Alex looked through the back window and saw a pair of headlights in the distance.
McGinn looked at her through the rearview mirror. “Turnaround, toots. I just proved there’s nobody back there tailing us. Now, let’s stay focused on the task at hand.”
CHAPTER 13
HASSAN GARAAR WOKE UP EARLY Thursday morning and began another round of quality control checks on his sarin. He donned his hazmat suit and siphoned out a small amount of the liquid onto a petri dish and slid it under the microscope. All the molecules still appeared stable. But he wasn’t satisfied with a simple inspection; he required a demonstration for peace of mind.
Garaar grabbed one of the mice from the terrarium in his office, placing the feisty animal inside a sealed room where he could vaporize the gas. A couple small puffs later, Garaar peered through the window and watched the animal twitch and turn until it gasped its last breath.
Everything is working properly.
Garaar took pride in fighting for the cause he signed up to protect, but it wasn’t the only reason he was excited about seeing the sarin leave his hands. Garaar was also thrilled about what was going to be placed in his hands—money, and plenty of it.
During his time studying at Caltech, Garaar began to see how Americans could enjoy such a culture. For as long as he could remember, he heard about how morally debased the United States was. His grandfather once told him that the country was full of whores. “Men can’t even walk down the street without a woman throwing herself at him,” Garaar’s grandfather explained. “These women are on every corner with one goal—and that is to take you down.” Those words haunted Garaar, even to the point that he almost reneged at the last moment on his pledge to attend Caltech so he could help out Al-Shabaab. But his commitment to the cause ultimately triumphed.
While at Caltech, Garaar discovered that his grandfather either didn’t know what he was talking about or things had dramatically changed. Garaar found it nearly impossible to get a woman to talk to him. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of his classmates were male, Garaar wondered why women wouldn’t speak to him. He desperately wanted to fit in and wanted to make the best of the next four to five years of his life. But he seemed resigned to the fact that being one of the guys would have to happen without having a girlfriend.
Before he accepted that reality, Garaar questioned if anything was wrong with him. He asked his friends, classmates, roommates—anyone who would speak with him—if there was anything about him that was keeping women from talking to him. He received a wide array of advice, varying from fashion tips to ways to engage a woman in conversation. He tried it all, and none of it worked.
However, Garaar watched in amazement as Theodore Holdman seemed to need a security team to keep women away from him. Theodore, who was affectionately called Teddy Bear by those closest to him, quickly became the most desirable man on campus. But his ability to attract women extended beyond the Caltech campus boundaries and reached neighboring UCLA. At one point in the spring of Garaar’s freshman year, Teddy Bear was dating a UCLA cheerleader and became a school legend.
But Garaar couldn’t figure out why. Teddy Bear wasn’t overweight, but he certainly wasn’t a jock. He wore dark rimmed glasses and rarely combed his hair. His fashion of choice—solid color cardigans—were often accessorized with mustard and ketchup stains. For a few weeks, Teddy Bear even grew a splotchy mustache that seemed to have no effect on the women who flocked to him. Garaar watched in awe until he finally asked one of his roommates about the Theodore Holdman phenomena.
“You think Theodore Holdman has some secret trick to getting babes?” Garaar’s roommate asked as he started to chuckle. “There are two billion tricks he has, if you know what I mean.”
Garaar cocked his head to one side. “Two billion tricks?”
“Tricks equal dollars, dope. Ever heard of Holdman Financial Holdings?”
Garaar shook his head.
“That’s the company where the elite in this country go when they want to invest. And Theodore is set to inherit his father’s business when he retires.”
“But he’s studying engineering here.”
“Yes, computer engineering, which he’s doing so he can better research the industry for his father’s company. He already has a business degree that he got from USC when he was eighteen.”
Garaar nodded slowly. “I see. So, it’s all about the money?”
His roommate laughed. “That’s an understatement. Chicks would dig you too if you had money.”
It was an off-handed comment, but one that stuck with Garaar. He desperately wanted a woman—or a whole bunch of them like Holdman. It didn’t matter. Garaar was convinced it’d help him fit in better.
However, it didn’t seem to matter as Garaar failed time after time in his attempts to lure women to going on more than one date with him. He only got two first dates, which both ended abruptly before the evening was finished. It left Garaar more determined than ever to win over the heart of a woman—and it had to be an American woman. His family could pick a Muslim for him to marry at any point. But Garaar wanted to woo one on his own.
When Garaar entered the world of online dating, he found it easy to be someone else. The profile he created made outlandish claims. He was a business mogul from the Middle East who’d amassed a fortune in oil. He took pictures of himself next to yachts with a drink in his hand to enhance the illusion. Then he began his search. It wasn’t long until he found a sucker, a woman who lapped up every outrageous story he fabricated and shared with her as if it were the truth. However, something troubling happened along the way: Garaar started to actually like the woman.
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