CHAPTER 24
“How is she?”
Grace jerked awake, startled. She was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall, with Brenna’s head now on her lap. She must have drifted off.
Jasha was looking down on Brenna.
Up close, Grace saw how ridged and taut the burn scars on his face and neck were, how weary the slope of his shoulders. These were the vestiges of a once-healthy man, ground down and blown to the winds by an inexorable war. “They gave her an injection,” she replied. “We’re waiting to see.”
Squatting to Brenna’s level, Jasha studied her. “She is good woman,” he whispered. “Good journalist. I have respect. Woman like this, she could be lazy—comfortable. She has money, but she works. She helps.”
“With her photos?”
“Yes, photos.” Jasha nodded. “But more. These boxes I am bringing—from front seat, you remember, yes? These are medicines, bandages, supplies for hospital. She pays bribes in Italy to put them on plane. Here, she makes Canadians look away. This is contraband. She could be arrested. But we need it.
We are in despair.”
Brenna groaned, stirring. “Jeez, Jasha—” she said, trying to prop herself up. “Alcott wouldn’t cross the street against the light and you make her an accomplice to smuggling?”
“Hey.” Grace smiled, happy to see her awake.
“And you,” she said, rubbing her face. “You have your hand under my jacket. How did we get to you rubbing my back?”
“It comforted you on the balcony.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t remember that.”
“Of course I do.”
“You were high on morphine.”
“I remember it clearly, Brenna. You were crying and I was comforting you.”
“I don’t cry.”
Jasha flashed crooked teeth. “Oh, good! She is arguing. Very good.”
“What’s good?” Mariana stepped into the room from the hallway.
“Brenna is awake, doctor. Arguing.” Jasha grinned. “I go to car now. Finish bringing in boxes.”
Mariana sat on a corner of the bed. “Can you tell me your name?”
Well, yeah, sure. Now, Brenna thought. She rubbed her forehead. One minute, she’d been riding in the car, and the next—nothing. She’d jumped a track, misplaced reality. And now the doc was checking if she was oriented. “Yes,” she answered. “I can.”
Mariana smiled at her evasion. “And mine?”
“Yours, too, Mariana. And before you ask if I know where I am, I do. We’re in a gondola on the Grand Canal in Venice.”
“So,” Mariana said gently. “You hide behind glibness. It must have been a terrible scare.”
Brenna pressed her lips together, fighting a sudden prick of tears. She felt emotionally volatile, marginally under control. Damn Mariana’s kindness. She knew it disarmed her.
“Tell me about your ride up here today,” Mariana persisted.
Brenna recalled fragments, random images. The city. Jasha fighting the car. Explosions. Nothing out of the ordinary. She’d made the trip before, knew it was rolling roulette. Life or death was determined by the caprice of firing arc, wind speed, and timing. You lived or you didn’t.
She’d mentally survived thirty months of warfare because, apart from taking pictures, she wanted nothing—not even her own life.
Unafraid of death, she’d been untouchable.
And that had given her an incalculable edge.
Free of fear, she could assess a scene without distraction.
Which helped her cheat the inevitable. She knew she was locked in a contest she couldn’t win, knew the odds were piling up against her.
Until recently she had been okay with that.
And then this morning she saw Grace look out the back window and realize that nothing she had lived by would save her.
It didn’t matter that she was a decent woman, that she had loved ones awaiting her return, that she wanted to live.
She was a target in a forest-green Volkswagen—luckless prey in the sights of an armed predator.
That look of hers broke Brenna’s heart. She wanted to console her, to tell her there weren’t really people trying to kill her, that she wasn’t powerless and she’d get home again. But on the mountain road, there was no going back. Two ruts. Forward only. At whatever cost.
This morning, for the first time in years, she had wanted something for herself: Grace’s deliverance.
She wanted there to be at least one good person left in the world.
Mariana’s voice broke through her reverie. “Brenna?”
She scrabbled to the edge of the bed and hung her feet over the edge.
Yikes. Sudden head rush. She grasped the mattress, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
She must have been given drugs. Slowly, the black-tunnel effect cleared.
She got up, using the stacks of boxes to steady herself.
Shuffling to the middle of the room, she looked around, missing something.
She patted her breast, hip, and cargo pockets.
Mariana tipped her head, watching her intently. “What do you remember?”
“A tough commute,” Brenna answered distractedly.
Grace grunted in disbelief. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Brenna.”
Mariana ignored the parry. “Did you flash back to Ari?”
Brenna glanced sharply at her, then at Grace. Grace didn’t know about Ari—didn’t know she’d lost her mind once before.
Mariana turned to Grace. “Would you mind stepping out for a moment?”
“She doesn’t have to go. We’re finished here.”
“No. We’re not.” Mariana crossed the room and gripped her elbows. “You did flash back, didn’t you?”
Brenna didn’t answer. But when she inhaled, she could still smell the cordite.
“You’ve had trauma upon trauma. You need rest. Counseling. Safety,” Mariana said. “You are breaking psychologically.”
She had a point, of course. Dying was one thing, losing your mind was another.
Grace broke the silence. “Turn in the material you’ve already shot. It’s time to wrap this up.”
The offer tempted her. Call it done, Brenna thought. Get out of Kav?ak.
Fissures opened in her resolve. Was it possible? Could she tell the story with the footage she already had? Mentally, she inventoried the material she’d shot with Grace, and the clips she’d been collecting for months—the footage that needed to be part of a larger whole, that she was throwing in.
No. There were still gaps.
It wasn’t enough to show one man’s evil. Inhumanity was a conspiracy perpetrated across society in actions large and small until an entire culture became corrupt. The story needed layering, reiteration, exemplars—and she didn’t yet have the footage for that.
“It’s not finished,” she said.
“It’s over,” Grace said firmly. “Done.”
“You can go home whenever you’re ready, Alcott. I live here.”
“Consider your contract fulfilled.”
“Fine,” Brenna said. “Tell Sam I’ll transmit the remaining material just for the fun of it.”
Grace rubbed her face in frustration.
“You must leave Kav?ak,” Mariana said. “You are coming apart.”
“I’m finishing the story. Subject closed. Now. Mariana. You promised me an interview. If Alcott won’t ask the questions, I will.”
Mariana crossed her arms.
“And how will you do that—” Jasha’s quiet voice cut across the room from the doorway. He’d reappeared, stealthy as aircraft under the radar, holding something up.
The camera.
A turbulent vortex sucked in every loose shred of fear and self-doubt inside Brenna, dragged it up to her clavicles, and precipitously dropped it. Fuck. The tool her life revolved around, and she’d been patting down her pockets, trying to recall what it was. She was cracking up.
Jasha stepped forward, his eyes locked on hers. “You never leave your camera.”
She shook her head slowly, acknowledging his unspoken message: She was teetering on a dangerous edge. Mariana was right. And Grace was trying to let her off the hook, irrespective of the consequences to her project.
“You have helped our city enough, my friend. Dr. Lazarov and I know this, but the time has come for you to leave us.”
She crossed the room on trembling legs and curled shaking fingers around the camera handle.
Poom. Poom. The building shook. A babble of urgent voices rose, call and response in the church of violence.
Her grip tightened. “I can’t turn my back, Jasha.” Not on the people of Kav?ak, and not on Grace. She wasn’t going to disappoint her like Geoff Garrett had.
Jasha held onto the unit. “Today and tomorrow, you work. The next morning, Thursday, you leave Kav?ak for good.”
“No,” Grace objected. “It ends now.”
“Thursday,” Jasha overruled. “Agreed, Brenna?”
A child’s frantic scream carried down the hall like the wail of an ambulance.
“Doctor Lazarov!” The storeroom door burst open. A nurse urgently demanded Mariana’s help.
Brenna closed her fist decisively. In a single fluid motion, she lifted the camera out of Jasha’s hands and onto her shoulder. Flipping the power lever and adjusting the settings, she followed Mariana out.
“I must assure you,” Jasha said to Grace after the door closed, “this has not happened to Brenna before. She did not accept to work with you, knowing she was like this. But, me... Thinking back… I should have predicted… Even the strongest…”
Grace lowered her chin, looking over her glasses. “Finish at least one sentence, would you, Jasha?”
“Before she went to Washington, we were on the other side of the river—still photos for Der Spiegel. We were separated briefly, and when I found her, a Nationalist soldier had her on her back with his bayonet in her throat. I think this triggers her falling apart.”
Grace winced. “So why in God’s name did you give her ’til Thursday? That’s when we’re leaving anyway. There’s no gain.”
“No. That is when you are leaving. You forget that Brenna lives in Kav?ak. I have urged her to depart, not just fly out. Anyway,” Jasha shrugged, “there is no escape from Kav?ak before then, my friend. Thursday airlift is first chance. You must know she will not hide in the hotel until then.
It is better to keep her close so we can protect her.”
Grace put both hands through her hair, shaking her head.
“She is difficult woman to care for, yes?” He squeezed Grace’s elbow and edged around her. “I have more supplies to bring in.”