his anger at the person who deserved it, the witch. Why not be honest and lay the blame where it should go? Why should the responsibility fall on her shoulders when the witch was the real culprit in this drama? And if Miranda were being honest, she was sick of being under the witch’s tyranny.
Miranda drummed her fingers on her desk. “To tell you the truth, our superior has filled the chief of security position.”
Giger gritted his teeth, the veins in his thick neck bulging and pulsing. His pale complexion transformed before her eyes, getting redder and redder by the moment. His body tensed and shook with rage. He slammed his fist down on the edge of Miranda’s desk and made her jump. “I wanted that position. The bitch knew that. She did this on purpose.”
“I wish I could help you, but my hands are tied on this. She hired this man without my knowledge.” Miranda poured it on.
“We’ll see about this. Nobody passes Giger Anfinson over.” Giger stalked from the office, his hand resting on the pistol beneath his jacket.
Chapter 2
Jijiga, Ethiopia
Lucy rode in the passenger seat, clutching her purse, feeling her insides being jarred loose.
Her father drove the Hummer over another unusually large rut.
Lucy grabbed the dashboard and glanced over at the driver’s seat. Was that a hint of a smile on her father’s face? He’d found every hole from here to the airstrip. Lucy refused to acknowledge that his lousy driving was getting to her, so she held the dash and braced her feet on the Hummer’s floor.
Beyond a curt hello, they hadn’t spoken, and the tension in the Hummer had turned into a thick wall that she dared not climb. Why had her mother sent him to pick her up? What was she thinking? Quality father and daughter time? Yeah, right.
She glanced out the window. Up ahead, the Karamara hills looked like a massive python with rolling humps that met plains and river valleys as far as she could see. In the middle of this wide expanse, the mud and grass huts, tin shacks and markets of Jijiga looked like scattered Tinker Toys. Jijiga was a reasonably large city for the region, an aid coordination center for Ethiopia. A city born out of need, where people came to get food and medicine to survive the drought-stricken area.
The rain gods had been kind to the area. The flat plains that were usually clouds of red dust were now verdant. Even a coiffure of green covered the hills. Streams coiled out across the plains. She could see a group of Amhara women washing clothes in a nearby brook.
Silence stretched between them, the tension solidifying by the second. Lucy felt it pulsing against her, drenching the air. When she found it hard to breathe any longer, she said, “It looks like they’ve had rain here.” The weather was a safe subject.
“Your mother says it’s a blessing for the area. The nomads are going back to the countryside to graze their herds. It’ll mean less starvation and people will be able to survive,” he said, his words forced through his lips, uttered with stilted formality. He didn’t glance at Lucy, but stared straight ahead at the road. A muscle twitched in his right cheek.
She had brought up a subject. His turn now. She waited.
Nothing.
She watched as they passed two men on camels and asked, “So, how is China?”
“Just as I left it.”
She stared at this man who’d always been a stranger to her, yet in many ways a mirror of herself. Both independent, both stubborn, and both apparently feeling the strain of dealing with an alter ego.
For a man of fifty-seven, her father was still in good shape. Well-defined muscles showed below his short-sleeve safari shirt and matching shorts. He wore a fedora that covered his short, red, wavy hair. Since the last time she’d seen him, he’d grown thick muttonchops that sliced across his ruddy cheeks and almost touched the corners of his mouth. That wasn’t the only change in him. More wrinkles crept out from the corner of his brown eyes, and the freckles on his face had multiplied, unlike her own that only dotted her nose. She stared at the large hands clutching the steering wheel, the veins protruding on his muscular freckled forearms. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt them hug her. Had her father ever hugged her?
“So…”
Lucy almost jumped at the sound of her father’s confident voice. “So,” she parroted back, knowing she must have sounded like a voice recorder.
A pregnant silence hung between them as if neither of them could think of one safe subject.
He shifted in the driver’s seat and stretched out his left leg, rubbing his knee. Was that arthritis bothering him? Somehow he’d aged without her realizing it. God, she wished things were different. She fidgeted in her seat, pulling at the seat belt.
Finally he said, “So, how is this latest venture of yours going?”
His emphasis on the word venture made her grit her teeth. He seemed unable to say the word, so she supplied it for him, “You mean the team?”
“Yes, that.”
“It pays the bills.”
He paused as if trying to control his emotions. It didn’t last long as he said, “You put your life in danger to pay bills?”
“You have a lot of room to reproach me. You work in Third World countries where you need a full-time security force to protect you.”
“I don’t risk my neck like you—”
“Don’t you? The only difference between us is that you blow up mountains. I blow up targets. And have you forgotten you’re the one who got me interested in demolitions?”
“I didn’t know you’d make a career of it.”
“Ah, come on, Dad. You were the one who taught me how to make gunpowder before I was eight. Most girls my age were playing with dolls. I was designing bombs. Admit it. You were grooming me.”
“Not for taking the kind of chances you do.”
“Don’t talk to me about chances.” In her heart Lucy always knew her father had wanted a son. Tough. He’d gotten her.
“I’ll talk all I want. I never thought you’d use that knowledge in a mercenary capacity.” He sighed as if part of his soul was escaping through his lips. “You could have worked with me, done something constructive with your life.”
Here we go. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Go directly to emotional jail. She forced her voice to stay even. “That’s right, but I’m happy with my life.”
“You should have finished engineering school.”
“Wasn’t for me.” She hadn’t been able to tame the restlessness in her long enough to get an engineering degree.
“Premed didn’t suit you, either. You destroyed your mother’s hopes of you following in her footsteps.”
“It doesn’t bother Mom half as much as it bothers you.”
“And
