Sam’s eyes opened. “Holy fuck,” he said.
“What?”
“Sarasota,” he said, struggling to sit up. He reached along the seat to take it out of its reclined position and ended up smacking himself on the back as it sprang forward. “Ow! Fuck! Mary Lou went back to Sarasota.”
Alyssa shook her head. “Why would she do that?”
“Hide where they’ve already searched—I told her that once. We were talking about some movie or some book that she’d read, and I told her if I was the fugitive or public enemy number one or whoever we were talking about, I’d end up back where I’d started. I said, then when everyone’s looking for me in Alaska—”
Mary Lou had told her mother that she was going to Alaska. “Did you really say Alaska?”
“Yeah. Because that’s what this was about. I remember now—it was a book she was reading about some guy who went to Anchorage because the mob was after him, and I was like, unless he changes his habits along with his appearance, the mob’s going to find him in Anchorage. I mean, sure, he can go out on the tundra and live in a house that’s five hundred miles from his nearest neighbors, but the reason the mob won’t find him isn’t because he’s isolated. It’s because his isolation keeps him from doing the things that’ll allow the mob to catch him. Stealing cars or gambling or fencing hot TVs. When it’s just him and the moose, and the moose don’t particularly want a great deal on a TV set . . . "
“I told her if this stupid ass guy in this book really wanted to get lost, he could get lost just as easily back where he started, in Newark, New Jersey. He just had to hang with a new crowd and stay away from the strip clubs and stop fencing TVs. No gambling, no prostitutes, no strippers, no drugs—he had to cut his ties with all those fun things the mob has its fingers in. He could live two streets down from the mob boss, but if he joined the church choir and volunteered at the old folks’ home and really changed his habits completely—you know, along with his appearance—he’d be invisible. And if he left a bunch of clues out there that he was heading for Alaska, he would be even more invisible. Because everyone on the mob’s payroll has already looked for him in New Jersey. They figure he’s long gone, so they’re waiting for him to show in Alaska, when in reality, where is he? Back in Newark.” Sam shook his head. “That’s what I told her. I had no idea she was actually listening. She usually didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”
“So where did Mary Lou go?” Alyssa asked. “Is Sarasota back where she started? Or San Diego?”
Sam was silent, staring out the window, wincing slightly as he repositioned the can of soda.
She knew he was thinking about that conversation he’d had with his next door neighbor—Don DaCosta, the mentally challenged man who saw “aliens” hanging out around Sam’s house. DaCosta had been questioned—gently, per Sam’s specific request—by agents who were still staking out the neighborhood and keeping an eye on both his and Sam’s houses. DaCosta couldn’t remember the name of the dark-skinned man he’d called the “flower guy.” The man he’d referred to as Mary Lou’s friend. How close had Mary Lou and this “friend” of hers been?
“I think she’d go to San Diego if she could,” Sam said, glancing over at Alyssa. “But I don’t think she had the money. Knowing how much she got for her car and knowing that she paid cash when she stayed at the Sunset Motel . . . I don’t think she could make it as far as California. I think she and Haley are in Sarasota.”
Alyssa nodded. “Then Sarasota is where we’ll start.”
“This is one freaking long shot,” Sam said.
“We have to start somewhere,” she told him.
He was quiet as she took the entrance ramp to 75 south. In fact, he was quiet for so long that when she glanced over at him, she expected to find him asleep.
Instead, he was watching her with those intensely blue eyes, his hair still slicked back from his face in that style Alyssa would forever associate with raw, screaming sex.
“I wish we had more than forty-eight hours,” he said quietly, and she knew he wasn’t just talking about the time they had left to find Mary Lou and Haley.
It was best to be honest, best not to leave him hoping for something that she’d be crazy to let happen.
“I’m doing this to help you find Haley,” she told him. “As far as you and I are concerned, I’m still feeling like we’ve been there, done that.”
“I hear you,” he said, but she knew he didn’t believe her.
And when he looked at her like that, with his heart in his eyes, she wasn’t sure she believed herself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Jules Cassidy to see you, sir.”
Max sighed and leaned forward to push the button on his intercom. “Send him in, Laronda.”
The team had returned from Gainesville, pissed as hell that Sam Starrett had slipped through their fingers. Max was betting that they’d drawn straws to decide who would come and confront him—and lay the blame for this goatfuck squarely on his desk. Which was exactly where it belonged.
Jules Cassidy opened the door and came in, a modern-day Oliver Twist. Please, sir, may I have some more? Interestingly, there was no sign of recrimination or even anger in his eyes. Just cool curiosity.
Max looked at him over the top of his reading glasses. It was a “this better be good” look, and since they both knew damn well that it wasn’t good, that Jules had no business coming in here in the first place, the kid should have been shitting bricks.
But Jules gazed back at him, pretending to be unperturbed. “May I sit?”
“No. Whatever this is, it’s not going to take long enough for you to sit.”
Jules actually laughed. “I really have to learn to do that,” he said. “That icy stare thing. It’s very effective.”
“I’m busy,” Max said tersely. “If you have some kind of complaint—”
“I’m not here to complain, sir,” Jules cut him off. “I just wanted to make sure that today’s little exercise went down the way you planned.”
Max kept his face expressionless. The office was filled with angry people who were sure that his interference had created a giant snafu. And yet somehow Jules Cassidy, a man most people didn’t want working for them because—horrors!—he was gay, had figured it all out.
“So what was it?” Jules asked. “The committee from Politicians R Us breathing down your neck? This way you could tell the senators and congressmen, ‘Well, we almost had Starrett. Unfortunately, he got away. But see how hard we’re trying?’ This way Alyssa finds him and gives him those forty-eight hours you promised, without you getting reamed for it.
“What I’d like to know,” he continued, “is how you knew Alyssa was going to position herself outside of the doughnut shop, when she didn’t even let anyone on the team there in Gainesville know. I’d also like to know if she’s called in yet. She vanished right after we found out we had the wrong man. I can only assume she’s with Sam right now.”
Max nodded as he took off his glasses and tossed them down on his desk. “So what do you want, Cassidy? A promotion for being so smart?”
Surprise, and then something very like hurt, flashed in the younger man’s eyes. “That’s not why I’m here. Sir.”
“I know. Sit down,” Max said more gently than he’d ever spoken to Jules before, trying to make up for being such a bastard.
As he watched, Jules sat on the edge of a chair. This kid was the real deal. He was not only smart, he was also extremely loyal. And Max really had to stop thinking of him as a kid. He only looked ridiculously young. In truth Jules was rapidly approaching thirty.
“You’re worried about your partner,” Max said. He sighed. “Well, I’m worried about her, too. She hasn’t called in. I don’t know if she’s thinking clearly enough to piece it together the way you did. I may have made her so angry at me that . . .”
He could see the words he’d left unspoken in Jules’s eyes. That I’ve lost her forever. But, Christ, maybe that was part of his pl
an, too. Maybe he had some subconscious desire to push Alyssa away. He thought of Gina, sleeping in his arms last night. . . .
“If Alyssa calls me,” Jules said, leaning forward in his seat, “I’ll tell her—”
Max shook his head. “No. Not over her cell phone. Someone might start monitoring that. I don’t want word to get out—in fact this conversation doesn’t leave this room.”
“Of course, sir.”
“But you have my permission to give her whatever information she asks for. Don’t ask her if she’s with Starrett, though. And don’t let her tell you, either. Keep her from saying it. You and I aren’t going to know anything about that, all right? As far as we’re concerned, she’s on her own, following a lead.”
Jules nodded. “Yes, sir. Don’t ask, don’t tell. I’m familiar with the concept.”
Max forced a smile. “But if you do see her in person, go wild in my defense, would you?”
“I don’t think I’m going to see her. At least not for forty-eight hours.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “I don’t think so either.”
Jules got to his feet. “How did you know what she was going to do? You know, put me in the doughnut shop in her place, with one of her scarves on my head?”
“I didn’t know. But when you headed toward Gainesville . . .” Max smiled. “I trusted she had something good up her sleeve.”
Jules nodded. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, sir.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “Oh, and Jules?”
Cassidy stopped, his hand on the doorknob.
Max cleared his throat and picked up his glasses. “Gina Vitagliano’s apparently checked out of her motel room. Did she, uh, give you any idea where she was going?”
“No, sir. But there are dozens of other little places to stay right there on the beach.”
“Yeah, I’m aware of that,” Max said. There were 155, to be exact.
“The info came in, you know, regarding her trip overseas,” Jules told him. “Did that cross your desk yet?”
Ah, Christ. “No,” Max said. “What have you heard?”
Jules made a cringing face. “Oh, sweetie, you’re going to hate this, but Gina’s going to Africa. I believe her final destination is Kenya.”
Max kept a whole string of expletives from escaping by closing his mouth and gritting his teeth. But somewhere in his brain, a vein definitely popped. Kenya.
“What I really hate,” Max somehow managed to say without sounding apoplectic, “is you calling me sweetie.”
Jules actually blushed as he went out the door. “Sorry, sir.”
Sam was driving even though his balls still ached. There was no doubt about it, he was going to be feeling Alyssa’s mighty wrath for days, if not weeks, to come.
Every time he caught a glimpse of the scrapes and bruising on her wrist from the handcuffs, his queasiness returned. He suspected those weren’t the only bruises he’d given her, because God knows he was feeling pretty tender in various places himself.
Every time he’d tried to bring it up, to talk about it, to apologize again, she’d shrugged it off. Forget it, it’s over.
But it was kind of hard to forget, considering that she wouldn’t have a single mark on her if he’d only trusted her. She was talking to Jules on the phone, making notes on a pad on her lap.
The stretch of road they were on was straight, so Sam took his eyes off it to glance down and read what she’d written.
Publix supermarket, she’d scribbled, along with an address, and a date—May 24th—and Mary Lou never shows up for work, no phone call, never returns.
So they knew where Mary Lou had worked. It was worth going over there, talking to her coworkers, as well as checking the Alcoholics Anonymous blue book to see where the meetings were in that area—meetings Mary Lou had gone to on a nightly basis in San Diego. They could try to figure out which meetings were close to her Sarasota home, too. Or—better yet—which meetings were close to the house that she and Janine had shared with Clyde. The two addresses weren’t so far apart that Mary Lou would necessarily want to change meeting locations after a move.
The AA meetings were support groups. Drunks who didn’t want to drink, leaning on each other. It seemed like a shaky way to rebuild a life, but it really could work. It had for Sam’s mother.
“Uh-huh,” Alyssa said to Jules, as she wrote down what looked like a name. Ihbraham Rahman, a dash and then the words gardener, also currently AWOL.
Hoo-yah! That had to be the name of Donny DaCosta’s so-called flower guy. The man Mary Lou was probably screwing on the side. Except, maybe it couldn’t really be called on the side, since by the end of their marriage, Sam hadn’t been sleeping with her at all. She was just living in his house, using his last name, taking care of his daughter, and probably getting it on with the neighborhood gardener.
Except there was something really wrong with this picture.
Ihbraham Rahman was an Arab-American with very dark skin.
And Mary Lou was a racist—something Sam hadn’t found out until months after they were married. She wasn’t a vicious racist, the way his father had been. And she probably would have been offended if someone had called her a racist to her face. She never used obviously derogatory words—she would never dream of it. But she had a real “us” and “them” attitude that only worked to perpetuate the racial divide. Instead of trying to find similarities between different races and cultures—a philosophy that Walt and Dot had preached at Sam and Noah endlessly—Mary Lou focused on differences.
No, no matter how Sam tried to view the situation, he just couldn’t see Mary Lou hooking up with a man who wasn’t Wonder Bread white. Unless she’d somehow had her eyes opened, had her archaic way of thinking overhauled . . .
Yeah, and maybe she’d also learned to fly by flapping her arms.
He glanced down Alyssa’s pad.
Kelly Paoletti, she had written, knew Rahman, too.
Holy shit. Wasn’t that one hell of a coincidence? Except for the fact that Sam didn’t believe in coincidences. It was a variation on Occam’s Razor. If you’re looking for a terrorist, and you’ve got a likely suspect, chances are he’s the terrorist you’re looking for.
Maybe he was wrong about Mary Lou and this Rahman. But no. He just couldn’t see it. It was possible that Rahman had a light-skinned associate, though, that Mary Lou was involved with. And of course, there was always Donny’s blond alien.
“So Rahman’s already been investigated—six months ago, while he was in the hospital with a head injury—and he’s believed not to be connected,” Alyssa said to Jules, obviously for Sam’s benefit. Wasn’t that interesting? She paused, listening. “So let me get this straight. We have a guy—Rahman—who gets his skull fractured during the Coronado assassination attempt. We’ve placed him there, in the crowd at the Navy base, during the terrorist attack, but he’s not connected?”
She paused. “No . . . No, wait, let me finish with Rahman first. So as of just a few days ago he allegedly comes knocking on Starrett’s door, possibly looking for Mary Lou—this coming from a neighbor who’s mentally challenged, who also gives us reports of some light-haired man, his alien, who’s following Rahman. Okay, yeah, you’re right, if Rahman’s part of the terrorist cell behind the Coronado attack, he’s probably not going to march right up to the front door of Mary Lou’s house and ring the bell. But still . . . Her prints are on that weapon. They got there somehow.” Pause. “So Rahman’s being checked out again, except now he’s vanished.” She shot Sam a hard look. “And vanishing when the authorities want to ask questions never looks good.”
Yeah, yeah. Point taken.
“So Tom Paoletti’s wife—”
“She’s not his wife,” Sam whispered, and got another sharp look from Alyssa. No talking while she was on the phone with Jules.
“So Kelly Ashton, who just married Tom Paoletti—” she said.
No kidding. Kelly finally married the commander. About freaking time.
Yeah, that, along with work, about summed it up as far as what Sam knew about Mary Lou’s activities outside of the house. There were no meetings supporting extremist Islamic jihad on the FBI’s list, either.
Of course it was entirely likely that the terrorist fucking had been an in-house activity.
“Okay, let me know if anything more comes up on Rahman,” Alyssa continued. “So tell me now about this thing that just came in.” She listened for a moment, but then froze, pen above paper. “Oh, dear God . . .”
“What?” Sam asked. Her tone was enough to strike terror in his heart. His biggest fear was that the FBI investigation would uncover Mary Lou’s and Haley’s bodies.
Alyssa glanced at him as she shook her head. Yeah, he knew. He was supposed to stay quiet so Jules wouldn’t know they were together. But come on . . .
“How long were they in there?” she asked.
They wasn’t a good word.
Frustration and exasperation rang in her voice. “Well, what’s their guess? They do know how to guess?” She listened, then, “Shit.”
It was a quiet shit. A very, very bad news shit. As if the look on her face wasn’t enough of a clue that whatever Jules was telling her was really going to hurt. Sam had a strong feeling that crushed balls had nothing on the pain that was coming.
“Please,” she said. “Keep me updated. Anything that comes in. No matter how little.” Pause. “Thanks, Jules.”
“Tell me,” Sam ordered as she hung up her phone.
“It’s not conclusive,” she said. “There’s been no positive ID.”
Oh, no . . .
Alyssa actually touched him, her hand on his arm. “Maybe you should pull over.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah.” The nearest exit wasn’t for another six miles, so he just pulled to the right on to the shoulder of the highway.
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