THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (11 page)

“Copy,”
Jackson
confirmed
.
 

“Yep,” Toby said.

“Let’s talk about the journalist,” Ike said in the same terse voice. “You know how I feel about the media.”

Jackson
did know. Ever since MSNBC broadcasted the rumor that Eryn had been abducted by a Navy SEAL, Ike had harbored a deep resentment for journalists, especially since he’d been that SEAL, protecting Eryn from a crazed terrorist, and their live coverage had exposed her location, putting her right in harm’s way.

“You know
Crime and Liberty
wrote a huge spread about my involvement in the Yaqubi disaster,” Ike added, referring to the tragedy that had taken the life of nearly every man in Ike’s SEAL squad several years ago. “Do whatever it takes to send her packing,” he said meaningfully
.

Jackson
suffered a pang of compunction. He would miss his adrenaline-racing encounters with
Lena
, but she had to go
.

“I’ll check with you tomorrow.” Ike tapped a key on his end, and their screen went black.

“In and out like a lightning strike,” Toby commented
.

“Never seen him quite so irritable.”
Jackson
glanced at his watch. “Let’s get this party started.”

Toby jumped to his feet. “Hooah,” he said, which, in Ranger speech, meant,
hell yeah
.

“I’ll meet you by the car,”
Jackson
reluctantly agreed
.
   

Five minutes later, dressed all in black, the two men slipped into the Crown Vic and rolled stealthily out of the driveway. Toby glanced over at
Jackson
. “Jack, I’m jealous. I can’t even see you in the dark.” 

“My name’s not Jack, either,”
Jackson
retorted.

Toby just chuckled
.

Chapter Six

Lena
stepped out of the Jeep into pitch-black darkness and eyed the outline of her rental with sudden foreboding. She was positive she had left the porch light on when she went to work, so either the bulb had burned out or. . . She didn’t want to think about the other possibilities
.

The crickets chirping in the fallen pine needles fell mute as she felt her way to the porch. Stubbing her toe on the step, she hobbled for the door. At her touch alone, the door cracked open, and fear shot straight up
Lena
’s spine. She dropped the keys, plunging her hand inside her purse to reach for the Micro Compact .45 caliber pistol she never left home without. The reassuring feel of its stainless steel frame steadied her pulse as she thumbed off the safety and cautiously pushed the door open
.
 

A hush emanated out of the darkness. Sliding her free hand along the wall, she felt for the switch and snapped on the light.

“
Diavolos!
”     

It looked like a tornado had swept through her rental. Cushions littered the floor. The recliner lay on its side. Even the braided rug had been ripped from the hardwood. In the kitchenette, drawers and cupboards stood open, their contents swept onto the counters and floor. Ceramic and glass shards lay broken and gleaming on every surface. And in the midst of the chaos, a steak knife stood straight up out of a cutting board, its point imbedded deep into the wood
.

Shock ricocheted through
Lena
’s body
.

The silence suggested the intruder was gone, but he might still be here, lying in wait. Holding her gun aloft, she waded deeper into the wreckage. Was there some malicious intent behind this ransacking? What had the intruder been looking for? Hopefully not her.

Oh, crap, my camera!
My laptop!

She pushed open her bedroom door with her toe. The room stood dark and still. Braced for the mess,
Lena
hit the light switch. The house appeared clear, but God in heaven, her laptop was gone and so, it seemed, was her camera
.

The wardrobe, where her camera had been hidden, stood gutted, its contents strewn like entrails across the floor. When she failed to spy her camera case, she laid her pistol on the bed and sifted hopefully through the piles of clothing at her feet, to no avail
.

Devastated,
she crossed to the vanity where she had left her laptop and stared at the table top, where
a
single sheet of notebook paper lay with the message
GO HOME OR DIE
scrawled on it.

The warning yanked
Lena
’s scalp tight. Her gaze flew to the window. Was someone out there watching, even now? Assailed by vulnerability, she spun toward her bed and snatched up her pistol.

Bang!

It discharged without warning, tearing a startled scream from her throat and ripping a hole into the drywall by the head of her bed.

Cristemou!
She’d forgotten the safety was off
.

Numb with shock, she reset the safety, whipped the curtains across the window to conceal herself from spying eyes, and sank onto the edge of her bed, shaking
.
She could have shot herself.

Calm down. Breathe
.

She had faced retaliation in the past, but never anything this personal. Who would do this?

Abdul Ibn Wasi.

The name jumped into her head, and her spine stiffened.

Yes, he was the only soul in Mechanicsville who even knew about her camera. Plus, he’d demanded she delete her photos, the ones she’d already offloaded onto her computer, which was now stolen. All those pictures of Davis and Abdul Ibn Wasi, gone! 

Violation gave way to chagrin. If he was somehow able to circumvent her password and examine the contents of her hard drive, he might guess her obsession with him. Either that, or he’d wrongly assume that she’d been spying on him all along. A look at her browser history would reveal that she’d researched his arrest history, or tried to. That would be misleading, too.

That bastard!

But wait. How could Abdul have broken into her place when, according to Bill, all the parolees had left Gateway that morning with their parole officers. Her six-hour shift had been endless and uneventful without them.

Leaping off the bed,
Lena
paced her room, kicking aside the clothes that littered her path
.

Could Abdul have discovered where she lived? Why not? He could have had her followed after work by some crony he had contacted. And if he could do that, he could certainly have orchestrated this kind of havoc. “Malakas,” she cursed, gnawing on a manicured fingernail
.

What now? Calling authorities was out of the question. The last thing she wanted was for the local sheriff to poke his nose into her business. All she could do was ignore the fear that his death threat evoked and confront Abdul upon his return
.

How dared he steal her work and threaten her life in such an ugly fashion! The man was nothing but a thug. And going to such extremes suggested he was trying to protect a secret even bigger than she’d imagined
.

Unfortunately, if he didn’t already suspect she was a journalist, he would know she worked for
Crime and Liberty
by the contents of her hard drive. And if he told Rupert Davis she was an undercover journalist,
Davis
would never let his guard down long enough to say something incriminating.

She would have to cut a deal with Abdul, promising that she would ignore him from now on if he would keep mum about her occupation. Of course she wouldn’t really ignore him. How could she, after what he’d done?

A sudden, consoling thought had her reaching for the smooth green stone at her throat. She still had her pendant; she was still in business.

Abdul might have put a dent in her intentions, but as long as he didn’t tell
Davis
his suspicions, she could complete her objective with the tools she had. If she ran out of storage space in her mini-camcorder, she could offload her files onto the computer in Artie’s storeroom.

The note lying on the floor caught her eye, rekindling her outrage
.
 

Like hell she’d go home.
Abdul Ibn Wasi was hiding something big, or he wouldn’t be so driven to get rid of her. She might be busy wrangling a murder confession out of
Davis
, but she knew a good story when she smelled one.

**

Now, this is the life.

Jackson
closed his eyes and sank deeper into the lounge chair. The heat of the morning sun warmed his bare limbs and the backs of his eyelids, but the briny breeze wafting off the
Patuxent
River
kept him cool
.

Over the sound of waves lapping at the sand by his feet, he discerned the call of a white heron echoing from the other side of the tree-lined river. Nearer by, Naomi flipped like a fish as she dove with goggles to scan the river bottom for treasures. Silvia had gone inside to whip up lunch. How long had it been since he’d taken a vacation?

Oh, yes. Four years ago, he’d taken Colleen and Naomi to
Myrtle Beach
, only to rent a car so he could drive back to work early. A vision of Colleen’s red face and watering eyes as she watched him pull away shackled him with belated guilt. He’d tried persuading her that he hadn’t had a choice. His battalion chief had contracted the flu and he had to stand in for him. Or had he actually volunteered to return? Either way, he’d expected Colleen to understand, to console herself with the satisfaction of having made sacrifices for her country.

Only, she never seemed to get that. In her eyes,
Jackson
’s commitment to the Corps was a direct snub against his family. The days he’d missed with them were days he would never be able to get back. Strange, but with the benefit of hindsight and maturity,
Jackson
realized she’d been right all along. How could it have taken him years, on top of his wife’s senseless death—a death he had contributed to because of his workaholic lifestyle—to come to his senses?

In one summer, his daughter had gone from a child to a woman, and he’d missed it, right along with all the months and years he would never get back because he’d been overseas. Yesterday he’d realized his daughter was practically a woman. And with Colleen dead, the only women left in Naomi’s life who could arm her with wisdom and encouragement were her two grandmothers. One was already a constant in her life; the other she saw only on vacations to
Grand Cayman
Island
. But they were no substitute for a real mother.

His thoughts strayed immediately to Magdalena Alexandra. Would a woman like that consider taking on an adolescent?

Wow.
He couldn’t believe he’d just thought that. Just last night he’d wrecked the woman’s rental, left a death threat, and now he was considering her as a potential mother to his child.
Am I really that delusional?