“What do we do?” asked Katie, grabbing the phone from the floor, her voice cracking from panic.
“Well, we can’t answer it!” replied Sean looking at the handset as uselessly as Katie.
“They have our baby!” she explained, pleading at Sean.
Sean really had to clear up the not being her husband issue and it not being his baby but such pedantry could wait until the phone stopped ringing.
“I know but we can’t answer without putting him at risk.”
The phone continued to ring. Both looked at it helplessly as the Mexican Hat Dance continued on a seemingly endless and infuriating loop.
As the tune ended, Katie dropped the phone on the floor and threw herself into Sean’s arms. Tears streamed from her face and soaked his shirt as she clung to him with every ounce of strength she possessed.
“I thought you were dead! God, I thought you were dead!” she whispered next to his ear between her sobs.
Sean felt the weight of the world fall on him as the wife whose husband was most definitely dead clung to him in relief.
“I’m not your husband, he is dead,” Sean said quietly but firmly, extracting himself from Katie’s hold.
Katie swung a fist at Sean. “Stop saying that! Why would you say that?! You are Sean Fox!” she cried, looking him deep in the eye.
A statement that Sean could not deny. He was Sean Fox but not her Sean Fox.
“I am Sean Fox,” he said and received a smile almost instantly from Katie. “But not your Sean Fox,” he added in explanation.
Katie looked at him with concern. “You must have hit your head. Head injuries can cause memory loss,” she offered, reassuringly stroking the side of his face.
Sean pulled back. Her intimate touch, after six months in the wilderness of Afghanistan, was very pleasant but also very wrong. He was not who she thought he was.
Sean led Katie through to the dining room which was untouched by the earlier violence and lacked any recent corpses. He sat her down in one of the chairs and pulled another out to allow him to face her.
“Please just hear me out,” he asked and received a nod of acceptance in response.
“My name is Sean Fox. I am 39 years old and have never been married. Up until 18 months ago, I worked for the government and only arrived back in the United States this morning after being in Afghanistan for six months.”
Katie had nodded in agreement to every statement but the last. “You were here three months ago,” she corrected. “That’s when you went missing and we thought you had been killed.”
Sean shook his head in frustration. “No I was in Afghanistan for six months and pretty much most of the year before that.”
Katie smiled. “It’s OK Sean I’ve seen TV shows about this, the confusion, the denial, the loss of time, it’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” She worked her way forward in the chair and reached out to him again. “I understand and we’ll get through it together!”
Sean stood up in frustration. Katie pulled back but did not react. Obviously, the TV shows had prepared her for such outbursts. None of it was helping Sean get his point across.
“Katie, your name is Katie, right?”
Katie nodded her head and smiled.
“I don’t know what has happened but I am a different Sean Fox. I am not your husband and I need you to accept that. I will get to the bottom of whatever has happened but your son…”
Katie’s face changed. The euphoria of having her husband back was suddenly trumped by the reminder of her son being kidnapped and being in the hands of the Mexican gang that her husband had just killed two members of.
“…I need to know everything you know about the men that took him, ok?”
Katie explained that the two dead Mexicans were part of the same gang that had taken her son and that their only demand was to meet Sean’s contacts, whoever they were.
As she stopped speaking, she threw herself once again into his arms, the tears started to flow afresh. Sean debated pushing her off once again but he would have done the same for any mother in that situation. She needed comfort, not more heartache.
Neither knew what to say or what to do next. They just climbed into the car in silence and drove out of the estate. Had there been a flight available at that time of night, they would have caught it to anywhere it was going. As Alexa indicated for the motel they had been at earlier, Pyotr broke the silence. “Let’s head to San Antonio, I’d rather not stay in Laredo!”
Alexa did not need to be asked twice. She killed the indicator and stepped on the gas.
“We need to call in,” she said, knowing Pyotr was thinking the same.
“I know,” he said heavily. His mind was elsewhere. Depending on how they handled their call in, there was just a chance they might manage to get out of the hole they were in.
“If they order us back, what do we do?” asked Alexa.
Pyotr didn’t answer straight away, as he considered the question. After a minute or two, he smiled and grabbed his phone.
“Get me General Borodin!” barked Pyotr as the call was answered. Alexa looked on in panic, not having had the chance to debate how Pyotr would handle the call that held their lives in the balance.
After a few seconds, Borodin came on the line.
“Done?” asked Borodin.
“Slight problem.”
“What?!” boomed Borodin threateningly.
“Sean Fox isn’t dead!”
“What makes you think that?” asked Borodin, his voice heavy with suspicion.
“He answered the door,” replied Pyotr. Although not technically true, Sean had been the first to react to Alexa and by default had answered their entry to the house.
Silence reined as Borodin digested the information. Pyotr waited with bated breath as the future of his life hung in the balance. If he was ordered back, he was as good as dead. If he were put on hold and told to await further orders, he reckoned it was a fifty fifty. If they were stood down, he pretty much reckoned they were free and clear.
Seconds felt like minutes as he awaited his fate. A deep guttural cough announced Borodin was about to speak. Pyotr held his breath.
“I’ll call you back shortly!” said Borodin and hung up.
“Shit!” replied Pyotr to the empty line.
“What? What is it?!” clamored Alexa, desperate to know what was happening.