by Allen Kent
Grace had slipped off her seatbelt and curled into the bucket on the driver’s side like a kitten on a windowsill. She wore soft, black jeans and somehow managed to tuck both of those long legs up under her in a yoga pose that would have crippled me for a week. I left my own belt off and turned with one knee jammed against the center console, my back against the door.
“Could be a long night,” I said awkwardly.
“Got anything else to do?” she said, grinning over at me in the muted light of the streetlamps.
“I was hoping to get a little sleep tonight.”
“We can trade off. If you want to catch a few Z’s, I’ll keep an eye on the exit.”
“I’m not feeling it now, but we may be here all night. Let me know if you need a rest.”
“I’m fine for now,” she said. “Tell me what happened up here during the day.”
I filled her in on the van discovery, confronting the two Talismen, and the calls from some mysterious power that took Joseph and Rosario out of the equation. “Nobody told them to stop watching the Syrian,” I told her, “but to leave the two guys from Mississippi alone. Since no one warned us off, they’re our responsibility.”
“So, somebody pretty high up knows about these hits and is protecting the guys who are doing it. How can they justify that?”
I’d been wondering the same thing and had come to my own conclusion. “I think some people see the war as existing wherever the enemy takes it. If we’re protecting people here who have been on our side and someone comes after them, we do what needs to be done to protect them.”
“Why not just arrest the assassins and lock them away?”
“And add to the Guantanamo problem we already have? Plus, I think it would make the public pretty nervous if they knew foreign killers are roaming across America. It’s simpler to just have them disappear.”
Grace tilted her head to the side. “You sound like you approve.”
“I can’t say I approve or disapprove,” I confessed. “I understand the rationale. If we’re at war, why should it make a difference if we eliminate the enemy there or here? If they sent someone to assassinate the President, for example, wouldn’t we be justified in taking out the killer?”
“They aren’t here after the President.”
“No. But after someone who was an important ally. If we can’t provide our friends protection, even when they are here, they’ll lose faith in us.”
“Then why are you concerned about them being here?”
I grinned over at her. “I just don’t like this whole mess coming into our county.”
We sat for a few moments, awkwardly studying each other’s faces. She really was an incredibly beautiful woman. A Botticelli face, hidden away in the rural Ozarks. What was she thinking? How did this inexperienced guy with no background in law enforcement get to be my boss? When she finally spoke, her question startled me.
“Why did you come back to Crayton?”
Was she basically asking the same thing? Why did I take a job that should have come to her? I watched her face for some sign of resentment but saw none.
“What do you mean, why did I come back? This is where I grew up. It’s always been home to me.”
Her quick nod showed that she’d been misunderstood. “No—I mean, I know you grew up in a pretty rough part of the county and didn’t have much. Water from a pump. An outhouse out back. Most of those old cabins aren’t even there anymore. But you got away. You’ve been all kinds of places. Like California and New York. And to all those foreign places.”
She paused and gave me an amused grin. “And you’ve learned about all kinds of useless stuff—like that mumbo-jumbo you were talking to Reverend Frazee about. I’ve never even heard of Gnostics or whatever those people were. I went to college up in Joplin. That’s it.” Her face again became sober. “That trip I took with you last year when we went to Tulsa after Verl Greaves? That was about as far as I’ve been from home. Ever. Oh—and to Kansas City a few times because my dad’s crazy about the Chiefs. And we didn’t even go into the city. Just to the stadium. But I’ve never been to St. Louis. Never been on an airplane. And you’ve been everywhere and seen all kinds of things and learned about all those different ideas. But you came back.”
There was a longing in her voice that made me want to reach across the console and pull her to me. Assure her that she amazed me with what an intuitive, perceptive woman she was and that she wasn’t somehow diminished by being “just Grace from Crayton.”
“There’s no place I’d rather live,” I said instead. “And you can learn all that worthless stuff I throw around with Matt Frazee from books.” I paused, then corrected myself. “Maybe I shouldn’t say worthless. Knowing about those ideas just makes me appreciate what I have all the more. The people who live here are the best I’ve ever known. True friends who’d do anything for you. You’re lucky to have been able to spend your life here.”
“It’s hard to know, when that’s all you’ve ever seen or known,” she said quietly.
I wondered if she knew how amazing she looked and if that was why New York and California had slipped out when she mentioned places she’d never been? I couldn’t suppress my own twinge of sadness and remembered Joseph’s comment about exposure and appreciation. This was a woman who would appreciate all kinds of things if she knew about them.
“What would you be if you could be anything?” I asked.
She shrugged with a thoughtful frown. “I don’t know that I’d want to be anything different. I feel lucky to be chief deputy. Some people don’t even think I ought to be that. But I’ve read about these places and can’t help but wonder what it’s like to be there.” She relaxed forward a bit and smiled, her hands fidgeting in her lap like a five-year old anticipating a surprise birthday gift. “What’s been your favorite?”
“My favorite?”
“Favorite place you’ve been.”
The answer was easy. This was one of my “think about it when you’re trying to relax and go to sleep” themes. But I’d realized from these night musings that the places had been favorites partly because I was sharing them with Adeena. I spared Grace that detail.
“San Francisco in the U.S.” I said. “I was stationed near there when I was with the Defense Language School. It’s just got a feel about it I love. Lots of diversity. Easy to walk from one little neighborhood to another—or take the trolley. And there’s a view of the Bay or the ocean from almost anywhere.”
“Oh, the ocean,” she murmured. “I’d love to see the ocean. You said San Francisco was your favorite American place. Where else have you really liked?”
The memory pulled my gaze from her intense dark eyes to a couple walking hand-in-hand along the lighted park trail across the boulevard. Adeena and I had strolled like that—across an arched stone bridge and along a cobbled lane that led through Castle Combe in England’s Cotswolds. Among the quaint, slate-tiled cottages we’d found a bakery, no more than two small wrought iron tables on a tiny patio in front of a glass display case of fresh-baked pastries, puddings, and tea cakes. We had shared a caramel, date, and walnut pudding and sipped English tea, soaking in the aroma of warm currant buns, still browning in the oven behind the display.
Grace jarred me back into the dark Cherokee. “You must have been with Adeena,” she said with an apologetic smile. “I can see it in your face. I shouldn’t have asked.”
I shook away the apology. “Oh, no. It was a good memory. And you would love this place. It’s a group of villages out in the English countryside that looks just like you imagine them to be. Like calendar pictures. We had the perfect day there . . .”
“Mmm,” she murmured. “She was so lucky.”
I glanced away again, thinking “lucky” didn’t include being hitched to a guy who couldn’t keep her alive while we worked together. Time to talk about something else.
“Are you hungry? There’s a cafeteria in the center that will be open. A stakeout’s not a stakeout without c
offee and donuts.”
Grace straightened and twisted back behind the wheel. “What if the men start to move?”
I nodded toward the Arbor Suites. “The Patrol has someone over there watching. They’ll see Sayegh leave as soon as the guys here do. You’d probably better go inside. I can’t risk running into them and you might want to get to a restroom while you can. Keep your phone in your hand. I’ll call if there’s any change. Do you need money?”
She gave me a dismissive glare. “You don’t pay well, but I can handle this. And don’t you ever need to use the restroom?”
“I was able to go before you got here.” I declined to tell her that, in true country fashion, I’d sneaked a leek against the concrete barrier on the top level of the parking garage.
She slipped from the car.
Ten minutes later, she was back with a cardboard tray with two cups of coffee, chicken salad sandwiches on croissants, and a pair of oatmeal cookies the size of saucers.
“Well, this should tide us over,” I laughed. “No donuts?”
“They had cinnamon buns, but someone has to be looking after your health,” she said lightly. “Oatmeal raisin seems healthy, even if it’s not. Now, what do you want to talk about?”
“How about you?” I suggested, ready to move away from memories of bucolic afternoons with Adeena. “Tell me about your father coming up from Mexico.”
24
Just after midnight, Qasim Sayegh began to move. Ron Holland was the stakeout at the Arbor Suites and saw him leave the hotel before the Talismen crew noticed him crossing to his car. After two hours of talking about everything we could think of without approaching personal feelings about each other, Grace had taken over the watch while I dozed with the seat fully reclined. Holland’s call jolted me upright.
“We have movement,” Holland said quietly, as if the target might somehow hear him in the adjoining lot. “Be alert. I’ll call Officer Joseph.”
Within seconds, the white Ford Fusion edged into sight at the south end of the cancer center lot, hovering near the exit onto Bradford. Grace started the Cherokee, keeping its lights out.
At the intersection, Sayegh’s dark Hyundai hesitated, then swung cautiously through the turn toward the James River Expressway. The Fusion slipped out and followed. Grace backed from her spot and eased the Jeep to the exit, allowing two cars to pass before turning after the Ford. Qasim took the first on-ramp and headed west on the expressway in medium traffic.
“If he’s headed toward Crayton, he’ll take 60 to Aurora, then 39 south,” Grace murmured. “That could be good or bad. It’ll be harder for him to know if he’s being followed if he stays off the country roads. But it will also be harder for the Talismen guys to force him off the road without being seen. Maybe we should get Bobby moving up 39 to intercept. We can switch off with him to change the scenery.”
“I’ll alert him,” I agreed, “but I don’t want either of those cars out of our sight until we’re sure where they’re going. I’ll tell Bobby to come in his own car. He can slip in between us a couple of times, but we need to stay right with them.”
Grace took her eyes off the Fusion just long enough to give me a sidelong glance. “Do you think they’ll try to stop him before he gets to town?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been trying to get into their heads all afternoon and so far, they’ve done pretty much what I expected. I’m thinking they won’t want to shoot the guy in his rental. Too messy and too hard to hide. They’ll try to get to him somewhere where they can dispose of him easily. They probably already have a plan—like they did with his brother.”
“Doesn’t seem like they would want him to make it all the way to Crayton, then,” Graced mused. “He’ll be on county roads for the last fifteen or twenty miles. Maybe they’ll cut him off then and drag him out of the car.”
I disagreed. “The Syrian’s gotta have a gun with him. If they force him off the road and aren’t willing to shoot the car up, they’ll become targets. And he’s a pretty experienced warrior. If Sayegh’s headed to stake out the Haddads, he’ll find a place to watch the apartments and wait. I think that’s when our Talismen will try to get him.”
Qasim exited the expressway on Highway 60, turning west. He was headed toward Crayton. I called Rosario and told him it looked like everything was in motion. He said he would check with the Haddad families and try to get everyone rounded up at home, then park where he could see the apartments and sit tight.
As we approached Aurora, Joseph called to say she was about ten minutes behind us. “Don said you went west on the expressway, so I guessed our guy’s taking 39,” she said. “When you get down toward Crayton, tell me where you want me.” Before I could answer, Grace interrupted.
“We’re at one of the passing lanes and the Mississippi guys are slowing down,” she said urgently. “I think they’re trying to see if they have a tail.”
I quickly “Roger’ed” Joseph, unfastened my seatbelt, and dropped sideways onto my knees in front of the seat. “Pass them,” I ordered. “Tuck in behind Sayegh. If he’s slowed down, pass them both. Then turn at Aurora.”
“What if they don’t?”
“We can go back and pick them up.”
She accelerated in the passing lane, looking straight ahead as she passed the Fusion while I pressed my head against her hip.
“Sayegh’s slowed too,” she murmured. “I think he’s doing the same thing—and the Ford is following me around him.”
Two minutes later with me still hunched against the front of the seat, we slowed for the light at the Highway 39 intersection. Grace eased the Cherokee into the turn lane.
“The Talismen guys are going straight,” she whispered. “They’re right beside me. They don’t seem to be expecting the Syrian to turn—but he’s coming into the turn lane.”
“They’ll come back and catch up,” I assured her. “Keep the Hyundai in your mirror and let Sayegh follow us. I’ll call Bobby and have him drop in behind him at Jenkins. When we get close to town, if Bobby’s in place, cut off on the Harrison extension. We can beat him to the apartments.”
I clambered back into the seat and returned Joseph’s call, asking that she park at the town-end of Beaver Creek Park when she reached town and sit tight. “If you’re in your state car, keep it out of sight. I think Sayegh’s going to park somewhere nearby, and you don’t want to be seen.”
As we passed through Jenkins, Bobby Lule’s white pickup eased onto the highway behind the Hyundai.
“Bobby’s picked him up,” I murmured. “Take the cutoff.”
The McKenzie Apartments, the semi-permanent residence of the Haddad clan, face a greenway across Beaver Creek Road that had once been covered by most of Crayton’s low-end rental housing. When what the National Weather Service called “fifty-year floods” began to happen every three or four years, FEMA paid the city to buy up the properties and tear down the rentals. The one FEMA condition was that nothing could replace them in the flood plain. The result was Beaver Creek Park, a strip of grass, trees, and jogging paths along both sides of a tributary of Mill Creek.
Along with an old VFW hall that has since become a dance studio, the McKenzie property sits high enough up a gradual slope that it escaped mandatory demolition. Across a side street, another set of apartments escaped the razing: a converted two-level motel, now called The Oaks, with eight units on each floor. This lonely collection sits on the edge of town with nothing beyond but twenty acres of cemetery, scattered patches of woods, and small farmsteads.
The Oaks offers its residents two rows of unlit parking in front, facing the McKenzie Apartments, and one dark row across the back. Grace slipped the Cherokee between a pair of resident pickups in the front lot and killed the lights and engine. Within minutes, the Hyundai cruised slowly past the Haddad apartments. Bobby Lule and his white pickup didn’t follow. Qasim Sayegh looped into the dark lot on the street side of the dance studio and doused his own lights. No sign of the Fusion.
“Do
you think he shook everybody?” Grace murmured in the darkness.
To our right, blocked from the studio by the Haddad housing units, the shadowy silhouette of a car, lights out, rolled silently down the street between apartment buildings, eased into the other end of The Oaks lot, and braked into an open space. A sliver of moon cast enough light to create shadows, but not enough to determine more than ghostly shapes.
“I’d guess that’s our men,” I ventured. “No one else would come down here lights-out.”
“Can they see Sayegh’s car from where they are?”
I guessed at the sightline. “I’d say yes. They must know he pulled in by the studio.”
“So—what do we do?”
“We wait,” I said, and eased my seat back until the narrow brace between windows disguised my own shadow if lights passed on the road in front of us.
The sliver of moon disappeared just after 2:00. Grace dozed in her seat while I kept watch, aided only by a clear, starlit sky and the faint glow of streetlights from the courthouse square a half mile away. A few minutes before 3:00, Sayegh slipped from his car, framed for an instant by a dome light he had forgotten to turn off. I nudged Grace.
“He’s on the move,” I whispered. She sat up, fully awake, and watched the Syrian cross Beaver Creek Road, then turn right along the jogging path.
“You were right,” She murmured. “He knows Yusef walks in the morning and has gone to find a place to wait for him. How did he get that kind of information?”
“Our Talismen knew he was coming into the country, where he was headed, and when he’d get here,” I said. “There must be some pretty elaborate intelligence networks on both sides watching these people.”
“Where do you think he’s going?”
“If he does what I think he will—and so far, he has—he’ll cross the creek down where it goes under the road and come back along the path on the other side. He’ll want to be where he can see Yusef leave the house, but where he has more cover.”
