Chapter 137

SUDDENLY I HAD even more questions.

They had the number of the cell phone I had borrowed. How did that happen? I wondered.

Not that it was impossible to get-but how had a gang of hoodlums from Nigeria managed to do it?

I wasn't inclined to conspiracy theories, but it was getting harder and harder to deny the obvious. Someone wanted to know what I had found out in Africa. And to shut me up for good.

Maybe a minute after the call ended, I walked out on the front porch, which I'd decided to keep dark for now. I still couldn't see anyone watching on the street.

Were they here? Had they left already? Did they have Nana and the kids in a nearby truck or van?

I didn't want to play the target any longer than I had to.

I hurried down the steps and got into the Mercedes-the family car that I had bought for safety.

I started it up, then began to back out of the driveway, feeling the car's power. I felt like I needed that-the help of some external force.

The cell phone shrilled-and I stopped.

“You continue to be a fool.” It was the older male again. I wanted to curse him out, but I said nothing. He might have my family. That was a hard thing to hope for, but I did anyway. I had to hope for something.

He laughed into the phone.

“What's funny?” I asked him.

“You are. Don't you want to know which way to turn out of your driveway?” he asked.

“Which way?”

“Make a left. Then you follow my directions straight to hell.”

Chapter 138

HE STAYED ON the line as I drove along Fifth Street but didn't say much of anything-and nothing to help me figure out what 1 should do next. I was trying to think things through, to make some kind of plan-anything that might work, maybe even a wild hunch.

“Let me speak to my family,” I spoke again.

“Why should I?”

I thought about stepping on the brakes, making a stand here, but he had every advantage right now.

“Which way?” I said.

“Make a right, next corner.”

I did as I was told.

“The fight in Africa is not your fight, white man!” I listened to the Tiger spitting rage as I drove along Malcolm X Avenue in Southeast. “You should drive faster,” he said, as if he were right there in the front seat, watching me.

He directed me onto I-295 heading south toward Maryland. I'd been on that road countless times before, but it seemed unreal and unfamiliar tonight.

Next, I merged onto 95 and then Route 210 and followed it for nearly fifteen miles, which seemed much farther than that.

Eventually I found myself on 425.

His voice went low. “Let me tell you something that's true. You are only coming to collect the bodies. You want the bodies, don't you?”