The Collective (9 page)

With the help of Jordan and Ronnie, Cait had managed to get Nizam enough fuel for him to begin driving his taxi again. Things were settling down in Baghdad. They could foresee a time when the fear and madness would end.

Then another bomb. Nizam had saved Cait’s life with his warning that first day, but Cait had to live with the knowledge that she had not been there to warn him. An IED hidden in a van had exploded in a marketplace. Nizam had been cruising slowly, hoping for passengers, and his taxi had been only feet away. His fuel tank—full of the gasoline she had procured for him—had provided a secondary explosion that was the final nail in his coffin.

During the weeks of grief and anguish that followed, many
of the guys in her unit revealed themselves to be coldhearted bastards. If one of them had screwed an Iraqi woman, somehow that was all right, but they froze Cait out because she had fallen in love, and because she would soon be going home, pregnant with Nizam’s child. Ignorance, jealousy, fear … she didn’t care why the guys had reacted that way. The betrayal cut her deeply.

Only Jordan and Ronnie had stood by her, had defended her at every turn and held her when she felt the world beneath her feet opening up to swallow her. They had proven themselves true friends, both in Iraq and here on the home-front. She wasn’t sure she would have made it home without their support. And now she had Leyla, and her world had again been forever changed, her heart filling with love for her daughter and beginning to mend.

But,
God
, how she missed him.

Surrendering to the inevitable, she sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and reached for the jeans she’d been wearing the night before. Zipping them on, she walked over to peek into the playpen, only to find it empty.

Cait smiled. Auntie Jane must have come to fetch her the moment Leyla had started to fuss this morning, trying to let her sleep. Cait didn’t know how she would have gotten through the past year without her aunt and uncle.

She went quietly down the stairs, knowing Uncle George was probably still asleep. A low murmur of television voices came from the kitchen, where she found Jane with Leyla on her hip. Expertly balancing the baby, she stole a sip of coffee and then went back to stirring a batch of pancake mix.

“Good morning,” Cait said.

Jane looked up, her hair unruly from sleep. “Well, well, Leyla. Look who’s up,” she said, and then met Cait’s gaze. “Your badass momma.”

Cait’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“Come on,” Jane said. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice my niece kicking the crap out of a dirtbag on the local news this morning?”

“They’re still showing it?” Cait asked, sagging a bit at the
realization that the previous night’s events would be interfering with her life for days to come.

Jane laughed. “Of course they are. And they’ll keep showing it. You’ll be an Internet sensation by dinnertime. Scratch that; you probably already are. That was a pretty amazing thing you did last night.”

Cait allowed herself a small smile. “He had it coming.”

“He sure did. You’re something else, kid.”

“Well, nobody messes with Sean McCandless’s little sister.”

“Damn right.”

Cait reached for Leyla, plucking her out of her aunt’s arms and kissing her several times before propping the baby on her hip, just as Jane had done.

“You’re making pancakes?” Cait asked.

“Anything special you want in yours?” Jane replied. “Bananas? Chocolate chips? I don’t have any blueberries, but I’m going to the supermarket later.”

“Actually, I have to deal with some consequences from last night. My boss wants to see me in her office this morning.”

“They can’t fire you for stopping a man from trying to kill his wife,” Jane replied, harshly enough that the baby gave her a curious look. Jane smiled to reassure the child, and when she spoke again, it was in the special, loving cadence most people reserved only for infants, but the words were not meant for the baby. “You tell that Lynette woman that the
rest
of the press will eat her alive if she tries to fire you.”

Cait smiled. That was a McCandless trait. There might not be many of them left, but damn if they didn’t circle the wagons when trouble came calling.

“I doubt she’ll fire me,” Cait admitted, “but I broke the rules. She’s got to at least give me a good talking-to.”

Privately, she worried that Lynette might have something more punitive in mind, but she didn’t want to say that to Jane—at least not until she knew exactly what she was up against. Driving the news van might not be the best job in the world—scheduled shifts often went into overtime and many days and weekends she had to be on call, ready to go in if they needed her—but the pay and benefits were decent, and
watching the reporters and camera operators in the field was interesting. Jordan had promised to train her to use the camera and the remote equipment in the van, so at some point she hoped to move from behind the wheel to behind the camera.

“I’ve got to tell you,” Cait said, “I wish I’d been in a position to buy Sweet Somethings when you sold the place. Making fudge and selling chocolates—being your own boss—is a much better way to live than this.”

“Just imagine how much you’ll save on Leyla’s dentist,”Jane said.

Cait laughed. “Hey, I didn’t get
that
many cavities.”

“Only because your dad was such a tyrant about you brushing your teeth,” Jane reminded her.

“True,” Cait admitted. Her father had loved Jane’s peanut butter and chocolate fudge just as much as Cait herself had.

“I take it you need me to watch the munchkin while you go face the music?”

Cait nodded, shifting Leyla to her other hip. “I’m sorry. You’ve had her so much, and all night—”

“She’s no trouble, Caitlin,” Jane said, smiling at the baby even as she put a pan on the burner.

“I’m not working today,” Cait added. “I should be back by ten-thirty, at the latest, and then we’ll be out of your hair until Tuesday.”

“No problem,” Jane assured her. “Do me a favor, though? Before you leave, see if you can get a peek at whoever’s sitting in that BMW, or whatever it is, down in front of the DiMarinos’ house.”

“Sorry, what?” Cait mumbled. She’d been playing with Leyla, blowing air into the baby’s face to make her giggle.

“They’re away,” Jane said. “The DiMarinos, I mean. In the middle of the night there was this car parked in front of their house.” She went on to describe what she had seen out the window the night before. “It’s probably nothing, but I kept thinking, what if it’s someone planning to break in?”

“Are they still out there this morning?” Cait asked.

“They were when I woke up,” Jane replied.

As Jane started doling pancake batter onto the pan, Cait slipped the baby into her high chair and locked her in place.

“Where are you going?” Jane asked.

“To stick my nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“What about breakfast?”

“Save me some.” Then she crouched down so that she was eye to eye with Leyla. “Take care of Auntie Jane for a few minutes, baby girl.”

Her daughter gave her a toothless smile. Cait stood and headed out of the kitchen.

“Aren’t they going to be angry if you interrupt their stakeout?” Jane asked.

Cait paused in the door frame, arching an eyebrow. “Stakeout? Next thing I know you’ll be talking about skel informants and righteous shootings. They’re in your neighborhood and not exactly hiding. You have a right to know what they’re doing. This is America, remember?”

Jane’s smile was halfhearted. “Sometimes I forget.”

Cait didn’t reply. They tried to avoid talking politics in the Wadlow house. George was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, but Jane had turned her back on the party the moment the Patriot Act had been passed. Cait stayed out of it; she didn’t much care who sat in the Oval Office. She had seen the faces of Iraqis up close, seen them laugh and seen them die, and they were just like anybody else—forged by the world they lived in. The Muslims who wanted to live in peace were no danger to America, and those who were willing to die if it meant taking American lives … well, they couldn’t be stopped. As far as Cait was concerned, the best thing to do was just stay away from them. But that was why she had been a soldier, not a politician, and now she could only hope to never return to the Middle East.

Still barefoot, she went out onto the front steps and immediately spotted a silver Audi parked three doors down and across the street. At a quarter after seven on a Sunday morning, the neighborhood had a wonderful stillness about it. A door opened to her left and she glanced over to see a young bearded guy step out, shirtless, to retrieve his newspaper from the stoop. Other than that, the street was quiet.

She wasn’t surprised Jane had thought the car out of place. The street consisted of small Colonials and ranches built in
the 1940s and ’50s. Any one of their driveways would have had room for another vehicle to park, including the absent DiMarinos’.

From a distance, and given the Audi’s tinted windows, it was impossible to tell if the car was occupied.

Well, there’s one way to find out
.

She padded down the steps and across the front yard, enjoying the feeling of the grass under her bare feet. Once she hit the sidewalk, she stayed on her aunt’s side of the street, not ignoring the presence of the car but not paying it any special attention, either. As she walked, she turned the whole situation over in her brain. The Audi sparkled in the morning sun. Really, it was too nice a car for undercover cops to be driving. Government, maybe, but what the hell would federal agents be doing in Medford? So maybe they were cops after all. On the other hand, some romantic entanglement—a cheating spouse, maybe—could easily put a private detective into play. She didn’t know any private investigators, but doubted they could afford such a car.

A mystery, right here on Badger Road.

As she came abreast of the Audi, Cait stepped off the curb and strode toward the driver’s side, the pavement warm underfoot. She put on her friendliest, most quizzical smile, thinking she would just rap on the window. Behind the tinted glass, she could vaguely make out the shapes of the driver and another man. But the engine growled abruptly to life, then softened to a purr as the driver threw the car into gear and pulled away, leaving her standing in the middle of the road, staring after it.

“Fine, be that way!” she called after the Audi, making note of the plate number and wondering if she really had just screwed up somebody’s surveillance and, if so, who they might be surveilling. Was that even a word? She thought it must be.

As she headed back to her aunt and uncle’s house, intending to write down the license plate number, an awful thought occurred to her. What if it wasn’t something as simple as a cheating spouse? She had thought it might be a government vehicle. What if they suspected someone on the street of being
involved in terrorism, or if one of the neighbors was a serial killer or something?

Despite the warmth of the August morning, Cait shuddered.

She had to jump in the shower and hurry if she wanted to get to Lynette’s office by eight o’clock, but she couldn’t just let this go. The odds were that the guys in the car were private detectives, but, just to be safe, she would put in a call to the Medford police as soon as she was out of her meeting.

The small plane that the Bureau had chartered to carry Josh and Chang from Florida to Maine touched down at Bangor International Airport just before nine a.m. The charter had been a necessity, as there had been no commercial flights departing Fort Myers for Bangor until late morning, and the clock was ticking for the abducted child. The kidnapper was a known killer and potential terrorist. Josh knew that the odds were against the infant being alive—this guy didn’t seem the type to ask for ransom—but hope was all that they had. And if there was any chance the child
was
still alive, they had to work as quickly as possible to track the son of a bitch down.

A car was waiting for them on the tarmac. The agent behind the wheel introduced himself as Ian Merritt; with the halo of gray that was all that remained of his hair and the doughy, too-much-whiskey complexion, he looked more like an accountant on the verge of retirement than an FBI agent. Still, Merritt didn’t balk at playing chauffeur to them, despite Nala Chang’s youth and gender. Josh had known other agents from Merritt’s era who would not have behaved so professionally, so the guy got points for that.

“The state police have agreed to let you guys set up shop in their Bangor barracks,” Agent Merritt said as he put the
black sedan in gear, “but I assume you want to talk to the TSA folks on-site before we head over there?”

“We do,” Chang agreed. “Have they turned anything up while we were in transit?”

Agent Merritt drove alongside the domestic terminal, the vehicle eyed warily by an airport security agent standing by a car parked between two gates. Like all U.S. airports, Bangor International had a contingent of TSA agents on staff, screening bags and passengers and overseeing security. A typical map of the airport would show gates and restaurants and shops and checkpoints, but not the hidden rooms in which TSA personnel monitored the comings and goings of passengers and staff. There were other rooms as well, where people were detained and questioned, and sometimes searched.