The Language of Secrets (31 page)

When she saw him open his eyes, she put the crossword book away.

She answered his question before he could ask it.

“Two fractured ribs, twenty-four stitches, and a mild concussion. You'll be just fine.” She gave him a crooked grin, and pointed at the round stamp on his forehead. “Gives you a bit more street cred.”

“Any idea who did it?”

He was surprised to hear that his voice sounded slurred.

“That's the painkillers,” Rachel advised him. “Nothing yet. Your phone's password-protected so I couldn't dig too deep. How are you feeling?”

The painkillers were effective. He felt drowsy and a bit thickheaded, nothing more. He gave Rachel the password to his phone.

“You should have had it long ago. Did you tell my family?”

Rachel shook her head. “I knew you wouldn't want them to be worried. And honestly, I didn't know how to handle Ruksh. I was afraid of what she might say or do with the news of your attack. If it had been more serious, I would have called her. Was that okay?”

He nodded. A vision of Sehr's pale face floated into his mind. Had he imagined that she had been there? He asked Rachel.

“She brought you here, don't you remember? I told her to go as soon as I got here. I wasn't sure we could risk the association.”

“Didn't ask her to come,” Khattak managed. “Asked her to call you.”

“From the state of our Crown prosecutor, I'm guessing she was too panicked to wait for my response. Sorry about that, by the way. I was in the shower; I didn't hear the phone.”

Khattak waved her apology away.

“Have to see Killiam.”

“They're keeping you overnight. I called the superintendent. Your meeting's been moved to later in the morning. I'll stay with you until you're discharged and drop you back to your car.”

Khattak let his head fall back against his pillow. Rachel had done everything he would have done if he'd been able to act for himself.

He thanked her wearily, asked her to go home.

She scoffed at that, and told him to go to sleep.

*   *   *

Which was a much calmer reaction than Rachel had had when Sehr Ghilzai had reached her. Sehr had gone with Khattak in the ambulance, and used Khattak's police ID to push him to the front of the queue. The private room and the first available bed were also due to Sehr's influence.

Sehr's phone call to Rachel had been a garbled mess, something much stronger than friendly concern in her voice.

He's hurt. He's bleeding. He's not waking up. Rachel, what do I do?

Frightened herself, Rachel had kept up an imperturbable front of calm, assuring Sehr that Khattak would be fine, he was a tough nut to crack.

“Don't tell anyone who you are,” Rachel had warned her. This wasn't the same woman Rachel had spoken with earlier, calm and decided in her judgments. When Rachel met Sehr in the emergency room, her pale face was streaked with tears, her eyes fearful and wide.

Sehr left unwillingly, texting Rachel often.

And she'd said something else, something significant, before she left.

“There's something I need to tell Esa about the case. I called earlier; he didn't answer.”

“You can't tell us anything, you know that,” Rachel said.

Sehr disregarded this.

“When he wakes up, ask him to call me. At once. Please, it's important.”

Rachel didn't think that less than a minute of wakefulness counted. The phone call to Sehr Ghilzai could wait.

*   *   *

It was five in the morning when Rachel received the call that galvanized her into action. It was Misbah, Khattak's youngest sister. Rachel had called to let Khattak's family know that he would be working late on a case. The phone call had been intended to allay any worry or suspicion. And she'd offered her own number in exchange, remembering what Khattak had told her.

My sisters know they can reach me whenever they need me.

Rachel still wasn't sure if she had done the right thing by not telling them.

“I can't reach my brother and I don't know what to do,” Misbah said, her voice strained.

“What's the matter? Tell me and I'll do my best to help.”

Misbah drew a deep breath. “It's Ruksh. She asked me not to tell my brother, but I'm worried.”

She'd found out, Rachel thought. Somehow Ruksh had learned about the attack on Esa.

“I don't understand. What did Ruksh tell you?”

“My brother told me not to have anything to do with the people from the mosque. He wouldn't even let me meet them.”

“All right, yes. I knew that. Has someone come to your house? Is your security system on?”

“It's not that.” The young woman's voice cracked. “Ruksh was planning this all along.”

Sweet Jesus,
Rachel prayed.
Don't let her have eloped with Hassan Ashkouri.

Her prayer was answered with something much worse.

“She's left for Algonquin with Hassan.”

*   *   *

Conscious of the escalating pressure of time, Rachel considered her options. She still hadn't learned why Ashkouri was heading up to the camp, but it was a moot point now. He was on his way, with Ruksh as his willing hostage.

She glanced over at Khattak, asleep in the hospital bed. His stitches stood out sharply against his green-tinged skin. There were harsh shadows under his eyes and a drawn quality to his expression in the depths of his slumber.

What would he want her to do?

Family was everything to him, more important than the case, more important than Mohsin Dar, but was it more dear than the outcome of the operation?

She called Martine Killiam again, without success. She didn't have Coale's number, but she remembered Khattak's phone. She keyed in his password to unlock the screen, scrolled through his recent calls. She saw the missed calls from Laine Stoicheva and Sehr Ghilzai. And the call to Laine without a reply.

Should she call Laine and ask for her help? Or was that precipitating Khattak into another kind of danger?

Coale's number flashed on the screen. He was her best bet, Rachel decided.

A voice with a sneer in it answered the call.

“What do you want, Khattak? I thought you were in the hospital.”

Rachel disliked him at once.

“He is. Inspector Khattak's under observation. This is his partner, Rachel Getty.” Quickly, she outlined the recent developments in the case to Coale. “We need backup. You need to send officers to the park.”

Coale's voice was filled with a vicious satisfaction.

“You don't give me orders, Getty; you have no role in this operation. Did you honestly think we'd flush down two years of work because of Khattak's sister? She knows what Ashkouri is. She's made her bed, now she'll have to lie in it. Which I think is what she was after anyway.”

Rachel sucked in her breath.

“With all due respect, sir, have you any proof of that?” Coale was silent. “I didn't think so. Which means that as far as your operation is concerned, Rukshanda Khattak is an innocent bystander, and a civilian in harm's way. You have to do something to protect her.”

“My tactical team is in position, Getty. The operation is priority one.”

“That's two days away, sir!”

“It could be a month away, my answer wouldn't change. And I'm surprised that Khattak used you to do his dirty work.”

Rachel ground her teeth. She couldn't risk being called out for insubordination.

“Fine,” she said. “I'll speak to the superintendent directly.”

“I'm afraid you'll find that a little difficult,” Coale said, not troubling to disguise his gratification. “She's gone to Ottawa to brief the minister.”

“She has a meeting with Inspector Khattak in a few hours.” Rachel checked her watch.

“I'll be taking that meeting on her behalf. And as of this moment, you're off this case.”

“You can't do that, sir!”

“I'm the ranking officer,” Coale said pleasantly. “I think you'll find that I can.”

*   *   *

Five in the morning. December 31. New Year's Eve was nineteen hours away. And Grace had told Rachel to get to the mosque by six a.m. if she wanted to come with the group to Algonquin for the spiritual retreat. There was still a chance that Rachel could make it to Unionville, if she left right now and used her siren all the way.

But what to do about Khattak and his meeting, assuming he was recovered enough to be discharged? What if his injuries were worse than they appeared at first blush?

She was reading through Khattak's contacts on his phone without paying close attention. Now one name leapt off the screen.

Someone she could trust. Someone who would understand the nature of her difficulty without demanding information she couldn't give.

She called Nathan Clare.

From the fuzzy quality of his voice, she knew she'd woken him from sleep.

Groggy at first, he soon picked up on the urgency of her tone.

He was at his door before Rachel ended the call.

 

25

Rachel kept a duffel bag in the trunk of her car. It contained a change of clothes, a flashlight, and two sets of thick outerwear in case her car broke down in a snowstorm. There were also three or four pairs of skates in her trunk, one of which was intended for figure skating. The thick leather of the skates would be frozen and intractable, but Rachel didn't have time to move her gear into the backseat. She had no contact information for Grace. If she didn't make it to the mosque in time, she'd have no idea which campsite the group was headed to.

Algonquin Park covered a massive amount of territory, some three thousand square miles in all. This was no peaceful advent into the wilderness. She was speeding like a demon through freezing rain, the roads heaving like a slippery current, cursing Ciprian Coale as she drove.

This was what Khattak hadn't told her—the ridicule, the condescension, the lofty superiority. Khattak hadn't shared a word of it, updating her on each of his meetings with INSET in as logical and focused a manner as possible. She had thought that Laine Stoicheva might choose to cause him some difficulty or unpleasantness. Instead, it was Coale who thwarted cooperation, watching catlike from the shadows, waiting for Khattak to fall from his tightrope.

How did Khattak bear it? she wondered, fuming on his behalf. Khattak should have refused the case the moment he knew his sister was involved. He should have thought of something, spirited Ruksh away on a family trip, dreamt up a plausible excuse.

The lights are for my sister's wedding.

He'd looked bleak as he'd said it, and now she understood why. Ruksh was headstrong and foolish, too certain of her own judgment in the face of her brother's long and distinguished experience of police work. Why hadn't Ruksh heeded his warning?

How frustrated Khattak must have felt on all fronts, and how alone—without comfort or support from those who should have understood him best. Powerless to do anything to change the course of events, except by getting to the bottom of Mohsin Dar's murder.

Rachel had to give him credit. He had concentrated all his efforts to that end, and he had done so without speaking of the things that must have weighed upon him so personally.

Successfully? He'd put a stop to the machinations of Andy Dar, but otherwise it was too soon to tell.

Hunger gnawed at Rachel's stomach.

She found a couple of Rice Krispies squares in her glove compartment and munched them down, one hand on the steering wheel. Her car skidded into the slow lane. She wheeled left to recover, cutting her speed by a third. Two more exits to the mosque. But she hadn't thought her plan through.

What she wanted was exact directions to the campground, along with the ability to convince Din and Grace to remain behind.

If the halaqa at Khattak's house the other night was an indication, Ashkouri would drive Paula and Ruksh. She didn't know about the two young men she hadn't spoken to, Zakaria and Sami. Jamshed Ali would bring Grace and Din. Rachel didn't want any of them being alone in a vehicle with Jamshed Ali. Not when Khattak suspected him of being responsible for the assault in the dark.

If her boss had been struck a little harder on the skull—she swallowed back her fear.

She tried to remember where she'd seen that distinctive mark that had appeared on Khattak's forehead, the small circular depression that had been punched against his skull. It wasn't a tire iron. It was something compact and precise.

Not ski poles, because their length would have made them unwieldy. And Khattak had recounted that he'd been struck twice in the same spot with two rapid blows.

She pulled off the highway, rehearsing her approach.

If she made it in time.

*   *   *

The parking lot beside the mosque was black and silky with rain. A green SUV idled in one of the parking spots, Grace and Din standing at its rear amidst a collection of camping gear, backpacks, and two large coolers.

The rain had begun to thicken into a slushy snow. The air felt mossy against Rachel's unprotected cheeks. She parked her car and loped over to the SUV, the extra Maple Leafs toque in her hands.

“You sure you want to go in this weather?” she asked Grace, tossing her the toque.

No sign of Jamshed Ali yet.

And she noticed something else. Grace had removed the studs from the back of her skull. A row of painful red dots trailed from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck. When Grace noticed Rachel looking at them, she stuffed her streaky hair under the toque.

“You came after all. I thought you'd changed your mind.”

“I didn't want to let you down when I'd promised to teach you how to skate. But this doesn't seem like a good idea, does it? The roads are pretty bad.”

“Hassan says they're better once you get out of the city. The weather's clear up north.”