Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (4 page)

Finally, he ran out of patience and shot me an exasperated look. “Aren’t you done
yet?”

Snap.

“This is the one,” I said, holding out the phone.

Nick took a look and frowned. “I look grumpy.”

“No, you don’t,” I lied. “You look dark and dangerous. That’s what women like.”

He took another look at the photo, his expression skeptical. “If you say so.”

Lu poked her head in the door. “Y’all having a party in here or what?”

“Nick and Josh are signing up for an online dating service,” I said, standing from
my seat. “They needed a female opinion on their profiles.”

Lu crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Uncle Sam doesn’t pay you boys to chase
skirts,” she snapped at Nick and Josh. “He pays you to hunt down tax evaders and squeeze
’em dry.”

“Speaking of dry,” Nick said, motioning the Lobo into his office, “you’ve been in
a dry spell for too long, Lu. Your husband’s been dead for, what, ten years? It’s
time for you to get back in the game. Let’s get you signed up, too.”

Lu’s face flashed surprise. “Me?” She blinked her false lashes. “Really?”

“Sure,” Nick said. “There’s men of all ages on here looking for love. A woman as hot
as you? Heck, you’d have to beat them off with a stick.”

Lu’s bright-orange lips fought a smile. “You’re as full of crap as the bull pen at
the rodeo,” she said. “But God bless you for it.” She shooed me out of the way and
plunked her plump butt down in the chair I’d just vacated. “Okay, boys, how does this
online dating thing work?”

chapter three

The Wheels on the Bus Don’t Always Go Round and Round

At home that evening, I ignored the dirty laundry spilling out of my hamper and sat
down on my couch to watch some television and take a fresh look at the information
on the terrorist case.

A half hour later I closed the file Lu had given me and shut my eyes, shaking my head
as if I could dislodge the horrifying images in my brain. The file had been compiled
by the CIA and Homeland Security and contained a number of photos depicting the aftermath
of terror plots. Homes destroyed, the families’ personal belongings strewn about.
Bodies covered with blood-soaked blankets and lined up on the ground, awaiting identification
and burial by grief-stricken relatives. A yellow school bus, the bright color at odds
with the gaping hole in its side and the tattered young bodies being pulled from the
wreckage.

The worst thing I’d faced in elementary school was an oversized bully intent on robbing
me of my lunch money. I hadn’t considered myself lucky when my arm had been pulled
up painfully behind me, but everything’s relative, isn’t it? I’d take a bully over
a roadside bomb any day.

I’d faced some scary people in the few months I’d worked for the IRS, but none quite
as heartless, as ruthless,
as soulless
as these terrorists.

They had to be stopped.

And the way to stop them was by cutting off their money supply.

Agents at the CIA and Homeland Security knew that money had been sent from the United
States to fund terror cells in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. After receiving
tips from undercover agents overseas, they were able to identify some of the financiers.
Several lived right here in Dallas and had been arrested after weeks of careful surveillance.
E-mails and text messages found on the computers and cell phones of the men linked
them to terror cells in Syria.

Unfortunately, the men had been far more cautious about covering their financial tracks.
Despite their best efforts, the agents had been unable to track down the money trail
and determine how the men had managed to move the funds.

Someone had helped them do it. Someone with the ability to transfer large sums of
money undetected.

That’s where Eddie and I came in.

As special agents for the Internal Revenue Service, we were among the best-trained
financial sleuths in the country. We could trace an extensive series of payments and
money transfers back to the original source. We could find assets hidden under multiple
layers of corporations, partnerships, and complex trusts. We were financial bloodhounds,
able to sniff out even a single copper penny.

Given our mad money skills, we had been solicited to assist the other agencies in
finding the financiers’ resources and staunching the flow of funds. Unfortunately,
none of the information in the file gave me a clue as to how these men were funneling
their money out of the United States and into the hands of their coconspirators. Eddie
and I had an appointment tomorrow to meet with a CIA operative and a Homeland Security
financial specialist. We hoped they would be able to provide us with more documentation
and information that would lead us to the money trail.

My skinny, cream-colored cat, Anne, trotted after me as I went to my kitchen, removed
a glass pitcher of homemade peach sangria from the top shelf of my refrigerator, and
poured myself a full glass over ice. Nick’s mother had given me the sangria recipe.
I’d modified it slightly, adding two or three spiced peaches to the other fresh fruit
in the mix. Brett had brought me a dozen jars of the peaches when he’d returned after
a monthlong project at a country club in Atlanta. The club’s chef had prepared them
and they were, well, absolutely peachy. Apparently all the food at the club had been
superb. Weeks later, Brett still blathered on about the wonderful meals he’d enjoyed
there.

Thinking of Brett caused a flood of guilt to flow through me. He’d be blindsided tomorrow
when I told him I wanted to put the brakes on our relationship, at least temporarily.
For all I knew, once Nick and I started dating we might realize we weren’t right for
each other after all. If that happened, I could only hope Brett would be willing to
give things a second chance. If not, well, I’d end up alone again, back at square
one. Hell, maybe I’d be the next one signing up for the Big D Dating Service.

I gulped down the glass of fruity wine and poured myself another, hoping if I drank
enough it would wash away the horrible, tragic images burned into my mind and the
guilt gnawing at my insides. But I feared there wasn’t enough sangria in the world
to make me feel better.

*   *   *

“Ready?” asked Eddie from the doorway of my office the next morning at eleven. Eddie
held his briefcase in his left hand, his gray suit jacket slung over his right shoulder.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I took a deep breath to steady myself, shoved the file and
a legal pad into my briefcase, and grabbed my purse from the bottom drawer of my desk.

Although we’d been granted a brief reprieve in the terrorism case when one of the
men who’d been arrested had agreed to talk in return for leniency, the lawyers hadn’t
worked out the details fast enough and word spread through the jailhouse grapevine
that the man was going to spill the beans. His tongue had been promptly cut out, presumably
by one of his coconspirators. Needless to say, his offer to talk was no longer on
the table. We’d have to hunt down the clues ourselves.

My head throbbed as I followed Eddie down the hall to the elevators. In retrospect,
three glasses of sangria last night might have been a bad idea. Not only did I have
a headache now, but I’d had to get up twice during the night to pee. On the bright
side, though, I’d received my recommended daily allowance of vitamin C.

We exited the building and walked in silence the few blocks to the Homeland Security
field office on Main. Eddie had obviously found the information and photos in the
file as disturbing as I had, perhaps even more so. His young daughters normally rode
a bus to school, but I had a sneaking suspicion he’d driven them to school that morning
himself.

We made our way through the security line on the first floor, took the stairs up one
flight, and continued down the hall, checking the nameplates on the doors. We found
the name we were looking for on the third door on the left.

Chung Wang.

Eddie rapped twice on the door, opening it when a male voice from within called out,
inviting us to enter.

The office was small, white, and windowless, lit by a rectangular fluorescent fixture
on the ceiling. The walls were lined with gray filing cabinets, which, judging from
the stacks of files on top of them, were insufficient to hold Wang’s workload. He
stood from his seat behind his desk and extended his hand over yet another pile of
files on his desk.

“Special Agent Tara Holloway,” I said, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.

Wang had the typical Chinese build, slightly shorter than average, lean but wiry.
He appeared to be around thirty years of age, no gray yet in his short black hair.
He wore a standard white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Working
hard, no doubt.

Eddie took Wang’s hand next.

A knock sounded behind us, the fourth of our party, the agent from the CIA, having
arrived. Eddie and I stepped aside to allow him in.

Like Chung Wang, this agent had black hair, brown skin, and appeared to be in his
early thirties. He wore wire-framed glasses and an argyle sweater-vest in green and
blue over a short-sleeved white cotton shirt. He looked like a Persian Urkel. I mentally
dubbed him Perkel.

“Azad Zardooz,” the guy said, extending his hand and stepping forward.

So not Perkel, then.

I shook his hand and glanced around at the dark-haired, dark-skinned men. “Wow, I
feel awfully—”

“Pale?” Eddie provided, shooting me a look.

He’d hit the nail on the head, but once he’d put it out in the open I realized how
politically incorrect it sounded, even if there was no malicious intent behind it.
I decided to go with “female” instead.

“Don’t worry,” Zardooz assured me as he shook Eddie’s hand next. “This isn’t a boys’
club.”

I raised a fist in celebration. “Hooray for ovaries!”

His brows drew together. He looked at Eddie. “Is she always like this?”

“Twenty-four-seven,” Eddie said. “She’s the most embarrassing partner I’ve ever had.”

“Maybe so.” I pointed a finger in his face. “But I’m the best with a gun.”

Eddie lifted his chin in acquiescence. “I have to give you that.”

Agent Wang invited us to take seats around his desk and handed each of us a second
file, this one far thicker and heavier than the initial file we’d been provided. I
looked inside and found copies of bank statements, credit card bills, check registers,
ATM receipts, and other miscellaneous financial information, including a pay stub
from a small biotech company and another from Texas Instruments, one of the area’s
major employers. There was even a grocery store receipt that included Oreo cookies.

“I’ve been through all the documentation,” Wang said, “and it led me nowhere. These
guys operate primarily on a cash basis. You’ll notice that several large withdrawals
were made from their accounts each month, but there was nothing to tell me how they
got that money out of the country.”

Agent Wang was intelligent and well trained, too, so I wasn’t sure whether Eddie and
I would have any more luck than he had. But it never hurt to have a fresh set of eyes
look things over.

Zardooz glanced at his watch. “I’d like to give you two some background on the men
involved. How about we discuss this further over lunch?”

“Sure,” Eddie said.

“Works for me,” Wang said, standing from his chair.

“Any suggestions?” Zardooz asked.

The men turned to me. As I looked at Azad and Chung, the federal government’s answer
to Harold and Kumar, a particular restaurant came to mind.

Eddie held up a hand. “Don’t you dare say ‘White Castle.’”

Sheez.
The guy could read my mind.

“Dallas doesn’t have White Castle,” I shot back. “How about Twisted Root?” The place
had an awesome black bean burger, not to mention their yummy sweet potato chips and
fried pickles.

“Is that the place that serves kangaroo?” Wang asked.

“Only when it’s in season.” I replied. They also served alligator, venison, boar,
and ostrich, not that there were many takers from what I’d seen. The downtown crowd
didn’t want to chow down on a Bambi or Big Bird burger.

“Let’s hit it,” Zardooz said.

We loaded our new files in our briefcases and headed out.

*   *   *

Over lunch, Zardooz shared some intriguing bits of information. In his younger days,
he’d infiltrated an Al-Qaeda training camp and learned some of their techniques firsthand.
He showed us a photo of himself from a decade earlier. With his turban, full beard,
and machine gun he looked nothing like the nerdy agent who sat before us sipping a
Coke and dipping his French fries in ketchup.

“Those camps are crazy places,” he said. He went on to explain that the strategy of
the camp leaders was to visit poor villages where they could easily recruit young
men and boys who had little or no prospects for the future. They’d move the recruits
to remote camps in wilderness areas. Once at the camps, the recruits were deprived
of sleep, exercised to the point of exhaustion, and fed a steady diet of lies to incite
them against the rest of the world.

The tactics were similar to those used by cults. Isolation. Sleep deprivation. Brainwashing.
I had to admit there were some eerie similarities to a summer church camp I’d once
attended in Louisiana. Whatever spell the staff had cast over us campers was broken,
however, when we caught the head counselor in the woods with a copy of
Playboy
in one hand and his ding-dong in the other.

Zardooz continued. “The leaders convince the recruits they’re doing something worthy
and heroic when they’re only being used to further a horribly warped interpretation
of Islam.” Sadly, many volunteered for suicide missions, hoping to become martyrs.
“These extremists haven’t just given Islam a bad name,” he said. “They’ve made life
very hard for mainstream Muslims. A man once ripped off my wife’s hijab when she was
shopping in Walmart.”