Every Deadly Kiss

by Steven James

  “If our team catches Fayed, we question him first, find out about his network, and the current threat. Only after we have what we need. Only then do we make the trade.”

  “Agreed.”

  “How do you propose we make this exchange?”

  “We’ll deal with the details later. I just want the commitment now. Give me your word, and I’ll give you mine.”

  “And Fayed?”

  He read my intent.

  “I guarantee you that justice will be meted out for what he did to Maria.”

  I shuddered to think of how much he was going to make Fayed suffer, but then recalling what Fayed and his people had done to Maria, and evidently had planned for others, I didn’t shudder for long.

  The bat.

  The spider.

  The fly.

  I wasn’t even sure which role I was playing anymore.

  From all that our team had been able to figure out so far, it seemed evident that this group had access to weaponized smallpox and the resolve to use it.

  The stakes were simply too high right now to chance that we would indeed catch Fayed on our own in time to stop whatever he had planned. We needed to act. We needed to move on this.

  And that meant I needed to trust Blake.

  “Alright. I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” He held up a cell phone. “I have your number. I’ll call you.” He backed up, easing toward the exit. “I’m leaving. I can either shoot this man to make you stay behind and help him, or you can assure me that you’re not going to follow me. Say the word and I don’t shoot. Your call.”

  “I won’t follow you,” I told him. “For now. But I am going to catch you, Blake. This justice you’re so interested in pursuing . . . well, I’m going to hand it to you, man to man.”

  “I wouldn’t expect any less.” He pressed the door open. “Don’t tell anyone you’ve spoken with me. You do, I’ll find out, and our deal is off.”

  Then he slipped outside.

  I waited until the door closed, then bolted around the side of the building to get into the office, retrieve my gun and my phone, and check on the condition of the desk clerk.

  64

  The man was fine and woke up less than five minutes later. In the meantime, I’d called the paramedics and they were on their way.

  I spoke on the phone with Schwartz and explained simply that I’d gotten held up, but that I could still come to Grandshore if he thought it would be helpful.

  “Honestly,” he said, “Kramer’s here and so are Julianne and the other CSI techs. Everything’s being processed. There really wouldn’t be anything for you to do at this point. Let me check. I’ll shoot you a text if we need you.”

  I contacted Angela and told her that I needed everything she could pull up on Dylan Neeson’s adopted family. “Cross-reference it all with what we already know about Blake.”

  “Blake?”

  “If my information is correct, Dylan is his adopted brother.”

  “Where does this information come from?” she said, somewhat skeptically.

  “A confidential informant.”

  “Okay. I also got a call from one of your associates there, Sharyn Weist. Lacey’s doing some work for her on the connection with the Hook’dup app.”

  “Sharyn mentioned that. Any progress?”

  “Not on that, but I have a lot number for you regarding the mannequins. They did originate in Russia and came to New York City via Toronto.”

  “Toronto? Huh. Good work. Let’s take a closer look at the shipping company and their other clients.”

  “On it.”

  “By the way, does Sharyn know that Lacey isn’t quite, well, a carbon-based life form?”

  “Pat, just because someone isn’t born biologically doesn’t mean she can’t think.”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Lacey’s AI was as strong as just about any computer’s on the planet, so I could certainly see where Angela was coming from. “Alright. Tell Lacey I need everything we can get on those Neeson brothers. And I need it ASAP.”

  “When have you ever not needed something ASAP?”

  “There’ve been times. Occasionally.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, also, someone named Fayed—run the name with connections between him and Blake, and also him and Dr. Kuznetsov. Anything and everything. Take it deep. It’s all related to Maria’s death. Make this case priority one.”

  “I always do.”

  Angela ended the call and I took a look around the motel to see if there was any evidence that Blake might have left behind, but finding nothing, my thoughts circled back to what Schwartz had told me about Geoff Dryer, the young resident in the morgue.

  He’d been shot with my gun, so the SIG would almost certainly be taken into evidence. Although it would likely be released back to me eventually, I was definitely going to be without it for a while.

  Did not make me happy. But right now that was insignificant compared to everything else that was going on.

  Dylan.

  Fayed.

  The Bluebeard.

  The terrorist.

  The nexus between them: Blake. He stood at the crossroads of his brother’s obsession and his lover’s suffering.

  When I was a kid, my older brother Sean would sometimes gross out our mom by mixing all of the food on his plate together into one indiscriminate pile.

  I was never sure why it bothered her so much, since in a few minutes it would all be mixing together inside him, but she would always cringe and he would always smile. “It tastes better this way.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she would say.

  Well, now, my plate was full and, although there were different piles of food for each different aspect of the intertwined cases, they were getting swirled together in a way that made it increasingly more difficult to tell where one ended and another began.

  65

  Now in the daylight, Dylan could see his surroundings.

  He was in some type of old industrial warehouse. Although he couldn’t view much outside the window, it appeared that he was in a decrepit and run-down part of the city—which, from what he’d seen of Detroit so far, didn’t narrow things down too much.

  Somehow at the same time the air smelled dabbed with decay, and also fresh, sweeping in from the nearby lakes.

  The water-damaged ceiling had rotted through in several places and, based on the perspective out the window and the view up through the holes in the ceiling, he could tell he was on the first of three floors.

  Although someone had removed whatever furniture might have once been there and the file cabinets were all gone, he figured he was in the office. The papers that’d been dumped onto the floor now lay, mildew-speckled, near the window.

  He tried again to free the end of the chain from the pipe but soon realized there wasn’t any way he would be able to get loose or break the pipe without some sort of tool.

  Earlier he’d heard Blake in the other room speaking with his associate. “Mannie, I want you to stay here. I have to go speak to someone across town. You know who it is.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to ask him for his help.”

  “It may take some convincing.”

  “I plan to offer him the thing he wants most.”

  “You?”

  “Close. Justice.”

  As far as Dylan knew, Mannie was still in the warehouse, perhaps in the next room over, perhaps outside. Neither he nor Blake had shown their face yet this morning.

  Dylan thought of Scarlett.

  From his history with her, he knew about her interest in law enforcement.

  During the trial, she’d changed her major to criminal justice and, if she indeed had gone that route, it might very well have meant a federal job rather
than work as a patrol officer—especially in Detroit where, it didn’t take him long to discover, the department paid their officers an average of ten thousand dollars less than the departments across the street in the suburbs.

  Scarlett was used to having money and was smart, and considering her criminal justice studies, he figured he would start with local law enforcement and then move on, as needed, to the FBI.

  One precinct at a time.

  One victim, one letter at a time.

  Draw out the officers, have someone film them, and, eventually the FBI would get involved.

  Meanwhile, he would be searching online for any clues as to where she was.

  One search.

  And another.

  Without assuming too much, he had to admit that all the signs were pointing toward the FBI.

  But he realized he needed time to make it work.

  Well, prison had taught him patience.

  He would do it body by body until he found her.

  Dylan had been in prison for fifteen years and technology had taken off exponentially in that time. Although he could navigate his way around online, he was by no means a hacker.

  So he went about it old-school.

  Scarlett Farrow had disappeared, and with all the ways to search for someone today, that wasn’t an easy task, so she likely had help.

  The Department of Justice? The Witness Protection Program?

  Maybe.

  If Simone was right and Scarlett was in Detroit, he might be able to get her to show her hand.

  And so, that’s what he had tried to do.

  Now, extending the chain as far as it would go, he searched for any assets he could use.

  He had on his clothes. There was a drain by his foot.

  Other than that, nothing useful was within reach.

  However, on the other side of the room, a crowbar lay forgotten in the corner, obscured by the shadows until now, as the sunlight angled through the window and revealed the top of it.

  The crowbar was about twelve feet from him.

  It looked like whoever had been in here scavenging had tried unsuccessfully to pry out a wall safe and left the bar behind, perhaps accidentally, or perhaps with the intention of returning later.

  Dylan reasoned that he might be able to use it to pry the pipe loose from the wall or, if he got the angle and torque right, maybe even crank open one of the chain’s links.

  Calculating how much distance he could get by using his pants, shoelaces, and belt to create some sort of retrieval system, he figured it would be close—close enough to at least justify giving it a shot.

  He snaked his belt free from its loops and slipped off his pants to tie them into a makeshift rope.

  ++++

  Sharyn’s phone vibrated and she checked the screen to find her first three requests for hookups through the app.

  Scrolling to the first profile page, she saw the photo of a male twenty-two-year-old graduate student from Thailand now studying here in Detroit. I’ve never done this before. Wanting to study international AFFAIRS. Git it?

  Um. No.

  That was definitely not Dylan.

  The second profile picture showed a graying man in his sixties posing behind the wheel of his convertible. Looking for someone to take a ride with me.

  Oh, this could not seriously be what the singles scene in Detroit was like these days.

  The third message was from a middle-aged Hispanic woman who must not have looked carefully at Sharyn’s profile preferences of F looking for M.

  She declined all of the hookups but kept her profile active and kept her status as “Available.”

  As she went to take a shower, her thoughts kept replaying what had happened last night: having Pat over. Their conversation regarding relationships. His apology concerning the way he’d broken things off when they were at the Academy.

  Then, Christie’s phone call right before he left.

  And what it might mean for the three of them.

  66

  7:34 A.M.

  Dispersal in 7 hours

  As I was finishing up at the motel and collecting my laptop and notes, my phone rang and Christie’s face appeared on the screen.

  I said a small prayer that things would be okay. Praying isn’t in my wheelhouse, so I wasn’t sure of the right words to use, but I figured God in all his wisdom didn’t need me to figure them all out. He knew what I was getting at.

  Help me save this.

  Help me say the right things for once.

  Please.

  Please.

  “Good morning, Pat.”

  “Good morning.”

  Bypassing small talk, she cut to the chase. “So, you’re working with a woman that you used to date?”

  Careful now. Don’t get defensive.

  “Yes.”

  I was going to say more. I was going to explain helpfully that our relationship ended eight years ago, that that’s a long time, that I hadn’t seen her since then, that I was over her, but said nothing. Which was probably for the best.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her, though?” Christie asked. “That she would be here?”

  “I couldn’t see how telling you would’ve helped us stay us.”

  “Us stay us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what does that mean to you, Pat? ‘Us staying us’?”

  “I know what I want it to mean.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A future together.”

  I didn’t elaborate on the specifics of what that might entail, and she didn’t ask me to.

  “Pat, did you take this case so you could see her again? Did that influence your decision?”

  Motives.

  Roots, interlaced and impossible to trace.

  When I was slow in replying, she said, “I see.”

  “Christie, don’t read too much into my silence. I want to be honest. I’ve never been the best at sharing my feelings.”

  She was quiet.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. I want to figure this out. We should meet, talk things through.”

  “You’re right. We should. But before that, I need to speak with Sharyn.”

  Sharyn still had feelings for me so I didn’t like the thought of that, but I had to admit that it would probably be good for them to talk—and the sooner, the better.

  If things were ever going to work long-term with Christie, I needed to make sure she could trust me—and that she knew I trusted her.

  “I’ll call her, see when she can meet with you.”

  “If you give me her number, I can call her myself.”

  Last night Sharyn had offered to do whatever she could to help resolve things, so I gave Christie both her mobile and work numbers. Then I said, “Let me know when you’re available to talk with me. Whatever I’m doing here, I’ll drop it so we can meet.”

  “Alright.”

  After we hung up, I texted Sharyn to tell her to be on the lookout for a message from Christie, and passed along Christie’s number so her phone would identify the call when it came in.

  ++++

  The nightmares were a noose around Ali’s neck. Dark, sinewy cords that tightened the longer he was asleep and that only let go when he was finally awake, heart hammering, hands clinging to his sheets, the shirt he’d slept in drenched in sweat.

  The pillow was smeared with blood from his split lip and fluid from his swollen, leaking eye.

  So, the dreams.

  Blood on blood on blood.

  Splattering across his clothes and onto the sand around him, all during the night as he slept.

  It was easier to believe that it was all a dream rather than a memory. Some nightmares are like that—we think they’re real until we wake up.

&nbs
p; Only to find out we’re still asleep and that we need to wake up again.

  Wake up, Ali.

  He recalled an old saying that his mother used to tell him when he was a boy: “A man may outrun his past but he cannot outrun the person it has led him to become.”

  So, now that he was awake, Ali had a different kind of terror, a different kind of pain: he was who he had become. There was no running from that. No hiding from the truth.

  Nightmares came at him from two directions—what he had done and what he was doing. The past and the present, squeezing any possible joy out of what was to come.

  He tried futilely to find comfort by reminding himself that the pathway he was on would serve Allah.

  Ever since he’d been recruited and given this assignment, Ali had wondered why Fayed and his group didn’t just infect him beforehand, before he flew to the United States. Why wait? Why was the timing important? And why hadn’t he been told about others who were going to martyr themselves? Were there others, or was he alone? And if he was alone, why?

  If there was a way that he could put an end to what he’d become a part of, if he could stop Fayed, protect his sister, and save innocent lives, he would do it. He had to do it, no matter what that might mean, or how great a sacrifice it might require.

  ________

  Last night Abdul had told him that his wife would bring breakfast up at seven, and checking the time, Ali realized he had overslept.

  After slipping on a loose-fitting shirt that could hide a suicide vest if necessary, he opened the door to head downstairs and ask her to forgive him and saw the meal waiting for him on a tray beside his door.

  Taking it back into the room, he went online as he ate.

  Fayed had instructed him to read up on the city, but since he’d had to drive up rather than fly, he hadn’t had the chance yet to do so.

  Now he studied the materials and links he’d been sent, and as he clicked through from one site to another, he discovered that over the last one hundred and twenty years a lot had gone on underneath the city of Detroit.

  In an online article titled, “It’s Not What You See That Counts,” the author, Gwyneth Leroy, a woman who’d extensively explored the bomb shelters beneath churches and schools, wrote about all that existed beneath the city’s surface.