The Collective (8 page)

Leyla’s eyes found her, and the baby made a kind of plaintive whimper, then went quiet. Seven months old, but she knew her auntie would take care of her. Technically, Jane was Caitlin’s aunt, but she felt too young to be anybody’s “great-aunt,” so
Auntie Jane
would be just fine.

Her lower back protested as she lifted the baby into her arms, cuddling Leyla against her chest. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, rocking gently, she started to pace the room.

As she rocked the baby, she glanced out the window and frowned. Badger Road was a quiet neighborhood. They didn’t see a lot of cars parked on the street unless one of the neighbors was having a party, or the Mandells’ daughter was having one of her high school sleepovers. So the dark sedan parked across the street and two houses down caught her attention for several reasons. First, it was after two o’clock in the morning, which meant even the Callahans, who loved a party, would have kicked any guests out hours ago. Second, the car looked brand new and expensive, which made it unlikely to belong to high school kids sleeping over at the Mandells’ house. Third, the car was parked at the curb in front of the DiMarinos’ house, two doors down, and the DiMarinos were on a cruise and wouldn’t be back for more than a week.

Jane bent over a little for a better look out the window. She had never been great with makes and models, but she thought it was a BMW or Audi—something expensive, with dark windows. Then Leyla started fussing a bit, forcing her to stand up straight and rock her properly.

“All right, baby. Hush now,” she whispered.

She relished the weight of the child in her arms, enjoying the smell and warmth of a baby. When Caitlin had first gotten her job at Channel 7 and begun fretting over how she would be able to afford daycare, Jane hadn’t hesitated. She didn’t have the chocolate shop anymore, so she had no job to prevent her from saying yes. No way would she let Leyla end up ignored and neglected in some germ-infested baby kennel. George had worried about how much work it would be—they were no longer young—but Jane had stayed firm.

Jane’s younger brother, Rob, had gotten married right out of high school to a beautiful dimwit who had lasted five years before abandoning him for a lawyer. She had left him with two children, Sean—who’d been four at the time—and baby Caitlin, fourteen months old. Rob had been a strict father but
sweet and loving with his kids, and they had respected and loved him in return.

Pancreatic cancer had killed him a week before Caitlin’s junior prom.

Sean McCandless had been serving in the Marine Corps, stationed in the Middle East, when his father had died. The Corps gave him leave to come home, but only long enough for the funeral. Jane and George were named in Rob’s will as Caitlin’s legal guardians until she turned eighteen, and they looked out for her afterward, helping her sort out her finances and do her college applications, advising her in the sale of her family home since she couldn’t afford to keep up with the bills.

Tommy might be the only child to whom Jane McCandless Wadlow had ever given birth, but Caitlin was the closest thing to a daughter she would ever have. The baby girl Jane cradled against her now could never be a burden. She kissed Leyla’s head, and the baby shifted a bit. Her eyelids fluttered as though she might wake up again, then she gave a tiny sigh and nestled in Jane’s arms. She was truly a beautiful baby, her skin a warm shade of cinnamon she had inherited from her father.

The yellow glow of headlights swept across the room and Jane heard the gentle purr of an engine as a car approached out on the street. She glanced out the window and saw a second car pull up behind the one parked in front of the DiMarino house.

Then the first car started up, the headlights blinking on. Jane watched as it pulled slowly from its place at the curb and drove off while the new arrival replaced it, sliding into the spot. The new driver killed the engine and the lights winked out. In seconds, it was like nothing had happened. Anyone who had not seen the new arrival would likely have assumed this was the same vehicle.

Jane waited, swaying back and forth with Leyla, but though she watched for several minutes, no one got out of the car.

A stakeout
, she thought. She had seen enough cop shows that this was the first thing that occurred to her, but quickly on its heels came another suspicion. What if somebody knew
the DiMarinos were away and they were watching to see if anyone had been left to house-sit? The people in the cars could be burglars casing the house.

Okay, so maybe she had seen
too many
cop shows, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be true. Something odd was going on down the street. What she had watched just now looked very much like a shift change, one car coming on duty and the other going off.

The question was, what duty?

A few minutes later, when she returned Leyla to her playpen and went back to her bedroom to find George snoring loudly, she was still wondering. Whatever those cars were up to, they made her nervous.

Cait woke to morning sunlight splashed across her legs and a breeze billowing the sheer white curtains. She stretched, her neck stiff and her eyes gritty with sleep, but she felt good. A glance at the clock on the bedside table—the same alarm clock her cousin Tommy had used all through his high school years—told her that it was early enough that anyone with a choice would still be asleep. But she didn’t have a choice—not if she wanted to keep her job.

In spite of that, she rolled over, crushing the soft pillow, relishing the warm August morning and the comfort of the bed for a few extra moments. Then she studied the white mesh of the playpen that sat on the floor six feet away.

You must have known Mommy needed sleep
, Cait thought. So strange, to think of herself as a mother, even seven months after she had given birth.

It had all started with Nizam. In so many ways, it seemed to Cait that her entire adult life had begun in the moment she
had first seen Nizam. Her unit had been providing security for a group of outreach specialists who had been trained to interact with the civilian Iraqi community, trying to create good will amongst those who weren’t already their enemies. Sometimes the outreach specialists would bring bicycles to kids in certain Baghdad neighborhoods, and that day they’d given out nearly a dozen bikes, all brand new and gleaming with metallic colors.

They’d been in a public square not far from the Kufa wall, with houses and apartments on one side, but mostly shops on the other. The thermometer had read 117 degrees and not even Ronnie—the wiseass in their unit—had made any jokes about it being a dry heat. That kind of thing had stopped being funny at the end of June. Now it was mid-July and Cait had sweat dripping into the crevices of her body—places she couldn’t reach in uniform, draped as she was with equipment and weapons. They tried to smile, to be friendly to the civilians, but all they wanted was to go home.

When the last bicycle had been ridden away and the P.R. soldiers had gotten the last thank-you from a widow whose face was covered with burn scars, they all returned to their vehicles, smiling but wary. Cait could still remember the way the breeze seemed to still when they spotted the green bike lying on its side in the mouth of a small alley between a curry restaurant and an abandoned smoke shop. One of the outreach people, a handsome Arizonan named Griggs, started toward the bike, curious and not cautious enough by half.

Several voices from the unit called out for Griggs to halt, but the outreach team were the officers there. Cait’s unit was only along for security. Griggs insisted, wanting to do his job properly, and a moment later Cait and Jordan were flanking the guy as he made his way toward the bike. Most of the people who had been in the square a few minutes earlier had departed, the children and their bicycles vanishing as though by magic.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cait caught movement. She could barely breathe the super-heated air and now her heart was pounding as if it might burst through her chest. She swung the barrel of her weapon toward the movement and
saw a man standing in front of a faded apartment building. Tall and thin, he wore his dishdasha knotted up at the hips, with light cotton trousers underneath. His head was bare, without the traditional thagiyah most of the men adopted at a young age, and he stood with his arms crossed in front of him, idly smoking a cigarette.

But what struck Cait immediately were the man’s eyes. They were wide and brown and gleamed with an intelligence that entranced her, even from twenty yards away. His gaze had locked on her and she had hesitated, wondering if she might be imagining that she was the sole focus of his attention. Then, as she watched him, he had given a single shake of his head, slow but emphatic, after which he had turned and vanished into the apartment building.

Jordan and Griggs had almost reached the green bike. Cait glanced back at the short convoy of vehicles, where other members of the unit stood guard, scoping the rooftops and balconies and alleys for any sign of danger. But she knew that the danger wasn’t going to come from there.

Cait had shouted at Griggs, running toward him. The idiot had ignored her, but luckily Jordan had not. He grabbed Griggs by the arm and got him turned around, and then the three of them were running back to the convoy. The explosion, when it came, hurled her forward, searing heat slamming her against the cab of a truck. The impact knocked the wind out of her and left her with scrapes and bruises, but otherwise she was unharmed.

The man with the entrancing eyes had given her a warning that had saved lives … including her own.

That had been her first glimpse of Nizam. The second had come nearly two months later, after her unit had been assigned to protect truck convoys moving supplies and materials into and out of Baghdad. Most of those trucks were driven by Iraqis—who the U.S. military called “Nationals”—who were risking their own lives for a job in which they were constantly scrutinized and viewed with distrust. Insurgents targeted them for death because they were cooperating with occupation forces, but paying work was difficult to come by and there were always men willing.

Cait had recognized Nizam immediately, though she still did not know his name. She spotted him driving one of the trucks in the convoy her unit was escorting. When they reached the Green Zone, the protocol required a member of the unit to transfer from a military vehicle and ride along with the Iraqi National driving the truck, which was how she ended up sitting beside Nizam for the better part of an afternoon.

They talked a lot in those hours as she kept watch over his activities. She learned that he had been a taxi driver before the fall of Saddam, and that he had taken in his fourteen-year-old nephew after his brother and sister-in-law had been killed in the Ashura massacre, which meant that Nizam was Shi’a, though he considered himself progressive and Cait had to agree. His taxi business had been critically impacted by the war—fuel was incredibly difficult to come by, and hugely expensive if he could find anyone selling it. Driving a truck for the coalition forces was a temporary solution, helping him to feed himself and his nephew.

Cait tried not to let him see that he had touched something within her. She was a soldier, and he was a civilian whose allegiances had to be constantly questioned. And yet … he had taken in his nephew, just as her own aunt had taken Cait in when her father had died. His voice had a soft musicality that reassured her. Sometimes he let slip a lighthearted smile that charmed her, so different from the grave expressions of most Iraqi men. And though he hated the sectarian violence in his homeland, he was filled with pride in its history. Iraq, he claimed, had been the birthplace of civilization, “as well as of its ultimate expression.”

She had frowned at him. “Which is what, exactly?”

Nizam had arched a playful eyebrow. “Poetry, of course.”

“You like poetry?”

“I have no choice,” he had replied, standing by the front of the truck while it was being unloaded, smoking a cigarette. “I am Iraqi. I am born with poetry inside of me.”

Cait had wanted to laugh. Nizam spoke of poetry in an almost offhand way, but she could see the sincerity of his passion for it.

“You actually write poetry?”

He had put a hand over his heart, feigning insult. “You believe a taxi driver is not capable of creating poetry?”

Cait had felt stupid talking about it. Not that she didn’t enjoy poetry, but in her mind, great poetry had been written by people who were now dead. She had always thought there was something faintly embarrassing about attempting poetry in the present day. And yet Nizam’s love of poetry was so pure that she could never have mocked him.

“Don’t worry,” he had said. “I’m not about to begin reciting my poetry to you.”

Cait had given him an uneasy smile. “That’s probably for the best.”

“But if you’d like, I could write one for you.”

She did like. Very much.

In what seemed no time at all, she had fallen in love. But it wasn’t the poetry or the kindness to his nephew or his surprising smile that had won her heart. It had been that first, wordless moment, the slow shake of his head—the warning that had simultaneously risked his life and saved hers. There were stolen hours of fierce lovemaking that could have had dire consequences for them both, followed by whispered plans for a future after the war, when they could find peace together. Nizam had spoken to his nephew, but the boy did not want to go to America, preferring to live with his aunt in Nasiriyah.