LITMIR.BIZ

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away, and spent the night in his rig, parked in the driveway of their home, exiled from the people who loved him.

      She and Logan endured the humiliation and, in the days that followed, Jake refused to speak of the incident. He went on several long-haul jobs while Maggie called anonymous crisis lines to find a way to fix their lives.

      She did all that she could for her family.

      Maggie opened her eyes.

      There it is again.

      The noise.

      A bit louder this time.

      She got out of bed to check.

      She went into the hallway and looked around. Unease rippled through her as she headed for the living room and the study area. Nothing obvious. Yet something felt wrong. She went to the bathroom, checked behind the shower curtain.

      Nothing.

      She went to Logan’s room. Nothing. She went back to the living room and this time she went deeper into the study area where she kept her computer and her records on Jake and Logan.

      The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

      Her papers had been shuffled, some had spilled onto the floor.

       Had someone been in her home?

      Maggie looked at the patio door just off the study at the back of the house. It was open by about four inches. She closed it. Locked it.

       Did she leave it open?

      She’d been careless before when she was lost in her thoughts.

      If she did, it would explain her scattered file. It was breezy tonight.

       What’s that?

      A faint trace of something. A lingering scent she couldn’t identify.

      Maybe it was nothing.

      Was she so stressed her mind was playing tricks on her?

      This is stupid. She couldn’t handle this right now.

      No. It was strange, but she could feel a presence.

      Maggie jumped as her phone rang.

       Who’d be calling at this hour?

      Hope fluttered in her stomach then fear clawed at her.

      “Hello?”

      Silence swallowed her answer. The incoming caller was BLOCKED, according to her caller ID.

      “Hello? Who’s there?”

      Nothing. No breathing. No background noise. Only silence.

      “Who are you calling, please?”

      Through the window Maggie saw a car whisk down the street with only its parking lights on.

       What’s happening?

      She hung up and thrust her face in her trembling hands.

       Was she losing her mind?

      8

       Washington, D.C.

      North of the White House, beyond the Capitol and the Washington Monument, Carol Mintz analyzed potential threats to the security of the United States.

      The pope’s upcoming visit to the U.S. made her even more tense.

      Watch for everything. Note anything, her supervisor had advised her.

      Sure. No problem. That’s what we do here twenty-four-seven. It never stops.

      Mintz’s keyboard clicked softly as she scrolled through the secret file from the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

      A French intelligence source listening to Algerian insurgent operatives had intercepted radio traffic out of Tripoli. The chatter indicated a possible shipment of hostile cargo from Africa was nearing the U.S.

      No other information was known.

      Mintz, an intelligence specialist, checked her archives, confirming what she’d suspected. This one had first surfaced a few weeks ago with an unsubstantiated report of a freighter steaming from Morocco’s Port of Tangier, the cargo thought to be drugs from Ethiopia. According to the latest information, that ship had navigated the Suez, crossed the Indian Ocean and was now thought to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

      Still unsubstantiated.

      So why was this flaring up again?

      Tripoli advised to stand by for an update.

      More information would be good. This was going to be another long day.

      Mintz worked in the old naval intelligence base known as the Nebraska Avenue Complex. Her office was among some three-dozen buildings on the thirty-eight-acre site, near the operations center of the Department of Homeland Security, about fourteen miles from where terrorists had slammed a jetliner into the Pentagon.

      The DHS’s mission was to prevent further strikes.

      Mintz’s job was to track cases and assess the threat with her counterparts at the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, Secret Service and various other agencies.

      Her team was responsible for distilling intelligence on incoming ships and planes.

      Mintz bit her lip as she glanced at her copy of the morning’s New York Times. A front page headline indicated foreign intelligence agencies were detecting increased levels of terrorist activity—activity that was aimed at heads of state.

       Ain’t that the truth.

      Earlier in the week they’d helped process a threat through Australian and British security services indicating that two men, suspected to be terrorist operatives, had boarded a 747 on a Hong Kong-to-Sydney flight connecting to San Francisco. U.S. fighters were scrambled.

      Fingerprints obtained covertly from their drinking cups in-flight by two American agents aboard and scanned in-flight to Washington, had confirmed the subjects’ identities and ruled out a threat.

      Everyone stood down on that one.

      Passengers had never known of the events that had unfolded around them.

      Mintz reached for a carrot stick just as her computer flashed with a new report.

      The embassy in Amsterdam had issued a classified threat. A jailed passport forger in Istanbul had told Turkish police interrogators that a ship was carrying several concealed containers of explosives that would be detonated when it reached Boston Harbor. Registered to a numbered company in Aruba, the vessel had left Rotterdam and was now approaching U.S. waters.

      Mintz grabbed her phone when her computer flashed with an update from the Central Intelligence Agency.

      The illicit Rotterdam cargo was a dozen mail-order brides smuggled out of Moscow. No explosives were located. No threat. It was common for criminal sources to inflate their claims to better bargain with prosecutors.

      Thank you, Langley, for sharing.

      Mintz massaged the knot of tension in the back of her neck as she looked at the National Threat Advisory displayed on the wall behind her.

      Today we are yellow—an elevated risk of terrorist attacks.

      Her computer flashed with an update on the African freighter.

      It was still headed across the Pacific to the U.S. The hostile substance was still suspected to be illicit drugs, possibly hashish or qat, a narcotic leafy substance, from Ethiopia.

      Fine, Mintz thought, the data seemed to be going full circle.

      Still, she directed it to her other agencies.

      Sharing information to connect the dots. Once more, over to you fine people at the Coast

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