Defending Hearts. Rebecca Crowley

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      “They’re not putting an alarm system in my house,” Oz insisted in Swedish, shoving his hand through his hair as he followed his manager across the parking lot.

      An oversized, Peak Tactical-branded pickup had parked beside his two-door Mercedes AMG, and it hung over the line so badly he wasn’t sure he could get the driver’s-side door open. He exhaled in disgust.

      Roland stopped beside his own, larger Mercedes, apparently oblivious to the pickup’s violation of Oz’s parking space. “What’s wrong with an alarm system? Everyone has one nowadays. Mine was preinstalled when I bought the house.”

      “It’s invasive, that’s what’s wrong with it. It’s an intrusive, pervasive, aggressive assertion about faith in humanity, and it’s not the kind of statement I want made in my home.”

      Roland unlocked his car, opened the door and rested his elbow on its top edge. “It’s a white box with lights and buttons that makes a noise and alerts the security company if someone forces open a window or a door. How is that a statement?”

      “It says my house is a fortress that needs to be protected. It says I can’t trust people outside its walls. I don’t want to live like that.”

      “After a week, you won’t even know it’s there.”

      “Of course I will,” Oz protested. “I’ll have to set it every time I leave the house and disarm it every time I come in. And where are they going to put the panel—right beside the front door? What if I want to come in through the garage? Or the back door? You know how hard I’ve worked to get that house exactly how I like it, and—”

      “Özkan,” Roland interrupted, and he instinctively shut up at the use of his full name. “Enough. You can’t intellectualize at me until I go away, not this time. I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t genuinely concerned. These people are dangerous, and they’re getting braver by the day. Did you see that story about the mosque in Idaho?”

      Sobered, Oz nodded. “The one they set on fire.”

      “And put three people in the hospital with severe burns. This is more serious than your interest in minimalist design, or pacifism, or whatever other abstract philosophical point you want to make. Understood?”

      Oz studied the man he’d followed for the last ten years, from Gothenburg to Boston to Atlanta. Roland was the only manager who’d been able to penetrate his arrogance as a prodigious teen, teaching him the discipline, patience, and humility that had saved him from becoming yet another early-twenties burnout whose potential was never quite fulfilled. Oz trusted Roland implicitly, and he knew he wouldn’t win this argument.

      Maybe he shouldn’t win this argument. As much as it annoyed him to admit it, the outpouring of hatred on his social-media accounts had shaken him. He never imagined anyone could be offended by his cherry-picked commitment to Islam, and certainly not to the vehement, violent extent that had been unleashed. Roland was right—this was too much to handle on his own.

      “Fine,” he huffed, shoving his hands into his pockets. “And, thank you. For putting the team’s money behind this, and for coming with me today. I know you could’ve asked me to do this on my own, or sent one of the Assistant Managers, but it was good to have you here.” He exhaled before his next admission. “Apparently I still need you occasionally.”

      Roland gripped his shoulder briefly. “We’ll get this nonsense sorted out.”

      Oz nodded, then added with a smile, “I do want it on record that I think alarm systems are cynical symbols of mistrust that degrade civil society.”

      Roland grinned. “If you find someone who cares, I’m sure they’ll be happy to make a note of your objection. See you tomorrow.”

      “Later.” Oz climbed into his car—that pickup wasn’t as close as he thought—and started the engine, then threw the car into reverse and beat Roland out of the parking lot.

      That’s my one victory for today. He turned up the volume on a Swedish techno track as he headed for his home in Ansley Park, distracted and unsettled as he navigated the busy Atlanta streets.

      When his best friend, Glynn, had texted that his address was on a Citizens First website, he’d laughed. Then he’d put his phone in his locker and spent the next several hours training with Skyline. When he picked up his phone again it had flashed with missed calls and panicked messages from a slew of friends and relatives. Although it had been removed within an hour, news of the list had found its way onto a lunchtime segment on one of the major broadcasters and taken off from there.

      Suddenly his publicist was fielding calls from reporters asking how it felt to be outed as Muslim, whether he’d received any death threats, and vying to be the first to get his exclusive interview.

      “You can’t out someone for something that was never a secret,” he’d told her over the phone in the hallway outside the locker room, still wearing his training kit. “And I’m happy to be interviewed on the subject of American professional soccer, since none of them seem to care enough to cover it on a regular basis, but my personal life is off-limits.”

      Except the messages kept coming. Hundreds of Islamophobic comments littered his social-media pages, punctuated by racist images and hideous language, each one worse than the last.

      Oz took advantage of a red stoplight to scrub his palm over his eyes as comment after remembered comment flashed behind his eyes.

      Get ready to die, filthy haji. We’re coming for all you sand rats. Run back to the desert while your head is still attached to your shoulders.

      But the one that scared him the most—the one that still sent a chill down his spine whenever it popped up—was by a user whose comments were always the same. Several times each day, across all the social-media platforms Oz used, a brand-new commenter appeared with a random jumble of numbers as a username. No amount of blocking seemed able to stop the phrase that posted over and over again: Ausonius 70.

      Ausonius was a reference to a serial killer who’d shot immigrants in Stockholm in the late 1990s. Seventy was Oz’s house number.

      Oz exhaled a wave of anxiety as he turned into his neighborhood, forcibly shoving his thoughts in a different direction. Hateful though the comments were, he still wasn’t convinced hiring a security company was the answer. And their erstwhile account manager, Kate Mitchell, hadn’t done much to convince him.

      He didn’t like her, that much was clear. That she took Roland’s side didn’t exactly set them up to be best friends, but his distaste didn’t end there.

      He didn’t like her accent, for a start, that deep country drawl that he heard most often from fat white men calling him queer through the windows of pickup trucks. As a pacifist he disliked her military record on principle, and her subsequent move to an oil company was even worse.

      Of course, his opinion was based entirely on ideology. It had nothing to do with the way she’d utterly failed to respond to his provocation, or buy into his lofty objections, or laugh at his jokes…

      He couldn’t stop his smile. Okay, maybe she wasn’t all that bad.

      She wasn’t bad-looking, either, if he was honest. Chin-length brown hair, blue eyes, a tall, athletic build. Nothing like his type, though. Not the sophisticated, erudite, professional woman he could count on to СКАЧАТЬ