Ben clenched his jaw. Kimani had been right about Jake all along. He should have listened to her. Instead, he had actually considered handing her back to the son of a bitch. If he hadn’t returned to the cabin when he had...
He cursed himself.
“According to my guy, Chin Ko, Jake went by her place.”
Ben stopped and turned swiftly to stare at Bataar. “What do you mean?”
“He didn’t go in or try to talk to her.”
“By ‘her,’ you mean Kimani.”
“Of course, boss. She’s the one you’re interested in.”
Ben was about to tell Bataar to keep his personal observations to himself, but he wanted to hear what else he had to say about Jake.
“Chin said Jake parked his car across from her duplex and sat there for ten minutes before driving away.”
What the fuck...
“Anything else unusual?”
“Not so far. I’ve got Stephens’ hacker in Singapore trying to track Jake’s movements online, but we haven’t hit on anything yet.”
Ben felt a pit in his stomach. “Put a guy on Kimani.”
“Twenty-four seven?”
“Of course. Why do a job half-assed?”
“I’m going to need a bigger budget.”
“You already went over budget when you hired Chin.”
“Just want to be sure, boss.”
His blood pressure soaring, Ben started walking again. Bataar had to scramble to keep up. Once outside, Ben put on his shades, the same pair of Louis Vuitton that he’d lent to Kimani their first day on Jake’s boat.
Ben’s car was waiting out front. After he and Bataar got in, Ben turned to the man who had watched out for him for the better part of seven years. “If anything happens to her, you’re fired.”
Bataar had a look of self-satisfaction on his wide mug. “Anything else, boss?”
Ben frowned. “Yeah. I’ll fuck you up so bad, your dick will be coming out your nose.”
Seeing that his boss wasn’t joking, Bataar only nodded. “Okay, boss.”
Chapter Five
“That was fun,” said Robin Alvarez, a fellow reporter at the Tribune, after they had returned to the campaign headquarters for Gordon Lee. “I’ve never been on a precinct walk before.”
She turned to Ron, the bearded photographer for the paper. “Did you get any good pics?”
Ron was scrolling through the photos he had taken of Gordon. “Yeah, I got some good action shots. Check these out.”
Kimani and Robin peered over his shoulder as he scrolled through pictures of Gordon talking to voters, Gordon wiping his brow as the Indian summer sun beat down on him during the second hour of their precinct walk. Gordon cheerfully waving to passersby, and Gordon laughing after he missed a terrible shot on a basketball court.
“I like that one,” Kimani said when Ron landed on a photo of Gordon taking a break, sitting down on the sidewalk with a stack of his campaign literature next to him, a wall of graffiti behind him. Gordon had remarked at the time that he wanted to look into supporting the expansion of mural projects for East Oakland.
“This is going to be a great piece,” said Robin. “I can’t wait to write it. I mean, cowrite this with you, Kimani.”