“What. The bloody. Hell?” Witt growled through Nena’s earpiece, snapping her back to attention. The team was waiting for her. Nena had deviated from the plan long enough.
A rustling from the bed drew Nena’s gaze to the girl, who she considered carefully. What to do with her? Nena couldn’t leave her like that. She couldn’t take her either.
The girl’s tiny hands picked at the collar around her neck, and without another thought, Nena stepped to the Cuban’s bureau of sex paraphernalia and the little key dangling on a hook inside it.
She could hear the team checking in with Network as they returned to the van. She’d skew the mission time if she was late, possibly compromise the safety of the whole team if more of the Cuban’s men arrived on-site. She had to move. She tugged the key off the hook. The girl would need to figure out how to survive, or not, on her own.
Witt growled, “For God’s sake, you need to leave now.”
“On the way.” Nena gave the room one final sweep, her eyes pausing briefly at the bed, before she slipped through the doorway. Behind her, the girl scrambled toward the little silver key that had landed among the satin sheets and pillows. As Nena raced through the hallways and down the stairs, away from the girl in the bed who’d reminded Nena of a past she wished she could forget, she felt like she was running right back to the beginning of it all.
4
BEFORE
Before I became Echo, before I was Nena, I was Aninyeh. And this is my story, my recounting.
Of who I was.
Of how I came to be.
My journey begins in my small village, nestled among the plush, vibrant green forests and cocooned on Aburi Mountain. If one is looking for me, they will often find me on the cliffs, overlooking the world below. My favorite time of day is early morning, when everything is still dewy and the fog is low lying and heavy but burns away as the sun comes up. It’s hot in Ghana, not uncommon for the late summer. This year has been a good year with a fair amount of rain, which allowed crops and our animals to grow well enough to sell at market and feed the village. We are prospering.
Here on the mountain, the temperature is cooler, perfect. On a clear day, I can stand on the cliff, look out through the dissipating fog, and see Accra, only twenty-five miles away but seeming so much farther from where I stand. The deep valleys below constantly remind me of how beautiful my home is. Of its richness. Of how lucky I am to be an African, a Ghanaian, a N’nkakuwean.
“Papa says to mind our business and do not covet—”
“—what our brother or sister has. Yes, I know, Aninyeh.” Ofori, my brother, rolls his eyes. “Does not mean I cannot worry about what happens to me after Wisdom assumes leadership and Josiah becomes his counsel.”
When Ofori gets this way, jealous over things our older brothers have and he does not, I strain from not slapping him senseless. Wisdom—tall, fierce, brave Wisdom, who not only inherited Papa’s Christian name but has a name that reflects his demeanor—will assume the title of chief as firstborn when Papa steps down. Josiah is three minutes Wisdom’s junior and will become Wisdom’s chief advisor.
“You should be glad there are no responsibilities binding you to N’nkakuwe like them,” I tell Ofori. Why he does not see his luck, I do not know.
The kitchen of our family home is a warm blend of cooking spices and sweetened pastry. Auntie, Mama’s closest cousin, who stepped in when Mama passed, glistens as she stands over a cast-iron pot of bubbling bean stew laden with bits of salted codfish. In a minute, Auntie will heat a pan of oil to fry the ripened sweet plantains. Bean stew and fried plantains are Papa’s and my favorite.
I consider all of this as Ofori steals a bofrot, a small round ball of sweetened fried dough. In the background, Auntie complains he will ruin his dinner. Diligently, I count bofrots in my head, dividing them by the six of us. I grimace because Ofori has already had more than his share.
Auntie says, “Ofori, you should be with your papa and the twins, seeing to the end of the day.”
“Why?” he asks, popping the last of his stolen goods in his mouth.
“Why what?” she asks.
“Why should I follow them around when I will never govern? They do not need me.”
“You will be on the council of elders, Ofori. That is important work because a chief cannot rule well without his council,” our auntie says as she flaps her free hand at him. “Now leave this women’s work and see to your father at the village center.”
My shoulders jerk as if pierced with a sharp stick. That Auntie delegates where the place of women and men should be is archaic, and I have no plans to adhere to it. My fifteenth birthday will come in days, and when I am eighteen, I will attend university abroad, not in Ghana like Auntie thinks. I will travel the world as Papa did, learn even more languages than the ones Papa has taught me. No one will tell me what a woman can or cannot do. But I say none of this aloud. I value my head too much and would rather not be thumped on it with the heavy wooden ladle she wields or have my ears boxed.