Flash Fiction Friday

Here’s this week’s flash fiction. It could stand alone, but if you read last week’s you might see a connection. This one clocks in at 292 words:

The Glock sat heavy in my pocket as I waited in the bright Lebanese sun. Call me naive, but I expected Beirut to be full of men in robes and women in hijabs. If the young native waiting on the tables was anything to go by, I was very wrong. She was dressed in tight fitting jeans and a baggy white shirt. Her long dark hair was tied in a pony tail that swung behind her as glanced between patrons. I didn’t intend to catch her eye, but she smiled in my direction and came over to my table.

“Can I get you something, sir?” she said with only a trace of an accent.

“Perhaps some tea?” I said. Her eyes seemed to take in my face and attire, then after looking over her shoulder, she slid into the chair opposite me.

“Paul Jackson?” she said.

“And you are…?”

“Anan Haddad. Even with the sunglasses, you meet the description I was given. You are expecting me?”

I blinked. It didn’t occur to me that Anan was not a male name. Certainly not the name of a beautiful young woman whose eyes now pleaded with me.

“Tell me you have news of my father. That is why you are meeting me, is it not? They said you will have a message for me.”

I slipped my hand into my pocket and held the Glock. Maybe she is a terrorist. But as she looked at me with trembling lips, my resolve melted.

“We… we want you to know we’re doing everything we can,” I said. She took my hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you, Paul. Thank you so much.”

And that was the last I saw of Anan Haddad.

Peterson saw to that, apparently.

More next week… 🙂