Falling by T.J. Newman

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THEO DROVE WITH THE LIGHTSflashing and sirens blaring as he made his way down Sepulveda Boulevard toward the airport. Cars parted to let him through, but the congestion around LAX made maneuvering nearly impossible. There wasn’t a moment of any given day that cars weren’t bottlenecked; the airport’s terrible positioning and layout were maddening under the best of circumstances. Theo tried to keep his road rage in check by tapping anxiously on the steering wheel. Today, the stakes were a lot higher than missing a flight.

His phone began to ring. DIRECTOR LIU. Theo declined the call and the screen went black.

Minutes ticked by. He tried to distract himself by calculating how far there was to go, but after realizing he hadn’t even reached Century Boulevard, he swore in frustration. This route would send him through the tunnel that went under the east end of the runways to connect to Imperial Highway before he would then have to make his way down the whole length of the far side of the airport, toward the main entrance to—

You idiot, he cursed himself as he made the connection.

Without checking for traffic, Theo sent the vehicle into a screeching U-turn. An oncoming car swerved out of his way, bleating its horn as another car swerved to miss it.

Theo pressed his foot on the gas and the tires squealed in response as the SUV shot forward and away from the airport.

He barreled down the road as cars moved to the right, out of his way, when up ahead, he spotted a black SUV with flashing lights stuck in traffic going the opposite direction.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, Liu,” Theo said to himself as he slowed to the speed limit and flicked off his own lights and sirens.

As he passed the vehicle, he glanced over quickly, not wanting to attract attention—and saw two of his colleagues craning their necks, trying to figure out a way to circumnavigate the cars. They never noticed him.

Were they backup? Or, in the middle of an operation, with lives on the line, was Liu willing to waste two of her agents by sending them to find Theo and drag his ass back in? He didn’t trust her enough to wait and find out. Accelerating the SUV, he left them behind.

Cool, fresh air blew in off the open sea, a startling contrast to the hot stuffiness of the van. Carrie gazed out at the inky water of the Pacific. Waves crashed on the shore in a ceaseless cadence of indifference. Tomorrow the tide would go out and come in just the same as it did the day before and would do the day after. She found relief in knowing that the earth would keep turning and that, ultimately, it didn’t care.

On the far end of the lot, out on the beach, a bonfire spat orange sparks up into the stars with a satisfying crackle. Behind the blaze, a couple reclined, their feet propped up on the gray concrete fire pit. Carrie inhaled deeply the smoky scent of nostalgia and immediately felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her neck.

“I wasn’t going to yell,” she said. “I was just… savoring.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Sam said, pulling her arm in the other direction.

Together they walked away from the van toward the other end of the parking lot. In that corner, the bulb in the streetlamp was out. A pile of sand and discarded construction equipment underneath took on eerie shadows in the moonlight. A seagull perched atop another lamp, his head cocking from side to side as he watched them go by. Carrie considered them from the bird’s view: two people, shrouded in explosives, calmly moving into darkness. The salty wind blew her hair across her face and she shivered.

“Back at the house, you said you had plans,” she said. “But then your father died.”

Sam nodded. “Ben and I were all set. Our paperwork and visas were done. We’d been saving our money for ten years. Our flights were booked. And then four days before we were supposed to leave, he died.”

“So you stayed and Ben left without you?”

Sam nodded. The sand crunched beneath their feet. He walked just enough ahead of her that she could see the handle of the gun sticking up over the waist of his pants against his back.

“Did you resent him?”

Sam turned his head. “Ben?”

“Yeah. When he left you behind.”

They had almost reached the end of the lot and the pile of discarded rubble.

“No. Never. I made him go. He wanted to stay, didn’t think it was fair. Which it wasn’t,” Sam said with a shrug. “I told him to go and I made him take my money too. It would make it easier for him. I said he should get a head start and I’d join him when I could. And seventeen years later I did. But at the time, I just couldn’t leave.”

“But your family. What happened? What happened to Ahmad?”

The name of the youngest sibling, the deepest wound, hung in the air after it left her lips. She knew instantly it would have the effect she thought. She braced herself.

His pulse beat visibly against the side of his neck as he turned on her, stopping himself just before he struck her. She flinched and tried to run but he grabbed her under the jaw and pulled her back toward him, his fingers wrapping around her neck. Bringing her close, he turned her head to the side, his lips lingering over her ear. His breath painted a warm dampness across her cheek and she squeaked involuntarily as his fingers dug into her skin.

“Do not bring his name here,” Sam whispered into her ear.

Don’t fight. Don’t fight. Don’t fight.Carrie desperately tried to override instinct. Closing her eyes, she focused on the sound of the crashing waves.

Slowly, his grip began to loosen until he released her completely. She stumbled backward, taking deep breaths. Bending over, her hands went to her knees. She averted her gaze.

Sam motioned toward the pile.

“Hurry up.”

The stoplight turned yellow. Theo accelerated, checking both ways as an afterthought. The light was red before he even reached the intersection, but he barreled through anyway.

To his left, a plane tore down LAX’s north runway in its takeoff roll. Theo checked his speed. Seventy-five miles per hour. The speed limit was thirty-five. With a glance over at the plane as its wheels left the ground, Theo pressed his foot into the pedal and the needle went over eighty.

Westchester Parkway ran parallel to the airport. Traffic was light and the few cars that were on the road obediently slowed and pulled to the right when they heard the siren and saw the flashing lights. Theo surveyed the area, desperate for visual cues that would fill in what his memory left out. It’d been years since he’d gone this way. The area looked different from how he remembered.

As a kid, when his family went to the beach, they went to Toes. Toes Beach had been a surfing mecca in the ’60s, but after rock jetties were built to prevent beach erosion, the surf that had brought people in disappeared. It was now primarily a locals’ beach with calm waves, a winding bike path, and very few tourists.

Theo pounded his fist on the dash in frustration and a shockwave of pain roiled through his injured arm. He was glad for the pain. He deserved it for being so stupid, for taking so long to put it together.

Toes connected to Dockweiler.

The end of the road approached, and Theo faced another red light. He slowed, checking for oncoming traffic, and saw none coming. Speeding back up, he began to turn right-on-red with a glance up at the street name as he rounded the curve. Pershing. He thought that street might—

He heard the brakes before he saw the car.

The tires screeched, one second before the car slammed into him at full speed, hitting the SUV just behind the driver side door. The car spun out of control until it struck something else—something large, something metal—that sent the SUV spinning in the opposite direction. There was a loud pop and glass rained down on him, followed by a rush of cool air.

For a moment, everything around him was stationary. Cool, and still. Theo didn’t move.

Theo unbuckled his seat belt with bloody fingers and went for the door handle. It wouldn’t budge. The door was stuck. The car was pinned up against what he assumed was the undercarriage of another car. Theo coughed as smoke seeped into the interior through the smashed window.

Crawling into the back seat, Theo became aware that his whole body was in pain—but he kept going. He tried the back doors, but they were locked.

The rear window was a spiderweb of fractured glass. Theo climbed over the back seat. There, he was able to get to his feet, stooped over in the tight cargo space. Holding himself steady with his good arm, Theo pulled back his left leg and kicked at the glass. On the third blow, the window shattered around his leg with a tinkling crash. Theo scrambled out the back of the car, sucking in deep breaths of fresh air.

A stranger ran up to him. “Are you okay? You need to sit down. An ambulance is on its way.”

Theo heard it all, but none of it registered as he surveyed the scene. Three cars. One on its side. A motorcycle. All mangled. Broken glass and twisted metal was strewn everywhere. A half dozen people lay on the ground, moaning. Bystanders stood by their own cars, helpless.

Helpless.

The Hoffmans.

He had to keep going.

Theo pulled away from the man who was trying to get him to sit down and headed for the overturned car. A young couple knelt on the ground speaking with the driver who was stuck inside the vehicle, still belted into her seat. She was conscious but covered in blood. They told her not to move.

“Is she alright?” Theo asked.

They nodded. “I think so,” the husband said. A siren was heard in the distance. “Hang on,” the man said to the driver. “Help’s coming. They’re going to get you out, okay?”

The sirens got louder. That could be an ambulance—or it could be the FBI. Theo needed to get out, too. Amidst the commotion, he walked over to the motorcycle that lay on its side on the ground. The key was still in the ignition.

Before anyone could stop him, Theo righted the bike and straddled it. Putting it in neutral, he pressed the kill switch to the on position before pulling the clutch and pressing the starter button. Miraculously, the engine stuttered into a throaty purr. Theo gave it a little gas as he eased out the clutch, and the bike took off.

Theo hadn’t ridden since learning on his freshman year roommate’s old dirt bike, but it came back quickly. Soon, he squinted into the wind as the motorcycle raced down the street, horns honking at him as he dodged and weaved through the cars. Theo ignored them.

His arm was harder to ignore. The way he needed to drive meant riding one-handed wasn’t an option. The pain he felt as he extended his left arm out of the sling nearly made him lose control of the bike. As his right hand worked the throttle and front wheel brake, he was relieved the injury wasn’t to that arm. His left hand trembled in its loose grip on the handlebar, struggling to keep things steady and on line. The front tire quivered precariously.

Theo scanned the upcoming streets and was certain the next intersection was the left he needed to make. There was one car ahead of him: a minivan waiting for a jogger to clear the intersection so it could turn in. Theo gave the bike a little gas and upshifted. The van was midway through its left when Theo pulled up on its inside. The van’s tires squealed as it swerved to the right. The jogger leapt onto the curb, narrowly rolling out of the way. The motorcycle wobbled momentarily before regaining its balance as Theo sped up the street into the residential area.

The neighborhood was exactly as Theo remembered: winding and hilly. He navigated the bike through the maze of streets that led toward the coast knowing there would be one more left, then a right that would jag to connect to an access road. That access road would then run parallel to the beach, ending in a connection with Dockweiler’s parking lots.

He just needed to find the right street.

Theo slowed, glanced both ways, and then blew through a stop sign to start up a steep hill. He had no time to ride carefully—but he had enough sense to recognize that there were no seat belts now and he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Driving down the other side of the hill, he focused on the second street ahead. He thought that was it, but as he passed the first street, something in his memory bank stirred.

The first street. That was it. The one he just passed.

Theo braked hard and torqued the handlebar. The rear tire left a black stain in the shape of a semicircle as the bike spun around. Revving the engine, Theo sped back up the street toward the correct turn, just as a car crested the hill in front of him.

Theo squinted into the oncoming headlights and banked right as the car braked and swerved the opposite direction, narrowly missing the motorcycle. Jumping the curb, the car plowed into a fire hydrant with an explosive bang. Theo brought his foot down in a desperate attempt to keep control as the bike tottered across the road. He looked over his shoulder at the geyser of water that shot into the air at the front of the wrecked car and the driver inside who wrestled with the airbag.

Theo kept going.

The bike tore past the multimillion dollar homes that lined the street. Theo knew the ocean lay just on the other side. Up ahead, sand had blown across the road near a light pole that displayed a reflective blue sign halfway up. BEACH, it read, with an arrow. Theo accelerated.

He was almost there. Once on the access road, it was a straight-away. He could reach the family in minutes.

If that’s where they were.

Doubt rushed through him as he thought of all that had happened since he’d left the FBI team. What if he was wrong? What if the family wasn’t there? Theo shook his head. No. They had to be there. They had to be.

The street approached. Theo accelerated into the turn but immediately slammed on the brakes. His body nearly went over the handlebar as the motorcycle came to a stop, almost ramming into the security barricade that blocked vehicle entry to the access road. Waist-high metal columns were spaced just close enough that the bike couldn’t fit through. It was a dead end.

“No!” Theo yelled, his voice smothered by the sound of the crashing waves out across the beach in front of him. He stood, straddling the bike, panting, ignoring the pain. A memory of the house exploding earlier in the day filled his mind, followed by the Hoffman family picture.

Theo sat down on the bike, twisted the handlebar straight, and kicked off.

Scanning the area as he drove through the neighborhood, Theo searched for a backup plan. Dockweiler was still too far to go on foot. He needed to get the bike around the line of houses to the access road.

Up ahead, an earth mover was parked in front of a dumpster at a construction site. Spurred by hope, Theo sped up. He narrowed his eyes as he approached the lot to get the lay of the land and found wood and steel supports rising up out of a concrete foundation. But more important was what he saw through and beyond all that: the beach and the access road.

Without thinking it through, Theo jumped the curb and rode the motorcycle up the plywood makeshift ramp that workers had laid against the foundation. He slowed as he drove carefully through the long, skinny house, steering left and right to avoid the metal pipes sticking up from the ground where the kitchen and bathrooms would soon be. At the back of the foundation, excess pipes laid atop metal scaffolding. Theo’s eyes widened as he judged the clearance.

Ducking down as far as he could, Theo rode under the pipes. He cleared it, barely, but in the distraction, his foot clipped the edge of the scaffolding frame. The bike spun violently to the side and Theo was thrown off, landing in the sand a short distance away. The scaffolding and pipes began to collapse in a terrifying chorus of uncontrolled metal crashing against itself as Theo scrambled back to the bike, dragging it upright and away from the lot.

Theo’s shoes dug into the sand as he pushed the motorcycle to the access road. “Don’t you dare,” Theo said as he heard the bike’s engine begin to sputter. As he straddled the machine, it seemed to groan in protest and Theo noticed a nail sticking out of the front tire. Theo gave it a little gas and the bike trudged on.

Holding on to the handlebar, he noticed both arms had begun to shake, and his left arm had gone completely numb. He put it all out of his mind. The damage to his body. The end of his career. The path of destruction he’d left in his wake. The image of the politician nodding at him, trusting him, just before the house exploded. Theo forced himself to shut it all out. He needed to focus on the family and what he could do to help them. That, and only that.

The front tire was now completely flat and the metal rim scraped on the concrete. A thin whisp of smoke trailed from the engine as it hiccupped, the bike lurching irregularly in response. With a sad puff, the motor seemed to extinguish itself, and the bike coasted forward on momentum alone.

Theo looked up, defeated, when not far ahead in the distance, he saw a building. It was a kind of municipal maintenance site or something of that sort—and he knew that just beyond that was Dockweiler Beach.

Theo dropped the motorcycle into the sand and started running, unholstering his gun as he went. The building took a more definitive shape the closer he got: solid wall to the ocean, but on the back side, open space for city maintenance vehicles and other equipment. The access road wound around the back side. Just beyond the building: the far edge of Dockweiler’s first parking lot.

Pulling up to the cover of the building, he drew his gun into a defensive position as he passed behind the building. It appeared vacant, save for a few trucks and a large tractor with a beach rake attached to the back. No lights on, no one around.

He slowed his stride, easing his way to the end of the building with his back pressed up against the wall. Cautiously peeking around the corner, he swept the area for a moving van but froze at what he saw. At the edge of the parking lot was a woman, bent over, hands on knees, and a man standing over her. Even from a distance, Theo could make out the explosive suicide vests they both wore.

Theo caught his breath as he scanned the lot, spotting the van at a distance. But what were Carrie and the suspect doing? As she stood up, the man motioned toward a pile of what looked like discarded construction barricades. She moved toward it.

Theo rounded the corner and ducked out of sight behind a truck.

Walking over to the pile, Carrie attempted to undo the button on her jeans but her bound hands made it impossible. Her shaking fingers failed to twist just right at the awkward angle. She turned back to Sam.

“Sorry, a little help?” she asked meekly.

Looking at her wet pants and the button above them, he seemed both agitated and embarrassed as he walked over to help. As he placed his hands near her waist, she looked away.

He fumbled with the button as well; it was stubborn and his hands were full. Placing the detonator in his pocket, he grabbed the little metal button and popped it through the opening just as Carrie’s knee drove hard into his crotch. His eyes bulged and a grunt shot out of his mouth, his body doubling over in pain. Carrie lunged forward and grabbed the detonator from his pocket. Jumping back, she scrambled out of his reach.

They stared at each other, eyes wide, breathing heavily. Carrie’s bound hands sandwiched the detonator between her palms, her fingers wrapping around the device like Sam’s had around her throat. The look on his face told her that despite all his planning and scheming, despite all his redundancies and backup plans, this was not something he’d anticipated.

Once she pushed the button the children would be safe. The plane could land. She would be granting Bill absolution. This was how it had to be. This was the only way.

“What happened to Ahmad?” she asked.

His eyebrows lifted a little before sinking into a look of painful defeat. As though the act of letting someone in was more difficult than kidnapping her family, than crashing a plane.

“I got to LA in September of 2019,” Sam said in a dark, bitter tone. “It was heaven. The sun, the ocean. Everything so fucking clean. I was doing it. We were doing it together. Finally. All of it. Life was just… outstanding.

“A month later your president ordered a troop withdrawal from northern Syria. Our little pocket of Kurdistan. Which gave Turkey the green light to attack. They came after our people within days.” He shook his head with a dark laugh. “Betrayed, again. Abandoned, again. And after we had sacrificed so much, fighting alongside you, destroying ISIS for you—we lost eleven thousand YPG fighters defeating ISIS for you. Eleven. Thousand. And you do that. You betray us like that.

“When Ben and I saw our town on the news it took three days before we were able to make contact with anyone on the ground. Do you know how many in our families died?”

She didn’t respond.

“All of them, Carrie. Every single one. We were sent pictures so we could identify the bodies. The last image I have of my mother is her bloated, rotting corpse. Blisters on her lips. Burns across her skin. Ahmad. My baby brother. Laid across her. Foam around his mouth. Yellow pus from the chemicals. My brother’s last act was trying to protect our mother.”

His eyes had filled with tears and now they narrowed in on her. She tightened her grip on the detonator.

“Were you aware of the troop drawdown?” he asked. “And the attacks that came as a result?”

She felt the shame blossom across her cheeks. She shook her head.

Sam nodded a few times, crossing his arms. “Well, I’m sure you were busy. Probably had a deadline with work. Scott’s baseball practice. I bet friends were coming over for dinner. Or maybe you saw it on the news but just couldn’t be bothered to care. It was just some poor country. Some poor people. Attacks like that just happen there. That’s just how it is.”

His voice began to rise.

“I know it’s how you reacted because I saw it happen. I was here. So was Ben. We were safe. We were in a country where attacks like that don’t happen. And all around us we watched you get your green smoothies and go to the gym. We watched you take selfies and go on vacation. I watched a grown woman sob hysterically, I mean, rolling around in the grass hysterical, when she saw a dog get hit by a car. And all I could imagine was the look on her face when she clicked past the news of my village’s annihilation. Bored. Distracted. I mean, the privilege.”

He snarled against the word, and Carrie flinched against the truth. The detonator hung between them.

“Ahmad. My baby brother. He was the reason I never resented losing all those years. He was what I was most proud of in my life. And he was taken from me, taken from me because this country sees him, sees our people, as nothing. Expendable. Just poor people they can do whatever they want with.”

A wave rolled in. And another.

“Sam,” Carrie said in a voice that was grounded but full of tenderness, “I get why you’re doing this, but it doesn’t justify what you’re doing.”

He didn’t have a response. He just blinked at her.

“You have every right to be angry, Sam. I would be too. But your guilt can’t—”

“My guilt?” he screamed. “My guilt? What about your guilt? You and your ignorance and inaction. This country and the way you think—”

“But Sam! You were here with us!”

Carrie saw her mistake immediately. Every moment in which he’d blamed himself for leaving them, for not being able to protect them because he too had abandoned them, for living a life of ease while they suffered. It all played across his face, the sucker punch of survivor guilt breaking him open right in front of her.

All he could do was nod his head. Something in him had changed. “You’re right,” he said finally. “You are. But does it change my mind?” He laughed and looked around at his surroundings, shaking his head vigorously, a bit maniacally. He pointed to the detonator. “Your little trick was cute. And your little mind games are cute. But you’re forgetting that I’ve still got a bird in the hand. I’ve still got the kids.”

Carrie’s body went cold.

“And that means—I don’t need you.”

Faster than she could react, Sam reached behind himself and produced the gun, leveling it at her head.

Without even thinking, she flipped up the plastic safety on the detonator and moved her thumb to the button.

A gun fired. Seagulls flew into the night sky.

Sam buckled, blood spurting from the gunshot wound in his left thigh. Screaming, he fell to his knees, the gun dropping at his side.

Carrie kicked at it, the weapon sliding across the sandy asphalt out of reach. Spinning, she saw a young man in a bulletproof vest scrambling down the hill toward them.

“FBI!” he screamed.

Squealing tires cut through the scene. Carrie whipped around to find two black SUVs speeding into the parking lot toward the moving van.

Sam took off, running awkwardly down the beach, sand flying, a trail of blood left in his footsteps.

“I’ll get him,” the FBI agent called out to her as he tore down the beach. “Go!”

Taking off at a dead sprint for the van, Carrie ripped at the vest’s Velcro. Freeing herself, she stopped long enough to set it down carefully on the asphalt, laying the detonator beside it. She raised her arms to identify herself as a nonthreat for the armed agents who were pouring out of the vehicles around the van.

“He needs help!” Carrie screamed. “The other guy. They’re down the beach. Hurry!”