Between Here and the Horizon (2 page)

Colonel Whitlock appeared next to him, and then the sky was filled with the beating thump of helicopter blades. They spoke for a second, and the thundering drum of the helo overhead dipped long enough for me to make out what Crowe said to Whitlock.
 

“He didn’t stop, sir. He didn’t stop until they were all out.”

Whitlock scowled. “I can see that, Specialist. He disobeyed a direct order in doing so, too.”

“He’ll be reprimanded?” Crowe asked. He was speaking as if I was no longer present; both of them were.
 

“No,” Whitlock said sternly. “Ironically, I think Captain Fletcher’s more likely to be honored than punished in this particular instance. Now get him on the chopper before I change my mind. The crazy bastard’s bleeding everywhere.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Law of Odds

I had been waiting for disaster to strike all my life.
 

It had seemed, for want of a more intelligent, rational explanation,
inevitable
.
 
Ever since I was old enough to read the paper or tune into the evening news, I had been bombarded with people losing their loved ones in terrorist attacks, cars crashing and burning, trains derailing, bank robberies turned horribly wrong. Every day, some natural disaster or terrifying violence splintered the world in two. Everywhere you looked someone’s life was lying in ruins, irreparably damaged and unrecognizable.

I’d spent the last five years, since I moved out of my parents’ house in Manhattan Beach, California, wondering when it would be my time. When would the bomb go off on
my
bus? When would
I
get held up at knifepoint for my fourth generation iPhone? When would
I
not look where I was going and step out in front of a Mac truck?
 

It was a matter of playing an odds game, after all, and no matter how hard I tried to avoid thinking that way, it seemed unreasonable to assume that tragedy wouldn’t visit my doorstep at some point in my life. Until that time I was simply holding my breath, waiting. Perhaps it would happen tomorrow. More likely, it would happen today, as the plane I’d boarded to travel from one side of the country to another, all the way from L.A. to New York, crashed into the Hudson. It had already happened once in recent years. No reason why it wouldn’t happen again.
 

My stomach tumbled over itself as the plane pitched to one side, swinging dramatically to the left, circling wide over New York. Out of the window next to me, the city sprawled in every direction for as far as the eye could see, only coming to an abrupt halt in the distance where steel colored water ate up the horizon.
 

I was being stupid. I knew the plane wasn’t going to crash, but I couldn’t seem to convince myself that I was perfectly safe when we were hurtling through the air toward so much concrete and glass and metal.
 

“Miss Lang?” The woman sitting next to me smiled, patting my hand reassuringly. “I just wanted to wish you luck again. I’m sure you’ll do just fine, y’know. These things, these job interviews—” She waved her hand dismissively. “They’re never as scary as you assume they’re gonna be. And you being such a lovely, charming girl and all? I’m sure everything’s going to work out just fine.” She hadn’t stopped talking the entire six-hour flight. I’d had the full rundown, gotten most of her life story in between the marginally unpleasant in-flight meal that came around somewhere over Colorado and the lone glass of gin and tonic I threw back somewhere closer to Indiana: her name was Margie Fenech, fifty-eight years old, and she had three grown sons, all of whom were now married, but boy if they weren’t any one of them would have just loved to date me. She’d been patting my hand and touching my arm like we were old friends for hours now, and to be honest I hadn’t minded. Not one bit. The contact, if anything, had been reassuring.
 

There were breaks in between her constant chattering, where she’d asked me questions about myself and I felt obliged to respond in kind. She’d easily managed to wheedle out of me my purpose for visiting New York in the middle of the week. She knew all about my parents’ struggling restaurant back in the South Bay. I’d told her of the illusive Ronan Fletcher, about whom I knew a few sporadic facts: he was ex-military, the recipient of the Purple Heart, so obviously a bit of a badass. His wife had died last year, leaving him with two young children to care for. And his personal net worth was pretty up there, somewhere close to the billion-dollar mark. Margie also knew that I hated flying, and she knew that I had no stomach for turbulence; in her own way I supposed she was trying to distract me from the abrupt angle to the ground the plane had adopted now that it was coming in for its final approach to land.
 

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure it’ll be okay. Has to be, right?” I said, flashing a brief, watery smile in her direction.
 

“Oh sure, sweetheart. If you take care of those little kiddies for six whole months, think about all the money you can save to help out your parents. You said it yourself. You won’t have any expenses. And you won’t know anyone in the city, so you won’t be out wasting your money every night of the week like some youngsters are prone to do.”

I objected to being called a “youngster” on a very deep level. I was twenty-eight years old, past the point in my life where I was out partying and frittering away my money every weekend. I’d been an elementary school teacher for the past five years, paying my bills, saving fifteen percent of my income religiously every paycheck, squirrelling away my funds in order to buy a house. I thought those were all very grownup things to have been doing for such a long time. I’d still have been doing them if the public school I’d been working for hadn’t had to close down due to insufficient government funding, too. I lost my job along with the rest of the school faculty four months ago, around about the same time Mom and Dad pulled me aside and told me, embarrassedly, that the restaurant was going under. They hadn’t asked for help, but I’d seen that they’d needed it. Needed it badly. So there went my savings. All of it. Now I had no more money saved to give them, and no job to make any more, which was how I found myself on this plane next to Margie, on my way to interview for a glorified babysitting job on the other side of the country.
 

I didn’t know how it had come to this. I should have been able to find another teaching job, but it was the middle of the school year and all positions had been filled. Support teaching was fine, but it was also sporadic and unreliable and I needed a steady income to make sure I could keep Mom and Dad afloat. When the agency I signed up with called and told me about Ronan Fletcher and his two young children, I hadn’t had much of a choice but agree to accept the all-expenses paid trip across the States to meet with this strange, wealthy individual and find out what he’s looking for.
 

“How old are the children again?” Margie asked. My arm got a squeeze this time.
 

“I’m not sure. I think the file said five and seven.”

Margie pulled an impressed face. “So young. And you say you don’t have any children of your own yet?” I got the impression that she thought I was ill equipped to deal with the challenge of dealing with a five and a seven-year-old.
 

“No, I don’t actually want children,” I said. “I love taking care of the kids at school, but I don’t plan on having my own.”

“Oh, goodness, sweetie, why on earth not? Being a mother…it’s the most miraculous thing. My life just wouldn’t be the same without those boys of mine.”

Over time, I’d learned that telling people I
couldn’t
have children always made them uncomfortable. It was always better to lie. To make something up.
My lifestyle’s too hectic for dependents. I’m just not a maternal person.
Anything was easier than explaining that I was married once, for a grand total of eighteen months, before I found out it was unlikely I was ever going to be able to conceive.
 
My son of a bitch ex hadn’t taken the news well. He
had
taken the cash sitting in our joint savings account—thank god it wasn’t everything—and he
had
taken off with my best friend. Last I’d heard, they’d just had their first kid together, a little girl, and they were living up in San Francisco.

I smiled blankly at Margie, shrugging my shoulders. “I’m sure motherhood’s wonderful. It’s just not for me.”

Margie’s brow creased, as if she couldn’t comprehend what could possibly be mentally wrong with me. “That’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “You’ll probably change your mind, you know. One day you’ll just wake up and all of a sudden—” She jostled into me as the plane’s wheels touched down. Somewhere at the back of the plane, a lone person started clapping. Margie looked momentarily side tracked, while I did my best to wrestle my heart back into its rightful spot in my chest, out from where it had lodged itself high in my throat.
 

“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Margie asked. She seemed to have forgotten all about the sentence she was halfway through just now. I was glad for it, too. I’d heard the whole,
you’ll wake up one morning and just need to have a baby
. The
it’ll hit you like a wrecking ball, and you won’t be able to deny your body
bit. The problem was that I’d already woken up and felt it, that call deep in my bones, but my body had denied
me
, and I’d been having to deal with that sorrowful reality ever since.
 

“
Attention all passengers. Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened until the pilot has turned off the seatbelt sign. When opening overhead lockers, please proceed with caution, as items may have moved during the flight and are at risk of falling.”
Over the tinny loudspeakers, a pre-recorded message continued to loop, warning the passengers on the oversized Airbus A380—barely a quarter full—that increased security measures within the airport might mean extended waiting time for disembarkation and baggage collection. I was barely listening. I already felt too crowded, my throat swelling a little, tiny beads of sweat bursting through the pores of my skin, sending cold chills dancing over my stomach and down my arms.
 

“Do they still have a monument?” I asked abruptly. “You know, where the World Trade Center used to be.”

Margie stopped rooting in her cracked black leather purse and looked at me sharply. She was somewhere between feeling intensely sorry for me and a little wary of me all of a sudden. “Why, of course they do, honey. Why on earth wouldn’t they?”

I looked out of the window, away from her, not wanting to trade in strange expressions. “I don’t know. It seems like such a long time ago now. People…they forget.”

“Oh, no. No, that’s not likely to
ever
happen. New York doesn’t forget. We’ll remember those poor people for generations. Until the city falls into the sea. Probably longer.”

An hour and a half later, I was swearing under my breath, sweating, cursing myself out for not giving myself longer to get from the airport to the Fletcher building. West 23
rd
and 6
th
was a long old way from JFK, and I only had twelve minutes to spare as I hopped out of the cab and dashed inside the imposing, tall, spear-like glass structure that seemed to rocket up out of the sidewalk.
 

The lobby of the Fletcher building was modest and simple but spoke of money. The floors were cool, polished marble, and the seating area set back to the right was comprised of beautiful gray leather armchairs that looked like they cost more than my car back in L.A. I hurried to the reception desk, frantically patting down my hair, hoping against hope that I didn’t look completely frazzled, which I undoubtedly did. The woman behind the desk glanced up at me and smiled.
 

“How may I help you?” she asked. Her voice was smooth and cool, but not unfriendly. Her bright blonde hair was swept back into a perfectly styled coiffeur that made me want to weep with jealousy.
 

“My name is Ophelia Lang. I have a four o’clock appointment with Mr. Fletcher.”

“Ahh, yes. Miss Lang. One moment, please.” She rolled back in her chair and opened a drawer at her side, from which she produced a small laminated name badge with my photograph on it. She slid the laminate across the counter toward me, smiling. “It’s a good picture,” she informed me. “Most of the time they look awful.”

I glanced down at the photo and grimaced. It was more of a mug shot than an identification picture. I looked startled. My eyes, usually green, were tinged with red somehow, so I looked fairly demonic. The contrast on the image was way off, too, so that my long, light brown hair seemed almost black. My tan was non-existent, and my lips looked blood red. Basically, I looked like a vampire.
 

I gave the receptionist a polite, awkward smile anyway. “Thanks.”

She leaned forward and placed a hand on my forearm, speaking very softly. “Don’t look so worried. Mr. Fletcher can be a bit of a cold fish sometimes, but he’s a decent guy. He’s fair, and he’s a good boss. Everything’s going to be okay.”

I had no idea why she felt the need to reassure me, but her words actually slowed my pulse from racing quite as fast, and that was something.
 

“You’d better head on up to the penthouse office now, though, Miss Lang.” She pointed at a bank of elevators on the other side of the lobby. “While he may be a good boss, he also really does hate when people are late.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Offer

A stern looking security guard escorted me up in the elevator to Fletcher’s office.
 

I hadn’t travelled much. A weekend in Arizona here. A trip to Vegas there. I’d only been out of the States once, when Dad stumped up for a ten-day trip to Canada for the family—a graduation present, back when the restaurant was doing much better and money was nowhere near as tight. As I stepped into Ronan Fletcher’s private offices on the thirty-first floor, which also just so happened to be the very highest floor of the Fletcher Corporation building, I was accosted by the strangest, most wonderful sights, from countries I doubted I’d ever get to visit: African tribal face masks made out of intricately carved wood. Japanese silk fans, beautifully painted, perched on the walls like rare butterflies. Russian Faberge eggs the size of my fist, seated in gilded golden stands on walnut sideboards. A glass case ran along the entire length of the right-hand wall, where an array of golden necklaces and hammered copper earrings were arranged with delicate precision on top of rich, ruby red velvets. It looked more like a museum exhibition than an office. If it weren’t for the huge, imposing desk, complete with a ginormous iMac that sat directly in front of the wall of floor to ceiling glass windows, overlooking the city, then I’d have thought I’d stepped into the Natural History Museum and not someone’s place of work.