“First of all,” she said, “her name is Irdina, and she’s a single parent. Her husband died in a trucking accident six months ago, right around the time Jaya was diagnosed with a treatable form of leukemia.” Dan glanced down at the photo lying atop the table. That poor, emaciated little body. Those soulful, suffering black eyes. His stomach turned over, and his diaphragm decided to become a steel vice, squeezing his lungs into his throat. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Penni’s lower lip tremble. “The doctors told her Jaya had an eighty percent chance of survival if he received the right therapy, but Irdina didn’t have the money for it. So she took the job at the hotel. Unfortunately, she has yet to save enough to start his treatment and in the meantime Jaya has taken a turn for the worse.”
“Lemme guess,” Dan said. “She was suddenly approached by someone working for the JI. And this someone offered her the money she so desperately needed in exchange for one teeny, tiny favor. In order to save her son, she just had to tape some explosives beneath the beds of a few Americans.”
“To make a long story short,” Vanessa concurred. “But Irdina swears she didn’t know they were bombs.”
Dan snorted. “Come on. Didn’t she see the wires attached to electronic timers? What the hell else would they’ve been?”
“She’s poor and uneducated,” Vanessa said. “And I may not be as fluent in Malay as I am in some other languages, but I’m still good enough to pick up on the sound of bullshit when I hear it. I think she’s telling the truth.”
“You okay, mon cheri?” Rock’s voice drifted over the open line, and Dan could picture the man brushing Vanessa’s ink-black hair over her shoulder. The love those two shared was as obvious as the noses on their faces. And for some reason, Dan’s eyes were pulled over to Penni. The muscle twitching beside her pinched mouth made his heart ache.
“I’m fine, Rock.” Vanessa’s whispered words drifted over the airwaves. “It’s so sad. So unbearably sad.”
And, yeah. That was it in a nutshell.
Still staring at Penni, he admitted, not for the first time, that he hadn’t a clue what to do with her, for her. Did he go with his gut and take her in his arms? Did he leave her alone to courageously endure? What did she want from him? What did she need from him?
Her statue-like stillness, her stubborn silence offered him no direction. And for a few moments, the only sound to break the tense quiet of the storage room was Irdina’s soft sniffle and the hard rumble of a cat’s purr rolling over the open phone line.
Peanut, the fat, mangy tom who was the Knights’ unofficial mascot, always seemed to know when one of the women was unhappy. The feline offered comfort by way of curling his rotund self upon whoever’s lap and starting his engine. Obviously, he’d seen Vanessa’s distress and was proving true to form.
Shit a brick! If the maid had been a fanatical believer in the JI cause, it would’ve been so easy to hate her, so easy to hand her over to the Malaysian authorities. But Irdina wasn’t a terrorist bent on the downfall of all the infidels. She was simply a mother. A terrified, frantic mother who was willing to do anything she could to rescue her son from the savage jaws of illness. It was a goddamned Charlie Foxtrot if ever there was one. Dan scrubbed a hand back through his hair, trying, quite unsuccessfully, to swallow the lump in his throat.
I need a drink.
One day at a time…
“How do you say ‘I’m sorry’ in Malay?” Penni suddenly asked, her shoulders slumped down so low Dan figured she’d need a hydraulic hoist to lift them up again.
Do I go to her? Do I not?
He was still waffling, still ignoring the AA advice that went a little something like quit slackin’ and make shit happen, when Vanessa rattled off a string of syllables. Listening intently, Penni nodded and reached across the table to lay a gentle hand on Irdina’s arm. The maid glanced up, her face tear-streaked and swollen. Tapping a finger on Jaya’s photo, Penni repeated the syllables just as Vanessa had said them. Irdina’s face caved in on itself, and she lifted her hands to cover her eyes, wailing anew.
“I have to—” Penni’s voice hitched as she quickly pushed back from the little table. Her chair tipped over, hitting the tile floor with a loud crack! Then she was racing for the door.
Cock and balls! He’d been wondering when that would happen. Because for the last several hours she’d borne a striking resemblance to a suitcase nuke waiting to go boom!
“Hey guys,” he directed his voice toward the face-up phone, wincing when the door to the storage room slammed shut. The shelves stacked with stainless-steel coffee urns and rows of cups rattled with the impact. “I’m gonna need you two to find out how Irdina knew which beds to plant those incendiary devices under, because I suspect she had direction from someone here at the hotel. In the meantime, I’m gonna go after Penni. I need to make sure she’s okay.” Make some shit happen, indeed.