“Has anyone ever told you that you have amazing symmetry around your eyes?” Nahal went on. “It’s rarer than you think, and it’s considered very attractive. No one else in the world has eyes like you, of course, or like me. But the tiny scar in your eyebrow would give you away even if your eyes were closed.”
Vivian had been nicked by a piece of shrapnel in Afghanistan. Most people didn’t even notice it. “My eyebrow piercing? I was a silly teenager.”
“Shame on you for trying to fool me.” Nahal shook a finger at her. “Your scar came from shrapnel from the IED that killed the man you wanted to marry.”
Vivian swallowed. This woman had done her homework, and she seemed a little crazy. Sane people didn’t hijack submarines, but Nahal seemed crazier than Ambra or Laila.
“I downloaded your military records. Tesla’s woman, how could I not?” Nahal fell back against a bunch of pillows. “You don’t approve of how my country treats women.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your dishonorable discharge, Sergeant Torres.”
More denials seemed useless, so she decided to stay quiet and see where this was leading. Her situation couldn’t get much worse. Now, that was probably just a lack of imagination. Things could always get worse.
“Only someone as smart as Tesla could have tracked us down. It was Laila’s misfortune to run into Tesla’s submarine.”
Not just Laila’s misfortune.
“I voted to deal with Prince Timgad in a more subtle fashion, but Laila’s the captain, and I can’t do much from sick bay.” Nahal fidgeted with her blanket. “I thought I knew her. I thought her different from her family history, kinder, more noble. Do you believe we are more than just our genes?”
“Yes.” Although Vivian had to admit she was more similar to her mother than she liked. “We make our own choices, and we can change.”
“Nobody expected you to not follow orders, did you know? I read your whole file, things you probably haven’t even seen yourself. Your commander fought hard for you. He blamed it on the stress of your beloved’s death. But I don’t think so. You have a nobility about you. You are strong, and you protect the weak. It’s why you had to do what you did. It’s why you became a bodyguard. It’s why you love Joe Tesla so.”
She didn’t love Tesla. She cared about him. She liked him. She felt guilty she’d let him down on the first night she was supposed to be guarding him. But none of that was what Nahal was talking about. Vivian knew she had a habit of protecting the weak. She found it more inconvenient than noble. Either way, she wanted Nahal to keep talking. Maybe she could become an ally.
“Laila is not so noble as you. Or as I want to be. At first, she was. She was ready to save the world when we stole this submarine. But now I think she did it to get revenge against the prince. Revenge against her father. Nobility is about grander things than hate.”
Nahal looked at Vivian like she expected an answer.
“You stole this submarine?” Vivian kept the accent, just in case.
“Of course we did. And of course you know.”
For all she knew, they were on a government-sponsored mission and the submarine was right where it was supposed to be. But she decided not to pick a fight and stayed quiet.
“Laila has developed a taste for killing since we got this sub — the prince, the tanker, Rasha. I didn’t expect it from her, even though that streak of madness runs through her family. I thought it would have spared her, since she is a woman and the others are all men.”
“Is she going to kill me?”
“I wouldn’t. Ambra wouldn’t, but Laila will if she gets a chance.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s changed. And she wants to preserve her secrets — she took this sub, she killed her own brother, she has killed others, and she will do more killing when the time comes. But, if you’re here, it’s not much of a secret, is it? Your appearance means Tesla has found our sub. He probably filmed it. He probably even knows where we’ve been and where we’re going.”
Vivian hoped so, but she thought Nahal might be giving Tesla a little too much credit. “Then why not let me go? If I’m no threat and there’s no secret, why keep me here?”
“This is bigger than you. Bigger than us.”
“If I’m supposed to die for this, why not tell me why?”
And Nahal did. If Nahal was right, Vivian, once a soldier and always a soldier, understood. It was bigger than her.
Chapter 44
Joe woke with a start when someone touched his ribs. “Ouch!”
“Sorry.” Captain Glascoe sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me what happened.”
Joe felt better than he had since he got on board the Voyager. His stomach was calm and his head was clear. “Water.”
Captain Glascoe handed him a glass of apple juice, and Joe drank it in a single long, glorious swallow. His mouth tasted and felt a lot better.
He summarized everything that had happened since he’d left the boat. The captain gave him a glass of water when he was finished.
“Vivian,” Joe said. “Tell me what we’re doing for her.”
“Not a whole hell of a lot we can do.”
“Not good enough.” Joe struggled into a sitting position. “What happened to her? How did you know she wasn’t coming back to the boat?”
“Things would be the same if you’d been with her.”
Joe shrugged that off. If he hadn’t let her onto the boat in the first place, she’d be safe and sound back in New York. “Tell me what you know.”
“She’s a brave soldier, your Sergeant Torres.”
“She is.”
“After you were separated, something must have gone wrong with the little wire-control sub, because it looks like Torres swam out to the sub to attach a transponder by hand.”
“That wasn’t the plan.” She wasn’t supposed to get close.
“But it happened.”
“How do you know?”
“She activated one and stuck it onto the hull of the submarine.”
Of course she did. She got results.
“But it fell off.”
“So we can’t track the sub?” His head throbbed. They’d lost her. His fault, and they’d lost her. “What about the other transponder?”
“It was activated, too, and it moved to the surface in a controlled ascent, which means she was probably carrying it, and she was probably alive at that time.”
Probably. At that time. Not reassuring. “And?”
“We have drone footage of her being taken out of the water, standing on the deck, and then being marched into the submarine. After that, the transponder stopped transmitting, which makes sense since it can’t transmit through steel.”
They hadn’t killed her right away. Vivian might still be alive! Joe still felt weak. His seasickness had retreated, but the long swim and the dehydration had taken it out of him. It didn’t matter — he didn’t have time for weakness. He had to find her. Both he and Captain Glascoe knew she might already be dead, but both of them were acting like that couldn’t be true.
“I’ll call the Navy,” Joe said. “Get reinforcements.”
“Sure,” said Glascoe. “They’ll send someone right out.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t help.”
“Nope,” Glascoe said. “And neither will the Navy.”
He walked out and left Joe alone with Edison. Joe lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. Then he checked his email.
A message from Vivian’s mother, asking if she was OK. Apparently, she’d been emailing her mother every night before bed so her mom would know she was fine. How could Joe tell her that she wasn’t?