“Just a quick roll-call before we go on,” said Major Parsons, “now everyone is here…”
Yeah, yeah I can take a hint. Jeez, he’d be hurting my feelings in a minute.
“Elizabeth Ashton?”
“Present and almost correct.”
“Telek Burczyk?”
“Tutaj.”
“Henri Ducat?”
“Oui.”
“Ricardo Esteban?”
“Si.”
“Heinrich Keller?”
“Jawohl.”
“Marc Lebuin?”
“Je suis présent.”
“Lee Venzi?”
A woman at the back raised her hand but didn’t speak. I glanced over.
What the fuck? No fucking way!
My heart started pounding and I was having trouble breathing. That woman. That woman. No fucking way! The woman who’d torn out my heart and danced all over it. The woman who’d told me she loved me, then disappeared without a backward glance. Ten years ago. What the fuck was she doing here? And what was with the new name?
“You’re Lee Venzi?”
I must have spoken out loud because everyone was staring at me. I rearranged my face back to boredom. Inside I was anything but. My heart was shuddering and beating so fucking hard I thought it would break out of my chest.
It took every ounce of self-control that I’d learned over the last ten years to keep standing and not completely lose it and run out of the room. My mouth was dry and I felt a cold sweat break out all over my body. Adrenaline was burning through me and I couldn’t tell if it was fight or flight.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to hit something.
I was frozen to the spot.
My hands were shaking so badly, I shoved them in my pockets and tried to concentrate on getting air into my lungs.
How could it be her? After all these years? How could she be here?
I thought I was having an out-of-my-fucking-mind-out-of-body experience. I fought to breathe normally, all the while thinking I was having a fucking heart attack.
My body was shaking so hard I thought it must be obvious. This was worse than a goddamn RPG attack by the fucking Taliban.
What was she doing here? Was it some sort of set up? Did she know I’d be here? No, not possible. She looked so shocked to see me. Shit, she hadn’t changed. She looked exactly the same as the day she walked out on me.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Breathe, you dumb grunt, breathe.
I stared out the window, but it wasn’t Geneva I was seeing—it was Ocean Beach, Point Loma, San Diego. I was 17, and Caro was 30 and married. She was so fucking beautiful, wearing that yellow bikini, her skin all golden from the sun.
I blinked, trying to clear the image, but it was as if the whole summer we were together was nailed to my brain and playing relentlessly like a horror film where you know someone’s going to get the guts ripped out of them. Yeah, that was me. I was the one who got ripped to pieces. And as for her? She got to walk away and start a new life.
Bitch.
Why the hell did she have to come back and haunt me now? The ghost of fucks past.
How was I going to get through the next day-and-a-half of this screwed up briefing? I was sweating just thinking about being in the same room as her. I needed to get out. I could leave, say I’m sick. The way my body was responding, nobody would doubt that I was completely fucked.
Crawley continued his mindless lecture. It was an almost pleasantly dull rumble in the background. Mentally, I was ten years and 6,000 miles away.
God, she’d been so beautiful—the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. If I was honest, no one else had come close since. Well, fuck. She’d fooled me. I thought I was something special. Along with my belief that the world wasn’t completely shit, she’d taken my virginity. Or I’d given it. Willingly. I thought we were in love. Really got that fucking wrong. At least I knew that she hadn’t gone back to the asshole she’d been married to at the time.
I risked a quick look.
So fucking beautiful. She wasn’t looking at me but I had to turn away again—it hurt to see her face, to see her sitting in the same room as me. But I couldn’t help noticing she was slumped in her seat and her cheeks were flushed. I’d have given my left nut to know what she was thinking.
Crawley droned on.
“Because most attacks occur upon reaching home, always ensure that you can drive straight into your garage or compound, and secure the door or gate behind you.”
I could hear the British woman whispering something that made the other journos laugh. Crawled-up-his-ass Crawley didn’t like that.
“This is serious, madam. What I tell you today may save your life.”
The British woman inflated immediately. Fuck, her tits were enormous—and not in a good way.
“Listen, sunshine, you may think you’re something special with a weapon of mass destruction dangling between your legs, but let me tell you a thing or two: I’ve been to the frontline of every war since Uganda in 1979, before you were bloody well born.” She started ticking them off on her fingers. “Angola, Croatia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and … bloody hell, places you’ve never even heard of. And this woman,” she pointed her chin at Caro, “has been in more hot spots than you’ve had hot dates.”
Of course. Lee Venzi. She’d changed her name, which was why I hadn’t recognized it when Parsons gave me the list of journalists attending the course. She’d been Carolina Wilson then, my Caro. I’d never known her maiden name. I’d read some of the articles and assumed this Venzi character was a guy—probably ex-military. But now I knew the truth: it figured. Caro had grown up around military bases and spent her whole married life with Captain Cocksucker. She knew military.
I wasn’t happy to hear that she’d reported from dangerous places, but what the fuck was I expecting? This pack of journos was all heading for Afghanistan. I glanced over again, but turned away the minute she looked towards me. I couldn’t give her a way in or she’d fuck me over again.
Shit. Was I really that weak?
I tried to keep my eyes off of her, but every time they were magnetically drawn back.
Focus, you pathetic fucker! Translate the National Anthem into Pashto, if you have to! Don’t look at her.
By lunchtime, I was so fucked. The second Parsons called a break, I was out of the starting blocks like a goddamn sprinter.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing: I just knew I couldn’t go back to that briefing; I couldn’t see her and not touch her. I was a fucking lunatic. I hated that woman. She destroyed my life and hadn’t even looked back when she walked out on me, leaving me behind with no clue how to find her.
And the worst of it was I’d believed that she loved me. Some fucking fairytale. But I’d believed her, and I’d waited for her. My fucking father had driven her away. Because I was 17 and underage, he’d threatened her with a statutory rape charge—unless she left quietly. But after three years, the Statue of Limitations freed us. I thought she’d find me when I was 21. I’d believed it every day for three long years. But she never came. I never heard from her again. And she was a journalist—how fucking hard would it have been for her to reach out to me?
I stormed down the street, ignoring pedestrians who jumped out of my way for fear of being mowed down.
And then I found myself heading for my favorite bar. Appropriately enough it was named L’Antidote. I really fucking hoped it would live up to its name tonight.
The room was long and thin, with almost no daylight. It was as close as the Swiss came to a dive—damn near perfect.
I headed inside and saw Jean-Paul the bartender. He nodded at me and poured a whiskey without me even having to ask. I tipped it straight down.