The Downward Spiral
The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
Oscar Wilde
ELEVEN
The chicken sat on the kitchen bench, forgotten.
'You know?' There was anger in her voice. Anger and pain. She stared down at the ground.
'Yes.' He moved forward, lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. She resisted only slightly. 'I'd just gotten out of prison. The first thing I did was to track the two of you down. I didn't know if you were alive or dead. I hoped. I hoped so much that you were still alive. My sources told me that you were both alive. That you were in America, with the FBI, and that he was in America too, with them. They raised him. Turned him into one of them.' She noticed the tears in his eyes. Noticed that their son's presence hurt him as much as it hurt her.
Seeing Steven at the site of the explosion had been no coincidence. It pained her to realize that he was involved, and it pained her even more to realize that he might be dead by the end anyway.
She looked down again, noticing her bare legs. She didn't want to be having this conversation half-naked. She went in search of her pants. Hassan followed suit.
'Are you going to say anything?' he finally asked, after a few moments of silence.
'What can I say? What words will make any of this better? "Let's find our son, and bring him home so we can be one happy family again?" It doesn't work like that, Hassan. We've lost him.' It's something that they've both already resigned themselves to, and yet saying it out loud just depresses her.
He hugged her, but there was no passion left between them. Not then.
'I'm going to bed,' she said, leaving him to the still wafting aroma of brandied chicken.
He followed her upstairs soon after. Sensing that she wanted to be alone, he had confined himself to the guest bedroom.
Emily found herself having trouble sleeping, but that was par for the course. Each time she started to drift off, she was awoken by phantom screams of a troubled past. After the fourth time, it was getting a little old. She sat up; put her head in her hands.
When did her life take this turn? How long had the weight being piling up on her shoulders? She didn't know the answer to that question.
In her diminished state, she heard footsteps downstairs. She knew Hassan was still up here. His steps were soft, gentle. These were loud and clumsy. She found her sidearm, and padded slowly towards the door, swinging it open as quietly as possible. Hassan was already there, finger to his lips. In his other hand, she saw an unfamiliar gun. She didn't have time to wonder where he had got it.
'Ambush at the top of the stairs?' she suggested, making certain that her voice didn't rise above a few decibels.
He nodded.
They moved in silence, stealth overcoming them.
The first thing she saw from her vantage point was a pair of heavily booted feet. Amateurs. It was as if they wanted to get caught. She didn't completely disregard the theory. The moment he put his foot on the landing, they moved as one. Hassan kicked his feet out from under him, and Emily moved forward, gun in his face.
'Who sent you?' she demanded, but, unconscious, he couldn't answer. She knew the answer to the question anyway. It was the Circle. It always came back to the Circle. But then, as she studied the face, studied the eyes, she realized that she knew this man. Her captive. Her torturer.
And he hadn't come alone.
'Get down.' No sooner than Hassan had said it, gunshots tore up the wall behind her, destroying artwork that she didn't particularly care for. She felt them whistle past her ear, almost hitting flesh. Stunned, she hadn't moved.
He pulled her down, milliseconds before a bullet struck the wall where she was standing.
They retreated. With some cover, they were less likely to get hit by ricochets.
'I've only got the one magazine,' she told him.
'They won't come up if they know we're armed,' he said. 'They wanted to surprise us. It's too bad they're idiots.'
'So we wait it out,' Emily concluded.
'Yeah,' affirmed Hassan. 'We wait it out.'