Toxic Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 3)

by Roxy Sinclaire

  “The CIA received Al-Farook’s latest video a few moments ago. We’ve been given access to it, as well as his previous statements. Start at the beginning?” I nodded my agreement.

  As we watched the first video, I felt my skin begin to crawl. Not because I found myself looking into the eyes of an evil killer, but precisely because that is just what I didn’t see. Al-Farook looked nothing like Osama bin Laden, or any of the other countless jihadis he had inspired. He looked more like a scared kid than the cool, calm, and collected terrorists we had come to expect in these filmed manifestos. When we watched the next video, I noticed how much weight he had lost between the two clips—a pattern that continued throughout the five videos the CIA had received.

  The last clip was less than a minute long, and I asked Billman to play it again. Something had bugged me the first time I watched it, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it had been; was there something out of place that might help us identify where he was? What was it that was different about that tape compared to the others we had watched?

  It was about halfway through the third viewing that I spotted it. The beard was fake! I took over Billman’s keyboard and tried to zoom in on the face, but the resolution was lousy, and we ended up unable to see a damn thing. I zoomed back out and focused all my attention on that youthful face. The beard was definitely a fake. It was exactly the same in all five clips. Exactly the same. The same length, which seemed unlikely unless all the tapes had been made at the same time—but then Al-Farook’s deteriorating physical condition showed me that that couldn’t possibly have been the case. But it was also in the same condition. At the start, it matched Al-Farook’s clean, almost stylish appearance, but, by the final tape, where he himself was skinny, dirty, and bedraggled, the beard still appeared clean and good-as-new. Which was entirely likely if the thing had only been used five times, so that Al-Farook could make his videos.

  I mentioned my suspicions to Alana and we watched the clips again in order.

  “I think you’re onto something here, Christine. You keep watching; I’m going to get hold of my CIA contact on the secure line.”

  Billman headed into the outer office where I heard her speak to her secretary; meanwhile, I tried to focus on the face of Al-Farook. I realized that if Jason had never had any doubts about his guilt, then the chances were that he had never really bothered to analyse these films critically. He would have been focused on trying to identify locations, and clues in his words—not looking for evidence that might suggest he wasn’t the Islamic extremist Jason believed him to be. Could it be that Jason was guilty of creating a narrative and then sticking to it—could it be that we all were?

  I watched the most recent clip again. Al-Farook looked as though he was terribly ill in this one; his cheeks were sunken, and the shadows under his eyes were as dark as bruises. I found myself staring into his eyes, as if willing him to give me a clue, to help me somehow.

  Wait—what was that? I used the keyboard to scroll the video back a few seconds. Was he falling asleep while he spoke? His eyes sometimes appeared to be closed for just a fraction longer than you’d expect, while at other times he appeared to blink normally. I watched again, but there was no discernible pattern to it.

  I called out for Billman, who stuck her head around the door.

  “There’s something else here, I think,” I said as I beckoned her over. “His blinking seems to be affected by something; it’s sort of uneven. Sometimes it looks as if he’s dozing off, and then he’s fine again. Could it be a neurological condition of some sort?”

  Billman watched the tape over my shoulder, nodding as she saw the same thing I had spotted. “Something else for me to tell the CIA,” she said with a smile. “Excellent work, Christine!”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation in which we found ourselves, I couldn’t help but feel a little proud. Especially if I had spotted things the CIA—and Jason, in particular—hadn’t seen in almost three years of investigating Al-Farook. I might find Jason incredibly attractive, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t also feel the same sense of competition that always emerged when you had two agencies, and two agents, working together.

  “Billman, I think we need to get our own guys analyzing this, too, not just the CIA,” I called after her, as she headed back into the outer office. “Give the information to the Yanks, by all means, but I want our techs looking at every aspect of Al-Farook’s behavior and speech. If he is ill, that might help us track him down.” I watched the video again. If he was sick, maybe he was seeing a doctor or buying medications online. It was a long shot, but, as far as I could tell, Jason and the CIA had tried all the usual channels. Maybe it was time to start thinking creatively.

  “You’re right—I’ll make sure our techs have everything they need. And I’ll tell them that this is a top priority.”

  Billman’s secretary appeared in the doorway. “Agent Kern is on the phone to speak to Simmons, ma’am,” she said. I couldn’t keep myself from smiling, and then noticed that she, too, was smiling broadly. Jason’s looks obviously hadn’t escaped the other women in the office. I experienced an irrational feeling of jealousy, and I’m afraid I was rather rude as I pushed past her.

  “I’ll take it at my desk,” I told her.

  The red light on my phone was already blinking by the time I got back to my cubicle.

  “Jason?” I said as I picked up the handset.

  “Hi, Christine. Did you get the videos we sent over?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I replied. “Billman and I have been watching them. We’ve spotted a few anomalies that I’ve asked our tech guys to look at.” I was bursting with pride at my discoveries and couldn’t wait to tell Jason all about them, but, to my disappointment, he didn’t even ask.

  “Great, great,” he said vaguely, and then fell silent.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked, thinking maybe his jetlag was finally catching up to him.

  “Yes, of course. Well,” he paused. “I’ve just had a bit of a strange conversation. Probably nothing.”

  “Is it connected with the case?”

  I heard him take a breath. He obviously couldn’t decide whether or not to place his trust in me. “Remember Warick? The diamond guy I told you about?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, I just spoke to him and he seemed to know a lot about the London bombings. Like, more than he should.”

  “Maybe he heard about it from his diamond contacts?” I countered, hearing the concern in Jason’s voice.

  “That might explain it if the information he had was just about which businesses had been targeted, but he knew about the firebomb. We’d only just heard about that a few minutes before!”

  I felt a chill run down my spine. Did we have someone leaking information? It wouldn’t be the first time a chatty forensic tech had been duped by a member of the press, but I was pretty sure we only had our best and most experienced techs working on this case, given its importance.

  “Did he tell you how he knew about the firebomb?”

  “He said he thought he heard about it—and the casualties—on the news. I don’t know; maybe the US press got hold of information from somewhere.”

  He knew about the casualties, too? That was more worrying. No member of the team would tell anyone on the outside about casualties before the police had had a chance to inform their relatives. I knew this Warick must be well-connected, if Jason had cultivated him as a source, but it was worrying that he was so well-connected that he knew more about our operations than most of our agents.

  “Anyway, I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Jason went on. “Warick has been a valuable informant—and a good friend. Maybe there’s been rumors around his contacts in the diamond business.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I told Jason, though I was far from convinced. “Are you on your way in?”

  “Just waiting for my cab now. I thought we could take a look at the evidence your guys have already rec
overed from the scene?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll see you in reception soon.”

  Half an hour later, Jason walked through the door of the MI5 office. Even in a busy reception area, it was easy to spot him. He had changed into jeans and a smart shirt and his hair was still a little damp from the shower. Annoyingly, I felt my heart skip a little when I caught sight of him. Annoying, because I had been so determined to remain professional when I next saw him.

  We talked on our way down about the anomalies I had seen on the tapes. He seemed impressed with what I had spotted, but I could also sense a little frustration in him that he hadn’t noticed that the beard was fake. It was understandable; Al-Farook had been his life for years, and then I come along and in just a few hours see something that he’d missed all along.

  “Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees,” I offered breezily and groaned inwardly. What a trite thing to say in the circumstances! This man was throwing me off my game completely.

  Finally, we arrived at the lab, where Fiona, one of the forensic team, was waiting for us. Jason was keen to see the diamonds which had already been removed from the damaged businesses.

  “All the smaller items are through here,” Fiona said, as she led us down a short corridor. When we came to the door, Jason held it open and gestured for me to go ahead of him. “Ladies first,” he said. I spotted Fiona’s expression and blushed. We were going to be the talk of MI5 before morning.

  Jason made a beeline for what he obviously recognized as yet more fire-damaged diamonds. He pulled on the latex gloves offered to him by Fiona and began examining the evidence closely.

  “Christine, come and see this,” he called at one point, and I trotted over obediently to his side.

  I had to lean my head in very close to his in order to see what he was showing me. He looked up to check that I was paying attention, and, for the briefest of moments, our eyes made contact. I don’t think I’d ever been so close to someone without kissing them, and the urge to do that now was almost overpowering.

  “You smell nice,” he whispered, taking me completely by surprise. “How do women do that? I bet you’ve been working non-stop for hours and yet you still smell amazing.”

  I coughed and turned my attention to the item in his hands. “So, what have you found?” I asked loudly, determined to at least appear professional in front of my colleague.

  “Burned diamonds,” he answered smiling. Damn. He knew he had me rattled. “But there’s something a bit odd about these.”

  “Fiona, was it?” he called over his shoulder. “We’re sure these are diamonds from the shop?”

  I turned, grateful for the excuse to escape Jason’s pull. Fiona was looking confused.

  “Well, they were taken from the scene this morning, so, yes, they must have come from one of the shops.”

  Jason nodded, but he was looking thoughtfully at the burned mass as he turned it over in his hands.

  “What do you see?” I asked, unable to stop myself from drawing closer.

  “I know your forensic guy said there was a firebomb—huge temperatures involved—but the effects would have inevitably been affected by the air around it. These look like they’ve been burned at a consistent temperature. Something more like an oven or a kiln.”

  I found myself staring at Jason’s face, not the diamonds, as he worked through his thought processes.

  “And did all the diamonds taken from the shop look like these?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the evidence.

  “Yes, well, kind of,” Fiona replied. That finally got Jason’s attention.

  “What does ‘kind of’ mean?” he asked.

  “Well, all the diamonds that were on display in the store looked like this, but we did find a pair of diamond studs on one of the victims that were almost undamaged.”

  Jason’s brow creased inquiringly.

  “Show me,” he said.

  Fiona left the room to fetch the earrings, and I was suddenly aware of how alone we were. The silence was deafening.

  “It hasn’t been that long,” I said finally. Jason looked confused. “Since I had a shower,” I went on, realizing too late how very stupid this line of conversation was. He took a step toward me.

  “I was just teasing,” he said with a wink. “And you know what they say about why boys tease girls.” I felt my face go crimson with embarrassment and delight. Part of me never wanted Fiona to come back in the room—another part of me needed her to come back right now before I made more of a fool of myself.

  When she did come back, Jason was suddenly all business again. Fiona took a clear plastic evidence envelope and held it up to the light. Inside, you could clearly see two diamond studs; the metal they were mounted in—it looked like gold—had melted, but the stones themselves were perfectly intact and undamaged.

  “At the kind of temperatures we’re talking about, all the diamonds in that store should have been at least damaged, if not completely destroyed,” Jason explained. “So how come you little guys managed to make it through OK?”

  Chapter 6

  Jason

  I spotted Christine as soon as I came through the main door at MI5. Even after a shower, I still felt like a sticky, sweaty mess, and yet she managed to look like she’d stepped out of one of those period dramas the Brits loved so much.

  As we headed down to the lab, she told me how she’d spotted a few things that looked off in Al-Farook’s videos. I was cautiously impressed, but also a little put-out. I had watched those videos hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Did she think I’d missed something? I tried to put my professional jealousy to one side—we were all on the same team, after all—but I couldn’t help but feel that she was questioning my abilities somehow.

  Once we were down in the lab, I felt as though I was on firmer footing. My relationship with Warick had made me, if not an expert on diamonds, then at least smarter than the average Joe on the street. I could see from Christine’s expectant face that she was just waiting for me to make some amazing breakthrough in the case. I felt more than a little terrified that I was going to let her down.

  As soon as I saw the burned diamonds from the two stores, I knew something was wrong. These were all too uniformly damaged—almost as if they had been burned on purpose. Even if the firebomb they had used had been extremely powerful, the temperatures would have been lowered by environmental factors; and not all the diamonds would have felt the full force of the blast, yet these looked like they had been…sort of pre-made.

  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I called Christine over to show her what I had found. As she drew closer, I couldn’t help but draw in her scent. It was beautiful—clean and pure, just like her. I told her so, and she blushed scarlet. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Damn near made me forget what I had to show her about the diamonds.

  Something was wrong with this picture — somewhere there had to be diamonds only partially damaged by the firebomb. I asked the woman from the lab, who told me they’d pulled a pair of undamaged diamond studs off one of the burned bodies. That was impossible. If the bodies had been burned in the firebomb, then any diamonds they were wearing would have been at least partially affected.

  She went and fetched them for me, and sure enough, they were in perfect condition.

  “So how come you little guys managed to make it through OK?” I queried, to no one in particular. I was met with silence.

  “This is all wrong,” I told Christine. “Those diamonds are almost too damaged; whereas these don’t have a mark on them. At first glance, I would say it was impossible they came from the same incident.” I sensed rather than heard the lab tech about to start protesting. “Obviously, I know that’s not the case, but the evidence is creating more questions than answers, and I don’t like it.”

  Christine turned to her colleague. “I suggest we get a rush job on the analysis of all the diamonds pulled from the scene—damaged and otherwise,” she added, as she took the plastic bag containing the stud
s from my hand.

  “I’d like Warick to take a look at these,” I said after a moment’s pause. Christine looked at me quizzically.

  “You can’t take evidence from the lab. Not during an investigation.” Now she sounded like a schoolteacher.

  “I could take photos?” I offered. “He’s a trustworthy source. And I don’t have to tell him any more than he needs to know.”

  Still Christine hesitated. These Brits were such sticklers for formality. Me, I’d bend or break any of the rules to catch Al-Farook. Eventually, she nodded and I pulled out my phone and took a few snaps of the damaged diamonds.

  Christine was looking at the undamaged diamond studs which she still held in her hand.

  “Why diamonds?” she said quietly.

  “Hmm?”

  “Why diamonds? I mean, it’s an odd target for an Islamic extremist. Not political, not likely to cause maximum panic amongst the public. Doesn’t really fit the profile for previous attacks.”

  “Al-Farook always talks about the decadence of the west in his videos,” I countered. “Our analysts have come to the conclusion that he sees diamonds—jewelry—as some kind of symbol of that decadence.”

  Christine didn’t look convinced, and I had some sympathy with her position. It had always seemed like a weak link to me, at best.

  “But we don’t know that for certain, do we? And if his issue is with the ‘decadence’ of the west, then at any point he could switch from diamonds to, well, banks, or high-end fashion. Fancy bars and restaurants. Even movie theaters!”

  I put my phone back in my pocket and watched Christine. She wasn’t just beautiful; she was a very brilliant agent. And what made her even more attractive was that she didn’t know she was either of those. You could tell from the way that she hid her face behind that bob of golden-red hair that she thought she wasn’t pretty, and the tentative way she spoke her ideas out loud told you everything you needed to know about her lack of confidence as an agent. That confidence would come with time, but as for the other thing, well, someone needed to show her just how pretty she was before she hid herself away forever.