“Maybe it’s a good thing people are more aware of their surroundings, like I’ve become. Although I wish it wasn’t this way. I just never thought these things would happen here.”
“Still the safest place around. But that doesn’t mean you have to live in the middle of it. This is a nice neighborhood, and still you’re not immune.”
Night sounds from the city began to drain back into the background as Amy’s nerves began to chill. She checked her phone, expecting either an update from building security or from Zak. It was close to nine-thirty.
“So tell me what happened, exactly,” her dad asked finally. Over the next few minutes she told him about the man and her interaction with the police.
Eventually, she was talked out. The stress of the day had taken a toll on her body. “You’re staying over, right, Dad? That couch makes up.”
“I’ll be fine. I can sleep anywhere.”
“Except you’re going to sleep here, in my living room. And then I’ll make you coffee and breakfast in the morning. Maybe then you can check with some of your friends down at SFPD.”
“Not much I can do tonight. You should check with building security before you turn in, Amy,” Dobson added.
Amy did so, and was told no further incidences were recorded anywhere in the complex. She informed them she would not be holding the office open on Sunday and asked them if they’d heard from the building owners. They indicated they had not. She told them she’d been cooperating with police.
She left a message for the building management offices, who usually did not work weekends, informing them of the closed sales office.
After getting her dad situated with a blanket and pillow, she closed the door to her bedroom and climbed into bed. Her body ached. Laying her head against the pillow, she noticed her neck hurt, and her jaw felt like she’d been chewing down on something hard all day. Just before she closed her eyes, her phone beeped.
The monitor flashed a message:
‘Taking an early flight to SFO. See you tomorrow. Zak.’
She texted back a smilie face, then added a heart emoticon. She’d just fallen to sleep when she heard the ping of her phone again. Zak had sent a heart as well.
Chapter 11
Zak raced through the San Francisco terminal, down the escalators and out past the baggage claim. He hiked the black nylon duffel on his shoulders and exited to the taxi stand, got in line and gave directions to the cab coordinator. Checking the driver’s name badge swinging from the passenger window sunscreen, he noticed the gentleman’s name was Addis.
“Why you want to go back down there?” Addis said as his eyes wildly searched him over the top of the driver’s seat. “You hear about the news?”
“Yes. Is it still a mess there?”
“Oh, no. All quiet now. But I’ve been telling people to go someplace else. Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf. Some other place. Not there.”
“I’m meeting someone there.”
The cabbie grunted. He swerved into the fast lane and joined the slow ribbon of steel heading into the City, several charms and a necklace hooked over the rear view mirror, flapping in the breeze of his open window. He spoke on the radio in a dialect Zak didn’t understand.
He’d texted Amy that he’d landed and was on his way. It was past nine o’clock, much later than he’d expected. Now he was stuck in traffic.
“Plane was late. So much traffic,” he said to the cabbie.
Addis rolled his head and then barked back, “No! Worse earlier. This is much better. Always like this on the weekend except real early. Worse on the work days. Sunshine, clouds, shootings—everyone wants to come to San Francisco today. Nuts. All peoples are nuts.”
Zak was inclined to agree.
“So no word on the other shooter?”
Addis laughed. “He look like me!” He continued to chuckle, his eyes getting wide, giving a grin showing off all his stark white teeth. “But trust me, I don’t know the guy. From the pictures they have, I don’t know anything about him. Looks like one of thousands of peoples who live here.”
Zak watched the slowly moving landscape and other passengers in vehicles. This highway had the same numbers of Mercedes as the San Diego area had. Traffic was just as bad, too.
“They’re saying he was a terrorist,” Zak said.
“Who knows? Somebody unhoppy. All sorts of peoples unhoppy all the time. Too many.” After a pause, the cabbie looked in his rear view mirror at Zak. “You police man?”
“No.”
“What you do here?”
“I’m not part of the investigation. Here to visit a friend, that’s all. Visiting a—a—girlfriend.”
“Okay. Well, do her a favor and take her away from this place. No place for a woman here right now.”
Zak was dropped off at the front of the address Amy gave him, and he walked into the Building One lobby, after being buzzed inside by the guard behind the desk. He texted her that he had arrived.
“I’m here to see Amy Dobson. She’s expecting me.”
Before the guard could call up to her apartment, the back door opened, and Amy came running out. Her light brown hair was down, trailing after her. She wore faded blue jeans that hugged her impossibly thin hips, and an oversized white sweatshirt hung off one shoulder. Her fresh face sparked all kinds of good things, kicking his heart into gear as he felt adrenalin spread all over his body. Clearly, that familiar chemistry was there again. Big time.
He felt her crush into him, as his arms wrapped around her, squeezing and lifting her feet up off the floor. “So happy to see you’re okay, Amy,” he whispered.
“Thank you so much for coming, Zak.”
They parted and he could see from the redness in her eyes where she’d been crying. “You okay?”
She slipped her arm around his waist as she waved to the guards and then took him through the doors to the hallway leading to the elevators. “Dad came last night and spent the night on my couch. He’s down at the station right now, getting some information. Supposed to call me later on. I’ve just been here, waiting.”
The elevator doors opened. Zak drew her into his arms as the elevator rose. “You must have been scared to death. What did the police tell you last night?”
“Not much of anything. Just that I should be available to them if they catch the guy. I’m apparently one of the only ones to get a good look at him. That’s my artist sketch they’re putting all over the news.”
“Of course, you have to cooperate. I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”
Zak followed, holding Amy’s hand as she led him to her front door. When he stepped through the tall doorway, he was stunned to see the panoramic view coming from her sliding glass door to the outside. The San Francisco Bay, the water, the Bay Bridge and glittering buildings nearby looked like a picture perfect post card of everything beautiful about the city.
Amy walked up behind him, leaning into his back, wrapping her arms around his front. “You like?”
“My God, Amy. It’s unbelievable. What a view. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before.”
“Yeah. I thought it was special too.” She stood next to him, admiring the picture before them. She hadn’t let go of his hand.
“I don’t blame you,” he said, turning toward her. “This is you. This is perfect for you here.”
Her eyes smiled before her lips did. She stepped closer to him, putting her hands up to his neck as he laced his fingers at her lower back. “So good to see you again, Zak. Thank you so much for coming.”
“Of course. Thanks for—” His lips were over hers so fast he wasn’t able to finish. The traveling, the frantic phone call from last night, all his training and all the events of yesterday pushed back into the woods of his mind. It was as if they began right where they’d left off before all the drama. Before the paths they’d taken. The life they’d started separately suddenly seemed to merge into one.
He felt himself falling again down a slope he didn’t w
ant to recover from.
Amy’s cell phone went off. Then it rang a second time. Amy was still returning his kisses.
“Sweetheart. Might be your Dad. The police.” Zak separated them and smiled. He kissed her nose.
Amy ran to the phone. “Dad? What did you find out?”
Zak watched the slow long look she gave him, starting from his eyes, his chin and then his chest, down below his beltline, to his shoes and then slowly back up again. She angled her head in the opposite direction with a satisfied smile.
She was nodding. “So all that’s good, right?”
Zak walked to the sliding glass door and out on the deck. Sirens didn’t sound the same as they did in Sonoma County. They echoed and reverberated off the tall buildings. There was more traffic, and he was surprised to hear sounds of people talking as well as the sounds of the boats out on the water. A wind had picked up and was making whitecaps out on the blue bay.
“No, Dad. That’s not necessary. I’m okay. You go on back up to Santa Rosa. I’m sure you have a lot to do up there. I’m available by phone anytime. And I’m secure here for now.”
There was a pause. Zak could hear her father trying to work his way into coming over.
“Dad. Zak came up. He’s here.” She paused again. “Because I called him and asked him to. After I called you. He’s not staying long. I promise I’ll be safe.”
Some of the old stiffness returned to Zak’s back and shoulders. Dobson would be not happy with this development.
“No. This isn’t Zak inserting himself into my life. This is me asking for his help. This is my life, Dad. You do understand that, don’t you?”
He could tell Dobson was irritated. He heard a slight edge to Amy’s voice.
“No, Dad. My decision is final. He’s here, and he’s going to stay here for a day or two. That’s all. I’ll be in touch.” She sighed and added, “Yes, I’ll tell him.” Zak heard the phone shut off.
Amy joined him at last. She slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow and leaned against him. He was going to let her tell him the message from her father. It was her story to tell. Her life. Right now, Zak was feeling like a fifth wheel, second guessing his decision to come up to San Francisco.
“No real news. But Dad said to remind you of the request he made of you to leave me alone. He said you promised.”
“I did.”
“But that was before all of this. Before you went off to your training. Before a lot of things that have happened since.”
“Yup. He might be right, Amy.”
She turned toward him, leaning back to get a good view of his entire face. “You think so, Zak?”
Zak slowly focused on her eyes, her lips, remembering the vision of her standing on the deck in the late morning sunshine. The woman he saw was different in some way. Stronger. More determined. She waited for him to respond, didn’t cut him off. She talked to him. It didn’t feel like she was pushing herself at him anymore, while he was having to spend all his time resisting her. That had been their game all growing up. Now he wasn’t fighting her, he was fighting with himself.
“No. He’s not right, Amy. I don’t know what’s out there in the future, but being here, right now, seems pretty great to me. Seems like the place I need to be.”
The path to her bedroom seemed to take forever, but Zak wasn’t complaining. It was the first time he’d been with her in a place of her own. It wasn’t the front of his pickup or on a blanket on some golf course lawn somewhere or even at a friend’s place for a stolen hour or two.
Amy faced her bed, which was shaded in the long shadows of the morning, the sun having gone to the other side of the building. Zak was standing right behind her, his palms smoothing down the backsides of her thighs as she removed her sweatshirt and turned around in her bra. His fingers gently pushed the straps off her shoulders as he held her face under her jawline and placed a sweet kiss there. His lips found the place under her ear.
She unbuttoned his shirt slowly, placing fingers against his tanned flesh, kissing him as more of his chest was revealed to her. Slowly they finished disrobing. He let her first place the condom on him, and then they slipped under her cool sheets.
Zak kissed her chest, down to her belly button and then went lower, kissing her at the top of her sex. His intense gaze focused on his fingers, now massaging her labia, pushing a finger or two inside her opening, then his thumb as he looked up at her before he bent to kiss her there.
She arched at the touch of his tongue in such an intimate spot, at the feel of his probing fingers. Her lips began to swell and she felt her pulse quicken. The sounds of their limbs shifting over the cotton sheets punctuated by the sounds of his kisses sent her into euphoria. It was all real. She could hear the sounds of the boats and the fog horns, the traffic and the bells and chimes of the city as he tasted her, as she heard his soft groan and then watched as this muscled warrior traveled up to lay against her body. They fit so perfectly together.
It was like her dream every night, what it would feel like to have Zak here with her, making love to her in her own bed on a lazy Sunday morning, as if there wasn’t anything else in the world to worry about, to concern herself with. The feel of his muscled shoulders and arms was delicious as her hands smoothed up and down. The way his knees separated her thighs, pressing his groin to her core as she rose up, set her heart on fire. With her head forward, they kissed again. She would have said something, wanted to say something, but hesitated.
He spoke first. “Thank you for asking me to come to San Francisco. I wanted to see you. I should have called before—”
He rooted to find her opening as her fingers covered his mouth, and she kissed him again.
“Shhh. You’re here now. It’s perfect now, Zak. Truly perfect.”
“Yes,” was all he said as he slid inside her. He watched her face as she stared back at him through watery eyes. She closed her eyes and held her breath, feeling her breasts press against his chest as his cock filled her fully. He kissed her lids like he was begging her attention. Back and forth, their movements were long and unhurried. She studied his stubbled chin, the way his clear eyes washed her with passion, the hair falling over his forehead, the way the muscles in his back rippled as she felt the power of him.
Her body was falling in slow motion as they moved in time together. He brought her to her stomach. She placed a pillow under her abdomen as he mounted her from behind. She loved the feel of his heavy breathing at the sides of her face as he kissed her neck, elevated her hips with his hands and plunged in deep. She splayed her knees, needing more of him, not ever being able to get enough.
Slowly her orgasm built as they lay on their sides, her knee over his hip. She threw her head back as she exploded, shattering into spasms that shook her whole body. He held her hips with his hands until, side by side, she felt him pulse into her.
An hour later, they were still entangled together on the bed, hot sweat now dried. A cool breeze drifted from the living room door left open.
Chapter 12
Hassan shaved off most of his hair, but not his chin hair. The face that stared back at him from the cracked mirror did not look like the face on his passport. His parents even would not recognize him. If he were a woman, he could use makeup and trace his eyes, change their shape and wear something to color his lips. But this would have to do for now.
He’d hoped to receive confirmation a gift would be waiting for his parents in Aden, but nothing had come. He’d tried several numbers given to him, but no one was answering.
The news reports listed his younger brother’s picture which was undoubtedly going to lead to him, since the two shared a flat in East Oakland. He doubted the baker where they worked would reveal much, if anything. Besides, all of his contacts happened at the coffee house, not at his place of employment.
He’d cleaned up at the bus terminal, washing his hands and face in the restroom filled with sleepers. The place was not a stranger to bloody handprints either. He wetted
down his hair and put up his hoodie, making it over to the home of his friend, where he told him a fake story about how he’d been robbed and needed a place to crash for the night. He knew his friend worked late nights at a restaurant, so when he went to work, Hassan went on a search of things he could take with him. That’s when he discovered the clippers.
His friend didn’t have anything in his kitchen, except for a few pickled grains he could take. He knew he couldn’t trust the man. He didn’t own a television, but that wouldn’t stop him from seeing Hassan’s face plastered on TVs all over the city. He knew the ferries and busses had cameras, as well as some of the busy street corners. He was better off staying off the street until he could properly disguise himself.
Hassan’s cell rang. After their customary greeting the voice was terse and angry.
“You dimwit.”
“Did the money get sent?”
“No. You haven’t finished the job.”
“Sorry? The statement was made.”
“Yes. But you were seen. You’ll be caught.”
“No. I will take my own life first. First I want to be sure my parents got the money.”
“You must not be caught.”
“I vow I will not be caught alive. What must I do?”
“You have to eliminate the woman who saw you.”
“How do I do this?”
“You remember where you saw her. The newspaper says she worked at one of the building near the Ferry Terminal. You know it?”
“I—I don’t remember very well. I could retrace my steps. But wouldn’t that be risky? And the door was locked. How would I get inside the door of her office?”
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