The Guardian Page 3

  **

  Jackson repositioned his dinner of halal chicken and rice on the white, ceramic plate. The possibility of his cover being exposed by a journalist had stripped him of an appetite. Until the bombshell was apprehended, her photos deleted, he’d be walking on eggshells, expecting the worst.

  Part of being a Marine was learning to expect the worst so you weren’t taken off guard. Having served twelve years in the Corps before leaving to work for the FBI and subsequently the Taskforce, it was second nature to Jackson to expect a shit-storm.

  As he toyed with his food in the mosque’s dining hall, he recalled the secretive look on the woman’s face, not to mention his powerful, visceral attraction when he saw her up close.

  I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. Her sexy voice could not disguise the lie. What bullshit. She’d known exactly what she was up to. If he hadn’t been so distracted by his response to her sex appeal, he’d have gotten her to surrender her camera before the store owner interrupted their tête-à-tête.

  Instead, he’d been so wrapped up in how unbelievably silky her skin felt within his grasp and wishing he could kiss her wide, succulent-looking lips.

  As he lifted his fork to his mouth, Jackson’s thumb, with blood caught under the nail, gave a painful throb. That’s what happens when you lose your focus, he reminded himself.

  But his mind was obviously acting of its own accord because it still swam with thoughts of her, which was unusual in itself. Since his wife’s death three years ago, he hadn’t given much thought to sex, with one slight exception, but that woman had already been claimed by Ike. The fact that he could envision himself taking slow possession of this black-haired beauty without really knowing her was therefore extraordinary. And he could picture it perfectly—her head thrown back, breasts bobbing just below his lips like ripe cherry-topped delights, her hips undulating, as he drove himself between her thighs. He wallowed in the fantasy, until a booming voice jarred him back to reality.

  “Abdul Ibn Wasi!”

  Imam Ibrahim, one of Gateway’s two leaders, stood in the doorway. With a slight smile, the mahogany-skinned leader with the salt-and-pepper beard gestured for Abdul to follow. Jackson jumped up. With a heaviness still in his groin, he carried his tray to the rubber container by the exit and followed the man’s flowing robes down the hallway to join him in his office.

  Twice a week, the ex-cons touched base with their parole officers. Under the tolerant eye of Ibrahim, Jackson dialed the number that would put him in touch with another of his colleagues, Tobias Burke.

  “This is Abdul Ibn Wasi,” he announced, careful to speak in the appropriate dialect when Toby answered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ibrahim open his file and rifle through it.

  One of Jackson’s priorities was to search both imams’ offices for information casting light on Gateway’s affiliation with Islamic militants. But in the short time he’d been here, he had yet to find an opportunity. By day, the hallways bustled with activity. At night, the mosque was secured by an alarm system that required consultation with experts before the Taskforce could confidently override it. It was only during this brief time in Ibrahim’s office that Jackson had the chance to look around.

  This evening, while supplying rote answers to Toby’s usual questions, he scrutinized the titles in Ibrahim’s bookcase, hunting for the book that had caught his eye the last time. His gaze finally snagged on it and he tipped his head slightly, straining his eyes to read the title on the spine.

  Supreme 120 Lessons: for the Nation of Gods & Earths.

  The strange title strummed a chord of recognition, as did the logo under the title: a crescent moon, a star and the number seven, all circumscribed by a sun. He’d seen that somewhere else, but where?

  “We’ll talk,” Toby said, hindering Jackson’s memory as he recalled that We’ll talk was code for Call Headquarters. Ike must have tracked down the bombshell. Hot damn!

  “A’right. Night, sir,” he answered, conveying that he would call HQ that very night.

  As he lowered the receiver into the handset, he saw Ibrahim jot himself a note. Concern clamped down on Jackson’s shoulders. Had the cleric caught him staring at the book? “Thank you, Imam.” He started backing toward the door.

  “Just a minute, Abdul.” Ibrahim waved him closer to the desk, where he sat beneath matching tribal tapestries.

  Jackson’s pulse spiked as he retraced his footsteps.

  “Your file says you are from Baltimore,” the imam noted, “yet I hear something peculiar in your speech. What is your heritage?” He looked up, his dark eyes bright with interest.

  “My mother was from Grand Cayman Island,” Jackson answered, relieved that Ike had layered that detail into the original Abdul Ibn Wasi’s file.

  “I see. And you never knew your father,” the imam added with a grimace of compassion.

  That detail was true of the real Abdul Ibn Wasi, but not of Jackson, whose father was a judge in Rockville. “Allah is my father now,” he answered simply.

  The imam’s expression turned thoughtful. “It gladdens my heart to hear so, Abdul.” He switched topics abruptly. “I noticed you have memorized the recitations already. You obviously have a strong mind.”

  “Thank you.” Jackson looked down at the desk. Maybe he should have pretended to struggle with the Arabic like the others, but having served three tours in Iraq, the passages flowed from him without effort. He shifted on his feet.

  “I can use a man of your intelligence,” Ibrahim admitted, snatching Jackson’s gaze upward.

  Pretending to be pleased, Jackson grinned. “Okay. How?” Wouldn’t it be nice if the imam dumped incriminating information in his lap, sparing him from having to endure all four weeks of the program?

  Ibrahim winked. “In good time,” he answered, disappointing Jackson. “You may return to the dining hall.” He looked down at his paperwork. “Kindly send in Yusuf Ibn Ismail.”

  Heaving an inward sigh, Jackson ducked into the hall and went in search of his roommate, Corey, who rarely went by his conversion name, Yusuf. He found him in the dining hall finishing his dessert. “Imam Ibrahim is waitin’ for you,” he conveyed.

  Scraping back his chair, Corey sent him a hopeful look through his glasses. “You gonna play ball with us tonight?” When it wasn’t raining, the parolees had taken to shooting hoops on the blacktop during their free evenings.

  “No, man. I gotta run.” Jackson patted his stomach. “I’m gettin’ fat.”

  Shaking his head at the exaggeration, Corey scooped up his tray and went to report to the imam. In the same instance, Imam Zakariya, who was small and spry and reminded Jackson of an African witch doctor with his eternally youthful face, dismissed them for their free time.

  “Peace and blessings,” he called as all the men but Corey bolted for the exit.

  Jackson pushed out of the sandstone mosque into a sultry August evening. It was not yet dark but the lights over the basketball cage blinked on in anticipation of nightfall. Turning his back on his peers, he darted to his dorm to don his running shoes.

  The parolees had been granted freedom to roam within a two mile radius of the campus from six to nine in the evening, starting from their first night here. Given their isolation in the country, the two-mile limit restricted them from visiting Mechanicsville proper. Jackson had made a habit of going running during that time, in a circuit that put him a mile up Highway 235 and another mile down an access road that ran deep into a deciduous forest. There, beneath the power lines, he touched base with Ike Calhoun via his tiny cell phone. Toby, who stayed in a motel in town, had met him deep in the woods once, so Jackson could describe the imams’ patterns in a more detailed way than texting permitted.

  Leaving the campus at an easy lope, he arrived at the lush, isolated spot where he usually placed his calls. Slowing to a walk, he swept the shadowed undergrowth before sticking in his ear bud and dialing his team lead. “Hey, Pops. You got news for me?” he huffed.

>   “The girl you asked about, was she driving a 2010 Jeep Wrangler?” Ike sounded as dour as he had that afternoon.

  “Yeah, that’s her.” Jackson’s heart pumped with confidence. The Taskforce would send out some discreet soul to bargain for the release of those photos. His cover would be safe again.

  “The vehicle belongs to a Peter Schlesser,” the Taskforce lead added, “forty-eight-year-old single male living in Columbia Heights.”

  At the unexpected news, Jackson listened more intently. So, maybe the bombshell had borrowed the car, only Ike’s terse tone assured him that her connection to Peter Schlesser wasn’t good news.

  “He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Crime and Liberty, which is a fairly reputable tabloid,” Ike bit out.

  Oh, hell, no. Jackson was well acquainted with Crime and Liberty. The tabloid took a strong civil rights stance, putting it in the same category as Libertarian News. While it enjoyed national circulation, most of its readers lived in Northern Virginia.

  He pinched the ridge of his nose. The bombshell had looked him right in the eye and lied to him! And now his photo might show up in a publication read by college professors and human rights activists nationwide, but most especially in the capital where he lived and worked. Hundreds of people would recognize him—his neighbors, folks from church, members of the PTA. . .

  “We have to find her,” he grated.

  “We’re working on it. I need a physical description.”

  “Late twenties, with dark, wavy hair, and kind of exotic-looking. Greek, I think,” he guessed.

  “There are a couple women on his payroll who fit that description.”

  “Why don’t we just ask Schlesser?”

  Their encrypted speech was slipping, but here in the woods that wasn’t too critical.

  “Schlesser’s on vacation. Office is closed. And he’s not answering the cell number I tracked down.”

  Jackson turned full circle under a darkening sky. “There has to be a way.”

  “There is. We track down the couple of women who fit your description. I should be able to reclaim those pictures by tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow wasn’t soon enough. “What if she uploads them to their website tonight?”

  “She can’t. We crashed their server. Nothing can get in or out.”

  Jackson’s temples throbbed. It looked like a waiting game no matter what they did. “Text me when you have more news,” he requested.

  “Will do.” The call ended abruptly.

  Jackson realized he hadn’t even mentioned the book in Ibrahim’s office, the one with the familiar logo on the spine. It was probably nothing, even though his gut told him it might be something.

  Putting away his ear bud, he eyed the dark track ahead of him. Twelve miles away, in a riverside rental on the Patuxent River, his daughter Naomi and her grandmother awaited his first visit “home.” Rather than waste time driving back to Northern Virginia, he’d installed them at a nearby waterfront rental. He couldn’t wait to see them this weekend.

  But, hell, by then the Taskforce’s efforts could be blown out of the water by one slippery, hot-as-hell tabloid journalist. They needed to find her fast. Jackson couldn’t risk his cover being blown, not before he learned whether Gateway had ties to terrorism.

  Chapter Three

  With a gasp of horror, Lena lurched awake and found herself in the four-poster bed in her rental cottage. Her heart still raced. Plumbing the unfamiliar shadows, she was relieved to find herself alone. Rupert Davis, who had been choking her to death in her dream, was nowhere to be seen.

  Just a dream, she assured herself, though her sweat-soaked nightshirt suggested it was actually a full-blown nightmare. Snatching up her cell phone, she checked the time—3 A.M.—before swinging out of bed and crossing to the door to flip the light switch.

  As the lamp blinked on, her gaze went to the curtains fluttering at the open window. No wonder she hadn’t slept well. Open windows left a city girl feeling exposed. But, as it turned out, the cottage didn’t come with central air. She should have checked that out, too, before signing the lease.

  Slipping into the adjacent bathroom, Lena tried emptying her mind with a cool, cleansing shower. But it didn’t work. Had the dream been a warning? she wondered as she soaped herself. Like most Greeks, she believed in signs and portents. This one suggested she should throw her clothes back in her suitcase and head straight for home tonight.

  Only, she’d gone too far to turn back now. Everything she had done for the past ten years from majoring in journalism, to monitoring Davis’s incarceration, to hiring detectives in the hopes of finding the missing Curtis—it would all be for nothing if she gave up now.

  Wrapped in a towel, she returned to her room, snapping off the light so she could dress with no one outside watching. When daylight came, she would toss her line into the water and see if Davis took the bait.

  If his ego was bigger than his brain, she’d have him right where she wanted him.

  **

  Jackson spotted the black Jeep out the corner of his eye, barreling up the 235 toward Gateway. Hot damn, the bombshell was back!

  Ducking back inside his dorm room in the converted motel, he tabbed the blinds to verify that the woman he’d confronted yesterday was behind the wheel. Indeed, she was. There was no mistaking her shoulder-length curls as she slowed at the intersection and turned right into the gas station.

  Thankful for his roommate’s absence, Jackson pulled out his cell phone while she parked near the store’s entrance. Why the hell had she returned?

  He accessed the camera application and snapped off several shots as she stepped out of the car, glancing over the hood in his direction. The sensible clothes she wore today didn’t come close to disguising her shapely curves. Even with fifty or so yards between them, she made his temperature rise, but the distance would compromise the quality of the photos.

  Nonetheless, he sent them with a message apprising Ike and Toby of the circumstances. Hopefully the Taskforce analysts could enlarge the image and use their state-of-the-art facial-recognition software to ID the woman. Once they knew who she was, they would put a swift end to her cat and mouse game.

  **

  With her feet already aching from just five hours on the job, Lena pushed out of the store into the afternoon heat, a bottle of iced tea in one hand and ham-and-cheese sandwich in the other. She’d had no idea being a cashier at a gas station could be so challenging. Bill had shown her all there was to do, from making fresh coffee, to setting the pumps, to restocking the refrigerators in the back room. It was two o’clock, and the midday rush had waned, affording her a break, at last.

  As she crossed the quiet parking lot, she glanced toward Gateway, surprised to see construction once more underway. Hunting automatically for Mocha Man, she realized with a leaping of her pulse that he was watching her from the height of a ladder.

  With a defiant smile, Lena showed him her sandwich. See, no camera here.

  He tipped her a nod. I see that.

  Heading doggedly toward the picnic table positioned under a mammoth pecan tree, she sat down, propped her aching feet on the opposite bench, and watched the parolees work while she ate.

  Not that there was all that much work going on anymore. One by one, the men had ceased their hammering and sawing to squint and shade their eyes as they stared across the highway at her, even Davis. She countered her sudden discomfort with a swig of iced tea.

  Would he recognize her as his victim’s sister after all these years? Surely not. It had been ten years since Davis had faced the Xenakis family at the pre-trial hearing. Back then, Lena had worn a thick braid down her back, glasses with lenses as thick as soda bottle bottoms, and fifteen pounds of extra weight. Plus, she’d dropped her real last name, Xenakis, for the sake of her professional career since no one knew how to pronounce it. There wasn’t any way Davis would make the connection, she assured herself. Eye laser surgery and rigorous Pilates made her look like a whole new woman.


  The sound of a bell had her glancing back up to see the men dispersing. Roughly half turned toward the mosque, but the other half, including Davis and Mocha Man were preparing to cross the highway.

  Like buzzards, they seemed oblivious to the sparse traffic. A school bus loaded with campers nearly bowled them over—all but Mocha Man who remained as alert as yesterday.

  Lena swam in a cold sweat. Ready or not, here they come.

  Lifting a hand to the gemstone at her neck, she flipped the tiny switch on the bail with her thumbnail. Her intent was to film her developing relationship with Davis, so that when he finally did confess, his words would come across as truthful, not just idle boasting.

  Last night’s dream flashed through her mind. Don’t think about it. She’d interviewed dozens of criminals in the course of her career. She could do this.

  “Damn, I’d like to get with that bitch,” Jamal Ibn Nasser exclaimed as they drew close enough to make out the woman’s supple curves.

  “Watch your mouth,” Jackson snapped, as much annoyed by the lanky man’s outburst as he was by the fact that he felt the same way, even now that he’d learned who she was: Lena Alexandra, freelance editor for Crime and Liberty tabloid.

  He’d received a text from Ike confirming his suspicions just an hour ago.

  The woman had trouble written all over her. And he knew he ought to keep his distance, except he was dying to discover her agenda. Given her come-hither smile and the fingers she waggled at them invitingly, it was obvious she was after something—hopefully not him.

  “I’m going to talk to her,” announced the parolee named Muhammed. Switching course abruptly, he inspired the others to trail after him, including Jackson, who kept a sharp look-out for anything resembling a camera.

  If the beauty was alarmed at being swarmed by ex-cons, she didn’t show it. “Hello,” she called, her lush lips curving into a heart-stopping smile.