Deadly Pursuit

by Ann Christopher

  “Great. Since you’re feeling so agreeable, tell me where you’re going when you leave Cincinnati.”

  Just like that, the brick wall sprang up between them again, invisible but solid and impregnable as Fort Knox. For good measure, his face closed off and he turned to snatch his jeans from the floor. “I can’t.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Yeah.” Furious now, he wheeled around on her, eyes gleaming and feral and every word clipped and dangerous. “You’re goddamn right I won’t. You’ve already been shot because of me. Do you think I’m going to do anything to put you in danger again if I can help it?”

  They stood toe to toe and she refused to back down before his raging anger. “This is my life and I make the decisions about what I need to know and what I can handle—”

  “No. You sure as hell do not.”

  Amara opened her mouth to scream at him in her frustration, to vent and let him know what she thought of him and his lousy pronouncements, but the subtle but absolute change that came over him had her snapping her jaws shut.

  More light was creeping in through the windows now, letting her see him in more detail, and what she saw scared her. She saw him stiffen his spine until he stood at his full height, and the added quarter inch seemed to make him twice as big as he’d just been.

  She saw his features harden until even the Sphinx showed more soft emotion than he did. Worst of all, she saw his back teeth clench and his jaw tighten down, and she knew that he would happily die rather than lose this particular fight with her.

  Time to face facts.

  This time tomorrow, or the next day at the outside, would be the last time she laid eyes on Jack, ever. She would not change his mind. They had gotten a little closer, true, but their affair, or whatever it was, was almost over, and when it was over there would be no messages reassuring her that he was okay, no occasional secret visits, no nothing, just like he’d always said.

  They would never lay eyes on each other again.

  In fact, they could go their separate ways tomorrow, he could be killed the next day, and she could spend the whole rest of her life wondering about him, not knowing he was dead. Tomorrow or the next day, when it was over, it would be over forever. The end.

  “Jack,” she said, anguished.

  Turning his head, he looked away without answering.

  To hell with not wearing her heart on her sleeve. To hell with her dignity. “You won’t sneak away, will you? You’ll tell me good-bye, right?”

  No answer.

  “Jack?”

  With a cry, she launched herself at him and held on as tight as possible. Against her lips she felt the frantic thump of his pulse at the base of his throat, and beneath her fingers she felt the strain of his muscles as he struggled against doing the right thing and touching her. The right thing won, to her everlasting dismay.

  Reaching up, he pried her loose and set her aside, his face turned away, but the choked emotion in his voice wasn’t as easy to hide. “I don’t have time for this.”

  He strode into the bathroom and shut the door, locking himself away from her.

  Chapter 24

  Kira couldn’t read Kareem’s mood this morning.

  That was always a bad sign.

  She hadn’t slept, and she wasn’t the only one with nocturnal wanderings. Around two A.M. the sound of Kareem’s light footsteps outside her room had nearly sent her into cardiac arrest. Paralyzed with fear, she’d held her breath and prayed. If he ever decided to, say, come in or break down the door, there’d be nothing she could do.

  Luckily, after a minute or two of lingering outside her door, his footsteps had continued on and then she’d heard the low, distant murmur of his voice mingled with Wanda’s as the two went downstairs, probably to get a drink and commiserate about the unfairness of things like a new trial and the country’s entire justice system.

  Once she’d all but worn a hole in the carpet, she studied for her exam because, yeah, her life wasn’t stressful enough or anything and she had her final nursing exams this week, too.

  Now here they all were, clustered around the kitchen table like three jittery cats in a shopping bag, pretending to eat breakfast.

  “You need to eat something, baby.”

  Kareem looked at Kira across the top of the Cincinnati Enquirer, his brow furrowed in lines of such husbandly concern that her heart panged. He was unspeakably handsome in his fine navy suit and red tie, the picture of a wrongfully accused man who paid his taxes and loved his wife and wanted nothing more than to be left in peace while he ran his above-board auto-customizing empire. Even now Kira wondered at her sanity for doubting him, he was that convincing.

  “You need to keep your strength up,” he continued. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  Didn’t she know it. Ignoring Wanda, who sipped her coffee, Kira put on her devoted wife smile and hoped it worked. “I think I’ll be able to stay at the trial through the afternoon break,” she told Kareem. “But then I’ll have to leave for my final. It’s at three-thirty.”

  “My wife. About to graduate college with her bachelor’s of nursing. I’m so proud of my baby.”

  He looked proud. His smile was proud. On the surface, anyway. But there was a disquieting gleam in his eyes and an ironic note in his voice. Or did she imagine it all? With Kareem there were always enough illusions and sleights of hand to make Houdini jealous.

  Still, there was a game in progress here and it was her move. “Thank you. I’m just ready for it all to be over.”

  “So am I.”

  There. There it was again and she didn’t imagine it this time. That enigmatic note that didn’t quite match the conversation, as though he knew secrets she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  Agitated, Kira poured more juice and tried to take another bite of eggs. Wanda hummed absently. Kareem read. Kira was just checking her watch, wondering how bad the morning traffic would be and if it was too early for them to head down to the courthouse, when Kareem gasped, lowered his paper to the table and bent his head over it with rapt attention.

  The women exchanged a bemused look. Then Kareem looked up and his face was alight with a terrible excitement that sent shivers racing along Kira’s spine.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Nothing.” But he looked down at the paper again, reread something and got to his feet with the vibrating restraint of someone who’s in a big hurry and trying not to show it. He tossed his napkin to the table and wheeled around, heading for his office down the hall. “I just need to make a quick call. And then we’ll go.”

  “O-kay, then,” Kira said to his departing back.

  Wanda, naturally, looked worried and trailed after him. “I’d better see what that’s about.”

  “Okay.”

  Kira waited until the sound of Wanda’s clicking heels disappeared down the hall, and then she lunged for the paper, desperate to see what had provoked such a reaction from Kareem. She hurried inside the pantry and scanned the headings.

  To her surprise, it was the classified section.

  What the—?

  Nothing she saw at first glance looked the least bit interesting. Autos … autos … autos … Boats. Computers. Furniture. Singles. The next page went into real estate. Big freaking deal. What on earth—?

  And then she saw it. Under the Singles column, a few lines so insignificant that they would never mean anything to anyone unless he or she knew what to look for. Two words snagged her attention: Kayjay and Muirwood.

  Kayjay, today is the day.

  C U L8R? Meet me on Muirwood, ok?

  —L.C.

  The words swirled through Kira’s mind in an indecipherable jumble and finally crystallized with a lightning flash of clarity, making perfect sense and solving mysteries that the DEA had spent countless hours and dollars trying to unravel.

  Kayjay. Oh, God, K.J. Short for Kareem Jason Gregory. K.J., the nickname Wanda had called Kareem as a boy, the one t
hey were all strictly forbidden to use now.

  And Muirwood was the name of a street in an underdeveloped section downtown where several abandoned factories stood. Where Kareem had once, years ago, looked at a warehouse and considered buying it for his auto-customizing business. Where he’d rejected the property as a money pit too run down to be worth the effort.

  Or so he’d said at the time. Oh, God—could it be?

  Shaking with excitement now, crumpling the newspaper between her clenched hands and getting newsprint on her fingers, she forced herself to smooth out the folds, breathe deep, and think.

  A beautifully wonderful and simple solution came to her.

  Kareem communicated with his suppliers—the Columbians, Russians or Mexicans; L.C. or whoever the hell was supplying his network with kilos of cocaine and heroin and God knew what all—through these messages in the newspaper.

  This was why all the DEA’s wiretaps and searches had turned up nothing. This was why they couldn’t nail him on federal drug or racketeering charges. This was why he’d eluded the feds for so long.

  She laughed—a single, hiccuping bark of surprised relief, too wonderful to keep inside—and immediately clamped her hand over her mouth lest anyone hear her.

  And the warehouse on Muirwood. That was where he received his shipments and stored them. That was the mother lode, the hidden stash of so many drugs and probably guns that a conviction on possession with intent to distribute and illegal weapons charges would put Kareem in federal prison for a hundred lifetimes with no possibility of parole.

  Jesus, God.

  This one newspaper ad was the solution to all her problems, the tiny bit of luck she needed to get protection from the feds and begin a new life free of Kareem Gregory and his evil. And Kareem never had to know she’d been the one to turn him in.

  Hands still shaking, she fished her cell phone out of her dress pocket. Not the regular cell phone, the one that Kareem called her on, but the secret one, the prepaid, disposable one that she only ever used to call Dexter Brady. She hit speed dial and waited for him to answer with so much uncontrollable excitement bubbling up in her that she could hardly stand still.

  “Brady,” he answered.

  “I’ve found the stash,” she told him. “The big one. I know where he keeps it all, and he’s getting a shipment today. I know how he communicates with his suppliers.”

  There was a long pause. She could almost hear the whirring of Dexter’s clever mind, feel his skepticism warring with his desperation for a breakthrough on this case.

  “How?” he asked sharply.

  She explained.

  Another long pause and then Dexter said the words she’d been hoping for:

  “I’ll get a search warrant.”

  Chapter 25

  “State your name and title, please,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jayne Morrison said.

  “Special Agent Jackson Parker Jr., DEA.”

  “How long have you been with the DEA, Mr. Parker?”

  Jack, sitting on the witness stand, didn’t answer.

  Almost everything in the soaring paneled courtroom had a surreal quality that Jack couldn’t quite bring into focus: black-robed U.S. Circuit Court Judge Roberta Sheldon, who sat on the bench slightly above him with the court’s enormous golden eagle seal on the wall at her back; the jurors in the box to his left, all waiting attentively for him to tell his story; the attorneys at their respective tables; the spectators in the gallery at the back; and the armed guards offering their protection from the man determined to hunt Jack down and kill him like a dog in the street.

  Only Kareem Gregory was focused and real to Jack now.

  The two men stared at each other across the space of fifteen feet or so, neither blinking. Nothing had prepared Jack for the shock of being in the same room with Kareem Gregory again.

  Part of the problem was the man’s outward appearance. He had on a dark suit and red tie that were more expensive versions of Jack’s own clothes, a commanding but respectful presence—as though nothing delighted him more than the chance to show up here at court and clear up this whole misunderstanding about money laundering, which was something he would never do because he was an honest and hardworking businessman—and a face that didn’t have green scales or vertical red pupils or anything else to clue the general public in to the fact that a monster walked among them.

  Kareem Gregory had a remarkable ability to look like a regular man. Like a crouched lion eyeing a herd of antelope from a patch of tall grass, Kareem Gregory was expert at camouflage.

  But Jack knew what he was. He could also see beneath the man’s bland expression and read the banked message in his eyes.

  I’ll walk free, Jack.

  I always walk free.

  And I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I ever do. Not because you set me up and trapped me, but because I always have the last word. Always.

  Jack stared back and telegraphed his own silent message:

  Not this time, motherfucker.

  “Mr. Parker,” said Jayne. “I was asking how long you’ve been with the DEA—?”

  Jack blinked. “Twelve years.”

  “Tell us about your background, Mr. Parker.”

  Speaking directly to the jury, he explained growing up in Memphis, his years in the corps, his subsequent criminal justice degree from the University of Louisville and his decision to join the DEA.

  “Why did you decide to become a DEA agent, Mr. Parker?”

  Staring at Kareem Gregory and sparing a quick glance at his beautiful wife and his doting mother, both of whom sat behind Kareem in the gallery and both of whom were complicit in every evil act Kareem had ever committed just as surely as they were both sitting there in designer clothes bought by the tainted drug money, Jack gave the answer he’d been dying to give.

  “Someone had to have the balls to try to get drug dealers off the street. And I was tired of seeing what illegal drugs do to people. So I signed up, did my training and went to work in New York City.”

  Jayne murmured sympathetically. “Do you personally know someone who had a problem with drugs?”

  Jack shifted, uncomfortable now. “My father. He had PTSD when he came home from Vietnam, but they didn’t call it that back then. They called it cracking up. And he eventually OD’d on heroin.”

  He couldn’t quite meet the jurors’ eyes at this point, but he was aware of their somber expressions and quiet nods of understanding. And he was aware of Kareem Gregory’s hard, unblinking gaze, relentless in its intensity.

  “Mr. Parker, were you involved in an undercover operation that concerned Mr. Gregory?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell us about it.”

  After months of investigating and working with a confidential informant, the identity of whom Jack had never been told, the Cincinnati task force investigating Kareem Gregory had called for outside help.

  Word was that Gregory, who quietly paid his taxes and made a good living running his auto-customizing business, was the kingpin of a ring that ran from Cincinnati down through Tennessee and up through Canada, with possible Mexican ties, but they didn’t have jack or shit on Gregory.

  They d rarely seen such a well-organized and close-mouthed ring and, in desperation, they set up a bogus bank that served a “discreet and select clientele,” hoping to get Gregory for money laundering, if nothing else, because, hey, when you’re making money hand over fist selling drugs by the kilo to little kids and addicts, you’re going to need a bank to clean it up real nice, aren’t you?

  Mostly they wanted to identify Gregory as the right man. Their Mr. Big.

  Cincinnati needed an agent to go undercover to play the banker and they wanted someone from outside the city so there was no question of anyone in Gregory’s organization recognizing him or being suspicious.

  That was where Jack and Ray Wolfe came in—literally flew in from New York.

  Introductions were made. Meetings arranged. Terms decided.

  Th
en came the big night, in a private room at Cincinnati’s priciest steakhouse.

  Jack walked in with Ray as his “lieutenant.” To the unsuspecting, they probably looked like professional athletes in town for a few days because they’d spared no expense on the clothing budget and were suited up real nice in Armani, just like Gregory’s crew.

  This was a rare switch from their usual UC work, which more often ran to T-shirts and jeans, setting up small-time dealers and raiding squalid dope houses for a few grams and a few weapons here and there.

  The clothes were great. Walking in without wires, with only the surveillance van down the street to come rescue them if things went south, wasn’t.

  Jack heard the faint but familiar rumble of Air Wing, DEA ‘s Cessna Citation, as it flew in the black skies overhead, surveilling the area, trying to keep them in sight for as long as possible and providing real-time commentary to the team in the van. It wasn’t much comfort at that moment to have the full might of the DEA protecting him when he knew damn good and well that if things went bad during this meeting, Jack and Ray could be shot and killed long before that jet radioed for help.

  Energy and tension ran high.

  “Shit.” Ray, the class clown, echoed Jack’s thoughts exactly. “I should have gone to business school.”

  The hostess in black led them through the fancyschmancy bar area, skirted the dining room with its well-dressed crowd schmoozing over the finest food to be found in Cincinnati, and led them down a hallway into the private room, where several overlarge gorillas in designer suits already waited, drinks in hand.