Infamous (40 page)

“And one of them—Nouri—in his heartbreak and rage, he shot me. And then he shot his family and himself, and it was …”

“Oh, God,” Alison said.

“It was happening all around me,” A.J. whispered. “These people, they all knew what was coming, and they chose a quick and painless death for their children.”

“So the massacre,” Alison whispered, “was … self-inflicted.”

“No,” A.J. said with certainty.
“We
inflicted it.”

“How did you survive?” she asked.

“This girl,” A.J. said. “Zaynab. She was maybe seventeen. She wanted to be a doctor and I was …” He cleared his throat. “Smitten.” But then he added, “Not like with you. This was entirely from afar, because she was so young, but we were friends. She and her brother got me back into the Jeep and they drove me out of town. Not out of kindness or affection. I’m sure they hated me by then as much as Nouri did. But they told me that if the warlord’s men found me there, even if they just found my body, they would raze the entire village—they’d even kill the people who didn’t actively help the Americans. Which those bastards ended up doing anyway.

“I’m not sure where we were when Lutz and his men found us. I’d lost a lot of blood by then and things were pretty surreal. I know I wanted to stay and fight. I remember trying to kick Lutz in the balls. I think I wanted to die there, but Lutz got me onto a chopper, and I didn’t. But Zaynab and her brother did. Die. Not right away. Lutz told me later that they escaped into the marsh where they formed a resistance. They did pretty well for a while. Until they were gassed—and the entire marsh was drained.”

“Oh, God,” Alison said again.

“But in my nightmare, it’s always Nouri,” A.J. told her. “Weeping as he puts his gun to the head of his ten-year-old son as his three-year-old screams. His wife picks her up and sings to her as she uses her own weapon to kill the girl, then turns her gun on herself, so her husband doesn’t have to do it. One final act of love as their world comes to a violent and bloody end—as I lie there, helpless, unable to do anything but watch.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alison said.

“At the time it seemed so black and white to me,” A.J. told her. “I was so sure that we should’ve invaded. We could’ve kicked Saddam’s ass. But we’ve all since seen what an invasion looks like when there’s no strategy in place for winning the peace. And it wasn’t in place back then, either. Goddamned idiots, all of ’em. That could’ve been the easy part and they screwed it up, royally. They’re so busy with the big picture—with the money that their corporate overlords can earn—that they don’t see that it’s all about the little things. About the people. It’s about Zaynab wanting to go to school to become a doctor, not in some big city, but in her village. It’s about Nouri risking everything because he wants a better life for his children. It’s about Nouri’s wife, who loved him and her children so deeply, and thousands of people, individuals, just like them, who
would have
been our friends if we’d greeted them with food and water and shelter and medical aid—and an organized way for them to get it. And then jobs and homes and education … Instead, we treat them—these proud, courageous people—as if they’re insignificant. Just a bunch of numbers, statistics. Vermin living in the rubble above a land rich with oil. Plus, their babies are brown, so they don’t count as much, back here in the
homeland
, when
they
die.”

He’d gotten louder as he’d said that last bit, and now the cabin seemed to ring with silence.

“Sorry,” A.J. apologized. “I didn’t mean to … I’m still a little angry and …”

“A little,” she said.

“Did I scare you?” he asked, his eyes worried.

“No,” she said, absolutely.

He kissed her then. It was a sweet kiss, but then he kissed her again, and his intention became very clear. He was done talking. At least for a while.

But Alison stopped him from kissing her again. “Thank you,” she said, “for telling me.”

“Thank
you,”
he said, “for not running away, screaming. At least not yet.”

He softened his words with a smile, but they both knew that he was kidding on the square.

As he kissed her again—longer, deeper—and her pulse kicked up a notch, Alison couldn’t help but wonder exactly what this was that she was doing here.

And then she stopped wondering about anything at all as he took her to heaven.

In the morning, while the plane was refueling on the ground in Seattle, A.J. had called Bev from the comfort of that big bed.

Alison was in the bathroom, on her own cell phone, hoping to get some information from Paula the intern. Something about the packet of letters from Penelope Eversfield to her sister Horry, that were being sent from Denver. Had Neil Sylvester received them yet?

A.J. could hear her asking about tracking numbers and dates as he let his sister know that his flight was going to land over at the old Air Force field, just outside of Heaven, shortly after noon.

She was more than happy to come and pick him up. And to lend him their old truck—the one that Charlie was trying to sell—to use while he was back in town.

Bev’s legendary curiosity had reached new levels though, when, in response to her offer to reserve a room at the local B&B, A.J. had informed her that Alison would be staying with him for the few days she’d be in town.

Which was exactly the kind of information that Bev had been fishing for.

“So Mom’s right,” she said triumphantly. “I thought she was just doing her usual crazy-mother thing. I’m impressed. You’re actually making time with the famous Hollywood writer. Go, A.J.”

“She’s not a Hollywood writer,” A.J. told her. “She’s a history professor, from Boston.”

“Now I’m even more impressed. What’s she like?”

And that was where A.J. made his fatal mistake. He not only told his incredibly secrecy-challenged sister that Alison
was brilliant and funny and beautiful, but he also admitted that he’d told her about Hor al-Hammar.

Which Bev—after she’d finished crying—correctly interpreted to mean that he’d fallen hard for Alison.

And
that
was why, as the jet came in for their landing, A.J. looked out the window and saw not just Bev’s truck parked near the hangar, but his mother’s SUV, as well as around ten other vehicles.

“Oh, damn,” he told Alison, as she held tightly to his hand for the descent. “We’ve got a welcoming committee.”

She looked out the window, but saw only the mountains. “Oh, my God, A.J., it’s
so
beautiful.”

And it was—with the lush green trees and the sparkling blue of the intercoastal waterway. Heaven was in the part of Alaska that was an arctic rainforest, which meant that the days were often overcast and gray. But today the sky was blue, without a cloud in sight—as if someone had ordered the perfect sunny, early-summer day.

A.J. was beyond happy to be home. But he wasn’t all that thrilled about the fact that they were going to have to face the twenty-questions brigade immediately upon stepping off the plane.

And then Alison, who was leaning across him, her hand on his thigh, saw all the cars. And the crowd of people standing around them, or sitting on their hoods. “Whoa,” she said as the jet’s tires grabbed the runway, as her hand tightened on his leg. “Are those
all
relatives?”

“Not all of them,” A.J. reported. “My mother’s there. And my grandfather—Adam. I see a bunch of cousins, too. My sister and her husband … And a lot of other miscellaneous people from town.”

“They must’ve missed you,” she said. “It’s sweet.”

“Nah,” A.J. said. “It’s pure curiosity, combined with it being lunchtime. Word must’ve gotten out that you were coming home with me. Everyone wants to check you out.”

“Am I that much of a novelty?” she asked, bemused.

“Actually,” A.J. said as the plane finally turned and taxied
toward the hangar, “it’s more about me. I tend to keep to myself.”

“Ah,” she said. “No hordes of wild women lined up at your door, I take it.”

A.J. smiled at that. “Not exactly. I dated a second-grade teacher down in Juneau for a while, a few years back, but it wasn’t serious. She never came up here, I always took the ferry down there. I’m not sure anyone even knew I was, um, seeing her.”

“Would you rather that no one knows about me?” Alison asked. “We could keep a low profile. If you want, I could stay at that bed and breakfast. That way people wouldn’t have to know—”

“That horse has already left the barn,” he told her. “Sorry about that. Bev kind of pried it out of me and … I’m just going to apologize in advance, for anything bizarre that my mother or anyone else in my family might say to you.”

Alison laughed. “What could they possibly say?”

“Welcome to Heaven. So. Alison. When are you and A.J. getting married?”

“No one’s going to say that.”

The plane stopped and Alison unfastened her seat belt.

“Care to put some money on it?” A.J. asked.

“Dinner,” she said. “Loser buys tonight.” She paused. “You do have restaurants in Heaven, right?”

He looked at her. “What’s a rest-ee-rant?”

“Very funny.”

“Italian, Thai, vegan, Middle Eastern, seafood, or seafood,” he told her. “I recommend Fishy’s, the second seafood place.”

“Fishy’s,” she said.

“Yeah, big-city woman. Mock it now. You’re going to be apologizing later. And picking up the check.” Not that he was actually going to let her do that. Still, it was nice to see her smile. To pretend that he really was bringing her home to meet his family.

He stood up. Kissed her. Kissed her again, longer this time, because he wasn’t going to be able to kiss her that way after they got off the plane. At least not in the immediate future.

She sighed and melted against him. “Hmm. Maybe we should ask the pilot to run us over to Boston so I could pick up my raincoat. You said it rains here all the time. It’s only a seven-hour trip, each way.…”

He laughed as he kissed her again. “You know,
my
bed’s pretty nice, too.”

“I’ve just really enjoyed the fantasy element of all this,” Alison admitted.

“Yeah,” A.J. said. “Me, too.”

And there was the flight attendant, whom they’d seen very little of, knocking on the cabin door.

A.J. went to open it, but Alison stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Is Jamie …?”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in a while. He’s, um, working on some big mystery back in Jubilation.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you more about it after we run the gauntlet of misplaced curiosity, okay?”

She laughed as he opened the door. “You’re so mean to your family.”

“The stairs are in place, sir,” the flight attendant said. “Ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, my God,” Alison said as she stepped out of the plane and took her first deep breath of that impossibly clean, fresh, cool air. But then she took A.J.’s arm and said, “You do realize that nothing’s changed between us, right?”

It was funny she could say that when, for him, so much had changed. He’d told her the truth about Hor al-Hammar, about Nouri and his family—just several of the dozens of people he’d thought of as friends whom he’d helped to kill as absolutely as if he’d pulled the trigger himself.

And Alison had listened without judging him. And without trying to minimize or make insignificant his feelings of responsibility.

“But I won’t embarrass you by being too honest,” she added, slipping her hand down into his, so that they were obviously holding hands—for his mother and Bev and the entire rest of the town to see. “No pronouncements that I’m
in this purely for the sex and that I see you merely as the steaming hot man-stud that you are, servicing me immediately upon my command.”

A.J. laughed. “You know, my cousin Bill is deaf. He reads lips.”

“Oh, no, really?” she said, covering her mouth as she laughed.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I mean, he does read lips, but he’s not here. Besides, aren’t you also here for the diaries?”

“Yes, I am,” Alison said, but they’d hit the tarmac and his mother was leading the crowd who’d come to meet them.