Her eyes searched his face, as if it held the answers to questions that had plagued her for a year and a half. It was not quite the same face she remembered. She took in the beard, the two small scars. The eyes were the same, dark and penetrating. So was the vaguely smug, perpetual half-smirk.
“Where the hell were you, you frigging arsehole?” she asked, throwing herself forward and clutching him in a fierce hug. His body felt different.
“Have you been working out?”
He chuckled, returning the hug.
“Work keeps me fit,” he said.
They stood in the lounge, Erika clinging to him like she was afraid he’d disappear again. Ian’s slightly inebriated, sing-song voice came drifting in from the hall.
“Erika… who’s ready to walk the plank?”
He walked into the room with a plastic cutlass on one hand and a bottle of rum in the other, wearing only some pirate-themed boxer shorts and a tricorn hat. He spotted his wife hugging the man in the dark cloak.
“What the… Jason?”
“What the hell kind of answer is ‘it’s complicated’?” Erika asked.
“An accurate one,” Jason said. “I’m going to tell you everything, I will. It just has to come in stages.”
“Why?”
“Because some things you need to see for yourself before you can accept them.”
Jason sat across from Ian and Erika at their dining table. Ian had made a quick trip to obtain pants, while Erika held Jason’s hand across the table, as if afraid he’d make a break for it.
“You expect me to just accept that?” Erika asked. “I knew there was something shady about what happened. I was looking into it for months. There was some kind of crazy coverup…”
“I know,” Jason said.
“You know? But you let me keep thinking you were dead?”
“I didn’t know then,” Jason said. “I had no say in what happened. I only got back a week ago and I’ve been playing catchup.”
“You’ve been here a week? Back from where?”
Jason sighed.
“Alright. I’ll give you the broad strokes, but you probably won’t believe me. When you just lay it out, it comes across as quite ridiculous.”
“Compared to a conspiracy where I had to back off instead of getting murdered?”
Fury twisted Jason’s face twisted into that of a savage stranger.
“Who threatened you?” he asked, his voice full of dark promise.
“I was looking into what happened with this cop, back in Melbourne,” Erika said. “He pretty much torpedoed his career trying to help me. He finally told me to back off because people who dug too hard were turning up dead. I know that sounds like some crazy conspiracy.”
“No,” Jason said. “I’m pretty sure I know who that was. Broadly speaking. I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in all this.”
“In all what? Seriously, Jason. You fake your death and vanish? What’s going on?”
“I didn’t fake my death, Eri. Look, this is going to sound insane, even by murderous conspirator standards. It started when I got caught up with this… let’s call him a fringe religious extremist. He never intended to get me involved; it just happened by accident. Next thing I know, I’m a very long way from home, with no way back.”
“You couldn’t pick up a phone?”
“No,” Jason said. “No phone, no internet, no radio.”
“Where were you? The Sahara Desert?”
“No, the Kalahari.”
“What?”
“It’s further south.”
“I know where the Kalahari Desert is, Jason. You’re telling me you’ve been in Africa this whole time?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to tell anyone when you left?”
“I didn’t leave, Erika. I was taken.”
“You were kidnapped?”
“Not on purpose, but essentially, yeah.”
“You were accidentally kidnapped. And taken to Africa.”
“I did say it would come across as ridiculous.”
“You know they have phones in Africa.”
“Not where I was.”
“You couldn’t go somewhere there was one?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
Erika let out a groan.
“What happened to your apartment?” she asked. “You’d better not say gas leak.”
“It wasn’t a gas leak. I’ll tell you all about it, but not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think you want me to tell you the reason again.”
She let out another frustrated groan.
“You look different,” she told him. “You sound different.”
“Part of my training,” Jason said. “I do a thing with my breathing that makes my voice different.”
“Training?”
“It’s a martial arts thing. Kind of.”
“There was a Shao Lin temple in the Kalahari?”
“I like your new voice,” Ian said. “It’s deeper, with a little hint of reverb. It’s sexy.”
“Thanks,” Jason said brightly.
“How can I be sure it’s even you?” Erika asked.
“Because you want to punch me in the face,” Jason said. “You know that feeling.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I do want to punch you in the face. How about you keep telling us your ridiculous story instead?”
“Alright, so this guy took me by accident. I… managed to get away, but it turns out he had a whole family of nutjobs and they caught me immediately. That was when I met these other people they caught, and those people were private security contractors. They’d been hired to look into this crazy family living out in the desert and got themselves caught.”
“Private security contractors?” Ian asked. “You mean mercenaries?”
“Whatever you want to call them,” Jason said. “Mostly, they work for the local authorities. They helped me get out of the situation I was in and recruited me.”
“They recruited you to be a mercenary?” Erika asked.
“Yes.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Did they mistake you for someone else?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“This is not helping my self-esteem, Eri.”
“Your self-esteem doesn’t need it. You’re telling me you’re a mercenary?”
“Not right now,” Jason said. “It was the only way we could think of that might get me a way home. These people, they trained me up over a few months. They became my friends.”
“They taught you to shoot people?”
“I’m more of a knife guy.”
“Oh, you’re a knife guy,” Erika said lightly. “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND?”
“I warned you, Eri: ridiculous.”
“You weren’t wrong,” Erika said, swiping the bottle of rum from her husband and taking a swig. “Alright, go on.”
“So, I worked this job for a while until I stumbled into a way back home. That was a week ago. I’ve been staying with Uncle Hiro while I get a handle on everything.”
“Uncle Hiro knows you’re back?”
“Yeah. It’s just him and you two. No one else yet. Not from the family anyway.”
“This is a lot to take in, Jason,” Erika said.
“I know. It’s only going to get worse once we start going through the details.”
“Maybe we just leave that for tonight,” Ian interjected. “How about we just be happy that Jason has come back to us?”
“That would be nice,” Jason said. “I’m going to need your support when it comes to Mum and Dad, Eri. And Kaito.”
“Oh, carp,” Erika said. “That’s going to be a huge mess.”
“Yep,” Jason agreed.
She squeezed his hand.
“Are you still saying carp instead of crap?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Carp is worse than crap.”
“You’re a chef,” Jason said. “Show some professionalism.”
“No. Carp is the worst.”