Chapter Nine
Elizabeth
Evening. Shadows enveloped the office, and the only glimmer came from the lamps outside, where the hostage takers kept their vigil. Elizabeth lay back on the couch, cushions propped beneath her head, her hands folded across her stomach. Matt, Jay and Blake were stretched out on the floor. The judder of helicopters sailing past the building filled the air and rattled the windows, the only interruption to the soft strands of Arabic that drifted through the silence. Strange that, how the same melody of voices had lulled her to sleep all those years before.
"This isn't half as exciting as the movies," Matt said.
Blake snorted. "Surely that's a good thing. I could do without the excitement."
"Well, one hostage situation was more than enough for me," Jay said. "At least the rest of you haven't been through this before."
Elizabeth twisted her wedding ring round and round her finger whilst she stared up at the ceiling. A helicopter chuffed past and cast a shaft of light through the curtains, momentarily illuminating the office with its eerie white glare. SteelKing. Tell me a secret. Just a piece of you. Was he still listening? Would he hear if she told?
"Who says we haven't?" Her voice wafted through the office, as faint as the tick, tick, tick from the clock on the mantlepiece.
"What?" Matt gave an awkward laugh.
She rolled over onto her side and peered down at the three of them.
Jay propped himself up on his elbows. "Wait." He frowned at her through the darkness. "You were kidnapped?"
Matt and Blake eased up to sitting too. Their mouths hung slightly open, their eyes dazed. Matt grabbed his glasses from the coffee table and shoved them on. Then they both sat with their knees hugged to their chests, like children awaiting a story around the campfire; though in the muted gloom, the office held none of that warmth.
"No, not kidnapped—thank God," Elizabeth said, "or Henry would have bankrupted us trying to get me out." She smiled to herself, and let out a soft snort. Then her gaze flitted over the three of them. "No, it was just a really bad case of 'wrong place at the wrong time'."
"Tell me." Henry's voice spoke in her ear. "I'm here. Tell me."
And how many times had he said the same words to her as he tried to coax out these pieces of her past? They would sit on the window ledge in their bedroom, her back to his chest as he wrapped her in his arms, his scent, his warmth, until everything became Henry. Then the dam of worry and fears would crumble, and the words would spill out, and he'd be waiting there to catch them all. Connecting is a lot easier when you're not having to look at each other.
"It was the early '90s," Elizabeth said, "and I'd been part of an operation in the Middle East—SteelKing." The quirk of her lips dimpled her cheeks. "I swear to God, some of their codenames make Russell Jackson's look positively inspired."
They chuckled, and their eyes brightened as they shared glances with one another.
"Anyway—" She shook her head to herself and then tucked her hair behind her ear. "—I was due to return home when I developed a nasty stomach bug. I couldn't keep anything down, not even water, and what with the heat I soon became dehydrated…and then I collapsed. Not my finest moment." She flashed them a smile. "It wasn't safe for me to travel, so I was taken to a local clinic where I was hooked up to fluids whilst they ran some tests. Eventually, I was given the all clear and was about to be discharged when a man stormed in with a gun."
Blake's eyes widened; their whites glinted in the dim light. "He held up a hospital?"
Elizabeth nodded.
Matt wrinkled his nose and drew his chin in towards his neck. "Who does that?"
"A man with a grudge," Elizabeth said. "He had planned to shoot one of the doctors, but fortunately for the doctor, he wasn't there at the time. Unfortunately for us, the man decided to hold us all hostage until the doctor gave himself up."
"What happened?" Matt asked.
"Well, everyone was terrified." Elizabeth flung one hand up. "I mean, the guy was clearly agitated, and he had a gun, and he kept going on and on about how he wanted to kill this doctor—who, if he had any sense, was halfway to the next province."
The circle of Blake's arms tightened around his legs—one shove and he'd be on his side in the foetal position. "Didn't the police do something?"
Both Matt and Jay turned to Blake and mirrored Elizabeth's incredulous look.
"No, Blake," she said. "They were a little preoccupied with rounding up dissidents, so dealing with a hostage situation wasn't really one of their priorities, surprisingly enough." She paused and then gave a mouth shrug. "Though, had they known an American spy was inside, that might have grabbed their attention."
"So what happened?" Matt stared at her over the rim of his glasses.
"I knew that I had to get out of there." She massaged her brow and then returned to fiddling with her wedding ring. "I thought about trying to contact the station, but any rescue attempt would have blown the operation, and it certainly would have blown my cover—not to mention putting all the other agents at risk." The windows rattled as another helicopter flew past. "But I couldn't just sit and wait either." She swallowed. "If security forces turned up and found me inside, it wouldn't matter if I had a cover or not. White, female, American…it wouldn't have been pleasant if I'd been caught." Her gaze lowered to the floor. No matter what ransom Henry could've mustered, it wouldn't have been anywhere near enough.
"So what did you do?" Jay said.
"The only thing I could do." Elizabeth shrugged. "I sat with the man and talked."
"You talked?" Matt smirked. "That's it?"
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, whilst Blake and Jay frowned at him. His smirk vanished, and his shoulders rounded forward.
"I was only young," Elizabeth said, "and I'd never been in that kind of situation before, but I knew the principles, and from all my practice in interrogations, I had a pretty good hold on my emotions." Her fingers stilled against her wedding ring. "Which was fortunate, because he spent the first day with the gun pressed to my chest."
"Wait—the first day?" Blake said. His brow furrowed as he gave a slight shake of the head. "Just how many days were you in there?"
"Three."
"Three days?" Blake echoed, and his eyes bugged.
"Three's really not that many, Blake." The pinch in her brow eased. "Plus, it got easier once he started talking. And of course, once he lowered the gun. That helped too." She gave them a wry smile that quickly soured. "Turned out that his five-year-old son had died just a week before, and he blamed the doctor at the clinic. He was grieving…I think he just needed someone to listen to him, someone to talk to."
"Still," Matt murmured. "It's a bit extreme."
"Oh, I don't know. You'd be surprised the lengths people will go to when it comes to their kids." Elizabeth's gaze softened, and it felt as though the walls around her could fall away and she'd be back there, with the hot sand stinging her skin and the relentless undercurrent of nausea. "I for one would sit there for three days talking to man with a gun to my chest, just so that I could get home safely and have the opportunity to meet my baby girl."
They all stared at her, eyes narrowed, deep frowns. "You were pregnant?" Jay said it first.
Elizabeth smiled. "Turned out I didn't have a bug after all, just a Stevie pumping me full of hormones. I found out just before the man stormed in."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Henry said, a hitch in his voice.
Elizabeth's heart ached, and her smile faded. She rolled onto her back again and slipped her wedding ring off and on, off and on. "I never told Henry…I didn't want him to worry, and I knew that he'd just blame himself. Had I not been pregnant, I wouldn't have been sick, I wouldn't have been anywhere near that clinic, and I would've just come home as planned." She shook her head, mussing her hair against the cushions. "And even once I was safe, I didn't want to ruin it for him. He was so happy when I told him he was going to be a father, I didn't want to spoil that by letting him think that he could have lost his family before it ever even started." She slipped the wedding ring off then on again, and held it in place. "I thought I could at least protect him from that."
A helicopter chugged past, so close that the windows vibrated. Elizabeth closed her eyes. She counted the steady rise and fall of her breaths as the waves of Arabic undulated through the office and wrapped themselves around her. Hours could have passed in a single minute. Then came the words in her ear. "Thank you…I love you."
