When he was alone again on the street, Khaled sent an encrypted text to Deputy Director Eiserly.Six months of worship and reverence and finally we have a payoff. The imam has asked me to assumeRehan al-Albiri’s duties. Only the official books, of course, but it is a start. The imam has even invited me to dinner this evening, unexpected and quite an honor. He said his sister Adara wishes to meet me. I’ll make contact again when I’ve learned more.
Chapter Thirty
Titus Hitch Wilderness
Titusville, Virginia
Friday
Autumn hiked to Locksley Manor, her special cave in the Titus Hitch Wilderness. She moved the brush away from the cave entrance and crawled in, careful not to squish her bag of potato chips. Once she was through the narrow opening, the cave roof soared to ten feet above her. It was her thinking place, her sanctuary. She carefully pulled brush over the opening until she knew from long practice her cave was once again invisible.
She sank down on the blanket she’d first spread on the floor of the cave when she was seven, frayed now, still as comforting now as it was then. She opened her bag of potato chips and set her bottle of water beside her. She pulled her iPhone out of her hoodie pocket, leaned back against the limestone wall, and stretched out her legs. She scrolled to the photos she’d downloaded of Carla Cartwright, COO of Archer Navarro’s investment fund, the woman whose name Tash’s dad had texted to Rebel. She’d looked it up—COO really meant second-in-command, the person who ran all the day-to-day operations.
She’d found a photo on Archer’s Facebook of Carla standing beside Archer, both grinning madly, taken over four years ago, when she and Archer had set up the Navarro Investment Fund.Autumn studied Carla Cartwright’s face. She wasn’t beautiful like Autumn’s mom; Cartwright’s features were too strong, her chin too aggressive. But her eyes were smart, Autumn could see that, and met the camera straight on. Her dark hair was cut in a bob sharply angled along her jawline. She had pale skin, black hair, blue eyes—Black Irish, she knew that was called, so somewhere along the line, Cartwright must have had Irish ancestors. She scrolled to another photo, this one recent and full length. Cartwright looked elegant and fit. Autumn had read in a Wikipedia article she was thirty-eight, five years older than Autumn’s mom, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business. She had an economics degree from Brown. She’d dealt with IPOs—initial public offerings—it said, until she’d hooked up with Archer Navarro. She looked vibrant in the photo, happy, very pleased with herself and her world.
Autumn scrolled through photos of her at the office and events, wearing beautifully fitted business suits in different colors in the daytime and long expensive gowns on formal occasions, where she was surrounded by men wearing tuxedos. There was a photo of Cartwright in leggings and sneakers, running past Betsy Ross’s house on Arch Street in Philadelphia. It looked staged because there were no tourists in sight. Another showed Tash and his mom, Celia, and dad outside of Luigi’s Pizza, Carla standing behind Tash, mugging for the camera. Tash looked maybe four years old. He was standing between his parents, each of them holding one of his hands. His mom was beautiful, with soft, nearly white-blond hair and the bluest of eyes. They looked like a happy family. Archer Navarro was beaming with pleasure. She remembered the Archer Navarro who’d hired her to shepherd his son for the summer. He didn’t look much like the man in the picture. He’d seemed stiff and formal, smiling only when he’d looked at his new wife, Sasha.
Autumn sat back. She didn’t want to think about how his orTash’s lives had changed so completely after Celia died. It was too scary, all the bad things that could happen to people, like cancer or meeting the Backmans.
She shook away the thought and scrolled to a photo of Cartwright wearing a tight, formal emerald-green gown. She looked like an off-with-your-head sort of queen. Okay, enough pictures, time to get on with it.
Autumn punched off her cell, ate one last potato chip, and closed her eyes. She relaxed her hands, palms up, on the blanket. She grounded herself, cleared all the stray thoughts from her mind, and pictured Carla Cartwright’s strong vivid face, her smart eyes, her dark hair in a bob.
She concentrated, but she saw only the pictures she’d looked at, not Carla herself. She tried over and over, but it was no use.
Autumn cussed one of the bad words she’d heard from Oscar at the grocery store when he splatted a carton of milk on the floor, but it didn’t help.
She concentrated on Tash instead, saw him immediately, sitting cross-legged in Rebel’s study, its low lights casting shadows on the walls behind him. He was listening to his uncle reading the novel he’d just sent off to his editor in New York. Autumn heard Rebel’s deep voice filled with menace meant to make you shiver.The strange shapes began to stretch out, taller and taller until they reached the ceiling. They twisted in on themselves, turned inside out, and one of them moved toward him. It was holding something long and blurry that slowly took form. It was an ax. Jamie recognized it from his uncle Elliott’s workshop.
Tash suddenly looked toward her, cocked his head in question. He saw her. He actually saw her. Good. He blinked, smiled really big. It was the first time he’d seen her. She winked at him, mouthed later, and left him there with Rebel, who hadn’t noticed a thing.
Autumn checked her watch, wadded up the potato chipbag, drank the rest of the bottled water, and stuffed them both in her backpack. It was time to get home to help Ethan and her mom feed the critters and make dinner. She decided she’d give all of them big hugs because you never knew when something bad might happen.
Chapter Thirty-One
Home of Ammar Aboud
Horse farm near Plattville, Virginia
Late Friday afternoon
Rome goosed up his speed to keep close to Savich’s Porsche in front of him once he’d turned off the highway toward Aboud’s horse farm in rural Virginia. Sherlock was summarizing more information about Ammar Aboud. “Our Mr. Ammar Aboud is an American citizen, born in Boston. Word has it the family wanted him to have dual citizenship because he was expected to conduct business internationally, which he has. His family wealth is two generations old and took a bigger step up when his father married his mother, an heiress to an immense shipping fortune. His father owns hotels, industrial plants making airplane parts, and a chain of banks Ammar will control when Aboud senior retires. Ammar Aboud himself, a widower with one son killed in the Syrian conflict, remarried another Sunni heiress some eighteen years ago and has three children.
“He’s a horse racing fanatic, spends a good deal of time here in the United States at his horse farm. He has a collection of World War II fighter planes hangared in Damascus, owns and flies a Gulfstream, the big one, a G5. He’s also a gambler, and he rarely loses. He’s been here for the past three months; his wife and children are in Damascus. He bought the Sikorskytwelve years ago from a United Arab Emirates sheik, had it hangared here on his property. We’re coming up to his property now.”
Rome turned off the two-lane country road and followed the Porsche through open white gates. Pastures and paddocks bordered white-painted stables and outbuildings stretched out in the distance. They drove past grazing horses twitching their tails, their healthy coats glistening in the bright late-afternoon sun. The smooth-topped drive was lined with oak and maple trees and curved into a circle in front of a pillared colonial house adorned with flower boxes painted a soft light green and bulging with summer flowers. The house looked freshly painted, a glistening white, like the barns. It looked like a painting.
A stout older woman of indeterminate age dressed in a gray suit and low heels opened the front door and regarded them with no particular interest.
“How may I help you?” she asked in a soft southern accent.
Savich introduced himself, Sherlock, and Rome, but said nothing about Elizabeth, standing behind Rome. They all pulled out their creds. “We would like to speak with Mr. Aboud.”
“I’m very sorry, Agents, but Mr. Aboud is quite busy at the moment. I was told he wasn’t to be disturbed. I am Mrs. Maynard, his housekeeper. Perhaps I could help you with something?”
Sherlock gave Mrs. Maynard a sunny smile. “Please tell Mr. Aboud this visit concerns his Sikorsky helicopter. Trust me, Mrs. Maynard, Mr. Aboud will want to know what we have to tell him.”
The woman cocked her head to the side and considered. “Very well. I will ask if Mr. Aboud wishes to see you. Please come in and sit down in the living room, just to your right.”
