Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria Read online

  Before I took a chance with Nick, though, I had to give Brett a heads-up, talk things through, come to some sort of agreement on the terms of our trial separation. It was the right thing to do. Plus, I wanted to make damn sure the door was left open with Brett in case things didn’t work out with Nick. But would Brett agree to take me back if Nick and I proved to be a bad match? Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody liked to play second fiddle or be the fallback.

  Still, dating at this age wasn’t just fun and games anymore. People our age were looking for lifelong mates, someone to settle down with. It was only smart to do everything possible to make sure that choice was made wisely, right? I hoped Brett would understand.

  I broke eye contact with Nick and glanced down at my lap, trying to corral my rampaging thoughts. Brett was coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I’d talk to him then. It wasn’t going to be easy. Brett was a nice guy and the thought of hurting him made me feel horrible. But the thought of Nick slipping through my fingers, of never knowing what might have been, made me feel even worse.

  When I looked back, Nick had turned to Josh, apparently taking my averted eyes as a sign that I’d passed on his final offer. “Sign me up.” He pulled out his credit card and plunked it down on the desk in front of Josh.

  Josh quickly input the information, then slid the card back to Nick.

  “Let me write your bio, too,” I told Nick.

  He shrugged. “What the hell. You made Josh sound like James Bond. Go ahead. Take a stab at it.”

  I pulled the computer toward me and stared at the screen. How could I sabotage Nick’s chances of meeting an attractive woman without making it obvious? After some thought and tinkering, I formulated a bio sure to turn women off.

  Avid sports fan and fishing enthusiast seeks a woman who is attractive, self-reliant, and tolerant.

  Any woman with half a brain would read between the lines and form a vision of Nick as a guy who’d neglect his girlfriend in favor of watching ESPN and spending weekends on the lake with his fishing buddies and a case of beer. Not to mention that the term “self-reliant” implied he’d be a poor provider who’d expect her to go Dutch on their dates and “tolerant” equated with “I don’t want to listen to any bitching about my bad habits.”

  Nick and Josh read what I’d written. I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping they wouldn’t catch on to my subterfuge.

  “You think it says enough about me?” Nick asked.

  “Less is more,” I said. “Women like a little mystery.”

  Josh handed me his phone to snap photos of the two of them for their profiles. Getting a decent photo of Josh took several attempts. In the first, his open-mouth smile made him look like the Gerber Baby. He looked pouty in the second. The third would do.

  I snapped several photos of Nick, trying to get his bad side. Unfortunately, Nick didn’t seem to have a bad side. He looked manly and sexy and absolutely gorgeous in each and every shot. Damn him.

  Finally, he ran out of patience and shot me an exasperated look. “Aren’t you done yet?”

  Snap.

  “This is the one,” I said, holding out the phone.

  Nick took a look and frowned. “I look grumpy.”

  “No, you don’t,” I lied. “You look dark and dangerous. That’s what women like.”

  He took another look at the photo, his expression skeptical. “If you say so.”

  Lu poked her head in the door. “Y’all having a party in here or what?”

  “Nick and Josh are signing up for an online dating service,” I said, standing from my seat. “They needed a female opinion on their profiles.”

  Lu crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Uncle Sam doesn’t pay you boys to chase skirts,” she snapped at Nick and Josh. “He pays you to hunt down tax evaders and squeeze ’em dry.”

  “Speaking of dry,” Nick said, motioning the Lobo into his office, “you’ve been in a dry spell for too long, Lu. Your husband’s been dead for, what, ten years? It’s time for you to get back in the game. Let’s get you signed up, too.”

  Lu’s face flashed surprise. “Me?” She blinked her false lashes. “Really?”

  “Sure,” Nick said. “There’s men of all ages on here looking for love. A woman as hot as you? Heck, you’d have to beat them off with a stick.”

  Lu’s bright-orange lips fought a smile. “You’re as full of crap as the bull pen at the rodeo,” she said. “But God bless you for it.” She shooed me out of the way and plunked her plump butt down in the chair I’d just vacated. “Okay, boys, how does this online dating thing work?”

  chapter three

  The Wheels on the Bus Don’t Always Go Round and Round

  At home that evening, I ignored the dirty laundry spilling out of my hamper and sat down on my couch to watch some television and take a fresh look at the information on the terrorist case.

  A half hour later I closed the file Lu had given me and shut my eyes, shaking my head as if I could dislodge the horrifying images in my brain. The file had been compiled by the CIA and Homeland Security and contained a number of photos depicting the aftermath of terror plots. Homes destroyed, the families’ personal belongings strewn about. Bodies covered with blood-soaked blankets and lined up on the ground, awaiting identification and burial by grief-stricken relatives. A yellow school bus, the bright color at odds with the gaping hole in its side and the tattered young bodies being pulled from the wreckage.

  The worst thing I’d faced in elementary school was an oversized bully intent on robbing me of my lunch money. I hadn’t considered myself lucky when my arm had been pulled up painfully behind me, but everything’s relative, isn’t it? I’d take a bully over a roadside bomb any day.

  I’d faced some scary people in the few months I’d worked for the IRS, but none quite as heartless, as ruthless, as soulless as these terrorists.

  They had to be stopped.

  And the way to stop them was by cutting off their money supply.

  Agents at the CIA and Homeland Security knew that money had been sent from the United States to fund terror cells in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. After receiving tips from undercover agents overseas, they were able to identify some of the financiers. Several lived right here in Dallas and had been arrested after weeks of careful surveillance. E-mails and text messages found on the computers and cell phones of the men linked them to terror cells in Syria.

  Unfortunately, the men had been far more cautious about covering their financial tracks. Despite their best efforts, the agents had been unable to track down the money trail and determine how the men had managed to move the funds.

  Someone had helped them do it. Someone with the ability to transfer large sums of money undetected.

  That’s where Eddie and I came in.

  As special agents for the Internal Revenue Service, we were among the best-trained financial sleuths in the country. We could trace an extensive series of payments and money transfers back to the original source. We could find assets hidden under multiple layers of corporations, partnerships, and complex trusts. We were financial bloodhounds, able to sniff out even a single copper penny.

  Given our mad money skills, we had been solicited to assist the other agencies in finding the financiers’ resources and staunching the flow of funds. Unfortunately, none of the information in the file gave me a clue as to how these men were funneling their money out of the United States and into the hands of their coconspirators. Eddie and I had an appointment tomorrow to meet with a CIA operative and a Homeland Security financial specialist. We hoped they would be able to provide us with more documentation and information that would lead us to the money trail.

  My skinny, cream-colored cat, Anne, trotted after me as I went to my kitchen, removed a glass pitcher of homemade peach sangria from the top shelf of my refrigerator, and poured myself a full glass over ice. Nick’s mother had given me the sangria recipe. I’d modified it slightly, adding two or three spiced peaches to the other fresh fruit in the mix. Brett had
brought me a dozen jars of the peaches when he’d returned after a monthlong project at a country club in Atlanta. The club’s chef had prepared them and they were, well, absolutely peachy. Apparently all the food at the club had been superb. Weeks later, Brett still blathered on about the wonderful meals he’d enjoyed there.

  Thinking of Brett caused a flood of guilt to flow through me. He’d be blindsided tomorrow when I told him I wanted to put the brakes on our relationship, at least temporarily. For all I knew, once Nick and I started dating we might realize we weren’t right for each other after all. If that happened, I could only hope Brett would be willing to give things a second chance. If not, well, I’d end up alone again, back at square one. Hell, maybe I’d be the next one signing up for the Big D Dating Service.

  I gulped down the glass of fruity wine and poured myself another, hoping if I drank enough it would wash away the horrible, tragic images burned into my mind and the guilt gnawing at my insides. But I feared there wasn’t enough sangria in the world to make me feel better.

  * * *

  “Ready?” asked Eddie from the doorway of my office the next morning at eleven. Eddie held his briefcase in his left hand, his gray suit jacket slung over his right shoulder.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” I took a deep breath to steady myself, shoved the file and a legal pad into my briefcase, and grabbed my purse from the bottom drawer of my desk.

  Although we’d been granted a brief reprieve in the terrorism case when one of the men who’d been arrested had agreed to talk in return for leniency, the lawyers hadn’t worked out the details fast enough and word spread through the jailhouse grapevine that the man was going to spill the beans. His tongue had been promptly cut out, presumably by one of his coconspirators. Needless to say, his offer to talk was no longer on the table. We’d have to hunt down the clues ourselves.

  My head throbbed as I followed Eddie down the hall to the elevators. In retrospect, three glasses of sangria last night might have been a bad idea. Not only did I have a headache now, but I’d had to get up twice during the night to pee. On the bright side, though, I’d received my recommended daily allowance of vitamin C.

  We exited the building and walked in silence the few blocks to the Homeland Security field office on Main. Eddie had obviously found the information and photos in the file as disturbing as I had, perhaps even more so. His young daughters normally rode a bus to school, but I had a sneaking suspicion he’d driven them to school that morning himself.

  We made our way through the security line on the first floor, took the stairs up one flight, and continued down the hall, checking the nameplates on the doors. We found the name we were looking for on the third door on the left.

  Chung Wang.

  Eddie rapped twice on the door, opening it when a male voice from within called out, inviting us to enter.

  The office was small, white, and windowless, lit by a rectangular fluorescent fixture on the ceiling. The walls were lined with gray filing cabinets, which, judging from the stacks of files on top of them, were insufficient to hold Wang’s workload. He stood from his seat behind his desk and extended his hand over yet another pile of files on his desk.

  “Special Agent Tara Holloway,” I said, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.

  Wang had the typical Chinese build, slightly shorter than average, lean but wiry. He appeared to be around thirty years of age, no gray yet in his short black hair. He wore a standard white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Working hard, no doubt.

  Eddie took Wang’s hand next.

  A knock sounded behind us, the fourth of our party, the agent from the CIA, having arrived. Eddie and I stepped aside to allow him in.

  Like Chung Wang, this agent had black hair, brown skin, and appeared to be in his early thirties. He wore wire-framed glasses and an argyle sweater-vest in green and blue over a short-sleeved white cotton shirt. He looked like a Persian Urkel. I mentally dubbed him Perkel.

  “Azad Zardooz,” the guy said, extending his hand and stepping forward.

  So not Perkel, then.

  I shook his hand and glanced around at the dark-haired, dark-skinned men. “Wow, I feel awfully—”

  “Pale?” Eddie provided, shooting me a look.

  He’d hit the nail on the head, but once he’d put it out in the open I realized how politically incorrect it sounded, even if there was no malicious intent behind it. I decided to go with “female” instead.

  “Don’t worry,” Zardooz assured me as he shook Eddie’s hand next. “This isn’t a boys’ club.”

  I raised a fist in celebration. “Hooray for ovaries!”

  His brows drew together. He looked at Eddie. “Is she always like this?”

  “Twenty-four-seven,” Eddie said. “She’s the most embarrassing partner I’ve ever had.”

  “Maybe so.” I pointed a finger in his face. “But I’m the best with a gun.”

  Eddie lifted his chin in acquiescence. “I have to give you that.”

  Agent Wang invited us to take seats around his desk and handed each of us a second file, this one far thicker and heavier than the initial file we’d been provided. I looked inside and found copies of bank statements, credit card bills, check registers, ATM receipts, and other miscellaneous financial information, including a pay stub from a small biotech company and another from Texas Instruments, one of the area’s major employers. There was even a grocery store receipt that included Oreo cookies.

  “I’ve been through all the documentation,” Wang said, “and it led me nowhere. These guys operate primarily on a cash basis. You’ll notice that several large withdrawals were made from their accounts each month, but there was nothing to tell me how they got that money out of the country.”

  Agent Wang was intelligent and well trained, too, so I wasn’t sure whether Eddie and I would have any more luck than he had. But it never hurt to have a fresh set of eyes look things over.

  Zardooz glanced at his watch. “I’d like to give you two some background on the men involved. How about we discuss this further over lunch?”

  “Sure,” Eddie said.

  “Works for me,” Wang said, standing from his chair.

  “Any suggestions?” Zardooz asked.

  The men turned to me. As I looked at Azad and Chung, the federal government’s answer to Harold and Kumar, a particular restaurant came to mind.

  Eddie held up a hand. “Don’t you dare say ‘White Castle.’”

  Sheez. The guy could read my mind.

  “Dallas doesn’t have White Castle,” I shot back. “How about Twisted Root?” The place had an awesome black bean burger, not to mention their yummy sweet potato chips and fried pickles.

  “Is that the place that serves kangaroo?” Wang asked.

  “Only when it’s in season.” I replied. They also served alligator, venison, boar, and ostrich, not that there were many takers from what I’d seen. The downtown crowd didn’t want to chow down on a Bambi or Big Bird burger.

  “Let’s hit it,” Zardooz said.

  We loaded our new files in our briefcases and headed out.

  * * *

  Over lunch, Zardooz shared some intriguing bits of information. In his younger days, he’d infiltrated an Al-Qaeda training camp and learned some of their techniques firsthand. He showed us a photo of himself from a decade earlier. With his turban, full beard, and machine gun he looked nothing like the nerdy agent who sat before us sipping a Coke and dipping his French fries in ketchup.

  “Those camps are crazy places,” he said. He went on to explain that the strategy of the camp leaders was to visit poor villages where they could easily recruit young men and boys who had little or no prospects for the future. They’d move the recruits to remote camps in wilderness areas. Once at the camps, the recruits were deprived of sleep, exercised to the point of exhaustion, and fed a steady diet of lies to incite them against the rest of the world.

  The tactics were similar to those used by cults. Isolation.
Sleep deprivation. Brainwashing. I had to admit there were some eerie similarities to a summer church camp I’d once attended in Louisiana. Whatever spell the staff had cast over us campers was broken, however, when we caught the head counselor in the woods with a copy of Playboy in one hand and his ding-dong in the other.

  Zardooz continued. “The leaders convince the recruits they’re doing something worthy and heroic when they’re only being used to further a horribly warped interpretation of Islam.” Sadly, many volunteered for suicide missions, hoping to become martyrs. “These extremists haven’t just given Islam a bad name,” he said. “They’ve made life very hard for mainstream Muslims. A man once ripped off my wife’s hijab when she was shopping in Walmart.”

  No man had a right to touch any woman without her permission, especially to do something as heinous as tearing off her head scarf. I wish I could say the reprehensible act surprised me, but alas it did not. For a country founded on religious freedom, America was full of ignorance, intolerance, and distrust. I felt bad for Zardooz and other Muslims who’d suffered prejudice due to the acts of a small faction of extremists. It was no different from judging all Christians based on the radical few who murdered abortion doctors or judging all Jewish people based on the bombings carried out by the Jewish Defense League.

  Zardooz reached into his back pocket and removed a small envelope. Inside the envelope were wallet-sized photos of the three men who’d been arrested here in Dallas. Zardooz handed one set to me, another to Eddie.

  I spread the photos out on the table in front of me and looked them over. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to see, but it certainly wasn’t the ordinary-looking men in the photos. All three were clean shaven, with short dark hair and light brown skin. They appeared to be in their late twenties, around my age. One wore a business suit and tie in his photo; the other two wore dress shirts. Though none smiled, their expressions were in no way threatening. Had I not known these benign-looking men were terrorists, I would’ve assumed they were no different from the thousands of other immigrants who had come to the United States seeking education, work, and a better life.