Dark Time: Mortal Path (17 page)

Surprised by the quote from an English playwright, she finished it to conceal her reaction. “They may die of old age, but they die young.”

Their wineglasses clinked. She sipped the wine and found it to be an Italian Barbera. She raised her eyebrows and nodded at Jake in appreciation, still reeling from the impact of the quote he’d used. Those words seemed to hint at knowledge of an issue of prime importance: her mortality after centuries of being Ageless.

Was it accidental, or does he really know something? If accidental, why did he pick such a deeply
romantic…

She never finished the thought, because Jake took the wineglass from her and set both glasses on the coffee table. He moved closer, put his hand on her shoulder, gently turned her face to meet his, and lightly traced her lips with his fingers.

It was her move.

Off-ramp decision coming up. Ah, hell.

They moved together for a warm kiss that promised more than she was prepared to deliver. She would gladly have moved from sofa to bed with him, except for the toast he’d made.

This is no casual fling for him. He could be the one. I feel…

“I feel like dancing,” she said.

He pulled back and looked at her quizzically. She kept her face from revealing the turmoil of her thoughts and the flutter of something light in her chest.

Jake picked up his wine and took a long sip. He was changing gears, and that affirmed her impressions about him.

He’ll give me some time.

“Slow dance?” he asked.

56 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

“Sure. Let’s save the tango for another night.” She had an intense memory of dancing in a bar in Argentina a century ago, her body crammed against her lover’s, legs wrapping around his body—standing sex, he’d called it. She felt blood rushing to her cheeks, but Jake had turned away to put on music and didn’t see her blush.

“The Lady in Red” played softly and Jake took her in his arms. Maliha rested her head on his shoulder, his hand laid claim to her hip, and they danced in the open space in front of the fire. When the lyrics got to the whispered “I love you” at the end, Jake’s embrace tightened.

Her move, again.

Her body was beginning to melt against his, age quote be damned, when his cell phone rang.

“Shit. I have to get that.”

They pulled apart. Jake slid his phone from his pocket. As he listened, his expression changed from serious annoyance to concern. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll be there.”

He shrugged apologetically as he put away the phone. “I have to go. It’s a case I’m working on. I hate to ask, but could you turn off the stove and oven?”

She nodded. “No problem.”

“I’m really sorry about this.” He disappeared into the bedroom and came back quickly, pulling a jacket over his shirt, which was now adorned with a shoulder holster. The weapon was a strong signal that their evening was over.

He was at the door. Then he turned back and crossed the living room in a few strides, pulled her close, and kissed her.

She closed the door behind him, her emotions unsettled. She went into the kitchen and occupied herself with storing the beef stroganoff and other items in the refrigerator and cleaning the pans.

Busywork. She puzzled over what to do with the fire that was still blazing away in the fireplace. She couldn’t close the damper yet or the place would fill with smoke, so she pulled a heavy spark screen in front of the hearth that he’d pushed aside for better viewing. When everything passed inspection, she put her gift of marzipan on the counter with a note:
See you soon. Love, Maliha
. Impulsively, she kissed the paper lightly and left a faint trace of lipstick.

Okay, that’s too much. Get a grip.

She tore up the paper and wrote a new note:
For next time
.

Better—less personal. I really need to think about this.

She was about to leave when it occurred to her that this was the perfect opportunity to learn more about Jake. She’d studied her victims in depth as a demon’s assassin. Why not do the same for a man who might be “the one”?

Any woman would,
she told herself.
Well, maybe not, but I’m not any woman.

A pile of unopened mail on the kitchen counter beckoned.

Strolling casually, as if Jake were still in the room, she circled the kitchen until she reached the pile of mail, then carefully flipped each envelope using a table knife. There was nothing out of the ordinary until she came to a greeting card with his name and address in a delicate woman’s script. Eyes wide, thinking she’d found evidence of two-timing, she flipped the card over and sighed with relief. On the back was a girlish drawing of a birthday cake, with block letters underneath it that said, “Uncle Jake is old.”

He hadn’t mentioned having a niece, but she hadn’t asked about his family.

How do I explain
my
family? Three guys and a pregnant woman?

She headed down the hall to the bedroom, stopping at the bathroom along the way. It was tidy, with few things out on the vanity. A razor, a can of shaving cream, a few other boring items, like nail clippers.

She pulled open the medicine cabinet over the sink. A typical assortment, the Tylenol and Tums basics.

No prescription meds in evidence. There was a full bottle of men’s cologne shoved into the back, gathering dust. His niece had probably given it to him as a present, and he kept it around in case she asked about it.

No revelations in the linen closet.

Maliha left a half hour later, after finding that Jake favored polo shirts and blue jeans when not dressed for work, that he used down pillows, that he had a large and eclectic book collection, and that he had a locked gun safe built into the wall behind a print of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, not the usual bedroom artwork. She skipped his underwear drawer, figuring she’d find out the answer to the boxers-or-briefs question soon enough.

57 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

T
he lights in Kelly’s Pub were turned low. The man across from Maliha was a private investigator, and although Maliha knew his real name, he was always just Hound. He hunched over his beer and rarely lifted his chin to meet Maliha’s eyes. She assumed it was because of his disfigurement. He’d left half his face in Vietnam. The pink scars were in vivid contrast to his black skin.

She’d used Hound’s investigative services before. She trusted him implicitly, paid him very well, never questioned his methods, and was happy to share a beer with him anytime.

What he didn’t know was that Maliha had been there the day he almost lost his life in Vietnam, and she was content to keep it that way.

Hound downed the rest of his beer. He hadn’t said a thing yet. She slid a fat envelope full of hundred-dollar bills across the table to him.

“Good to work with you again.” His words were a little slurred as he shaped the sounds with half of his mouth frozen.

“Luis Fernando de Santos and Harold L. Borringer.” He handed her two envelopes. “You knew these stiffs?”

“No. Not personally.”

“I figured. You can read all that background shit yourself. I got only one thing that stirred my interest.” He leaned a little closer, and she did, too.

“Luis Fernando came up with a scheme for smuggling heroin inside laptop computers manufactured in India. The smack goes out of Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and into India. Indian companies manufacture and assemble the laptops. Bags of heroin are tucked inside. The laptop can be booted up to demonstrate that it works. Who cracks one of those things open to check for drugs? You wouldn’t think there would be room. Inside one, there isn’t room for much. Inside tens of thousands of laptops, the amounts are significant. My source says they take out the drugs at central warehouses and then sell the laptops. By now those little smack carriers are all over the country.”

“You’re saying Nando put all this together?”

“Hell, no. I said he had the idea. He might know his computers, but what he didn’t have was the connections in the drug trade to pull it off. I mean, he couldn’t score H on a Friday night on the West Side, much less set up a complex overseas operation.”

“Who, then?”

Hound shrugged, a disconcerting gesture in which one shoulder went up higher than the other.

“Damn if I know. I’m gonna keep at it, though.”

She went home with Hound, as she always did. As soon as the door to his place closed behind them, his hands were all over her.

“Wait, take it easy.” She pushed him away. One by one, she removed the weapons hidden on her body, and turned the process into a viewer’s delight. It was a strip tease done with blades and bullets.

“Jesus, woman, that was the sexiest disarming I’ve ever seen.”

“Your turn.”

Two guns and a switchblade knife later, Hound was clean.

Later, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Like always, she left before he woke up in the morning.

M
aliha spent hours studying Hound’s reports.

If Nando was in on it, maybe Hairy was, too. Two geeks trying to swim in the deep end of the
worldwide drug-trade pool without life preservers.

She decided to let Jake do a little drug investigating for her, and start the process of cutting off the drug importation at the same time.

Even if the smuggling is unrelated to the coders’ murders, there’s still some justice to be done.

Who better than Jake Stackman, intrepid fighter for the cause?

58 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

She called the Chicago office of the Drug Enforcement Administration and asked for Jake. Instead of the voice mail she expected, he picked up the call.

“Agent Jake Stackman. How may I help you?”

“Agent Stackman, how many years of experience do you have?”

There was a pause.

“Marsha? Is that you?”

“Pretend I’m somebody you don’t know. I’m calling up with an important drug-related tip, and I don’t want to trust it to just anybody. Convince me that you’re the one I should spill my guts to.”

“Is this a joke? Or something for one of your books?”

“No, and no. I’m serious here, Jake.”

They had a staring match over the phone. Jake blinked first.

“I joined the agency twelve years ago. I’ve been with the Chicago Division for eight years, starting with meth cases in downstate rural areas and then working Asian heroin trafficked by West Africans. I do some demand reduction work too, because I think it’s important to get the message out to schools and parents that drugs ruin lives. I’ve been in on a few major operations. Is that good enough?”

There was an edge to his voice that was both defensive and challenging.

“You can put your hackles down now. I know about a smuggling scheme and I wanted to make sure you were right for the case, which you are.”

“Kind of you. Details?”

“Heroin is being imported into the country inside laptop computers. Heroin from the Afghanistan crop goes into Pakistan, then to India. The computers are manufactured in India by a company named SkyDevice Enterprises. They come in through Miami—”

“Wait! Slow down.” She heard him rustling papers.

“They come in through Miami and are shipped by rail to a sorting warehouse somewhere in southern Illinois. I don’t know the exact location. The laptops are opened up and the heroin bags are stripped out, then the computers are sold online by noolaptops.com. Check out their Horizon Pro line, if you’re in the market for a new laptop, and don’t forget to ask for the free upgrade to express shipping. Don’t rush into it. There are bigger fish behind the first guy you find.”

“Holy shit. Who’s your source?”

Maliha hung up. Right about now, she figured, he was placing an order for a Horizon Pro at noolaptops.com. In a few days, the machine would be in a DEA lab undergoing testing for heroin residue.

She’d passed the torch and she was sure he’d run with it.

H
ound looked out from behind a tree at the clearing in front of him. His target was lying fifty feet away, out in the open, vulnerable. He’d heard the soldier shouting for help, but the shouts had faded as the man grew weaker. The guy in trouble was Rod, a nineteen-year-old from Indiana, who’d gotten his nickname from the erections that tented his blanket every morning. Rod had a girl back home, and he missed her mightily. Even in godforsaken Vietnam, the young man could imagine he was somewhere safe and she was in his arms.

Hound’s wife, Angel, and daughter Sarana had been killed by a drunk driver on the way to a birthday party. His imagination couldn’t compensate for that.

Rod was clutching his leg where a bomb fragment had torn an ugly hole. Blood wasn’t spurting, and the wound looked like it was on the outside of the thigh. It wasn’t the femoral artery, then, which could bleed out in a few minutes before a medic had a chance to reach the man.

Hound, God help him, had passed by those cases if there were other soldiers down with serious injuries that he stood a chance of saving. He could only do so much with two hands.

59 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

As Hound watched, the man’s hand slid down his thigh until it rested on the ground, as still as a fawn huddled in the grass.

Hound had to get out there. He couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t wait for cover, couldn’t wait for help. It had to be now, or Rod would never make it back to his Jolene.

Bullets flew over the clearing at chest height, like angry metal bees bent on vengeance and looking to sting somebody’s heart.

Hound slung his medical kit over his shoulder. He took a deep breath and tried to still the rising nausea he felt at the thought of leaving his place of relative safety. Before he could think too much about what he was doing, he dashed out into the clearing, keeping low, adrenaline powering his muscles.