For a moment, pain and panic overwhelmed her. She leaned her forehead against the window, forcing herself to breathe evenly, then turned back to the dossier.
Sophie examined the picture, but there was nothing she didn’t already know. Michael’s face was etched on her heart. He wasn’t smiling in the picture – he rarely smiled in photos – which made him look more foreign. His mother’s Orlisian blood dominated in his heavy brow, generous mouth, and stern expression. He looked more American when he smiled, showing boyish dimples beneath the black hair he’d inherited from his father. A perfect blend of his parents, and the two cultures that shared him.
Determined not to cry, Sophie turned her attention back to the workup. She flipped to the next page, noting a mention of her own name. She showed up in any decent profile of Michael Nariovsky-Trent.
She appeared under “Closest Known Associates/Friends” along with Carter DeVries. No one else; Michael had always been solitary. Sophie spotted Mirielle Desmarais’ name under “Sexual/Romantic Relations.” Other names appeared there as well, relationships Michael had had over the years. But a brief entry at the bottom of the category startled her.
“Sophie Ann Swenda: Likely ongoing romantic relations since 2002, exact nature of relationship never confirmed.”
“‘Ongoing romantic relations’?” she murmured. “Someone should tell Michael that.” But she couldn’t tell him because he was missing. Missing and almost certainly presumed dead by the world’s bureaucratic machinery. And the fear rose in her all over again.
Terror had been her companion since Michael had left for his besieged homeland of Orlisia in the summer. Panic had arrived in September when he’d vanished after a Soviet incursion into the region where he’d been. Two months, three days and….she checked her watch…nineteen hours ago.
-
Four months earlier
Sophie met Michael on the steps of his parents’ house in midtown Manhattan. He smiled broadly at her approach, his dimples popping out.
Michael had returned from his mission to Uganda with Médecins Sans Frontières several weeks earlier. Sophie was running Refugee Crisis International headquarters while her colleagues worked in Sichuan province in China following the massive earthquake that had struck in May. It was the first time they’d been in New York at the same time for an extended period of time since she’d moved there four years previously.
Not that they’d had a moment to themselves since the Soviet Republic had invaded Orlisia a few weeks prior. Certainly there hadn’t been the time or inclination for romance. Michael seemed happier, more relaxed, as Sophie greeted him. Maybe tonight.
“Walk with me.” He took her hand and led her to a nearby park to sit in the summer twilight. Michael pulled Sophie close to him, and for the first time, she felt how his long, lean body trembled with suppressed emotion.
Her happiness drained away, and she searched his face. Then she knew what he’d brought her there to say.
“No.”
“I have to go, mana mila.” His cold hands took hers. “It is my home. I must do something.”
“Please, no,” she said, terror seeping into her body. “Your home is here, in New York. With your parents. With me, Mikael.” Agony filled his face at her words. She switched to Orlisian, talking faster. “The border is closed. You’ll never get in. No one can get in now, certainly not a US citizen of Orlisian birth. They’ll shoot you.”
Michael crushed Sophie against him, and her voice became muffled against his shoulder. “Please don’t go. I can’t bear to lose you again. I’ve lost you too many times.”
“You have never lost me,” he whispered. “You have always had me. Always. But I must go. I cannot live with myself if I do not.”