Snowfall at Willow Lake: Lakeshore Chronicles Book 4 (8 page)

The Hague, Holland
Three weeks later

W
hile waiting for Tariq in the courtyard of the Peace Palace, Sophie turned in a slow circle, waiting for the flashbacks to hit like a bolt from the sky. She'd been told by her post-trauma treatment team to expect unsettling reminders of the ordeal she'd suffered here. But nothing happened, not even when she thought about André staggering toward her, bleeding into the snow. She felt a wave of grief, but no panic, no insanity. The sky remained its usual brooding gray. The neo-Gothic walls of the palace, stained by age and pollution, looked the same as they always had, coldly beautiful and impenetrable.

This was not the first time she'd come here in the past few weeks. She'd been brought here several times, as her doctors wanted to be sure the location did not trigger any sort of trauma-induced reaction. On the contrary, she felt nothing but the usual bone-deep dampness of a typical winter day.

The screen of her PDA displayed a text message from Max sent the day before. Dad taking us skiing at Saddle Mt 2day. Wish U were here xoxo. She checked her watch, which was always set at her children's time zone, and deemed it too early to phone the States. There would be time to call after her meeting today to tell them her plans.

A moment later, Tariq joined her, his Burberry greatcoat swirling fashionably in the wind. Like Sophie, he was shadowed by security agents, whose constant presence was a given these days.

“You look remarkably calm,” said Tariq.

They set off together to a meeting at the supreme chamber. Sophie eyed him with a slight frown. “Why do you say ‘remarkably calm'? Why not just calm?”

“No one would blame you for not wanting to set foot in this place. After what happened to you—”

“I swear, if I hear that phrase one more time…And what about you? It happened to you, too.”

He waved away her comment. “I've survived worse than a bloodied nose. Besides, being unconscious is my preferred way of enduring an attack.” He paused in the colonnaded hallway and touched her arm. “I wish you'd been spared as I was.”

Three weeks had passed since the incident. That was how the events on the night of Epiphany had come to be known—the incident. Or, The Incident. The Epiphany Incident, referred to in somber tones by foreign correspondents.
The London Times
had called it the Twelfth Night Massacre. But there was no term that could encompass the terror and powerlessness of that night until it became a code word—The Incident.

She had walked away from death that night, soaked to the skin but feeling nothing. Hypothermia created such symptoms, the doctors later told her. The body went numb to protect itself from damage. So, in a way, had her mind. Her memory of the ordeal was fragmented. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she relived the ordeal in terrifying bursts. There was the weightlessness of her free fall as the van hurtled through the night. The impact when it hit the water thundered up through the vehicle, jarring her teeth so that she bit her tongue, snapping her head back. The air was filled with screams and howls that sounded almost animallike. Water flooded the van from front to back, and she felt herself swept backward; her captors hadn't bothered to fasten her seat belt.

The investigative team speculated that she'd exited via a broken window, as evidenced by the pattern of scratches on her arms and legs. She'd survived thanks to a combination of luck and skill at swimming. She had a vague recollection of swimming—icy water, aiming at a dull flicker of light shimmering on the surface above her, battling her way free of the vortex created by the sinking van. Oil-tainted seawater rushed into her nose and mouth, causing her to choke while she clung to an iron loop set into the cut-stone side of the canal.

Another gap of memory. Somehow, she hoisted herself out amid wailing sirens and the pulsating roar of a helicopter's rotor blades beating the air and churning up the water. Emergency vehicles swarmed the bridge, but no one seemed to notice her. It was as though she were invisible. Maybe she was. She remembered thinking maybe this was death, and no one could see her as she wandered among squad cars and emergency vehicles. One great mercy of working for such a powerful organization was the strict control of information. Only a few people knew Sophie had been taken; fewer still were aware of her mode of escape. And no one knew she had caused the van to go off the bridge. No one, except the terrorists who had been pulled alive from the Voorhaven. And they weren't talking.

To avoid retaliation, her name was kept out of accounts released to the public.

“I
was
spared,” she told Tariq, her tone edged by an unreasoning anger. “I'm here, aren't I?”

“Sorry,” Tariq said. “Honestly, Petal, I want to know you're all right.”

Sophie's decisive action in the van had effectively ended The Incident. Three of her captors had drowned. Three others, like Sophie, had survived—just barely—and were recovering under heavy guard in the hospital.

People looked at her and marveled that she'd escaped “unscathed.” She bore no outward sign of her ordeal.

She'd suffered only minor scratches, contusions and a touch of hypothermia. The treatment team at Bronovo Hospital had warned her that she was at risk for posttraumatic stress disorder, though tests revealed that her psyche appeared to have survived, as well. Certainly she didn't consider herself a casualty of the event. Casualties were André, her driver. And the security agents who had been murdered. And, it had to be said, the men in the van. Fatou had lost the baby and now faced a third surgery, and Brooks Fordham was still recovering from a coma. Sophie had walked away, dripping wet, a survivor. And, she was soon to discover, a stranger to herself. She was willing to let everyone believe nothing about her had changed. She certainly was not comfortable allowing people to look into her heart and mind. Still, it left her feeling adrift. Misunderstood.

Immediately following the incident, she had called her children in St. Croix and her parents in Seattle, on the off chance that the news would somehow creep into the American or Canadian media. No danger of that, as it turned out. She'd told her family simply that there had been a “security situation” at the Peace Palace but she was fine and in no danger. The incident was no big secret, but she didn't want to worry her family. She hadn't cried on the phone. She'd felt displaced from herself, as though she were watching her own actions.

As she told the two psychiatrists who had treated her, “If I let this be a big deal, it won't leave room for the things that are important.” Through hours and hours of intensive therapy, she had come to realize exactly what those things were.

She had not spoken of what had happened during the ordeal, not even to the medical and psychological team that had cared for her during the aftermath. Dr. Maarten had tried to persuade her that exploring every moment in exhaustive detail was the key to defeating the demons.

“You don't understand,” she had told him. “There are no demons. They went away the moment I survived.”

“Are you sure?” He clearly thought she was either lying or fooling herself.

“Of course I'm sure. I've studied every item on your post-trauma assessment lists. I'm not suffering from any such symptoms, and I don't plan to in the future.”

Now she glanced over at Tariq. He knew as well as she did what was going to happen here today. They had offered her an appointment most jurists only dreamed about and today she was expected to give her answer.

She was used to the bodyguards by now. In a very short time, she'd become accustomed to the safety precautions. It all felt very surreal. Did she want this to be her normal life, to be crushed by scrutiny, to walk among armed strangers who were utterly focused on her safety?

“Off we go, then,” Tariq muttered.

“Off to see the wizard,” she said.

The double doors of the lead justice's office opened, and she and Tariq went inside. There was a heartbeat of panic—not because of The Incident but because of something much deeper-reaching than that. Willem De Groot, Esquire, sat at a carved Gothic desk in front of an array of stained-glass windows. Illuminated from behind by jewel-toned light, he looked imposing, otherworldly and intimidating. The wizard.

Actually, he looked like Sophie's father. Yet unlike Sophie's father, the redoubtable Ragnar Lindstrom, a partner in a Seattle firm, Judge De Groot displayed an array of family photos in his office. There were shots of him with children and grandchildren of all ages, incongruous amid the ponderous legal tomes. Yet at the moment, he was all business. He wanted to see her strive and achieve. He wanted greatness for her.

His version of greatness.

She and Tariq stood together across from him. De Groot's assistants were stationed discreetly to one side, silently pressing the keys of their mobile devices.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “And for the honor of this offer.”

“It's an offer we didn't make lightly,” Willem De Groot said. “A seat on the Permanent Court of Arbitration is not a reward for your actions. It's an acknowledgment of your potential as a jurist.” He steepled his fingers. “This vacancy comes at an opportune time. I'm pleased to be able to offer you the position.”

Sophie nodded, even as she felt a chill of skepticism in her bones. This promotion was the ultimate prize. As a jurist of the PCA, she would be on track to one day become a justice of the World Court. That marked the pinnacle of any career in international law, the Olympic gold medal of achievements. She would earn not just the accolades but maybe even a place in history. Her influence would come to bear on great matters of the day.

There was a ring of triumph in her ears. She had reached the apex of her career, and it was higher than she'd ever dreamed. From this seat, she could change the world. She could help whole populations of people. Her policies and decisions would become a part of history.

Sophie could feel Tariq beside her, practically growing taller out of sheer pride. This was not just her achievement, and they both knew that. With her elevation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, her staff and associates would all advance, like train cars hooked to the same engine. This appointment would change not only her life and her career, but also the careers of everyone she worked with. De Groot was speaking to Tariq now, explaining his role as deputy.

Her spirit flared up like a fire splashed with accelerant. Yet, just as quickly, the feeling was doused by the cold damper of memory. She had been taken hostage. She'd seen people murdered, inches from her. She'd held a bleeding child in her arms. She'd caused people to plunge to their death.

That was her reality. She'd worked long and hard with the treatment team whose mission had been to heal her spirit, even though she swore her spirit didn't need healing. Still, the counselors persisted. They worked every day to show her that although she could never escape or outrun what had happened to her, she could live her life with purpose and deliberation, not in spite of what had happened but, perhaps, because of it.

“Thank you,” she said to De Groot. “I'm honored.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, made steady eye contact with the chief jurist. “But I can't.”

The words dropped like cold stones into the office, echoing off the neo-Gothic walls.
I can't.

Those two words had been banished by Sophie's father from her vocabulary, long ago. She'd been raised to embrace the concept of “I can.”

I can bring down a corrupt dictator. (But only if I move an ocean away from my children and work eighteen-hour days.)

I can escape when captured by terrorists. (But only if I force myself to do something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.)

I can be the youngest jurist ever appointed to the PCA. (But only if I turn myself into a robot, starting now.)

That was what her parents failed to see, that for every “I can” statement proclaiming her invincibility, there was a huge and terrible hidden sacrifice.

Sophie felt utterly calm and focused. “I've given this a lot of thought,” she said, then reiterated her statement. “I won't be accepting the post.” She heard Tariq pull in a breath and didn't let herself look at him, knowing he'd be staring at her, aghast, as though she had sprouted antlers.

The old Sophie would have leaped at this chance, the brass ring of judgeships. Now the new Sophie, the one who had been melted down and remade during the hostage ordeal, knew that the prestige and excitement of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was no longer her calling.

In the aftermath of the intensive treatment and counseling she had received, she felt like a different person. Perhaps the goal of all the interventions she had undergone was to bring her back to her normal, ordinary life. If so, Sophie's treatment had failed. Instead, The Incident and fallout had proved to her that a life lived without family was meaningless.

Judge De Groot was old and unflappable. Unlike Tariq, he was matter-of-fact when Sophie explained about her family. “If you walk away from this opportunity, it won't be here when you come back. I cannot hold it open for you.”

“I understand that, Your Honor,” Sophie said.