The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (18 page)

“Please, sit down,” I said and showed the woman to the living room. Jami sat down next to her on the couch and I sat in a recliner across from her. She was an older lady, looked like maybe she was in her early seventies. “Are you friends with Anita?” She smiled and looked down.

“Very good friends.”

“Can you tell us where she went?” Jami asked.

“I wish I could. One day I stopped by to pick her up to go to breakfast like we do every day and she didn’t answer the door. I went back inside and got my cell phone and came back to her door and tried calling her. I heard her cell phone ringing from inside. I didn’t think much of it at first, I thought maybe she was in the shower. But an hour later, the same thing happened.”

“Then what?” I asked. “Then I knocked on the door again and this man walked up and introduced himself. It was her son. He said that she went out of state and that he would be staying here. I asked him about the cell phone. He opened the door and invited me inside. The phone was on the kitchen counter. He said she had left it behind by accident. I felt very uncomfortable and excused myself. I haven’t seen her again.”

Sandra’s eyes started to well up and Jami handed her a tissue. “Have you seen the man since then?” Jami asked after grabbing her hands and trying to comfort the woman. I had been wondering if any neighbors had seen or heard anything.
Who was this guy? What did he do with Anita Perez? Was she really out of town or was she dead – killed by the kidnapper, Victor Perez?

“I haven’t seen him again, no. But I’ve heard him a few times while walking past Anita’s door.” Jami and I exchanged a glance and I spoke up.

“What do you mean you heard him a few times? On the phone?”

“No, not on the phone, I heard him arguing. Yelling is more like it. I might be getting up there in age, but my instincts are still intact. I had a feeling that the guy was going to be trouble.” I leaned forward in the recliner and got Sandra’s attention.

“Was Anita’s son arguing with someone here in the room?”

“Yes, loud voices. Always two men.”

“What did they sound like? Does Victor have an accent?”

“No accent, not like Anita’s at least. She told me once that she had a son and a daughter born in the states.”

Sandra stood. I felt she was ready to leave but I still needed more answers. “What were the men yelling about? Could you make out anything that they were saying?”

“The words were always muffled,” Sandra explained to me. “I could pick up a few things here and there, but not enough to understand what they were saying. It usually happened late at night around eleven o’clock. Sometimes I can’t sleep so I’ll just go for a short walk inside the building. That usually does the trick. But whenever I’d hear them, I’d just go back inside, I try to avoid them both.”

“What do you mean avoid them both, Mrs. Sandra? Do you know who the other man is? The one that Anita’s son argues with?” Jami asked.

“Oh yes. Well, I don’t know him, but I know where he lives, right down the hall. He’s in 723,” Sandra said and walked to the door.

“We’ll let you know if we figure out what’s going on,” I said and she smiled. “Please stay inside and don’t come out for the rest of the night, okay?”

After she left, Jami and I talked about next steps. It was getting late and we didn’t have time to chase down dead ends. “Go ahead and call it in, I’ll get started on the office,” I said and I walked into the next room and started going through everything.

“Morgan, can you look into suite 723 and tell me who lives there?” I heard Jami ask in my earpiece. I was going through the desk and found something interesting.

“We’ve got schematics,” I yelled and Jami ran into the room to join me. “Looks like floor plans for the United Center,” I said while Jami sifted through a pile of papers.

“Here’s a newspaper from July eighth,” Jami said and showed me the headline from the Chicago Sun-Times –
Presidential Convention to be Held in Chicago
.

“Bloody hell,” we heard Morgan say in our earpieces. “The gentleman living in suite 723 is Aasaal Nazir.”

I felt numb. Aasaal Nazir was involved, after all. But how? What was his connection? “Thank God we used that keycard, if we had just busted in he may have heard us and ran – if he’s still there, that is.” Jami said.

“Jami, can you make a keycard for 723? I’m worried about the residents coming outside if they hear us.”

“Right, keep them safe without causing panic. Sure, I’ll be right back.”

I watched Jami jog down to the elevator and I checked in with Morgan again. “Can you check power and water for 723?”

“Give me a few,” he responded and I walked back inside Anita Perez’s home and looked outside. I hoped to see the FBI agents that had followed us parked out on the street. But I figured they were most likely parked somewhere on the south side of the building on Pearson, outside of my view.

I rubbed my face while trying to piece the puzzle together and realized that I hadn’t shaved in thirty-six hours. Suddenly, I felt extremely anxious, realizing how long Jami and I had been trying to find the senator and realizing that the sun would be going down soon. I didn’t have time to waste. I had to act.

“Morgan?”

“I’m working on it. Okay, I see activity, heavy usage. Someone’s in there right now.”

“What’s the background on him? Wife? Kids?”

“All of the above, Blake. Wife and two small kids.”

“The guy’s not here!” Jami yelled in my earpiece as I waited in the hallway.

“What?”

“He’s gone, he either escaped or someone let him out. The door’s locked, I can’t get in to make a keycard.”

I grabbed my Glock and ejected the magazine. I grabbed a new mag from inside my jacket, inserted it with my left hand and held the slide as I drove the gun forward to cock it and I walked down to suite 723.

“Blake, Mallory says they’re sending a tactical team, they’re just five minutes out.” I stood outside the door and I could hear the laughter of children inside the suite and a man’s voice. I was confident that the voice I was hearing was Nazir’s as he played with his kids. I put my ear up to the door and I could hear the sounds of dinner being made.

“Wash up, boys,” I heard a woman say. My heart was pounding. I was trained for situations like this and had encountered them many times. I thought of the irony that my initial training came from the man that I was now trying to save. My mind was racing as I tried to figure out how I was going to get inside suite 723. I needed a way to surprise Nazir.

“Morgan, can you flip their power off for a few seconds?”

“Yes,” he said and after a few seconds I heard him again. “Done. May I ask why you had me do that?”

I waited patiently outside of Nazir’s door, leaned against the wall, with both hands on my gun. I counted to thirty and nothing happened. “Do it again,” I whispered.

“Alright, done. Blake, the team is just a few minutes out and Mallory’s sent the two agents that followed you in, they’ll be there any second now.”

“Then they can catch up to me,” I said calmly into the earpiece.

“Blake, they just ran past me, they’re heading up the elevator now, just wait for them,” Jami said. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down, knowing that every action would have to be flawless. I couldn’t wait on the FBI. We were losing daylight and if we could take this guy alive, we might be able to find out where the senator was being held.

“One… two… three…” I counted and told myself that if I got to ten, I’d kick the door in. But the second power flip worked. The door opened and Nazir’s wife stuck her head out into the hallway. I grabbed her, spun her around, and put my gun to her head.

“Don’t say a word,” I whispered and we walked inside.

“Which way?” I whispered again into the woman’s ear as we walked inside and slowly passed the kitchen.”

“Right,” she admitted and we moved toward one of the bedrooms. The layout was different from Anita’s.

Before we could enter, I heard Nazir’s voice and the squeal of children coming from behind me. “Let’s eat,” the man said and I turned us around and we started walking to the other side of the home. At that same moment, the woman that I held onto raised her right hand and brought it down quickly.

I felt immediate pain in my abdomen. “Aasaal!” she screamed and managed to break free from my grasp. I looked down and saw a small knife sticking out of my shirt. I pulled it out and dropped it on the floor.

“Don’t move!” I yelled at the woman and by that time, her husband had already come into view with the kids. She ran past him and hid in a bedroom while Nazir held the youngest child, a boy around three years old, and reached into the couch and pulled out a gun that he had hidden behind one of the cushions.

“Drop the boy!” I yelled, not caring about alarming the other residents anymore.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Nazir said as I pointed my Glock at the man and followed his every move.

He was about twenty five feet away from me. I noticed that the toddler was holding onto the end of a blue car with his right hand and squeezed it tightly. He wasn’t crying, but by the confused expression on his face as he looked at his father then back at me, I knew he was about to burst into tears at any moment.

When the boy looked up at his father again, I lowered my gun slightly and pulled the trigger.
POP!

The blue car left the boy’s hand and flew across the room and hit one of the walls behind Nazir who jumped, thinking I had tried to shoot him. When the car ricocheted off the wall and landed at his feet he realized what I had done.

“I’m better at this than you are,” I said in a gruff, confident voice.

“You have two seconds to drop the boy or that’ll be your head hitting the wall next.” Tears welled up in the toddler’s eyes that stared at me and the dam broke. His cries added to the confusion of the situation. I could hear men running down the hallway. I knew it was the two FBI agents that had followed us in. They’d be here soon which meant I needed to end the standoff now before it escalated. He was calling my bluff.

“One,” I said and he didn’t move. I closed an eye and cocked my head slightly. “Two!” I yelled and Nazir dropped the boy and laid the gun on the floor. The boy ran into the bedroom where Nazir’s wife still hid.

“You’ve won the battle, but lost the war, Agent Jordan,” he said which caught me off guard. I squinted my eyes.

“How do you know my name?” I asked as I heard the agent’s footsteps getting louder. Nazir smiled.

“How do you know my name!” I yelled and rushed the man, running into him and pushing him against the wall as I held my Glock to his neck.

“We know everything about you,” he whispered and started to laugh as the agents ran inside.

I wished we were alone. I would have made him talk. If there was any doubt before that this whole thing was personal, it was far gone. What did any of this have to do with me? I desperately needed answers.

“Agent Jordan, stand down,” one of the men yelled at me. The barrel of my Glock was pressed so hard against Nazir’s throat, he was having difficulty breathing but managed to laugh again anyway.

“Jordan, stand down now!” I stepped back and noticed I had left a trail of blood as one of the agents handled Nazir and I told the other that the woman had a knife and was hiding in the back room.

A few neighbors were standing in the hallway, others poked their heads out, trying to understand what was happening. So much for being discreet. Jami saw my shirt was wet and asked me what happened.

“Paring knife,” I said and her eyes grew large.

“Blake, that’s bad,” she said just as the tactical team arrived. Five men showed up. Four of them went inside Nazir’s apartment, but one of them, a medic, hung back.

“Are you okay?” he said as he saw me holding onto my stomach tightly, trying to stop the bleeding.

“He has a knife wound,” Jami said as I started walking back to Anita’s apartment.

“Are you Agent Jordan?” he asked. “You need to let me take a look at that. Sir, I need you to stop walking.”

When I went inside Anita’s apartment, Jami grabbed me. “Blake, stop – let him check you out.” The man walked me into the bedroom and had me lay down on the bed to reduce some of the blood loss.

“Bend your knees,” he said as he set a medical kit down on top of the bed and rummaged through it. I unbuttoned my shirt and cringed with pain as the medic looked it over.

“It’s not that deep, you’re lucky.” He covered the wound with a moist, sterile dressing and taped it on as I started to sit up on the bed.

“What are you doing? You’re going to have to get to a hospital and be treated to prevent infection.”

“I don’t think so, not yet,” I said. “There’s a little boy down the hall, go make sure he’s okay.”

“Agent Jordan, you really should have this checked out, you can’t leave this untreated” he demanded.

“I will. After we get the man we’re looking for, I will go.” The medic shook his head and left the room. I stayed sitting on the bed and Jami paced the room. We were all alone – for a few minutes at least.

“I was worried about you, Blake. You could have been killed in there. What were you thinking?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said and Jami put a hand on my shoulder. For the first time I wondered if there might be something more going on between us, but I dismissed the thought and tried to stay focused.

“I didn’t get to finish looking into Nazir earlier. I wonder if Reed had anyone else chase down the possible Jihadi Coalition connection. I guess it wasn’t a red herring after all. What is the connection?” she asked.

“Morgan, are you still there?”

“I’m here, Blake,” Jami and I heard him respond.

“Why wasn’t Aasaal Nazir arrested earlier?”

“CPD arrived and questioned him, but had nothing to go on.”

“How would the man be able to afford living in a place like this?” Jami asked.

“The JC, that’s how. They have billions in funding, some of it even coming from the United States.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking, Blake. The kidnapper had his own agenda and somehow got connected to Nazir because he needed money. If Sandra heard them arguing, that tells me that the kidnapper probably didn’t work for Nazir. They teamed up and for some reason, they weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on something.

I started buttoning my shirt back up. The bleeding had stopped and I was going to have to be careful not to open the wound again, but I decided that I would be okay to get back to work. “We still need to search through the office,” I said. “And search every nook and cranny of this place to figure out who this guy is.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to keep going?” Jami asked as she sat down next to me and put a hand on my back. I turned to her and noticed that she had a strange expression on her face. “There’s something under the mattress,” she said and she stood up and helped me get to my feet. The pain was worse than I let on. We each took a side of the mattress and lifted to see what she had felt when she sat down on top of it.