by Jade Kerrion
No one, seeing the pegs, would have taken them for handholds. They were installed at irregular intervals, customized to Zara’s physical reach and acrobatic ability. Flawlessly, silently, she vaulted and lunged her way to the fourth floor. A cautious glance confirmed the room was empty before she climbed in through the window. A whisper of a sound drifted to her.
The bedroom.
She angled the framed picture on the wall and pressed a hidden button. A ceiling panel slid back. Zara leaped, catching the edge and swinging her feet up into the dark maw. She crawled over thick layers of soundproof insulation until she was over her bedroom. Her fingers traced the edge of the ceiling panel as she glanced at the six-inch screen installed beside it, displaying images captured through the security camera in her bedroom. Three men—not SEALs—concealed themselves behind furniture, their assault rifles aimed at the door.
Had they really expected her to walk into a trap in her own house?
She released the safety on her handgun and drew a deep breath, before pressing a button to open the panel. It slid back—not soundlessly—but she leaped through the opening and landed in a battle crouch. Her first bullet penetrated the back of one man’s skull. Her second pierced the side of another man’s head, killing him as he was spinning around, bringing his rifle to bear.
She dove into a forward roll without trying for the third kill shot. A bullet sliced so close to her she could feel the rush of air in its wake. Her shoulder hit the floor, and momentum pushed her across the slick surface. She fired twice at the third man in the room. The first bullet took out his right shoulder, the second his kneecap.
The gun toppled from his fingers, and he dropped to his knees, screaming. Zara strode to him and smashed the grip of her handgun on the back of his head. He crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
The explosive sound of a bullet jolted her.
Zara spun around. A fourth man stood in her doorway, his rifle aimed at her, his eyes wide with shock. Blood trickled out of a hole in the middle of his forehead. Like a puppet with cut strings, he toppled to the floor.
His face expressionless, Klah stood behind the dead man, his gun aimed at Zara. A lazy curl of smoke wafted from the muzzle of his gun.
Her weapon snapped up to lock on his face. She held her ground. “Where are my friends?”
Pain sheared through his exhaustion-glazed eyes. “My team’s dead.”
She gaped at him.
“They’re dead, all of them.” The muscles in his cheek twitched. His voice cracked.
Her mind recoiled. How did anyone kill an entire SEAL team? “The missile…?”
“They were in the house when it came down on them. I couldn’t even find all their bodies.”
“But you and God weren’t in the house.”
“He was dead, next to a missile launcher. But he wouldn’t have fired it.”
Zara’s eyes narrowed. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know you didn’t fire that missile launcher?”
“What?” Klah’s jaw dropped. The tip of his gun lowered. Outraged shock cracked through the thick layer of his pain. “I…they’re my team!”
Of course. The famed SEAL brotherhood. Guys jumping on grenades to save each other’s lives. Zara huffed her breath out in an almost soundless snort. There was a reason she was a solo operator. The situations she found herself in were complicated enough. There was no need to complicate it further by adding the lives of people she cared for into the mix.
Like now.
To hell with the SEAL team. It wasn’t her problem. “Where are my friends?” she demanded.
“Why the hell did you run with Lila?”
“Why the hell not? When I’m in Lebanon, I don’t like being shot at by people who swear in English.”
“You’re hurt?” His gaze flicked over her body. “Who shot you?”
“Shot at me. Missed.” She shrugged. “I didn’t see a face, but I injured him. He cursed in English. The people who ‘kidnapped’ Lila were embassy guards.” Zara reached into her pocket and pulled out two dog tags. She dangled them from her fingertips before shoving them back into her pocket. “The whole situation stank, so I ran with Lila, and now she’s dead.” She bit off the last word before guilt leaked into her voice.
Klah said nothing, but he drew an unsteady breath. His face was a mask of agony.
Zara glanced at the unconscious man at her feet. She had left him alive for questioning, but it would be several hours before he was aware enough to talk. Her gaze and gun still on Klah, she knelt and groped for the man’s dog tag or other identification. She did not find any, but her fingers brushed against something on his collar—not quite a button.
A microphone. Damn it!
She plucked the earpiece out of the man’s ear and held it against her own.
“—hear this. The team is on its way. Rendezvous in ten minutes.”
Zara glanced at Klah and gestured with her fingers. Ten minutes.
He signaled back. Pull out.
She narrowed her eyes, which was code enough for Hell, no.
He lowered his gun—she didn’t—and closed the distance to whisper in her ear. “Top-of-the-line guns. Cutting-edge technology.” He gestured at the tiny earpiece. “They have you beat on guns, toys, and sheer numbers.”
“My friends are missing. I need answers, and I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t trust you either, but answers aren’t any use if you’re dead. I’m calling a truce; let’s get out of here.” His gaze flicked to the window, and his eyes flashed wide. He tackled her to the floor and rolled with her onto the far side of the unconscious man’s body.
A projectile arced through the open window.
Seconds later, a blast exploded through the room.
15
Her ears ringing, Zara squirmed out of Klah’s immobile embrace and shoved to her feet. The man she had knocked out was dead, his body flayed by shards from the fragmentation grenade. Grimacing, she shoved her handgun back into its holster and knelt by Klah to search for a pulse.
Rhythmic movement flickered beneath his skin.
He was alive, thank God. The dead man and Klah’s body armor had taken the brunt of the damage.
Movement flicked by the door. Zara swung her gun up, caught a glimpse of a raised rifle, and didn’t hesitate to squeeze out two bullets. One took out the intruder’s knee. The second smashed into his face as he dropped to the floor.
Zara gritted her teeth. Her instincts of going straight for the kill were hell to contend with when trying to keep someone—anyone—alive for questioning. She ran to stand by the blast-darkened doorway and pressed herself against the wall as shadows flickered against the stairwell.
Across the room, Klah groaned and stirred.
Zara heard the familiar whisper of a safety being released. The intruder had stopped just outside the door, out of her line of sight. Her gaze flicked to Klah as he raised himself up on one elbow and stared at something outside the doorway.
She visually traced and extended the line of his gaze, which would set the intruder’s face right about—
She pointed her gun, exposing only her wrist, from the side of the doorway, and fired.
—there.
A choked cry and a thud confirmed her bullet found its mark.
Klah’s shoulders sagged.
No other visible threats. “You okay?” she asked.
He nodded and climbed to his feet. Grunting, he reached for his weapon. “Anyone alive?”
Zara shook her head. “We’ve got five minutes.” She glanced out the window. “Less. A truck just turned down Maroun Naccache Avenue. It’ll be here in two minutes.” She swung aside a hidden panel in a closet and grabbed the case containing her rifles and ammunition. “This way.”
Klah followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen. She opened the wine closet, a narrow space scarcely larger than a pantry, installed from top to bottom with wooden racks. Wine bottles occupied more than half of those
racks. She removed a bottle and reached into its slot to press a button nestled against the back wall. She stepped back as the wooden racks slid toward her to reveal a steep staircase into darkness.
Zara replaced the bottle in its slot. “Let’s go.”
Klah went down first, his rifle braced against his shoulder. Zara followed with her gun case, her jaw tense. Klah might have saved her life, but she did not trust him enough to go in front of him. At the bottom of the stairs, she pressed the button installed beneath the lip of the lowest stair, and the wine racks slid back, squeezing out the light from the kitchen. She grabbed a flashlight from the stash tucked beneath the stairs and handed Klah another. Two bright beams of light flicked on and danced across the narrow space.
“Down that way.” She aimed the flashlight down the tunnel.
“Are these Roman catacombs?” Klah pressed his hand against the wall of packed dirt.
She shook her head. “PLO tunnels, from the days of their war with Israel. The tunnels go for miles beneath Beirut.”
“You’ve mapped them.”
“Not all of them, but enough to have an exit route from most places. Watch your head and your step. No one maintains these tunnels anymore.”
“Where are we going? Another safe house?”
She snorted. “I don’t trust you enough to drag any more of my friends into this snafu. Why are SEALs fighting embassy marines?”
“I don’t know. You had the same information we all did.” His voice grated. “We went in blind.”
Too blind. “I’m going to find my friends. I want you to get those girls out of my house and back to their school or the embassy; I don’t care which.”
He paused and turned to face her. “We do it together.”
Her upper lip curled into snarl. “The girls are not why I came back to Beirut.”
“Then why did you come?”
“To collect another ‘get out of jail free’ card.” The snarl transformed into a smirk, which vanished as her eyes narrowed. “But all bets were off the moment they went after my friends.”
“Do you even know who ‘they’ are?”
She inhaled deeply. A scarcely formed thought flickered—something about her friends and her house—but it was elusive and flittered away before she could grasp it. They. Who could they be?
Embassy guards protecting the ‘kidnapped’ ambassador’s daughter? Soldiers armed with the latest in military technology, courtesy of the American government? Lila shot—executed—in front of her family, steps outside of the American compound?
Guilt made her chest ache. Zara glared at Klah. “I’m not interested in getting tangled in your government’s crazy plots. I have no intention of being a victim because your government’s right hand doesn’t know what its left is doing.”
“You think our government, the American government, is behind this fiasco?”
“What reason do I have to believe otherwise?”
“Nakob and Hezbollah.”
She laughed. “So someone invited them to play.”
“Who?”
Zara mentally stroked the blade of her dagger to soothe the restless edge of her emotions. “The CIA, perhaps. I bet the ambassador has answers.” And with her dagger at his throat, she’d get the answers she needed, including what he had done with her friends. She stepped back from Klah and shoved past him to take the lead. “The embassy’s this way.”
“I’m bringing the girls back.” His voice floated to her. He had not followed her as she had walked away.
She stopped and turned to face him. “Where will you take them? Back to the American embassy and watch them all get shot—executed—in front of the gate?”
A muscle twitched in Klah’s jaw. “I don’t know. Back to their school?”
“How is their school any safer?”
“Where would you take them?” he snapped.
Where would she…? The Venezuelan embassy, of course. The girls were mostly daughters of American and European expatriates, and a handful of wealthy Middle Easterners. All the relevant embassies were likely watched, but not the Venezuelan embassy. She opened her mouth to respond but caught his eye. “Nice try, but this is your job. I’m not getting sucked into your rescue mission. Look how the last one went.”
He strode up to her. “The girls are in your house, protected by your friends. I’d have thought that at the very least, you’d want them off your hands.”
“Oh, you’re good.” Zara snorted softly. She paced a short length of the tunnel. Klah was right, the bastard. As long as the girls remained on her property, Nazrol and his Hezbollah warriors were at risk. Her heart fisted in rebellion even as her mind yielded. She ground her teeth. “All right, let’s go.”
“On one condition.”
Her brow furrowed. He wanted her help; why would he set any conditions? “What is it?”
“You’ll let me help you find your friends.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Why?”
“Because they matter to you.”
What the—? If her brain had a fuse, it would have blown. “Why would you do that?”
He shrugged the question off and walked past her, continuing down the tunnel.
“Damn it.” She grabbed his arm. “Why would you risk yourself for my friends?”
“Because Danyael was my friend, and it’s obvious you mattered to him. He would have wanted me to do this.”
If her brain had a back-up fuse, that one would have blown too. “I owe Danyael nothing.”
Klah paused and looked over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
“Danyael is out of my life.”
“I know. Danyael is out of everyone’s lives.”
Klah’s quiet voice stabbed into her heart. She inhaled shakily and breathed out through the shock of pain so deep, so real, it was a miracle there wasn’t a physical wound to accompany it. “I don’t want to talk about Danyael.”
“Fine.” He kept walking.
She did too, for several moments, until the need to know became too much for her. “You said you knew Danyael.”
“Everyone knows Danyael. He’s an alpha empath; there are only three known alpha empaths alive today.”
Including Danyael, but for how much longer? She had to close her eyes against the mental image of Danyael arching against the steel cuffs around his wrists and ankles, screaming himself unconscious.
The image refused to go away. She gritted her teeth. “You know what I mean. You don’t just know about him. You know him.”
“I met him a few times at the Mutant Affairs Council. His psychic shields prevent most people from knowing him, from really seeing him, but for those who do, it’s hard to forget an encounter with Danyael.”
I know.
“I was twenty-one and in a bad way. Ran with the wrong crowd and ended up with a federal warrant.”
“You?” Quiet, steady, unassuming Klah?
Klah nodded. “When the Feds realized I was a mutant, they sent me over to the Mutant Affairs Council to be profiled, and when the council realized I was an empath, they called Danyael. He was eighteen. Just started college. When he walked into my cell, I wondered what the hell that kid could teach me that life hadn’t already knocked into or out of me.”
“What did he do?”
“He signed me out, and we went for dinner in one of the worst parts of New York City.”
“Obviously he didn’t have an expense account.”
“He was trying to make a point.”
“And that was?”
“As an empath, I could choose to be swayed by the emotions of others, or I could choose to sway them. That night, I saw him break up fights just by walking within twenty feet of them. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t even look. It was like this force field of serenity surrounded him and everything that came within his sphere of influence was smothered by peace.”
“Even if they didn’t want it.”
Klah acknowledged Zara’s cynical observation
with a nod. “He made his point, and then he stopped. The fighting started up again. I could feel the emotions of others like pressure against my skull, making my eyeballs swell in my head. I never realized before what it meant to be an empath. I just thought I had chronic migraines; I didn’t realize until that evening that I had absorbed other people’s emotions to the point where it was driving me crazy. Before I could scream or lash out, Danyael touched my arm and the madness went away. I could think again.” Klah’s lips curved into a faint smile. “The Mutant Affairs Council moved me up to their Boston location so that Danyael could work with me between his college classes. We hung out every day for about a month, just talking.”
“He didn’t work with you?”
“He did, but self-control isn’t something that can be taught. It can only be learned. I told him about my life. He told me about his.”
“Danyael talked about himself?”
Klah chuckled at the incredulity in her tone. “Not much, but enough for me to read between the lines and thank God that I was only an empath, and not an alpha empath. At the end of the month, he signed my release papers. He told the council I didn’t need to be monitored, and someone in the council made the federal warrant go away. I got my fresh start. I joined the Navy, and then the SEALs.”
“Did you ever see Danyael again?”
“Yes. I heard that he’d gone on to medical school, and then started work at the free clinic in Brooklyn. One day, when I was home on leave, I went to Brooklyn to see him.” Klah’s smile turned ironic. “He was glad to see me.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
“I wasn’t sure he was happy. He looked tired. Lonely.”
Zara’s heart ached. Tears stung her eyes. Yes, Danyael would be; it was how she remembered him too.
“He said he had everything he needed, but I think that’s only because he expected so little. But how do you tell him that? I couldn’t shake up his world.” Klah’s voice shook. “It was enough for him to have food and shelter, and the occasional visit from a friend. If he thought he was happy, who was I to tell him that he didn’t know how to want more? I know he loved his job, though. It was in his blood—helping others. It helped him keep his mind off himself. It kept his pain under control.”