“So where do you think we should go from here?” Lana knew the route she wanted Maureen to take, but waited to see if the cyber swallows would actually land in Capistrano for the MIT grad.
“You should give me the go-ahead to hack Tahir Hijazi.”
Conspicuous, indeed, thought Lana, who quickly gave her permission.
Lana’s own effort ranged far from both Steel Fist’s chat rooms and Tahir’s efforts to stir up hatred against her family. Assuming it was Tahir, which felt like an eminently reasonable supposition.
She was far too busy digging into deeper vaults where Tahir’s quietest secrets apparently hid. And if her work and Maureen’s converged, it would give Lana a chance to observe the young woman’s skills firsthand.
Lana settled at her workstation to return to her probe of Tahir’s background, which had confirmed his strong associations with Al Qaeda and the CIA and — by extension — the NSA.
Now let’s see just how many hands that Sudanese ex-pat is playing.
She paused over her use of gambling lingo, which sometimes could infect every other thought — a sure sign of the tumult she felt. Another appeared in the next instant when she checked her watch for the third time since talking to Maureen and saw that she had seven hours and forty-three minutes until the Gamblers Anonymous meeting.
Then four hours and thirty-seven minutes.
An hour and twelve minutes.
After her least productive day in memory, it was finally time to leave. Which meant that Tim Angier, the FBI’s second-shift agent after Robin, would learn that one of the nation’s top cyberwarriors was an addict.
Lana shrugged off the concern. With five million Americans enrolled in one twelve-step program or another, high-ranking members of the intelligence community were likely represented in significant numbers.
Still, the thought of the meeting made her nervous. The anonymity she sought was also the anonymity she feared.
Emma glared so fiercely at Don he felt as if she’d reduce him to ash if she could. He’d just told Em he didn’t want Sufyan and her going to the mall. The young man was standing by her side.
“It’s less than a mile away. I’m sick of being stuck in this house all day long. It’s like a prison.”
She sounded screechy, every word a drill bit to Don’s brain. Even Jojo’s upright ears were rotating like satellite dishes. So was his head as he followed the argument, as if he understood the words.
Don tried to keep his response soft. “Em,” he pleaded, “you saw the message from that madman. You know he’s got ten million racist followers. I’m not Superman—”
“That’s for sure,” she cut him off to say.
Breathe. “Which means I can’t protect you everywhere.”
“We don’t need you to. I’ve got this.” She pulled a blond wig out of her shoulder bag. “Nobody’s going to recognize me if you’re not ten feet behind me all the time. I’ll be fine.”
He sighed. “You really think that’s going to throw them off your scent?”
Long straight hair parted in the middle, it looked like it had been modeled on Gwen Stefani.
Or Stefani’s just been scalped, which Don felt would be more in the spirit of the times.
“And I’ll wear some shitty-looking shorts, totally out of style so nobody will recognize me.”
“And what’s Sufyan going to wear?” he asked patiently, wishing he hadn’t when Emma nudged her boyfriend and the young man whipped out an afro wig that he’d been holding behind his back. It looked like it had been lifted off the head of boxing promoter Don King.
Don couldn’t stifle a laugh. Bad move. Emma now glared so hard her eyes were slits.
“Look, you two won’t be going to a Halloween party for a few weeks. And in those get-ups you’re not going to fool anyone.”
“With sunglasses,” Emma protested, “I think we will.”
Interestingly enough, Sufyan hadn’t said a word. Don figured Tahir’s nephew wasn’t nearly so practiced at defiance.
“No, sorry.” Don shook his head.
“Let’s go,” Emma said to Sufyan, throwing her wig on hastily. The middle part ran at a diagonal across her own hair, which hung down and looked so bizarre it would have drawn more attention to her than the wig itself. “Put it on,” Em said to Sufyan.
The young man demurred, but scooted out the door to the garage right behind Emma.
Jojo looked back and forth, as though unsure of what to do. “Don’t look at me,” Don said to him. “I don’t know, either. But duty calls. Come.”
Don and the dog trailed the pair into the garage. The electronic door was rising. Emma fired up the Fusion. Sufyan was closing the passenger door. Em started backing up.
“Sit,” Don commanded Jojo.
He ran inside and grabbed the Glock from the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet, then bolted back into the garage, determined to try to keep them safe.
Em had closed the door.
He swore, raced to the panel and pressed the button to open it. Lana had ordered him a remote from the security company but it hadn’t arrived yet. Then he opened the door to his pickup, signaled Jojo into the cab, and backed out as daylight appeared behind him.
Emma was long gone.
Don backed onto the street fast, thankful that at least he knew their plans, unless… she wanted to dodge him completely at this point.
Swearing profusely, he gunned the old truck, which had more ponies under the hood than a lot of newer cars.
He tore through the neighborhood, watching crosswalks and corners for children, then turned onto a main boulevard to the mall, which soon loomed before him, a colossus of consumerism.
God knows what entrance they might have used.
Don turned into the first one, making a sweep of a parking area the size of FedEx Field. Lots of Fusions, but none was Emma’s. No cockamamie blond wigs or Don King lookalikes, either.
He circumnavigated the mall, which took almost forty minutes, acutely aware that his was a cursory search at best.
Don felt panic creeping up his spine. He trolled all the surrounding neighborhoods and mini-malls, even making a pass by Sufyan’s house. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Jojo sat beside him, looking back and forth from Don to the parking lot. Ninety minutes more passed by the time Don was done. Still no sign of them. He was frantic.
And then he heard the sirens.
Second-shift FBI agent Tim Angier hung back as Lana walked into a meeting room of the Hope Center in Bethesda, which hosted a number of twelve-step recovery fellowships. She’d briefed him in her office, pointing out that it was a closed meeting. “Addicts only. There won’t be any family or friends. And just so you know, nobody here knows about my addiction.”
“I understand,” he’d replied. “Am I going to have to say anything? Fake it?”
“Not at all. Some people don’t talk at all for their first few meetings. There’s no pressure to do that.”
About twenty gamblers were seated when she arrived. Only a handful were women. The meeting was to begin in three minutes. Lana helped herself to a cup of coffee, spurning the cookies.
Tim walked in a minute later, sitting at about two o’clock from her. Three other African Americans were also at the meeting. Asian Americans and Caucasians, including Latinos, formed the rest of the multicultural group.
Lana recognized seven regulars. One was the woman she’d sat next to at the last meeting. She avoided Lana’s eyes. Lana didn’t feel much like socializing, either; she wanted to get this monkey off her back. And if she couldn’t pry the tenacious beast loose, she wanted to sedate it somehow.