Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [106]
Habib peered through the shower glass and looked out the bathroom window. The city lights had a certain glow when it was truly nightfall, and by his estimation, he had at least another fifteen minutes. He squeezed a glob of shampoo from the bottle, his mind awhirl as he worked the lather through his hair.
The news from Shada had surprised him. It had come while they were lying naked on the bed, his heart still thumping from an intense climax. Out of the blue, she’d told him about Paulo. Habib had pressed her for details, but she’d denied that it was a prearranged meeting, and she’d offered up nothing in response to his questions:
“What is Swyteck doing with him?”
“No idea.”
“How did they track you down?”
“I swear, I don’t have a clue.”
Habib still wasn’t sure if he believed her. His initial reaction had been to blame her for being careless and somehow blowing their cover. On reflection, however, perhaps it was his own damn fault.
Could they know about the e-mail?
He was thinking about the e-mail to Jamal’s father. “I killed your son. I wanted you to know that.” Sending it had been risky. But he couldn’t help himself. Memories of his sister—of how Jamal’s father had gotten her to “volunteer” for martyrdom in Mogadishu—still burned like a firestorm.
I’m glad I sent it.
The bathroom light switched on, and the blast of brightness was more than he could stand.
“My eyes!” he shouted.
“Oops, I’m sorry,” said Shada, and the light cut off.
He closed his eyes, soothing them with darkness, and then he opened them slowly. It was all he could do since the explosion. Sleeping by day. Working by night. Living in shadows. Running from the sun. Showering in the dim glow of a tiny night-light. Photophobia was what the doctors called it, a diagnosis that spoke more to the symptoms than the cause. For three years he’d suffered, and even though it was his own bullet that had punctured the propane tank and unleashed the destructive flash of heat and light, there was only one person to blame.
This is all your fault, Paulo. Even if you did get the worst of it.
He turned off the water, stepped out of the shower, and toweled himself dry. The bathroom window had darkened. It was past Isha, but he didn’t feel like praying. His friends at the mosque would have told him he wasn’t a good Muslim, and they would have been right.
I am The Dark.
He pulled on a bathrobe and went to his computer. Shada was only pretending to be asleep, but he didn’t care, so long as she left him alone. A three-year-old anger burned inside of him. Vince Paulo had already lost his sight in the same explosion, and the Dark had shown him the mercy of leaving it at that. But if Paulo had come here like a blind fool thinking he could settle an old score, it was the Dark’s intention to make him pay an even steeper price. And just as he’d done with Jamal’s father, the Dark wanted the pleasure of telling him so.
He entered a stolen user ID and password to log on to an e-mail account. It wasn’t the same account he’d used to contact Jamal’s father, and he used a new screen name as well. One that would definitely mean something to Vince Paulo. He banged out a quick message, then stopped.
FMLTWIA. The simple act of typing in the screen name—seven letters that summed up his work for the past three years—triggered a brainstorm. The work had begun with McKenna, but it was ongoing, as enduring as the memory of what had happened to his sister in Mogadishu. He was suddenly thinking of the other little whore in the cellar, of her breach of security during his trip to Miami—her phone call to Swyteck.
That’s why Swyteck is here.
Maybe she had reached out to Shada, too. The thought chilled him, but he quickly calmed himself. There was no way. It would have taken a major breakdown in his spyware for any communication to Shada to have gone undetected. And Shada