Chapter 3
Reality came into hazy focus.
A room.
His living room.
He didn’t know why, but that didn’t feel right. Why was Haatim in his living room? How had he gotten back to his apartment? Where had he been, because he vaguely knew that he hadn’t been here? He had a strange suspicion that this wasn’t where he was before he passed out, lying on his leather couch.
And was that . . .
. . . bacon?
It all hit him at once: the night, George flying out of the window, his camera, and the attack. He sat up, gasping for air. His body felt rigid, and he let out a grunt of pain as his muscles cramped.
He focused on breathing, but he could feel himself panicking: he’d been in his car, and he hadn’t had pants on, and George was dead, and someone was after him, and he was about to be mugged or killed, and it was a dead guy, and he lost his camera and he vomited and—
“You’re awake!” a voice called cheerfully from the kitchen.
Haatim screamed.
“Shh. Don’t wake your neighbors.’
It was a woman’s voice. He looked up, cowering, and saw the lithe black woman—Abigail—he’d been following for the last few days standing in his kitchen, drying her hands on his blue kitchen towel. This was the first time he’d gotten a close-up and unobstructed view of her: she had shoulder-length curly hair and high cheekbones. There was a scar on her right cheek, maybe an inch and a half long.
She was in her early twenties, maybe, but hard to tell with most of the lights off in his apartment. She was wearing skinny jeans and a faded gray T-Shirt that read “Avalon Wolves Rock!” with a wolf’s head on it.
“Who—who—who—who—”
“Are you pretending to be an owl?”
Haatim felt his mouth hanging open, trying to process what she was saying.
“OK,” she offered with a shrug. “I guess it wasn’t that funny.”
Haatim gulped. “Why . . . ” he started “…why are you in my kitchen?”
“Because I was hungry?”
Haatim couldn’t think of a reply. He looked down and saw that he was in his underwear.
“Why am I . . . ?” he trailed off.
“Almost naked? Because you vomited all over yourself. I threw your clothes into the bedroom and shut the door. Seriously, you don’t have a washing machine or anything?”
He looked again at his underwear, feeling his face flush.
“I didn’t take those off,” she said with a laugh. “But I can’t stand the smell of vomit. You didn’t seem to mind, either. You just sort of moaned and thrashed while I did it.”
“I uh . . . I don’t have any money,” he said. “Or not a lot, but you can have . . . ”
She frowned. “You think I’m here to rob you? Why would I bring you home, drop you on your couch, strip your puke-covered clothes off you, and then cook us both breakfast if I was going to rob you?”
“Then what do you want?”
“You have been following me,” she said. She stated it directly, making it clear it wasn’t a question.
He winced as if she had punched him. “I wasn’t.”
“You’re going to try that route? I advise against it.”
He winced again. “I was hired to.”
“So you think you’re a detective?”
“Sort of.”
She shrugged. “Not a very good one.”
“I’m a blogger.”
“Ah,” she said, her face solemn. “I’m very sorry.”
“Why would you think I’m a detective?”
“You’ve been photographing me.”
“For my blog.”
“You mean for George Wertman, right?”
“Him, too. He’s the guy who hired me.”
“I’ve read your blog. You’ve never done a single story like this.”
“The opportunity was sort of sprung on me,” he said.
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “You have no idea how right you are.”
She turned and disappeared into the kitchen. He could hear sizzling and the microwave was running. “How do you like your eggs?” she called out.
“Excuse me?”
She appeared around the corner again. “Eggs? How do you like them?”
“I’m not hungry,” he said, shaking his head. “How did I get here?”
“In a car. Your car, I hope. Otherwise, someone is going to be pissed tomorrow when their space is empty.”
“What happened?”
“You passed out. I thought that much was obvious.”
“I mean, what happened after that? How did I get here? Did you drive?”
She paused, staring at him with pursed lips. “You ask a lot of dumb questions. You know that?”
“Excuse me?”
“You keep asking questions that would be obvious to any sane person who examined this logically. Do I look like I have a driver with me? Maybe someone waiting out front to chauffeur us around? No, after you hyperventilated I shoved your ass into the passenger seat and climbed in.”
“How did you know where I live?”
“Your driver’s license,” she said.
“My driver’s license . . . ”
He sucked in a breath. He started to feel dizzy.
“Whoa there, stay with me. Let’s not do that again.”
“Guy . . . he was dead . . . ”
“It was a costume,” the woman said. “Just a costume.”
Haatim kept gasping for air, having trouble focusing.
Suddenly she banged her hand on the wall, startling Haatim. He shook his head, back in reality.
“Just a costume,” she reiterated. “The guy uses it to scare people.”
Haatim hesitated. “It didn’t seem like a costume.”
She shrugged. “I don’t care what it seemed like. In any case, I retrieved your wallet and keys and brought you back here.”
Then she disappeared back into the kitchen. After a second, he heard humming.
He stood up, still a little off balance, and staggered over to his bedroom. The smell of stale vomit wafted out as soon as he opened the door and he swallowed back a bit of bile. Without breathing more than necessary he kicked his dirty clothes toward the basket in the corner of the room and pulled a shirt and some pants on.
He stared longingly at the bedroom window for a few minutes after he was dressed. He could slip out, find a police officer, and tell them some strange person was in his kitchen, someone he’d never met before who had apparently driven him home and undressed him in his apartment.
But he decided against it. For one thing, he didn’t know what was going on, and it seemed like maybe she had saved his life. Another problem was that he’d been following her for a few days now, collecting evidence on his computer and the document he’d been writing made mention of her more than a few times. “Sorry officer, this person I’ve been cyber stalking for a few days broke into my apartment and cooked breakfast in my kitchen,” didn’t sound very convincing.
But, the real reason he decided against it was that his bedroom window was really small. He wasn’t in as good of shape as he used to be and doubted he could slip through.
With a deep and—he hoped—calming breath, he headed back to his living room. He felt better now that he had clean clothes on, and the pain and tightness in his body had mostly gone away.
The woman was sitting on one of his barstools, munching a piece of toast and scrolling through a phone. She paid him no attention at all.
It was the first time he saw her in good lighting up close. She was actually quite beautiful, he admitted, with full lips and smooth black skin. He’d suspected she was gorgeous, and she certainly didn’t look like a murderer.
But, he now knew, looks could be deceiving.
Not looking up, she pushed another plate of food toward him. It had bacon, eggs, and a piece of toast on it.
“Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Wasn’t an offer,” she said, taking another bite of her toast.
He picked up a piece of bacon and twirled it in his fingers. Just thinking of the grease in his stomach made him queasy. He dropped it back onto the plate and glanced at her again.
“Wait a second, isn’t that my phone?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Hey give it—“
She looked up at him sharply. He stopped reaching and folded his hands in his lap.
“Uh . . . how did you get my passcode?”
“Seriously?” she asked. “It’s the first four digits of your birthday. About as secure as a broken lock.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, but he did anyway: “How did you know my birthday?”
“I looked you up Monday,” she said. Haatim did some quick math. That would have been the same day he was first asked to check into her when he’d met George at the library.
On Monday, he’d spotted her in a nearby park sitting on a bench. He only snapped a few pictures from his car on that day. He hadn’t even gotten close to her, so how the hell had she known he was tailing her?
“Plus, every time you log on in the morning to check your email, you hold the phone up in clear sight of the window.”
A flood of emotions hit him all at once. He couldn’t decide if he was disheartened that she’d known he was following her from that very first day or that she had been spying on him and he hadn’t noticed.
Or . . .
“Wait . . . I check my email in the bathroom.”
She didn’t look up. “Yep.”
“OK, OK, what the hell is going on?” he asked, flushing again. “Who the hell are you?”
She hit the power button on his phone and slid it across the table to him. “Why didn’t you publish your article?”
“Excuse me.”
“You have plenty of evidence against me. Why didn’t you take it to the authorities or post it like George wanted you to?”
“I wasn’t supposed to take it to the police. George was going to do that.”
“Oh, come on. I saw the pictures on your camera. They would have stuck me with a restraining order if you’d shown them even a few of these. Maybe not enough for a conviction, but certainly enough to raise suspicion.”
“I wanted to get an up-close picture,” he said awkwardly, “to post on my blog.”
“Is that the only reason?”
He paused. “Yes.”
“You hesitated.”
“Yes,” he repeated firmly. “You’ve been through my phone. Probably my laptop, too. You read the post I wrote. It’s almost ready to submit. I just needed a final picture for the front page and I was going to publish.”
“And then you would give the photos to the authorities and have me arrested?”
“Yes,” he said. Then his eyes widened as he realized what he had just said. “I mean no. No. No way. I wouldn’t turn you in. No. Probably not. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Relax,” she said. “You never would have made it that far.”
He started to ask her what she meant, then decided against it.
“In any case, you’ve pissed a lot of people off sitting on this evidence, and they decided to take it from you.”
“What? Who?”
“The people who work for the guy I just killed.”
Haatim was silent for a long minute, having no idea what to say.
“You’re wondering why I killed him.”
“I…” he trailed off.
“He was a sex trafficker and money launderer.”
“Then shouldn’t the police deal with someone like him?”
“I am the police for someone like him,” she said. “Sort of.”
“The police don’t execute people.”
“Trust me, George was already dead. In either case, when you didn’t give him the stuff he wanted, he decided to take it from you. Now that he’s dead, his people want to use it.”
“It’s just some pictures. I didn’t even catch you doing anything illegal.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s why they were after you in the alley.”
He felt a chill run down his spine. “What do you mean?”
“They’re planning to kill you and make it look like I discovered that you were tailing me.”
“What? Why?”
“They want to frame me for two murders and hopefully, have me arrested. You’re just a piece of the puzzle. When the police find out you are dead they will search your laptop, and then they’ll find the pictures you took of me and come looking.”
She took a piece of bacon from his plate and popped it in her mouth. Haatim stared blankly, trying to work his way through what she had just said.
“You really should eat,” she said. “After earlier you need something in your stomach. It’ll help steady you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Is this Applewood? I love Applewood bacon!”
“Why are you here, then?”
She was silent, studying him. “I had been watching George for two weeks, trying to be obvious about it. This morning, I got the order to take him out.”
“By who?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m here now because I need to delete those pictures and make sure you aren’t planning to do anything stupid, like go to the police.”
“Never,” Haatim agreed immediately. It seemed like the safest thing to say.
“The only thing is: I didn’t realize they had the same idea and would come looking for you. That means you’re valuable to them, and I don’t want them to get their hands on you.”
“So you’re protecting me from them?”
“You could say that,” she said. “But I’m also protecting myself from the cops finding those pictures. I need for you to delete everything on your computer, the camera, and on your cloud backups, I’m heading out of town tonight, and I can’t afford to leave any loose ends.”
“Loose ends?”
“You are my loose end,” she said. “But you won’t be any danger once I’ve destroyed the images and taken the computer. If you aren’t holding evidence against me then you won’t be worth anything to them. There won’t be any more reason for them to kill you.”
“So you’re stealing my computer?”
“And your phone and camera,” she said. “After you delete all mention of me.”
“Do I have a choice?”
She shrugged. “You always have a choice; but, in this case, there is a correct way for things to go.”
Haatim stared at her for a second and then went over to grab his laptop. “All right. It’s only a few files and the document I was writing.”
“I know,” she said. “You should stick with that blog, just not as a crime journalist. You have some real talent, and that other stuff you write about God and forgiveness is really interesting.”
He sighed. “Thanks. I think.”
He deleted the photos from the camera first, wiping the memory card, and then he opened the laptop and logged in. He hated to delete all of the pictures he’d collected over the last few days, but he didn’t have much choice. It was just frustrating because he’d worked so hard gathering them to begin with.
Of course, even with that at stake, he found himself believing what Abigail had told him. The men in the alley hadn’t seemed interested in chatting with him, and he hadn’t trusted George by the end. The idea that he might have been part of a set-up was terrifying but not nearly as far-fetched as he would have liked.
“This is a really nice place,” she said after a few minutes. “You know, that reminds me of something I’ve been wondering: how do you afford a place like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t seem to have a full-time job, and you just graduated from college with a very expensive degree, yet you are living in a ritzy upscale neighborhood on one of its nicer floors. How the hell do you pay for it?”
He shrugged. “My parents help.”
“That’s what I assumed, but when I looked into them there weren’t many details,” she said. “I couldn’t find any information about your father.”
“He doesn’t like the Internet,” Haatim said.
“Still,” she replied, “I assumed there would be something listed about him if he could afford a place like this. But, no, there was nothing.”
Haatim was silent, staring at the table.
“What?” Abigail asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re hiding something. Is it about your father?”
He hesitated.
“You hesitated,” she said. “Tell me. I’m not going to ask again.”
“The thing is, my father and I have different last names and—”
He was interrupted by the buzzing of a cellphone on vibrate. Abigail slipped a phone out of her pocket and glanced at it. She read the name on the front and then looked at him.
“I have to take this. Keep deleting.”
“I will,” he said.
“No funny stuff.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied.
She stood and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Haatim waited a few seconds and then tiptoed across the floor. He pressed his ear against the wood and listened.
“No, but it’s almost taken care of,” he heard her say, voice muffled by the thick door. “Just some personal business, and I’ll be on the road in an hour or two at the most. Yeah, Frieda, I got it: Raven’s Peak, I know. No, I won’t. I gave you my word, didn’t I?”
There was a moment of silence. Haatim leaned closer, straining to hear.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Look, Frieda, I have to go. I’m in the middle of something, but I promise I’ll be on the road heading out of town in just a short while.”
Haatim tiptoed back to the counter only seconds before the bathroom door opened. He sat down next to his laptop and typed, pretending to ignore her. Abigail walked back to the other side of the counter, sliding her phone away and frowning.
“Almost done?” she asked.
“Almost,” he said. “Just one last group of photos to delete.”
“All right,” she said, checking her watch. “I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“OK,” he said, scratching at his arm.
He heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the table. He sensed her tensing up and froze, slowly turning to look at her.
“What?” he asked.
“Uh oh,” she said.
“Uh oh?” he echoed.
“Let me see your arm.”
Haatim held it up. She turned it to get a clear view of the cut, shaking her head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“When did you get this?”
“A few days ago,” he said. “I think. Just a scratch, but it just hasn’t closed.”
“It isn’t a normal scrape.”
“Then what is it?”
She hesitated. “Something else.”
“Then what does it mean?” he asked.
“It means,” she explained. “That things just got a lot more complicated.”
