obsess vt: to haunt, fill the mind—obsession n
HEY, WHAT DOES YOUR GUY look like again?”
Special Agent Ed Newcomer stood planted behind a column in the Customs area of Los Angeles International Airport. It was the busiest time of the day. The place looked like the middle of Times Square during rush hour. It was awash with new arrivals in a moving mosaic of sights, sounds, and smells.
He stared in disbelief as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jamie Holt asked the question. The agent couldn’t be serious. Newcomer was quickly getting a bad feeling about all of this. “What do you mean?” he asked in return, his stomach doing a three-sixty.
“Well, there are only about five people left, and no one in Immigration has seen him yet,” Holt admitted.
Though neither of them said a word, it wasn’t a far stretch to guess that there’d been a screwup somewhere along the way.
Newcomer’s eyes darted around nervously as he broke into a cold sweat. How could he simply disappear? Who in the hell was this guy, anyway? Houdini? “He was on the flight, right?” he double-checked.
This would be the third time that his perp had slipped away. Three strikes and you’re out, he thought cynically, a wave of nausea beginning to overtake him.
“Yeah, yeah. He was definitely on the flight. Just hold on. Don’t worry yet. I’ll be right back,” Holt said, trying to reassure him before rushing back toward Immigration.
Don’t worry. That was a good one. All this case had been so far was one major headache. After three long years of grueling undercover work, this was supposed to be his payday.
Newcomer took a deep breath, trying to summon his last bit of energy to put this case to rest. Panic was already oozing out of him. LAX was the fifth-busiest airport in the world, with fifty-five million people passing through every year. It felt as if each and every one of them was here today.
Holt ran back, looking as if she’d just seen a ghost. “He was here all right, but he somehow got through.”
The words shot through Newcomer’s brain as if they’d been fired from a .357 Magnum. “What the hell do you mean he somehow got through?” he demanded.
Four hundred people had just disembarked from a Japan Airlines flight. The room started to spin as Newcomer feverishly searched through a sea of Asian faces. The crowd became a nonstop blur of moving body parts and jostling luggage intent on only one thing: making their way as quickly as possible toward the exit.
A bitter laugh began to rise in Newcomer’s throat. Goddamn it. Had Kojima really won again? It was as if he’d taken a play straight out of Bobby Fischer’s handbook and just declared, “Checkmate.”
How in the hell had his case ever come to this?