This is Gonna Hurt

CHAPTER ONE

‘We’re screwed.’

‘I wouldn’t put it that black and white,’ Jonah tried to lighten the sentiment.

‘You wouldn’t? And how would you describe our current predicament?’ Ebony shot back, her stare daring him to contradict her.

‘We have challenges,’ he tried.

Ebony brought her hands up to her face, rubbed her eyes and sighed. She plucked at a strand of hair that had escaped her cap, sighed again, and looked at the ever-smiling Jonah.

‘Okay,’ she said exasperated. ‘Let me summarise this. Make sure I have the right perspective.’

Jonah and I nodded. It seemed the safe thing to do.

Ebony turned and walked to the three moveable whiteboards arranged in a semi-circle near the computer set up. She picked up several markers in different colours and beaconed us over. Naturally, we compiled. Failure would not go down well in her current mood.

She began to write on the central whiteboard, then turned to face us.

Why did I always have the feeling I was back in the school benches when she was like this? I felt disproportionately intimidated by the tiny five-foot-two computer wizard in front of me. I glanced at Jonah and saw he wasn’t much better off. Not even with his six-foot-six, two-forty pound frame.

‘Right,’ she started.

We were all ears.

‘Your dad,’ she pointed to me. ‘The self proclaimed Christian God, is now aware that you’ve joined forces with the big man.’ She pointed to Jonah. I nodded. She turned and wrote it on the central board.

‘He declared war on you.’

‘Technically yes, but I suppose we did that earlier…’ I stopped talking. Her stare was so intense it almost made me stutter. ‘Yes. Right. Not the time for semantics.’ I felt the blush rise and cover my cheeks as I averted my gaze.

‘You think?’

I refrained from answering. Jonah stayed silent. He didn’t even gloat. Guess I’m not the only one intimidated by Ebony.

‘He doesn’t know about me yet,’ she continued. We both shook our heads and she wrote the statement down in a new list on the right-hand board.

‘Your family has technology that can transport them to wherever they want including cross-dimensional.’ Again the centre board.

‘We don’t have a way to trace them, or be forewarned.’ Centre board. ‘They are also the driving force behind The Establishment.’ Again. ‘The Establishment basically has control over the Christian Church.’

I was about to say something when she added, ‘and the other major religions as well.’ I nodded. My input no longer needed.

‘Your dad will have informed The Establishment so basically we’re at war with them too.’ It was starting to sound very bleek.

‘It’s just the three of us,’ She continued to write, not bothering to look at us.

‘Not just us,’ Jonah dared to contradict. ‘There’s the archbishop as well.’

‘Archbishop Benedict.’ She stated, turning to him with a cold stare. Jonah nodded enthusiastically.

‘The guy you think is our ally, who you haven’t heard from since you visited him months ago?’ she commented with an edge.

‘Well. Yes. But I’m sure he’s on our side,’ he stammered.

Another big sigh from Ebony. ’Shall we put him down as a maybe then?’ Jonah nodded sheepishly. Benedict was added to the left-hand board under our names.

‘Let’s continue, shall we?’ When neither of us commented, she picked up her narrative.

‘Thanks to your archbishop, the big man’s picture is hanging on every cop-station wall.’ Jonah was about to say something, but decided just in time to keep his mouth shut.

‘And you,’ she pointed to me again. ‘Are quickly coming into the spotlight of the anti-terrorism squad.’

I was taken back. ‘Say what? When did that happen?’

‘Anti-terrorism has had their beady eyes on your mosque for a while,’ she explained. ‘They’re probing your background along with the other “persons of interest”.’

Shit. Not what I wanted to hear. That would put an even shorter deadline on whatever we could find at the mosque.

‘And to top it all off,’ Ebony continued. ‘I still haven’t deciphered the contents of the hard drive you downloaded.’ That really bugged her. Maybe more than all the other things.

She added all the comments to the boards. Our “good guys” list on the left board was pathetically short and the plusses on the right-hand board were even worse. The one list that stood out was the shit list. The centre board. Our challenges.

If you put it that way, it really was depressing.

She took a step back and studied the overview, then turned to us.

‘We’re screwed.’

We didn’t contradict her this time.

CHAPTER TWO

‘So how did they find you?’ I asked Jonah.

He glanced at me, his eyes dark and unfathomable. ‘Not important,’ he declared and went back to unpacking his duffel bag.

‘It is actually,’ I countered. ‘We need to know so we can avoid making the same mistake again’

He stood up straight and gave me his best intimidating stare. Under normal circumstances, it would unnerve even the strongest of men. Me, I was used to it. It didn’t have any more effect on me than mild amusement. After all our months together, surely he didn’t think it still worked?

‘Where did they grab you?’ I tried a different avenue.

His stare continued. I returned it with a smile.

‘You’re not going to give up on this, are you?’ he asked. I shook my head.

‘At the beach,’ he answered sullenly, turning back to his bag.

I waited. There were loads of questions I could have asked, but he knew them already. It was a waiting game now.

He finally finished unpacking and moved to the living room of his new apartment. I followed and walked to the groceries we’d picked up on the way here.

San Diego was nice. The town had a distinctive Mexican vibe. More laid-back than San Francisco or L.A. The few people we’d met up to now seemed friendly. More open. Jonah had definitely already made an impact on the ladies in the apartment complex. With his big frame, powerful aura, and the mischievous glint in his eyes, he was undoubtably already the topic of many pool-side conversations.

We thought it prudent to move him after the debacle in San Francisco. We weren’t sure whether his previous address had been compromised, but we couldn’t take the risk. There were too many people hunting him. Me, I had to stay put, my job at the mosque wasn’t done yet. San Diego was Ebony’s suggestion. Far enough from Frisco and still on the beach somewhere.

Still. I wanted to know how my brother Michael found my partner.

Jonah poured two mugs of coffee from the ever-present and working coffee-maker and handed me one. We made ourselves comfortable in the lounge chairs and sipped the black gold.

‘I was surfing,’ Jonah finally divulged. ‘At twilight. The beach always emptied around six and I figured I would be inconspicuous then.’

I looked at him in surprise, my eyebrows raised. Inconspicuous? How in hell did he think he could ever be anything close to low-key? He wasn’t built for it.

‘Let’s face it Jonah,’ I answered him. ‘You will stand out wherever you are.’

He smiled and cocked his head. ‘You know what I mean.’

I did, but a bit of banter lightened the mood.

‘Anyway,’ he continued. ‘They were waiting for me when I walked back over the beach. Two of them approached me from the side, one in front and another came up behind me. They boxed me in.’

‘Did you recognise them at all?’

‘No. Never seen them before. Though I did pinpoint them as your people.’ There was a slight reproach in his tone. I let it go—for now.

‘They made it clear they would take me, voluntarily or not. There were still a few people around and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, so I complied, and they took me to a van in the parking lot. They made me get in the back, and that was where I saw Michael.’ The hatred was back in his hard glare. Well, I had the same sentiment for my sibling. No discussion there.

‘I was about to wipe the smile off his face when everything went black.’

I thought about it for a few minutes. Michael must have known where to look. It couldn’t have been a chance encounter. That would be too much of a coincidence. There was more. There had to be.

‘How did he know where to look?’ I asked in general, not expecting an answer.

‘How the hell would I know?’ Jonah avoided my gaze. ‘Maybe it was just a case of being in the right place at the right time.’

I cocked my head in question and observed my partner. The question had been a rhetoric one, no more than me thinking out loud. Why had he taken it so personally?

‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ I continued, eager to find out what he was hiding.

He glared at me. My answering smile didn’t help to improve his mood.

‘What are you implying?’ He spat out the words. ‘That it was my fault?’

‘I’m not implying anything.’

I continued to observe his fidgeting. He stood up and walked back to the kitchen to replenish his coffee and stayed there, his back to the kitchen counter. He felt my eyes on him and looked up. There was a mixture of anger and self-reproach in his features. I waited him out.

‘I just went surfing,’ he finally broke the silence.

‘How often did you do that?’

‘Few times a week. Always in the evening and on quiet beaches.’

‘Was there a pattern? To your visits?’

He shook his head and took another sip.

‘Was there anything different that day?’

‘No. Nothing. Look Gabe, I’ve been racking my brain trying to find out how they found me. I have no idea.’

I nodded. Aggravating him wouldn’t get any answers. We would have to approach the conundrum in a different manner.

‘Okay,’ I said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Let’s back-track and see if we can find any clues.’

He moved back to the living room and sat down opposite me.

‘We have to assume they were staking out the beach,’ I began. Jonah nodded.

‘There are loads of beaches. Was there anything special about this one that made you go there?’

‘Just the peace and quiet. The waves are okay, not as good as in other places. But it’s almost deserted. I thought that would be safe.’

‘You’d think. Right?’

I peered into my coffee cup. Nope. No answers there either. There was something nagging at the back of my mind.

‘I know we can’t hide your size, but I thought with all the changes, it would be difficult to recognise you,’ I mused.

He nodded as well.

‘Yeah. My own mother wouldn’t recognise me clean-shaven with this blond hair,’ he laughed.

‘Not to mention with the tats gone,’ I added.

The atmosphere in the room changed immediately. I looked up at him. His brow was creased, the eyes hooded. What had I said? I rewound the last thirty seconds. The Tatts. Could that be what had such an impact?

The nagging voice slowly made its way to my consciousness to form the question I didn’t really want to ask. ‘When you surf,’ I asked. ‘You wear the wet-suit, right?’ The wet-suit covered the tattoos. The usual camouflage foundation washed off in the water.

He stared at me. ‘Yeah. Of course.’

We were silent. I held his gaze, he couldn’t. Not a good sign.

‘Most of the time,’ he added sullenly.

‘Most of the time?’ I couldn’t keep the reproach out of my tone.

‘Okay. Once. I didn’t wear it just once. There was no one at the beach. I checked. It was deserted.’

‘Fuck.’

He didn’t react. The self-reproach was enough.

‘Someone must have seen you,’ I said quite redundantly. He refrained from his usual sarcastic replies.

‘How long after that surf did they grab you?’

‘Two days. I didn’t go back to the beach the next day.’

‘Well, at least we know.’ It wouldn’t help to rub in how reckless he had been, he knew. ‘And let's just be grateful they didn’t follow you back to the apartment. They could have found your laptop and made the connection with the mosque or Ebony.’