Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Alyssa stepped quietly into the room. Praise the Lord for small favors. Sam didn’t even have to know she’d been here.

  But then she heard it. A soft sound. Like something an animal might make. Snuffling. Sniffing. Unsteady breathing.

  And then she saw it.

  Everything on the dresser had been swept onto the rug. The desk chair was knocked over and the big gilt-edged mirror on the wall was askew and cracked—as if there had been some terrible struggle in here in the ten minutes since she’d left the room.

  Was it possible that someone—like the as-yet-unapprehended terrorists who’d thrown those homemade bombs down toward the pool just yesterday afternoon—had come in here after she’d left and overpowered Sam and . . .

  Heart pounding, terrified that he was lying there dead or dying, she went past the wall that separated the entryway and closet and bathroom from the rest of the room.

  The mattress was off the bedframe. The blankets and sheets had been hurled to the corner of the room. And Sam Starrett sat on the floor, shoulders bent, head bowed and . . .

  He was crying.

  The man was sitting on the floor and crying.

  Alyssa stared, frozen in place.

  She must’ve made some sort of sound, because he turned toward her with a look of sheer horror in his eyes. His still-muddy face was streaked clean in places from his tears.

  And she understood. He’d made this mess. This was the aftermath of some kind of temper tantrum, some kind of fit of anger that . . . she’d caused?

  Was it possible that Sam Starrett was crying—crying—over . . .

  Her?

  But that hadn’t been anger she’d seen in the bend of his shoulders. That had been hurt. Misery.

  Heartache.

  “Get out!” He pushed himself to his feet in one smooth movement.

  But she was stuck there. Hypnotized by the sight of those eyes filled with tears, by the very idea that this tough, unbreakable man was capable of crying over anything.

  He took a threatening step toward her. Shouted. “Get the fuck out of my room!”

  Alyssa turned and ran, scooping up her fanny pack on the way out the door.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Eighteen

  Teri forced herself to wait in the basement lobby.

  She could see Mike Muldoon inside the restaurant, carrying a hot cup of coffee, getting himself a pastry—or four—from the self-serve line.

  She couldn’t see Stan at all, but if he’d come in with Muldoon, it was likely that he’d leave with him, too.

  After what seemed an eternity, Muldoon headed for the door. Directly toward her.

  She knew he wasn’t really attracted to her. He’d said that he didn’t think she was a very good kisser.

  It was all she could do not to run and hide.

  But Teri steeled herself. She wanted this confrontation. She needed this. She could do this. She was mad at this loser who was willing to ask her out and even sleep with her merely because his senior chief had asked him to.

  “Hey, Teri.” Muldoon greeted her cautiously, no doubt leery of the steam coming out of her ears. “Everything all right?”

  “Great.” God, what was she saying? And through clenched teeth, no less? “No,” she said instead. “No, Mike, actually, everything’s not great. I need to see Stan right away. Didn’t he come down here with you?”

  “Oh,” he said. “No. He went upstairs. He wanted to shower before he got something to eat.”

  Muldoon was the lousy kisser. If he’d kissed even half as good as Stan did, maybe she would have bothered to kiss him back. As it was, she hadn’t wanted to waste her energy. She started for the stairs.

  “Hey, I was wondering . . .” Muldoon followed her.

  “You want to have lunch?” she said shortly, taking the stairs two at a time, forcing him to rush to keep up. “Sure. Why the hell not? How’s noon?”

  “Uh, fine,” he said.

  “Great,” she said. “Lunch at noon, and then what do you say we have sex afterward, say, at 1300?”

  Muldoon dropped two of his pastries. They went bouncing down the stairs, and he hesitated, having to choose between going after them or following the woman who’d just suggested having postlunch sex with him.

  His hesitation didn’t last too long. He followed Teri.

  “Glad to know I’m more appealing than a prune-filled Danish,” she told him.

  “Teri, what’s going on?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  She was angry as hell. At Stan. At Mike. Mostly at Stan.

  You didn’t get angry enough, his voice echoed in her head. Instead you internalized it, where it would fester and make you feel even worse. Who the hell needs that? You don’t! So say it to me. Confront me. Get angry.

  “I’m great,” she told Muldoon, and this time it wasn’t a lie. She did feel great. She was angry. No. She was furious. But that was okay. Because she was heading upstairs to go pound on Stan’s door and tell him a thing or two about playing God, about messing with her life, thank you very much.

  She wasn’t going to jam it all inside, the way she’d done so many times before. She was going to blast Stan.

  Come on, hit me.

  Yeah, maybe she would. Maybe she’d give him a solid knee to the balls. Son of a bitch.

  And as for Muldoon . . .

  Teri stopped on the landing right before the doors to the main hotel lobby and grabbed him by the shirt. He was juggling his paper cup of coffee, the remaining pastries, and her outrageously bold suggestion that they follow lunch by taking off their clothes and getting busy, but she didn’t give a damn. She just pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him.

  It was a no-holds-barred kind of kiss. A soul sucking, total tongue, teeth clicking, going for the tonsils kind of kiss. The kind that promised hot, deep, total penetration, a bed rocking, sweat slickened, gasping for air, and screaming for more kind of sex.

  It was a Hall of Famer as far as kisses went, and Muldoon, brave SEAL that he was, was completely up for the challenge. He tossed his remaining pastries and coffee onto the floor, where they hit with a splash. He was solid and warm and he tasted like sweetened coffee.

  But he wasn’t Stan.

  Teri pulled away before he got his arms around her.

  “Gotta go.”

  He followed her into the lobby. “Hey, whoa, why wait till noon—Teri, I’m not busy now.”

  “Yeah, but I am.”

  “Noon, then,” he said, still following her. He nodded as they went past Lieutenant Paoletti and Jazz Jacquette, waiting until they were out of earshot, but then still lowering his voice, “I’ll come to your room.”

  “You know,” she said, stopping short, “on second thought, I can’t have lunch with you. And as for having sex . . . ?” She pretended to think about it. “Nope, can’t do that either. Not in this lifetime.”

  She started for the stairs up to the west tower where both she and Stan had rooms. But Muldoon grabbed her arm.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “You just . . .” He was completely confused and she almost felt sorry for him.

  Almost.

  “You’re just going to kiss me like that and then . . .” He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s it?”

  “You know, Muldoon,” she said, making a very sympathetic face, “you’re just not a particularly good kisser.”

  And with that, he instantly understood. “Oh, shit,” he said. It was the first four-letter word she’d ever heard him use. “You heard that?”

  Teri nodded. “Let go of me.”

  He dropped her arm. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . really sorry.”

  “Great. That makes it all better.” She started for the stairs again, and again he followed her.

  “Teri, I don’t know what I can say—”

  She stopped. “Don’t say anything. Just leave me alone.”

  He stood in front of her, blocking her p
ath. “If you won’t let me try to explain now, then why don’t you meet me for lunch.”

  Teri laughed in his face. “Oh, there’s an original idea.”

  But he persisted. “You’ve got to eat, right? I’ve got to eat. Let’s sit at the same table, and please, let me try to—”

  “Mike. Don’t you get it? You’re off the hook. You don’t have to have lunch with me. I know Stan set you up to—”

  “But I want to have lunch with you. I need to have lunch with you. Please? Come on. Give me a break. I really like you, Teri. I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”

  She looked at him. And she knew. The man was a Navy SEAL. He had pitbull-like tenacity. He was going to dog her every step until she agreed to meet him for lunch.

  “Noon,” she said through gritted teeth. “Lunch and only lunch. As friends.”

  “Absolutely.” He nodded. “If that’s the way you want to play it, that’s the way we’ll play it.”

  For now. He didn’t say the words aloud, but they hung there as he walked away.

  Teri knew that kissing him that way had been a stupid mistake.

  And it was all Stanley Wolchonok’s fault.

  “We got video!”

  The negotiators’HQ room—mission control, so to speak—erupted in quiet cheers.

  Quiet, because after three days of hemming and hawing and buying the SEALs in the Troubleshooters Squad time to rehearse the takedown of the plane, everyone in Max Bhagat’s team was exhausted.

  Desmond Nyland stood in the doorway, watching Max watch the screen. Max himself looked fresh as a daisy. He was too much of a son of a bitch to let anyone know he was running on caffeine and nerves strung way too tight.

  The man shaved two or three times a day so that his team never saw him looking anything but completely in control.

  Although rumor had it he’d nearly broken Senator Crawford’s nose. And rumor had it that last night he’d actually gone out onto the runway in an attempt to trade himself for this Gina girl who’d been brave enough to step forward and say she was Karen Crawford when the tangos were about to start killing the other passengers.

  That sure as hell didn’t sound like the Max Bhagat he knew.

  The miniature cameras had finally been put into place, and the equipment was finally up and running. Two days those SEALs had spent there in the scorching heat and the chill of the nights, refusing to give up.

  And now they had video.

  Out of the three cameras Ensign MacInnough and his men had managed to get placed and working, two gave a snake’s eye view of the cabin—from the floor, of course. It was limited, but they were lucky they had that much. The third was in the cockpit.

  Max stared at that screen, both hands on the table in front of him, leaning closer.

  “Oh, God,” he breathed, more to himself than anyone standing around him. “She’s just a girl.”

  Des moved into the room to look over Max’s shoulder at the screen.

  The picture was amazingly clear despite the fact that, again, the camera was angled up from the floor to the ceiling. But there was a young woman sitting on the floor, knees in close to her chest. She had long dark hair and big dark eyes and a face that was more than merely pretty. She was striking looking—with cheekbones and a nose that announced her Mediterranean heritage.

  And Max was right. She was little more than a girl. In a few years she was going to be a gorgeous woman. A real Sophia Loren­type beauty.

  Of course, right now her life expectancy wasn’t more than a few days. Hours even.

  Especially if what Des suspected was true—that this was a suicide mission for the hijackers, and had been right from the start.

  “How old is she?” Des asked.

  “Twenty-one—going on thirty-five. She’s been cooler under pressure than some of my agents who’ve been on the job for five years.”

  “You might want to send over a skirt or pants or something so that girl can cover those legs.” Des tapped the screen. Not that he had any problem with it. She had legs like a movie star. Five miles long and gorgeously shaped.

  “Yeah, and how do we do that without letting them know that we can hear and see what’s going on in there?” Max asked.

  “Details, details,” Des said. “I’m surprised she hasn’t been hassled by the tangos for indecent exposure.”

  “One of ’em, calls himself Bob—we’ve IDed him as Babur Haiyan—” Max told him, “was talking to her about it last night. But it didn’t seem exceedingly threatening.”

  Des tapped on the screen again. “Lookee here. Whoever this is, he’s just waiting for the order to play rough so he can have at this girl. Look at him watching her. He’s going to be first in line for the gang bang.”

  Max raised his voice. “I need a visual ID. Tango on screen three. Anyone match a name to that face, call it out!”

  As he waited, a muscle jumped in his jaw. Now, wasn’t that interesting? Our man Max had let little Gina Vitagliano under his incredibly thick skin. Under what Des had always believed was impenetrably thick skin.

  “Helga all right?” Max asked, still watching the tango watching Gina on the video screen.

  Oh, damn. “She’s not here?” Des countered.

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  Max never missed anything, but right now it was possible he wasn’t up to his usual speed, glued the way he was to the video screen. Des quickly scanned the room, looking for that familiar head of gray hair, that beautiful round face that was always smiling.

  Double damn. Helga was supposed to be here. She was scheduled to be.

  But she wasn’t.

  “She didn’t call in?” Des tried to sound casual. As if he weren’t picturing Helga wandering the streets of K-stan, confused and disoriented and in terrible danger.

  “She didn’t call me,” Max replied.

  “Alojzije Nabulsi”—the name he’d been waiting for—rang out.

  “You stay the hell away from her,” Max said to the video screen. “She’s just a kid.”

  When the power and air conditioning kicked back on, Stan closed the curtains in his room, shutting out the hot sun. It would take a minute or two for the air coming through the vent to turn cool, but at least it was moving again.

  He was tempted to take another shower—to stand there under the water until the room cooled down, until the terrorists surrendered, until the team was on its way back to California, where he could return to his regularly scheduled life and not have to think or worry about Teri Howe ever again.

  He was giving in to the urge and had just stepped out of his pants when someone started pounding on his door.

  Holy Christ, whoever it was wanted him to open up in a hurry. He grabbed for a towel and lunged for the door. With that kind of lead fist, it had to be WildCard or Cosmo or . . .

  “Is there a problem?” he asked as he yanked the door open.

  Or Teri Howe. Oh, shit.

  “You bet your ass there’s a problem.” She pushed past him, into his room, as he scrambled to pull the towel more completely around himself.

  She was willing to bet his ass—she didn’t necessarily want to see it flapping in the breeze.

  He knew exactly what this was about. Mike Muldoon had called on the hotel phone just minutes ago with the bad news of the hour. It seemed that Teri had overheard their entire conversation in the stairwell.

  She turned to face him. “Close the goddamn door.”

  Muldoon had told him that she was angry, but Stan had imagined that meant that she’d avoid him, maybe give him the cold shoulder until the end of time. Be passive aggressive at best.

  But, damn, here she was. Ms. Nonconfrontation, getting right in his face about something he’d done to upset her. As bad as this was, it was also good. It was beyond good. It was amazing.

  He was so fucking proud of her, he wanted to cry.

  Christ, she was livid. And gorgeous. Her eyes were hot and bright, her delicate mouth a tight line in her flushed face.
She was breathing hard, as if she’d sprinted five miles. Or gone up eight flights of stairs at a dead run.

  She didn’t seem to notice—or care—that he was wearing only a towel.

  Stan didn’t shut the door. “How about we just leave this open until I get some clothes on? I’m not comfortable being alone like this without—”