The car where he’d been held was gone, and somewhere in the confusion, I’d lost track of Mahoney and Sampson, too.
Then I saw Ron Burns. Or more specifically, he saw me. “Cross!” he yelled, and wagged a finger.
As I came toward him, he turned and walked farther off, away from the hustle and bustle in the yard. The rescue mission was winding down while the investigative crews were just kicking into gear.
Evidence Response Teams had already started unpacking their vans, photographers were snapping everywhere, and a couple of total-station techs were setting up their equipment — the little black shoebox, I call it — to start a 3-D rendering of the entire farm.
I caught up to Burns at the foot of the porch stairs at the old ruined house. I could see he was already steaming.
“Rodney Glass tells us he has no idea how he got out here,” the FBI director started right in. “He also maintains he knows absolutely nothing about the kidnapping.”
I wasn’t sure where to start. Burns and I have some history together, not all of it good. But all in all I’d always trusted him.
“Ron, I —”
“Not a word,” he said. “The less you say right now, the better off we’ll both be.” He pushed the tail of his jacket back with both fists. I was a little surprised to see he was armed.
“Whatever it was you got from Rodney Glass, and however you and your little A-team got it, none of it’s going to be admissible. You do understand that, right?”
I knew better than to answer.
“As it stands right now, we’ve got nothing substantive to hold Glass on. We’ll be able to detain him for twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours, but unless something new turns up here, he’s going to be out by tomorrow night.”
I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Ron, I’m not done with Glass,” I said. “We’ll get him. I’ve already got a surveillance crew up and running. We can put a GPS on his car —”
Burns put a hand up. “Seriously, Alex. Does anyone ever tell you that you talk too damn much?”
He took a deep breath then. It seemed to let a little of the air out of his tires, and his tone came down as he went on.
“No one’s pretending this is just cut-and-dried,” he said. “It’s likely those kids wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for you, and you’re going to have the gratitude of some very powerful people. Obviously. So I’m not too inclined to start turning over any rocks that don’t need turning over, understand? As long as Glass doesn’t file a complaint — and he’d be a goddamn idiot if he did — I’d say this was your chance to shut up and walk away.”
He pointed over to where someone had moved my car. I saw Sampson was there, too, leaning against the fender and watching us.
“I don’t want to walk away,” I told Burns.
He just shook his head like he felt sorry for me and started back toward the barn. “Yeah, I know,” he said over his shoulder.
AS THE SUN slowly rose over the horizon, Hala could see that they had arrived at the ocean, the powerful, very gray Atlantic. They were in Massachusetts, maybe. Or this could be Connecticut. Once they’d gotten off the highway, it had been much harder to track the road signs.
A row of shuttered cedar cabanas sat along the beach. Beyond that, waves broke onto an empty shore in the early morning light.
Actually, the beach wasn’t quite empty, Hala realized. A man was there, bent toward the water — toward Mecca — in prayer. She could see only the figure of him, no distinguishing characteristics. Presumably, it was his silver Mercedes parked next to their 4Runner. The rest of the dusty lot was deserted.
Tariq raised his head from her shoulder. His hand was still badly swollen, but he was at leas
t hydrated, with a fresh bandage and the first course of antibiotics in his system.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re … here,” Hala said. It was as much of an answer as she had. For that matter, where seemed less important than who they were here to see right now. Whoever this man was, they’d driven all night to get here.
Neither of the two in the front seat spoke. They waited for the stranger to finish his prayers and only then opened their car doors to get out. Hala and Tariq followed.
The four of them came around and stood by their vehicle while the man walked slowly up from the beach, shaking the sand from his prayer rug as he came.
He was elderly — older than Uncle had been, but fitter. His snowy hair was brushed straight back over his head, and he wore the kind of tracksuit an American businessman might wear on the weekend. Dark blue with a single white stripe. His feet were bare, and he carried a pair of Adidas scuffs in one hand.
Hala could feel the excitement rising in her chest. Before they’d come to America, no one had even suggested that advancement within The Family was possible. But that was before they’d met Uncle. Now, it seemed, anything was possible.