Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(7)

“Mr. Akbari, I just want to know where you got the bill.” I retrieved my prop from the table and slid it back into my folder.

Akbari’s expression was almost pained, and indecision warred in his dark eyes. “I don’t know.”

I raised one eyebrow and restrained the impulse to fold my arms over my chest, as most people saw that move as antagonistic. I wasn’t quite ready to take that tack with him. Yet.

“You don’t know.” My tone was borderline questioning, though it’d taken a considerable amount of willpower to refrain from sounding sarcastic.

He shook his head. “No. I don’t know.”

“Do you often walk around with hundred-dollar bills in your wallet, Mr. Akbari?”

He didn’t reply.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked, my voice light. I regarded him steadily as I awaited his reply.

“I am sorry?”

I held out my hand to Meaghan, who wordlessly deposited Akbari’s driver’s license into it. I glanced at it for confirmation of his age before I handed it back to him. I’d been told he was in his mid-twenties. The date on the license verified that fact.

“For a job,” I said. “Where do you work?”

Akbari hesitated. “I’m a graduate student.”

“So you have no means of income?”

He shook his head.

“Yet somehow you have enough hundred-dollar bills at your disposal that you can’t remember where you got the one you tried to use three weeks ago to buy milk and eggs?” Now I allowed my skepticism and disbelief to bleed into my words. I didn’t ask where he went to school. Since I was fairly confident he was lying to me, I didn’t really care. There was no need to poke more holes in his story. We both knew he was full of shit. And we both knew that I knew.

The uncertainty was back in Akbari’s eyes. He picked at the edges of the driver’s license in his grip but didn’t seem aware he was doing it. The sweat on his brow was more pronounced, and beads of it dotted the visible skin of his neck.

“Tell you what. I know you have to pray. I’d never stand between a man and his God, so I’ll leave you to it. Why don’t you think about it after you’ve communed with Allah. Try to remember where you might’ve gotten the bill, and give me a call. How does that sound?”

“All right.”

I stood up to go but stopped just short of actually making a move toward the door. “Is there a number where I can reach you?”

“I don’t have a phone,” Akbari said quickly.

I glanced pointedly toward the credenza where a cell phone lay. Akbari said nothing to refute his previous denial. I sighed theatrically and walked over to pick it up. Akbari didn’t move as I placed it on the table in front of him. While I was doing that, Meaghan had risen and plucked the landline phone off the wall in the kitchen. She nodded when I looked to her, letting me know there was indeed a dial tone.

“Do you want to try that again, Mr. Akbari? I can get these numbers another way if I have to, but doing that extra work won’t make me feel very kindly toward you. You do want me to feel kindly, don’t you?”

Looking almost angry, Akbari rattled off two telephone numbers in rapid succession. Meaghan jotted them on her notepad and gave me a thumbs-up to indicate she’d gotten them. I extracted one of my business cards from my commission book and laid it on the table next to his cell phone.

“Thank you for your time this evening, Mr. Akbari. If I don’t hear from you in a few days, I’ll be in touch.” I moved to the door and opened it to allow Meaghan to exit ahead of me. I hesitated in the doorway and looked at Akbari until he met my eyes. “Amin. It means ‘honest,’ doesn’t it?”

Akbari’s own eyes grew wide, and his mouth dropped open.

I smiled. “Your parents named you well.” I stepped out of the apartment and shut the door softly behind me.

Meaghan gave me a look of exasperation as I joined her in the hallway. She smiled slightly and shook her head as we walked. She managed to maintain her silence until we’d gotten into the elevator, but I could tell the effort was killing her. When we began our descent she turned to me.

“That was much, even for you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t.” Her tone was teasing, and she playfully bumped my shoulder with her own before she mimicked me. “‘It makes me long for a simpler time.’”

“Hey, I thought that one was pretty good.”

“You have to stop shoveling that bull in interviews, Ryan.”

“Works, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but do you have any idea how hard it is for me not to burst out laughing?”

“And there’s the other upside.” I grinned at her.

Meaghan shook her head again and exited the elevator ahead of me. She was trying hard to affect a demeanor of annoyance, and I think she was becoming irritated that it wasn’t working.

“What was in the folder, anyway?”

I opened it and held it up so she could see. “Crossword puzzles.”

Meaghan threw back her head and laughed.





Chapter Three


I’d barely walked through the door to my office early the next morning when I heard my immediate supervisor, Mark Jennings, bellowing my name from the other end of the hall. Clearly, he required my presence in his office, though I wondered what I could’ve managed to pull off in the two minutes I’d been in the building that made him feel the need to yell with such contempt. Maybe if I’d had a chance to stop for coffee on my way in, I’d have had enough brain power to figure it out.