Stand Fast (DEA FAST Series Book 3)

by Kaylea Cross

  “They’ve got a few others.” He’d seen the pictures on the wall earlier. “Not sure how promising they are, since I didn’t get all the details.”

  His buddy’s mouth twitched in the hint of a grin. “Bet Agent Rabani would tell you if you asked.”

  Zaid shot him a hard look but Prentiss didn’t make eye contact, so he let it drop, not wanting to talk about her. Prentiss was observant, and it shouldn’t have surprised Zaid that his buddy had picked up on Zaid’s interest in or protectiveness toward her, but Zaid didn’t want anyone talking about her or speculating about what was going on between them. He wouldn’t allow her reputation to be tarnished.

  After about forty minutes, the door finally opened and Jaliya and her boss came out. Zaid looked at her, taking in her self-assured gait and posture. The woman moved with a confidence that was damn sexy. “All done?”

  She nodded. “For now. You guys ready to head back?”

  “Sure. Just let me contact your driver.” Zaid pulled his cell out and dialed the guy, double checked to make sure everything was still secure outside. “Yep,” he told the others, “we’re good to go.”

  Outside on the front steps of the building, Jaliya’s phone rang. Zaid paused to look back at her. She pulled it out and stopped when she glanced at the screen, the overhead lights showing a slight tension taking over her body.

  He moved fast, grasping her arm and pulling her into the shadows beside the building, his only thought getting her out of the light so she wasn’t an easy target for anyone lurking out here and hoping to take a shot at her.

  Her dark eyes flashed up to his, a little annoyed. “I need to take this,” she argued, trying to pull her arm free as she raised the phone to her ear with her free hand.

  “You can take it once you’re off these steps,” he told her, and hustled her down and into the relative safety of the shadows. She followed, barely paying attention to him.

  “Barakat,” she said, causing Zaid and her boss to look at her sharply. He’d called her? There was no way she’d given him her personal cell number. Maybe she’d had another number forwarded to it. And this must be important, for him to miraculously overcome his earlier dislike of her. “Where are you?”

  Zaid kept moving her toward the vehicle. The driver had pulled it up to the main gate and waited with the engine running.

  But Jaliya dug in her heels and twisted away from Zaid a few yards from the main gate. She shook her head adamantly at him when he tried to grab her arm again, and began speaking in rapid Dari.

  Zaid and Prentiss immediately went back into sentry mode, watching for threats while she continued her conversation. Her voice was clipped, her posture tense. “No, he’s not all right,” she told Barakat. “His body is on its way to the morgue right now. What do you know about it?”

  Her boss stood a few paces from the gate, eyes glued to her. “Where is he?”

  Jaliya shook her head at him and continued to talk. “No. No deal. The intel you gave us before? Useless. We sent a team out to the site you gave me and there was nothing there.” Her mouth compressed into a thin line as she listened to whatever Barakat said next. “I don’t think so. You expect me or anyone else to listen to you after what happened? No. Your words carry no weight with me.”

  A tense pause followed. Jaliya’s gaze flicked between Zaid and her boss. “All right, I’m willing to meet with you. Right now. At a location of my choosing.” She named an address Zaid wasn’t familiar with, but he guessed it was somewhere in the city. “Twenty minutes. Come alone. If you don’t show up, or if you feed me more lies once you get there, I promise you’ll wish you’d never taken my call that first time.”

  She hung up and strode for the truck, an air of palpable excitement radiating from her. “He’s meeting us in twenty at a café a few miles from here.”

  Her boss raised his eyebrows. “Us?” He shook his head. “I’m due back at Bagram within the hour, so I’m already going to be late as it is. With this assassination under investigation, I can’t push back the meeting.”

  “But he says he’s got intel that could help our investigation. He said The Jackal is still alive.”

  David cursed under his breath. “And what if he’s straight up lying again, just to get more money?”

  “Or trying to lure you in for a kidnapping or targeted hit?” Zaid said, unimpressed by Barakat’s sudden change of heart about “helping” them.

  She turned her head to stare at him, her expression unflinching. “I need to meet with him. I want to see his face and read his body language.”

  In other words, she was going with him, or without him. His choice.

  Her boss’s gaze shifted to Zaid and Prentiss. “Can you go with her?”

  What? Zaid stared at him. He was seriously going to allow her to jeopardize her safety for a meeting with this little asshole?

  “We’ve got our own security with us, so you and Prentiss can stay with Jaliya. If your team can spare you a while longer,” David added.

  Since the guy outranked him, Zaid kept what he was really thinking to himself. “You sure about this?”

  David glanced at Jaliya, then back at him. “Yeah. You guys will escort her to the meeting. If it feels off, get out of there. If it feels okay, make it fast, find out what the kid knows—if anything—and leave. Call me with an update as soon as you’re done. If he really does have something for us, I want to move fast.”

  “Okay.” Jaliya looked over at Zaid. “Where did you park?”

  Zaid couldn’t believe they were doing this. He wanted to put her in the truck and drive her straight back to Bagram. But if she insisted on going through with this meet, then he was going with her. “You good with this?” he asked Prentiss.

  His buddy nodded once. “Yeah. I’ll call Hamilton, let him know what’s going on and see what he says.”

  “Okay.” He waited while his teammate made the call. There hadn’t been anything scheduled when he’d left base, and neither Hamilton nor Taggart had called them back in, but something might have come up in the past couple hours.

  Prentiss ended the call and put his phone in his pocket. “Got a green light.”

  Guess we’re doing this, then. Zaid turned to Jaliya, trying to be all business and ignore the invisible pull she had over him. “Stay close to me, and don’t get in the truck until we check it.”

  She frowned at his brusque tone, but didn’t argue. “Fine.”

  His senses were on high alert as he, Jaliya and Prentiss headed for the truck, parked outside the main gates behind the other agency vehicle. He made Jaliya stay back about twenty yards on the sidewalk while he and Prentiss checked to make sure no one had tampered with the vehicle or rigged it with wires or explosives. Only when he was satisfied that he wouldn’t blow them up by turning the ignition did he go back for her and escort her to the rear driver’s side door.

  Once she was settled he scanned the street before climbing behind the wheel and starting the engine, while Prentiss rode shotgun. “Where are we headed?” he asked her.

  In the rearview mirror her dark eyes sparkled with excitement in the glow of the streetlights, the thrill of the hunt revving her up. They were more alike than he’d realized, and she was unlike any woman he’d ever met. More daring. Ballsy, even. On her, it was sexy as hell.

  “Go north for two blocks, then take a left,” she said.

  Zaid followed her directions, winding them through the darkened streets of the crowded city center while Prentiss kept watch of what was going on around them. “You think the kid knows anything?” he asked Jaliya. Zaid had his doubts. Serious doubts, and he just hoped the kid wasn’t luring them into a trap of some sort.

  “He’d better.”

  Yeah, no joke. “How do we know he isn’t working for someone else now?”

  “We don’t.” She gave him a little smile, her dark eyes holding a distinct gleam of anticipation. “Thanks for this. I feel way better with you guys coming with me.”

  Her admissi
on surprised him a little, because she always seemed so fearless. “Welcome. But just so we’re clear, I’m not leaving you alone with him at any time.” He didn’t care if she didn’t like it. That’s how it was going to be.

  “Good. I need the intel he has, but I don’t trust him.”

  Neither did Zaid. And even though he disliked this situation, he had to admit he admired her bravery and dedication. “Are you always this determined?”

  Her lips twitched as she stared out the windshield. “I think so, at least when it comes to getting what I want.”

  Wish you wanted me that badly. He didn’t dare say it aloud.

  “I usually do, though. My father says I’ve always been headstrong.”

  She claimed to have lots of friction with him, but she sure talked about him a lot. Whatever their history, she obviously loved and respected him a great deal. “What does your mom do, anyway? I never asked.”

  “She teaches classical studies at a college. Yours?”

  “We’re blue collar all the way. My mom has a cleaning business and my dad’s a mechanic. Their English still isn’t the greatest, even though they emigrated from here to the States when my mom was pregnant with me.”

  Jaliya nodded. “Learning a new language as an adult is hard.”

  True.

  “Wait, your old man’s a mechanic? Then how come you suck with mechanical stuff?” Prentiss asked.

  “I don’t suck at it, I’m just not as talented with machines as I am at patching up human bodies.”

  Prentiss chuckled under his breath. “If you say so.”

  Okay, a change of subject was in order before his ego took a beating in front of the woman he was trying to make an awesome impression on. Zaid glanced up to meet Jaliya’s eyes in the rearview. “Were your parents born in the U.K.?”

  “My mom was. Dad’s family was originally from right here in Kabul.”

  He shook his head. “Man, the changes our parents have seen here over the last few decades must have been mind-blowing.”

  “Yeah, the country’s barely recognizable to the one they grew up in. It’s one of the reasons I took this job. I hate what’s happened over here and I wanted to make a difference.”

  “Trying to make the world a better place.”

  Their gazes connected in the mirror once more, and at his words her expression froze for an instant before closing up. Almost as though she was hiding something. “Exactly,” she murmured, looking away.

  Make the world a better place. His gut tingled as that same phrase echoed in his mind, from a conversation he’d had months ago with the woman he’d met online.

  He dismissed it and picked up the thread of conversation. “Me too. Prentiss, what about you? Why’d you take on this gig?”

  “I get to play with some pretty cool toys in this job, and my teammates rock even if the assignments don’t always. Also, drugs suck.”

  They totally did. “Right. Don’t do drugs.”

  Even painkillers could be the start of a slippery slope for a lot of people. For that reason he never gave a patient a higher dosage than absolutely necessary during treatment and transport. Not unless they were going to die and the only act of kindness was to pump them so full of meds that they didn’t suffer in their last few minutes on earth. His hands tightened around the steering wheel as ghostly faces flashed in his mind.

  Pushing them aside, he glanced in the mirror again. Jaliya was watching him, the touch of her gaze a low-grade tingle beneath his skin.

  “Do your parents support your job?” she asked.

  “In FAST, you mean? Or the agency in general?”

  “Both.”

  “Yeah, they do. They’re proud that I’m trying to make a difference for the people here and back home by cutting off funding to terrorist organizations and cartels. But they don’t love how dangerous it is.” He took in her profile for a second as she gazed out the window before focusing back on the road. “Why, you don’t think yours support your job?”

  She made a face. “They like that I’m fighting for what I believe in, but they’d always hoped I’d pick something more academic.” She tossed a grin at him. “More white collar.”

  “So they’re snobs,” he teased.

  She laughed and he smiled in reflex. “When it comes to professions, yes, I guess they are. Mostly I think they just worry about me all the time. They want me to be safe, and to them that means a comfy, boring desk job back in the States.”

  I want you safe, too. It’s why I’m here. But he would never want her to give up a job she was so well suited for and obviously loved, even if it was dangerous. He might not like that she was in danger, but he’d learn to deal with it.

  “I guess that’s just something parents never stop doing—worrying about us.” He loved her laugh. And her voice, her cute British accent. Her dedication to her job and that she was a team player.

  “Maybe. And, I guess you’ve probably noticed by now that I hate any kind of misogynistic bullshit.”

  “I had, yes,” he answered with a straight face.

  “I noticed that too, by the way,” Prentiss said with a wry smile.

  She gave a soft chuckle that went straight to Zaid’s gut. “My parents and sisters share my view on that, but they hate that I’m so vocal about it. They think I should fight quietly and not be so…brash about it.”

  “But then you wouldn’t be you,” Zaid said.

  She turned her head to meet his gaze in the mirror then, and for a split second there was such unguarded gratefulness on her face that it sent a wave of tenderness through him. He wished they’d been alone and not riding in a vehicle so he could hug her.

  “That’s exactly it.” She paused a moment, as if searching for the right words. “I tried to fit into their mold when I was younger, I really did, but I felt suffocated. We all love each other, even if my father can’t say the words, so that made it easier when I broke with tradition and went my own way.”

  The friction with her father was starting to make a lot more sense now. “How many sisters?”

  “Two. I’m the middle.”

  He grinned. “It’s always the middle child.”

  She shot him a playful glare. “What are you, then, the perfect eldest?”

  “Nope. Only. Perfect? My mom thinks so. Although my cousin did come to live with us for a few years when I was in my teens, and she was like a sibling.”

  “Was?”

  His stomach muscles grabbed. “She…passed away the year she was supposed to graduate.” He’d never gotten over it. Or over the feeling that he could have—should have—done more to save her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  Prentiss already knew the story, so Zaid didn’t mind telling her with him here. “Her ex wouldn’t take no for an answer, refused to believe they were done. So he ran her car off the road and shot her twice in the chest as she lay there pinned in the wreck.”

  “Oh my God, how awful. Is he in jail?”

  It had been the darkest time of Zaid’s life, knowing that he hadn’t done enough to protect her. “Yes. I think about her all the time. She had the purest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. Maybe she was too good for this earth.”

  “That’s the nicest compliment I’ve ever heard someone give another person.”

  Well, it was the truth.

  They lapsed into silence for a few minutes as he drove them deeper into the city.

  “We gettin’ warm yet?” Prentiss asked finally, checking the GPS on his phone.

  “Take a right at the third street up,” Jaliya said.

  Zaid did, and she swiveled in her seat to peer out her window at the buildings they passed. “Just up here on the right, about twenty metres—yards, I mean. Yes, there he is.” She pointed.

  Zaid glanced over in time to see Barakat appear out of an alleyway and walk toward the building. He watched carefully to make sure no one was with him. “I want to drive around the block first, see if we have any other company.�
� Both his and Prentiss’s phones had tracking beacons in them, so Hamilton or Taggart would be able to follow their position, just in case.

  “All right.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and got to one knee to reach for the opposite door, ready to open it. He wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t steal a glance at her sweet, round ass in the rearview mirror as she did.

  Jerking his gaze back to the road, he continued past the café, turned left at the next street and doubled back around, checking for a tail. At this time of night there weren’t many people walking around—all of them men—but nothing tweaked his internal radar. Barakat was slouched against the far brick wall of the café, watching them when Zaid pulled up.

  “We good?” he asked Prentiss.

  “Yep.”

  Jaliya opened the rear passenger door. “Get in,” she told him in Dari, pistol in her free hand.

  Zaid lowered his right hand to the sidearm on his hip and kept careful watch while the kid got into the back, even though Prentiss already had her covered. Zaid didn’t question the territorial urge he felt toward her.

  As soon as their passenger was aboard, he hit the gas. “Where we headed?” he asked Jaliya in English.

  “Wherever. Just keep driving around while I talk to him.” She turned to Barakat, and when Zaid flicked a glance in the rearview mirror, the kid was looking nervously at her weapon. “What have you got to say for yourself?” she demanded in Dari.

  “I didn’t lie,” he insisted. “I did not,” he said more forcefully when she raised an eyebrow at him. “I was told The Jackal would be in the village that night.”

  “Well, he wasn’t. And not only that, we reviewed satellite imagery of the area for the week prior and every day since our last meeting, and he still hasn’t shown up. No weapons or drugs, either.”

  Barakat folded his arms across his chest and seemed to curl into himself as he leaned against the corner of the door, keeping as much distance between himself and Jaliya as possible. “He should have been there,” he muttered.

  Jaliya let out an irritated sigh. “What about tonight? Have you heard anything about who planted the bomb?”