Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
I made a mistake. Ara’s words played in Jessica’s mind over and over again. When she glanced to the left, barely able to move, she’d swear she could see her ghost.
Brown eyes. Golden skin. Long, dark hair. Dimpled chin. Sweet smile.
She’d been twenty-four. Just starting life.
And now she was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica whispered as Ara stood before her.
Guilt clawed, nails sharp like a panther’s, jabbing into her sides as she waited—as the ticking of a clock that only existed in her mind grew louder and louder.
Her lashes lowered halfway, dizziness starting to overwhelm her. All she could see were little bare feet moving closer to her.
Was the girl a mirage?
Jessica was on her side, she realized. In a new bed.
She opened and closed her eyes again, trying to determine where she was.
Horns. People talking—but she didn’t think it was German. Arabic, maybe. Based on the sounds, she wasn’t on the ground floor.
She tried to open her mouth, but it was as if glue kept her lips together. Someone didn’t want her screaming, which meant that, if she could be heard, she could be saved.
I’m not in the hospital. The thought sank in as she found herself looking at a pair of brown eyes.
Curly hair framed a girl’s face. Her lips were slanted, curiosity in her eyes.
She crouched before the bed, staring at Jessica.
Eight, maybe?
The girl flinched and jerked upright at the sounds of shouting in Arabic from another room. She took off and light filtered in from the half-open door. Jessica’s gaze drifted to the table alongside it.
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
An s-vest was already packed with explosives.
Alongside it were bottles of chemicals. A few she recognized: hydrogen peroxide and acetone.
If the third group of containers housed mineral acid, they’d have what they’d need to make TATP.
The white crystalline powder was so sensitive, it could explode under any type of heat or friction.
Terrorists called it the mother of Satan—and now she was probably in a room with the compound.
Part Two of the act, she realized. Ara had only been the beginning.
“She wouldn’t talk.” Jessica heard her abductor’s voice from a neighboring room.
“It’s her. Your job is finished.” The second voice was male. The accent was Middle Eastern.
Based on the sounds from the creaky hardwood a man moved farther away from her room.
The hard clank of a door shutting followed.
She was pretty sure her original abductor was gone.
More footsteps, and then her door fully opened.
A man—barely out of his teens—stood in the doorframe now, and she squeezed her eyes closed, dragging up a memory.
Not everyone is an enemy, she’d said to Asher back at the base six years ago when she’d noticed a line of distrust dart through his forehead as they’d walked by a group of Syrian teen boys.
Maybe. But someday, he’d began while pointing, they could become my enemy. That’s the sad truth.
And now, after she opened her eyes, she realized he’d been right. At least about the man now standing before her.
“Hello, Stephanie,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”