Alpha

Chapter Seven

The first thing Bell does is argue with himself. He tells himself that WilsonVille is a popular vacation spot, that people come from all over the country, all over the world, even, to meet there. Family reunions and birthday parties and wedding anniversaries and, yes, of course, school trips to celebrate graduations or team victories or even the end of another year of education. He knows this, it’s not open to debate, it does not require someone to convince him. Summer, too, sees the highest number of visitors to the park, and again, school trips are often scheduled during the summer vacation for all the obvious reasons.

All these things are true, but still, he cannot bring himself to accept his daughter’s impending visit at face value. Whether he’s being paranoid or simply cautious, he doesn’t know, but at the least, due diligence is required. So Bell checks with WilsonVille reservations, asks them to look up the Hollyoakes School for the Deaf, and a bright-voiced woman named Vitoria confirms it for him within minutes; the Hollyoakes school has had their reservation and deposit down for almost twelve months now. Well in advance of his own placement in the park.

That should do it for Bell, that should satisfy, but it’s not enough, and now he knows he’s being paranoid, thinking that the reservation could be backdated. He needs a harder confirmation, and that’s easy enough to find in his position as the deputy director of park safety.

Tuesday morning, he collars Shoshana Nuri as soon as he’s in the office.

“Have a job for you,” he says.

“Sure.”

“Verify a school trip this weekend, the Hollyoakes School for the Deaf, based out of Vermont.”

“Should be in the database.”

“It is in the database. I want a verbal, I want you to call the school.”

“And say what?”

“Whatever you like, I just want the verbal confirmation. I want a confirmation on the dates, when they made the plans. Tell them you’re double-checking, whatever you like. Do it now.”

Shoshana Nuri raises an eyebrow, puzzled, then shrugs. Bell goes to his office, is just settling in when she sticks her head through the doorway.

“They confirm,” she tells him.

Bell nods, and she holds a second longer.

“My daughter’s school,” he says.

“I see.”

“Come in, close it,” Bell tells her.

She does, standing just in the doorway.

“Here’s my problem,” Bell says. “My problem is I don’t want them coming.”

“You have new intel?”

“I have the same intel you do.” He fixes his eyes on hers. “Unless you’re holding back.”

“I am not.”

“I have the same intel you do.”

“So you’re being paranoid.”

“It’s my daughter and ex-wife.” Bell pauses. “Of course I’m being paranoid.”

Nuri considers this for a second, then nods. “Yes.”

“I’m sending it up the line.”

“To do what?”

“To put a stop to it.”

Nuri shakes her head. “You’ll compromise us.”

“It’s my daughter and my ex-wife, you think I care about that?”

“I do, yes.”

For a moment, Bell thinks he might hate her, beautiful, young, smart, and absolutely right. He feels caught, a sudden surge of dread that is almost sickening rising in his gullet. The helplessness of watching an accident unfold with adrenaline clarity, the illusion of slowing time, without the grace of attendant speed.

“Think this through,” Nuri says. She comes closer, approaching the desk, and Bell rises abruptly, suddenly wanting to maintain the space between them. “You think you’re being played, you’re being compromised, but it checks out. The timing checks out, makes this legitimate. This is a flat tire on the Humvee, this is a broken radio, this is a dead battery. That’s all this is.”

Bell doesn’t speak.

“You send this up the line, you’re compromised. They’ll pull you out and have to scramble someone into your place and that will draw attention, will demand questions be asked and answers given. Operational security will be destroyed. They’ll pull you out, and that’ll expose your man, that’ll leave me here, alone, high and dry. I am not a shooter, Mr. Bell. I am not a shooter.”

“I am compromised. I am obligated to inform Brickyard. One way or another, I am obligated to inform.”

She looks at him, her jaw clenching for a second. A nod, reluctant.

“You do what you have to do.”

She leaves, shuts the door behind her.

Wednesday night, the Yard House, louder, and the volume on the televisions is up. Ruiz is waiting at the bar, a long oblong island in the middle of the space, and Bell squeezes in next to him, displacing a squadron of secretaries. Hears one of them remarking on his ass, loud enough to know it’s a come-on, and all it does is annoy him.

Ruiz waits for him to order another of the same IPA, and they detach from the rail, move to a newly vacated standing table. Bell gets a good look at Ruiz’s expression, and the colonel is not looking like a happy man.

“Are you asking me to pull you out?”

Bell has been wondering the same thing. Wondering the same thing and feeling, yet again, the same conflict that destroyed his marriage, the same conflict that divorce was supposed to remove.

“What’s the intel?” Bell asks.

“Same as before. Are you asking to be pulled?”

“You can’t cock-block them? You can’t shut this down?”

“Not without exposure. I need an answer.”

Bell shakes his head, arguing with himself. Too many ifs, and if he knew, if he was certain, he could answer, and as he thinks that, he has his response. They’re coming, Amy and Athena and the rest, they’re coming regardless, unless he goes and stops them himself, and there it is.

Because if, God help him, it comes down this weekend and he’s not in the park, he will never forgive himself.

“No,” Bell says.

Four minutes past eight on Bell’s watch, it’s Saturday morning, and he hears them coming. Deaf children vocalize with joy, and without restraint, without self-censorship, without care. Then they grow, and they discover judgmental eyes, and self-awareness gives way to self-?consciousness. They learn that their voices are unwelcome to many who hear, and they censor themselves. That he can hear them now, Bell knows, speaks to their excitement and their happiness.

Bell raises his head to see Athena and Amy and a man who must be Howe leading a pack of five other teenagers toward the faux-wrought-iron gates of the VIP entrance. He can almost recognize Athena’s classmates-some of them, at least-young men and women with whom his daughter has grown up and who probably know her far better than he ever will. But the sight of her here and now, the distinctive sound of her laughter, her fingers flicking and flying in silent banter with her friends, banishes the guilt and the regret and, at least for the moment, the paranoia. Despite everything, Jad Bell is glad to see his daughter.

Amy spots him first, says something to Howe, takes a stutter step forward, picking up speed. Athena reacts, follows her mother’s line of motion toward Bell, and the smile on her face flashes into a scowl. No face reveals emotion like a teenager’s, and the anger is still there in hers, but it fades as Shoshana Nuri unlatches the gate. Then his daughter is racing forward, eager, passing Amy and straight toward him, and Bell catches her. In that moment, in the early sunshine, in her hug, everything is forgiven. She squeezes him tightly, like she’s six and not sixteen, lets him go, looks up at him. Brushes strawberry-blond hair from her eyes, gleeful.

“Hi, Dad.” Athena speaks the words aloud, eager and atonal.

“Hello, Gray Eyes,” Bell says.

She reads his lips, hugs him again, even more tightly than before, and then remembers that she’s sixteen and that her friends are watching. Her hands slip away from him and she steps back, casting her eyes down in a moment of embarrassment. Bell sees this for what it is, turns to his ex-wife in an attempt to spare his daughter, leaning forward and giving Amy a kiss on the cheek. She accepts it with a smirk.

“Jad.”

“You look good, Amy.”

Her laugh is self-effacing, dismissive of the compliment as insincere, though he means it as anything but. A year younger than he, fit and healthy, she’s more lovely than ever, Bell thinks. It’s with some heartache that he recognizes that maturity has given her a confidence that was lacking in their youth. She’s carrying a backpack over one shoulder, adjusts it as she gestures to the man who, presumably, is Howe.

“I don’t think you two have actually met,” Amy says. “Martin Howe, Jad Bell. Jad, this is Marty.”

Howe offers his hand. He’s two inches shorter than Bell, and slender, wearing khaki shorts just below his knees and an open blue oxford over a white T-shirt with the Hollyoakes school seal printed in navy at its center. Black hair that’s a little too long, stubble that’s almost verging to beard, black with touches of copper to it. When they shake hands, he squeezes a little harder than necessary, smiling, eager.

“Nice to meet you, Jad. Very nice to meet you at last.”

Bell returns the pleasantry, frees his hand. Like Amy, Howe has a backpack of his own, similarly slung. Past them, Athena’s classmates shuffle impatiently back and forth, silent conversations coming to a halt one after another as they await entry to WilsonVille. There are three boys, two more girls, most of them in jeans, a couple in shorts. All wear the Hollyoakes shirts.

“If you want to come over here?” Nuri says. She’s speaking to Howe. “And have everyone line up?”

Howe nods, turns to the class, relaying the instruction in sign. The students fall into line, Athena giggling as she and one of the boys shoulder one another for position. The boy in question is African American, a hand taller than she, hearing aids visible in both ears. Athena glances to him, sees her father looking, looks away, and Bell is wondering just who this boy is when Amy puts a hand on his arm.

“I did everything I could,” she says quietly. “But we couldn’t just up and cancel without a good reason, Jad. It wouldn’t be fair to the class.”

Bell feels the tension return as if pouring from a pitcher into his breast. He forces a smile on Amy, puts his hand on her back, steering her a half dozen steps away from the group. She allows it, puzzled, then looks past him to where Nuri is speaking with Howe, and through him, to the class. Going through backpacks quickly, handing out the CELEBRATION! buttons for everyone to wear.

“So who’s she?” Amy asks.

“Shoshana? She works with me. Listen.” Bell faces her, head bent, and Amy looks up at him, and if it were twenty years ago, the next thing he would say would be “I love you” and then he’d be kissing her. But it’s not, it’s Saturday morning, closing on the end of summer, and there’s been nothing from Ruiz, and Chain still hasn’t found whatever the hell it was that got Vesques killed, and, for that matter, neither has Bell.

“Listen,” he says again. “Stay together today. Don’t let anyone wander off. Pay attention when you’re on the rides, know where the exits are.”

“We always do.” Amy searches his expression, frowns. “Is this your normal paranoia or something else?”

“It’s me asking you to do this thing, that’s all it is.”

“I’m thirty-nine, Jad, I think I know what I’m doing. I know it better than you do, in fact. This is no different than running a classroom or taking them on any other field trip.”

“I’m not questioning your abilities, Amy.”

“Sure sounds like it.” She stares at him, the frown gone, mouth turning to a hard line. Bitterness and the memory of countless fights are swirling up between them, they can both feel it, and Bell can’t even remember what the fights were about, but the sense of deja vu is profound, and saddening.

“We all set?” It’s Howe, coming up on Bell’s periphery, his head inclined ever so slightly forward, almost solicitous. “Everything good?”

Amy, still glaring up at Bell, says, “Everything’s fine, Marty.”

“Good, great!” He stops beside them. “They’re acting like colts in a stable, we should get moving.”

Another moment’s pause, awkward, and Bell knows that Athena and her class are watching them now-Nuri, too, most likely. He drops his head, breaking the stare with his ex, sighs before straightening up again, turning to look at Howe. “It’s going to get busy today. If I were you guys, I’d hit the near attractions first, the Wild World stuff. The animal shows are best in the morning, before they get tired. Then maybe loop around the park counterclockwise. You make it up to Lion’s Safari by ten or so you’ll have a lead on the rest of the crowds, at least until around noon.”

Bell gestures, pointing to one of the pathways that snakes away from where they’re standing, to the northeast, skirting around Wild World Live! Howe follows the direction of his arm, nods, then checks the map in his hand. The standard park visitor’s map. Nuri probably handed them out with the badges, Bell thinks.

“I’m not seeing anything here designated for the deaf, no services,” Howe says. “When we planned the trip, the website said there were services.”

“The website’s correct. Just check in when you come off the line wherever you are, and as you enter, there’ll be a Friend there. Let him or her know what you need.”

“Multimedia on a lot of these rides.” Howe taps the map. “If they’re not captioned, I’d like an interpreter.”

“The park utilizes reflective, handheld, and even open captioning, depending on the attraction. Just let the Friends there know, they’ll take care of you.”

Howe looks up from the map once more. “I was under the impression we’d have an escort, actually. An ASL interpreter.”

Bell takes a second, thinking about this man, wondering if he’s pushing because he thinks he can or because he thinks he must. If this man, Howe, is a sincere advocate for his students, trying to secure for them the best WilsonVille experience that he can. Bell thinks that if he’d spent the last ten years as a father and not a soldier, he would know the answer.

“I’ll see what I can do about getting a dedicated interpreter assigned to the group,” Bell says.

Howe smiles slightly, nods, relaxing. There’s both a sense of relief and a vague disappointment coming from him, as if he has, perhaps, been cheated of battle. As if this is a fight Martin Howe has joined many times, and will do again. Bell knows the feeling, and it softens him immediately to the teacher.

“I’m in my office or on the grounds all day,” Bell says, turning back to Amy. “I’m easy enough to find if you need anything. Just ask anyone in a blue blazer, they’ll direct you.”

“I think we’ll be okay, Jad.” She smiles thinly at him, then turns to where the class is clustered perhaps ten feet from Nuri. Amy raises her arm, flaps her hand loosely, immediately catching their attention. Before she’s even begun to sign, they’re surging forward, unable or unwilling to contain their eagerness. Howe gives Bell another grin, thanks him once more, then moves to join Amy as the group begins to follow her. She’s taking the northeast pathway that Bell indicated, and that, at least, makes him feel a little better about things.

Athena shoots a glance back over her shoulder at him as they depart. Gives him another one of those smiles, signing quickly, small gestures.

Thank you Daddy I love you.

See you later Gray Eyes.

Her smile blossoms broader, and then she turns away, heading into the Wild World.