Not for what she needed.
She pushed forth a light shrug. "Oh, it's not as difficult as you'd think. And it does get easier with each case I work and every bastard I bag. Especially the intelligent ones and their equally challenging investigations, unlike you…and yours."
She waited for the explosion, but it didn't materialize. The faux serenity returned instead. Despite the creaking of pipes, the air nearly pulsed with it.
Impressive.
He followed it up with another one of those sage nods that would have made Freud himself proud. "Yes, that is understandable. Your passion for the difficult and the complicated. I suspect both are born of your childhood as well. The physical and emotional abuse from your grandfather. All those foster homes. Perhaps this is why you chose to repair your fractured relationship with the major, hmm? Your determination to see at least one through? But it won't work, I'm afraid. You are too damaged, Agent Chase. Profoundly defective, in fact. In your mind and in your body. " He paused with that, as if to assess how successful he'd been in landing those blows.
Considerably less than he believed.
Nor did she need this bastard ripping off the lifelong scabs that barely covered her innumerable insecurities so he could trowel in a fresh load of doubt.
It was already there.
And he'd made a mistake. A serious miscalculation.
She had no intention of letting him know. She needed him to continue. The more he said, the more he revealed…and the closer she would get.
To the most important of those names.
She pressed her lips together. Allowed her chin to tremble. Just barely.
It was enough.
He was certain he was getting to her. The fresh wave of oozing concern confirmed it, as did that soft, sympathetic sigh. "That man will never see you as an equal. Nor will a relationship with the major ever last. How can it? You put your career first, Agent Chase, and in doing so, you killed his child. Eventually, he will find someone else. Someone worthy. And he, too, will leave you. Deep down, you know this."
Mind fuck. She'd heard the term years ago.
This man defined it.
She had to give the doc credit. Psychologically speaking, he'd managed to make up for those less than stellar undergrad grades with bruising, real-world experience. Experience he'd honed and learned to inflict upon others. He was a damned site better at screwing with her head than she'd given him credit for. Though really, she shouldn't have been surprised. He'd had plenty of time to prepare for this round.
But where the hell had he gotten his intel?
Because it was solid. Extensive.
Even Riyad hadn't been able to unload as many armor-piercing rounds at her that afternoon in her stateroom. As much as she hated to admit it, this particular bastard had succeeded in piercing her painstakingly forged protective shell.
Her right hand had begun to shake.
She slipped it into her lap as nonchalantly as she could, but it was too late. Those dark eyes were fairly gleaming. Nor could he resist flaunting that shit-eating grin.
Bastard.
She met his glee with an insouciance she definitely didn't feel. "Thanks for the advice, Doc. I'll keep it in mind while I'm working on my intimate relationships in the years to come—and you're in prison, working on your own intimate relationship…with your eager brute of a cellmate." After all, even with that scar, he was so very pretty.
As for herself, Durrani might even be right, especially with regard to John.
Hell, he probably was.
It wasn't as though she hadn't already run through the possible scenarios on her own—and come up with the same, inevitable outcome for her and John.
But she couldn't afford to worry about that now.
She shifted her phone and the copy of the Qur'an to the side of the table, willing both to remain in place and not hit the deck as she opened the manila folder. Bypassing the creased photo she'd left with Durrani earlier, she drew a fresh copy from the file and laid it on the table between them. As she reached out to re-stack the phone and the Qur'an on top of the folder, she caught sight of Riyad just past the doctor's head.
The spook's posture had relaxed.
Even more curious, he deliberately avoided her stare as he stepped back into the outer compartment. She couldn't see him anymore.
A moment later she realized why, as the quick-acting watertight door to the outer compartment groaned in ferric protest and opened. She caught Chief Yrle's soft apology for the interruption, followed by a pair of boots moving quietly toward the door. She could still see the Marine's left profile, so…Riyad's boots.
Several more moments, and she caught a second groan as the door closed.
Had something happened to John?
She forced herself to push the burning personal question aside and concentrate on the equally searing professional one in her hands. The question she might actually be able to answer before she left this cell. Regan turned the image of the seventh, desecrated victim from the cave around so that it faced her killer square on and gently tapped the woman's bloodied hair.
"Who is she?"
Those dark, rising brows feigned ignorance. "You tell me."
Both she and this monster knew full well that she still couldn't.
But she had learned a few inescapable truths about their mystery woman—truths that pertained to her killer. Truths that were rapidly coming into focus. Especially when Regan added up Durrani's polite, yet insolent behavior with herself today and back in Charikar; his sneering attitude at Bagram Airbase with his fellow Afghan-born and professional equal, Dr. Soraya Medhi; as well as the bastard's flirtatious, then violent behavior with the ship's female corpsman earlier that evening. Together, they added up to an intriguing—and damning—hypothesis. And, given Tamir Hachemi's motive for drawing Captain McCord in their heinous plot, one that was seriously ironic.
"You were in love with her."
Durrani's entire body flinched. A split second later, those dusky features flushed until they nearly matched the pink of his scar, then bled all the way down to a pasty gray.
Pay dirt.
Her smile grew, the one pinned to her lips and the other one. The one she'd kept tightly reigned in and stored deep in her gut. The one that had been fueling this conversation of theirs for the past half an hour. For all his airs, Nabil Durrani wasn't so different from the cohort he'd sneered upon after all, now was he?
But the real reason for both those growing smiles? His flinch. With the distinctive tell had come something truly promising.
A lead.
She had a decent chance at uncovering their mystery woman's identity now. Because somewhere—in the US, in Pakistan, or in Afghanistan—there would be a record or a witness of Nabil Durrani and this woman, interacting.
Given the nature of the photo, she also knew, "This woman rejected you. In fact, I suspect she not only wanted nothing to do with you, but she also went so far as to tell you to your face." With that level of violence against the woman, she must have. "Why? Did you work with her, then harass her when she refused your overtures?"
No flinch this time. But the flush was back, and this time it surpassed the newborn pink in that scar.
Regan allowed her visible smile to stretch and deepen into an outright grin. "Thank you."
"I did not tell you her name."
And he wouldn't. That much had become obvious over the course of their conversation tonight. Specifically, his side of it. Not a single question from the doc since she'd entered the room regarding her newfound immunity to that chimera. There was only one explanation possible: this woman and her identity were too important.
Durrani had no intention of identifying her.
Ever.
Regan shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I'll figure out who she is soon enough. I'll begin with every doctor, nurse and lab tech you ever worked with, while a few of my associates start in on everyone you came in contact with before, during and after medical school
—in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the States." She held up the photo. "Keep in mind, we have an infinite number of copies of this to bring with us, and to distribute if need be. In person, in the papers, online, and on TV. Someone will recognize her." Regan shook her head as she reached out to tap the cover of the Qur'an beside her. "And when they see all that blood and that baby, it won't matter which book they hold while they pray. They will come forward. And then, we'll know what you have planned next."
"That will take time."
She shook her head. "Not as much as you'd think. After all, we've got a lot of boots on the ground in the States and spread out among other countries, now that we've pulled them out of that hellhole you came from. Those boots are attached to hands that are ready, willing and able to carry copies of this picture around the globe. And as I said, as soon as we identify her, the battle will be over. We'll have won the war."
That got a response.
His fingers fused into a single, tightly knitted fist as he lunged as far forward as he could get. "Never will it be over! Not until we have won. Nor did you pull out of my country. You were chased out like the jackals you are, with your tails tucked between your legs as you scurried back to huddle up beside your cowardly president. No concessions were needed. If you think that with you gone we will forsake our brothers in Al Qaeda and elsewhere, you are mistaken. If you think we will accept the rule of the puppets you left behind in Kabul, you are doubly so. We will prevail, again and again. And unlike you, we are in no hurry. It is as it has been said: you have the clocks, but we have the time. All we needed to do was wait. And so we did. Soon enough, it will be truly over—everywhere. You will be forced from all lands where Allah smiles. You are, in fact, already defeated; you simply have not recognized it. This so-called democracy you tried to seed in my country and others has been strangled at birth. By the time you and your army recognize the noose, it will be too late. Until then, everything is as Allah wills, in Allah's time—as it should be."
With that, he jerked back in his chair, then fell forward over his hands with the motion of the ship. He landed so hard, his forehead smacked into the edge of the table, directly in front of the steel bar. The top of his head and his body jerked once, twice, then stilled.
"Doctor? Are you okay?" She snapped her stare to the doorway, but couldn't see Riyad. Nor had she heard the outer compartment's watertight door reopen. The Marine was still in front of his desk, standing guard. "Corporal! Get Dr. Mantia! Now."
She was dimly aware of Vetter yanking the sound-powered phone off its hook and barking into it as she vaulted up onto the table, her knees slamming into the manila folder. By the time she'd grabbed the doctor's shoulders to shove him up and away from her, Marine Corps camouflage was already thundering in on her left.
If Durrani had been poisoned—
Twin, thick jets of hot blood instantly drowned that possibility as they squirted up and out from two mangled holes at opposite sides of the man's neck, splashing across her forehead, over her cheeks and damned near into her eyes.
Instinct combined with relentless training and the time-tested reality of combat as she shoved her thumbs into Durrani's neck, digging in at his pulse points.
A fresh round of scarlet burst forth regardless, this time coating her jaw and neck as it arced down into her ACU top. She could feel the blood dripping beneath her tee shirt and soaking into her bra as she dug her thumbs in deeper. But Durrani's neck was also with slick with blood, forcing her to readjust her grip.
"Damn it, Doc, stop pulling away!"
The bastard just stared at her—and smiled. That blasted serenity had returned too, and it was directed solely at her.
"Vetter, get his cuffs." If he could get Durrani free and laid out on the deck, she could turn the physics of gravity and pressure into their favor.
The Marine worked as rapidly as he could, but the blood was still squirting out through those mangled holes with each beat of the man's heart. There was less and less force behind each jet, too. Less and less blood splashing into her neck and chest.
Shit.
She didn't need Colonel Tarrington's vaunted skills, much less a formal autopsy, to confirm that Dr. Durrani had managed to shred both his carotids. The proof was in his blood. Most of it was outside the bastard's body now—coating her.
Slicking those damned cuffs.
Between slippery steel and the scarlet stain still spreading out over the rolling deck, it was impossible for the Marine to keep his grip.
What the hell had Durrani used to cut himself with anyway?
But, deep down, she knew. Just as she knew this entire, senseless fiasco was her fault. She should have made the connection sooner. Before the doc's lap had begun to fill with his own blood.
The cuffs finally clicked open and fell away. A split second later, half the ship's medical department barreled into the brig, and then the cell. Dr. Mantia and the beefy corpsman from the conference room that morning were in the lead.
Behind them, and coming up fast, a livid Riyad.
She ignored the spook and concentrated on the splatter of red now barely bubbling forth as Vetter worked around her hands, hooking his arms behind Durrani's neck and knees so he could lift and lay the man out into the ocean of his own blood. But she could tell—even before the Griffith's physician reached her side and knelt to assess the situation, shook his head, resigned himself to the reality—it was too late.
The bastard beneath her thumbs had already given her his last fucking smile…and died.
15
"What the hell have you done, woman?"
Riyad.
Regan leaned back on the heels of her bloodstained boots and stared up at the NCIS agent, silent. Resigned. With everything that had happed, she couldn't even screw up anger over that slur. And that word, from this man, in that tone of voice?
"Woman" was definitely a slur.
At the moment, she just couldn't give a crap. Unfortunately, Vetter did.
The Marine jackknifed to his feet and stepped up into the spook's face. "Agent Chase didn't do a blessed thing, sir, except try and save the bastard. I saw it all."
Even Riyad backed down beneath that righteous fire. He took several paces to his left so he could level that scowl on her again. "How the fuck did Durrani even—"
"The scissors."
It took a moment for her quiet words to cut through Riyad's seething ire. Suspicion quickly followed. "What are you talking about? What scissors?"
The ones Petty Officer Nguyen probably hadn't even realized were missing because the corpsman had been so rattled by the black eye that Durrani had given her during the suture removal. The scissors Riyad would have known about if he'd stuck around up on the flight deck earlier instead of grabbing the microTLC out from under her and slinking down to the master-at-arms shack to fire it up all by himself.
She would've explained now, but Riyad had already turned away, executing a slow, three-hundred-sixty-degree, searching turn made even slower by the rolling deck and the slick ocean of red spreading further and further out around them.
The spook finally circled back to her, his standard filthy expression locked into place. "Unless they're beneath the body, there are no scissors."
Regan nodded toward the doc's coveralls. Vast swaths of the dark blue twill covering his torso, abdomen and thighs were darker still from all that wet, glistening blood. "Check his sleeves, up inside the cuffs."
Dr. Mantia passed a pair of sterile latex gloves to the spook.
Riyad accepted them, his stony stare rife with disbelief as he donned the protective gear. Hunkering down, he carefully tucked the fingers of his left hand beneath the cuffs crowning Durrani's right and fished around. His suspicion faded, though not completely, as he slowly slid a pair of Littauer suture removal scissors out from beneath the fabric.
Constructed of stainless-steel, they were roughly five inches in length, with the slightly parted blades taking up at most an inch, an inch and a half of that. A tiny�
��and in light of what had just happened—ominously scarlet-coated hook formed the tip of one end.
Several distinctly relieved sighs filled the compartment, momentarily competing with the creaking of the ship. None of them belonged to her.
Though the prints on those scissors would exonerate her, possibly even in Riyad's eyes, she knew better.
Tonight had been her fault.
If she hadn't been rejoicing in relief over that strychnine and what its presence meant for John—and, yes, if she hadn't also been in such a rush to clear him so she could bring John into this very cell and use him against the bastard now lying dead at her knees—she'd have given more thought to what Chief Yrle had said about how the suture removal incident had gone down.
Specifically, how Durrani had bashed his skull into the corpsman's eye.
The bastard hadn't been taking out his anger on Petty Officer Nguyen over her lack of interest in his flirting, much less his arrest back in Charikar and present incarceration aboard the Griffith—and pending lengthier incarceration elsewhere.
Nor had the Afghan doc been obsessed with any coming "physical" questioning. There was no reason. He'd already decided on his out.
His new, impromptu plan would get him out of any manmade prison and send him straight to Paradise for his first face-to-feet with Allah—seventy-two virgins and a river of milk and honey included, or not. Either way, Durrani had bided his time, waiting until the last possible moment, and then he'd distracted the corpsman with panic and pain. If the corpsman had discovered the scissors' absence in her kit, she probably assumed she'd dropped them as she'd hurried back to sickbay.
Durrani had then used the ensuing commotion to hide the scissors inside his sleeve. He'd been praying over that Qur'an, all right. Praying that no one would notice that the modest blades were missing and circle back to his cell before he was ready to use them.
That was why he'd begun demanding her presence before she'd even made it back aboard the Griffith. He'd planned on ripping through his carotids and bleeding out in front of her all along. One last fuck you to the States—and her.
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