“People I know. I’m a businessman.”
Elizabeth’s mind was reeling. She wanted to get out of there and call Gordon.
“What else? What’d you sell the woman?”
“An SR-25. Shit. Look, this isn’t personal, all right? It’s business.”
“Business? It’s called treason, motherfucker. It’s called murdering innocent people.”
Suddenly, Derek’s arm snaked around her. He jerked the handcuffs from her waistband and slapped a bracelet on Vincent.
“Hey!”
A loud clink as Derek snapped the other bracelet to the bar on the front of the Dumpster. Then he was frisking the guy.
“Derek, what—”
“Hey, that’s my phone!” Vincent yelped.
“It’s mine now.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Let’s go.”
“You can’t just leave me here!”
He grabbed Elizabeth by the arm and propelled her down the alley and around the side of the building.
“Derek, what the hell are we doing? We can’t leave him there like that!”
“He’s a squirter.” He tossed the cell phone at her, and she caught it one-handed.
“A what?”
“If we let him go, the second we leave he’ll be out the back door, calling up everyone in his distribution chain. This way you guys can arrest him.” He looked at her. “What? You should be thanking me.”
He popped the locks on his truck and jumped behind the wheel. She slid inside. “Are you crazy?”
“No. But I’m a little pressed for time.” He shoved the truck into gear and rocketed backward out of the space. “Check out that phone. See if there’s anything from Rasheed or Ameen.”
Elizabeth’s heart hammered as she stared down at the phone.
This was bad. Everything about this was bad. And that didn’t even take into account the extremely illegal “apprehension” they’d just made.
“Stop the truck.”
He looked at her.
“Stop the truck! I need to think a second.”
“No can do.”
“But—what’s an SR-25?”
He shot her a look. “You really don’t know?”
“What is it?”
“A sniper rifle.”
Chapter Twenty-three
She blinked at him across the truck. “A sniper rifle.”
“That’s right.”
“But I thought he sold them bomb-making components?”
“He did.”
Elizabeth clutched Vincent’s phone in her hand. She dumped it into the cup holder and took out her own.
“Who are you calling?” he asked.
“Gordon.”
It went straight to voice mail. She left him an urgent message and hung up.
“We have to figure out the target,” she said.
“That would be useful right about now. My contact at the Delphi Center’s been analyzing the comments on that home-improvement blog. He called me an hour ago and told me he thinks someone posted a launch code.”
“Where are you going?”
“The hospital,” he said. “Maybe the motel clerk knows something. Maybe she saw Fatima leaving for work, wearing some kind of uniform. Or maybe she chatted her up and she mentioned her job.”
“She didn’t.” Elizabeth dialed Torres.
“Shit, where’d you go?” Torres demanded.
“I’ll fill you in later. Listen, did you ever interview that maid from Happy Trails? The one who only spoke Spanish?”
“Just came from there. Talked to her for about twenty minutes. Dead end.”
Elizabeth’s heart sank. “She didn’t have anything?”
“Nope.”
“Did she see something in the room? Maybe a pay stub? Or maybe an apron like a waitress would wear or a bag of tips?” She was grasping at straws now. “What about a fast-food receipt that might be near wherever she works?”
“I asked all that. No leads. This maid never communicated with any of them face-to-face, just noticed them coming and going.”
“So she saw three of them?”
“Two men and a woman,” he confirmed. “And yes, the woman looks like our sketch. So that’s something. But other than that, she couldn’t tell me anything except she thought they were slobs, and they left food lying around and cigarette butts all over the place. I’m heading back now to write all this up. And where the hell are you? We could use a hand with this.”
Elizabeth was staring out the window as billboards and shopping centers flew by. She thought about everything they knew and everything they didn’t know about Fatima Rasheed. Elizabeth was now one-hundred-percent certain that Fatima was the face of the operation. She’d probably been here for weeks or even months making the contacts, doing the legwork, running the errands. An idea hit her.
“Elizabeth?”
“I have to call you back,” she said, and hung up. Her heart pounded as she scrolled through her phone, looking for the photograph she’d taken at the ME’s office of Rasheed’s personal effects.
“What is it?”
She glanced at Derek, then looked around at the freeway sign. “Exit here, and pull a U-turn.”
“Where are we going?”
“The Happy Trails Motel.”
* * *
“Up here on the left,” she said. “Just before the intersection.”
“The gas station?”
“That’s right.”
Derek pulled into the parking lot and took a space near the door. Elizabeth rushed inside the store, with Derek close behind her.
It was the same cashier from the day before, the tall middle-aged woman who’d carded the teenager trying to buy beer. Elizabeth walked over and flashed her badge.
“I need to ask you a question,” Elizabeth said.
The woman sighed and glanced at her line of customers.
“This will only take a moment.”
“Right.” But she came out from behind the counter and led them to the corner beside the beverage station.
“Have you ever seen this person?” Elizabeth held up her phone, showing the composite drawing of Fatima.
The woman glanced at it. “I don’t know. We get a lot of people in here.”
“Look closely. She’s got a distinctive hairline. She was probably in and out a few times buying Marlboro Reds. She was staying at the Happy Trails Motel down the street.”
Recognition flashed across her face. “Marlboro Reds. She had dyed hair.”
“That’s right.” Elizabeth cast an excited glance at Derek.
“Yeah, she was in here. What about her?”
“You recall what she was wearing?” Derek asked, and the woman’s attention settled on him for the first time. She looked struck by both his size and his intensity.
“I—I don’t remember.”
“She worked evenings,” Elizabeth added. “Was she wearing a uniform that you recall? Maybe a hat or an apron or—”
“A hat, yeah. She had one of those blue ball caps.”
“What did it say?” Derek asked.
“It didn’t say anything, I don’t think. It was just blue. Like her T-shirt.”
“Did her T-shirt say anything?” Elizabeth asked.
The woman glanced down and paused, as if trying to pull the memory from the depths of her brain.
Elizabeth held her breath. Such a tiny detail, but it might make all the difference.
The woman looked up. “Minute Maid.”
Elizabeth blinked at her. “You mean like the drink?”
“The park.” She glanced at Derek. “She was wearing one of those uniforms, you know? Like she works at the baseball park.”
* * *
Derek pulled out of the lot with a squeal of tires. Elizabeth dialed Gordon again and once again got his voice mail.
“Is there a game tonight?” Elizabeth asked.
“Not just a game. The All-Star Game.”
“That’s tonight?”
“Yes.” Derek blew through a stop sign, earning a honk.
Elizabeth’s phone rang, and she recognized Torres’s number on the screen. “Where’s Gordon?” she demanded. “I’ve left him two messages.”
“That’s why I’m calling,” Torres said. “We need you at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, ASAP.”
Dread filled her stomach. “What’s going on?”
“A bomb just exploded outside Terminal D. The task force, the bomb squad, everyone’s on their way over there.”
She looked at Derek. “A bomb went off outside the airport.”
“When? What kind?”
“Tell me about the explosive,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t have a lot of details yet,” Torres told her. “They’re saying it was in a trash can outside the international terminal.”
“Casualties?”