THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (16 page)

He slowed to a walk, silencing his breathing as he followed Toby’s tracks in the damp earth. Last week, he’d been pegged by Toby’s air soft gun. Hell if he would let the former Army Ranger catch him off guard again. Seeing Toby propped against a tree trunk in plain view took the fun right out of their ongoing game. So did the serious expression usurrping Toby’s habitual smirk.

“What’s going on?”
Jackson
asked. His gaze flicked to the message on Toby’s damp green T-shirt: I LICK ON THE FIRST DATE.
Jesus
.

“We know why the journalist is here,” Toby stated, getting straight to the point.

Finally.
“What took so long?” 

Toby stuck his fingers into his pockets. “Her name isn’t Lena Alexandra. She adopted that name when she started writing for
Crime and Liberty
. Her real name is Magdalena Anastasia Xenakis.” He articulated every syllable as his eyes scanned the darkening forest, a habit from his Ranger days.

“Go on,”
Jackson
urged, pleased that he’d guessed her first name correctly
.

“Nine years ago,
Davis
was accused of murdering her fifteen-year-old sister, Alexandra.”

It took
Jackson
a second to absorb the awful news. “The girl in the photo by her bed,” he guessed, recalling how uncomfortable he’d felt wrecking
Lena
’s bedroom when the eyes in the photo seemed to follow him. It disturbed him to think that the delicate, dark-eyed girl in the picture was dead. “
Davis
was a cop back then,” he recollected
.
 

“That’s right. Alexandra had been walking home from an evening church service when she ran into a troubled teen named Curtis Vandaloo and his friends. They were high on coke and tried to talk her into snorting.
Davis
showed up and put her into his squad car under the pretext of getting her safely home. Curtis Vandaloo watched the cop drive away with her, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive.”

Jackson
’s dinner of stewed lamb burbled inside him
.

“When the girl’s burnt body was found in a dumpster two weeks later, Curtis came forward. Unfortunately for him, he had a juvy record, so investigators initially suspected him of killing Alexandra, only he was seen by neighbors at his house around the time that the victim was murdered. Investigators swabbed Davis’s cruiser for Alexandra’s DNA and found nothing, suggesting it had been wiped clean, so with just Curtis’s incriminating statement, they went ahead and pressed charges. Two weeks before the trial, the kid disappeared. His parents filed a missing person’s report, and the city looked high and low for him, but he was never seen or heard from again.”

The soft patter of rain filled the gloomy silence. “And that’s why none of this is on
Davis
’s rap sheet,”
Jackson
guessed
.

“Exactly. No witness, no trial. The charges were stricken from
Davis
’s record.”  

A droplet of rain slipped under
Jackson
’s collar to course his spine. Now he knew what had brought Lena Alexandra to Mechanicsville. Sure enough, her mission was personal, as well as dangerous enough to merit carrying a weapon. “So her cockamamie story that she’s here to write a book is a cover, just like we thought,” he considered out loud. “I think she’s hoping to incriminate
Davis
without his knowledge.” Recalling how masterfully she had manipulated the men so far and how she’d been garnering information over the years from various criminals, it was clear to see why she thought herself capable of such a daunting task
.
 

“Using the hidden camera you suspect she’s wearing,” Toby finished, “the pendant. You want me to take it from her?” he asked, flashing an evil grin.

“I’ll do it,”
Jackson
insisted.

Toby raised an eyebrow. “I thought the boss told you to steer clear of her. It’s only going to rouse her curiosity if you grab her pendant from her.”

“Her curiosity’s already roused. Let me handle the journalist. You break into Artie’s tonight and hack the computer looking for my picture,” he suggested, designating tasks to keep Toby busy. “She’s bound have offloaded the contents of her pendant by now, and the store’s computer is the likeliest destination.”

“I see what you’re doing.” Toby’s smile grew as he folded his arms across his chest. “You just want to jump the broad yourself.”

Jackson
scowled at him but didn’t bother to deny it.

“Can’t say as I blame you, Stonewall, but the boss ain’t gonna like it,” Toby pointed out.

“So don’t tell him,”
Jackson
bit back
.

Both of Toby’s eyebrows shot up this time. “You want me to lie? Damn, Stonewall, I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said with approval
.

“It’s not a lie,”
Jackson
insisted. “Just don’t tell him anything. I know for a fact Lena Alexandra won’t leave this place unless we offer her something she can’t refuse.” He’d come to that conclusion just today.

“And what’s that?”

“
Davis
’s head on a platter. I won’t tell her how I’d do it, just that I could help her bring about his ruin. Maybe that would be enough to send her on her way.”

Toby scratched his chin and sent
Jackson
a dubious look. “Whatever, man,” he finally agreed. “I won’t tell the boss if you don’t want me to. In fact, we never had this conversation. You said you had some news on your end?” he prompted
.

The reminder of what had happened today dropped a heavy weight on
Jackson
’s shoulders. “You guys were right about Ibrahim being a Five Percenter,” he admitted, experiencing the same disillusionment he’d felt earlier that day. “He pulled seven of us into his office this morning, took down that book I told you about, and then proceeded to hammer his philosophies into our heads.”

Toby grimaced. “How committed does he sound? I mean, the NGE can be a positive influence if it’s not taken to extremes.”

“This is extreme.”
Jackson
swiped the rainwater out of his eyes. “He was skillfully brainwashing us, recruiting us to join him and his followers, and this wasn’t his first recruitment, either. If you ask me, the majority of those men who attended last Friday night’s service became Five Percenters years ago. That’s what he credits their success to.”

Ibrahim’s words echoed in his mind.
God is you and you and you and every black man to walk this earth.
“He told us that on Judgment Day we would defeat the Devil and rule as we were destined to rule. I have to tell you, he’s pretty damn persuasive. He had me sold right up to where the Devil was identified as the white man, the scourge of the earth. As annoying as I find you, Burke, I wouldn’t go so far as to call you Satan.”

Toby smirked. “How touching.”  

“Anyway, it looks like we’ve got a gang leader on our hands. I’ll keep a finger on the pulse and keep you updated.”

“Cool.” Toby glanced at his watch. “You’d better head back, Stonewall.”

“Right.”
Jackson
made to turn away and then thought better of it. “Where’s your gun?” he asked, raking his colleague with a mistrustful look.

Toby blinked. “Come on, do you really think I’d shoot you in the back, especially now that I learned you’re a god?”

“Yes.” 

“You wound me, Jack,” Toby said, clapping a hand over his heart. “We’re partners now. You gotta learn to trust me.”

With a final suspicious once-over,
Jackson
turned and ran.

Seconds later, a pellet whacked him in the right butt cheek, stinging like a son of a bitch.

“Prick,”
Jackson
muttered, picking up his pace
.

Toby’s rumbling laughter echoed through the murky forest
.

Emerging onto the rain-slick highway minutes later,
Jackson
’s gaze went straight to Artie’s neon sign. Under the weeping sky, its lights bled a rainbow of color.

He thought of the horrific crime
Davis
had inflicted on fifteen-year-old Alexandra Xenakis, and a cold wave of fear washed over him. Did
Lena
seriously believe she could elicit a confession from her sister’s killer? If so, she needed a reality check. If Muhammed wasn’t being interviewed by her at this very moment, he’d pound on the back door of Artie’s until she granted him entrance
.
 

Only what would he say that wouldn’t expose him as an agent of the law? If he disclosed his knowledge of her agenda and offered to help her incriminate
Davis
, that might get her attention, certainly, but then she’d wonder how he knew.

He couldn’t just tell her who he really was. She was a crime journalist, for Christ’s sake, who wrote for a tabloid that railed against the abuse of civil liberties. Not only might she jeopardize his investigation but she could expose it to the percentage of the population who’d be most offended by the government’s meddling
.

On the other hand, turning a blind eye to her agenda was unpardonable.
Davis
would shred her like a rabid animal if he knew she had a bead on him.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If only Ike had a means of whisking
Lena
to safety, like he’d done for Eryn
.
But, making
Lena
disappear for a couple of weeks wasn’t an option. The parolees at Gateway would be the first to fall under suspicion if an employee at Artie’s suddenly went missing. And
Jackson
needed scrutiny like he needed a hole in the head.

There was no apparent solution to his predicament. Somehow, someway, he had to convince
Lena
to abandon her plans without revealing how he’d come to know them. Plus he had to confiscate her pendant while tracking down the videos she’d possibly already offloaded.

It all sounded impossible.

Dealing with a resolute crime journalist was proving far more difficult than discovering Gateway’s ties to terror
.

Chapter Nine

The rain had put a damper on the parolees’ usual game of basketball. As he drew nearer to Gateway,
Jackson
spied the parolees taking shelter under the dormitory’s overhang. Light from the windows behind them cast their dark forms into silhouette
.
 

“Whassup?”
Jackson
asked, avoiding
Davis
’s hostile glare as he joined them. A pungent cloud of body heat and body odor greeted his nostrils as he stepped under the portico
.
    

“Yo, Muhammed’s been over there for over an hour, dog,” Jamal whined, nodding at Artie’s with a look of envy.