by Fiona Quinn
“But there’s a death certificate,” Brian pressed.
“That’s not the interesting thing. There was a 9-1-1 call from Sophia’s apartment on December 16th, 2013. It was Hunter’s mother saying her son had tried to kill himself. Guess what else happened December 16th?”
Thorn and Brian sent him blank stares.
“Chance Campbell was born. Per the birth certificate, Chance’s birth happened an hour before the 9-1-1 call. Sophia goes in to the hospital to have a baby, and Hunter is home trying to kill himself. Happy fucking birthday, right? The baby was born at thirty-three weeks and put in the NICU. Lots of hospital bills.”
Thorn threw himself back in his chair. “Holy crap, he killed himself.”
“No, he didn’t. At least not that day. He didn’t die until August 11th, 2014, at the hospital. The same hospital where his dad died fifteen minutes later, by the way. There’s something weird in that. All of that is to say, Hunter and Chance Campbell racked up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. Sophia is swimming in debt. A few select artifact sales might just put her back on solid financial footing.”
“Has she made any large payments? Is there any shift in her financials?” Brian asked.
“Small monthly payments to a collections agency. Also, she’s scheduled to be in court the second week in June. That’s as far as I got with my research.”
“Where’s Mama Campbell? Is Sophia living with her? It makes sense if she’s swimming in debt.” Brian thought about yesterday’s issues fetching Turner. Why wouldn’t the mother-in-law help?
“Her mother-in-law died on Chance’s birthday this year, December 16th. The second anniversary of her son’s attempted suicide.”
“From what?”
“Myocardial infarction. She was only forty-eight years old. Kind of strange. Just seems odd to me. I’ll keep digging.”
“It’s one hell of a story. Sophia’s twenty-six now?” Thorn asked.
“Yes, twenty-six. Nadia is thirty.”
“What do you have on Nadia?” Brian asked.
“She was quick and easy. PhD in 2012, she started working right away with AACP. She bought her house in 2014. She bought her car at the beginning of the year. She pays off her credit cards monthly. She likes to travel for long weekends to New York, Miami, Chicago. She has a 401k. She’s made conservative investments. Her financials all add up. Her mother and father live in upstate New York. Her sister, Lana, lives around the corner from both Nadia and Sophia. Lana is a stay-at-home mother to three young boys. Nadia’s squeaky clean. I can’t see how anyone would have leverage over her or her life.”
“Lana Dajani. We didn’t hear that name from the FBI.”
“Lana Taylor is her married name. I talked to Nadia about her sister,” Thorn said. “Lana is a homebody. She never wanted to go on digs with her father. She stayed back in the United States with their mother. She has a bachelor’s in English Literature. Her life revolves around her family and reading. There’s nothing in that direction.”
Brian examined the pen he was holding. “It seems kind of cut and dry. Sophia is a woman in crisis. But let’s not get tunnel vision. Evidence lies. Clues, like statistics, can be manipulated to show what we want them to show. If Sophia’s culpable of terrorist activities, I’ll be the first one to slap those cuffs on her wrists. But until we have a crystal-clear picture of who, what, where, and why, let’s stay away from assumptive thinking. The FBI believes that something happened in 2011 when the women were kidnapped. Why would that something affect one of the women and not both? Why would this be going on for nearly five years? And is it possible that there’s an unsub somewhere who hasn’t shown up yet?”
Chapter Eight
Sophia
Tuesday a.m.
As her minivan thumped over the bump at the top of her drive and Sophia steered her way down the steep hill, Brian came into view. He was sitting on her stoop, his long legs stretched comfortably out in front of him, resting back on his elbows. Sophia thought for sure he’d have given up and left by now.
She threw the gear into park and slowly pulled her keys from the ignition, stalling her walk of shame. She wore blue night shorts covered in leaping sheep. Her t-shirt read “Sweet dreams, I love ewe” and wasn’t made of a thick enough material to mask the fact that she’d left the house without a bra, or any underwear, for that matter. Her hair was mussed, her face sweaty. She was covered in grime and her thighs still had the bright red marks of yesterday’s burns.
As she moved up the sidewalk a grin spread across Brian’s face. “This is going to be a good story.”
“No, it’s not.” She rattled through her keys until she found the one for her front door and climbed past Brian to unlock it. “I apologize for being late.”
“That’s all right.” He followed her through the door, not offering to come back another time the way she wished he would. “I had some things I needed to think through. It was a good opportunity.”
Sophia moved from her office to the Florida room door, and over to her stack of tires. “Before I get sidetracked, I need to put one of these in my car.” Please go home, Brian. She reached up to maneuver the top tire off the stack.
Brian reached over and helped her out. “You had another flat?”
“Don’t sound so incredulous. I’m the queen of flat tires.” She gestured toward her pile. “The guy at the tire store felt so bad for me, he sold me a dozen at cost, so I could have them on hand.” She reached over to roll the tire out, but Brian held it in place. She shifted her gaze to his face where she thought she’d find amusement at the ridiculousness of her problem, instead she saw animosity. She didn’t know what to make of that. “I’ll admit, though, that I played the ‘single mom with two little kids’ card. I asked for a good customer discount.”
He turned toward the stack. “After this, there are only seven left.”
“Like I said, I’m the queen of flat tires.” She tried again to pry the tire away from him. He held it fast.
“Have you always been?” he asked.
Sophia stood upright and combed her fingers through her hair. “No, not always, just since I moved here last June, right after the car accident.”
He settled the tire against his leg and reached for her arm, turning it over. Sophia worked hard not to snatch it back.
He ran a finger over the long scars that ran down her inner arm. “Where did you get them?”
The gentleness and concern made her breath catch. Sent her already tenuous equilibrium spinning. She turned away from him to step into the office, forcing him to let go of her. “My mother-in-law was driving when we got t-boned.”
Brian hefted the tire over his arm and rested it on his shoulder as he made his way toward her car. “And that’s why you’re late today? You were on the side of the road, in your pajamas, changing your tire?”
“In a church parking lot. But yes.” Sophia hustled after him, pressing the key fob to make the hatch open.
“Do you always go out like that?” Brian had put the tire in place and was closing the back when his eye focused across the street.
Sophia followed his gaze to the upper window, where one of the Sheppards was staring at them. Sophia turned and headed toward the house. Yesterday she was in her nightshirt, today, sheep shorts. She wondered what the Sheppards thought of her.
Brian kept pace. “I want to talk to you about these tires. You being out like this on the side of the road is a safety hazard. I’ve been tasked with your security.”
“When I’m on a dig.” Sophia shut the door behind them and crossed her arms over her chest for modesty’s sake.
“I’ve been tasked with your security.” Brian’s blue eyes crackled with electricity. “Yesterday, the guys at Iniquus’s garage said there were construction bolts in the front and back tires.”
“I assumed. I don’t know how I find them. I’ve tried different tires, different routes, different times of day for driving. I seem to magnetize construction materia
ls to my car.”
“Only your car. Not Nadia’s, for example.”
“No, she’s never had a flat tire in her life.”
“You weren’t having flat tire issues when you lived at student housing. Then you moved here…”
“After the accident, I moved in to help my mother-in-law out. That month I had my first flat. Then once a month like clockwork I could cross ‘fix a flat’ off my to-do list. In the last few months, it’s just become obnoxious. Beyond obnoxious.”
Brian considered her for a long moment. “You look tired.”
The concern in his voice caught at her mask and tried to pry it loose. Sophia scraped her teeth over her lip.
“Is Chance okay? Is that why you’re in your pajamas?”
“Chance is doing better, the antibiotics are working, thank you.” Sophia tried to use a professional voice to build a wall between them. “I was up late working on a project, I got to bed after three, but then my house alarm went off an hour later, so it took some time to calm down. This morning I slept through my wake-up chimes. Lana, Nadia’s sister, is keeping my kids for me today. I thought I’d run them over and slip back in the house to shower and change, and leave a note for you to let yourself in.” She offered up a rueful smile. “So much for plans and good intentions.”
Brian’s muscles tightened, and his eyes grew keen. “Did the police come to check your property last night?”
“Oh no, the alarm isn’t attached to a service anymore. I ran up too high a bill with the police department.” She looked at the keypad on her wall. “And I’m not going to turn it on again. It wakes the boys up, and then they’re in a terrible mood the next day.”
“Wait. Hold up. Go back a step. Why are the police charging you?”
“When you have a false alarm, they come and check it for free. The second time, if nothing’s wrong they charge you fifty dollars. The third time it’s one-hundred dollars and so on. I was out of town this past January, and by the time I got home, I owed the police three-thousand-six-hundred and fifty dollars. Every night at 11:10 on the dot someone or something rattled my office door.”
“Something?” Brian’s brow furrowed. “It stopped?” He moved toward the back of the house. “Which door was it?”
“That door there.” Sophia stood to follow him, but remembered what she was wearing and kept her distance. “I let my alarm service go. I sometimes engage the system just to alert myself if someone is to try to get in. Maybe scare them away.”
He moved into the room and leaned his back against the wall. “Why did you have it on last night?”
“I got spooked. It felt like someone was out there watching my house, so I turned the alarm on in the hopes it would make me feel less vulnerable. I paid the price.” She moved toward the stairs. “If you’ll excuse me, it’s about time I got some clothes on.”
***
The quick shower did its job; she was human again. Sophia walked down the stairs just as Brian shut her front door. The look of sheer bewilderment he wore as he turned to face her was priceless. Sophia found herself grinning at him “Who was that?” she asked.
“Marla?” Brian scrubbed a hand over his closely cropped brown hair. “Does she own clothes besides the flesh-colored bikini?”
“Yeah, she usually only wears that one to garden at eight in the morning, and around five in the afternoon. In between, she’s usually dressed for the gym.”
“So, she’s in the garden as people leave for work and come home.”
“Yup, leaning over, fanny in the air, weeding her little heart out.”
“That’s insane.”
“I’d have to agree with you on that one.” Sophia made her way down the rest of the stairs. “She must have caught sight of you coming and going and wanted to check you out for herself. She wouldn’t have kept the bikini on for my sake. She collects male admirers as a hobby. What did she say she wanted?”
“She said she came over for a little sugar. I told her you were out.”
“That’s how she phrased it? ‘I came over for a little sugar’?” Sophia raised her hand. “Wait. Don’t answer that. Instead, tell me what’s on your agenda. Why did you need to come by this morning?”
“Since the AAPC computer systems are here, and they contain sensitive information, I need to go over your house from a security point of view. Your alarm system story has me concerned. While you were getting ready, I checked out your Florida room. There’s a stack of outdoor automatic lighting fixtures in there. I’d like to get those put in place.” He turned his tablet to show a gallery of pictures—one from each side of her house, with sketches of light placement and trajectories. “You have enough to cover your property three-sixty, and a couple extra that I could put in the trees nearest to your house.”
“Because people are climbing my trees?”
“Someone small could get near enough to your windows to see in. I’m not suggesting that’s ever happened. I was just trying to find a way to incorporate all the lights you bought.”
Sophia reached for the tablet and looked things over, like she knew what this all meant. She smiled and handed it back. “Thanks. I’m going to make myself a cup of tea and get to work, do you need anything?” The phone on her desk rang, and Sophia felt the blood drain from her face. Her breath caught. Brian’s gaze was hard on hers. By the fourth ring, she had the receiver in her hand. There were five staccato beeps then a dial tone. She picked up her keys and said, “Would you excuse me?” She didn’t even look Brian’s way as she jogged up the stairs to her bedroom.
Chapter Nine
Brian
Wednesday a.m.
Brian clanked the barbell back into place and sat up to take a swig from his jug of water. Titus moved his way and thumped him on the back. “I got hung up yesterday, so I missed you,” he said, sitting on the bench across from Brian. “We were working on locating Honey.”
“Any news?” Brian mopped the sweat from his forehead and leaned in so they could keep their conversation private. Rooster Honig, whose call sign was “Honey” was in Iraq working solo, which was normally against Iniquus policy. He’d been on loan to Strike Force operatives when a distress call had come in. One of their clients had an energy executive kidnapped while on a business trip. Honey was one of Iniquus’s best negotiators, and spoke fluent Arabic. He took off with a friendly, heading from Jalalabad to Kirkuk. Dagger was supposed to hook up with him. A two-man team, low and lean. But Dagger never made contact. The Panther Force operatives all had their go bags sitting by their front doors, ready to jump into action if the situation didn’t clear up.
“All personnel accounted for. The kidnapping victim is still in the wind, but Honey’s opened up a line of communication.”
Brian nodded. Their work was full of twists and turns. Danger. Violence. Adrenaline. It was where he belonged. His mind and body were built for this job. He felt lucky that as he transitioned from FAST—the Marine Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team—to a civilian job stateside, he could continue to serve America and put his specialized training to use. Having been deployed to that region, Brian knew just how bad things could get if Honey went incommunicado.
Titus glanced around the room before he said, “I noticed during Monday’s meeting that you and Dr. Abadi know each other. You didn’t bring that to my attention when I made the assignments.”
“I wasn’t aware at that time that she and I were acquainted. I never knew her last name. She introduced herself to me as Sophie.”
“When was this?”
“Her birthday, November of last year. We met at the bar in the hotel where I was staying during the New York mission. We talked into the wee hours of the morning. That’s the end of it.”
“Did that talk include having sex?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She was distressed when she saw you.”
“She was embarrassed. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone without a goodbye. Like I said, I didn’t know her last name. Had no clue
she was an archaeologist. I haven’t seen or spoken with her since.”
Titus gave him a hard stare. “Is it in the best interests of the case that I reassign that duty?”
Brian kept his posture neutral, his expression indifferent. “If that would make you more comfortable. I don’t have a problem with it one way or another.” But he did. The idea of someone else being in Sophia’s home, in her life, protecting her when it should be him, didn’t sit well.
Titus stood. “Let’s leave things as is for now. Let me know if any concerns come up.”
Brian moved toward the locker room to shower before his powwow in the war room. Protecting Sophia was only part of his job. Figuring out if she was a terrorist was the other. It was going to be one hell of a challenge. How could he both protect and try to expose Sophia at the same time? If the situation called for it, could he take her down? A picture of her lying on his bed, her long, black hair draped over the side as they laughed together the night of her birthday had him closing his eyes. It was the most amazing thing he’d ever experienced. If pressed to describe the sensation, he’d call it a religious awakening. It was a revelation that he could feel that perfectly connected to a person—a stranger, no less. In his mind, he’d thought it was the first night of a life of nights together. He couldn’t imagine ever being without her. Then he woke up and reached out for her, only to discover she was gone.
Even with all of Iniquus’s resources at his fingertips, he’d never been able to find her. When he saw her walk into that morning meeting, all those feelings rushed back to the surface. He had to come to grips with the idea that he’d fallen hard for someone who could very well be a terrorist sympathizer. Could he take her down? At his core, there was no question. To save his brothers and sisters in arms, to protect America, damned straight he could. He slammed his locker shut and headed to the Panther Force war room.
***
“I’ve been compiling information for you.” Nutsbe popped open his laptop and set it in front of Brian and Thorn. “The good news is that everyone’s surveillance is functioning. Brian, we may need to move to night vision on your outdoor cameras if things keep up the way they did last night.”