Ethan fell silent, caught in the web of his own memories, of months and years lost in a paralysis of grief. Rachel’s voice spoke softly from nearby.
“What happened next?”
Ethan roused himself.
“Nothing happened next,” he said. “I’ve been fully unemployed ever since. Posttraumatic stress, they call it, makes me medically unable to work. I don’t sleep much, maybe an hour here, an hour there.” Ethan shrugged to himself, felt her penetrating gaze on him but went on talking quietly. “She was a great person, Joanna. You’d have liked her. She loved life. Always full of energy, always quick with a joke. Bright. Cheerful. One of those people that you can’t help but like.”
Ethan’s voice started to become strained as though his vocal chords were being twisted.
“You’ve got some idea, now, of what it’s like when someone you love so much just vanishes, completely and utterly, without explanation or information. What it’s like when you have no idea if they are safe or not, suffering or not, alive or not. I have images of people harming her, and of going and finding those people and skinning them alive, or having them fed to sharks or lowered feetfirst into wood-chipping machines.” He saw Rachel wince and shook his head. “It brings things out in you that you can’t imagine.”
Ethan glanced out of the window, fatigue amplifying his grief.
“I send her parents flowers on her birthday, every year. They always return them unopened. I still don’t feel right alone in bed at night unless I wrap her T-shirt around a pillow next to me. Can you believe that?”
He lowered his head, not willing to let Rachel see what he knew she already must have seen. His voice when he spoke sounded strained in his own ears.
“I wanted to find out what happened to her, and to find Lucy for you. I thought maybe I could put this all right, but I can’t. There’s no such thing as a hero when there’s no way to solve a case. There’s nothing more I can do for you here except tell the authorities about MACE’s involvement.”
Rachel’s reflection was pinched with remorse.
“You’ve done enough,” she said quietly. “It took a lot for you to come out here after all that’s happened. I wouldn’t have come this far alone.”
Ethan was still unable to bring himself to look at her.
Rachel squeezed his arm and rested her head against it, while Ethan continued to stare out of the window at the pale strip of light now slicing across the eastern horizon.
WADI AL-JOZ
WEST BANK, PALESTINE
Lucy Morgan awoke, struggling to overcome her drug-induced lethargy and reach the shore of consciousness just ahead.
She tried to move her body but her wrists and ankles were still firmly bound and a thick leather strap encircled her waist. Cold metal touched her skin. She turned her head and saw the room about her, enshrouded in darkness, and with a bolt of panic she realized where she lay.
“Good morning.”
The voice, somehow familiar, hovered somewhere beyond the periphery of her vision. A face appeared and gazed down at her, hollow-looking eyes, a flare of white hair illuminated like a halo by the bright light, and wearing what looked like a surgeon’s gown. She realized that semi-opaque adhesive patches had been attached to her face to protect her eyes, obscuring her vision.
Lucy Morgan swallowed thickly, trying not to tremble.
“Murderer,” she whispered. “You killed Ahmed.”
Again, that excruciatingly compassionate smile.
“No,” the surgeon replied. “A discoverer, a journeyman, a seeker of the truth.”
Lucy’s addled brain struggled to comprehend what the man was referring to as he moved around the gurney upon which she lay. As he spoke, she realized that her body and forehead were covered with electrodes attached with adhesive patches. Small wires ran from the pads to the monitors alongside the gurney.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she muttered with forced contempt. “You’re dabbling in things that you can’t possibly comprehend.”
The surgeon looked at her in surprise, and nodded happily.
“You’re the first patient to say that, Lucy. I’m impressed, truly I am.”
Lucy saw him adjust dials on one of the monitors before turning to look down at her again. She was naked but for a small pair of white briefs and a bra, not her own, she realized. He must have dressed her, tended to her as she lay comatose beneath the anesthetics that he had forced into her unwilling body. The knowledge sent a bolt of nausea through her.