Won't Back Down

by J. D. Rhoades

“Well, she did.” Meadow looks away. “She made me stop a few months ago. That’s the other thing you need to know. He’s growing weed up there. A lot of it.”

  “Marijuana?” Alia blinks in surprise.

  “That’s what weed is, sis.”

  “Shut up, Bassim.” She shakes her head. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

  “More dangerous than wandering around the roads with a government paper out on us saying we’re terrorists?” Bassim turns to Meadow. “You think he’ll let you bring friends?”

  She bites her lip. “I can ask. But we have to go there. He doesn’t have a cell phone. He says the government tracks you with them.”

  “I’ve read that, too.” Bassim looks at Ben behind the wheel. “I say we go.”

  Alia looks out the window. A car goes by in the opposite direction and she turns to watch, dreading the possibility it might turn around and follow. She feels sick and exhausted with worry and fear. “He has guns, I assume.”

  “Oh yeah,” Meadow says. “Lots.”

  She closes her eyes. “And how does he feel about, well, people like us?”

  “You mean…Arabs?” She looks doubtful. “I don’t know. I never asked.”

  Alia opens her eyes and looks wearily at her. “It’s kind of important, don’t you think?”

  Meadow nods. “Yeah, I know. But I can’t think of any safer place to go right now. Dad always said he’d do anything for me.”

  Alia leans her head against the window. I’m so tired. Her answer comes out in a whisper. “Okay.”

  “Swing by my place first,” Meadow says to Ben. “I need to pick up a couple of things.” She looks at the box holding Marie’s gun. “Like a screwdriver.”

  ONE HUNDRED-

  TWO

  As Fletcher and Cameron walk back into the station, the civilian receptionist at the front desk calls out. “Hey, Fletch. You got a message.”

  He walks over. “Thanks, Lisa.” He waits, but she just looks at him. “It’s on your computer. The new internal messaging system, remember?”

  He grunts in annoyance and turns away. “I hate that goddamn thing,” he mutters.

  Cameron falls into step beside him on the way to the bullpen, where the few detectives in the tiny department work at desks shoved together in a former meeting room. “You’re just irritable because you can’t ball up a message you don’t want to answer and throw it in the trash.”

  “That’s part of it, yeah.” He takes a seat and the desk he shares with the detective on the next shift and stares at the screen.

  Cameron leans over his shoulder. “Click on LawTrak, then pull down the menu for—”

  “I know how to use it.” Fletcher grabs the mouse and performs the necessary commands. He sees the message on the screen. “Huh.”

  “From Homeland Security. They actually called back. Urgent.”

  Fletcher turns to him. “You mind?”

  “Sorry,” Cameron straightens up.

  “Here,” Fletcher reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a roll of breath mints as he reaches for the phone with the other hand.

  “Nice,” Cameron says sourly, but he takes the mint as Fletcher dials. He gets another surprise as the person on the other end picks up immediately.

  “Agent Bertone.”

  “Uh, hi, Agent Bertone, this is Brock Fletcher of the Harnett County Sheriff’s Department. In North Carolina. I’m returning your call.”

  Bertone’s voice sharpens. “Right. An inquiry about some people supposed to be on the watch list.”

  “Right. See we found it a little strange that—”

  “Detective, Homeland Security does not confirm or deny whether or not someone is on the watch list.”

  “I see. So, this Agent Gray—”

  “That’s actually why I called, Detective. You said the name the person gave you was Iris Gray.”

  “That’s right. She said she was—”

  “There is no one matching that name working for Homeland Security.”

  Fletcher’s getting tired of being interrupted, but that information silences him.

  Bertone goes on. “Needless to say, we’re investigating as well. Is there anything else you can tell us about this person?”

  It takes Fletcher a second to find his voice. “You mind if I put this on speaker? My partner’s here.”

  “Yes, I mind. And information about this phone call is not to be repeated. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” Fletcher says. He looks at Cameron and rolls his eyes. Cameron nods. Fletcher goes on. “We know that she’s picked up a couple of bodyguards. Carrying automatic weapons.”

  There’s a brief silence on the other line. Then, “We’ve got a team coming from Charlotte. Until they get there, you should not engage these people. At all. Understood?”

  “Understood.” Fletcher hangs up without saying goodbye. He notices that Cameron’s walked away and is having an intense conversation with Xavier Willis, a black detective who Fletcher had thought was on the night shift.

  “Fletch,” Cameron motions him over, “we got another homicide.”

  “God damn it,” Fletcher mutters as he walks over. He nods at Willis. “Hey.”

  Willis nods back. “Hey. Cameron says you might have a connection with this one, the kid who got blown up, and the preacher they found dead in the road.”

  Fletcher feels a sinking sensation in his stomach. “Who’s the victim?”

  “Warehouse manager for Dalton Chemical. Foreign guy named Adnan Khoury.”

  Fletcher closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “You could say there’s a connection.” He opens them. “We’d been led to believe that Adnan Khoury was some kind of US intelligence asset. He was supposedly under the protection of a Homeland Security agent going by the name of Iris Gray. Except I just got a call from the Department of Homeland Security telling us there ain’t no such agent.”

  Willis grimaces. “Great.”

  “Oh, it gets better. This DHS puke tells me we need to leave Gray alone. They’re sending a team from Charlotte.”

  “We gonna do it?” Cameron says. “Leave her alone, I mean.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Guys,” Willis says nervously, “maybe we should do that. I mean, if this thing’s going Federal…”

  “Khoury has two kids,” Fletcher says. “Teenagers. They’re in the wind along with two other local teenagers. They’re afraid this Gray woman is after them. And I’m beginning to think they’re right.”

  “Kids,” Willis mutters. “Fuck.”

  Cameron nods. “That sums it up nicely.” He turns to Fletcher. “What about Keller?”

  Willis looks puzzled. “Keller? Who’s Keller?”

  “Used to be a bounty hunter,” Fletcher says. “Khoury hired him as a bodyguard for the kids.”

  “Gray tried to run him off,” Cameron adds. “He didn’t go for it. Then she tried to get us to arrest him.”

  “Which we did,” Fletcher says.

  “Wait,” Willis says. “Ain’t Keller the guy that got his house blown up?” They nod. “And you think Gray may have done it?”

  “Maybe,” Fletcher says. “Or the two goons she’s got with her.”

  “Well, we’d like to have a talk with his Keller guy, too,” Willis says.

  Fletcher raises an eyebrow. “About what?”

  “About the pile of cash we found in a duffel bag in the back of the house. And some firearms we found.”

  “Firearms,” Fletcher says.

  Willis nods. “You know he’s a convicted felon, right?”

  Fletcher sighs. “Yeah. We know that.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “We know where he’s supposed to be,” Fletcher says.

  Cameron smiles grimly. “You really think he stayed put like we told him? Out at Jones’s place?”

  “No.” Fletcher pulls out his car keys. “But that’s where we’re going to star
t looking for him. Because unless I miss my guess, he’s going after those kids. And so is Gray. Find one, maybe we find them all.”

  “Let’s hope we find at least one of them before they all get together,” Cameron says. “Because I can’t think of a way that ends well.”

  ONE HUNDRED-

  THREE

  Keller pulls up outside the address Marie gave him, a double-wide trailer sitting on a clear-cut dirt lot surrounded on three sides by woods. He doesn’t see his truck there. What he does see is a pale, red-haired woman seated on the wooden steps of the trailer, smoking a cigarette.

  “You just missed ’em,” she calls out. She doesn’t sound happy. Or sober. Keller can see a couple of empty Budweiser cans on the step next to her.

  Keller kills the engine and gets out. The red-haired woman stands, weaving a little in place, as he approaches. She’s dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a loose-fitting AC/DC tour t-shirt. “They’ve come an’ gone.”

  “Who’s that?” Keller asks.

  She regards him through narrowed, reddened eyes. “Who the hell you think? My daughter. Or whatever she is. An’ her boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Or whatever.”

  As Keller gets closer, he can smell the beer and weed on her. She has a spray of freckles across her face and a pair of green eyes that might be pretty if the whites weren’t blood red. “They driving a black pickup truck?”

  She blinks. “Yeah. Why?”

  “It’s my truck.”

  The woman snorts. “So now she’s a car thief, too?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She shakes her head, trying to clear the cobwebs she herself put there. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “There may be some extenuating circumstances.”

  “Ex-tenuating…” She laughs. “You sound like a lawyer. But you don’ look like a lawyer.” She steps a little closer to him, close enough that she’s looking up at him. She smiles.

  “Thanks. You have any idea where Meadow and the others went with my truck?”

  “Meadow.” The smile disappears. “That ain’t the name I gave her.”

  “It’s the name she likes. But let’s not go there.”

  But the name’s clearly a sore point. “I thought once she started hanging around with that boy, that Ben…” She stops and cocks her head at him. “Hey, is that your boy?” Before Keller can answer, she’s off again. “I thought she’d straighten out. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if they were fuckin’. At least that’d be kinda normal, and he is kinda cute. But nooooo, she’s still tryin’ to work out her,” the woman makes air quotes with her fingers, “sexual identity. Jesus. What kinda bullshit is that?”

  “Ma’am,” Keller begins.

  “I mean, I changed her goddamn diapers for years. I’m pretty damn sure she’s a girl.”

  “Ma’am!” he says louder.

  “My name’s Debra. Not ma’am.” She smiles at him again, seeming to lose track of her outrage. “An’ what’s yours?”

  “Jack. Now about where your daughter went…”

  “With Ben. And that Arab girl and her brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  Instead of answering, she stumbles back to the steps, sits down heavily, and picks up one of the beer cans. From the way she looks at it, it’s empty and she’s not happy about it. “Jack,” she says. “I need a ride to the store. Can you take me?”

  For god’s sake, Keller thinks. “I’m kind of in a time crunch here. Can you just tell me where you think they might have gone?”

  She’s lost the thread again, looking off into space. “You know, if the damn sperm donor had just stuck around, she might have grown up likin’ men better.” She looks at Keller. “Sperm donor. That’s what I call her daddy.”

  Keller’s losing patience. “Debra,” he says. “I need to know where they—”

  She smiles in a way that he guesses is supposed to be flirtatious. “Take me to the store and I’ll tell you. But maybe we can party a little before you…”

  That’s all he can take. He crosses the distance between them in three long strides, bends down, and grabs her by both shoulders. “Debra!” he shouts, and pulls her to her feet.

  “Ow,” she whines. “You’re hurtin’ me.”

  “Listen to me,” he says between clenched teeth. “Those two kids who were with Meadow and Ben? Those Arab kids? There are people out there, people who are very close, who want to hurt them. Okay? And they’re not above hurting your daughter if she gets in the way.”

  Debra’s eyes are wide with fear. Fear of him. He hates that, but he presses on. “I can help them. At least I can try. But to do that, I have to know where they’re going. I think you know, or at least you’ve got some idea. So, you need to pull your head out of your ass and tell me what I need to know.”

  She swallows, and her eyes brim with tears. “Someone…someone wants to hurt my little girl?”

  “They won’t think twice about it to get what they want.”

  The tears are flowing freely down her face now. “But why?”

  “Because that’s the kind of people they are, Debra.”

  “No. I mean why would Melissa put herself in danger like that?”

  Keller releases her shoulders and stands up. “Because that’s the kind of person she is. She’s a good kid. She cares. She’s loyal to her friends.”

  Debra nods, still weeping. “She is. She’s a good girl. She’s so sweet. Always has been. Since she was little.” She cries harder. “And I’ve been so mean to her.”

  “So, help me find her. And her friends. I can help them.”

  Debra stands up, still a little unsteady. “Okay. Okay. Come on inside.”

  Keller sighs. “I don’t have time to party, Debra.”

  She nods. “I know. But you need to come inside. There’s a map.”

  “A map.”

  “Yeah. To where her daddy is. That’s probably where she’s gone.” She weaves her way up the stairs and opens the door. Keller hesitates a moment, then follows.

  Inside, the trailer smells of grilled meat and onions, dirty clothes, and marijuana smoke. Debra gestures vaguely at the piles of clothing on the couch. “Sorry ’bout the mess. Wasn’t expecting company.”

  “It’s fine.” Keller follows her through the living room and down the hall. She stops at one of the trailer’s smaller bedrooms and snaps on a light.

  It’s a small room, mostly taken up by an unmade twin bed. What strikes Keller most is the artwork on the walls. Instead of the expected pop-star posters, every wall is covered with what looks like original drawings, paintings, and a couple of lithographs, mostly bright, intricate, eye-bending patterns, but with a couple of portraits so realistic they seem to jump off the page. One, a head and shoulders rendering of a dark-haired boy laughing, particularly catches his eye. As he looks more closely, he realizes with a shock that it’s Ben. He can’t recall ever seeing Ben laugh like that. Apparently, Meadow can. Another, smaller sketch, almost a miniature, shows Francis, sitting on the floor, all his attention on a toy truck.

  “Good, ain’t she?” Debra says.

  “She’s amazing.”

  “Lot of good it’ll do her.” Debra walks to a metal desk by the window that’s covered with tubes of paint, brushes, and paper. Keller realizes that what he’d thought was a dull green abstract drawing pinned to the wall beside the desk is a US Geological Survey topographic map of the Uwharrie National Forest. She reaches up and pulls the map from the wall without taking out the thumbtacks holding it to the cheap paneling, so that the corners tear loose. She holds the map out to Keller. “Here. That’s where she’s prob’ly gone.”

  Keller takes the damaged paper. He hasn’t had to read a topo map since the Army, but he can see the route Meadow’s traced in pen from a state road, through the National Forest, then off that reservation up to a place marked with an X, where the contour lines come together to indicate a steep slope, possibly even a cliff. “Th
is is where her father lives?” Keller asks.

  Debra’s stumbled backward to a seat on the bed. “Yeah. Drug-dealin’ asshole. I’m callin’ my lawyer in the morning. He ain’t s’posed to see her ’til he turns three clean drug screens.” She snorts. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

  Keller folds the map into a square and stuffs it in his back pocket. “Okay. Thanks for the tip.”

  She squints up at him. “You gonna take me to the store now?”

  He shakes his head. “Got to go. How long have they been gone?”

  She scowls and stands up. “You said you was gonna take me to the store. I’m outta beer. And cigarettes.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to take you.” He exits the bedroom and heads for the front door. “If anyone else comes asking where Meadow’s gone,” he calls back over his shoulder, “don’t tell them. In fact, don’t even open the door.” He stops to consider. “Except to a cop named Fletcher. You can trust him.”

  “Wait a damn minute,” she fumes. “What the hell am I supposed to do here by myself?”

  Keller turns to face her. “Sober up, maybe. Get ready to be at least a little less shitty to your kid when I bring her home.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. “Who the fuck do you think you are, tellin’ me how to raise my child?”

  Keller doesn’t answer, just turns and walks out.

  “Asshole!” she yells at him from the front door. She shouts it several times as he pulls away.

  ONE HUNDRED-

  FOUR

  If there’s one good thing about all this craziness, Seth Childress thinks, it’s the opportunities. The Criminal Investigations Division was undermanned to begin with, and now that there are at least three major murder cases breaking, even road deputies like Childress are getting more responsibilities.

  “Deputy Childress?” the female deputy working the front desk calls on the intercom. “There are…some people here to see you. About the Khoury case.”

  Childress looks up from the report he’s typing. “What do they want?”

  “They say they’re his family.”