by Karen Singer
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Jenni considered laughing, but she forced herself to abandon the idea. Still, she turned to her aunt. “I can’t believe I’m buying another bathing suit. And this time, a bikini!”
Sally laughed. “It’s the best we could find for underwear,” she said as she watched Jenni fastening her top. She looked Jenni over. The bikini actually made her look better! The bra cups of the thing gave her a bit more shape. “That thing doesn’t look half bad on you,” she noted. “Maybe you should consider getting yourself a few more.”
“No thanks!” Jenni replied emphatically. “I may never go to a beach again. Ever!”
Sally laughed again. “And I wouldn’t blame you!” She watched as Jenni balled up a little bit of tissue paper and stuffed it into the bra cups of her bikini.
Their new bathing suit underwear was soon covered up by some fairly expensive shorts and tops that the gift store had. Expensive, because everything in the store was expensive. But it was the best they could do.
Five minutes later, both she and Jenni were as acceptable as either of them could manage. They went out and paid the hotel manager for their purchases and left the gift shop. Detective Pierce was standing outside waiting for them. But before Sally went any further, she noticed the bartender watching from under the shade of a palm tree out near the start of the path. “Excuse me a minute,” she said to Pierce. She left and headed for the bartender.
Jenni stayed with Pierce and waited. She saw her Aunt Sally head over to the man and talk to him for a minute. Then he saw them both take out their phones and start typing. Her jaw dropped. Finally, her aunt walked back. “Did you just give him your phone number?”
Sally blushed. “What if I did? I’m a grown woman.”
“But Aunt Sally….”
“Don’t worry about it, Jenni. Besides, we both know nothing can ever come of it. He lives down here, and we’re too far away.”
“Then why did…”
“Jenni! If you have to ask, then you’re too young to know!”
Again, Jenni’s jaw dropped. She smiled and laughed. “You like him!”
“Are you old enough for that answer?”
“I don’t know. Are you old enough to date him?”
“I’m going to smack you!” Sally teased.
“Better not. The police might get the wrong idea.”
“That’s the only reason I haven’t done it yet.”
The boat was waiting for them at the pier. A short trip later, they were back on the main island of Islamorada.
“I want you in my car with me,” Pierce told them. “Give your car keys to me. I’ll have one of the officers here drive it back for you.”
“Why?” Sally asked.
“So I can keep my eye on you too. At the rate things are going, I’m too afraid someone else is going to jump out of the woodwork and try to kill you.”
Sally and Jenni had no choice but to climb into the back of his car. Sally noted that at least it was clean and comfortable.
“I wish we were going home,” Jenni said.
“Me too!”
“Tomorrow,” Pierce told them. “Maybe tonight if everything looks okay, but most likely you can go in the morning.”
“So where are we going now?” Sally asked.
“I just want you off the island and closer to Miami so we can keep an eye on you two easier. The island is too far away.”
“So where are we going tonight?”
“I don’t know yet. Back to the precinct first. I need to talk to Jenni for a few minutes to close out the case she figured out yesterday, then we’ll see what my Captain says.”
“I’m just glad to finally be off that island,” Jenni replied.
“You and me both!” Sally added.
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Philly listened with disbelief. “He tried to kill you?”
“And Shirley. I’ve got a car full of bullet holes to prove it.”
“Shit!” Philly exclaimed as he immediately started moving. “Gonzo. Get a move on. Shooting!” He turned back to his phone. “Robbie, we’ll be right there!”
Fifteen minutes later, he pulled his car up two spaces away from Bosch’s car. As he did, he saw Robbie coming out of the building. He also noticed the way Robbie cautiously looked around with each step he took. Cautious. But after seeing the bullet holes in his car, maybe he better be.
“What happened?” he asked as soon as he and Gonzo were out of the car.
“Same guy as last night,” Robbie told them. “He positioned himself around the corner of the building and was just waiting for us. We had just gotten out of the car and…bam! I ran for the other side of the car and started trading shots with him. Eventually, he ran off and I followed. He drove away faster than I could find out anything more.”
“So you didn’t get a license tag or anything?”
“He was gone so fast I couldn’t even tell you what kind of car it was.”
“Damn!” Philly exclaimed. “This guy wants you dead.”
“Yeah. I might have noticed. Any leads yet on who he might be?”
“Not yet. But we’ve been pretty busy all day. Those two FBI guys found Granger and his wife dead in their house earlier. The lab boys just finished going through things a little while ago.”
“Now Granger’s dead? No clues there yet?”
“Not yet, but you know how long it takes the crime scene guys to come back with their findings.”
Robbie shook his head. “Too long!”
Philly’s phone rang. He answered it after checking to see who was calling. Pierce! “Hello?”
“Philly. This is Pierce.”
“Anything new on those murders last night?” Philly asked him.
“You might say that,” Pierce replied. “I’ve got Jenni and Sally in my car now and we’re heading back to Miami for the night. Those two killers came back this afternoon with one intention and one intention only, to kill Jenni. We had a rather miserable shootout on that island between them and half the Miami police department a little while ago. I’ve got a couple of guys who are hurt pretty bad. I’m not sure one of them will live.”
“A shootout on the island?” Philly exclaimed. “What the hell? Please tell me you got them.”
Both of them are now dead,” Pierce told him.
“Good!” Philly replied. “But I sure wish you had managed to capture at least one of them alive so we could find out what the hell is going on. The private eye, Robbie Bosch, he just traded a bunch of shots a little while ago with someone up here. The same guy that tried to kill him last night.”
“Shit!” Pierce exclaimed. “I was considering shipping Jenni and Sally all the way home tonight. But if someone is still that determined, maybe it would be better to wait till tomorrow and see what things look like then.”
“Yeah. I think you’re right. See if you can stash them someplace safe for the night.”
“That was my plan. I’ve got them in my car right now so I can keep an eye on them. I’ve got one of our officers driving their car for them. I’m not taking any more chances with those two. Someone was all too hell bent on seeing at least one of them dead.”
“Yeah,” Philly replied as he looked up at Bosch, who was watching and listening intently. “I’ve got pretty much the same thing happening up here. And we picked up another double homicide today of someone else who was directly part of this case.”
“Shit!” Pierce exclaimed. “What the hell is going on?”
“You tell me. We still haven’t been able to identify any of them yet.”
“Not yet? Nothing?”
“Nope! It’s like they never existed. We don’t even know where to start looking.”
Pierce considered that for a moment. “It’s not going to be much help,” he said. “In fact, it may muddy things up and make it even more difficult. But I can let you know one thing that caught me by surprise earlier.”
“What?” Philly asked.
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“As one of them was dying right in front of me, he said something I wasn’t prepared for.”
“What’s that?”
“Praise Allah.”
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“Have you sold the hard drive yet?”
“Not yet. These things take time.”
“I need my money!”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get it.”
“Were you able to get past the encryption on it?”
“There was no encryption. None. All I had to do was plug it in. It was simple.”
“So why haven’t you sold it yet? What’s taking so long?”
“These things take time to set up. And then it takes more time so that the interested buyers can submit their bids. And then there’s the fact that instead of finding only one project on that drive, I found three.”
“Three!”
“Yes. I need to determine if it would be better to sell it all to one person, or break it up into separate bids.”
“In other words, you haven’t done anything with it yet.”
“I’ve done plenty. We’ve only had it for a short time. Patience. It will come.”
“My patience is wearing a little thin right now. I got called out to help process Granger’s house earlier. And then a little while ago I heard that someone tried to kill Robbie Bosch again. Unsuccessfully I might add. Pasha I’m guessing. Personally, I think the kid’s a screw-up! And then I heard that two men were killed in a big shootout with the Miami police on an island down in the keys.”
That caught his attention. “You did? Did they say who?”
“No. Not that I heard.”
“How about the girl, Jennifer? Did they kill her?”
“Evidently not, since she was riding back to Miami in the back seat of a cop car.”
Vahram cursed in a language the other didn’t speak. “This is not good news.”
“Hey, don’t blame me. I’m only supposed to let you know what’s going on.”
“Yes. And you’ve been invaluable. You have my appreciation.”
“Well you could appreciate me a bit more with some money!”
“Yes, yes. Don’t worry. You will get it. Perhaps a little something extra as well.”
“Good! The sooner, the better! An awful lot of dead bodies are piling up. It’s making me nervous.”
“Yes, I’m sure it does. It does not please me either. Too much attention.”
“Damn right!”
“I will do my best to hurry the sale of the information.”
“Good!”
“But we still need that girl dead! Anyone who was able to dig out that we had stolen a hard drive and what was on it, could be dangerous to us.”
“Hey! Don’t look at me. I can’t know about any of it!”
“You are safe…for now. But if I lose anyone else, then be prepared.”
“Huh! Don’t count on it!” He hung up the phone.
“Stupid people!” Vahram cursed. He wanted to throw his phone, but instead, he set it gingerly on the table. It sounded like the men in Miami had failed. He would be hearing about that soon from his contact there. No doubt, they would try to blame him somehow for their failure. The idiots!
He had been surprised to find no encryption at all on the hard drive they had taken from Todd Granger when they had killed him. But Americans were always stupid. They were all too complacent. None of them knew the struggles that the rest of the world faced.
The plans for the new military weapons system that Granger was working on were easy to find on the drive. All he had to do was plug the thing into his computer. What he hadn’t planned on finding were the two other government projects as well. Older projects he had known nothing about. He was guessing that Granger had put them on the drive in order to drive the price up so he could gain more money. He might have done the same thing if he were in Granger’s position. But he would have taken far more security measures than Granger had – which was none! All of those plans had already been sent back home to Iraq, but he still had the hard drive itself, and selling them to another company could gain him a lot of money that he desperately needed for their struggle.
It should have all been so easy. He had found out about Granger stealing the prototype plans. He had even had Pasha and Bijan enlist the aid of Grangers nitwit nephew Todd. The nephew had actually turned out to be a big help in their ongoing thefts of houses so they could sell the electronics and jewelry found. And he had also made things easier than expected when he had managed to learn his uncle’s security code for his house. But once the police arrested him for those thefts, even though he hadn’t told the police anything, he had still become a liability. Pasha and Bijan had taken the drive from him, and then killed him. Perfect! Until that girl had figured too many things out.
What was that girl doing with a job like that? Who would entrust a woman with that kind of responsibility? Stupid Americans. They not only treated their women as equals, he had seen many of the idiot men practically bowing down to them. They were women! They should all be put in their place.
Why wasn’t this Jennifer woman at home raising her children? Was she even married? In Iraq, where he came from, she would have been married off long ago. She would have been raised properly to care for her man and his children. She would have been taught her proper place in life. There would be none of this running around trying to do things that should be left to the men.
Americans! The truth was, they were all about as uncivilized as a people could get. And they were trying their hardest to spread their lack of breeding and culture across the entire world. That was why he had joined this holy jihad. That was why he was now here in America. That was why he was now at the forefront of trying to fight back and bring the fight directly to the enemy. He had seen too many of his family members die at the hands of the American military. The political struggles in his country were for his people alone, not the Americans. Every place the Americans went, they brought nothing but harm.
He had truly believed in the cause since he was a little boy. Now he was older, and he knew that fighting the enemy was best done on their land, not on the holy sands of the middle east. He had asked to come. He had asked to be at the forefront of the fight. And they had granted the opportunity to him.
He had no doubt that everyone back in Iraq would be very glad to get the information he had just sent. He was sure they would all realize now just how valuable he could be to them. This time, he was sure they would send help. His brother fighters in Miami had lots of help. He had been sent to this nothing city with only his two young nephews. And now one of them was dead. Well, it was a war. It happened. It had already happened years ago to Bijan’s father. Now Bijan and his father were united again.
He and Pasha and Bijan had been born in Iraq. They all knew the truth. They all knew the struggles of their people. That policeman he had managed to get working for him didn’t. The man was a recent convert to Islam. He had been easy to convince to help them. But he wasn’t born in Iraq. He couldn’t be trusted. And as it turned out now, he was only really interested in the money. Well, he would get his payment. One way or another. And once the man’s usefulness was done, he would make sure that the payment would come in the form of…the other.
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The police station that Pierce walked them into was clean and bright. But that did nothing to dispel the feeling of depression that Sally felt just walking into the place. “Is my mother here?” she asked as she followed Pierce through the building.
“She should be,” Pierce replied. “I’ve been kind of too busy to check on her today.”
Sally didn’t reply to that. She and Jenni followed him into a small break area where there was coffee and some vending machines for snacks. “Any chance I can see my mother?” Sally asked.
Pierce studied her for a moment. “I’ll check,” he told her.
“How about Ashley?” Jenni asked.
Pierce looked at he
r, then turned away without answering. He was back five minutes later with a uniformed officer. “Officer Fisher here will take you down to your mother,” he told Sally. He turned to Jenni. “You stay here so we can talk.”
Jenni watched as Pierce went over to the coffee pot and poured himself a Styrofoam cup full. Then he poured another one. “Do you take sugar or cream in your coffee?” he asked.
“Both,” she replied, moving closer.
Pierce dumped some sugar in one of the cups, then added a container of creamer. He picked both cups up and brought them to the table where he sat down. Jenni sat in the seat where he placed the second cup of coffee.
“Are we in trouble?” she asked uncertainly.
“Yes! Absolutely! But not from me.”
“Then who?”
“Who was it that was trying to kill you on that island?”
“How should I know?”
“They were after you. I figure you have to know something.”
“Well I don’t. It’s all just as much of a mystery to me.”
“How about that piece of industrial espionage you somehow managed to come up with?”
“That?” Jenni asked. But as she said it, her face fell. “I was wondering if that had anything to do with it.”
“So you do know something.”
“No. I just put some things together and the idea of selling the hard drive popped out. That’s all I know.”
“Are you sure? There’s an awful lot of men who are dead suddenly because of that hard drive, and you and your aunt should have been two more!”
Jenni took a deep breath. “I know. But I don’t know why or who’s after me.”
“Jenni, what comes to mind when I say, praise Allah?”
Jenni blinked. “Huh? Are you going some kind of crazy religious on me?”
“Nope. Nothing like that.”
“Then why would you ask something like that?”