“I am nothing like you. I would never target an innocent little girl and use her as a pawn in whatever sick game it is you’re playing. Melanie has nothing to do with this. You want me? Stop being the coward you are and come face me.”
Alexander closed his eyes, hoping it would help him focus on listening and nothing else. The ding-dong of church bells sounded, then he heard something he hadn’t noticed before. He had been so focused on the intonation of this guy’s voice, he had ignored what was going on in the background. It was barely audible, but it was there.
“JFK. UMass. Next stop: North Quincy. Transfer here for commuter rail.”
He flung his eyes to Simpson, removing the earphones from his head.
“You heard it?” Simpson asked.
Alexander nodded, his mind racing.
“Good. There’s more.”
Alexander put the earphones back on as Simpson continued the video.
“I know. I know,” his voice cut through. “It’s about the girls.” Then the sound of a train grew closer, as if passing by, before the clacking of steel against metal diminished.
Removing the headphones once more, Alexander looked at Simpson, who brought up a satellite image of the JFK/UMass stop.
“That’s a red line train headed toward Braintree. They’ve got to be pretty much on top of the train station to hear the conductor’s announcement.”
Alexander nodded, scanning the map. “It looks like it’s all a bunch of retail locations.”
“Yes, mostly…except right here.” Simpson circled a building on the map. “It’s a warehouse. I got the address and did some digging. It’s been vacant for the past year or so.”
“Before we go in there, we need to know this is the place. It could just be a coincidence. It could be a different location close by. If they see us storm this building, they’ll leave and we’ll be back to square one. I need something concrete.”
“How’s this for concrete?” Simpson zoomed in on a white building across the street from the warehouse.
“What is that?” Alexander squinted his eyes.
“Looks like a church.”
Alexander jumped up, dashing from the room. “Text me the exact address.”
Running down the corridor, he brought his phone to his ear. He hated the idea of pulling Martin away from Olivia, but he needed every agent he could get, and he trusted Martin more than anyone else working for him.
The line rang several times, but Martin didn’t pick up. A knot formed in his stomach, but he couldn’t dwell on it, not when finding his daughter was within his grasp.
Approaching the conference room where a handful of agents pored over piles of papers, Alexander stormed in. “All of you, gear up. Let’s go.”
Without questioning it, they jumped into action, grabbing their jackets and checking their pistols before holstering them.
Alexander hurried out of the office and into the elevator, his agents following closely behind.
“What’s going on, sir?” one of them asked.
“We have a possible location,” Alexander answered. “Warehouse on Morrissey Boulevard near the JFK/UMass red line station. Two of you will come with me. The rest of you will be in a separate vehicle. We don’t want to do anything to raise suspicion. No one makes a move until I say so. There’s no telling what this guy is capable of.”
“Sir,” the agents said in unison.
Once the elevator arrived in the garage, they all filed out and into two separate company SUVs, Alexander at the wheel of one. Peeling out of the garage, he merged onto the empty streets of Boston, snow beginning to cover the pavement.
“What’s the plan once we get there, sir?” one of the agents asked.
Alexander glanced at the man sitting in the passenger seat. He thought his name was Andrews or something like that, but couldn’t be sure. He hated the idea of working with a team he wasn’t familiar with. He picked up his phone and tried Martin again, still not getting a response.
“Sir?” Andrews repeated.
Alexander tapped the steering wheel, scanning the streets. There were only a few cars on the road, most likely people running last-minute errands before the city shut down because of the storm. The truth was, he didn’t know what they should do when they got there. He ran through a thousand different scenarios regarding what he was about to walk into. He had absolutely no idea what to expect, who was behind it. He hated the thought of walking into the unknown with a group of complete strangers, more or less, without someone he trusted.
“I don’t know yet.”
Pulling onto the interstate, he continued to glance at his phone every few seconds, hoping to see a message or incoming call from Martin. It wasn’t like him to not answer. Hell, he could call him in the middle of the night and he’d still pick up. His gut told him something was off, so he grabbed his phone and dialed Simpson.
“Burnham here,” he barked into the phone when he answered. “Run a trace on Martin’s phone and his company SUV. See if you can get a location for me. He’s not answering his cell.”
“Copy,” Simpson said. Alexander could hear him typing in the background. “It’ll take a minute or two to come back, sir. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know I did some digging on Maleek Abdar.”
“Anything come back?”
“Surprisingly, yes. Turns out, that’s not his real name. Up until five years ago, Maleek Abdar didn’t exist. No paper trail. No hospital records. Nothing. I didn’t think it too strange, considering it is Afghanistan, but I ran his face through facial recognition on the off-chance I got a hit. I was surprised when one came back. Maleek was arrested five years ago for assault. Back then, his name was Aazar Faraj.”
“Faraj?” Alexander repeated.
“Turns out Aazar Faraj is the younger brother of Aliyah Faraj, one of your contacts at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.”
Shaking his head, Alexander furrowed his brow. “You don’t think she used her position in the ministry to gain access to these girls’ location, do you? Why would she put her life on the line to protect these women if she was involved?”
“Perhaps she’s not, sir. Perhaps her brother used her access without her knowledge. According to information I was able to pull up about Ms. Faraj, she’s spoken publicly about her brother disappearing from the jail where he was being held after he was arrested. The family had no knowledge of what happened to him until a few years later when he reappeared in some propaganda video for an extremist group.”
Alexander nodded. It was a story he had heard time and time again. Extremists preying on those most vulnerable to further their twisted mission.
“You said it was five years ago?”