LITMIR.BIZ

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      This book is for

      Jeff Aghassi, Ann LaFarge, Mildred Marmur, and John Rosenberg and Jeannine Rosenberg. Because no one gets through life without the help of others.

      It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air – there’s the rub, the task.

      Aeneid

      —Virgil

      Prologue

      The woman in the video is wearing a white shoulder-length hijab, embroidered with delicate beadwork. Her immaculate silk scarf frames her face, accentuating her natural beauty. She gives a tiny nod to the camera.

       A soft cue is heard, then she begins.

      “I am Samara. I am not a jihadist. I am a widow-mother baptized with the blood of my husband and my child when your governments murdered them.”

      Her strong, intelligent voice underscores her resolve in accented English, suggesting a mix of the Middle East and East London. Her eyes burn into the camera as it pulls back slowly. She speaks directly to the audience who will soon meet her on every television set in the world.

      She lets a moment pass in silence. Her hands are clasped before her on a plain wooden table. Her rings glint from her thumb and wedding finger. The camera eases back, revealing a framed family photograph of a man, a boy and the woman herself. They are smiling. Joy swims in the woman’s eyes. For it is a portrait of her from another time. Another life. It stands next to her as headstone to her happiness and witness to her destiny.

      To exchange pain.

      For the intelligence analysts who will study her message, there is no prepared statement. No grenade launcher on display before her. No AK-47 flanking her.

      No chanting from the glorious text.

      There are no black-and-gold flags on the walls behind her. No flags of any group. No carpet or fabric. The background is simple with angled mirrors.

      Nothing betrays the woman’s location, where she is recording her video or who is helping her. She could be in a safe house in the West Bank. Or in Athens. Maybe in Manila, Paris or London. Perhaps Madrid, or Casablanca.

      Or in a suburb of the United States.

      “Your soldiers invaded my home, tortured my husband and child. They forced them to watch as one by one they defiled me. Then they killed my husband and my son before my eyes. They fled when your bombers delivered death to my city. I carried my dead child through the ruins and to the bank of the river of Eden where I buried him, my husband and my life. But I have been resurrected to seek justice for these crimes.

      “And it is for these crimes that I deliver my widow-mother’s wrath. For these crimes you will taste death.

      “Dying for me does not mean death. Dying for me is a promise kept. For I will have avenged the destruction of my world by bringing death to yours. Death is my reward as I join my husband and my child in paradise. For them, I am the eternal martyr. For them, I am vengeance.”

      Book One:

      1

       Blue Rose Creek, California

      Maggie Conlin left her house believing a lie.

      She believed life was normal again. She believed that the trouble preying on her family had passed, that Logan, her nine-year-old son, had come to terms with the toll Iraq had taken on them.

      But the truth niggled at Maggie as she drove to work.

      Their scars—the invisible ones—had not healed.

      This morning, when she’d stood with Logan waiting for the school bus, he was uneasy.

      “You love Dad, right, Mom?”

      “Absolutely. With all my heart.”

      Logan looked at the ground and kicked a pebble.

      “What is it?” she asked.

      “I worry that something bad is going to happen. Like you might get a divorce.”

      Maggie clasped his shoulders. “No one’s getting divorced. It’s okay to be confused. It hasn’t been easy these past few months since Daddy got home. But the worst is over now, right?”

      Logan nodded.

      “Daddy and I will always be right here, together in this house. Always. Okay?”

      “Okay.”

      “Remember, I’m picking you up after school today for your swim class. So don’t get on the bus.”

      “Okay. Love you, Mom.”

      Logan hugged her so hard it hurt. Then he ran to his bus, waved and smiled from the window before he vanished.

      Maggie reflected on his worries as she drove through Blue Rose Creek, a city of a hundred thousand near Riverside County, on her way to the Liberty Valley Promenade Mall. She parked her Ford Focus and clocked in at Stobel and Chadwick, where she was a senior associate bookseller.

      Her morning went fast as she called customers telling them orders had arrived, helped others find titles, suggested gift books and restocked bestsellers. As busy as she was, Maggie could not escape the truth. Her family had been fractured by events no one could control.

      Her husband, Jake, was a trucker. In recent years, his rig had kept breaking down, and the

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