Learning to Stand Read online

  LEARNING to STAND

  CLAUDIA HALL CHRISTIAN

  Copyright © Claudia Hall Christian

  Cook Street Publishing

  Denver, CO

  Also by Claudia Hall Christian

  ALEX THE FEY SERIES

  The Fey

  Learning to Stand

  Who I am

  THE DENVER CEREAL

  The Denver Cereal

  Celia’s Puppies

  Cascade

  Copyright © Claudia Hall Christian

  Licensed under the Creative Commons License:

  Attribution – NonCommercial – Share Alike 3.0

  Smashwords Edition Licensing Notes:

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to mashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

  ISBN (13 digits) : 978-0-9826417-4-3

  Library of Congress : 2010900413

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First edition © February, 2010

  Cook Street Publishing

  PO Box 18217

  Denver, CO 80218

  303-242-5391

  For Jennifer Riley,

  whose red pencil “WHAT?” forced me to be a better writer.

  Thank you.

  “How do you pick up the threads of an old life?

  How do you go on, when in your heart,

  you begin to understand there is no going back?

  There are some things time cannot mend.

  Some hurts, that go too deep, have taken hold.”

  --Frodo Baggins in Return of the King;

  Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens inspired by J.R. Tolkien.

  CHAPTER ONE

  January 31 – 3:15 A.M. CET

  Paris, France

  “Shall I get a car, ma’am?” the doorman asked in French. He held the door for her to walk through. “Maybe an umbrella?”

  “Non,” she replied. “Merci”

  She stepped into the driving rain from the warm CIA hotel lobby. Wanting the rain, needing the river, she was drawn into the wild, dark morning.

  She and Homeland Security Agent Arthur ‘Raz’ Rasmussen were in Paris to clear out the Fey Special Forces Team vault. Two and a half years ago, the blood and lives of eleven troops were spilled onto the floor, boxes and crates of that storage vault.

  Ten friends. Ten beloved teammates gave their lives. She was the eleventh ‘troop.’ Turning onto the wide boulevard, Rue des Saints Pères, she snorted at the word ‘troop.’

  She would have died.

  She should have died.

  But her friend, mentor, and, as she found out a few months ago, biological father, Ben received a tip that her team had been assassinated. Ben and his assistant, Raz, found her in the vault doorway with her best-friend Sergeant Jesse Abreu’s head on her lap. Raz carried her from the vault moments before she bled to death.

  Two and a half years ago.

  She turned left at the river. Moving along the Seine, the frozen rain battered her head and streamed from her oilskin coat. She tucked her ice-cold fingers into her sleeves.

  She’d laughed when she opened the Fey Special Forces Team underground storage vault three days ago. Turning to Raz, she said, “I’ll clean up my own blood, thank you, sir.”

  Fool.

  Raz had checked in with her every couple of hours with a quick, “Ready to stop?” But she wouldn’t give up. They had work to do and she was going to do it. Finally, after fourteen horrific hours of scouring blood and flesh, Raz demanded they stop.

  By that time, her mind had fractured. She begged him not to leave her dead friends alone in the dark. His gentle words and kind presence led her through the limestone tunnels and back to their hotel suite.

  They began cataloguing the vault the next day. Blood infiltrated every crack, corner, and possession in the two hundred foot space. They saved what they could for the families and threw the rest in large red incineration bags. Sixteen hours later, they stumbled, broken-hearted, to the suite.

  Yesterday, a US Army team arrived to haul away the large items, the incineration bags, and anything already catalogued. Raz directed the soldiers’ work while she pushed boxes from the corners of the vault.

  With the vault floor cleared, she collected stashes of porn, random weapons and other personal items. The soldiers were removing their last load when she found her Commanding Officer Charlie O’Brien’s wedding ring lodged against a wall. He must have put his hand up to the shooter because the ring encircled his mummified finger. Numb from the macabre work, and injections of a CIA ‘vitamin’ cocktail, she slipped Charlie’s finger, and ring, into her pocket.

  Five hours later, Raz found the finger among the pile of her dirty clothing. Horrified, he ordered her into their sitting room. When she didn’t respond, he burst into her bedroom. He found her tucked between the desk and the corner of the room.

  She heard him calling her.

  She knew he was worried.

  But nothing could make her get up from the tight, safe corner.

  Looking up, she watched his face shift from worry to sorrow. He fell to his knees in front of her. When he held out his arms to her, she crawled from her corner. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they wept for themselves and their friends.

  She’d left Raz sound asleep in the suite.

  She stopped on the bridge, Pont du Carousel. The hard rain made divots in the dark water below. She held out her arms as a gust of wind lifted her jacket. For a moment, she was flying backwards. When she hit the railing on the other side of the bridge, she knew what called her into the early-morning storm.

  She ran across the bridge and through the deserted Place du Carousel. Buffeted by the wind, she jogged the limestone gravel path through a labyrinth of evergreen hedges in the Jardin des Tuileries.

  She skid to a stop at the opening to an evergreen hedge circle. Embarrassed by her haste, she bowed her head to acknowledge the naked female form in the center of the hedge circle. The bronze statue beaconed her into the circle. Moving forward, she sat down on the bench facing the statue.

  Charlie O’Brien loved this statue. To him, she represented everything pure and simple. This bench had been their ‘strategic command.’ Every time they were in Paris, she and Charlie laughed, plotted and gossiped on this bench. According to intel, she sat here talking to Charlie only moments before her entire world turned upside down.

  She stretched her fingers out to touch the wet green wood where Charlie sat two and a half years ago. She raked her mind for some glimmer of what they had talked about.

  Nothing.

  Looking across the circle, she noticed raindrop tears flowing down the statue’s face. Her fingers found her own tear drenched face. She bit her lip to keep from keening with grief.

  Only two grainy satellite images existed. The first image showed Charlie pointing at her. Her face was set in mock indignation. One minute later, Charlie was bent forward with laughter. Her hand was forward as if she had pushed him. Her face was bright with laughter.

  Charlie died twenty minutes later.

  The storm released its fury. Obscured by sheeting rain, Charlie’s favorite statue was lost. Her heart broke open with loss. Rocking back and forth on the bench, she wailed.

  Her tears slowed when the storm eased. The statue’s outline reappeared. Charlie’s statue had returned to her.

  If on
ly Charlie would return.

  If only...

  Her head jerked up. Footsteps crunched the gravel path! Someone walked toward her! Her heart pounded with hope.

  Charlie?

  Just in case, she slipped her hand around the handgun in her sacrum holster. She stood to peer through the rain. Across the hedge circle, she saw a well dressed man enter the opposite side of the circle.

  “Alexandra,” the man said in French. “Please sit with me.”

  He held his wide black umbrella over them. The rain formed a rhythm across his umbrella.

  “My brother telephoned. No ‘Hello.’ No ‘Good morning.’ Not even a ‘Did I wake you? How is your wife? Your children?’ Not Benjamin. ‘Find my daughter,’ he growled.” The man laughed. “He can be so very bossy.”

  She glanced at him then returned her attention to the statue.

  “I will tell him I searched everywhere for you, but I knew you would be here.”

  “I’m sorry, Dom. I...” She replied in French.

  “No need to explain,” Dominic Doucet said. “You’ve spent the last three days in the vault where your loved ones died, where you almost died. I wouldn’t ask my worst enemy to do what you’ve done.”

  Staring at the statue, she whispered, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”

  “Yes, Lady Macbeth. You didn’t kill them.”

  “I can’t get her out of my head.”

  Cleansed by the downpour, the statue gave her a kind smile.

  “You come here because it’s the last place you felt normal.”

  “Sane,” she said. “Whole.”

  He nodded. They watched the light rain dance on the statue.

  “How are you holding up?” Dominic broke the rain’s percussive tempo.

  She turned her head to look at him then turned to back to the statue. He had never known her not to smile, laugh or make a joke. Today, her face held only unspeakable pain.

  They listened to the rain for a while.

  “I don’t know how to do it, Dom,” she said. Her words were so quiet that he had to read her lips. “I don’t know how to move forward without them. Every time I try, I fall flat on my face. I’m failing at everything.”

  “You have the curse of the Doucets. You’re impatient. We are gifted in so many ways. We expect everything to happen at our whim. Surviving, changing, moving on... These things only happen one tiny step at a time.”

  “I… I don’t have any idea what tiny step to take.”

  Dominic laughed.

  “Only the brave survive, my dear. And you’re very brave,” he said. “Come. Let’s get your partner, your Rasmussen. I understand he’s frantic. We’ll eat crepes, drink too much café and argue about nothing.”

  She nodded.

  “You’re done with the vault. I insist. If anyone asks, I will tell them the President’s wife is taking her clothes off again and we don’t have the resources to protect you.”

  The director of the French Intelligence service, Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur, stood from the bench and held out his hand to her. She looked up into his face. Nodding, she took his hand and stood.

  ”Today our task will be to convince one fish to take a chance on our flies.” Dominic said. “That’s all. When Benjamin finds us, we’ll pretend we always planned to fish today.”

  They walked across the gravel. At the edge of the labyrinth, she turned for one last look at Charlie’s statue. Winking at her, the statue whispered:

  “Only the brave survive.”

  She blinked, and the statue’s face became bronze again.

  At the street, Dominic signaled his driver. A small limousine pulled in front of them. When they settled in back seat, the driver gave them warm dry towels. Dominic requested her hotel, and the car shot into a snarl of Paris traffic.

  “Why didn’t you tell me I was your niece?” she asked. She rubbed her hair with the towel.

  “I enjoy being your friend,” Dominique said.

  “You knew when we met,” she said.

  “Yes. I knew the moment you walked across the bridge carrying your fly fishing rod and bright smile,” he said. “You and Max look very much like our mother.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Our mother was beautiful person – inside and out,” Dominique said. “Just as you are.”

  In the warm car and compassionate company, she felt herself relax. Fly fishing on the Seine was wicked fun. Her husband, Dr. John Kelly Drayson, and her identical twin, Max Hargreaves, would arrive tomorrow morning. If she was lucky, maybe Raz would take her dancing tonight.

  “Are you asleep?” Dominic asked.

  “Thinking. Planning,” she said.

  He looked over at her. She caught his brown eyes.

  “Thank you, Uncle.”

  “I prefer to be your friend.”

  “Thank you, friend.”

  Resting against the leather seats, Major Alexandra “The Fey” Hargreaves smiled for the first time since she entered the vault on Monday. Today was going to be a good day.

  F

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two months later

  Monday early-morning

  March 24 – 4:30 A.M. MDT

  Denver, Colorado

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  Alex lifted her head from the pillow to kiss her husband, John. Like most mornings, they started the day in each other’s embrace.

  “What’s weird?” she asked.

  “How everything can be the same.” His British accented words were punctuated with quick thrusts of his hips. “And still so different.”

  She bit his ear. Even after thirteen years of marriage, she never understood why he started conversations in the middle of sex. He laughed at her ear nip reprimand.

  “You mean the new bedroom? New house? New clothing? New...”

  “Yes,” he said.

  They moved into their new bedroom last night. She rolled on top of him.

  “You mean everything,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. He kissed her lips. “Yet some things are deliciously the same.”

  “Delicious?”

  Her rhythmic movements caught his full attention. Sitting up to look at him, their eyes locked. His hands held her hips. They rose in intensity. She was very close when he said:

  “I don’t want you to go today.”

  She ignored him.

  Pulling on his arms, he rose from the bed to wrap himself around her. She dropped her head back and let herself slip away to bliss. With a sigh, he followed her. Wrapped in each other’s tight embrace, they slipped through the waves of sensation. He kissed her neck and throat. She shifted to catch his lips. He moved on top of her again when the alarm went off.

  Alex reached over to hit the snooze button.

  “Warning bell?” he asked.

  “It’s the finish-what-you-were-saying bell,” she said. She kissed his neck. “What’s going on, John?”

  “God Alex, what do you think?”

  “Vell,” she said in her best imitation of Dr. Freud. “I think your home vas destroyed by terrorists; you vere exposed as a member of the illustrious Kelly’s of the IRA; your vife vas held hostage, and...”

  “Fuck’s sake Alex! This isn’t a joke! I don’t to be away from you again,” he said. “I spent an agonizing month in Scotland vhile my vife vas held hostage.”

  She smiled at his imitation of her.

  “And.…” Attempting to control his strong emotions, he blew out a breath. “I was awful while you were in Paris in January.”

  “I was awful while I was in Paris in January,” Alex said.

  “I have my General Surgery certificate already. I can work as a General Surgeon,” he said. “I’ll quit the vascular surgery program and go with you.”

  She shifted so he could disengage. She lay on her side to look at him. Her eyes reviewed his dark curly hair and large cobalt blue eyes. Her thumb ran over his cheekb
one. She leaned forward to kiss his lips. Her mouth less than an inch from his, she whispered what she had said thousands of times before:

  “Your dreams are important to me.”

  “I don’t care anymore, Alex. I only want you. That’s all. I don’t care about anything else.”

  She pressed her fingertips to his mouth.

  “We have five months left in your eight year program,” she said. “By August, you’ll be done. Let’s finish.”

  They nestled together in each other’s arms until the alarm went off again. Moving off the bed, she held a hand out to him. She guided him to the spacious bathroom adjacent to their new master suite. Pulling him into the shower, she took them through shampoo and soap ending with blue fluffy towels. She left him in the bathroom to finish shaving.

  Wandering into her barren walk-in closet, she put on the only thing hanging there: a solitary pair of jeans. She grabbed a T-shirt from the stack. He was tying his tie when she reentered the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, she watched him finish dressing.

  This week he was stuck in a week-long class on the effects of advanced diabetes on the vascular system. Their drama of last fall forced him to miss this class. If he didn’t finish this class now, he wouldn’t finish his program. Period.

  And she had orders to leave Denver in an hour.

  She brushed his lips with hers in a quick kiss then adjusted his tie. Reaching for his hand, they went down a flight of stairs through the remodeling of their dilapidated hundred-year-old rooming house. The second floor walls were stripped down to the studs and the brick exterior. They turned the corner then continued down another flight of stairs to the kitchen, dining and living areas they shared with Alex’s identical twin brother Max and the rest of their family – Raz and John’s brother Cian.