The Guardian

by Marliss Melton

  Damn if there wasn’t something about her that made a man think of sex.

  “How you doin’?” Muhammed purred, putting a swagger in his stride.

  “Super.” She tucked a dark curl behind one ear as she regarded them one by one. “How are you all?”

  They lined up on the opposite side of the picnic table feasting their eyes on her. “We good now,” Muhammed declared, his gaze wandering toward her cleavage. “Wha’s your name, baby?”

  A spark of cynicism flared in her eyes, but her smile remained fixed. “Maggie,” she said, setting her elbows on the table top and giving them a mouthwatering view of the tops of her coconut sized breasts. “I work here now.” She nodded toward Artie’s.

  Jackson couldn’t believe his ears. The woman hadn’t wasted any time insinuating herself into the local scene, finding the ideal vantage from which to keep tabs on Gateway and making up a fictitious name. Why? Had the media caught whiff of the Taskforce investigation?

  “My name’s Muhammed,” said their spokesperson. “This here is Nadim, Hasan, Jamal, Sulayman, and Abdul.”

  “Nice to meet all of you.” Her gaze lingered a split second longer on Jackson than on the others.

  “Maggie, huh,” Muhammed continued, giving his chin a thoughtful rub. “Is that short for somethin’?”

  Her sexy shrug shifted the pink gemstone dangling from her neck. “What do you think it’s short for?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.

  “Margaret,” guessed Davis, looking smug when she gestured that he was right.

  “Smart man,” she praised him. “It is Margaret.”

  She was lying through her pearly white teeth. Jackson battled to hide his growing scowl.

  “You live here?” he demanded on a note that made her glance at him sharply.

  “As a matter of fact I just moved here from D.C.,” she answered.

  Another lie, Jackson thought.

  “No shit. We all from D.C.,” Muhammed exclaimed, “‘cept for Abdul. He from Baltimore.”

  “Small world.” She sat a little taller, tantalizing them again as her breasts jutted out. “What neighborhoods are you all from?”

  “I’m from Anacostia, baddest ’hood in the city,” Jamal replied.

  Sulayman Ibn Surad, whose real name was Rupert Davis, spoke up suddenly. “I used to be a cop—Metropolitan police,” he boasted.

  Maggie shifted her whole body to face him. “Oh, dear,” she said with a sympathetic look.

  Jackson eyed her incredulously. Couldn’t the men tell that she was reeling them in?

  “Yeah, we all got busted for one thing or another,” Muhammed corroborated. “But don’t you worry, baby,” he rushed to assure her. “We all cleaned up our act. We God-fearin’ men now,” he added with conviction. “Ain’t that right, fellas?”

  “Tha’s right,” three others confirmed.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she stated, “especially since I’m writing a book about prison conversions and I’d love to interview some of you, if you’re interested.”

  “You writin’ a book?” Muhammed thumped down onto the bench across from her.

  Jackson scowled. What book? She wasn’t here to write a goddamn book.

  “Absolutely. My goal is to show the positive, long-term effects of prison conversion on parolees.”

  The men gaped at her in awe.

  “I want to be in it,” Muhammed declared, slapping his hand on the table.

  “Well, okay then!” Maggie flashed him a megawatt smile, her gaze jumping up expectantly. “What about the rest of you? I’d love to interview a former cop,” she said to Sulayman.

  The tension ebbed slowly out of Jackson. He didn’t believe a word about her so-called book, but at least she didn’t seem to be sniffing out a government spy.

  “Not me,” Sulayman declared, taking a backward step.

  “Man, why not?” Jamal demanded. “I’ll do it. I used to be a bank robber, but now that I found Allah, I’m a saved man.”

  “We all saved,” Muhammed insisted. “You could interview all of us.”

  Ike wouldn’t stand for this, Jackson assured himself. It didn’t matter if she was hunting him or not; the woman was a threat to his cover.

  Nadim, the only Hispanic man, shattered the moment by announcing that break time was almost over.

  “Aw, man.” Jamal slid a mournful look over Maggie’s outrageous curves.

  “Time to go.” Grabbing Muhammed by the scruff, Jackson hauled him off the bench.

  “Bye, baby,” Muhammed sang out as Jackson herded them all toward the building.

  “Bye.” She fluttered her pink-tipped nails at them. “Come visit me soon. I’ll be here every night at six,” she called, setting Jackson’s teeth on edge.

  As the men filed into the store to buy their drinks, Jackson handed Muhammed a dollar and told him to buy an extra water while he waited outside. The surveillance cameras in the store, like Lena’s camera yesterday, made him uncomfortable unless he was wearing a billed cap. Standing alone on the curb, he sensed the journalist staring at him.

  Reluctantly, he looked over at her. “I trust you deleted those photos,” he called across the parking lot.

  But a mutt in the back of a pickup truck started barking, muffling his words.

  Lena put a hand to her ear and shook her head. “I can’t hear you.”

  He directed his glare at the annoying dog. “Quiet,” he said with authority he had learned from K-9 handlers in the military. “I said, I trust you deleted those photos,” he called to her again when the dog fell silent.

  All she did was cast her eyes heavenward and shake her head.

  Just you wait, Jackson thought, stewing at her stubborn refusal to acknowledge the truth. She’d regret it when the Taskforce lead stepped in to protect him.

  Muhammed reemerged and handed him his water. The dog started barking again as the men spilled out in his wake, waved farewell at the journalist, and started back across the highway. Jackson could feel her speculative gaze on his back, keeping him prickly in his skin.

  He probably wasn’t the reason she was here, he acknowledged, but a woman as accomplished as she was at eliciting information was a danger to his cover. Somehow, some way, Ike needed to get rid of her.

  There was already one spy in this town; two was just too many.

  **

  With shadows sliding up the trunks of the trees outside, Lena flicked on the light in her bedroom, propped her laptop open on her vanity, and connected her camera to it. The time had come to save backup copies of her photos onto her database at work.

  Thumbnail images popped onto her screen, and her gaze went straight to her pictures of Abdul Ibn Wasi. Her pulse automatically quickened.

  Abdul. His conversion name had caught her off guard, today. Curious to know the meaning of his name, she Googled “Abdul.”

  Servant, said a site devoted to Islamic conversion names.

  As in sex slave? queried a wistful voice in Lena’s head.

  Her brow furrowed. Why had he presented himself so differently today than yesterday? From his walk to his speech, which had lapsed into a vernacular similar to that of his peers, he’d struck her as an entirely different person than the articulate man who’d accosted her yesterday. The only thing that hadn’t changed about him was his blistering resentment toward her and his insistence that she delete her photos.

  Why would her pictures pose such a threat to him anyway? And what about him set him apart from his peers, even when he tried to be like them? It wasn’t just his lighter coloration. He’d noticed her when the others had remained oblivious. His hawk-like vigilance was evident in his light-colored eyes. She doubted anything escaped his notice, ever. Having a man like that around when she was working undercover made her nervous.

  With a shrug, she typed in Crime and Liberty’s URL and waited for the log-in page to load, so she could access her personal records.

  Nothing. The DSL service at her rental was a far cry
from the high-speed wireless she was accustomed to at home. With a sigh of annoyance, Lena hit the refresh button. Still nothing. Something had to be wrong with Crime and Liberty’s servers. She found herself thinking about Abdul again.

  Maybe if she knew what he was serving time for, that would shed light on his reluctance to have his picture circulating. Opening a new tab on her browser, she typed in the URL for the National Crime Information Center. A friend at the DA’s office had provided her his log in and password information so she could have access. She typed in Abdul’s name and pasted his image into the facial recognition pane, hitting the search button. The program would scan all twelve Persons Files on the NCIC, saving her hours of research, and bring up his criminal history.

  Her pulse thrummed as she waited. What if Abdul’s crime was reprehensible? What would that make her for finding an ex-con so appealing?

  After several long minutes, the words NO MATCH flashed onto the screen, baffling her. Lena scratched her head. How could there be no match if he was a convicted felon? He would have to have seriously altered his appearance for the program not to identify him.

  Curious to see what results Davis’s image yielded, she followed the same procedures with his photo, using his conversion name, Sulayman, and received immediate feedback: Rupert D. Davis (aka Sulayman Ibn Surad). Former D.C. Metropolitan Police officer convicted of trafficking marijuana and cocaine. Sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Served eight years at Arlington County Corrections. Paroled July, 2012.

  “That’s odd.” Why would Davis’s face be recognized and not Abdul’s?

  Curiosity nipped at Lena, prompting her to expand her search outside of the NCIC to include celebrities and professional athletes who’d gone to jail, since he struck her as someone who could have been either. But armed with just his first name, and with no facial recognition program of her own to use, her search proved random and inefficient.

  By now, the open window formed a dark rectangle against the white wall. Throwing up her hands in frustration, Lena decided to enlist Peter’s help. If anyone could identify an unknown person, it was the founder and CEO of Crime and Liberty.

  She sent him an email from her Google account, attaching Abdul’s photo and a concise request that concealed her underlying fascination with the man.

  When the email bounced right back, she sat back, thought for a moment, and sent the picture to Peter’s Google mail, which he used for personal correspondence.

  Then, rubbing her heavy eyelids, Lena saved the pictures on her laptop. Tomorrow she would offload the contents of her pendant. Since it could hold up to two hours of recorded video, there wasn’t any rush. Tonight she needed to catch up on her sleep.

  Powering down her laptop, she climbed into bed and covered herself with just a sheet. The photo by her bed caught her eye as light from a passing car briefly illumined Alexa’s sweet visage. The air wafting through the open window smelled of the small white berries on the shrubs outside. Odd, Alexa used to own a bottle of perfume that smelled like that.

  “No bad dreams tonight,” Lena told herself.

  Chapter Four

  “What’s the plan, Pops?” Jackson demanded, speaking directly into his cell phone as a late-afternoon thunderstorm rumbled in the direction of the river and rustled the leaves on the trees overhead. His heart still thudded from his jog into the darkening forest.

  Over forty-eight hours had passed since Lena Alexandra had snapped his pictures and twenty-eight hours since she’d invited the men to visit her while she worked. Not only had she insinuated herself locally but word of her had spread among the parolees, so that the majority had made plans to accept her invitation to come visit her, tonight after Friday worship. “We’re not letting this chick stay here, are we?”

  “It’s a wait-and-see situation,” Ike replied.

  There had to be something more they could do besides sabotage Crime and Liberty’s servers. “Have you found out her phone number yet?”

  “I did, but she’s not carrying her regular cell.”

  Obviously, the woman had done this kind of thing before. They couldn’t even monitor her phone calls. Jackson’s agitation mounted. “So we do nothing?”

  “Your best friend’s going to follow her home tonight to find out where she lives,” Ike said. “Then you and he can have a party at her place tomorrow, while she’s at work,” he added, significantly.

  Ah, so there was a method to Ike’s madness. Ike had Toby keeping an eye on the journalist. “Cool.” And by party, Ike meant that Jackson and Toby would raid her place of residence and seize her camera, her laptop, and anything else that could be used to jeopardize his cover.

  “You’ll want to convince her that your college isn’t right for her,” Ike continued on a steely note.

  In other words, scare the crap out of her so she’d leave.

  “Right,” Jackson agreed, relieved but also reluctant. He drew the line at intimidating women. Plus, he didn’t necessarily want to see the last of her. Having her around offered respite from the otherwise tedious experience of working through a program that redeemed ex-cons when he wasn’t one, and looking for evidence for the Taskforce that he doubted even existed.

  As far as he could tell, Gateway was everything it was held up to be.

  “Anything new?” Ike asked.

  Jackson thought about the book he’d glimpsed in Ibrahim’s office the other day. Just because the logo on the spine had looked familiar, that didn’t make the book suspect. “No, nothing. I can’t wait to come home,” he inserted, aching to hold his daughter whom he hadn’t seen since the start of summer when she’d left for Girl Scout Camp.

  “Tomorrow,” Ike reminded him.

  “Yep. See you, Pops.”

  “’Night, son.”

  Tucking his phone back in his pocket, Jackson flinched at the terrific crash of thunder that shook the ground under his feet. For a split second he was back in Iraq, his battalion taking mortar rounds.

  Working for the Taskforce was a lot like war, he reflected. Sometimes the line between ally and enemy got blurred.

  What was Lena Alexandra, aka Maggie? Friend or foe?

  One way to find out was to visit her tonight at the store with the other parolees.

  **

  Lena cast another anxious glance through the windows at the front of the store. This was her first night of handling the store on her own. She was relieved when floodlights came on outside at either end of the building, driving the mantle of dusk to the perimeter of the parking lot. The gas pumps stood empty under the illuminated shelter. The store was lit up like Las Vegas, only no one was coming to gamble, not even the Lotto-loving Amish man. She hadn’t wanted to be too busy, but the lull that had followed the initial rush made the time creep by.

  Nerves frayed by the continual classical music, Lena found the source and turned it off. How long would she have to wait for the parolees to venture over? Surely they would take her up on her invitation. The refrigerators hummed and the percolating coffee hissed. Then above those noises, a sing-song voice permeated the store. Seeking the source of the sound, Lena pushed outside to find Gateway’s parking lot crammed with vehicles. The eerie incantation was the muezzin, she realized—the Muslim calls to prayers, floating down from a minaret that pricked the cobalt sky. Lights shining out of the mosque’s high windows suggested a service was underway. No wonder no one had paid her a visit yet.

  But as long as the service didn’t last till midnight, she might have visitors yet.

  **

  “Go forth with Allah’s blessing,” Ibrahim called from the minbar, the high, tower-shaped podium from which he’d issued his sermon. Sweeping down the long steps he stalked to the back of the room to fling open the heavy doors to the foyer.

  Freed to move, at last, Jackson unfurled his numb legs and rose from his prayer rug trying not to bump his neighbors. Dozens of men, visitors and current parolees alike, had been kneeling for two hours straight, facing the mihrab, an elaborate
ly tiled niche that dominated the wall of the mosque facing the direction of Mecca.

  At the start of the service, the visitors had been introduced as former parolees, graduates of Gateway. Jackson’s peers regarded them in awe. Dressed in suits, many appeared affluent; all of them struck Jackson as amazingly well integrated, considering they were former felons. If Gateway was responsible for transforming them into such productive, upstanding individuals, then the Taskforce was barking up the wrong tree.

  Ibrahim’s sermon about restraint and self-respect had been a fitting one, as this weekend would be the parolees’ first taste of freedom since getting out of jail. As with previous sermons, it was filmed by a cameraman who would post the sermon on Ibrahim’s website. Jackson kept his face averted whenever the camera swung in his direction.

  While Ibrahim’s words might be influential in preventing some ex-cons from reverting to previous behaviors, Jackson figured the example set by the graduates was more likely to motivate them. Inviting successful graduates to attend Friday night worship was a stroke of genius on the part of the leadership.

  “Go straight to your beds, my brothers,” Zakariya cautioned, threading his way through the crowd. “Remember that you will be tempted in your freedom,” he added, laying a knobby hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “You must resist temptation.”

  A vision of Lena Alexandra sprang to Jackson’s mind. Now there was temptation incarnate, he mused, joining the others in heading for the door. He noted that Ibrahim greeted each man by name, forgetting no one’s. “For you, Abu,” he said, doling out a pamphlet to each and every attendee. Accepting his, Jackson glanced at the title, Judgment Day, and slipped it into his rear pocket to review later.

  He followed the crowd outside. There, the parolees watched with envious eyes as the graduates departed, driving away in Toyotas, Cadillacs, and Lexuses. Then all twelve men trudged in thoughtful silence to their dormitory. As they neared the entrance to the campus, Artie’s One Stop Shop came into view, lit up like a whorehouse in a port of call.