Sobered, Oz nodded. “The one they set on fire.”
“And put three people in the hospital with severe burns. This is more serious than your interest in minimalist design, or pacifism, or whatever other abstract philosophical point you want to make. Understood?”
Oz studied the man he’d followed for the last ten years, from Gothenburg to Boston to Atlanta. Roland was the only manager who’d been able to penetrate his arrogance as a prodigious teen, teaching him the discipline, patience, and humility that had saved him from becoming yet another early-twenties burnout whose potential was never quite fulfilled. Oz trusted Roland implicitly, and he knew he wouldn’t win this argument.
Maybe he shouldn’t win this argument. As much as it annoyed him to admit it, the outpouring of hatred on his social-media accounts had shaken him. He never imagined anyone could be offended by his cherry-picked commitment to Islam, and certainly not to the vehement, violent extent that had been unleashed. Roland was right—this was too much to handle on his own.
“Fine,” he huffed, shoving his hands into his pockets. “And, thank you. For putting the team’s money behind this, and for coming with me today. I know you could’ve asked me to do this on my own, or sent one of the Assistant Managers, but it was good to have you here.” He exhaled before his next admission. “Apparently I still need you occasionally.”
Roland gripped his shoulder briefly. “We’ll get this nonsense sorted out.”
Oz nodded, then added with a smile, “I do want it on record that I think alarm systems are cynical symbols of mistrust that degrade civil society.”
Roland grinned. “If you find someone who cares, I’m sure they’ll be happy to make a note of your objection. See you tomorrow.”
“Later.” Oz climbed into his car—that pickup wasn’t as close as he thought—and started the engine, then threw the car into reverse and beat Roland out of the parking lot.
That’s my one victory for today. He turned up the volume on a Swedish techno track as he headed for his home in Ansley Park, distracted and unsettled as he navigated the busy Atlanta streets.
When his best friend, Glynn, had texted that his address was on a Citizens First website, he’d laughed. Then he’d put his phone in his locker and spent the next several hours training with Skyline. When he picked up his phone again it had flashed with missed calls and panicked messages from a slew of friends and relatives. Although it had been removed within an hour, news of the list had found its way onto a lunchtime segment on one of the major broadcasters and taken off from there.
Suddenly his publicist was fielding calls from reporters asking how it felt to be outed as Muslim, whether he’d received any death threats, and vying to be the first to get his exclusive interview.
“You can’t out someone for something that was never a secret,” he’d told her over the phone in the hallway outside the locker room, still wearing his training kit. “And I’m happy to be interviewed on the subject of American professional soccer, since none of them seem to care enough to cover it on a regular basis, but my personal life is off-limits.”
Except the messages kept coming. Hundreds of Islamophobic comments littered his social-media pages, punctuated by racist images and hideous language, each one worse than the last.
Oz took advantage of a red stoplight to scrub his palm over his eyes as comment after remembered comment flashed behind his eyes.
Get ready to die, filthy haji. We’re coming for all you sand rats. Run back to the desert while your head is still attached to your shoulders.
But the one that scared him the most—the one that still sent a chill down his spine whenever it popped up—was by a user whose comments were always the same. Several times each day, across all the social-media platforms Oz used, a brand-new commenter appeared with a random jumble of numbers as a username. No amount of blocking seemed able to stop the phrase that posted over and over again: Ausonius 70.
Ausonius was a reference to a serial killer who’d shot immigrants in Stockholm in the late 1990s. Seventy was Oz’s house number.
Oz exhaled a wave of anxiety as he turned into his neighborhood, forcibly shoving his thoughts in a different direction. Hateful though the comments were, he still wasn’t convinced hiring a security company was the answer. And their erstwhile account manager, Kate Mitchell, hadn’t done much to convince him.
He didn’t like her, that much was clear. That she took Roland’s side didn’t exactly set them up to be best friends, but his distaste didn’t end there.
He didn’t like her accent, for a start, that deep country drawl that he heard most often from fat white men calling him queer through the windows of pickup trucks. As a pacifist he disliked her military record on principle, and her subsequent move to an oil company was even worse.
Of course, his opinion was based entirely on ideology. It had nothing to do with the way she’d utterly failed to respond to his provocation, or buy into his lofty objections, or laugh at his jokes…
He couldn’t stop his smile. Okay, maybe she wasn’t all that bad.
She wasn’t bad-looking, either, if he was honest. Chin-length brown hair, blue eyes, a tall, athletic build. Nothing like his type, though. Not the sophisticated, erudite, professional woman he could count on to see him through what would inevitably be his short-lived soccer career to his life beyond. In fact, she reminded him a lot of his uncle’s ex-wife—the woman who’d divorced him after an injury brought his uncle’s high-flying soccer days to a screeching halt, whose abandonment sent his uncle into the depressive spiral that ultimately killed him.
He shook his head. No way was he falling into the same trap. He had The Plan.
Still, maybe they could at least—
Oz slammed on his brakes, the seatbelt digging into his neck as the car jerked to a halt a few feet from his driveway. He checked his mirrors, glanced out both windows, twisted in his seat to confirm the road was empty. Then he picked up his phone, found Kate’s business card in his pocket and dialed her number.
She answered on the second ring.
“Kate? It’s Oz Terim. I was just in your office.”
“Of course, what can I do for you, Oz?”
“I think I might have a problem,” he replied, studying the crude symbol spray-painted on his mailbox. The handiwork wasn’t great, but the intention was clear.
A swastika. Bright, white, and so fresh the paint was still dripping.
Chapter 2
“Can we put it here?” Kate indicated a space beside the back door.
Oz shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to have to look at it every time I go into the backyard.”
“Can we put it over there, next to the fridge?”
“Won’t work.”
“Why?”
“It’ll ruin the backsplash.”
She swallowed an exasperated sigh as she propped her hands on her hips, surveying his enormous, white-glass-tiled kitchen and the even larger, even whiter dining and sitting rooms beyond it.
“I like the open concept, Oz, but it doesn’t give us many walls to work with. And this alarm-system panel has to go somewhere.”
He crossed his arms, brows furrowed in thought as he gazed across the space. Kate resisted the urge to roll her eyes for what must’ve been the thousandth time that morning.
On one hand,