24 Veto Power by John Whitman Read Free Book Online

just begun to wonder if she could fall in love with a non-Muslim when he appeared on their doorstep one day with a search warrant and a gang of federal agents.
    Now Nazila unchained the door and stepped back, allowing Jack to slip inside. He recognized furniture he had seen in their previous house—there was a chocolate velvet sofa and chaise, a leather ottoman that doubled as a coffee table, a beautifully framed replica of a 15th-century map of the Persian Gulf and Indian subcontinent. All these items had been crammed into the tiny duplex. The boundaries of their lives had shrunk, but all the baggage remained.
    Nazila stood in the middle of the cramped living room and smoothed the folds of her terry-cloth robe. She neither sat down nor offered him a seat, and she certainly would not offer him tea. She was short, but in that small room she seemed to gather size like a bird puffing up its feathers.
    “After the problems with your case I was demoted to another unit—” Jack began.
    “Good.”
    “I was investigating a militia group. They’re nuts, but they’re well-funded and active. They got hold of information similar to the intelligence that steered me toward you and your father. I believe they’re going to act on it.”
    Jack delivered his information in the short bytes he would have used for another professional. Nazila was quick and, as he knew well, very strong. She absorbed the facts as fast as he could say them. “So you’ll stop them,” she said.
    “We did stop them. We arrested their leader tonight. That’s how we found out they had targeted you. But a few of them got away, and if I know these guys, they’ll still try to finish their mission. I came here to warn you.”
    Now Nazila sat down, hugging her stomach and folding over like a flower closing up. “I feel sick. Why does this keep happening to us?”
    “Bad luck,” Bauer said. “Bad people.”
    He meant the Greater Nation, but her eyes bored into him. “Yes, bad people.”
    “Wake your father up. I want to tell him what’s going on. I think we should move you to a safer location until we can find these guys.”
    Nazila Rafizadeh felt the tiny apartment grow even smaller. She stared at Jack Bauer, whom she hated more than a human being ought to hate someone. He had toyed with her feelings and terrorized her father. He could not have done more to ruin their lives if he had tried. She had no reason to trust him. But, then, he had no reason to be here. He had already taken everything from them, and as cruel as she believed him to be, she also knew that he did not waste his own time.
    She unfolded slowly from the couch and stood up. She went into the cramped hallway and passed the single bathroom, toward two bedrooms. She felt Bauer’s presence behind her. He moved very quietly, but she knew he was there. Her own bedroom door was thrown open. Her father’s was closed. He was a heavy sleeper, especially these days. He did not sleep long, but when exhaustion overtook him, he slept the sleep of the dead. She knocked loudly. “Pedar?”
    She opened the door into the darkened room. Jack leaned in over her shoulder. Even in the darkness he could see that the bed was empty and undisturbed. Professor Rafizadeh was not there.
    “Where?” he asked.
    “I ...I don’t know. He had plans this evening. He teaches English as a second language at the mosque since he lost his job. I’m always asleep before he gets home on Tuesday nights . . .”
    Before Nazila had finished her sentence Jack was on his cell phone to CTU, and by the time her surprise had turned to fear, he knew two things: Professor Rafizadeh had left the Culver City Mosque just after two o’clock in the morning, and his car was last seen at the corner of Centinella and Pico.
    He repeated the information to Nazila as it was relayed to him by Jessi Bandison.
    “How do you know these things so fast?” she asked.
    “Traffic cameras, security feeds, cell phone records . . .”
    She shook her