The Chimera Secret

3

Ethan Warner was not a nervous kind of guy. He had known fear, and plenty of it. Ethan had stared death in the face several times and, so far, had survived to tell the tale. But the corrosive, gnawing anxiety grinding through his guts right now was far worse for him, especially as it was entirely irrational.

The restaurant looked out over the glittering expanse of Lake Michigan, slate-gray waves flecked with white crests rolling their way south. A pair of cutters were carving their way north against the blustery wind, tacking hard to make any progress. Watching them helped to distract Ethan from the impending confrontation. He spent several minutes wishing the moment would arrive, and then when it did he wished he had more time to prepare.

‘You’re looking good, Ethan.’

The brunette who strode confidently toward his table was a couple of inches shorter than he was, her long hair flowing across her shoulders, but there was a familiar arrogance to the set of her frame and a recognizable icy-gray gleam in her eyes as though they were reflecting Lake Michigan’s frigid waters.

Ethan stood and hugged her. Some of the anxiety thawed inside him.

‘Natalie.’

He hadn’t seen his sister in four years. Natalie Warner had studied politics in New York City while Ethan had been working overseas as a journalist. An internment at the White House had followed after her honors degree, and now she worked as an analyst for Congress at the Government Accountability Office in Washington DC.

She sat down opposite him. Although only twenty-five years old she was already wrapped in a cloak of authoritative confidence that belied her years. Ethan could picture himself in her from years gone by, the same determination they shared that had gotten him into the US Marines as an officer and later through the greatest tragedy of his life. Natalie’s clear eyes and flawless skin were only marred by the wide jaw she shared with Ethan, making her attractive if not beautiful.

‘So,’ she began, her voice husky like his own, ‘to what do I owe this honor?’

Ethan leaned back in his chair as the waiter poured sparkling wine into their glasses. The restaurant was out of town and half-empty, which was why Ethan had picked it. Most people were at work. Ethan worked for himself, and Natalie was on vacation for a week to visit their parents.

‘Been a long time since I last saw you, and Pa said you were in town.’

‘You two are talking?’ Natalie’s eyes sparkled. ‘Did Mom pay you both?’

‘I called home a while back.’

‘Jesus, is it terminal?’

Ethan laughed. Natalie had a forthright way about her. The laugh faded away as he recalled why it had been so long since he’d been home.

‘It’s been a tricky couple of years.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘Kind of why I’m here.’

Natalie sipped some of her wine and set the glass down before replying.

‘You’re off the grid for four years, then you turn up when you want something? Ethan, you live in the same city as Mom and Pop yet you’ve barely spoken to them in all that time.’

‘I wasn’t myself,’ Ethan said, keeping his voice even. ‘Things are better now. Kind of.’

Natalie merely raised a questioning eyebrow and sipped again at her wine. Ethan sighed heavily, not touching his drink.

‘Joanna might still be alive,’ he said.

Natalie froze in motion, her glass touching her lips and her eyes staring into Ethan’s. She set the glass back down.

‘And you know this how?’

‘Can’t say much about it,’ Ethan replied. ‘Some of the people we’re contracted to have access to high-level intelligence. I did some work for one of them and in return I got information. They had footage of her, Nat. Not much, but enough.’

‘How old was the reel?’ she asked him.

‘No more than six months old at the time. Nearly a year now.’

Natalie stared at her glass for a long moment, and Ethan could tell that the sudden revelation wasn’t provoking the kind of excitement in her that he had hoped to see.

Joanna Defoe had been Ethan’s fiancée and business partner. Working as investigative journalists in some of the world’s most dangerous places, they had exposed corruption and in the process saved dozens of victims of abduction and incarceration from lonely, unjust deaths. But their achievements had finally caught up with them in the sinister, sun-scorched alleys of Gaza City. Joanna Defoe had vanished without trace four years previously, presumed abducted by militants. Ethan’s life had collapsed in the aftermath of her disappearance, all of his money expended in a futile search for her across the Middle East. Distraught, broke and driven by little more than alcohol and bitterness, Ethan had been given the chance to search for her again in Israel just a year previously by a friend who had been his commander in the US Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom. That had led to his work with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the information that had recently identified Joanna as alive. Among other things.

‘What do you want?’ Natalie asked.

She wasn’t looking at him. Ethan chose his words carefully.

‘I need somebody to look into where she might be, do some digging in places that I can’t.’

Natalie kept her eyes on her wine glass.

‘Can’t you just ask your friend? Surely they would know where to begin better than I would?’

‘His help was a one-off,’ Ethan explained. ‘I can’t go back to him without having to risk my neck again for the chance of more information.’

Natalie finally looked up at him. ‘What the hell are you involved in, Ethan?’

‘It’s complicated. We’re bail bondsmen by trade, but we also do investigative work for the government.’

Natalie leaned forward. ‘Who?’

Ethan paused as he figured that there wasn’t much harm in telling her. Christ, she worked for Congress — she could probably find out herself with a single phone call.

‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ he said. ‘We pick up cases that the other agencies write off as unworkable.’

‘Unworkable how?’

Ethan shrugged. ‘Budgets don’t justify the work, or the manpower’s not available because agencies are focused on counterterrorism. We get called in to investigate in their place.’

Natalie was watching him with a steady gaze as though trying to peer through the DIA’s veil of secrecy and uncover the bizarre things that he had seen.

‘Who’s we?’ she asked him finally.

‘Nicola Lopez, my partner. Former DC detective. She’s solid.’

‘She’d be solid if she was still a ranked detective,’ Natalie uttered. ‘She fall on hard times too?’

‘Partner got killed,’ Ethan replied as he felt his jaw tighten as it so often did when he thought about Lopez. ‘Corruption. I don’t blame her for leaving the force after what happened.’

Natalie took a deep breath before speaking.

‘Ethan, the last time you went looking for Jo it nearly killed you.’

Ethan managed a ghost of a smile. ‘That’s why I’m asking you to do it instead.’

‘Charmed, I’m sure.’

‘I’m not doing any field work this time until I have a solid lead,’ Ethan said. ‘I don’t need much, Nat, just a bit of time in the books seeing if there’s anything that’s been overlooked. Congress might not know anything but it’s a good place to start. The National Security Agency might know something too.’

Natalie laughed.

‘Sure, no problem. I’ll just march into the most secure agency in the world and ask to borrow some coffee or something.’

‘It’s more than I’ll be able to do,’ Ethan replied. ‘I know Congress is about to start an investigation into the intelligence community. Your team will have unprecedented access to files from the CIA, DIA, NSA and God knows who else.’

‘Do Mom and Pop know about this?’

‘No,’ Ethan replied quickly, ‘and let’s keep it that way, okay? I don’t want them worrying.’

Natalie’s eyes flickered with sheet lightning. ‘Like you didn’t want them worrying when you disappeared for four years? Jesus, Ethan.’

Her words sliced through his shame, but he did not try to avoid it. Like a victim of depression who cuts for the relief the pain brings, he faced it head on, sucked it in and let it settle in his guts.

‘I’m back now,’ he replied, ‘and I’m not going to make the same mistake again, Nat, but I can’t let this go until I know what the hell happened to Joanna. I need closure.’

Natalie’s gaze bore into him from across the table.

‘You lost her once, Ethan, and it tore you apart. You seem like you’re finally getting over it and now you want to dive straight back in like nothing’s happened. You ever think that if she’s out there, she might have contacted you by now? You ever think that she might not want to?’

Ethan felt tiny pricks of pain in the corners of his eyes. ‘Every day.’

Natalie’s eyes softened.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said. ‘Just make sure that it’s what you really want, Ethan.’

She looked down at her menu. Ethan glanced out of the restaurant windows at the bleak surface of the lake and asked himself the same question he’d been asking himself for six months: Is this really what I want?