He held the hand of the man in the police uniform. The din of what sounded like hundreds of children in the building was overwhelming. Where to look? He couldn’t focus. His eyes drifted up toward the ceiling as he stood in the center of a vertical tunnel of stairs that rose what felt like thirty stories. Those same noisy children were staring at him over the rails and through the spindles. He wanted out of here. The last six days had been confusing enough with the boom, the fire, the smoke, the ground shaking, the building walls tumbling, the screams of people, and the sirens. Then the shuttling back and forth between the police station and the man’s home.
When the explosion occurred, he and his parents had been sitting at a table in a restaurant on Dizengoff Street having a late breakfast. A bus had pulled up just outside the window, and Micah had been watching when it burst into flames and flew straight up in the air. The shock blew out the windows of the restaurant, and debris blew into the building. Years later, he would still be haunted by his first memory after the explosion—lying stunned on the floor next to his mother, her eyes wide but otherwise unresponsive to his cries and his small hand touching her face. His tiny fingers had come away slick with the blood that covered the side of her face.
He rolled over in the chaos, seeing people attempting to crawl from the wreckage. Finally, his eyes fell on a brown dress shoe. His father’s shoe. Micah crawled on his belly to where his father’s body sprawled awkwardly. A large shard of glass protruded from his chest, and several smaller pieces were embedded in his face. His father also did not respond to Micah’s attempts to wake him.
His ears hurt, and he was frightened by the muffled sounds that made it sound like he was underwater. Micah crawled to a table in the back of the restaurant that had somehow remained intact and set for the next guests to sit at. Crouched as tight as he could to the wall, hands covering his ears as if that would reduce the pain, he watched as people picked through the rubble, helping loved ones and strangers from beneath the debris. After a while, rescuers arrived to assist the injured. Micah watched those same rescuers examine his parents on the floor beside their window table and then cover them with tablecloths.
No one noticed him.
Much later, Micah watched as the rescuers removed the bodies of his parents from the restaurant in what looked like garbage bags with zippers. He stayed hidden under the table. Somehow, he remained unfound. When people came to investigate the restaurant, he hid in a supply closet behind a tower of boxes. At night, he crept out and raided the cupboards for food. On the third day of his hiding out, he was finally found by a nice man who tried to ask him questions. Micah stared into his eyes, but he refused to answer.
The nice man took him to the police station, but that was more overwhelming than the restaurant had been. There were so many people rushing here and there. At the restaurant, he had been invisible because he’d been hiding. Here, he was invisible even though he was in plain sight.
A lady in a navy blue dress with a briefcase came to visit him. He just looked at her as well, refusing to answer her questions. The lady talked to the man about him, and there seemed to be a disagreement about what to do with him.
For two more days and nights, he traveled back and forth with the man between the police station and the man’s home. The man had a pretty wife and two children who were older than Micah. They were all very nice to him, but it wasn’t home. They weren’t his family. He wanted his mother and father.
On the third day after he’d been found, the man took him in a police car to the building they stood in now. All Micah could do was look around in confusion. In six days, he hadn’t cried, hadn’t spoken. Somehow, he knew his life had changed irrevocably, and not for the better.
The man crouched down to Micah’s level. “Are you sure you can’t tell me your name? Where you live? I don’t want to leave you here. I’d like to get you back to your family.”
Micah simply stared at the man’s face.
The man sighed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little card. “This has my name and phone number on it. If you change your mind, or if you remember anything about yourself or your family, have the orphanage call me.” He put the card in Micah’s jacket pocket. When he rose, he also handed a card to the woman he had been speaking to when they arrived. “Hopefully, someone will come forward for him soon.”
The man ruffled Micah’s hair. And with that, he turned and left.
The woman took him by the hand, and they began to climb the stairs. It felt like they had been climbing forever before she made a left turn and took him down a long hallway to a room that had four beds in it. Each bed had a small table next to it with a big drawer and a single cubby space. She brought Micah to the farthest bed in the room and sat him on the edge of the bed. She removed his jacket and shoes, then tucked him in under the scratchy sheets and thin blanket. “Get some sleep, young man. You’ve had a rough time of it. Hopefully, the police find your parents, and this is only for a few days.”
Even at seven, Micah knew that no one would find his parents. It would be eleven long years of living at the orphanage before he could leave its walls legally and make his own way in the world.
TB shookhimself free of the past. Within ten minutes, his team leader found him.Leaning against the door jamb, hands in his pockets, Waters quipped, “I didn’t know you remembered you had an office.” He looked around at the bare walls, bare desktop, and the computer monitor that wasn’t turned on and likely never had been. “Do you even have anything in those cabinets and drawers?”
TB rolled his eyes.
Clearing his throat, Waters entered the office, closed the door, and sat down on the couch against the wall, stretching an arm across the back of it. “We were just discussing how you are going back to your side project.”
“We?”
“Well, God and I were. The twins were snickering and reverting to middle school girl behavior, Demon fell asleep, and Steel looked like he was plotting ways to kill everyone in the room, so I kicked them out to continue angles on the Ka-Bar project.”
TB grunted. “So, I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”
“Nope,” Waters replied.
I hate it when he pops that “p” when he says that word. Fuck. Now what?
TB rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the dark computer monitor as if it was going to magically hold answers to his dilemma. After a few moments, he decided to just rip off the duct tape. “Going back to that project might be tougher than we originally planned. I cut her loose when we went to Egypt looking for Zahra and Ka-Bar,” TB admitted.
Waters tapped his fingers along the back of the couch as he scrutinized him. “Why?”
TB rolled his eyes. “What I’m about to tell you does not leave this room, or I walk, and you’ll never find me in order to kill me.”
Waters sighed and shook his head. “Should we pinky promise on that?” he snarked.
“You know that you and Kubrick are melding into the same person, right? It’s hot and creepy all at the same time.”
“Deflection. Shut up and tell me your deep, dark secret. And no, I won’t tell anyone, a.k.a. Nemo.”
TB took a deep breath, held it a moment, then exhaled. “We’d been talking online for a while. I figured it would be a couple of conversations and done. But somehow, it turned into every night I wasn’t on a project. Then, while we were in Roatán, something changed. I started texting her. The gaps between texts got smaller. The conversations were no longer about the research. It began to get more personal, I guess.”
Elbows propped on the desktop, TB ran his hands over his face, over the top of his head, and laced his fingers behind his neck, his face turned down. Gathering himself, he willed his body to relax and return to an upright position in his chair. “I knew within an hour of getting home I needed to get out of here, or I was gonna pound you to a pulp for your dumbassery, so I went to the club. I was twitchy. Thought maybe a scene would help me work out whatever was poking at me. I realized I’d been going to the club for months but never left the bar area. It just didn’t hold my interest anymore, and within minutes of being there, I knew that I wasn’t going to be participating after all.”
TB continued, “By the next morning, I finally admitted that what I needed was to talk to Flame. It was so strong I couldn’t have denied myself if I’d wanted to. And then shit got out of hand.”
“How so?”
“I engaged her in an online practical application of BDSM. That led to an invitation to meet at the club, which she agreed to the next day.”
“That was the phone call you got when we were in the meeting.”
“Right. We met up, we had a scene…” TB couldn’t say it.
“Ahhhh.” Waters connected the dots. “‘Out of hand’ meaning it went too well.”
TB looked at his boss with surprise.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m an analyst. It means I take shit apart and look at the pieces to see how they work as a whole.” He counted off the evidence on his fingers. “One, based on her reaction to seeing you, she was obviously shocked. Two, Demon said she couldn’t even look at you when you appeared in the break room, which suggests that she was embarrassed. Three, she did agree to talk to you, but only if people weren’t in the room—so, hurt, but not angry. And four,” he added with a shrug, “because I know your defense mechanisms.”
Waters stared at TB. Instead of tapping, now Waters’ thumb and first two fingers were rubbing against each other. TB didn’t know how long they sat there in silence, but as he watched the spidey senses take over Waters’ brain, TB diverted his attention back to the blank computer screen.
I know that look. Shit. Here it comes.
Finally, Waters asked the question that TB was trying to figure out himself. “How do you feel about her?”
And that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?
For the briefest of moments, TB considered playing dumb. However, he respected his team leader too much to start now. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Well. Not what I was expecting to come out of your mouth.”
“I’m pissed that someone”s terrorizing her. I’m thrilled to see her, even if it’s for fucked up reasons. I’m…”
“In a panic because when you look at her, your lungs won’t inflate? Can’t think clearly because you’re torn between wanting to kiss the hell out of her and wanting to spank her ass because she doesn’t realize just how bad this situation is? In a blind fury because you want to use your bare hands to strangle the shitweasel who’s terrorizing her? Should I go on?”
Closing his eyes, TB pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “I fucked up. Majorly.” TB took a breath and let it out. “I didn’t talk to her for a week afterward. Well, technically, I never talked to her at all. Eventually, I thought better of my stupidity. I went back online the night before we went to Egypt to explain why I did what I did or what I’d convinced myself was why I did it, but she never showed up. So I left her an email telling her that I’d given her all I could and that she was good to move on with her research with others, basically. I should have texted her. Called her. Had Midas find her. Anything but what I did.”
Waters nodded in commiseration. “Yeah. Know the feeling well.” Waters exhaled, moderating his frustration and leaning against the sofa back again. “I wish I could tell you those feelings will pass quickly, but I’m guessing it’s going to take a while for you to get your shit straightened out.”
“Nothing to straighten out. I’m not good for her.”
“Yeah. I had that conversation with myself, and a couple of the team members, as well. Remember?”
“It’s not the same.”
Waters shrugged. “Yeah, it is, but I get why you feel that way right now. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, and the guys, including me, are going to give you no end of shit, but you’ll figure it out eventually.”
TB grunted.
Shifting gears, Waters gave him the bad news. “In the here and now, we have a connection between Flame and the disappearances, and it’s not a pretty one.”
“Steel said your spidey senses were tingling.”
“Several of the pictures inside the envelope she received were of her at The Library the night you two met up.”
TB pushed so hard on the desk, it skidded a couple of inches in Waters’ direction, and his chair overturned when he stood up out of it in his rage. He started to make his way to the door, but Waters stood between him and it, placing a hand on TB’s chest when he got within range.
“Dude, she’s still in the break room. She’s safe. Relax.”
TB’s chest was heaving, like he’d run a marathon across the desert.
“There’s more. You need to sit down.”
TB glared at him.
“You either sit down, or I won’t tell you, and I’ll lock your ass up. I can’t have you going on one of your typical rampages on this one.”
“Motherfucker, I swear to God I will?—”
“Sit. The Fuck. Down.”
Waters was smaller than him but scrappy. TB knew better than to test his team leader when he went into operator mode, despite the fact that he hadn’t been one in truth for almost two years.
TB began grinding his teeth, then whirled around, smashing his hand against the in-out trays sitting on the corner of the desk, shattering them on contact. Standing at the window, hands on hips, he tried to rein in his anger. It was several minutes with Waters standing in front of the door, waiting for TB to collect himself, and TB clenching and unclenching his fists as he stared out at nothing on the street below.
Get your shit together. She’s inside Tribe. No one can get to her here.
No place is impenetrable.
No one here is going to hurt her.
Damn straight.
Finally, TB turned, picked up his chair, and sat back down behind the desk. It was another minute before he was able to unclench his teeth and speak.
“What else?”
Waters sat back down on the couch but on the edge of it.
Whatever it is he’s about to tell me, I’m not going to like because he’s ready to cut me off at the door again.
TB could feel the cold coming over him. It was in these moments that he knew he was most dangerous. Because when he felt cold, there was no compassion, no faith, no mercy, and no justice. Only revenge and retribution.
“There was also a note inside the envelope.”
TB felt his heart pounding. His fists were clenched on top of his thighs. His upper teeth were grinding down on the bottom ones.
“He called her a whore. Said he always knew she was one. That participating at the club proves he’s always been right about her.”
“I know how your mind works. You think he’s someone she knows. Do you think she knows who it is?”
“Can’t tell. Too much fear there to cut through right now. That suggests to me, yes, she knows who it is and is legitimately scared. Midas is compiling a file on her while he waits for Cyclopes to do its A.I. thing on the photos, looking for shadows, reflections, whatever.”
“Fuckin’ computer program scares the shit out of me,” TB murmured. “Pretty soon, we won’t need Midas anymore. That or he and Cyclopes will meld.”
Waters pulled a photograph out of one of his cargo pockets and threw it across the desk. “Right or wrong, I held this one back. I don’t think she saw it, as it was stuck inside the envelope down at the bottom. Demon and I, and now you, are the only ones who’ve seen it. I’ll hold off on showing it to anyone else until I absolutely have to.”