"He's dead, Frank…your father is dead…!"
His mother's voice echoed in his mind, and suddenly Frank felt someone smoothing his hair. He became aware of his mother's face above him, and heard her sniffling. Blinking, he looked up at her.
"Frank!" she exclaimed.
Frank looked around, realizing he was in a tent surrounded by his family and team.
"Wow, Frank," said Cody. "That was freaky!"
"What happened?!" Alex asked him. "You've been staring at nothing for 10 minutes!"
Frank looked at Alanur. She looked so upset, he was afraid to tell her. He sighed, closing his eyes. "That man," he said. "He killed my father." He opened his eyes, looking at Alanur. "I saw him. I was there when it happened."
Alanur shook her head. "No, you were out with friends that night."
Frank sighed again. "Dad and I were walking down the street, talking about what I was to become, in life." He had to pause, to swallow the lump in his throat. "I went into a store for a second, and when I came out he was gone. I heard…noises, and followed them. Dad was…lying on the ground. I heard someone behind me, and turned. It was him, I saw his face! He hit me, and I woke up on Marty's lawn. He put me there!"
No one said anything for a minute, digesting the story.
"Why did you never say anything?" Ardeth wondered.
"His mind repressed the memory!" said Monica. "He witnessed something traumatic, and then was confused by finding himself in a different place when he woke up. His mind repressed what he saw."
"And now that he has no memory, his mind is no longer repressing anything!" said Jake.
Monica nodded. "Exactly."
Alanur shook her head. "Frank, that man is Rafiq, you know him! He was a friend of mine growing up, I can't see him doing such a thing!"
"There's one thing everyone's forgetting," said Cody. "Where did it happen? America?"
Alanur nodded, sadly.
"Did Rafiq ever go to the US?" Walid asked his grandfather.
Ardeth shook his head. "Never."
Cody lifted his arm in a, 'well, there you go' gesture.
"However…" Ardeth continued, frowning. "Rafiq…I seem to recall…"
Everyone watched him, impatiently wondering what he was about to say.
"At about the same time I found out about your father's death, Rafiq had been missing, and presumed dead."
At this new piece of info, Frank tried to sit up, with Alanur and Jake helping him. "Missing?"
"I remember that also," said Safti. "There had been a battle, I can not remember who it was with. Rafiq disappeared, and returned a week later, telling us he'd been taken by the enemy and had finally escaped."
Frank began to feel lightheaded. "He lied. He took the opportunity to leave and go to the US, to kill my father!"
"But why!" Alanur cried. "I don't understand!"
Ardeth sighed, and everyone turned to look at him. "He was always in love with you, Alanur."
Alanur's eyebrows shot up. "What?!"
"He tried many times to get you to notice him, but you never had any feelings other then friendship. He asked me for your hand, once," Ardeth told her.
Alanur's jaw practically dropped. She closed her mouth again, saying nothing.
"I told him that it was up to you who you married," Ardeth continued. "I was not going to arrange a marriage for you with someone you did not love."
Alanur smiled, grateful for that. A frown quickly replaced it. "But…Rafiq loved me so much he went to America to kill my husband?! That is not love, to destroy my life!" She looked at Frank, putting an arm around him. "And the life of my son!"
Everyone was silent for a minute, at a loss.
"Frank," said Alanur, taking him by the arms. "Are you sure that did in fact happen?"
Frank frowned. "You think that my mind is so far gone that I hallucinated this? Yes, it happened! I was there, I saw him, I heard him…" He shook his head. "I heard him laugh."
Alanur saw that she'd upset him, and pulled him into another hug. "I'm sorry," she said.
Jake, Alex, Monica, and Cody were speechless, having no inkling of what to say or do. The person they were seeing, hugging his mother, seemingly fighting back tears, was not the Frank they knew. He'd been so different since his injury; they all feared he would never go back to being Frank Donovan, United States DOJ agent.
"How can we prove he did it?" Walid asked, anger evident in his voice.
Ardeth and Safti looked at each other.
After a minute, Cody raised his hand like a kid in school. "Question."
Everyone looked at him.
"When exactly did this happen?"
"1987," Alanur told him.
"I can check flight records," Cody told them. "To see if Rafiq took a plane out of the country."
Frank broke the hold his mother had on him, and looked at Cody. "You can?"
It was a shocking question to hear Frank ask.
"Yeah," Cody said. "Through my computer."
Jake laughed. "You brought a computer with you?"
Cody shrugged, sheepishly. "A laptop with a world-wide wireless internet connection, the signal transmitted through a satellite…"
"Way to go, Cody!" said Alex.
"Can you start on it right now?" Monica asked him.
Cody nodded. "I'll go get it." With that, he ran out.
Alanur sighed, closing her eyes against the anguish she felt inside. Hearing her sigh echoed, she looked at Frank to see him looking worse then she felt. "Oh Frank, lie down, dear."
Frank obeyed without protest, exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. He closed his eyes, wishing the circumstances would somehow fix themselves.
Cody came back in with his precious laptop, and turned it on. Within seconds, he was typing away at warp speed.
The 'clickity clickity click' drove Frank insane, thanks to his headache.
"WAHA!" Cody suddenly exclaimed.
Frank jumped, startled.
"Oh geez, sorry Frank!" Cody said.
"What did you find?" Jake asked.
"Not sure if this is good or bad news, but Rafiq took a flight from Cairo to Washington DC in May of 1987."
Alanur made a sound of shock. "That's when it happened." She raised a hand to her eyes. "Rafiq killed my husband!"
********************
It was a very long night, for everyone. They all stayed in the same tent, not wanting to desert Frank and Alanur at such a terrible time.
Walid, at Ardeth's wise insistence, had decided to confront Rafiq in the morning, rather then cause a possible uproar in the middle of the night.
Everyone tried to sleep, but it was difficult for them all.
Ardeth pretended to sleep, not wanting to worry anyone over him. He felt terrible that all these years, he'd harbored the murderer of his son-in-law. He closed his eyes with a soundless sigh, trying to convince himself that it wasn't his fault; there was no way he could've known.
Frank also lay awake, his mother on his right side with an arm around him. He could tell by her breathing that she was currently asleep, and he wished for slumber himself, wanting an escape from his emotional and physical pain. He sighed, and his mother shifted slightly.
Frank held his breath, hoping he hadn't woken her up, but she settled and her breathing stayed the same, to his relief.
Walid was sitting up not far from Frank, staring into space, angry beyond words at what Rafiq had done to his cousin and aunt. He saw Frank open his eyes, and sigh. Scooting closer, he put a hand on his cousin's shoulder.
Frank felt it, and looked up at his cousin. He could read the anger in his eyes, even through the gentle expression Walid was showing, for his sake. He gave Walid a tired half-smile, and closed his eyes, finally able to sleep at the show of his cousin's strength, a strength that would help him get through this.