The Blood of Patriots

Chapter 1: The Rainbow

I hate a winter that drags out longer than normal. The world around me aches for the heavy cleansing only a good spring rain can bring. It waits anxiously for the annual resurgence of life, the sudden emergence each spring of that first yellow and green daffodil through a pile of gray crusty snow. I also ache—for anything that will change the season in me.

I finish my lunch and exit the restaurant into a rush of people heading in the direction of my office. I become part of the flow. Putting on my gloves, I pull up my coat collar against the late winter chill. I pay little attention to the walk lights, moving with the crowd, stopping when they do and following along when the herd moves again.

I check my watch at the next stop. I have twenty minutes until my scheduled call with DHS, the Department of Homeland Security. I'll have plenty of time to prepare when I get to my office, but I go over the routine agenda in my head.

The Assistant Director of the regional DHS will be annoyingly happy. He always is. Like most government employees, he wasn't promoted into his current position because he's good at it.

The rep from the St. Louis County Sheriff's Department will be anxious. It's a Friday. She'll have a string of strategy meetings this afternoon in preparation for the weekend. She'll have no patience for the DHS guy's chatty banter.

And, as usual, the rep from TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, will just be coming on shift. He'll be completely unprepared. I don't think he cares. He'll drag out ....

"Sam! Sam Taylor!"

The calling of my name startles me as I step up onto a curb. The voice is familiar, too familiar to pass by. It can't be her. Rumor had it that she'd died in Iraq years ago, but a tiny voice deep inside always whispered to me that she was still out there, somewhere.

A wall of people in gray and black coats parts and Oz magically steps back into my life in a rainbow of colors—green coat, purple scarf and yellow beret. Her brown curly hair is cut short and frames her oval face. She pushes her way through the people. I take her red-gloved hands in mine and reel her in.

"Oz, what are you doing here? When ...?"

She reaches around my neck with both arms and kisses me hard. The smell of her perfume envelopes me. The taste of her and the shape of her body through her thick wool coat take me back ten years. We let go and stare at each other with stupidly happy smiles.

I remember the disappointment then in her large brown eyes, mixed with the sad lack of surprise at my response. Now, however, I see hope and longing. Maybe that's only what I want to see. I examine the lines in her face, the shape of her eyebrows ....

"Sam, snap out of it."

I rush to tell her that I'm sorry, that I was wrong, that I tried to find her but couldn't—that I need her. All that comes out is a garbled babble of embarrassing blubber.

She laughs and the wonderful memory of that sound melts away the years like the first warm ray of sunshine on the morning's frost. She sticks a piece of paper into my hand.

"I need to see you," she says. "Meet me tonight. The address is on the paper."

"But I ...."

She silences me with another kiss then turns and slips through a flood of people from the changing walk light. Bodies bump into me, trying to push me toward my office once more. Someone slams into my arm and I clench my fist around the piece of paper. Another body hits my shoulder and turns me away from her. I turn back, forcefully.