Saving Sophie: A Novel (34 page)
Read Saving Sophie: A Novel Online
Authors: Ronald H. Balson
“Quite a bit, actually. I’ll tell you about it when I get home. So, how would you like to go to Hawaii?”
“Is that a trick question? When?”
“Right after I get back. I’m going to track down Sommers.”
“But, Liam, I have Kelsen’s deposition set for this week and I can’t change it. Can’t we go in two weeks?”
“No, honey, I’m sorry. I have to go right away.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to go alone.”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Oh, I get it. Miss State Department gets to go to Hawaii with my fiancé.”
“It’s her operation, Cat. Of course she’s going. Postpone the deposition and you can come with us. Lawyers change deposition dates all the time.”
“I said I can’t change the date,” she snapped. “It’s set by court order. You know what, just forget about it. Go with Miss State Department.”
“She’s not with the State Department. I’m not sure exactly who she’s with, but she’s definitely an intelligence agent. She’s a spy.”
“Well, that makes me much more comfortable. I suppose she’s not married either, is she?”
“No, Cat, she’s not married. If you’re so damn worried, then postpone the deposition and come with us.”
“Aren’t you listening to me? I can’t postpone it. It’s set in stone. And who says I’m damn worried?”
“This jealousy is very unlike you.”
“Really? What’s like me?”
“Look, I’ll be back in Chicago tomorrow. We can talk more about it then if you want.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about.”
Liam paused. “All right, I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Liam hung up, took a deep breath, and walked into the lobby where Kayla was standing by their luggage. Kayla noticed he was shaking his head. “Problems?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really understand women.”
“Catherine?”
He nodded.
“How long have the two of you been together?”
“Oh, a long time if you go back to when we hung out in high school. But, as a couple, just about a year.”
“You dated in high school?”
“No. I never had the nerve to ask her out. She was too pretty, too popular. We were just friends. Best friends, really. I was afraid to spoil that relationship by asking her out and screwing it up. Years later, we got together while working on a case.”
“But now you think there’re problems in your relationship?”
“I didn’t think so until recently. We’ve had a couple of awkward conversations. Now she seems real upset about my going to Hawaii.”
“Is she worried about you traveling without her? Globe-trotting with the femme fatale?”
“Is that what you are, the femme fatale?”
She smiled.
Liam shook his head again. “I don’t know. Once she told me she wanted to go to Hawaii on her honeymoon.”
“Are the two of you getting married?”
“I always assumed so. She brought it up the other night but I totally dropped the ball. Now she doesn’t want to talk about it. I told her I’d be happy to discuss it.”
“You’d discuss it? Did you ever ask her to marry you?”
“You mean, like, right out? ‘Will you marry me?’”
Kayla smiled. “That’s usually the way it’s done.”
“Not in those words. I’ve asked her if she wanted to talk about it.”
“Very romantic.” Kayla picked up her bag.
“Thanks for your incisive analysis. I told you I don’t understand women.”
Kayla smiled and bit her bottom lip. “Is it so hard for you to understand that your girlfriend might be jealous? I experienced a few of those Irish moves outside of al-Zahani’s house, and I have to admit, there’s some style there. Maybe she wants to protect her property. I’d be jealous too.”
Just then, the Agency car pulled up and they loaded their luggage for the ride to the airport.
A
L-ZAHANI UNLOCKED THE DOOR
to Sophie’s bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, rocking back and forth, clutching her bear tightly to her chest.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “Where did you go today?”
“Outside.”
“Why did you hide?”
Sophie pressed her lips and looked away.
“Answer me, Sophie!”
“I want to go home,” she snapped.
“You are home. This, this is your home. Are you so foolish you think you can walk across an ocean? Do you think your Jadda and I will not find you wherever you go?”
“I want my daddy, I want my home,” she said defiantly.
He put out his hands and cupped her face tightly. “Listen to me. He is gone from your life. You will never see him again. Your mother, your father, they are not here for you anymore. Ever. Stop this useless pining.”
“He is
not
gone,” Sophie yelled. “He will find me, and when he does, you’ll be sorry.”
Al-Zahani slapped her on the cheek. “You will not disobey me again. You will not disrespect me or your Jadda.”
The door opened and Lubannah, responding to the cries, walked a few tentative steps into the room.
“Leave us, woman,” al-Zahani snapped.
Lubannah stood at the doorway. “Arif, please…”
“I said leave us! Now go. I will handle this.”
Lubannah hung her head and left the room, shutting the door behind her.
“You will suffer punishment for what you have done, Sophie. There will be no dinner today. If you run again, I will tie you to your bed.” Al-Zahani stood and looked down at her with a stern face. “Do not disobey again.”
“I
TAKE IT FROM
your expression that there were no further e-mails.” Marcy sat behind the wheel of Jack’s car outside a strip-mall Starbucks in the west Oahu town of Waipahu.
Sommers slid onto the passenger seat with his laptop. Jack had taken a room in a motel in Kaneohe since the day he learned that Glenn had visitors. Jack and Marcy were now being careful how they met up and where they went.
“Nothing. Not a word in days. Every day we drive to a different town, to a different Wi-Fi spot. Every day I get my hopes up. Now I’ve come to believe you were right. They gave me false information to lure me into the open.”
Marcy looked at him sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”
“I gotta go back to Chicago and confront these guys. I know who’s involved and all the details. I know where the grapes of wrath are stored. I can put them all behind bars. They can’t afford to double-cross me.”
Marcy grabbed his forearm. “Jack, that’s foolish. You know everything about them and what they’ve done. That’s exactly why you can’t go back. It’s just what they want you to do. No one else is left to put them behind bars. But I don’t understand why you need them at all. You’ve got the money. Find a way to make your own deal.”
Sommers shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that. I need these guys. They have the contacts in the Middle East.”
“Jack, if you go back to Chicago, you’ll get arrested, or worse, you’ll get killed.” She leaned over and put her arm around his shoulder. “Please don’t do something stupid, Jack.”
“Marcy, I’m not going to fail Sophie again. If you have any sense, you’ll bow out of this right now. Get out and cut your losses. I knew when I got into this scheme that I’d probably never get away with it. Divert the money, rescue Sophie, and live happily ever after in Hawaii? Pretty far-fetched. But there was an opportunity to save Sophie. Grab it or lose it. And I kept thinking, ‘We must take the current when it serves.’ The tide was right for me. It was my chance and I grabbed it. I had to. The guy gave me a plan when I had none.”
“But, Jack…”
“It was my only shot at getting my daughter out of Palestine. But, in the end I was naïve and foolish. Now I gotta go back to Chicago. I might still be able to put this deal back together.”
“If you go back there, you’re more likely to lose your life than put a deal back together.”
“You might be right, but I have no choice. In any event, it’s time for you to get out of this mess. You know I’m fond of you, Marcy, but this is the wrong time and place.”
“I hope you don’t mean that.”
Sommers nodded and hung his head. “It was wrong for me to let you get involved. I shouldn’t have kept calling you. It was purely selfish on my part.”
“Selfish because you need someone?”
“Don’t say that. You’re not just someone,” he said quietly.
“Selfish because you can’t go through this alone? Because maybe you have feelings?”
He nodded. “Maybe so. But it’s the wrong time for the two of us.”
“Well, maybe I don’t agree.” She smiled. “Why don’t I contact Liam Taggart? He said he could help.”
Sommers shook his head. “He didn’t have a solution. What can he do?”
“I don’t know, he said he was going to be on the ground in Israel. It can’t hurt to find out what he has in mind. Tell Deborah to text him and I’ll meet him in LA.”
“I can’t allow you to go back to LA.”
“You can’t allow me? Don’t I have a say in this? If I want to go to LA, I’ll go to LA. There has to be some way this all works out. I’m going to help us find that way.”
“No. You don’t have a say in this. I was, and I still am, willing to sacrifice myself. I’m not willing to sacrifice you.”
“Jack, I’m going to LA. And you can’t talk me out of it.”
“You’re crazy, you know that? You may be even crazier than I am.” He shifted around in the car seat. “Damn you, Marcy.”
The two sat silently in the car staring at each other. Finally, Jack said, “You’re a good friend and I’m lucky to have you on my side. The only thing I can figure is that the Fates must have been looking down and seen this poor sap sitting in a ratty motel room in Honolulu burying his troubles in a bottle of Scotch. ‘Boy, has life fucked him over,’ the Fates must have said. ‘It must be time to give this guy a break.’ So they dangled this travel brochure in my face with a picture of McDuffy’s-by-the-Sea. ‘Why don’t you drive out there for dinner?’ they said. And those same Fates probably made you thirsty and whispered in your ear, ‘Hey, Marcy, how about a beer at McDuffy’s?’ That’s the only explanation for why you and I are in this car at this time.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Nothing else makes any sense to me.”
“That was no kiss. Don’t you give me a peck on the cheek.” She cupped his face and kissed him hard. “I’ll accept that theory. The Fates put us together. Now we’re going to get Sophie back. And it’s permissible for me to think about a future, if I want to.”
“There’s no future, Marcy.”
“Yes, there is.”
As they drove north, Jack said, “Okay, this is the deal. Whatever we do, I insist you cannot cross the line. You can go to LA, but you cannot do anything illegal. I will not let you implicate yourself criminally or become an accomplice or an accessory after the fact. Deal?”
She nodded. “Deal.”
“At some point, Marcy, you just may have to cooperate and turn me in.”
“That’s never going to happen. I’m a Bonnie riding with my Clyde.”
“I won’t let you do that. You’re not going down with my ship. The moment they start closing in, we separate. Promise me.”
“No, I won’t. Because then I’d be admitting to that possibility. There has to be a way that everything works out. I just believe it. You’re going to get Sophie back, you’re going to return the money, and there won’t be any charges.”
“Even you don’t believe that.”
“Jack, I won’t concede that there’s a dead end. I don’t know how, I just know it’s going to work out. Why else would the Fates have made me thirsty?”
A
BLUE-AND-WHITE TOUR BUS
approached the highway checkpoint from the east. The painted logos on the side of the bus read
HOLY LAND TOURS
. The driver smiled as he presented his credentials to the guards. The passengers were each examined, and once the security screenings were completed, the tour bus drove on to Jerusalem and then to the Central Bus Station.
One by one the passengers alighted, each thanking the driver and the armed security guards for the wonderful, educational tour of Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The driver expressed his deep appreciation for the gratuities from several of his passengers. Once the security personnel and the tourists had disembarked and the bus was emptied, the driver headed west to an industrial part of Jerusalem.
He pulled into an open loading dock of a one-story warehouse. The sign on the front façade read
GLOBAL FISHERIES—COLD STORAGE.
Once the bus was in, the overhead door was closed. Three men opened the bus’s luggage compartment and unscrewed the metal floor panels. From beneath the floor, six boxes were carefully removed and carried into a refrigerated storage room. “
MEDITERRANEAN MEDICAL SUPPLY COMPANY
” was stenciled on the side of each of the boxes. In the storage room they were placed on a pallet alongside other similar boxes.
The driver returned to the bus, replaced the metal floor panels, and backed out of the Global Fisheries loading area. His job completed, the driver returned the bus to the yard where it would not be needed until next Tuesday’s run to Hebron.
* * *
H
PD CAPTAIN GRANT OKOYE
handed a slip of paper to Communications Sergeant Donna Miwa. “I need an alert to go out to all eight divisions. We’re looking for a guy named Eugene Wilson. DMV records show he purchased a 2008 blue Acura, license number 175 889. We want him picked up for questioning.”
“What did he do, Captain?”
“I don’t know that he did anything. The detectives who were investigating the Coral Reef homicide found a motel register on the chest of the dead clerk. Wilson’s name was circled on the register. The deceased had his arms around the book when he got shot. There’s a good chance that Wilson’s name was circled for a reason. My gut tells me he must know something. I want to bring him in.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll put the alert out. It’ll be on the screens within ten minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later, two civilians, in shorts and tank tops, sitting in a black Cadillac, saw the alert on their laptop. “Thank you, Marvin,” said the shorter one.