THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (7 page)

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
.