THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (2 page)

Locating the gasoline can he kept tucked away for emergencies, Rupert Davis sloshed gas into the dumpster. Then he stood back, lit a match, and tossed it in.

The contents exploded with a
whoosh.
Flames crackled and writhed, licking the dark alley with amber tongues.

Whistling a casual tune, he retreated to his cruiser, backed it into the street, and drove away.

By the time the girl’s body was found, there’d be no evidence left to indict him. He was an eight-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department. He knew how to frustrate forensics. He also knew everything and everyone in D.C.’s teeming underworld. Hell, he orchestrated most of what went on. And he owned thugs like Curtis. The boy wouldn’t dare betray him. This would be just one more unsolved case for the detectives to gnaw on.

Chapter One

Journalist Lena Alexandra jeopardized her surveillance by lowering the windows of the Jeep Wrangler several inches. A brisk breeze wafted in, alleviating the sauna-like temperature within the vehicle. Climbing onto her knees in the passenger seat, she put her flushed face to the vent she’d created, inhaled the pungent scent of the nearby
Patuxent
River
, and aimed her camera through the crack, hoping no one would see her
.
     

She knew she’d be a lot cooler standing out in the open, but she needed the long-range scope on her camera to help her identify her sister’s killer, and she couldn’t risk the ex-cons across the street guessing she was a reporter, specifically the prolific crime journalist Lena Alexandra. That would ruin all her plans.

The ex-cons were fresh out of prison. Their reintegration program, aptly named Gateway, was situated near the rural town of
Mechanicville
,
Maryland
on a campus consisting of a roadside motel, a lovely gold-domed mosque with a minaret, and a modest home for the leaders. Every parolee at Gateway had converted to Islam, adopting new names and identities while serving time in jail.

TIME
magazine called Gateway “a triumph for moderate Muslims.” With ninety percent of its graduates living crime-free, socially responsible lives, it had become a national model for effective reintegration
.

But every positive statistic had a downside didn’t it?

Of the twelve parolees she had counted, one or two would revert to criminal behavior. Picking out the subject of her investigation,
Lena
had no doubt Rupert D. Davis would return to his former ways, which meant that he would kill again.

But not if she could help it.

Nausea roiled through her as the face of her sister’s killer came into focus. To think he’d gotten away with such a monstrous crime. A charred skeleton and a tiny scrap of a school uniform were all that had remained of Alexa. And when the only witness to Alexa’s abduction disappeared, the case against
Davis
had been dropped.

Six months later, he’d gone to jail for drug-trafficking. Eight years into his fifteen-year sentence,
Davis
convinced the parole board he was a changed man because he’d found Allah in prison
.

“
Malakas
,”
Lena
hissed in her parents’ native Greek as she depressed the shutter
.

To her disgust,
Davis
didn’t look a day older than when her family had faced him in the pre-trial hearing. If anything, he was trimmer and more muscular than ever, and not a single silver hair glimmered in the dark whorls of his closely-cropped hair
.

So unfair, she thought, having plucked occasional silver threads from her own dark curls since the bastard got away with murder.

Unable to stomach the sight of him a moment longer, she panned her camera over the remaining parolees. The majority of them were African American. One appeared Asian, another Hispanic.
These are the ninety percent who will turn their lives around,
she assured herself, determined not to judge them for what they’d done. They might have committed felonies and petty larceny, but their crimes were probably not like
Davis
’s. Their conversions might have been sincere. She felt vaguely sorry for them laboring to construct a shed under the blazing August sun.

A man of commanding stature caught her eye as he hauled on the pulley rope to raise the rafter beams. Rivulets of sweat trekked from his neatly shaved hairline, past thick lashes that obscured eyes of a light hue, over his square jaw. The effort he put in to his work aroused her respect.

Handsome devil,
she mused, snapping off several shots. His dusky-colored skin made her think of mocha-flavored coffee, her favorite
.

Look this way, Mocha Man,
she willed, but his feet remained planted. With each tug of the rope, his long, powerful limbs flexed.
Lena
switched to the sport’s setting on her camera and caught the fluid motion in a series of rapid-fire shots
.
 

Then she sat back on her heels to admire them.
Very nice
.

He was honed from shoulder to calf. The damp cotton of his sleeveless T-shirt outlined a muscular chest and taut abs. Basketball shorts hung so low on his round butt they looked in danger of falling off
.
He could make a fortune modeling underwear, she considered with a cynical smile. What a shame he’d gone to jail, instead.

Rising onto her knees again, she forced her attention back on
Davis
, only to swivel it toward Mocha Man as he turned suddenly in her direction.

The vision in her lens made her gasp with appreciation. Handsome was an understatement. Gray-green eyes, so unexpectedly light against his tan complexion, narrowed as he scanned the side of the street where her Jeep was parked. In the next instant, he looked straight into her camera.

Lena
jerked away from the window. Dropping onto her bottom, she slid to the end of the seat so that her head barely cleared the door panel. Her heart thumped as she sneaked a peak out the window to see if he was still looking.

And he was
.
    

He can’t see me through the tinted window.

But apparently he could. Either that or those freaky-deaky eyes gave him X-ray vision
.

With her mouth desert dry, she threw a leg over the gear shift and clambered awkwardly into the driver’s seat. Keeping her head low, she disassembled her camera, placed the components back inside the carrying case, and stuffed the case under the seat out of sight
.

She had just one thing left to do
.

Who the hell?
Special Agent Jackson Maddox stewed, shading his eyes from the sun’s harsh glare. Above the cracked passenger window of the black Jeep Wrangler parked across the old highway, he had glimpsed the unmistakable glare of a camera lens. Behind it, the face of the woman holding it had reflected guilt before she ducked out of sight.

He’d known it. The prickling of his scalp had warned him that he was being watched. He’d just assumed it was the clergy at Gateway secretly spying on the men, looking out for slackers feigning their exertion and leaving the labor-intensive work up to the others. Only the creeping sensation had continued, prompting him to take a good look around
.

The truth turned out to be far worse. A stranger had just taken his picture with a camera typically used by professional journalists.
Well, God damn.

Gateway had been the object of media attention since
TIME
Magazine published an article about its success rate. But journalist or not,
Jackson
couldn’t risk his likeness appearing in any public forum. Curiously, the woman didn’t appear to be in any great hurry to leave. He could just make out the top of her head as she stepped out of the far side of her vehicle
.

“You can take a break right after you seat this rafter,” promised the engineer overseeing the project.

Jackson
put all his weight into hauling on the rope. With any luck, he could dart across the highway and confront the journalist before she left.

Lena
stepped out of the driver’s side door, shielded from the parolees’ view by the Jeep’s tall frame. It had to be twenty degrees cooler outside the vehicle than in it, not that
Maryland
was cool in August.

Checking her reflection in the tinted window, she combed fingers through her jet-black ringlets and realized her pink bra could be seen through the damp silk of her ivory blouse. The narrow black skirt she wore was sticking to her thighs. She looked like she’d been sitting in a sauna fully clothed. Not the best look for a job interview.

With a shrug of resignation, she turned and hastened into the convenience store on strappy high-heeled sandals. Her gaze snared briefly on the horse and buggy that had pulled up to the lot minutes before. It wasn’t every day you saw an Amish man pop into a convenience store, but Mechanicsville, she recalled, was home to a small Amish community.

Hauling open the heavy door,
Lena
set off a chime that prompted the only two occupants turning their heads to gawk at her. One was the clerk, the other the Amish man, dressed in black suspenders and clutching his broad-brimmed hat. He appeared to be purchasing a Lotto ticket, of all things.

“Hello,” she said as they continued to stare. Accustomed to her effect on the opposite sex,
Lena
closed her eyes a moment, gathering up her hair to cool her neck under the blasting A/C. Then she headed toward the drinks at the back of the store, aware that the place was dead silent but for the classical music coming from the overhead speakers. Commuters likely thronged the place on their way in and out of D.C., the closest city,
but during the day,
it was just a quaint country store off an old highway
.

By the time she approached the register with her bottle of grape Gatorade, the gambling Amish man had taken off. She could hear his buggy rumbling away with the clip-clop of horse hooves, leaving just her and the clerk alone, just as she’d hoped
.

“Dollar seventy four,” said the clerk, trying not to ogle at her as he took her money and fished change from the register. He was middle-aged and balding with a friendly face
.
  

“How are you today?” she asked him.

“Oh, can’t complain.” He colored faintly as he glanced up, his gray eyes straying toward her bosom
.
   

“Are you still looking for help?” She had spotted the HELP WANTED poster while suffering miserably in the hot SUV, and it had seemed like serendipity. Before seeing it, she had wondered how she was going to befriend the parolees while appearing to be a part of the community. A job at Artie’s One Stop Shop offered the perfect cover from which to incriminate her sister’s killer.

The clerk stared at her for a stunned moment. Then he bent over to feel beneath the counter. “Sure. Here’s an application,” he said sliding it toward her
.

“Great.” She couldn’t have hoped for a more prodigious start
.