BoneMan's Daughters (6 page)

Without a word he opened the bottle, pressed it to Ryan’s lips, and fed him like a mother might feed her child. Ryan sucked
down the liquid, surprised at his thirst.

Kahlid withdrew the bottle and set it on the table next to the rice cakes. “There’s a bucket in the corner. I will remove
your chains so that you can relieve yourself and stretch your bones. If you attempt to escape, I will put a bullet through
your thigh. Do you understand?”

Ryan blinked.

Kahlid rounded his chair, unfastened the shackles, and helped him to his feet. His joints felt like fire and it took him half
a minute to loosen the stiffness. Hobbling over to a lone bucket and roll of toilet paper in the back corner, he glanced around
his prison, but there was nothing new to see. Just the lone chair, the table, the camera, and the photographs.

He used the bucket and walked back to the chair. The locks on the chains were made by Master Lock.

“Go ahead, stretch, get your blood flowing. I need you to be exhausted, but not in pain to the point of indifference.”

Ryan’s mind began to spin again. Kahlid could hardly utter a word without complicating matters for him. Navy Intelligence
could use a man like him.

“That’s enough. Please”—his captor motioned to the chair —“sit.”

Thirty seconds later Ryan was back in chains, staring at Kahlid. It occurred to him that the brief reprieve had worked against
him. Chained again, he felt a surge of hopelessness that wouldn’t have been as acute without the reminder of freedom.

All expected techniques, and effective.

“According to your uniform, you are an officer,” Kahlid said. “Not that it matters. You have extraordinary control of your
mind. You don’t express emotion very well. You might even be emotionally repressed. Worse, you might even be proud of yourself
for not succumbing to my blatant attempts to affect your emotions. What you don’t know is that this will only work against
you.”

Again, expected.

A slight, nearly sympathetic smile crossed Kahlid’s mouth. “You’re in intelligence, aren’t you? G-2? Again, just a guess.
Tell me, how would you judge the effectiveness of my methods to break you thus far?”

No harm in engaging the man on this level. “You’re good. Predictable at times and unorthodox at the same time. But I don’t
think you understand me very well. We both know that I’m already dead. None of this matters to me. Yes, it would be nice to
die quickly, but we both know that you won’t allow that. So I’m left with no option but to suffer whatever you have in mind
for a matter of hours, days, or weeks and then die.”

“So calculating. Arabs are far more passionate than Americans are, I think. Everything makes so much sense in your perfect
world, doesn’t it? Now you’ve come over here to show us poor Arabs how to enter your perfect world.”

Ryan didn’t think a rebuttal would help matters.

The man’s shoulders sagged and he frowned. “Okay then, you leave me without a choice. We will play our game. But you must
know one thing before I tell you what my intentions are. Many would say that I am insane. What I’m about to do will be heralded
as inhuman by my own brothers. But you give me no choice.”

“Like I said, I’m already dead,” Ryan said.

“Yes.” Kahlid looked at the pictures. “And so are they. Killed by Satan himself, whom you don’t seem to care about, because
you don’t believe in God.”

Kahlid swiveled to him, and Ryan saw the change in his eyes immediately. Something in his mind had shifted.

“Do you know how many women and children your war on our country has killed? Do you have any notion at all of how many thousands
of innocent victims the Great Satan has left dead in my country?”

A small voice whispered a warning in Ryan’s mind, but he couldn’t make it out.

“They all die; they die, they are butchered by your bombs and your missiles and it’s all so clinical and distant—you don’t
feel the pain because it’s so far away and because you don’t understand the wailing of the mothers and fathers and of God
himself when you kill the children!”

He spat the words with bitterness.

“So now”—he paused, taking a deep breath through his nostrils and closing his eyes—“you are going to help me bring the pain
of our loss to all the mothers and fathers of your country.”

Ryan’s eyes snapped open.

“Do you understand yet?”

The man thrust his finger back at the photographs. “If Satan had killed a few children on the streets of any town in your
country, horror would settle in the hearts of millions. Ted Bundy kills a few dozen women and the press screams foul, foul,
foul. Your Beltway Killer shoots a handful of people on the streets of your capital and the country cries out with outrage!”

Kahlid blinked. “But Satan comes here and kills thousands of women and children and not a single tear is shed. And I tell
myself, I have to turn the thousands into one. If they can see just one die, they will understand our pain.”

“This is madness,” Ryan said.

The man’s nostrils flared. “Bring him in!”

The door swung open and a shirtless young man, perhaps fifteen, walked in, wearing an expression that looked part confused,
part curious.

“Ahmed.” Kahlid smiled at the boy. “Come here, Ahmed.”

The boy walked over to Kahlid tentatively, eyes wide at the sight before him.

Kahlid put his hand on the youth’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, he doesn’t speak a word of English. Which is good, because if he
knew that I was going to kill him the way my own son was killed—that I was going to crush his bones—he would cause quite a
scene.”

Nausea swept through Ryan’s gut.

“I don’t have a building to drop on him, so I’m going to break his bones with a hammer. To be more accurate,
you’re
going to break his bones. You will kill him, just as you killed my wife and my child one year ago to this day. No one cried
because no one saw. So you will do it again, and this time we will put it on film.”

He wouldn’t kill, of course. How could they force him to kill? But the mere suggestion of it made his mind swim.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” was all he could manage.

“You can save this child a fate that neither of us would wish upon him,” Kahlid said. “You’re wearing a wedding band; tell
us where your wife and children live. I have some friends in your country who are waiting for my call. They will go to your
home, kill your wife and your child on camera so that the whole world will know how painful even one lost child can be. Look
into the camera and tell us to execute your child and I will spare this one.”

Ryan’s mind refused to process his thoughts logically for a few beats. What was he being asked to do? Surely they… Surely
this man didn’t…

Then the game altered in his mind and he knew that he wasn’t the only one who would die here in this room. They would use
empathetic pain to break him. Survivor guilt and self-loathing, meant to crush his will.

The ease with which he made his decision surprised even him. It was as if a steel wall had gone up in his mind, shutting off
all but his stoic resolve. If it came down to it and this man was not bluffing, then he would have to accept the death of
this boy, however monstrous it seemed. The alternative was simply an impossibility.

“You’ll only make them hate you more,” he said.

“I don’t think so. Americans have a great capacity for forgiveness once they understand a man’s pain. Their problem is that
they don’t understand our pain.”

He wasn’t bluffing, was he? The man actually intended to go through with this.

“I will leave Ahmed with you for six hours. Then I will return and kill him, unless you are willing to sacrifice your child’s
life for his. And then”—a tear formed on the edge of Kahlid’s eyes and slipped down his cheek—“then we will bring in the second
one. A girl named Miriam. You’ve killed thousands, but I beg of you, don’t make me kill even one more.”

THE ATMOSPHERE AT Truluck’s steak and seafood restaurant in downtown Austin reminded Bethany of success, with all the clinking
silverware and wineglasses, the murmur of important people reviewing what they’d accomplished this day and planning the next.
The fact that the district attorney, Burt Welsh, had joined her and her mother, two days after her selection to be on the
cover of
Youth Nation,
only solidified the impression.

Problem was, she was quite sure she didn’t belong.

Everywhere she looked, waiters in white aprons served customers heaping plates of broiled lobster tails and crab legs while
a piano player filled the dimly lit room with music.

“A toast?” The DA held up his wineglass with an infectious grin.

Her mother lifted her glass and Bethany followed suit, raising her own, never mind that it was Dr. Pepper.

“To the next cover girl of
Youth Nation
,” the DA said.

“To the most wonderful daughter a mother could ever hope for,” Celine chimed in, beaming.

Her mother was certainly in her element. Bethany smiled graciously. “Thank you.”

They clinked their glasses and took sips.

“I have to say, I’ve been around the block a few times, and I admit I have an eye for those bound for glory. You, young lady,
are one such person, I could see it the moment you walked in tonight.”

What did you say to that?

The DA continued before she could say anything. “Like mother, like daughter.”

Her mother’s eyes sparkled with pride. “Thank you, Burt.”

It was the first time Bethany had actually met the DA, and thinking of him by his name seemed strange to her. Her mother,
on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so reserved. Only a blind man wouldn’t see the chemistry between them. Didn’t they care that
half the restaurant probably recognized the DA and was wondering at this very moment why he was sitting at a table with a
married woman and her daughter, with more than food on his mind?

“Thank you,” she said.

They talked about the upcoming trip to New York and the modeling business while they waited for their food. She was surprised
to learn that the DA—Burt, he insisted she call him—that Burt Welsh had modeled himself once, while attending law school at
the University of Texas. He’d quit when they’d asked him to do an underwear shoot.

Honestly, she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man. He certainly had the look of a model, with large square shoulders
and a closely shaved jaw, but she found him oddly repulsive. A perfect fit for her mother maybe, with his compelling, confident
demeanor, but that didn’t make him God’s gift to all women.

They’d come to celebrate; when Celine suggested they take up the DA’s offer to take them to dinner, she’d agreed. Clearly
something was going on between them; maybe it was time to meet this man her mother spent so much time on the phone with.

But half an hour in Burt’s company reminded her why she didn’t think she could stomach the modeling business as more than
a passing gig.

She began to regret her decision to let him join them. It was fine for her mother, who deserved some love in her life—her
father had failed miserably on that front. But that didn’t mean Bethany had to like the man who was sharing her mother’s bed
when it suited them.

In fact, sitting here with him in the lap of luxury, Bethany felt oddly sick. Here the rich partook of the spoils of their
wealth, but in Bethany’s world girls were cutting their skin with razor blades to escape the emotional pain that haunted them.

She’d even thought about cutting herself a time or two, if for no other reason than to see what so many saw in it. She knew
the reasoning, of course: better to control the pain inflicted by yourself than the pain dumped on you by your circumstances.

Bethany blinked. Here she was thinking about razor blades while her mother and Welsh were toasting life. There was irony.
She decided to bring them into her world.

“I’ve decided that I don’t want to pursue modeling beyond this job,” she said and sat back to hear their response.

Her mother dismissed her with a slight flip of her hand. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Why would you say that?” Burt asked, swirling the red wine in his glass.

“I just don’t think I could stomach all the superficiality that comes with it. What do people really know about models anyway?”

“What do you mean, angel? It’s not a marriage; it’s a job. A job that could lead to acting, Hollywood. This is just the beginning.
What happened to all those calls with your agent, was that all just for grins?”

The DA tipped his glass at Celine. “Your mother has a point. This could be just the beginning of something much bigger. Cover
at your age? That’s pretty impressive.”

“Hollywood stars are the same thing. I walk around school and already they look at me like I’m some kind of monkey in a zoo.
They don’t know a thing about me.”

Her mother’s mouth gaped in a show of shock. “How could you be so ungrateful? Every last girl in that school would kill to
be you right now. You just want to throw that away because you don’t have a deep, meaningful relationship with every boy in
the hall?”

Now this was more like Mother. Bethany had to admit that she wasn’t entirely ready to throw out modeling just yet, but her
claim was at least partly true. Maybe even mostly true.

“I’m just saying”—she picked at the bread on her plate—“it bothers me.”

Her mother offered Burt a condescending grin. “She’s sixteen going on twenty-one with a degree in philosophy.
Everything
about life bothers her when it suits her. Nothing is really meaningful. Our little existentialist in the making. But that
doesn’t mean she doesn’t love to shake her butt in front of a thousand boys at football games, now does it?”

A raised brow from Burt. He seemed to be enjoying the shift in conversation.

“So I play the game; you taught me that, Mother, didn’t you? Play all the angles, use your assets to take all you can from
life. Just because I’ve decided to try things your way doesn’t mean I have to like it or give my life to it the way you have.”