“I’ll meet with her, Cass. I have only one must for the meeting, and that is I want a person in charge at Whitman/Graham present during any meeting with Linda - unless of course you can instill common sense and logic in her.”
“I will make that happen, Nick. Take care of yourself. You’re making me rich. If you want Linda taken care of, let me know. I’ll knife her in an alley somewhere.”
Nick enjoyed Cassie’s offer immensely. It took many moments before he could speak. “You…you’ve been reading too much Diego, Cass. It’s just business, my friend. Let me know when you have the list.”
“Will do. Talk at you later.”
Nick disconnected and sipped more, followed by a large gulp of beer. “I noticed no one from the police department messaged me or texted me. That fact is a bit disconcerting. I’m letting both you and Jean know, because until we can get away on this book tour, we need to be careful to the point of obsession. Jamal Kader and his buddy, Aban Kassis tried to do a drive-by shooting on me earlier, which was why it took a while to finish with that unforeseen complication. Did Sergeant Dickerson contact you, Rach?”
“No one called from the police, Nick,” Rachel replied. “What do you think that means?”
“I’m not sure. It could be Dickerson was ordered not to contact me. For obvious reasons, I can’t call him asking what the hell’s going on, and why. We’ll have to wait on answers for that. Dickerson should have called me. That he didn’t means something else is in play. Let’s keep the results of the incident behind us. Jamal and his pal, Aban won’t be facing off with us ever again. My agent will put everything on track over the next day or so. We’re leaving no one behind, including Deke.”
“Jean and I are really looking forward to the tour,” Rachel replied. “I’m thinking you’re more worried Dickerson hasn’t contacted you than anything else.”
“You’re right, but that doesn’t matter for now. We have to wait for contact, and deal with it as it comes. The unknowns have Gus as worried as we are. We need to stay observant. We’ll let these threads with the press, and our soon to be noticed missing Kader link guys, evolve. We will be contacted. We’ll have to increase our sleep time. A fresh start tomorrow may dispel this dark cloud over our heads. I have no doubt the police will be communicating with us soon. School will be in session tomorrow, so I’ll walk Jean to school as usual with Deke. After that, it will be anybody’s guess how our day tomorrow develops.”
“Did you finish investigating Florence and her connection to Jamal?”
Nick nodded. “I found quite a bit. She’s on a Saudi payroll, and filtering news for them. Because of my notoriety as an author, the incident at the school drew a lot of unwanted publicity for this Sharia Law honor killing crap. Flo was ordered to find a way to discredit me. That backfired on her, and she took more drastic steps by contacting Jamal. It’s a complicated thread I may have to leave alone for the time being. I’m going to tip off her employer tomorrow morning after I hack into her life on-line. They won’t like having a Saudi agent on their payroll. I’ll provide proof, and tell them if they don’t handle Flo, I’ll turn it over to their rival networks.”
“We won’t have to move, will we, Dad?” Jean had been following the conversation with quiet speculation.
Nick could tell Jean had fears they would soon be on the run again. “Do you know me at all, young lady? I love Pacific Grove. If things get a little dicey here, we’ll stay in my Carmel Valley place for a while. I don’t think that will be necessary though. Extended time away on the road trip will cool this case off locally. If we still have some heat on us when we get back, we’ll go stay at my place in Las Vegas. You two aren’t harboring any ill thoughts about my Vegas abode are you.”
Nick laughed when Rachel and Jean exchanged uneasy glances. “No one’s after you two anymore. We can visit Las Vegas once in a while. I have to check the place occasionally. Hey, I put it on the tour, so you both can get a feel for the place. There’s stuff we never had a chance to do there on our other journey. We can head over to the Grand Canyon, and do their helicopter tour.”
“Jean and I don’t have your casual attitude toward a house where so many died,” Rachel said.
“I’ll get you a suite at the Wynn’s or somewhere spectacular. I’ll stay at the house with Deke. There’s no hurry to decide on that part. They always have great rooms available there.”
“Can we still do some training in the desert?”
“Sure, Danger. We’re flying private jet, so I can cart along anything I want for luggage. You’re still too small for the .50, but we can bring along something else a bit more powerful than the .22 long rifle.”
“We’re going to train here too, aren’t we, Dad?”