National Security

CHAPTER 50

Carrie couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. The walls of her mother’s three-story farmhouse were beginning to close in around her. She found it difficult to breathe, let alone think. For the first time in five years, she lit a cigarette. The terrifying notion that Zafir Jawad was in the United States was more than she could wrap her brain around. With the help of Dr. Soto, she’d only just come to grips with the nightmares of her past life. Now this man who’d committed unspeakable acts of cruelty for so many months had reared his head again. The mere thought of his face made her retch.

She took a long drag on the cigarette, willing it unsuccessfully to calm her twitching nerves. Christian lay on his belly in front of the television holding his nose at the smoke and watching a Transformers cartoon. Her mother had stepped into the bedroom to take a phone call from a neighbor.

Two federal agents — neither looked old enough to shave — occupied the living room by force, trying to seem inconspicuous. She could tell from their barely concealed sneers that neither considered this a top-shelf assignment. One sat on the recliner in the corner reading a paperback spy thriller. The other stood by the window talking to his wife on the cell phone about her shopping habits and their mountain of credit card debt. Both had their jackets off and their pistols were exposed. At the foot of the one reading the book was a discreet black case Carrie knew contained some sort of machine gun. It would not be enough. Pistols, rifles, swords, or atom bombs — it didn’t matter. She knew Zafir. He was too smart. If he wanted her, she was a sitting duck. No matter where she hid or what anyone did, he’d find her. There was no getting around it. He was too close, too strong. She alternately clenched her fists and relaxed them as Dr. Soto had taught her, struggling in vain to calm her erratic breathing.

She stubbed out her cigarette on one of her mother’s china saucers, fighting off the feeling that the room was getting smaller. Her eyes shot from her little boy to the back door and she suddenly realized what she had to do. She couldn’t just sit still and wait for him to come kill her.

Smiling at the two agents as she passed the adjoining room, Carrie walked into the kitchen. Pretending to rummage through the refrigerator, she scanned for possible weapons, finally settling on an eight-inch chef’s knife from her mother’s wooden block. Wrapping the blade in a rolled dishtowel, she stuffed it down the waist of her jeans, over the small of her back. She tugged the tail of her loose cotton T-shirt over the top of her pants to cover it, then stood at the kitchen door. She motioned to Christian, touching a finger to her lips to keep him quiet.

“Hey, little man,” she whispered, fighting to keep up her tremulous smile. “Go put on your shoes.”