Page 125 of Grave Danger

“Mommy?”

Jack had more to say, but not in front of a seven-year-old girl. Zahra climbed down quickly from the stool and went to Yasmin. Jack and Nouri stayed at the island, seated in silence as Zahra led Yasmin back to the bedroom, their voices fading in the hallway.

Jack had plenty of questions for Nouri. He asked the most obvious one.

“What are you doing here, Nouri?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

“I’m here to tell Zahra she needs to surrender to the authorities.”

“And I’m here to tell you she’s not going to do that.”

“That’s a problem,” said Jack. “With me here, the FBI is going to expect Zahra’s cooperation.”

“We can deal with the FBI,” Nouri said with confidence.

Jack had heard enough. “There is no ‘we,’ Nouri. As soon as Zahra comes back, she and I are going to have a conversation—without you. Then, one of two things is going to happen. Either Zahra walks out that door with me and surrenders to the FBI. Or I walk out that door with Yasmin, and the two of you can hide out in the dunes with the sea turtles and the beach mice and deal with the shitstorm you seem determined to create. Got it?”

Nouri answered in a flat, even tone. “Sure, Jack. Whatever you say.”

The words said one thing, but Nouri’s cockiness said quite another. Jack stared back at him coldly. It was a look he’d perfected over years of representing incarcerated clients who had nothing more to lose and bullied everyone, even their lawyers, just for the fun of it.

“You’re not going to screw this up, Nouri. Not on my watch.”

Jack let the warning hang in the air for a moment, then pushed away from the counter and went to see his client.

Chapter 46

Andie and her longtime partner, special agent Grace Kennedy, were in Blowing Rocks Preserve, a seventy-three-acre nature conservancy on Jupiter Island. They left the car in the parking lot, found a couchlike formation of limestone rock just a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean, and sat beneath the stars, facing the waves. More important, they were less than a mile from Jack’s location, according to the GPS coordinates they’d picked up from his cell phone.

“You think Jack will be mad when he finds out?” asked Grace.

“That I tracked him?”

“Tracked himwithout telling him.”

The FBI had no legal basis to surveil Jack’s electronic devices, but Andie had the same app that millions of other mothers had on their cell phones. It allowed her to track Jack, Righley, Abuela,Jack’s father, their dog Max—the whole family.

“He’ll thank me one day,” said Andie. “Maybe. In another life.”

The spray of the ocean soaked the dunes around them like a car wash. The southern tip of Jupiter Island has the largest exposed bluff of Anastasia limestone on the entire East Coast of the United States, and the chimney-like formations could funnel plumes of seawater fifty feet in the air at high tide.

Andie zipped up her jacket; the night was turning cool. A minute later her cell phone chimed with a text message. It was from Jack:

With Zahra and Yasmin now. Both fine. All under control. Will ping you a location for surrender when ready. No SWAT.

Andie shared it with her partner.

“Sounds positive,” said Grace. “But you’ve given him enough time.”

“What would you do?”

“I understand you promised to let Jack work out the surrender with his client before taking this up the chain of command,” said Grace. “But there’s a child at risk.”

“I asked, what would you do?”

“I wouldn’t call in SWAT to bust down the door. But I’d call in the location and put hostage rescue on alert. If it was anyone but Jack, you’d do the same. Right?”

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