He arrived at the school about ten minutes early to make sure he snagged a place across the street from the parking lot. He was sure a vehicle with a shotgun was verboten on campus.
It’s not legal out here, either, he reminded himself. Till you see that courier.
He discreetly pulled out his compact binoculars and scanned the lot for Emma’s white car. He found one in the third row from the street. Don couldn’t see the plate so he glassed the rest of the lot to make sure there weren’t two white ones.
He expected her to be moving along quickly because of choir, especially with Sufyan not around to lure her attention. She’d told her parents that he and the rest of the team were scheduled for pre-season physicals today. Don remembered them from his own playing days, squirming when he recalled the command “Cough, son.”
There she is. Emma was rushing toward her car. Then she turned; Don thought another student must have called to her. But it was Sufyan’s uncle Tahir, hurrying up to her. Grabbing her arm.
Don swore and threw open the old Chevy’s door. He locked it and sprinted across the street in seconds, dodging kids driving away from school as fast as they could.
“Let me go!” were the first words he heard as he moved within earshot.
Tahir looked up and saw Don running toward them. He let go of Emma’s arm. She backed away, rubbing a red mark above her wrist.
“What did I say about threatening my family?” Don stepped just within striking distance of Tahir, who was a couple of inches shorter than him and lighter. He told Emma to get in the car. “And lock up.”
Emma jumped behind the wheel.
“She didn’t listen when I told her to stay away from my nephew,” Tahir said. “She picked him up this morning.”
“I’m proud of her for that,” Don said, glancing quickly around them. “She’s not going to let you intimidate her.” Nobody was paying attention to the two adults. Satisfied, Don delivered a sharp blow to Tahir’s mid-section, expecting to fold him over, the best position, he’d learned, for talking sense into bullies. But to his astonishment, his fist felt as if it had struck a knight’s breastplate. Tahir didn’t even flinch.
“Don’t do that again,” the Sudanese said evenly.
Don had fought FARC guerillas and unscrupulous drug dealers in Colombia — the kind who’d tried to rip off honest pot pirates, as he’d viewed himself back then — but he’d never punched anyone that hard to no avail. “Next time I’ll take you down for good,” he said with measured calm. “I know what you survived. But you don’t know what I’ve done. She doesn’t even know.” Don nodded toward the car; Emma had started the engine. “If you think I’m going to let you hurt my kid, you’re dangerously mistaken.”
Tahir walked away unbowed. Don knew that as surely as he’d read the murderous anger on the man’s face. Don turned back to the car. Emma was gripping the wheel. She looked terrified. He realized that she and her boyfriend were caught between two veterans of violence.
As long as they’re not caught in the crossfire.
He slid into the Fusion’s passenger seat.
“You punched him.” Emma looked as if she’d been struck.
Don nodded. “He threatened you. I threatened him. We speak the same language.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Making sure you’re safe.”
She dropped her forehead to the steering wheel and started crying.
“Em, I’m sorry, but that guy—”
“He said he was going to kill me if I didn’t leave Sufyan alone. I’m not stalking him! He loves me.”
“I know. Tahir’s got to know that, too. But it’s not just him I’m worried about. We’ve got those neo-Nazis, too.”
“I know.” She sat back and wiped her eyes. “I feel like I’ve got a big bullseye on my butt.” A smile creased her lips.
Don was glad to see the levity. It showed that his daughter hadn’t lost her grit.
“You might as well go with me in this car to choir,” Emma said, “since you really are a stalker.”
Don’s turn to smile. “Do you want me to drive? I have two quick stops.”
“No, I can drive. Where? They’ve really got to be quick.”
The first was at his truck; he couldn’t leave his weapon in the cab in front of a high school, of all places. He rested it between the two front seats.
“So you’re actually riding shotgun?” Emma said, resting her hand on the barrel.
“Looks like it.”
The second stop came at Waverly Street and the highway, where the courier was waiting. He handed Don a padded envelope. Don signed for it, knowing from the weight that more than a gun license was sealed inside.
He climbed back into the car and pulled out a Glock G30S semi-automatic. He checked the magazine: packed with .45s ready to pop. A spare had also been included in the envelope. Lana really did have clout with a capital C these days.
“Jesus, Dad. Things have sure changed since you got back.” She didn’t sound so approving now. Sometimes reality set in slowly.
“I didn’t bring any trouble with me, Em. I’m just here to make sure none of it sticks to us.”
“Can you really do that?”
He nodded. So did she. She believed him. Trust was a good place to start. It meant she’d probably listen to him if things got bad.
Emma merged back into traffic, heading toward the city.
“We’ll get an injunction against Tahir,” Don said.
“An injunction? Are you kidding?”
Emma was right: a court order would never stop him.
“We’ll have him arrested.”
“Don’t!” She turned to him. “Then he’ll be deported.”
“Watch the road.”
“He told me he’d take Sufyan back to Khartoum if I kept seeing him. It’s like Mom says — caught between a rock and a hard place.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
Don glanced down at the Glock, wondering if the best solution lay on his lap.
Son-of-a-bitch might have a hard body but he’s not made of Kevlar.
Lana pulled up to CyberFortress with Robin right behind her in his broad-bodied Charger. He hurried ahead to get the door, which she didn’t mind because she had both her shoulder and laptop bags in tow.
His eyes roved over everything in sight but her, and she realized that getting the door gave him an opportunity to scan behind them without drawing attention to what he was doing. An important skill when a man with ten million hateful subscribers was calling for her death and the murder of her daughter and Sufyan.
She brushed past the FBI agent wondering Why Robin? Of all the possible agents? What were the odds? Worse than craps. But she’d have to grant Robin this much: he’d taken her mind off gambling with cards or dice, perhaps because her strongest impulse right now was to gamble with her heart.
Lana had never told a soul about him. At times she’d wished she had a close friend to confide in, but she didn’t. And her work had trained her long ago not to talk, not to give away much of anything to the everyday world of her fellow citizens. Maybe that was why she’d given everything but her heart during those steamy hours with Robin.
She waved Jeff Jensen and Galina Bortnik out of the war room to introduce them to Robin. Galina gave him a big smile, which Robin didn’t appear to notice.
“I need to talk to them privately,” she said to him.
“I’ll park myself outside,” he replied equably.
Once settled with Jeff and Galina in her office, Lana asked for an update on the ISIS men in Louisiana. “The last I heard, they were being transported to Camp Blanding by an army detachment.”