The Language of Secrets Page 28

  When he was done, everyone wiped their faces with their palms.

  Except for Jamshed, whom Rachel watched from the corners of her eyes.

  And then she ventured a statement.

  “Your friend didn’t just die here, he was killed.”

  Ashkouri gazed at her steadily.

  “The police seem to think that someone who was here that night did it.” She glanced around the circle of faces. “Ruksh wasn’t here, so it couldn’t be Ruksh.”

  “It wasn’t any of us,” Ashkouri said, as pleasantly as if they were discussing the weather. “Mohsin was beloved to us. He was one of us, the moon to many stars.”

  Rachel looked up at the purpling sky. The first hints of starlight had arrived to prick the darkness. If there was a new moon, she couldn’t see it.

  “How do you think he died, then? Who do you think killed him?”

  Din shifted beside her on his camp stool, freeing his arm from Grace’s.

  “Why do we have to talk about this? Bad enough the first time, Mo lying there in his blood.”

  “You saw him?” Rachel asked.

  “It was terrible.” Din briefly closed his eyes. “To see somebody you love, dead like that.”

  But had Din truly loved Mohsin Dar? Or was the chat log on the Rose of Darkness website a blind?

  “I don’t want to hear this,” Grace muttered. “I’m going to skate by myself.”

  Jamshed shifted away from the tree in her direction. Grace tipped up her head and glared at the older man.

  “What? You can’t stop me. I’ve participated in your ceremony and now I just want some fresh air. Come with me, Din.”

  Din’s head swiveled from Grace to Jamshed. He took a second too long to consider.

  “Fine!” she shouted. “Do whatever you want. These people aren’t good for you, this camp isn’t good for you, but whatever. I’m the one who watches out for you, but you don’t seem to care. I’m done with the whole stupid thing.”

  She pushed past Jamshed to disappear into the trees.

  Ruksh rose from her stool.

  “I should go after her, Hassan. It’s dark out there, and she doesn’t know how to skate.”

  “She didn’t take her skates with her,” Ashkouri pointed out.

  Rachel jumped to her feet. This was it. Her chance. Her moment to get Grace and Ruksh out of this mess. She didn’t have the car keys, she didn’t have her cell phone—but she was going to seize the opportunity anyway.

  And, undetected by the others, she’d thought she’d heard a sound.

  The sound that she had been praying for, though nowhere near close enough. The crunch of a car’s tires over the compacted snow.

  “I’ll go with you. Bring a flashlight, Ruksh.”

  And then, with a stroke of inspiration, Ruksh made a decision, chose a side.

  “I don’t have one. Let me use my phone.”

  She grabbed it from the sack before Hassan could object, switched it back on, and flashed its light around the camp.

  Paula grabbed hold of Hassan’s arm.

  “Let them go, Hassan. We can start the preparations for dinner.”

  Rachel didn’t wait. She maneuvered past Jamshed, dragging Ruksh in her wake.

  “Grace,” she called up the rise. “Grace, wait for us!”

  Behind them, she saw Jamshed Ali nod to Din. He disappeared into one of the cabins.

  Why? To grab the gun?

  Ashkouri watched them without moving, a smile twisting his lips in the flickering light of the bonfire. It was Jamshed who followed in their wake.

  “Hurry,” Rachel hissed to Ruksh. “Call your brother, and keep the connection alive, no matter what.”

  But they had gone beyond the reach of the cell tower, losing the signal as they climbed. Ruksh was panting along beside Rachel.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing,” she said to Rachel. “I don’t know why I’m frightened. I know Hassan. He couldn’t have done it. He’s a good man.”

  “Then why did you follow me?” Rachel gripped Ruksh’s arm from underneath, pulling her up the ridge. “Where’s the creek? I don’t see Grace. Grace!” she called out again. “Grace, where are you?”

  They stumbled toward a sheltered copse of pine trees, the tang of the needles a counterpoint to the hazy smoke of the bonfire.

  Rachel checked behind them. Jamshed had stopped his pursuit. But he had stopped to wait for Ashkouri and Din to catch up.

  She swore loudly and fluently.

  Where was Khattak? Where was Grace?

  “I’m here,” the girl’s voice floated toward them from beyond the stand of pines.

  Rachel shoved Ruksh toward the trees.

  “Kill the light. Get behind those trees and hide. Go as far as you can, and in the name of sweet Jesus, don’t make any noise. I’ll get Grace.”

  “No!” Ruksh hissed back. “If there’s truly anything to fear, I’m not leaving you alone out there.”

  “Ruksh! I’m a police officer, for God’s sake! I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s you that Ashkouri wants, it’s you he’s always wanted. Now go!”

  Rachel broke away, following the hollow sound of Grace’s voice. It seemed to drift away behind the pines. She could hear something else, too: the almost imperceptible rush of running water. The creek was nearby. She could smell the wet-pavement scent of the tumbled stones in the water.

  “Grace, where are you?”

  “Here, on the ice.”

  Rachel spied her fifty yards away, gliding out on her booted feet to the middle of a creek bed less than thirty feet across.

  The running water was from a rivulet that cut across the ridge.

  To reach Grace, Rachel would have to leave the cover of the pine grove and break into a run through open country.

  She’d lost sight of Ruksh in the thick cover of the pines and the hemlock up ahead, but back the way she had come, she could see the dim rounds of yellow light cast by bobbing flashlights. And beyond them, back at the bonfire, a sight that caused a wave of relief to swell in her chest.

  An SUV pulling up beside the fire, its headlights left on.

  A figure jumped out from the driver’s seat.

  She couldn’t see who it was, but she guessed.

  “Up here!” she shouted from the rise. “They’re tracking us—be careful!”

  One of the flashlights broke away, headed in the direction of the drumlin, before its light was shut off.

  Rachel skidded across the frozen creek bed, panting as she caught up with Grace.

  “Are you okay?” she gasped.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Grace spun around in a circle, her head tipped back, the staple-studded tattoo gaping out at Rachel like the scythe of the reaper.

  “Grace, will you come with me? Away from here? There’s more to these people than you understand. Like you said at the campsite, they’re not good for Din—and they’re not good for you.”

  Grace slowly came to a stop. She was looking over Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel didn’t turn. She couldn’t. She didn’t have time.

  “How would you know? You’ve only just met them.”

  The crunch of footsteps was closing in on them. In a moment, Ashkouri or Jamshed would be slipping across the ice to catch up with them.

  “Listen to her, Grace. She’s a police officer.”

  It was Ruksh. She had broken free of the clearing, risking her own safety to come to Rachel’s aid.

  Rachel spun around. They were all on the middle of the ice now, Ashkouri and Din at its edge. Jamshed must have been the one to break away.

  And now she could see Khattak, climbing the rise at a furious pace. He was alone.

  “Get out of here,” she shouted to Ruksh.

  “I can’t leave you out here on your own. I don’t understand, but I won’t leave you!”

  “You knew what they were planning?” Grace asked Rachel. “You came here to stop it?”

  “Yes.” Rachel reached out for the g
irl’s arm. Grace slid farther away. “Please, you have to listen to me.” And then she realized. “You knew about the attack? All this time you knew?”

  Her heart plummeted into her stomach.

  Grace was a member of the cell.

  Ashkouri was moments away, Khattak still too far away to help.

  Grace or Ruksh? What should Rachel do?

  “Ruksh, run!”

  But it was too late. Ashkouri’s advance upon the ice was slow and predatory. He came up behind Ruksh, caught her at the waist, held her fast.

  “Hassan, what—”

  He dropped the flashlight onto the ice. Rachel heard a slight wheeze, the sound ominous. The light bounced back across Ashkouri’s face. He didn’t have Din’s gun. He was holding a knife to Ruksh’s throat.

  “You didn’t tell me, my sweet fiancée. You didn’t tell me how well you knew your brother’s partner. Didn’t you trust me?”

  Ruksh couldn’t speak under the press of the blade. She was staring up at Hassan in shock.

  “Let go of her, Ashkouri,” Khattak shouted from the ridge. The terror in his voice echoed across the ice.

  Hassan wheeled around, dragging Ruksh with him.

  “I told Jamshed to deal with you. Your sister was a distraction. Until she told me all about her brother, Inspector Esa Khattak. Then I saw how useful she would be. And here you are, exactly as I planned. So back off, unless you want me to use this.”

  He pointed the tip of the blade straight up under Ruksh’s jaw. She whimpered in response.

  Rachel calculated the distance between herself and the flashlight. It was a heavier object than the ice screw. She had good aim. If she could throw it from behind … Ashkouri turned back to her, bringing Ruksh with him. He’d altered the angle of the blade again. It was pressed flat across Ruksh’s throat.

  “I don’t need her alive,” he said. “So think carefully.”

  “Let her go.”

  It wasn’t Rachel or Khattak who spoke. It was Grace, her voice hard with purpose. Rachel looked back at her. Grace was holding the gun—Din’s gun—in steady hands. It was aimed squarely at Ruksh’s chest.

  “Grace, no!” Rachel cried, bewildered. Why did Grace have the gun?

  Hassan shifted Ruksh’s body more fully in front of him.

  “So you took the gun,” he said. “I wondered. What did you do with it?”

  “You don’t want to know,” she answered.

  Din approached from behind Ashkouri, inching closer to Grace.

  Rachel shook her head at him in despair.

  “You haven’t done anything yet,” she said. “You can still get out of this, Din.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Grace said in a monotone. “I always thought I could get him out, save him somehow. It didn’t work. He left me with no other choice.”

  “What are you saying, Grace?” Rachel gasped.

  “They drew him into their plot. They turned him into one of them. He wasn’t the Din I knew anymore. I tried to get him away, but Mo wouldn’t let me near him.” Grace jerked the gun at Hassan’s head. “Mo ran interference for Hassan. He made sure that the members of the cell didn’t back out. So I took care of him.”

  “It was you? You shot Mohsin Dar?”

  Rachel couldn’t catch her breath. She slid toward Grace, a little at a time. The gun was still pointed at Hassan and Ruksh. Grace used one hand to smooth her hair under the Maple Leafs toque. Then she gripped the gun tighter, letting it dip toward Rachel.

  “I had to. To save Din.” Her voice cracked. “He used to love me once. He was the only person who did. I couldn’t let them take him. I couldn’t let them hurt him.”

  “Gracie, no!” The heart-wrenching wail was Din’s. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You couldn’t have hurt Mo. You could never hurt anyone.”

  “Then why do I have the gun?” Grace blinked away tears. Her voice was a whisper. “It was for you, Din. I did it for you.”

  “I loved him!” Din cried. “He was my brother.”

  “He ruined you,” Grace answered. “He wanted to see you dead.”

  “Don’t grieve for Mohsin,” Hassan told Din. “He’s become shaheed, a martyr to the cause. He’s in paradise now.”

  Rage rose in Rachel’s throat, choking her. She was poised on the ice between a girl with a gun and the man who held a knife to Ruksh’s throat. The man who counted up lives and spent them, like so many worthless pennies.

  “You’re wrong,” she said to Hassan through gritted teeth. “He wasn’t your martyr, and he didn’t want to die. He didn’t believe in your cause—he was working with us. That’s how we knew about your plot. That’s how we were able to stop it.”

  Hassan smiled. There was nothing in his manner to suggest that Rachel’s news had shaken him. Until his blade drew its first drops of blood from Ruksh’s throat.

  “Did you stop it?” he asked. “It’s not yet midnight.”

  “We have you,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”

  “We’ve already done it.” He waved the knife at her. “Why do you think we came back here? To draw you away from the Nakba.”

  Rachel gasped. She didn’t know what he meant, and she didn’t have time to sort it out. She was focused on the tears of blood leaking from Ruksh’s throat. She needed to get the gun away from Grace.

  “I’m so sorry, Grace,” she said to her, aghast at what Ashkouri’s schemes had cost the girl. “I’m so sorry. Mohsin wasn’t who you thought he was. He wasn’t trying to hurt Din. He was trying to keep him safe—to get him out. You killed the wrong man.” She drew a deep breath. “Mohsin Dar was innocent.”

  A gunshot whistled past Rachel’s ear.

  Din threw himself to the ice.

  Ashkouri didn’t move. The gun was trained on Rachel now.

  “You’re lying,” Grace said. Her eyes were two hollow smudges.

  “I’m not, Grace. That’s how I knew to come here to help you. That’s why I was trying to get you out. Because Mohsin told us—because that’s what Mohsin wanted. Please, Grace. Give me the gun.”

  “You give her the gun, Grace, the first thing she does is take down your boyfriend. He’s committed now. There’s no way out for Din.”

  Rachel turned on Ashkouri like a cornered mountain lion.

  “The first thing I’ll do is take off your head. Let go of Ruksh, now!”

  Her eyes beseeched Ruksh. Ruksh had to find a way to help herself.

  Ashkouri closed the distance between himself and Rachel, dragging Ruksh with him.

  The ice shifted underneath Rachel’s feet. She heard the ominous wheeze again. She’d been on the ice all her life. She knew what it meant. There were too many of them gathered at the weakest point on the surface.

  “Grace,” she said, holding out her hand for the gun.

  From her peripheral vision, she could see that Khattak had reached the creek bed. His gun was drawn, but he didn’t have a clear line of sight.

  Grace raised the gun. She pointed it at Rachel. The ice shifted again. Grace lost her balance, but recovered quickly, the gun still aimed at Rachel’s heart.

  “Too many people have lied to me,” she said, her eyes wet. “Including you.”

  There was a terrible sense of shock in her face. Her mouth gaped at Rachel, the tattoo on her neck stretched tight with pain. She didn’t want to believe Rachel because of what it would mean. She had killed Mohsin for nothing, for all the wrong reasons.

  “Do it,” Ashkouri said. “Be one of us. Help me.”

  Rachel shifted farther away from Ashkouri, drawing the gun with her. She’d opened up a field between herself and Ruksh, giving Khattak the clear line of sight he needed. But he had only a few seconds before Ashkouri clued in to his approach.

  And in those seconds, Khattak would need to decide.

  His sister or Rachel.

  There was no choice, really. Khattak couldn’t cover them both.

  And she realized she didn’t want to be a wit
ness to his painful decision.

  She made her words flat and no-nonsense.

  “If you wanted to save Din, it was Hassan you should have killed.”

  She leapt at Grace, wrestling the girl for Din Abdi’s gun.

  The gun went off, a crack that shattered the immaculate silence. Then a second shot, followed by a muffled thud on the ice. Stars splintered and wheeled above Rachel’s head. Grace butted Rachel’s forehead, her piercings stabbing into Rachel’s skin.

  “Gracie!” Din called, scrambling to his feet.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Rachel shouted at him.

  He didn’t listen.

  Rachel wrested the gun from Grace’s hand. It fired again, this time straight down into the ice. The plates of thinned ice jerked against each other, once, twice, then separated under Grace’s feet. She plunged into the depths of the creek, a startled expression on her face. She vanished under the surface in a heartbeat.

  “Grace!” Din’s voice was petrified.

  Rachel threw herself flat on the ice, grabbed the ice screw from her pocket, and drove it into the heaving surface of the creek.

  “Get off the ice,” she shouted back to Din. “Let me get her!”

  “No!” he screamed. He slid past Rachel on his belly and threw himself into the hole where Grace had disappeared.

  He dived once, twice, three times—the minutes between his ragged attempts at surfacing stretching out longer and longer.

  On the third try, Rachel grabbed at his scarf. She staked it down with the ice screw, reaching for his shoulders.

  He was shivering wildly.

  An inch at a time, Rachel propelled his body from the hole, slinging it along the length of the ice, moving toward the banks of the creek.

  “No, no, no,” he kept crying.

  Rachel shoved his trembling body away to safety, then swung out again, creeping back toward the hole, using the screw as a safety measure, the same way a mountain climber would use a spike.

  “Rachel, no!”

  It was Khattak’s desperate cry.

  She didn’t listen. She spared a moment to reassure herself that it was Ashkouri who had fallen, and that Ruksh was safe in her brother’s arms. Then she kicked off her boots to dive into the hole.

  She was a better swimmer than Din, but the cold bit into her body at once, a shock to her arms and legs. The puffy coat weighed her down. All around her was blackness, and the dragging pull of the water.