John smiled. “Fair enough. I’ll say again. How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks for asking,” Akina said. “Things have been quiet at the agency, which has given me a little time to adjust to the new role.”
“Let me know if I can help in any way,” John said.”
Stony leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Speaking of boundaries, I’ve never seen one I wasn’t willing to stomp all over. Akina would never ask, but you’re back to become the new Director, right?”
“As Ms. Pearl just reminded me, such questions are out of bounds.”
“I knew it! Congratulations!”
John held up his hands. “Jesus, Stony, slow down. I came back for a conversation that I’d deferred when the Pakistan thing took off. Now I’m headed home to finish my vacation and will be back on duty in a couple of weeks.” His voice was tight and clipped.
“John.” Akina was staring at him, her face composed. “I’ve not said anything about this to Stony or anyone else, but you should know something. I want the permanent appointment to the Director’s role. I think I’ve earned it and have the skills to do it well. You may be the DNI’s fair-haired boy and you are the best agent I’ve ever known, but—”
“Hey,” Stony said. “I thought I was the best agent you’ve ever known.”
Akina ignored her. “But you aren’t the right person for the Director’s job. In fact, I think you’d suck at it. I’ll fight you for this. And still love you while I’m doing it.”
“Thank you for putting the issue on the table,” John said. “Have you talked with DNI?”
“Not yet.”
“Do it. The sooner the better,” John grinned. “I won’t discuss anything that passed between Lewis and me. But I agree with your assessment.”
“Assessment of what?” Stony asked. “That you’d suck as Director? Or that Akina should be the Director? What?”
“We’ll leave it at that, Stony,” John said. “Time to change the subject.”
Before Stony could object, Akina shot a frown in her direction and steered the conversation away from the DTS. “Pakistan isn’t the most tourist-friendly country in the world. Where’d you go after the case ended?”
Not the smoothest segue ever, but I can work with it.
Rick returned to the table with their food. Dishes were passed, utensils unwrapped, and cups refilled.
“Got some guidance from Tareef and stayed in his valley and the ones nearby. Focused on Kalash settlements and their burial areas.” He pulled his iPhone from his pocket and turned the screen toward the other side of the table. “The Kalash are polytheistic, which is why they make their Islamic neighbors uncomfortable. They don’t bury their dead. They put them in ornamented wooden coffins above ground and if they’re wealthy, they erect a wooden effigy.”
“Gross,” Stony said. “Don’t they stink? Don’t animals get into them?”
“They’re closed boxes. If they stank, I couldn’t tell.”
John rattled on while they waded through sticky buns, scrambled eggs, and pancakes. Finished, he put his napkin on the table, leaned back, and took a deep breath.
“I’ve got a plane to catch, but before we split, I need to share a thing with you that came up during my conversation with the DNI.” He told them about the DNI’s ultimatum.
The two women looked at each other and an uncomfortable quiet fell over the table.
“That’s just rumor bullshit,” Stony growled. “What’s his source?”
“Really?” John asked. “That’s the way you want to play it? Deny, deny, deny? You really think that’s the best path?”
“I’m not reacting to fucking rumors based on hearsay.” Stony’s face was twisted in anger, as red as the seats in the booth.
John held up a hand. “Tell me you don’t have a relationship and I’ll take it to the bank and tell the DNI to back off.” He looked from Stony to Akina and back to Stony. “Just say the words.”
“The man doesn’t even have the balls to confront us directly,” Stony said. “And you agreed to be his fucking lapdog. I can’t—”
“John.” Akina’s voice slashed through the tension and Stony’s increasing anger.
He lifted an eyebrow in response.
“The DNI is right.” She shot a glance to her left. “Stony and I both know that.”
“The hell I do,” Stony retorted. “Our private lives are just that—fucking private.”
“Maybe not the best choice of words,” Akina said. She wore a sad, resigned smile. “Your anger is coming from embarrassment, dear.”
Stony jerked back as if she’d been slapped. “You’re wrong. I’m not embarrassed. I don’t know why Martin Lewis thinks he has the right to dictate his employees’ relationships unless there’s a specific problem. There is no goddamn problem.”
John shook his head. “Stony, you’re missing the point. The perception of a problem counts just as much as personal actions. And there’s no bigger perception problem than when the head of national intelligence sends you a message. You guys are going to have to decide what you want to do.”
“Oh, we’ll do that,” Stony said. “Don’t worry your pretty little self about it.” She looked at Akina. “The only new partner I want is a replacement for John. The sooner the better. Consider this a formal request.”
5
New Boston, Texas
“I’ve had it with that bastard,” Tim Cole muttered. He stared at a group of men standing a few yards to his left.
Cole and his buddy squatted under one of the two small cottonwood trees framing one side of the exercise yard at the Barry Telford Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The trees offered meager shade from the mid-summer sun blasting the cracked asphalt and sucking the life from all things living. The two men shifted their gaze to a handful of cons shooting baskets in the center of the yard. The chains dangling from the hoops clinked against each other, punctuating the afternoon quiet as the players scored.
“He thinks everyone is his nigger,” Cole said, his voice a whisper. “You know what the son of a bitch did? He got the guards to drag me into his cell to clean his fucking toilet. Shit was smeared all over the goddamned thing. The guards laughed and called me the General’s trained monkey.”
His buddy half-turned and leaned close to Cole’s ear. “Shut the fuck up! If he hears you, we’re both fucked.”
“What do I care?” Cole asked. He wiped sweat from his face and flicked his hand in a burst of nervous energy. “I’m outta here next week. I’m gonna skip through the door and never look back. No more prisons. No more gangs. No more ‘General’ Robert E. Lee Wells to make my life miserable. I’m gonna find a cute little whore who wants out of the life and settle down. Maybe we’ll have a kid and join the PTA.”
Wells and five other members of the Aryan Brotherhood—the worst of the worst of the gangs in the Texas prison system—were huddled about fifteen feet to Cole’s left, standing under the only other tree in the yard. Neither Wells nor those around him appeared to be paying attention to Cole or the men playing basketball.
Prison gossip claimed that Wells came from Aryan royalty. His grandfather was George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the National Socialist White People’s Party. At twenty-three, Wells had become the party’s youngest leader. A year after his election, he’d pistol-whipped an old Korean woman who ran a liquor store and took off with a bottle of Garrison Brothers whiskey. As the only six-five albino with a nose as wide as his mouth wandering drunk along the streets of Dallas, the cops had needed less than an hour to find him. He’d been sentenced to twenty years.
Once inside, he’d fought and maimed his way to the top, controlling drugs, gambling, the sale of the weakest for sex. Whispered rumors described in brutal detail how Wells used contract killings to stay on top of the prison hierarchy.
The gang leader turned from his group’s whispered conversation and stared at Cole.
“You scrawny punk, you think I don’t have ear
s?” Wells asked. “No woman in the world would let you fuck her. Even a pinkie finger would be better than your needle dick.”
Wells paused for a moment, as if he was deep in thought, then smiled. “Unless we're talking about your mama. She’s gotta be used to your dick.”
The yard fell quiet. The men playing basketball slowed, going through the motions to avoid attracting the attention of the guards, but focused on the scene unfolding under the heat-bleached trees. Calling a man a punk—a coward or queer, or both—was a quick way to start a fight. Insulting a con's mother almost never failed.
Wells wasn't finished. “You trying to deliver a message? Like how you'll be outta here in a few days so you don't need your brothers?”
Cole's sun-reddened face paled. "I didn't mean no disrespect, General. I just don't want to land back in—”
“You're a member of the Brotherhood forever,” Wells growled. His voice dropped to a coarse rumble. “Or maybe you forgot that I get out of here two days before you do.”
Wells’ appeal for parole had been approved two weeks earlier. He was scheduled to be released on the tenth anniversary of his arrest.
A hard smile creased the general’s lips. “Inside or out, your ass is mine until you die.”
He turned and stomped away without waiting for a response from Cole, nodding at his second in command, a three-hundred-pound enforcer called Lobster. “With me,” Wells demanded.
The two men quick-stepped to the opposite side of the yard, turned, and stared back at Cole.
“Second time I've heard that prick spout the 'no more gangs' bullshit,” Wells said. “How much is he bitching behind my back?”
Lobster grunted. “Some. Always the same shit with that guy.”
In a fit of crack-fueled rage, Lobster’s mother had thrown a pot of boiling coffee in his face when he was a kid. One eye was sewn shut and the sunken cavity was always matted with a crusty mess. His face was worse, like a roasted cadaver’s, covered by blotches of white and red skin creased by fissures and scars.
“He's getting bolder,” Lobster said. “Guess he figures gettin' out protects him.”
Telford bordered Highway 38, a half-dozen miles of two-lane asphalt southwest of the Rea Hill Cemetery in New Boston, Texas. The unit housed a mix of convicts. Some, like Lobster, convicted of second-degree murder, would be guests of the state until they were old men or residents at Rea Hill. Others, like Wells and Cole, had been paroled and transferred to Telford for release processing.
“Cole is gonna give others the idea they can dis the brotherhood and get away with it,” Wells said. He glanced at Lobster. “Some of our brothers don’t think too straight.”
“True enough,” Lobster said. “But no one is so fucked up in the head that they’d listen to Cole.”
“Bullshit.” Wells’ voice was hoarse with anger. “I’m tired of him. He's gotta go.”
Lobster hesitated several seconds before responding. “You say so, he's gotta go. His release is two days after yours. I’ll deal with him after you’re gone. You don’t want to fuck up your parole.”
Wells shook his head. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Now you're the one talking crazy,” Lobster growled. “You been tellin’ me how you can’t wait to see your kid. If that’s true, you don't want any part of this.”
Wells’ boy, GT, had turned two the same day Wells had been moved to the state pen. He worried that his wife had coddled the boy and that it might be too late to guide the twelve year old to manhood.
“I’ve got an idea how to pull it off so no one goes down for it,” Wells said. “Best I remind everyone who’s in charge and that paroles won’t protect their sorry asses from the power of the brotherhood.”
Lobster scowled.
“Meet me in my ‘office’ after lunch and I’ll lay it out for you,” Wells said. “Cheer up. We’ll have a little fun killing that son of a bitch before I go my way.”
6
Ticonderoga, New York
“Dad?”
Twelve-year-old Natalie Forrest stared into the mirror over the pedestal sink. Her call to her father was a whisper, laced with uncertainty.
She’d gotten out of bed to get ready for school—her dad never had to wake her— and struggled down the hall to the bathroom. She’d moved slowly, feeling tired and achy, and had wondered if she might be catching something. She’d peed, washed her hands, squeezed bubble-gum flavored toothpaste on her toothbrush, glanced into the mirror. And stopped breathing.
Her irises were black, speckled with glowing ruby flecks. Not their usual hazel. Not the hoped-for lavender of Transition, but bottomless ebony pools with tiny spots of red, like dots of blood. She leaned forward and blinked. Black blinked back at her.
Nat dropped the toothbrush and screamed, “DAD!” She fled the bathroom and sprinted down the hall.
Her dad intercepted her before she reached the kitchen door. “Nat, what the hell? What’s—”
She skidded to a stop on the hardwood floor staring up at him, eyes wide, tears streaming.
He stared at her for a moment, his own eyes widening, then reached out and pulled her in a hug, whispering in her ear, “It’s probably some rare Transition thing. Don’t worry.”
All she heard was the “probably.” When her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, her dad had promised Nat that he’d never lie to her. He’d kept that promise ever since. Even when the radiation and chemo didn’t stop the cancer and her mom got worse and died.
“Probably” means he doesn’t know.
She squeezed her dad and squirmed from his arms. She wiped her cheeks and checked her hands. “Well, at least my tears aren’t black. That would be gross.”
“You, young lady, have a twisted sense of humor.”
His slight smile wasn’t enough to erase the confusion and concern from the corners of his eyes.
“Your eyes were bloodshot last night when you came home,” Natalie said. “Maybe you gave me some sort of crud.”
“Your eyes aren’t bloodshot, kiddo. They’re black.”
“I noticed.”
“You notice anything else weird?” He paused. “I mean unusual.”
“It’s okay to say ‘weird,’ Dad. ‘Cause it sure as shit is.”
“Funky eyes don’t mean you can start cussing. Answer my question. You notice anything else?”
Her dad shifted into what she called his “engineer mode.” He had a weird college degree in paper engineering and was the assistant superintendent at Global Industry’s mill in their hometown of Ticonderoga, New York. He could drive her crazy with his questions.
“Nah, except that I feel kinda tired and achy. No biggie.”
“What aches?” he asked.
She thought about it. “All over, I guess. It’s really not a big deal.”
“Stick out your tongue and give me your wrist.”
He peered into her mouth for a couple of seconds and checked her pulse.
“Mouth and throat are their usual ugly selves. Your pulse is up a bit, but so’s mine.”
“Daaad, you’re an engineer, not a doctor. And my mouth is beautific, not ugly.”
They smiled at each other. Nat used some of her mom’s expressions, like beautific, as a way to remember her. They made her sad, but happy.
“We’ll call Doc PJ and see what he has to say. No school for you, and I’ll let the mill know I’m not coming in.”
Doc PJ had been her pediatrician her whole life and was a close friend of her dad’s.
“Awww, why can’t I go to school? It’s more fun than lying around the house and, besides, the other kids will think my eyes are epic.”
“Not until we know what’s going on. Go finish getting dressed and come to breakfast.”
As she wandered down the hall toward her bedroom she could hear him leaving a message on Doc PJ’s machine. She noticed she was panting slightly, like a puppy that didn’t know when to quit running.
“How much longer?” Natalie asked.
She and her dad had gotten to the doctor’s office a little after ten and were taken to an exam room soon after. She checked her iPhone; they’d been waiting for almost an hour.
Her father smiled. “That’s dangerously close to triggering a ‘whine alert.’ We were jammed into the middle of the doctor’s schedule, so it might be a—”
The door opened and Doctor Patrick James “PJ” Moonstone swept into the room. He was wearing his customary wrinkled khakis and Birkenstock sandals, complete with neon-green argyle socks. The end of his stethoscope was tucked into the chest pocket of a worn plaid shirt. His plump round face bore the usual white beard and wrinkled smile. Natalie’s father once said Doc PJ was proof that not all hippies were dead and gone.
“Very dramatic, Nat,” Doc PJ said. “You are such a movie star.”
Her dad had suggested she wear sunglasses to protect her eyes. She’d decided to leave them on even after they were seated in the exam room.
Doc PJ dropped onto a wheeled exam chair. The round black cushion exhaled with a deep whoosh.
His chair farts like Dad after eating beans.
She stifled a laugh, grinned, and removed the sunglasses.
“Whoa.” Doc PJ said. “Those are some impressive peepers.” He reached over to a nearby table and grabbed the instrument he used for eye exams. When he finished guiding Natalie through the exam, he tilted forward on the stool and stared at her eyes. “You’re a little more light sensitive than usual, but everything seems fine otherwise.” He focused on Natalie. “You first noticed the color change when you got up, right?”
“Yes, when I started to brush my teeth.”
“Do your eyes burn?”
“Nope.”
“Itch?”
“Nope.”
“Hurt?”
“Nope.”
He pointed to an eye chart on the wall. “Read the smallest line you can.”
Natalie sped through the bottom line with the smallest print.
The Ebony Finches: A Transition Magic Thriller Page 3
