Flock of Wolves Read online

  "He loved you very much. And he loved his daughter. And he loved me. But he did what he believed was right and necessary." I raised my eyes to her again.

  She held my gaze, anger and the cold breeze shaking her. "You're a fool, just like him. You want to be honorable. But all you're going to be is dead."

  She turned quickly, almost stumbling. I reached out a hand to steady her, but she whipped away from me, and threw over her shoulder one last barb. "I don't ever want to see you again. I don't ever want to hear from you. You leave my daughter alone."

  I watched her storm across the cemetery, her gait steady, rage propelling her forward.

  So different than my own mother. Young and angry, versus dying and defeated.

  I stood there, watching her go until she was just a tiny figure climbing into a black car.

  Then I turned around and looked at the casket in the ground and grief welled up inside me so that I could hardly breathe.

  I heard my father's voice.

  Son, you know what the right thing to do is. There is a price to honor. A price we all must pay. But it's worth it.

  Would he still agree? My father laid in a coma from the time he was shot until the time he died. He'd been so still, so silent but for the beeping of the machines ticking off the beats of his heart…until it failed and the machines fell quiet.

  I'd never hear his voice again.

  It was up to me to forge my path, to make my own decisions.

  I turned away from the casket, from his memory, and strode off toward the wake, toward the sea of blue that waited for me—my brothers in arms. They'd support me now and always.

  I had faith in them.

  Anita

  The hard-packed earth of the running trail cushioned each footfall. My breath came in harsh pants as I sprinted through the jungle. Music of the animals around me, birds squawking and rodents scuttling, broke through the thoughts circling in my mind.

  Should we release the tape?

  Will Zerzan do it anyway?

  How should we respond to the wave of unexpected publicity?

  Joyful Justice's PR and marketing was my responsibility, my obsession, my passion. The public's opinion of us wavered between terrorists and saviors.

  While we never tried to recruit new members as Isis and other organizations did, we did try to convince the world that what we were doing was the right thing.

  People found us through the website joyfuljustice.com. It was started months after Sydney Rye aka Joy Humbolt murdered the Mayor of New York to avenge her brother's death. Joy Humbolt, dog walker, single young woman, broke into the mayor’s home and killed him, because the authorities wouldn't touch him. Then she fled the country. Two years later Joy Humbolt was believed to have died in Mexico, the circumstances suspicious and the body burned beyond recognition.

  Joyfuljustice.com started as a place where people bore witness to injustice and gave each other solace, but had slowly become a place where people planned action against wrongdoers. Once Dan, with his brilliance and unparalleled computer abilities, got involved, it morphed into something organized, dangerous, and very illegal.

  The running path opened up, curving around the edge of the inactive volcano, the trees fading as the path grew narrow. To my left, black rock descended to the ocean at a steep grade. Waves smashed against the island's edge. To my right the volcano rose up, its slopes green and lush. Even at this close distance it was impossible to perceive what took place inside.

  I slowed to a walk and drank from my water bottle. Whenever I had a tough decision to make, or was stuck on a problem, I'd go for a run.

  I also knew that Dan and his morning paddleboarders would be at the beach I was headed toward. I'd never met anyone like Dan. Not only did he run Joyful Justice's strategic operations, use his incredible hacking abilities to gain vital insights, but he also found time to care…

  He was in love with Sydney Rye.

  When I met them, they'd been living together in a hut in Goa, India. Sydney saved my life. I owed her so much.

  A group of sex traffickers I was investigating captured me. They were toying with me, about to rape me before murdering me, when Sydney dashed out of the darkness and saved my life.

  I told her what had happened, the full extent of my investigation, and she joined me to take down the leader and his organization. When I was captured again, and suffered for days at the hands of his men, Sydney never gave up trying to find me. And Dan helped her.

  He followed her lead.

  How many men as brilliant and strong as Dan Burke were willing to follow the lead of a woman?

  My ex-husband flashed across my mind. Tom. Tall, handsome, from a well-known and respected English family, Tom ruled the world with the easy grace of one born to do so. Would he follow a woman? Me?

  I shook my head, trying to clear him from my thoughts. I'd left him because I couldn't live in his shadow. Needed to stand on my own two feet. Not that he'd even tried to overshadow me, but he couldn't help it. The world made him bigger and more important than me.

  I worked my way down the path toward the beach and crouched in the shade of a tree, watching the small figures on their paddleboards moving to the shore.

  Laughter reached me across the water, and I saw one of Dan's engineers, Gregory, throw his head back.

  It was a smaller crew today, only six of them.

  Dan had everyone working overtime trying to identify the Her prophet, in addition to their regular duties.

  It wasn't unusual for him to ask so much of his crew; however, for him to let them out of their outdoor activities was rare.

  The waves brought them in, and using his paddle and bending his knees, Dan surfed along a wave's edge, directing himself to the shore and then dropping into waist-high water.

  He flicked his head, shaking his long hair off his face. It caught the sunlight, reflecting it back. His arms around his board, Dan waded in, the tendons in his forearms popping with the effort.

  I waited in the shade of a tree, needing to speak with him but enjoying watching him too much to say anything. There was something safe about watching Dan…lusting after him.

  The Supreme Lord said: It is lust alone, which is born of contact with the mode of passion, and later transformed into anger. Know this as the sinful, all-devouring enemy in the world.

  I didn't have to worry about Dan—we could never be together, even if we wanted to. I could just look.

  Droplets of water fell from Dan's hair, sliding over his corded shoulders and running down his sculpted chest. He emerged from the water and dropped his board onto the sand, laying his paddle next to it and then reached up to the sky in a stretch.

  Spotting me, Dan smiled. "Hey," he said.

  I stood and brushed the sand off my jogging shorts. "I was out for a run and figured I'd meet you." I shrugged. "I was wondering if you'd made any progress on finding Her."

  His grin grew wider.

  "I'm pretty sure I found her."

  My heartbeat picked up its pace. "Seriously?"

  Dan nodded. "Give me a second to put my board away."

  I nodded. He carried it over to the paddleboard holder set against the rocks, his back muscles defined and glistening in the bright morning light. He slid his board in, and then, saying goodbye to the rest of his crew, jogged back to me.

  He slipped on a pair of flip-flops and grabbed a water bottle but remained shirtless.

  My eyes ran over the contours of his chest, lingering on the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles as we fell into step next to each other on the path back to the command center.

  "So," Dan said, his voice high with excitement. He sounded almost like a teenage boy with a good bit of gossip.

  I was happy to see the broad smile on his face. He'd seemed morose lately. Overworked. No doubt worried about Sydney.

  "So what we did is crosscheck all of the flight information we could find going into Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey in the last four years, with the list of surge
ons in every country that has it available."

  When Dan said "available" he meant that their servers were hooked up to the Internet, not that the information was readily available to the public.

  "Now here's the thing—we know from the information Robert Maxim sent us that whoever worked on Sydney in the field was a hell of a surgeon."

  "Sydney is also in really good shape," I noted.

  Dan nodded and continued. "The point is that we're not looking at a huge pool of people here. Especially since we're also only looking at women." I flinched—not that I didn't know that there were a lot more male surgeons than female. But just that it was so fucking wrong.

  "So, I found—well, I should say, Gregory found…technically, Gregory's script found."

  I let Dan go on, explaining to me in overwhelming detail the brilliance of Gregory's script, which had done the narrowing down for them. I understood bits and pieces of it, but really I just let the up and down of his rich voice lull me. What I needed was a name—a person—in order to humanize this prophet. I didn't care how Dan got it for me.

  "I'm pretty sure her name is Rida Dweck. She's Syrian-born, is off-the-charts brilliant, went back to Syria right before shit hit the fan and hasn't been heard from since."

  I stopped walking. Dan had gone another three steps, his head down, as he continued to talk. But his gaze traveled up and back to me. When his eyes landed on my face, he cocked his head and his brow furrowed in concern.

  "You okay?"

  "I know a Rida Dweck."

  "You do?"

  "She was at Imperial College London while I was at University of Westminster."

  "1994 to '98," Dan said, rattling off the years that Rida Dweck attended ICL.

  "We were friends." My voice came out a soft whisper as her face danced out from my memories.

  Dan walked back to me, the smell of salt and ocean coming with him. A smattering of sand caught in his chest hair glittered in the sunlight that diamonded through the jungle foliage.

  "That's wild," he said. "I knew you and she were in London at the same time, but it never occurred to me..."

  "We met at a yoga class. She was a very serious student." I looked up at him. "She wasn't religious at all. I mean, her family was Muslim but…"

  "No, according to everything I've found, she didn't wear a headscarf and had basically given up her religion."

  "It caused a rift with her family," I said, remembering our long talks. Rida was older than me, but we shared brown skin in a very white world. Neither of our families approved of us. And both of us wanted big things, wanted to help people.

  We'd slowly lost touch. But if someone had asked me, Do you know Rida Dweck, is she a friend of yours? I would have said yes. "I can't believe it's her."

  "Why not?" Dan asked.

  "The Her prophet is a zealot. A diehard feminist. Rida was none of those things. She just wanted to help people. She didn't like conflict. Was brilliant and quiet and bookish."

  "People change," Dan said, his voice edged with hard-learned lessons.

  My neck felt hot and my brain buzzed. "I know people change," I said.

  "Maybe she had an experience…" Dan continued to hold my gaze.

  I had an experience that changed me.

  "She can't be the only person on your list," I said.

  Dan shook his head. "No, there are a few others, but she's the best candidate. She was assumed dead, you know?"

  "I didn't." The ground under my feet felt shaky. In my mind, Rida had stayed the same brilliant, quiet surgeon she'd always been. I'd put Rida in a safe bubble, and Dan was breaking the glass.

  Her

  Because you didn't

  follow the rules

  something bad happened.

  Everything bad is

  always happening. Everything

  has already happened

  and is yet to come.

  You are everything.

  ...pure and good.

  True or false?

  Chapter Eight

  Stories Told, Memories Fold

  April

  They fed me, offered me use of the shower and loaned me clean clothing—a pair of sweatpants and T-shirt. Then we all sat down in the rectory.

  "Thank you," I said. "Thank you for your help, and for listening to me." Taking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes for a moment and gathered my thoughts. Where to begin?

  "My daughter went missing in Isis territory." The women gasped. They were good Christians—Cynthia, Madeline, Debbie, and Nancy traveled from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to this gathering place for Syrian refugees just over the Turkish border to bring the message of Jesus Christ to the people here. They knew about the ills of Isis, but not about the prophet…it was my job to tell them.

  "We were estranged, Joy and I." My lips pursed as memories of our life together flashed through my mind—her rebellious teenage years while I searched for sobriety, the split in our relationship when she moved out, after refusing to acknowledge Jesus as her Lord and Savior. Joy forced me to turn away from her…or so I'd thought. "I lost my son," My throat closed with pain, but I opened my eyes and pushed on. This was more important than me. "He was murdered several years ago."

  "I'm so sorry," Cynthia said, leaning forward and placing a warm hand on my knee, her blue eyes welling with tears.

  I nodded and went on. "When I heard my daughter was missing, something inside me changed." I cleared my throat. "I didn't know if it was the devil or the Lord, I just knew I had to go look for her."

  Nancy nodded, popping a mint into her mouth. She had mousy, brown hair cut into a neat bob. Her lips were painted coral, the same tone as the blouse she wore. "How did you get across the border?" she asked, her chocolate brown eyes round with admiration and curiosity.

  "I couldn't have done it without the Lord," I said. "Until very recently, I lived with the devil always whispering to me."

  The women all nodded, their mouths turned down in knowing frowns. They must hear the devil's voice, too.

  "He told me to drink."

  Color stole over Debbie's neck and cheeks.

  "I drank to excess, even as I was desperate to find my daughter. I drank to where I didn't remember what I did."

  Madeline clucked her tongue, the sound at once admonishing and sympathetic. The oldest in the group, Madeline's silver hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and large square spectacles made her look almost like she was behind a window—hidden from the world, but watching it.

  "When I woke up," I continued, "the Lord had brought me to a man who was willing to take me across the border."

  I left out the part about how I slept with him in exchange for that passage, images of his face above mine and his weight against me bringing heat to my chest.

  "I did not find my daughter for some time, but I met a group of young women. Barely women at all, teenagers really, who had escaped Isis."

  Cynthia nodded, leaning closer, listening intently.

  "They were Yazidi," I looked around to see if they knew what that meant. Solemn nods told me they did know about this small religious group whose beliefs combine Islam, Christianity and other traditions. "Isis believes Yazidis worship the devil, and therefore they had the right to kill the men, and enslave the women. It was former slaves who told me about the prophet. A woman."

  The room became very still.

  "The prophet is Her. We are all Her."

  Cynthia frowned. "I don't understand."

  I gestured toward the tote bag I'd seen her slip her iPad into. "Let me show you a video."

  Cynthia handed over the device, and I navigated to YouTube, finding the video easily.

  The screen filled with the image of a cloaked woman, everything covered, including her eyes. I turned the iPad so that we could all see it, and hit play. The covered figure spoke in Arabic, her voice distorted, and English subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.

  "I am Her," the woman said. "I am all of you. You are all me. We all follow
the one true God, who has come to us, now, in this time of caliphate, to lead us to the Promised Land. Men and women are equal. But they will not know it—the world will not acknowledge it—until we do. We decide our own value." The prophet touched a gloved finger to her temple. "I wear this burka to remind you that we are nameless, faceless, female. We are all one. I am Her. You are Her. We are all Her. I am your prophet, and this is our new beginning. We decide our value." The woman on the screen paused, and a tense silence filled the rectory. "Spread the message, change the world, release the wolf."

  The video ended, and I laid the iPad in my lap.

  "What does she mean, ‘release the wolf’?" Cynthia asked.

  I navigated on the iPad until I found the image I wanted. It was a symbol that I'd helped paint all over Isis-controlled territory: a wolf's profile, its lip raised in a snarl, with a woman's silhouette set inside it—the symbol of the prophet. I turned the iPad around for them to see. "We must fight for our value," I said. "Be willing to release the power inside ourselves in order to make it clear that we are equals, not chattel, not slaves…that we are wolves, capable of great things. An endless flock of wolves."

  Cynthia nodded slowly, Madeline pursed her lips, and Debbie swallowed audibly—fear written across her face.

  "Is the prophet Muslim?" Nancy asked.

  I shook my head. "She is a prophet. Muslims, Christians, Yazidis…many religions believe in prophets."

  "What is this prophet's name?"

  "She is nameless, faceless. Her."

  "But," Cynthia said, "what makes her a prophet? Just because she says so?"

  "No, she has produced a miracle. Brought a woman back from the dead. There are witnesses…I, myself, have seen this Miracle Woman." I paused; the women leaned toward me. I had them. "My daughter is the Miracle Woman. And I fought by her side in the battle of Surama."

  They stared at me, eyes wide, mouths slack—I'd shocked them.

  "Your daughter?" Cynthia asked.