“Oh, Christ, kid, no. Not with Chava in the house, no.” Gene stepped beside Jake, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Besides, you don’t want to get caught carrying. If I think you need one, I’ll lend you one of mine.” Gene’s eyes probed him. “How’s Rinnah?”
Jake blew out a sharp breath. “First day of morning sickness. Man, was she cranky.” He broke away from his uncle, folded his arms hard, tried to take the frustration out of his voice. “I can’t keep this from her much longer, Gene. She’s asking why I’m in guard-dog mode. Couple nights back, we went out for Chinese. Know how I always like to sit by the windows, watch the people?” Gene nodded. “This time, I dragged her as far into the back as I could. She looked at me like I’m nuts.” He held out an open hand. “Am I? Tell me I’m nuts. Please.”
Gene looked out the window at the street vendor’s fake designer handbags, weighing his words. “Look, I know you’re worried about this. I asked my guys to keep an eye on the other three, just in case. I’ve mentioned it to a buddy in JTTF. I wish I knew what else to do.”
Again, not what Jake wanted to hear. At least Gene hadn’t called him nuts. “Yeah. Thanks, Gene, thanks for looking. I…just worry. I’m a Jew, it’s in my DNA, right?”
Gene snorted. “Yeah, I’ve heard that. Hey, on the first, come in a little early, I’ll introduce you to the Commissioner before the Intel standup, okay?”
“Sure.”
“It’ll be fine, kid. You’ll love the job, really. Hell, you’re already doing the damn job.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Good.” Gene slapped Jake’s bicep, then pointed toward Jake with the first two fingers of his coffee hand. “Fucking ease off, will you? You’re gonna pop something. And for Christ’s sake, don’t tell Rinnah. She’s pregnant, she doesn’t need the stress. You gotta talk to someone, talk to me, okay?”
“Yeah, I get it. I remember someone telling me to be careful. Looked a lot like you.”
“I know, I know. Anything weird starts happening, tell me, I’ll put a unit on you. Until then, take it down a few notches. You’re too young to vapor-lock yet. See you, kid.”
Jake watched his uncle shamble away and wished he could have Gene’s confidence in the reliability of the system. But the system had never screwed Gene the way it had Jake.
He wouldn’t cancel the news alerts anytime soon.
TWENTY-SIX: Brooklyn, 28 November
The knock on the door broke Rinnah from her attempts to puzzle together dinner from the bits and pieces in the refrigerator. She checked her watch. Six already? “Coming!”
She padded barefoot to the door, peeked through the spyhole. A man wearing a hardhat, black-blue sweatshirt and a yellow safety vest stood just far enough away that she could see the clipboard he had propped on his belt buckle. “Who is it?”
“Con Ed, ma’am. I need to ask you a couple of questions.”
The hardhat was the familiar sky blue. He looked harmless enough. Rinnah flipped the deadbolt and cracked the door until the chain stopped it, framing the man in the gap.
Caramel skin, a strong chin, short, thick black hair, lush eyelashes—why did men get such good lashes, anyway?—and eyes that made her think of melted chocolate. She paused before she spoke, not wanting to spoil the Harlequin moment. “Um, how can I help you?”
“Sorry to bother you so late.” He ducked his head to read from his clipboard, gazed at her through those eyelashes. “One of your neighbors reported his lights flickering and running dim. I need to know if this is happening in the whole building or just his unit. Is this Jacob Eldar’s apartment?”
“Yes. He’s my husband.”
“Lucky man.” He smiled. Oh, wow. “Is he home? Can I talk to him?”
Flirting? Not that she minded. She loved Jake—despite how edgy and preoccupied he’d been lately—but it was nice to be noticed by someone else, especially now she’d started to puff up. She slipped the chain, opened the door wider. “I haven’t noticed anything.”
“No flickering, no dimming, no humming?”
“No, nothing.”
“Okay. Are you at home during the day? The problem was reported late this morning.”
“No, I work.”
“I can see that. In an office, it looks like.”
“Yes. They lock me to a desk with chains. No handsome prince ever rescues me, like in the books.”
He smiled again. “That’s a shame. The prince doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
Rinnah regretted not wearing a skirt. This might be her last chance to show off her legs before they turned into tree trunks. Little arms wrapped around Rinnah’s hips from behind; she looked down to see Eve peeking around her at the workman.
His eyes got bigger and softer, which she wouldn’t have believed possible. He bent over a few degrees. “Who’s this? What’s your name?”
Eve giggled. “Eve.”
“Hello, Eve.” He straightened and returned his attention to Rinnah. “She’s beautiful. She looks like her mom.”
Did he do this with all the women he met? Probably. But it was just what she’d needed. “Anything else I can do for you?” If he could flirt, so could she.
He lofted his eyebrows. “Sure. Has your husband mentioned the lights? Maybe not, he must work days, too.”
“No, he hasn’t said anything.”
“All right.” He twitched his nose like a rabbit for Eve, who giggled and hid behind Rinnah. “Can I get your name for the report?” He hovered his ballpoint over the papers on his clipboard.
“Rinnah.” She spelled it. He tapped the paper after the last letter.
“Thank you, Rinnah Eldar. Again, sorry to bother you so late.” He smiled again.
Rinnah smiled back. She couldn’t help it. “No problem. Good luck fixing the lights.”
“Thanks.” He waggled his fingers at Eve. “Bye, Eve.”
“Bye-bye.”
It wasn’t until she closed the door that Rinnah realized how much information she’d given the Con Ed guy. She didn’t even get his name, or look at his ID, even though he had one half-hidden behind his vest. You idiot, she chided herself on her way back to the kitchen.
But she wouldn’t mind so much paying the electric bill anymore.
Rafiq slid into the driver’s seat of the white van, parked half a block down from number 475. “He’s not home, but his wife is. Her name’s Rinnah.” And she’s lovely, he didn’t say.
Alayan tapped on his laptop’s keys. “Did it go well? Did you have to use the identification?”
“No, she didn’t ask.”
“Good.” Alayan poked around with the touchpad for a minute. He nodded, then swiveled the laptop so Rafiq could see the screen. “Is this her?”
Rinnah smiled out at him from a Flickr page, her face in bright sunlight, all of lower Manhattan stretched out behind her. Eve’s cheek pressed against her ear. Rafiq recognized the view from the Empire State Building’s observation deck; he’d been there a lifetime ago. “Yes, that’s her. That’s not a very good picture, she’s prettier than that. The little girl is Eve.”
Alayan turned the screen back to face him. “You can marry her after we eliminate her husband.” He tapped the touchpad a few more times, then showed Rafiq another picture. “This is the husband.”
A man with curly black-brown hair looked straight into the camera. He had a long, slender face with sharp features, a straight nose, strong chin, dark eyes. He smiled with nearly-closed lips, as if he held in a joke. Eve perched on his lap, his arms wrapped around her, her smile showing off a missing front tooth.
“There are several Jacob Eldars, but only one Rinnah,” Alayan said as he pivoted the laptop back to himself. “Good, now we know who we’re looking for. We’ll follow him tomorrow, get an idea of his schedule.” He patted Rafiq’s shoulder. “Good work.”
Rafiq felt gnawing in his guts. Guilt? “Um, sidi? We’re only after him, right? Not the woman, not the little girl. Right?”
Alayan gave
him a smile as wintry as the evening. “Of course. Only the man.”
TWENTY-SEVEN: Midtown Manhattan, 30 November
Flashing lights, a music bassline strong enough to stop a heart, shouting, bodies everywhere. Sohrab’s head was full to exploding. Nothing like this existed in Tehran anymore, hardly anything like it in Beirut. If the Basiji back home ever found anything like this place, everyone here would be beaten bloody. And that was just the men.
The women? He couldn’t imagine what would happen to them. The nearly naked ones dancing on the three stages, rubbing themselves on the men for tips, the spotlights and colored neon strips painting bizarre glows on their bodies. Or the slightly less naked ones hauling trays of alcohol through the crowd. Or even—this had taken some effort to absorb—the women in the audience, watching the dancers, even tipping the dancers. Beatings? Prison? Torture? Death?
How was he supposed to keep track of Brown in this brothel?
He wasn’t a prude. He enjoyed the sight of an attractive woman’s body, in the proper place. But this was just…obscene. Overwhelming. And so blatantly commercial, money everywhere, and he didn’t doubt that with enough money, a man (or a woman, but he had to stop thinking about that) could get anything—anything—he wanted here.
Sohrab flinched when a hand landed on his shoulder. Then he heard Kassim’s voice in his ear. “Alayan says to go ahead.” He paused. “This one’s actually pretty. Brown has taste.”
“American women do this to themselves?” Sohrab said, stunned.
“Just concentrate on Brown. The fire door is next to the toilets. I disabled the alarm. We’ll pick you up on 52nd Street.” Kassim faded into the murk and the crowd.
At least they weren’t the only non-white men here. White, black, brown, yellow, suits and jeans, ties and hoodies, united by their grazing eyes and a willingness to pay $20 to see bored semi-naked women pretend to perform for them. No one had paid the least bit of attention to him except the predatory cocktail waitresses and the jendeh hustling lap dances.
When a hipless Slavic blond replaced the curvy redhead Kassim had complimented, Brown lurched out of his padded metal chair, grabbed his black-leather briefcase and started his upstream swim toward the toilets. Sohrab sighed in relief. Finally. He waited a few seconds, then abandoned his chair and edged through the spectators, keeping one eye on Brown’s progress across the tiger-striped carpet toward the last piss the man would ever take.
Sohrab clutched the stiletto’s grip in his coat pocket. This wouldn’t be one of Alayan’s elaborate charades. Nathan Brown usually went straight from his Long Island home to the train to his office, then back again, always surrounded by people. Tonight he’d delayed returning to his wife and children for…this. Kassim’s idea was simple: a robbery in the toilet. Simple was good.
But Kassim had missed the middle-aged Latin bathroom attendant standing by the sinks, handing out paper towels and breath mints for tips. Madar Ghahbeh! Sohrab stalked past the man, pretended to piss at a urinal near Brown. Now what? I can’t kill him here!
After a moment, he knew what to do. Sohrab flushed, hurried out into the short, dark hallway outside the toilets, pressed his back against the black wall next to the hinge side of the men’s room door. He tucked his stiletto behind his leg, ready.
Brown stepped through the door a few tense seconds later. Sohrab grabbed the man’s loose tie, yanked him farther into the shadows, then plunged the stiletto between the man’s ribs into his heart. Brown’s eyes bolted wide open; he let out a muffled “oof.” His briefcase thumped to the floor. “What?” he gasped. “Who?”
But he was already dead. Sohrab felt no heartbeat through the knife’s shaft. A moment later, Brown’s brain also died. He sagged into Sohrab’s waiting arms.
Quickly. Sohrab sat him against the wall, carefully drew out his knife, wiped it on the carpet. The thin blade made a tiny, self-sealing wound; only a dribble of dark red on his shirt showed Brown hadn’t passed out from drink. Sohrab patted the pockets in the man’s gray suit, looking for a wallet.
“Hey you! You!” A man built like a safe stared down at Sohrab from the hallway’s end. All in black, the club’s logo on his polo shirt. A bouncer. An! “What are you doing?”
Take the bouncer? He was out of reach, and too many people were nearby. Run? The fire-escape door lay perhaps two meters away. Could he make it?
The bouncer marched forward, eyes narrowing, hands flexing.
Run.
Sohrab crashed through the fire escape door and charged two steps at a time up the concrete stairs leading to street level. Before he was halfway up, the door slammed open again. The bouncer yelled, “Stop, goddamnit!”
He saw me! Sohrab reached the top of the stairs, sprinted down a grubby, half-lit service hallway smelling of cigarettes and wilted produce. Heavy breathing and thudding footsteps loomed behind him.
Even with a knife, Sohrab didn’t like his chances going hand-to-hand against a man who had eight or ten centimeters and a good fifteen kilos on him. He couldn’t risk getting that close.
He yanked his collapsible baton from his pocket, swiveled and swung the black stainless steel rod in a vicious arc behind him. The baton snicked to its full length an instant before it crashed into the bouncer’s extended right arm. The scream of pain almost drowned out the sound of bones cracking.
Sohrab stood aside to let the man’s momentum take him a few steps farther. The bouncer turned, red-faced, a leather blackjack in his left hand. He swatted at Sohrab, who stumbled back a step, feeling the breeze from the close miss.
The bouncer charged. Sohrab tried to sidestep, but a meaty fist caught him in the center of his chest and bounced him off the stained plaster wall. He lurched under the man’s next swing, slammed the baton forehand into the side of the bouncer’s skull. The man tumbled against the wall, then slid onto the worn tile floor.
Sohrab peered down at the unconscious man with a twinge of irritation, rubbed the dull ache where the man had hit him. “Why?” he panted to the bouncer in Farsi, not expecting an answer. “Now I have to kill you.” He snapped the baton into the man’s throat, then dashed for the door. He caught himself just in time. Sohrab collapsed the baton back to carrying size, straightened his leather bomber jacket, took a couple deep breaths, then pushed through into the night.
Brown was finished. Eldar tomorrow.
TWENTY-EIGHT: Brooklyn, 1 December
“Chava, where’s your backpack?”
“In my room.”
Rinnah stifled a groan. She was already running late; she didn’t need this, too. “Go get it. Now. We have to go.”
“Mommeee…”
“Now!”
Eve flounced through an about-face, arms windmilling, and stomped away. “I don’t wanna go to school! It’s boooring…”
Alayan hunched in the driver’s seat of the van, his arms folded over the wheel. He could just see Eldar’s building three doors west, number 475: brick, three floors, three tall windows across, blue front door. Holes opened in the files of parked cars lining each side of the street as people emerged from their homes to go to work.
He checked his watch. 7:05. The woman was late. He texted Gabir and Ziyad: Hold in place.
Each chirped back. No words; the connection sound was their acknowledgement. Every day, they learned something new, became just a bit more efficient. They’d taken Brown in three days, now Eldar in four. This could work.
Come on, woman. We have a schedule.
Four doors west of number 475, Kelila warmed her hands on a paper cup of Starbucks tea. She’d cranked the sedan’s passenger-side mirror so she could watch the front of Eldar’s building. No action yet. She used the little joystick on the dash to sweep the mirror back and forth, searching for lurkers. No one was foolish enough to stand around in the cold.
“Anything?” Raffi’s voice buzzed in her ear. He was out there somewhere, patrolling.
“All quiet.”
If Hezbollah was still tailing Elda
r, they’d have to pick him up at his home. It was too much to hope she’d see them setting up. Still, she and Raffi—Mr. Gur, you’re on a mission—had to try. She might have spotted a tail when they followed him yesterday morning, but the guy broke off before she could confirm it. Good-looking, Arab coloring, maybe her age, in a gray suit. If he showed up again, she’d recognize him.
Jake appeared in the mouth of the hallway, dressed and freshly shaved. “What’s wrong?”
Rinnah growled. “Eve doesn’t want to go to school today, so we’re late, of course.” She took a calming breath. “You’re ready early. Making a good impression on your first day?”
“No, Gene said he’d introduce me to the Commissioner if I came in a little early. I don’t know what today’ll be like. I’ll call if I’m running late.”
“Okay.” Rinnah never got tired of looking at Jake, even though he wasn’t classically handsome. He had great eyes. Everyone called him “nice-looking,” which Rinnah thought was much too little praise. “That suit looks so good on you.”
“Thanks. This hot babe helped me pick it out.” He smiled, closed the distance to her in two strides, wrapped an arm around her waist.
“Anyone I know?” She ran her fingertips over the smooth cotton of his sapphire-blue dress shirt. If she wasn’t late for work and Eve wasn’t tramping around, she’d love to take Jake right here, in the hall. She guessed from his reaction he wouldn’t mind. She’d been non-stop randy for the past six weeks, just like when she was pregnant the first time. Stocking up for when she got huge and sex became too uncomfortable.
Eve trudged around the corner, dragging her pink Hello Kitty backpack behind her and a rain cloud over her head. Rinnah sighed and kissed Jake. “Time to go. See you tonight.”
“Love you.” His face suddenly grew serious. “Hey. Be careful out there, okay?”
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