Sheik Defense

by Ryshia Kennie

  “Did we confirm my suspicions?”

  “Not exactly. What I did find was that Dan had a number of calls in recent weeks from Ben Whyte. He was calling from a small Texan town—Tristan. So I checked into the place. It’s a going-nowhere-fast kind of place. Stopover for truckers and such heading for bigger centers. Nothing much goes on.”

  “Strange,” Faisal replied but his heart sped up slightly as it always did upon receiving a major clue. His gut told him that was where Ava had gone. His logical mind told him that he had no other options, no clue, no direction. He had to follow the clue he had or remain in a state of inertia. The latter was no more comprehensible than it was feasible. The problem was that he was pretty sure Ava wouldn’t be using her own name but he had no idea what she was calling herself now. He had to go back to the bus depot and see if somehow repetition would provide the break he needed. The only thing he could do was ask employees, fellow passengers even, whoever might have seen her. But none of the passengers would know her name, so that only left employees. And so far, he’d struck out in dead-end Fort Lauderdale. It was beyond frustrating. He needed someone who remembered her boarding the bus. So far he hadn’t received that break.

  “Also, one other thing. I’ve had an eye on Darrell Chan,” Barb said, breaking into his thoughts. “He’s landing in Hong Kong International Airport as we speak. Seems our boy is flying the coop while he can.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s not all,” Barb said with barely a pause. “I’ve got evidence that he bought more than one tract of land near Tristan, Texas. A huge spread. There’s no evidence of a monetary transaction other than a small initial deposit.”

  “Who did he purchase it from?”

  “There was nothing about the sale online. The only evidence I have is an email from Darrell to Dan.”

  “I wonder if the land even exists.”

  “I wondered the same,” Barb replied. “False deeds, pretty easy stuff. Hard part, from what I can see, is not getting caught. Darrell Chan was promised acres of land. Oil rich, at least that was what it was advertised as and all of it in south Texas. That’s what I’m getting from hacking into more of Dan Adams’s emails, but, like I said, none of this is registered in online records.”

  “Damn,” he said shocked at what she said. “I can’t believe it.” In fact, he didn’t believe it, at least not that Dan was voluntarily involved. He believed a lot of things but something like that of Dan, no.

  But opinion wasn’t proof and he’d need proof to nail Dan Adams’s killer to the wall.

  Any proof he needed was in Tristan, Texas. He clenched his fists at the thought that if Ava was there she was alone and without his protection. He needed to get there as soon as possible.

  This time when he contacted security at the Miami bus depot, he got action. Security agreed to check the video. Thirty minutes later he knew that a woman matching Ava’s description had been there. Her ticket would take her to the small southern town of Tristan, Texas. The estimated time of arrival was five hours ago.

  He hung up shortly after that. He dashed the back of his hand across his forehead before grabbing his go-bag. He’d never felt anything so urgent in his life as the need to reach Ava. The story was piecing together quickly and he liked none of it. What he believed was that the truth had come out that night on the yacht and Ava had been witness to it all. He needed to get to Tristan, Texas, without delay.

  Two minutes later he had the chopper on alert. Fifteen minutes after that he was preparing to board.

  * * *

  BEN WHYTE STUCK out his thumb and an hour later realized that getting another ride would be a long shot. The semi driver had just dropped him off. The hours on the road hadn’t been kind. He no longer looked safe, nonthreatening. He was scruffy-looking, a middle-aged man with an after-five shadow and a wild look in his eye. No one else was going to pick him up. He ran his fingers through his hair, took his mind from what he couldn’t fix, such as the beginnings of a beard, and plastered a goofy smile on his face. His lips ached from the effort and he couldn’t bring a smile to his eyes but a few cars slowed, hesitated and then changed their mind and sped up. A few minutes later, he had success. A battered blue Cougar, a dream car for a car enthusiast, slowed down and pulled over. He eyed the Cougar, thinking of the possibilities. It was a car that one would fix up, that... His thoughts broke off as he concentrated on the smile, focusing on making the smile reach his eyes. The man who’d stopped for him might be a decade younger. He had artfully disheveled hair and a carefree look in his dark eyes.

  He smiled, all the while thinking that soon he could quit with the idiotic smile that was killing his facial muscles. His lips actually hurt from the effort but it had paid off.

  “You need a lift?”

  “I do,” he said calmly as he opened the door and slipped in knowing that this time he needed to take control. He was too close to his goal. No more sitting in the passenger seat and watching the miles go by. He didn’t need a witness this close to his goal.

  Ten minutes later he was at the wheel. It had been surprisingly easy. There was truth in everything getting easier with practice. This time he hadn’t felt anything. It had been rather unreal. There’d been little blood in the kill. A sharp whack with the wrench he’d stuffed into his bag earlier. He followed the assault with a second blow just to ensure that he’d done enough frontal lobe damage to kill the driver. A bathroom break on the shoulder of the road, five minutes into the ride, had given him the opportunity. He supposed the element of surprise had given him the advantage but Eric hadn’t been much of a fighter. By the time he’d realized—seen the wrench Ben held in his left hand that he’d conveniently picked up at the gas station—it was too late. There’d been a panicked look in his eyes when he’d realized what was coming down. Now, the seat was wiped clear of any blood with a jacket he’d found in the backseat. He’d thrown that into the ditch along with the body of his Good Samaritan.

  There’s no such thing as do-gooders, boy. It always turns out wrong. That had been one of the last pieces of advice offered by his father. It was the best thing that no-good piece of crap had done for him.

  “No such thing,” he repeated as he cranked up the radio and tapped a hand against the wheel as AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” beat at top volume. He floored the vehicle. He needed this deal done before the buyer became suspicious and Ava spilled what she knew. If she knew what he suspected she did then there was only one place to be, Tristan. That’s the only place where the records were accessible for they weren’t online. But no one was going to access them, he’d make sure of that. Then, once it was done and Ava Adams was dead, he was getting the hell out of town. He would be out of the country before Darrell Chan put a hit out on him.

  Now he had to get to the place he’d once called home, back to where it had all started and where it would all end. He couldn’t get there fast enough. Everything he was, everything he’d be—it all rested in Tristan, a little piece of hell in the heart of Texas.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tuesday, June 14—4:00 p.m.

  Thank goodness for small towns, Ava thought as she briskly pulled the sheets off a bed. She loaded them onto her cart that was sitting just outside the door. The roar of diesel was a reminder that this town might be small but it was also a stopover for truckers. Fleets of them passed on the side roads as they took a break before heading to the bigger centers. She mused about how in a city she would never have been hired without any credentials. That was a good thing as she couldn’t haul out her list of academic accreditations. None of her diplomas would do her any good here. Fortunately, in this small town in the south of Texas no one had given a thought to asking her for identification. They needed the help and she needed the employment. She’d never worked in the service industry. She’d been lucky. Her father had insisted she keep her mind on academics, and
with the exception of her tutoring, a salaried job, no matter how part-time, was not a consideration.

  Not wanting to arouse suspicion, the story she had told the motel owner of her reason for a lack of belongings was one of tragedy. Her home had flooded following a torrential rain. The disaster that followed caused her to leave her rental unit behind. She’d managed to leave the place unnamed and vague, rather like her memory had once been. The woman who managed the motel had asked no questions, only expressed sympathy. She’d felt beyond guilty about that but she had no choice. She’d make up for every shady thing she’d done when it was all over. That is, if she lived to see the end of this.

  She’d been hired at noon and outfitted by one o’clock. It had been a stroke of luck when the woman who would have worked this shift had gone home sick. She’d even been given an advance on her paycheck. She’d had to ask and churn out an addendum to her hard-luck story and, frighteningly enough, that hadn’t been too difficult. With a little tweaking, her real story was every bit the hard-luck case, so she wove bits of it into the story she’d already told. In fact, the story was so good, she’d surprised herself at her desire to keep embellishing. It wasn’t a habit she was going to keep once this was over. In fact, she was surprised that the story had worked, that the woman who ran the motel had agreed to a small advance in exchange for her beginning work immediately. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  * * *

  BEN WHYTE’S HEAD hurt like hell and anger coursed through him. He eased his grip on the steering wheel when his knuckles started to ache. He’d get that little witch who could ruin his plans.

  He needed Darrell Chan to pay up for the land he’d signed on to buy. It was the biggest deal ever and the one he needed in order to be able to call it quits. Once he had the money he would leave the country and everything else behind. He didn’t need Dan Adams’s interfering daughter ruining it all with something as simple as the truth.

  It was here, in this out-of-the-way place, that all his dreams would come true. That’s what he’d thought only weeks ago and then Adams had done what he hadn’t anticipated. He’d thought their partnership was solid and he’d been proven wrong. Adams was never supposed to find out the truth and yet somehow he had. He’d had no choice but to take him out. With Adams out of the way, he hadn’t expected another piece of flotsam—his daughter. By the time he’d realized that Ava Adams was on board, it was too late. Adams managed to get her off the yacht and out of his hands. She was a fly in the ointment and he wasn’t sure what she did or didn’t know. But if Dan had told her anything, he would have told her where the evidence could be found and that was here in Tristan. He had to make sure she wasn’t here and if she was, he had to find her. If she was here, he was betting that she hadn’t gotten farther than the outskirts of town.

  He pulled down a service road, passed a filling station and then a junkyard piled high with rusted cars and assorted farm implements. Like many small towns where businesses had been shut down, a cluster of metal and pipe from projects long forgotten sat abandoned along with gas stations on either end of town serving travelers that never made it to the town center. A police cruiser drove slowly by, the officer glancing at him curiously. He nodded but didn’t smile. He’d found eye contact and a friendly, but not too friendly, demeanor worked best with the local authorities.

  He turned left into the rutted and worn blacktop of the motel’s parking lot. He’d been to three others like it. But this time as he walked out of the administration office, he knew that he’d hit gold. It wasn’t the same name but there weren’t a lot of twenty-something women checking into motels in this town, not that matched her description. She was here. He touched the gun hidden beneath his shirt. He’d gotten not just a car but a gun when Eric had picked him up. The boy had been sheer gold.

  Ava Adams, the name was like nails on a chalkboard. She knew too much and she was too smart. She was lethal in her own way and she needed to be removed just like her father had been. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any time to drag it out, to have any fun. It was a shame because he wanted her in every way a man wants a woman. He wanted just one shot at her before she died.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tristan, Texas

  Tuesday, June 14—6:00 p.m.

  Close to Tristan, Texas, and still in the air, Faisal received a grim lead. The radio was playing and a news report came on. One of the top stories was about a man being killed after picking up a hitchhiker. Motorists were advised to be on the lookout for a middle-aged Caucasian male about five-ten...

  The report went on. Faisal had heard enough. His gut told him that the hitchhiker was Ben Whyte. But the interesting thing was that he’d murdered and stolen someone’s car while hitchhiking.

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He phoned the Houston Police Department and asked to speak to Detective Morris. Rex Morris was another law enforcement officer he’d dealt with before. He was open-minded as long as you didn’t try playing any games with him. Even though it had happened outside Rex’s jurisdiction, ten minutes later he had the details he needed. The death had been particularly violent. A wrench, wiped suspiciously clean of even a fingerprint, had been found in the ditch. The coroner had been on the scene and was convinced that the bludgeoning marks were fairly indicative that the wrench had been the weapon. In the meantime, the authorities would lift whatever DNA they could. Unfortunately, there was nothing solid to go on. All they had was a description of the vehicle the victim had been driving and an APB was out. He gave a brief description to Rex of the case he was on. They hung up with an agreement to notify each other if the vehicle was found. There was nothing else. He had to take the tip he had and run with it.

  His phone buzzed.

  It was Barb with the information he’d asked her to follow up on. Ben Whyte’s mother’s location. She’d found Evangeline Tominski’s address and phone number in Chicago. He knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy call and he was proven right minutes later. The woman sounded worn and beaten like she’d been a victim. If he could have painted a picture of the trajectory of her life, he guessed that it would have been done in gray with splotches of red—dull with moments of great trauma. It was sad and disheartening. Listening to the story of someone beaten down all their life was one of the few things that made him regret his career choice.

  She’d opened up as soon as he’d told her who he was and that he was looking for her son. He listened patiently as she told him that her son, Ben Whyte, had supported her with an occasional check that he mailed to her. She said many things, many of them irrelevant but some very relevant, including how she was terrified of her son. She muttered that he was violent and had beaten her up many times. She said that she was afraid that he’d turn worse, kill even, just like his father. She then mentioned that some of it was her fault. She hadn’t left his father even when he’d pushed the boy down the stairs in a fit of rage. Her son had limped ever since. And still she’d stayed until her husband had turned that anger outside the family and been jailed for murder. It had been an entirely disturbing telephone conversation. Sometimes, there were aspects of this business he detested. This conversation was one of them.

  Knowing what had shaped Ben Whyte gave him a clearer picture of who he was dealing with. He bet that Tristan, Texas, had drawn him back because that was where Ben Whyte had spent the majority of his miserable childhood. It was a rural area of southern Texas surrounded by nothing but flat arid land. Familiarity had drawn the man back.

  He shook his head as he mulled over the details of the call. Ben Whyte hadn’t had a chance. He’d come out of the ashes of an abusive childhood deeply scarred. It was urgent that he find Ava immediately. Ben Whyte was an unpredictable, troubled man. Not only that, but if what his mother said was true, like his father, he had no love of women. A woman-hating man with a grudge. He shuddered at the thought of it.

  Thirty minutes later,
Faisal had the chopper pilot drop him five miles from Tristan town limits. In a town this size, the arrival of a helicopter wasn’t going to go unnoticed. He had a vehicle waiting for him. It was a basic silver SUV that blended in with all the others. It was the perfect choice—mass-produced, dull and mundane. It was exactly what he needed to remain under the radar. While the town was a good size, it was still small enough that a stranger would eventually be noticed by someone.

  His mind went over all that had transpired. What did Ava think she was doing? She’d phoned for his help and now fled it. He’d considered possibilities including that somehow she might have had a heads-up on the man who had killed the patient after her. Hospital surveillance hadn’t told him much more than that he was an average-sized male who had kept his face carefully hidden from the surveillance cameras. So far, he appeared to be working alone.

  His phone buzzed. This time it was his contact within the Canadian RCMP, Sergeant Aaron Detrick. “There’s a bit of information I thought you ought to know. I was just speaking to one of the other officers who had worked undercover on the case we discussed. Chan has a couple of go-to men, basically killers for hire he uses. It’s not often. I think, rather ironically, like I said before, Chan considers himself a good guy.”

  “Some good guy,” Faisal said, and then he regretted the interjection. Aaron tended to be a bit long-winded if given any kind of encouragement.

  “There’s one name that came up just recently, Dallas Tenorson. He’s been arrested a number of times. Violent acts, a brutal beating during a robbery, road rage, but nothing to keep him locked up for any length of time. Except, we were sure he was behind a killing last spring. Cause of death, gunshot to the head. One shot took the victim out cleanly—that doesn’t happen often. It had hit man written all over it, between that and a clean crime scene. No one was ever convicted. The evidence was just too thin. But the interesting thing is that the man who died had been up on charges for rape. He raped Chan’s daughter. She committed suicide immediately after the rape.”