justdidntseeit | [[ los angeles ]]

[ long day, getting longer ]

June 10, 2005
Los Angeles, Calif.
5:08 p.m.

“Do you want to suffer like he did?”

She’s still shaking, but she doesn’t feel cold. She can’t stop staring at the clear plastic sheet covering Paul’s body, dark with blood-spatters.

“No.” Her gaze falls to her lap, to the red splotch streaking one thigh of her khakis. “Of course not.”

“Then tell me what you learned from your father’s computer files, who you told.”

She looks at the nameless man, tears leaking down her cheeks.

“I already told you, I don’t know anything.”

5:31 p.m.

Strands of blond hair cling to the side of her blood-slick neck. Her earlobe burns from the scalpel-thin vertical slice, and she’s trying not to see her silver earring in his palm, its still-closed clasp crimson and wet.

She pushes past the pain and her rising panic, forces her bound wrists not to fidget behind her back.

“You and your friend know so much about me,” she says as calmly as she can, “so you probably know my family spent five years in the Middle East when I was younger.”

He doesn’t say anything, just sets her bloodied earring on the lip of the dirty tub and starts cleaning his small stainless-steel blade.

“We spent three years in Riyadh, another two in Bahrain. We admire the Muslim culture. My sister’s marrying a Muslim — ”

“You know, no real Muslim would marry a woman from the West.”

“You’re wrong.” She shakes her head, sweat-damp hair rasping against her sticky skin. “Reza’s whole life is based on the Five Pillars.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you know about the Five Pillars?”

She wills her teeth and tongue to cooperate.

“There is none worthy of worship except God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God,” she answers in Arabic, but can’t keep the tremble from the words. “That’s the First Pillar. The other four are prayer, charity, Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca.”

When he doesn’t speak, she looks up at him, hope flaring in her chest.

“Barely a nick,” he says, his eyes flicking to her left ear. “Not nearly as bad as it feels.”

Fresh tears well in her red-rimmed eyes.

“You don’t have to kill me; you can just leave me here. By the time anyone finds me, you’ll be a hundred miles away.”

She’s grasping at straws, and they’re snapping in her numb fingers. If she can move, get to the doorway, any doorway, maybe she can find the bar and —

“Something’s going to happen today, very soon.” He steps behind her. “Something terrible, something that will cause a lot of pain and suffering. This will be easier.”

He racks the gun in his hands.

nonopleaseno

She squeezes shut her eyes, waiting, and then she’s praying, not for deliverance or salvation, but to see Milliways after he pulls the trigger.

5:40 p.m.

“It’s all right, just breathe. It’s over.”

Her earlobe still throbs from the cut; her eardrums are still aching from the gunfire.

But she’s nodding, stumbling out of the bathroom, away from the body (bodies) thanks to a firm, reassuring hand on her upper arm, leading her outside.

She sinks onto an Adirondack chair, the afternoon sun warm on her clammy skin.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when her shoulders jump; one of the agents — the man who shot Ali’s assistant, the man who saved her — is wrapping his jacket around her.

“Kate.”

She looks up, the gentle voice almost familiar, somehow.

“My name is Jack Bauer. I’m a federal agent. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal in there, but I’m afraid I have to ask you a few questions.”

She tightens the coat against her collarbone with a wooden nod.