“Did Sufyan text you after they left?”
Emma nodded. “I’m picking him up for school just like always. He says his uncle can’t stop him from seeing me.”
“You can’t blame Tahir for being worried, not after what that family’s been through. And you can’t go the same way to school anymore.” Lana pulled out her phone: “Here’s the route that creep put up on the Web about you two.”
Emma studied the screen. “What the hell! That’s exactly how I go. How did he even know that?”
“That’s the shortest distance between those two points,” Lana said, hoping that Steel Fist had simply been guessing; the thought of neo-Nazis already tracking her daughter’s movements was too horrifying to consider. “But you’ve got to start changing how you go every day. It’s not hard to do. Look at this.”
She slid a map in front of Emma. Before going to bed, Lana had highlighted half a dozen different routes her daughter could take to and from school, which included stops for Sufyan; a small red dot designated his home. She’d also colluded with Don on another security measure.
Emma ran her finger along the yellow lines, shifting the map to read the street names.
“I figured you’d be doing the driving,” Lana said. Sufyan didn’t have a car.
Emma looked up. “Do you think those threats are going to become news?”
“I hope not, but the Post probably has someone monitoring the Steel Fist website. They did a piece about it a few weeks ago when he registered his ten millionth follower. Whether the paper will spread the word about you two, I can’t say. Let’s hope not.”
“Can’t you stop them?” Emma asked.
“No, I can’t. But I’ll talk to Deputy Director Holmes and see what can be done a little higher up the food chain, maybe get someone to nudge the publisher. We could make the argument that neither of you is even a legal adult yet.”
A point that usually made Emma bridle. Not today.
Don straggled into the kitchen, hair bunched to one side. His robe hung open, exposing his prison stripe pajamas. Emma had given them to him for Christmas as a gag gift, which Lana hadn’t known about until he opened his present. She’d held her breath when he took out the top, replete with a prison number — his birth date. But he was smiling and wore them most nights, joking that after years in prison they made him feel right at home.
He was the last of the clan to activate the espresso machine. “Everybody sleep okay?”
“No,” Emma and Lana answered at the same time.
“Me, either. I don’t think I really fell off till about four. You tell her about the dog?” he asked Lana.
“What dog?” Emma lowered her mug.
“We’re looking at getting a Malinois,” Lana said.
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“Remember the story about the Belgian military dog that was on the Osama bin Laden raid?” Don asked.
“Uh, no?”
“That was a Malinois. They’re like German shepherds but they have shorter hair.” Don pushed his own out of his face and grabbed his java. “They make excellent guard dogs.”
“Who’s going to train it?” Emma asked, clearly at odds with any thought of doing it herself.
“None of us. No time for that,” Don replied. “We’re going to have to buy one all ready for duty.”
“Is he going to be okay with me?”
“Of course, but the three of us are going to have to be trained to work with him.”
“You’re kidding,” Emma laughed. “We have to be trained for him? That’s classic.”
Emma opened the garage door and looked over her shoulder. Her Ford Fusion was two years old, white, and spotless. Her parents had insisted on a safe car. She’d wanted a sports car, an argument had ensued, and they’d won. But Emma liked the Ford, and it made her feel like an adult to drive to school and park it in the lot.
She backed out, looking for bad guys. That was how she thought of them, but she had a hard time figuring what they’d look like. Skinheads? She knew cool punk skinheads. And she doubted anyone trying to kill her would be that obvious.
What she didn’t see as she pulled away was her father, shotgun by his side, waiting down the street to follow her in his old Chevy pickup. By taking the pump action, Don was risking a fast return to prison for violating his parole guidelines. It had been fine for him to be armed on the high seas, but bad news for him to try that in Bethesda.
Emma turned into one of the town’s few modest neighborhoods and parked in front of Sufyan’s house, a small clapboard two-story, freshly painted by his uncle in a cheerful yellow hue with refrigerator-white trim. A red door provided a flash of bright color when Sufyan hurried out with his knapsack. His uncle stood in the doorway staring at the de- parting young man. He never lifted his eyes to include Emma. If he had, she would have waved. She wanted Tahir to warm up to her, but it felt like trying to melt a block of ice in a blizzard.
Sufyan slipped his solid frame into the front seat and dropped his pack to the floor. He smiled, but didn’t kiss her. He avoided that with Tahir always watching them until the car was no longer in sight. The man had piercing eyes, like he could see right through you.
So her first kiss of the day never came until they braked at a stop sign at the end of the street. But this morning Emma pulled a U-turn and headed back the way she’d come.
“Hey, where are you going?” Sufyan asked. “We’re going to be late.”
“We’ve got to change the way we come and go to school. Didn’t your uncle show that website to you?”
“No, but he tried to take me to school today.”
“And you told him no?”
“My mother told him to let me go with you, and then he pounded the table and walked away.”
Emma gave him the URL and waited while he looked up the Steel Fist website on his phone.
“I have six ways to come and go from my house to yours and school,” she told him. “My mom had that ready for us this morning.”
“I like your mom. She’s cool.”
“And my dad?” Emma asked.
“He scares me. I don’t think he really likes me seeing you.”
“He’s old school. Not about race,” she hastened to add. “With the religious stuff. Both my parents just don’t buy any of it.”
“I don’t see how people can’t believe in God,” Sufyan said. “Look at all this.” They were passing a city park near Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Flowers everywhere. “It’s so beautiful.”
Emma nodded. “Talk to him about it sometime. See what he says.”
“Did you say your evening prayers?” he asked.
She shook her head, unwilling to lie.
“Morning?”
“No, but I had a latté.” A non sequitur she hoped would make him laugh.
Sufyan suffered a smile. “Me, too.” He said nothing of his prayers, which he never missed. They were as important to him as breathing.
They finally came to a stoplight and kissed. Emma had put on lipstick before driving to his house especially for this moment. She loved his lips, his looks, everything about him. When he took to the court as a point guard, she always thought of Wesley Snipes in White Men Can’t Jump, an old movie her father had insisted she see when she showed the slightest interest in basketball. One look at Snipes had her thinking OMG, I want a guy just like him. She’d hardly noticed Woody Harrelson. Then she’d seen Sufyan playing summer ball at an outdoor court and felt a shortness of breath. Not long after she’d brought him round to meet her parents.
Sufyan had enrolled a few weeks before, having just moved to the district in June. He could shoot, drive to the hoop, spin in the air and pass behind his back. And he was deadly with three-pointers from any spot along the perimeter. The school was expected to move from also-rans to contenders this year. She was proud to hold his hand as they strolled onto campus.