Garage Sale Diamonds (Garage Sale Mystery) (38 page)

The doctor came out, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “We had him stabilized, but I think the femur fracture he sustained in the car accident must have released bone marrow into his blood. This can cause a fat-embolism. The resulting clots travel up through the venous system to block the entrance to the lungs. When that happened, we couldn’t stop it. We did everything medically possible to save him, but we can’t control every outcome. All I can say is that we tried…. These things happen.”

Catherine sobbed as the doctor and Jennifer exchanged looks and he left.

“Let’s sit here a few minutes,” Jennifer suggested. When Catherine quieted, she said, “Becca and I are visiting Jason in another ward. Would you like to spend a little time with us? Could we help you call your brothers about this?”

“Yes, thank you. Mom would be so glad you’re here just when I need you most.”

“Your mom was a wonderful person and my dear friend. It’s the least I can do.”

A nurse approached them. “You can go in now.” She gestured to the curtained cubicle.

Catherine reached for Jennifer’s hand. “Please, will you come with me?”

Steeling herself to view the man who told her he was a murderer, Jennifer put an arm around the grief-stricken girl. “Of course. Let’s go in together.”

96

Tuesday, 7:03 PM

“May I have your car keys, Abdul?” Ahmed asked.

“But you told me you can’t run the risk of driving. I can take you wherever you wish to go.”

“You are correct I said this, but things have changed.”

Abdul looked nervous. “Do you…have you had practice driving?”

“Of course. Choosing not to drive here was a matter of tactic, not skill.”

“I…I planned to leave my extra keys with a note for my wife telling her to find the car here after the jihad. She will need it when I am gone.”

“Don’t worry, I will take good care of your car. Now, please, the keys.”

Ahmed drove straight to Khadija’s house, used the garage door opener and parked inside.

Zayneb met him in the house. “Will you have dinner with us?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He basked in the family atmosphere missing most of his life. He smiled at Safia, chatted with Zayneb and looked lovingly at Khadija. Heba seemed pleased to see him also. With time running out, he risked bolder conversation than in the past.

When Heba returned to the kitchen after serving them dinner, he asked Zayneb, “Do you know this woman’s story?”

“She arrived here as my husband’s servant, but she and I became friends. She said as a young child she visited cousins and for some reason stayed with them instead of returning to her family. Life was hard in that village so when an older man offered a dowry for her in marriage and a job for the father, as was custom in her country, they basically sold her to him when she was eight years old. He kept her for a time, but as a plaything not a wife. When he finished with her, he sold her to someone else. In both these cases she was raped and treated with scorn.”

Ahmed blanched. “Life is sometimes cruel.”

“The second owner sold her to the sex trade. Her life was unspeakable. One group smuggled her to the U. S., forcing her to work as a prostitute until someone bought her. Then she passed from owner to owner until Mahmud brought her to our household. She’s had a horrible life, but she tells me the last twenty-four years here were the best since she was a child. She’s intelligent. With my husband…away…she wants to get an education. I can help her do that. She has survival skills and shows an amazing spark of life, considering all she’s been through.”

“I see. Thank you for telling me this.” They talked amiably as they finished their meal and at the end, Ahmed said, “May I speak privately with Khadija for a short while?”

They all looked at him in surprise but Khadija stood and nodded to him. “I’d like that. Shall we go into the study, Ahmed?”

Once seated there, Ahmed didn’t know how to begin what he wanted to tell this beautiful woman about whom he cared so much. His future rode on what he said next.

“Khadija, tonight I speak from the heart. First, you must give me your oath you will never repeat what I’m about to tell you…to anyone…ever.”

She looked puzzled. “I promise to tell no one else.”

“You will hear good and bad things. Please remember, as I talk, that I love you and ask you to be my wife.” She beamed. “You are the most intelligent, kind, remarkable person I have ever known. Your beauty encircles my heart. Your mind touches my thinking in ways I could not imagine possible. This is good news, but I also bring bad news. I share with you now secrets I have sworn to keep but cannot hide from you if our lives are to intertwine.”

She smiled her love and reached out to hold his hand.

“Growing up, I knew only what others taught me, so I believed those teachings true and right. The man controlling my life groomed me to become a terrorist.”

Khadija flinched at these words. Ahmed rushed on before he lost his nerve.

“He and those around him convinced me and others like me that we were fighters for Allah, bravely escalating the coming of the one Islamic world. But you showed me terrorism is only one possibility in a larger group of choices. I do not want to blow up women and children even if they are infidels. I want to build, not destroy. I want to live, not die. I want to offer my love to you, to build a happy family like the one stolen from me by the leader, his liars and his murderers. I am a man at a crossroad, a man wanting to walk a new path with your hand in mine.”

Khadija gave him a thin smile.

“Shall I stop now or do you wish to hear more?”

“I…I want to hear what you have to say.”

“My job here is to lead a cell of terrorists on a jihad right here in northern Virginia. The Great Leader provided money to do this and men to accomplish it. If he heard me speak these words he would strike me dead himself or have others do it in the most painful way possible. They would think me too weak to carry out my task, a frightened coward afraid to sacrifice himself. Worse, they would label me a reviled traitor.”

Khadija swallowed hard but said nothing.

“This is what I propose: I would like to defect, tell my story to the authorities and ask for the witness protection program. I would like to ask you to come with me as my bride. We could make a new life together in a new place. We could use our love to create precious children who we will teach to ‘question everything.’ But this means you must leave your home and your family. You could not see them or communicate with them again, for our new location must remain forever a secret. Why? The all-powerful Great Leader will scour the earth to find and punish me. He ruthlessly eliminates those who embarrass him, defy his wishes or interfere with his plans.”

Khadija’s eyes filled with tears. She stared at her hands as he continued.

“Normally, a man offers the bride of his dreams positive rewards. Sadly, I offer you nothing positive…and, worse, I introduce risk and danger into your life along with my love and loyalty to you forever.”

She cried softly, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

“I cannot blame you for choosing instead to continue a normal life with your mother and sister. I understand you may not love me enough to share this meager, uncertain life I offer you. One way or the other, I will disappear from your life, but wherever I am, you will always live in my soul.”

Khadija now wept openly. He hated bringing such grief to the woman he loved, but only if she knew the truth could she make an informed choice.

He squeezed her hand. When she stopped crying enough to speak, she managed, “Ahmed, thank you for telling this incredible story. In the week since we first met, I found you an appealing person who I care very much about, but this future you describe…you’re asking me to leave all that’s familiar—plus everyone I know and love—for a life with you in which we’re always looking over our shoulders for danger. That fear would increase for our children, who we’d never want harmed or at risk. Our strong attraction makes it seem we know each other well, but in only one week we’re still more strangers than friends. Marrying someone under perfect circumstances is risky enough but under these circumstances…”

His eyes brimmed at the answer he’d feared. “I apologize for creating this impossible situation, but because of my love for you, I had to ask if you could make this difficult choice. You are right. You are young, beautiful and smart. You will find an American well-suited to you and live a good, safe life with your family’s blessings. I wish you many children and great happiness.”

He stood. “As for me…” he choked with emotion, “…no woman could ever measure up to you.”

“I’m so sorry, Ahmed.” She circled her arms around him and they stood, holding each other. After a moment, she broke away.

“Wait,” he said. “Here is my cell phone number. If…if ever you want to reach me. I will answer it if I can. Also I have a strong warning for you and your family: Don’t go to any shopping malls in three days—on Black Friday. Do you understand?” She nodded, grateful at his parting gift—protecting her from danger.

He fought for composure. “I must speak now to your mother.”

They walked to the dining room and found Zayneb. “I leave your house now. Good-bye and thank you for your kind hospitality.” Their eyes locked in a shared secret of their own about something hidden outside beneath a raised garden. “I will go upstairs to make sure I left nothing in my room.”

When he drove away, determination alone prevented him from looking back.

Arriving at the motel, he thanked Abdul for the use of his car. Then, noticing Abdul’s visible relief at seeing his vehicle returned intact, Ahmed added, “However, my friend, you would make a very bad camel trader.”

97

Tuesday, 11:58 PM

Thunder rumbled in the distance as Adam crunched across the gravel parking area at the top of the driveway. Pushing open the barn door, he flipped on the light to locate a crowbar and ax. He tested the blade with his thumb. Not razor sharp but adequate for what he had in mind.

When he turned off the light, darkness closed in—almost as dark as last night when he and Hannah helped foil the kidnapping on the other side of their farm property. He glanced up at ominous clouds moving swiftly across the moon before blotting it from view. In the darkness, he felt the air freshen as the wind picked up. Branches in surrounding trees began to rustle and sway. Distant flickers of lightning accompanied a rising wind as the storm moved closer. The TV weatherman forecasted severe thunderstorms tonight. Good, the countryside needed rain.

He remembered Nathan’s warning: “Brush fires are a worry now in current drought conditions. Not only a problem for firefighters like me but for police like you who might need to evacuate residents from threatened homes.” Considering the woodsy profile of this part of Fairfax County, Adam hoped the lightning fizzled fast but the rain poured hard.

Inside the house, he gazed lovingly at his sleeping bride before quietly closing the bedroom door and crossing the hall. A bright burst of lightning flashed outside the window shades as he counted one-one-hundred, two-one-hundred and three-one-hundred before a huge thunderclap rattled the windows. A close strike, only three miles away if the old formula held true. Like most residences, theirs had no lightening rod, but knowing this wooden house had withstood over a hundred years of just such storms reassured him.

He moved quickly to the exercise-room closet, climbed the stepladder positioned there, wiggled through the ceiling trapdoor access and again surveyed his childhood attic Punishment Room. He turned on the flashlight he’d left there yesterday, illuminating the claustrophobic wallboard enclosure. He focused the beam on the bloody four-digit handprint he’d made as a child when his mother shoved him up here after cutting off his little finger to punish spelling mistakes.

Though he saw no lightning through the makeshift room’s four solid walls, the crashing rolls of thunder reverberated even louder in the attic as the storm stalled overhead. He’d felt pathetic gratitude at finding his mother’s letter, proving she’d adored him once. That loving letter helped balance her later cruelty to him after she was driven insane by the monster she married.

Still, the memory of those horrible hours—those terrible days unable to defend himself as an abused child—welled over him, fueling anger at the injustice that took place here. Now he could let that tormented little boy escape by destroying this hated room now in a way he couldn’t then. He lifted the ax and, using all his strength, hacked into one of the walls. The blade tore a long gash in the wallboard. A second blow widened the initial hole. After the third blow, he glimpsed some of the old attic on the other side. In a frenzy, he chopped and slashed at the wallboard until only the room’s vertical studs remained.

As the resulting debris lay on the floor around him, he saw that someone had amateurishly planked the floor in this small area and erected a closed room around it with the closet’s ceiling trapdoor the only access. His mother could not have built this. Maybe Tobias, or even his father? How many souls over how many generations had suffered punishment in this miserable hole? But he’d changed that. Nobody would ever suffer here again.

He had just squeezed through the destroyed room’s studs into the larger attic, when he cringed involuntarily at an ear-splitting crash of thunder, so powerful the house shook beneath his feet.  He steadied himself, clinging to a joist. He recalled his police training taught that when lightning strikes wood, the flow of current through it can splinter or shatter with such force the heat generated often ignites. Had a bolt struck the house? No. What was the chance of that?