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Waverly laughed when Ben told him later how he’d offered to check in on Epifanio now and then and do what he could to keep the kid in school. Waverly warned Ben that he was asking for heartache. He’d told Ben his chances of keeping Epifanio out of the 18th Street gang and off hard drugs—highly addictive crystal meth and crack cocaine—when his brother had been a gang member and a methamphetamines addict, were slim to none.
Despite Waverly’s advice, Ben had made a point of seeing the kid at least once a week over the past five months, although he never had told the kid what he really did for a living. Epifanio thought Ben worked in an office in downtown D.C., which Ben did. It just happened to be the ICE office.
It had taken a long time to earn the kid’s trust. And there had been setbacks.
Three months ago, Ben had come by one afternoon when Mrs. Fuentes was still at her babysitting job and been concerned when Epifanio didn’t answer his knock. He’d stepped inside the unlocked apartment and found Epifanio sitting on his bed, leaning against an interior wall spray-painted with graffiti, his pupils dilated so wide that Ben could have fallen into the kid’s eyes.
“What are you on?” he’d demanded, searching around the kid’s iron cot for drug paraphernalia. He’d pulled out his cell phone to call 911, afraid the boy might be in danger of OD-ing, but Epifanio had grabbed his wrist and said, “It’s only Ecstasy.”
“Only Ecstasy?” Ecstasy wasn’t addictive, but it was still a powerful narcotic. Then he’d had another thought. “Where did you get the money to buy that junk?”
The kid had hung his head.
“Well?”
“I stole the E from a locker at school,” he’d mumbled.
Ben had been so mad he could have wrung the kid’s neck. “I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
“It’ll wear off in a couple of hours,” Epifanio protested.
Ben had hauled the kid out to his car anyway, taken him to the emergency room and waited with him while the hospital did a blood test. The toxicology report confirmed that the only drug in Epifanio’s system was the amphetamines in Ecstasy.
Ben had been standing by, his arms crossed over his chest, when Mrs. Fuentes arrived at Epifanio’s hospital bedside, her dark brown eyes huge with fear.
Epifanio had been defiantly silent in response to Ben’s disapproval. But when his grandmother sank into the chair beside his bed, crossed herself, closed her eyes and folded her hands in prayer, the kid started to cry.
“I’m sorry, Abuela,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Ben had kept up his visits to the household. And the kid had been true to his word. Two months later, Epifanio was still off drugs, still not part of a gang and still in school. Ben was counting his blessings, but because of constant reminders from Waverly that the good behavior couldn’t last, he was taking things one day at a time.
“I’m looking forward to having the sergeant as my brother-in-law,” he told the boy.
“I hate cops,” Epifanio said, his dark eyes narrowed, his lips pressed flat.
I’m a cop, Ben thought. But he merely met the kid’s gaze.
Epifanio made a face as he holstered his own plastic gun. “You might wanta watch yourself when you come around to the neighborhood. I been hearing rumors of something bad goin’ down.”
“Bad like what?” Ben asked.
Epifanio shrugged. “Just guys lookin’ over their shoulders, you know? That sorta creepy feeling you get when something’s not right?”
Epifanio might not belong to the 18th Street gang, dubbed the 1-8 by the MPD, but most of the kids in his neighborhood did. It was impossible for him to avoid them entirely.
As far as anyone in the neighborhood knew, Ben was supposedly a “Big Brother” from the community group Big Brothers and Big Sisters. His ICE connection was a secret. Which was why another ICE agent monitored the activities of the 18th Street gang.
“Thanks for the heads up,” Ben said.
Trouble among the gangs hit the streets like ocean waves. Some waves passed without incident. Some devastated everything in their path. He put a hand on Epifanio’s shoulder and said, “You be careful out there, too.”
“You know I will,” Epifanio said with a cheeky grin.
“How about that homework?” Ben said.
The kid grinned. “I ain’t got—”
“Don’t have—” Ben automatically corrected.
“Any homework,” Epifanio finished, his grin widening.
Ben ruffled the boy’s short dreads, something he wouldn’t have done even a few weeks ago. “Then go read a book.”
As they left the Games & More video arcade, Epifanio teasingly flashed Ben the 18th Street gang sign. He laughed when Ben frowned at the display, then sauntered down the street toward home.
Ben stuck his suddenly trembling hands deep in his pockets, clenching them into fists. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He had trouble catching his breath.
He felt the searing heat of the desert. The grittiness of the sand at his collar. The stickiness of blood on his hands.
“Hey! You gonna stand there all day? We’re late!”
Ben’s tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He jerked a nod toward Waverly, who’d pulled his Ford Explorer up to the curb.
“You okay?” Waverly asked, sticking his head out the open window.
Ben forced himself to take a step. Another step. He crossed behind the car, to give himself time to recover. After all these months, he wasn’t going to let this … shit … get the better of him. The incidents were occurring less often. They were less severe. Surely, at some point, they would stop entirely.
By the time he got to the front passenger door of the car his hands were out of his pockets and functioning without a visible tremor. As he slipped into Waverly’s Ford he said, “I can’t believe you and Julia are letting Patsy throw you a party, especially this close to the wedding.”
“Your dad was more of a dad to me than my own. When she suggested it, I didn’t want to say no,” Waverly replied. “Don’t blame me if your stepmother invited your whole family. Julia said just about everybody agreed to come.”
Ben groaned. “Everybody? My mom and the senator in the same room with my dad and Patsy?”
“Yep,” Waverly said.
Ben groaned. Although his parents had divorced twenty years ago, his mother had never forgiven his father for cheating on her with another woman. His father had never forgiven his mother for her lack of understanding and inability to pardon what he claimed was a single lapse in judgment under extraordinary circumstances.
Both had remarried within a year, and from what Ben could see, both had remarkably successful second marriages. But he was pretty sure his parents had never really stopped loving each other. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still be so miserable in each other’s presence.
Unfortunately, their continuing attraction made things pretty uncomfortable whenever their respective spouses were in the room. Which meant the party tonight would be a parental minefield, exacerbated by the warfare that went on between the very different children who’d grown up as relatives because of their two second marriages.
Ben was one of thirteen siblings. And nobody was married yet or had produced offspring.
Actually, fourteen siblings. He was forgetting the reason for his parents’ divorce, his father’s bastard son, Ryan Donovan McKenzie. Ryan was the result of a one-night stand his father had indulged in with a barmaid, Mary Kate McKenzie. His dad had insisted on acknowledging and supporting his illegitimate son, and invited Ryan to every family gathering. The Black Sheep always declined.
“How many of the Fabulous Fourteen have said they’re coming?” Ben asked Waverly.
“The senator’s three kids by his late wife, one of your three brothers, your stepmom’s twins with her ex from Texas and your three half sisters. And, of course, my lovely fiancée. In short, nearly the whole dysfunctional bunch. No surprise, the Black Sheep sent his regrets. Should be a great party.”
Ben felt his heart take an extra thump. “I can hardly wait.”
2
“How are things with the kid?” Waverly asked as he drove out of the ethnically and economically mixed Columbia Heights neighborhood toward elite Chevy Chase, Maryland, where the party was being held. Columbia Heights was becoming gentrified, forcing out the poor, but right now it was still a blend of the crumbling old and the very new. The distance to Chevy Chase wasn’t far in miles, but it might as well have been a trip to the moon, the two worlds were so far apart.
“The kid is fine,” Ben said as he reached for the rep-striped tie he’d left in the backseat with a jacket earlier in the day.
“For now.”
Ben buttoned up his shirt, slipped the tie around his neck and began to tie it. “I’m optimistic.”
“You’re naive.”
“You’re jaded.” Ben shoved the Windsor knot up to his throat.
“Maybe so. We’ll see.”
Ben hesitated, then said, “Epifanio has heard rumblings that something bad is in the works.”
“If the kid asks too many questions, they’re going to shut him up. Forever,” Waverly warned. “Don’t push it.”
“I didn’t ask for information. He volunteered it.”
“Someday somebody’s going to make the connection between you and ICE and the kid. They’ll start to wonder what he’s told you. And—” Waverly made a ragged sound as he drew his forefinger across his throat.
“I’m his Big Brother. That’s all.”
“Yeah. Right,” Waverly said.
As the man in charge of the MPD Gang Unit for the past two years, Waverly knew far more about gang behavior than Ben did. If Waverly was worried about Epifanio, Ben knew there was something to worry about.
“Have you heard something I haven’t?” he asked.
“Just the same stuff as the kid,” Waverly said. “That something is going to happen. Something big.”
“What are we talking about here?” Ben asked. “New car theft ring? Counterfeit bills? Drug shipment? Illegal weapons?”
“Terrorism.”
Ben mentally reeled. He’d chosen to work on an ICE joint task force with the MPD dismantling gangs in D.C., rather than join the investigative arm of ICE and search out terrorists, precisely because he’d had enough of war. Apparently, this time the war was coming to him.
“Terrorism,” he mused. “What does that mean? I have trouble imagining white or black or Hispanic or Asian gangs hijacking planes and flying them into buildings.”
“Maybe not. But they can help smuggle dirty bombs or biological weapons across the border from Central or South America. Or learn how to make improvised explosive devices—IEDs—and plant them in big cities across America—Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, New York—and of course, the District.”
“Is that really going to happen?”
“Nobody knows for sure,” Waverly said. “But you and I are going to keep a damned close eye on MS.”
Mara Salvatrucha 13, called MS by the MPD, was known to be a merciless and violent gang in El Salvador, where it had originated. Its members had brought that arbitrary death-dealing with them when they stole across the border and joined MS gangs formed in the States.
“Are several gangs involved?” Ben asked. “Or only MS?”
“MPD and ICE share info, so I’m sure you know Al Qaeda had sent lieutenants to El Salvador to recruit members of MS to commit terrorist acts. The presumption is they’ll make use of members of MS here in the States to help them, by threatening their families in El Salvador, if necessary. Which is why we’re focusing on MS.”
Ben hadn’t wanted to believe Al Qaeda would be successful in El Salvador. His job was going to change radically if a bunch of hired assassins began infiltrating across the border and joining local MS gangs to cover up their terrorist activities.
“Have you heard anything on the streets about exactly who—or what—Al Qaeda’s target might be in D.C.?” Ben asked.
“That, my friend, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. They have a helluva lot of choices.” Waverly brought his car to a stop in front of an impressive, two-story Colonial redbrick home with white shutters and a tall, elegant front door.
“We’ve reached the end of your father’s obscenely long driveway—and this conversation,” Waverly said. “You know Julia doesn’t like me to talk about work around your mother. It upsets her.”
Ben got out of the car and dumped his leather jacket in the backseat. He grabbed a navy suit jacket from a hanger on a hook over the window to wear with his khaki trousers. He knew what really upset his mother was the idea of her eighteen-year-old daughter marrying a thirty-year-old cop. Especially since the bride and groom had only met six months ago.
And it wasn’t just the age difference, or the short time they’d known each other. His mother blamed him for the fact that in three days Julia would be marrying a man with a dangerous job that could get him killed. Worst of all, the young couple was determined to live on the paltry income of a D.C. cop.
Ben’s mother, Abigail Coates Benedict Hamilton, not only had inherited wealth of her own, but a year after she’d divorced Ben’s even wealthier father, she’d married a wealthy widower, the senior senator from Virginia, Randolph Cornelius “Ham” Hamilton, III.
Ben’s half sister Julia had been born into a life of opulence and privilege. His mother couldn’t bear the thought of Julia wanting for anything. She deplored the small apartment that was all Waverly could afford, and which would be her daughter’s first home, and had announced she was “devastated” that Julia would be attending Georgetown University instead of her alma mater, Wellesley.
Seeing that Waverly and Julia were in love, Ben had let his mother’s complaints roll off his shoulders. The fact he pretty much always fell short of pleasing his mother was something he’d learned to cope with at a very young age. Eight, to be precise.
That was the year his parents divorced. Ben had always wondered who’d come up with the idea to split up the Benedicts’ four living sons—Nash, Ben, Carter and Rhett—and give two to each parent.
Nash, who was eleven, and Rhett, who was only a baby, had stayed with his mother. Ben, who’d been a little intimidated by his father, Foster Holloway Benedict, an army officer who’d been awarded the Medal of Honor, had begged to be allowed to stay with his mother in their home in Richmond. But his father had taken him away to live in Chevy Chase, along with his younger brother Carter.
Not that Ben had spent much time with his father once he’d taken up residence in the mansion in Chevy Chase. Within a year of his parents’ divorce, his father had married a woman named Patsy Taggart. Patsy had done all the caretaking while his father was off being a soldier. At thirteen, Ben had been sent off to Massachusetts to attend Groton, an Episcopal prep school.
At the time Patsy married his father, she’d had twin two-year-old sons who lived most of the year in Texas with her former husband. But it wasn’t long before she was pregnant with Ben’s twin sisters Amanda and Bethany. A few years later, Camille had come along. Ben called the girls the ABCs, because their names started with the first letters of the alphabet.
It was hard not to love the ABCs because they so obviously adored him, and he did his best to be a protective and loving big brother.
It had taken a long time before he let Patsy fill the hole left in his heart when his mother had given him away. But his stepmother had been persistent. He loved her now far more than the mother who’d borne him.
Ben had seen the pain in his biological mother’s eyes when he’d remained aloof through the years. Diabolically, his parents had arranged for their four sons to spend time together in the same households from time to time—for holidays or vacations—so they wouldn’t lose touch with each other.
As it turned out, he and Carter were close. Rhett, no surprise, was everybody’s friend. Nash was unknowable
Ben had always been in awe of Nash, because when that Solomon-like custody decision was being made, he’d refused to leave their mother. Ben had overheard him tell their father flat out, “I’m not going.”
Of course, that meant Ben had been forced to go instead. He didn’t blame Nash. Ultimately, his mother had agreed with the decision to send him away.
Ben had never given her another chance to reject him. But he dreaded family gatherings because it dragged up all that ancient history.
He was keenly aware that he’d once again managed to disappoint her by introducing Julia to Waverly. Ben felt an ache in his chest. He focused on the peaceful forest scene that helped him quiet the demons. The last thing he wanted was to have an attack now.
He thought of how little any of his family knew about the bad things that had happened to him as a soldier. And how grateful he was that they’d never asked.
