Decision made, she conceded. “All right. I’ll come with you.”
Ameen studied her for several seconds. Then he wrapped his scarf around his arm and hand before using his gun to knock the remaining glass out of one of the broken windows. After stashing the pistol and scarf in his waistband, he formed a stirrup with his hands and boosted Marissa up so she could climb through the window. Once she was clear, he dove through the opening and somersaulted to his feet.
They sprinted silently through the night, always on the lookout for violent drug goons who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them simply for the fun of it. Ameen kept his gun raised and ready. Only once did he have to slow his long strides when she tripped on her abaya. His arm encircled her shoulders and hugged her body up hard against his to prevent her from falling.
Marissa noticed his curious expression when he peered down into her upturned face, their lips separated by mere inches. For several heartbeats, their chests rose and fell in tandem. Abruptly, he released her and turned away. They ran down multiple alleys until they dodged around one last corner and collapsed against a white Ford truck.
After a moment’s rest, he unlocked it and they climbed inside. The engine roared, and the truck barreled down the road. Once the slum was behind them, Ameen slowed to a normal speed.
Marissa kept one eye on the silent stranger driving her to an unknown destination as she tried, unsuccessfully, to memorize the circuitous route through Tijuana. One of her hands grasped the handle of Samir’s knife, the tip of the long, bloody blade resting on the floor by her feet.
The sat phone rang, startling her and Ameen. She glared at it for a moment before switching it off and removing the battery. Someone, somewhere, could be tracking the phone’s GPS chip. And that someone could be Husaam Abbas.
She forced a calm demeanor even though her mind raced through a myriad of questions. Who is this man? Should I trust him? I know I can defend myself, but where is he taking me? How could he shoot Samir and Omar so accurately in the dark? How did Husaam break my cover? The questions stopped when a stark realization hit her. Beheaded. I was almost beheaded. The shocking truth shattered her thought process. An icy shiver washed over her, and she swallowed the bile rising in her throat.
While the truck carried her farther and farther away from her near execution, Marissa stole sideways glances at her rescuer. His expression grim, he focused on the road, but twice she caught him studying her. His muscular arms were taut, and his hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. But he didn’t speak. A muscle in his jaw twitched as if chewing on his rage.
“Who are you, Ameen? And I want more than just your name,” she finally said.
Ebony eyes shifted slowly to hers. “I was waiting for you to ask. I’m sure my answer will be much easier—and truer—than yours. I am Ameen Ali. I live in San Diego and work for my uncle, Abdullah, who is the imam at a San Diego mosque.” He frowned. “Is it a waste of my breath to ask who you are and why you were with those men?”
“Yes.” She pressed her lips together to hide a faint smile.
He shook his head in frustration. “Will you at least tell me your name?”
Her defensive instincts tingled. She repositioned the niqab on her head and covered her face before she answered. “I am called Baheera.”
“Baheera,” he echoed. “Just Baheera?”
She didn’t respond.
His piercing gaze seemed to penetrate her veil. Without hesitation, he switched to English. “In Arabic, Baheera means dazzling, brilliant. The name fits, although I doubt it is what your parents named you.”
“Perhaps not,” Marissa replied in English. She would have to be careful with this man.
Thirty minutes passed before Ameen parked the truck in front of a house in a much nicer neighborhood of Tijuana. He sat for a moment, staring at his hands resting on the steering wheel. When he turned, his dark eyes were filled with concern.
“I promise, Baheera, no one is going to hurt you. Will you trust me and wait here?”
She rolled down the window and scrutinized the house. Small, but neat. The moonlight revealed a well-maintained yard and flowers in pots on the front stoop. “Who lives here?”
“My good friends, Khaleel and his wife, Safiya. I hope they will let us spend the night.”
She hesitated and then agreed. “Fine.”
Ameen nodded once before climbing from the truck. Several minutes after he knocked, the porch light came on. Marissa heard a quiet exchange between him and someone inside the house. Finally, the door inched open, and a man peeked out. Then, a woman, dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, appeared at his side. Unlike the man, she smiled and welcomed Ameen warmly.
He leaned closer and continued to speak in little more than a whisper. The couple glanced toward the truck. Safiya cocked her head and stared, but when Khaleel stomped his foot, she turned back to him.
Unmoving, Marissa hid behind her veil. She could hear the voices speaking Arabic, but couldn’t distinguish their words or imagine what story Ameen was telling his friends. An unmarried Muslim woman alone with an unrelated male would raise many unwelcome questions. When the three friends stepped inside the house, she carefully slid the knife under her clothes and tied it to her leg with Ameen’s scarf. She stuffed the sat phone and wallets in her pockets. Last, she checked the niqab to be sure it completely covered her face and hair.
Ameen reappeared beside the truck and swung open her door. “Safiya and Khaleel have agreed to let us stay. Will you?”
Marissa read the relief in his expression. Once she nodded, he grinned.
As she climbed out, he scanned the inside of the truck. His smile faded. With his steady gaze fixed on her veiled face, his eyes told her that he knew she was carrying the missing items, specifically the knife. She waited for his questions or reprimand.
Instead, he only muttered, “If you must.”
The couple was arguing on the couch when Ameen ushered Marissa through the living room. Khaleel stood up abruptly, blocking their path, and glared at her with hateful, suspicious eyes. She stared back from behind the black veil, analyzing what and how much danger the tall man represented. The sticky blade of Samir’s knife against her leg provided reassurance.
Safiya laid her hand on her husband’s arm and smiled up at Marissa. “You are welcome in our home. We are pleased to help a Muslim woman in need.”
Khaleel shook off his wife’s hand and stormed out of the room.
Hastily, Ameen guided Marissa down the hall into a bedroom.
“Do not mind Khaleel. He doesn’t trust strangers and wants only to protect his wife. I’ll be close by. You are safe here,” he said as he left and shut the door behind him.
Marissa wasn’t so sure.
Holding her breath, she listened with her ear pressed against the bedroom door. Ameen’s voice was intent but quiet; she could barely hear his words. Khaleel ranted about the risks of sheltering a strange woman. Safiya spoke in a soothing voice of reason, trying to temper her husband’s tirade.
Marissa listened for any mention of the earlier violence, but heard nothing about knives, guns, or killing. Could she trust Ameen not to tell his friends what had happened? Not to share even her name. Would Safiya throw them out if she learned the true circumstances of their meeting? Was Khaleel more of a danger than Ameen realized? Those and a hundred other questions kept her ear glued to the door until all three voices became whispers and defeated her eavesdropping.
Sighing, she surveyed the tiny bedroom. The furniture was sparse and cheap, but the room neat and clean. The one window was large enough to allow escape. Unfortunately, the door had no lock. Marissa yawned and decided she really had no better option than to spend the night. She glanced warily at the door. If necessary, she would defend herself.
She slipped the knife, phone, and wallets under the covers. Exhausted, she removed the veil, crawled between the sheets, and stared at the ceiling.
Almost beheaded. Her skin turned clammy. Her whole bod
y began to shake. Shock? Adrenaline crash? Sleep seemed impossible, but she had to try.
* * *
“Whatever possessed you to bring that infidel to my home?” Khaleel hissed.
Ameen considered him calmly. His friend had changed since moving from San Diego to Tijuana several months ago. His Islamic beliefs and practices were more fundamentalist, more extreme. The man’s personality had also grown aggressive and almost paranoid. Ameen wished he knew what was bothering his friend so he could help. He’d talk privately with Khaleel and attempt to identify the problem as soon as he could. But right now, Baheera was the pressing problem. “How do you know she’s an infidel?”
“Was she not outside her home without a male family member escorting her?”
“She may not have been unescorted by choice, but by circumstance. I don’t know. Many Muslim women in today’s world are in public without escorts. Are they all infidels?”
“Perhaps not, but they shall pay for their disobedience.” Khaleel huffed. “We know nothing of this woman. Why won’t she tell you her name? Why must she keep it a secret? I find that very suspicious.”
Baheera was hiding many secrets, but Ameen couldn’t admit that or his overly protective friend would throw them out of his house. And he needed a safe place to keep her. Other than making the time-consuming drive back across the border and north to the mosque, he didn’t have any other good options. “Is it not enough to know a Muslim woman is in need of our help? Would Allah want us to deny her solely because we do not know her?” Ameen asked.
Khaleel dismissed the thoughtful questions with an impatient wave of his hand. “She is filthy. What if she brings disease into my house?”
True, Baheera’s abaya was slightly dirty from the fight, but Ameen didn’t think for a moment that she was filthy or diseased beneath it. He envisioned the flawless, olive complexion of her upturned face, the full soft lips only inches from his own. He shook the tempting image from his mind and swallowed hard. “Are you offering her a bath?” The question roused another inappropriate vision.
“Absolutely not.” His friend pounded his fist on the arm of the couch.
“Khaleel, please. Ameen wouldn’t bring us trouble,” Safiya said to calm her husband. “It’s getting late. We should go to bed.”
He scowled at her. “Hush, wife. You are a woman. You do not understand.”
She bowed her head. “Yes, husband, I am a woman, but I read the newspaper and listen to the news. I’m not worried that this unnamed woman was unescorted or is dirty. There is a greater danger I fear.”
Ameen tensed. “You think she is a danger to you, Safiya?” He pictured the knife Baheera had smuggled into their home and cringed at the memory of her impaling her attacker. What did he really know about this woman? And why was he willing to lie to his friends about her?
Safiya raised her thoughtful, intelligent eyes to meet his and shook her head. “Oh, no, Ameen. I don’t fear this danger with her. She is but a simple, gentle Muslim woman who needs our compassion tonight.”
He arched an eyebrow. Simple? No way. Gentle? Not so much.
“Then what danger are you babbling about?” Khaleel asked.
Ameen spotted the pain of humiliation in her eyes before she lowered them.
“Terrorists. I speak of terrorists,” she said.
“What?” her husband spat.
“It’s true. Islamic terrorists, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and others. They are hiding among us, planning horrible things.” She looked to Ameen for support. “They pray at our mosques, eat with us, work beside us, and we don’t know the truth about them. They are a danger to everyone, even fellow Muslims. I fear them, not this woman.”
Chapter 3
Clothed in a long, black robe and veil, a woman ran from two men whose eyes flashed with hatred. In a panic, she ducked into an abandoned building with the men closing in on her. They burst through the front door and then separated, searching each room. When one paused in the doorway of the room where she was hiding, the woman smashed the door against him. He yelled for his partner and kicked the frightened woman to the ground. The second man barreled into the room, brandishing a huge knife. As the woman struggled on her hands and knees, one man yanked off her veil and grabbed her hair. Her eyes wild with terror, the defiant woman clawed at her attackers. The massive knife towered over her neck. “Benja! Miláčku,” she screamed.
“Marissa,” Ben Alfren yelled into the darkness. He bolted upright in bed, panting as if he’d been running with the woman.
“What’s wrong?” his girlfriend mumbled, stirring under the covers beside him.
He swallowed hard, but failed to loosen the tightness in his throat and chest. “Nightmare,” he said. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
Amber Jollett’s hand slid out from under the pillow to give him a reassuring pat, but when her fingers touched his clammy skin, she paused and then sat up. “Are you all right?”
He blew out a long breath and nodded, even though his heart still raced.
“Did you say ‘Marissa’?” Amber asked, eyeing him as she brushed the hair off his forehead.
“Yeah. She was in the nightmare. I have to call her.” He reached for the cell phone on the nightstand.
“But Ben, it’s eleven o’clock. That’s two in the morning in Washington.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
While he pressed the number for Marissa’s Georgetown condo, Amber kissed his cheek. “I understand.”
After ten rings, a sleepy male voice answered. “H’lo.”
“Hey, Ian, this is Ben in California. Sorry to wake the two of you, but I need to speak to Marissa.”
“Ben? Ben Alfren?” Ian asked amid the rustle of sheets.
“Yeah. Put Marissa on, please.”
“Can’t. She’s not here. Isn’t she with you?”
Ben frowned. “What? Why would she be here?”
“As crazy as it sounds, I’d actually started to hope she was with you. At least that would explain why she isn’t returning my calls.” More than a hint of suspicion tainted Marissa’s boyfriend’s voice.
“I haven’t seen Marissa since I was in DC a few months ago,” Ben said defensively. Two years earlier, he’d been devastated when she broke up with him. During his last visit to FBI Headquarters, they had finally found closure and reconciled as friends. Since then, they’d stayed in touch through frequent phone calls and e-mails. She had even helped him with a recent case. But, as Ben recalled now, they hadn’t communicated at all during the past couple weeks.
“Honest you haven’t seen her?” Ian asked.
“Of course. Why would I lie?”
“To hide the fact you’ve gotten back together.”
Ben tried to rein in his growing impatience, but his frustration with her boyfriend’s paranoid jealousy spewed out. “Damn it, Ian. Marissa and I are not back together, and we won’t be getting back together. We haven’t been lovers for more than two years. That chapter is ancient history. We’re just friends now, good friends. You need to get that through your thick skull, or you’re really going to piss off both of us. Besides, I have a great girlfriend. Amber’s right here. Do you want to ask her if I’ve been cheating with Marissa?”
“Forget it. Doesn’t matter anyway. I warned Marissa that I was sick and tired of all this cloak-and-dagger shit. I said I wouldn’t put up with it anymore. Even though we argued…” Ian groaned. “Well, hell. To be honest, she broke up with me. But still, I can’t believe she’s not returning my calls.” He sighed. “I wouldn’t be so worried if it wasn’t for all the weird crap right before she went missing.”
Ben tightened his grip on the phone. “Missing? What the hell do you mean?”
“Since I’m not FBI, Marissa can never tell me anything so I don’t know much. She’d been working ungodly hours for a month. Then about two weeks ago, she got a call in the middle of the night. Before she left the bedroom, I overheard the guy on the other end yelling something about wiretapped phone calls an
d al-Qaeda.”
“Last time we talked, she told me she’d been tied down with a lot of translating. And hey, getting a call in the middle of the night isn’t that uncommon in this profession,” Ben explained, hoping to calm Ian down.
The attempt didn’t work.
His voice strained, Ian continued, “But it wasn’t just any phone call because Marissa lit out of here like a bat out of Hell. I didn’t see her again until the next night. She came home saying she was going out of town on assignment for a week. Of course, she wouldn’t tell me a damn thing about it. That’s when we had the big fight.” He cleared his throat. “When she wasn’t looking, I poked around in her purse and found the airline tickets: Dulles to San Diego with a return scheduled seven days later. She didn’t call once that whole week, and I knew better than to phone her.” He huffed. “When she didn’t come home a week ago, I started calling her cell. Never got an answer or a response to my messages. I contacted the FBI. Her boss—”
“Did you get a name?”
“No. I’m pretty sure he didn’t give one, but I was damn pissed so maybe I just missed it. Anyway, he sounded real uptight and wouldn’t tell me a fucking thing.” Ian paused. “Shit, Ben, I heard the guy on the phone that night say al-Qaeda. I’m sure you know more than I do about all the attempted attacks by domestic sleeper cells since we killed Osama bin Laden. And you also know that one of Marissa’s languages is Arabic. I’m afraid there’s a connection.”
Ben shoved his fingers through his hair. Not only did she speak fluent Arabic, her olive complexion, long, black hair, and dark eyes could easily pass as Middle Eastern. And she was an experienced field agent with extensive undercover training. He didn’t dare mention those facts to her distraught former boyfriend.
“Relax, Ian. What you’ve told me so far isn’t that unusual. Assignments often last longer than expected.” He hesitated. “But I am surprised Marissa never called to tell me she was going to be here in San Diego.”
Targeted (FBI Heat) Page 2