He wanted to find out why the authorities were tiptoeing around the monster who was at the center of their investigation. He wanted to know where the bastard was now and if he intended to try again. Not because he was a racist or hated Muslims as his critics had said, but because the elusive son of a bitch was a murdering terrorist. Tracking him down and exposing him was the right thing to do, whoever it pissed off.

“Yeah,” Jack said at last. “The mojo is so back.”

***

Jack Hatfield’s fall from grace had been swift and brutal, and had come when he could least afford it. Already in the midst of his divorce, he was a year into a new contract hosting Truth Tellers, one of the top-rated opinion shows on the GNT cable news network, when he was blindsided by accusations that he was an unrepentent Islamophobe.

The accusations were nonsense, of course. Jack had long been a champion of religious freedom and free speech and anyone who watched his show knew that. But the liberal media elite took it upon themselves to take his words out of context so they could twist and amplify them. They went after him like a starving jackal chasing an eastern cottontail.

As much as Jack believed in religious tolerance, he drew the line at murder. And whether his detractors liked it or not, Muslim extremists were the face of terror around the globe. Time and again they had demonstrated a willingness to kill in the name of Allah. Pointing out that simple fact, and suggesting oh-so-gently that a few more imams should be speaking against the killing instead of getting wound up stumping for a controversial mosque in the heart of San Francisco did not even begin to rise to the level of hate speech. The exact, very rational words that started the anti-Hatfield fatwa were, “Hell, if these guys did more of the first no one would ever complain about them wanting to do the second.”