Slim To None. Taylor Smith
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and scrub surrounding the LZ with Zaynab and her granddaughter, listening to the rotor thrum of the returning helicopter, Hannah felt the passport weighing on her and her frustration mounted. It wasn’t all about sisterhood, she had to admit. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that this was as doable right now as it was ever going to be. If Amy was still in Al Zawra, then it might just be possible to spring her, and she herself was the ideal candidate for the job. No one would expect a woman to try anything, so the element of surprise would be on her side. And there was even transport back at the house where they’d found Zaynab and her granddaughter. Looking through the window of a covered shed at the back of the house, Hannah had spotted an old Toyota pickup truck. It had been Yasmin’s father’s, Zaynab had said. Someone had driven it back to the house the day after he was killed. The keys, presumably, were still in the truck or somewhere in the house. Zaynab would be able to tell her where.
It was about fifty miles from Al Zawra to Baghdad and the comparative safety of the Green Zone, Hannah calculated. An hour’s drive. Hazardous, maybe, but she was trained in survival and evasion tactics. She knew the language and the culture. Maybe all her training and experience had been leading up to this very mission. She could do it. There might be no one else who was as uniquely suited as she was to pull it off.
A million bucks. She could do a lot with that kind of money.
In the first place, she could finally afford to hire a decent lawyer to help get her son back. Her ex-husband and his legal buddies had run circles around her bargain basement family law guy during the custody hearings when she’d lost Gabe to Cal and Christie. And if—no, when—Hannah went back to court to challenge their current arrangements, she had no doubt that Cal would try to steamroller right over her again. Unless, that is, she had legal guns to match his.
Here, as in many other areas of life, it was a classic case of those who have, get more, while the little guy just keeps falling into deeper and deeper holes. She knew for a fact that colleagues who worked high profile divorce and family law cases had provided their services mostly free of charge to her ex—just lawyer buddies, trading favors. In exchange, as a celebrity defense attorney with a rising profile and several professional sports figures and above-the-title movie stars in his client roster, Cal had Grammy and Academy Award ticket she could trade off, as well as impossible-to-get ringside, rink-side and courtside seats at sporting events. He also had an entrée to the hottest clubs and parties in L.A., all provided by his growing stable of rich clients and their handlers. Hannah would need big bucks to level that playing field.
And that wasn’t all. Even the best legal team wouldn’t do her much good if she couldn’t provide a stable home for Gabe, with opportunities at least somewhat comparable to what Cal and Christie could give him. That meant she had to have enough money to live on for the next five years at least—and ideally, until Gabe finished high school. Living in a tiny condo in Silver Lake, spending nothing on herself and banking most of her security work earnings, she’d started to build up a nice little nest egg. But even with the recent rise in overseas contract security work, the best she could hope to earn in a year was about $250,000, and that was taxable unless she spent at least two hundred days out of the country, which didn’t leave much time for being with Gabe.
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