THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (12 page)

No, just desperate. Honestly, when was the last time he’d had sex? He couldn’t remember.

Hearing the telltale vibration of feet on the wooden stairs behind him,
Jackson
realized Toby’d returned from his three hour quest to find beer in the blue-law state of
Maryland
on a Sunday. He kept his eyes closed, even when Toby’s shadow blotted out the sunlight.

“I hope you like Budweiser.”

Jackson
cracked an eye. Today Toby’s T-shirt read: IF I AGREED WITH YOU, THEN WE’D BOTH BE WRONG. He wore his two hundred dollar sunglasses and a fake moustache.

Jackson
sat up. “I take it no one recognized you.” 

“Nope.” With a grimace, Toby ripped off the hair glued to his upper lip. “You ready for a beer?” he asked, lifting the plastic sack while stuffing the moustache in his pocket.

“No thanks. Why don’t you check to see if our password generating program discovered Lena Alexandra’s password yet?” 

Toby reached into the plastic bag, pulled out a cold one and twisted off the top, releasing a beguiling hiss. With a long swig, he surveyed the view with evident appreciation. “Place must cost an arm and a leg,” he mused, ignoring
Jackson
’s suggestion.

It was none of Toby’s business how he spent his paycheck. “Beats the hell out of the
National
Center
for Counterterrorism,” he grated
.

“Yes, it does.”

“I’ll be up in a bit,”
Jackson
hinted
.

“Sure, have a seat. Enjoy yourself,” Toby countered sarcastically. “No, thanks,” he answered himself. “I think I’ll get right down to work.” Saluting
Jackson
with his bottle, he turned and plodded back up the steps.

I am a dick,
Jackson
realized. “Hey thanks,” he called over his shoulder
.
 

“Take your time, Stonewall,” Toby retorted
.
   

Ignoring the Marine Drill Sergeant in his head who railed at him to get down to business, he stayed right where he was until Silvia called from the sliding glass doors that lunch was ready.

“That’s our cue, Gnomy.” The nickname Colleen had given Naomi had suited her when she was a baby and looked a little like a gnome. These days, she resembled a water nymph, all sleek lines and subtle curves as she waded out of the water.

My daughter is almost a woman.
Panic banded
Jackson
’s ribcage. If he blinked, would she sprout wings like a butterfly and flit away?

“Look, Dad!” Breathless and dripping, she showed him her bucketful of treasures—colorful shells and rocks and an earring made of real gold. “See, it says eighteen karats right there!”

“You’re rich,”
Jackson
affirmed. But a girl with no mother lacked the riches that mattered most.

Over a lunch of tuna sandwiches and dill pickles,
Jackson
watched Toby’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he swilled down a second beer. Obviously, the ATF agent had stumbled onto something in Lena Alexandra’s laptop that amused him.

With lunch finally over and Naomi settled up in the loft to read,
Jackson
made his way to their temporary office to see what Toby had found
.

“Check this out,” said the ATF agent as
Jackson
shut the door. Tapping a key, he enlarged a photo of
Jackson
as Abdul Ibn Wasi, tugging on a pulley rope. Unsettled,
Jackson
sank slowly into the second chair. The vixen
had
taken pictures of him that day, not that he needed any proof
.
 

“And this,” Toby added, clicking to another photo. “And this, and this, and this.” Photo after photo of
Jackson
filled the screen, filling him with a mix of disquiet, heightened stimulation, and self-consciousness. She had zoomed in so close that he could see rivulets of his own sweat rolling from his temple to his jaw.

“Woman has the hots for you, Jack.” 

Toby’s assertion made
Jackson
break out in goose bumps. “You think this is funny?” He leveled a glare at his colleague. “I am undercover, Burke,” he reminded him, pitching his voice low so his daughter wouldn’t overhear. “No one is supposed to take pictures of me, let alone a journalist. She knows who I am.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Toby refuted, unfazed by
Jackson
’s vehemence. “She took these pictures before she looked you up.”

“She looked up me up on NCIC?”
Jackson
guessed, his stomach tightening
.

“Relax. We erased the real Abdul’s history, remember? She didn’t find a thing.”

“But that in itself looks suspicious.”

Toby shrugged as he clicked through a series of action shots. The photos were taken in such quick succession that they formed a kind of motion picture.

Jackson
’ face grew hot. “Please tell me she took pictures of the other guys.”

“Just this one,” Toby returned to the main screen and scrolled up to a couple facial shots of Rupert Davis.

“That’s the former cop,”
Jackson
stated, his disquiet growing. He remembered
Davis
asking Maggie to meet him after midnight. She’d brushed him off.
Some other time
.

“She looked him up, too,” Toby disclosed. “The man served eight of fifteen years at Arlington County Correctional facility. I think he’s the reason she’s here.” Toby sat back and folded his arms across his chest.

Jackson
thought about the two times the parolees had interacted with Lena Alexandra. The first day, she’d seemed intent on getting Sulayman to interview for her book, but not so eager that she was willing to spend time alone with him the other night. “What makes you so sure?” 

“I saw his name on her email calendar. See?” He opened her Outlook calendar
.
On July 27
^th
,
Lena
had written,
Rupert Davis gets out of jail
. “She obviously knows his real name,” Toby stated. “He’s the one she’s hunting.”

“No kidding,”
Jackson
said, experiencing little relief in the knowledge that it wasn’t him. “I wonder why”    

“No idea. I put their names together in a search, but nothing came up.
Davis
is mentioned in a news article called
Dirty D.C. Cops
, but she didn’t write it. But his getting out of jail obviously meant something to her.” 

“Maybe our analysts can find out,”
Jackson
suggested
.

“I’ll request that right now.” Toby sat forward to compose an email.

Ike had scheduled a 5 P.M. teleconference, after which time Toby would deliver
Jackson
back to Gateway.
Jackson
heaved a sigh. The weekend was getting away from him.

Toby glanced up at him. “Have a beer,” he recommended. “Have two beers. Play a board game with your kid.
Relax,
Stonewall.” 

“I’m trying,”
Jackson
muttered. It wasn’t in his nature to relax, a fact that had driven Colleen absolutely crazy. Nor had he touched liquor since his wife drove headlong into an eighteen wheeler with a blood alcohol level of .18. Leaping to his feet, he went out into the living room and called up to the loft, “Hey, Gnomy.” 

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Do you still remember how to play chess?” He’d taught her several years ago while on leave from one of his deployments.

“Of course.” Her eager face popped over the railing.

“Is there a chess board here?” 

“Sure there is.” She darted out of sight then appeared again, coming down the spiral staircase with the board game under one arm and a grin on her face.

You’d have thought he’d just offered to send her to Disney World. Oh, wait, he did that last year. She had gone with her grandmother and a friend while he worked.

Colleen’s plaintiff voice railed in his head.
Do you want to give up your life for your country,
Jackson
?

No, he had resigned his commission from the Marine Corps to keep that from happening. Working undercover for the Taskforce was scarcely more dangerous than driving a car for a living, and yet he couldn’t shake the fear that his sense of duty would get the better of him, yet, costing him his life and leaving Naomi parentless
.

God forbid
. With a private shudder, he ushered her to the table to play
.

Chapter Seven

Lena
trailed the only customer out of Artie’s and stared across the street. It was six o’clock on Sunday evening. The heat of the day was just beginning to wane. And if the official-looking sedans pulling in and out of Gateway were anything to go by, then the parolees were back from their weekend away.
Finally
. As much as she dreaded her face-to-face encounters with
Davis
, getting this business behind her was all she could think about.

Planting herself on the curb, she watched for the return of one man in particular. Soon Abdul Ibn Wasi would be finding out that his intimidation tactic hadn’t worked. He would see that she was still here, by God, and she wasn’t leaving until she’d made serious inroads into sending
Davis
back to jail.

Muhammed was the first parolee to catch sight of her as he popped out of a Dodge Charger. She raised a hand in welcome, and he shot her a shit-eating grin that mellowed her umbrage. At least some of the parolees amused her, instead of just creeping her out—or infuriating her, as in the case of Abdul
.

A dark blue Crown
Victoria
veered abruptly off the highway into Gateway’s parking lot. Its brake lights flared, the back door opened, and Abdul Ibn Wasi rolled up out of the back seat. Just the sight of him set her heart pounding with a heady mix of exhilaration and resentment. As he turned his head, pinning her with a glare, a high-voltage charge seemed to arc across the four lanes between them, making the fine hairs on her body stand on end
.

What?
Not happy to see me?
She raised her fingertips to her mouth and blew him an elaborate kiss.
Kiss this, Abdul.

Thanks to him, she had spent all morning sweeping up ceramic and glass shards and resenting the fact that now she’d have to go and buy a whole new laptop
.