Jennifer Rardin - Jaz Parks Book 3 - Biting The Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

Cassandra shook her head. “We aren’t suggesting you donate any more blood to Vayl. We don’t think he’d take it if you offered, now that he’s fixated on Zarsa. We think you should talk to Asha.”

  I slumped so far down the couch my butt hit the edge of the cushion. Oh yeah, this was going to be a blast. Because I was sure whatever exchange they were suggesting involved some major vulnerability on my side. And, frankly, if I had to crack open the shell I’d begun to build the moment I heard about my dad, I would never make it through this mission.

  A clatter at the door that led into the apartment from the garage signaled the return of Dave and his crew. I straightened. Pulled myself together. No way in hell would I let Amazon Grace see me looking pitiful and forlorn. She’d get off on it way too much.

  They joined us in the living room. Natchez dropped next to Bergman on the love seat. Grace settled by the fireplace with Cam. Dave sat on the couch with Cassandra and me. Jet and Cole took a detour into the kitchen and came out minutes later with drinks for everyone.

  “How did it go?” Cassandra asked Dave.

  “Pretty well,” he replied. “We’ve got the location scouted and photographed so we can make a mock-up on the second floor and do some run-throughs with Jaz and Vayl later tonight.” I looked around the room, expecting satisfied nods. But they all looked pretty grim and stoic to me.

  “What happened?” I demanded, shelving my own bad news until I heard theirs.

  “We ran into some trouble,” Dave said. “We’d probably be in jail right now if not for some quick talking on Cole’s part.”

  Now the nods came, along with several toasts. Cole accepted them with his usual good-humored grin.

  I looked at my recruit and raised my eyebrows. “Well?”

  He sauntered over to Cam, held his hand out, received a toothpick and a salute before taking his place center stage. “We’d finished the reconnaissance and were headed back when the police stopped us and herded us into this huge square. They made us join a group of maybe thirty men. I asked an older guy if he knew why we were there, and he told me we were all suspected of inciting a riot that had happened earlier that evening.”

  “I think we were there,” I said through lips that had gone numb. “Two women were hung, right?”

  Cole nodded in surprise. “That’s what he said.”

  “I thought the riot started when the older woman’s chador came off.”

  “According to the old man, it was a combination of the picture pinned to her dress and what the people in the crowd were shouting.”

  “Tell me.”

  Cole scratched his beard as he gnawed at the toothpick, both sure signs of distress. “The picture was of her daughter, who’d been buried to the waist by her uncle and then stoned to death by him and some other male family members for trying to divorce her husband.”

  Though Dave’s crew had already heard the story, they still looked sick. As new partakers of this information, Bergman, Cassandra, and I kept looking at each other, not knowing how to react. We had no common ground from which to pull a story that started, “Oh yeah, I had a crazy uncle once who . . . ” Nope. The worst thing my uncle Barney ever did was get so drunk at my cousin Amelia’s wedding he thought he could limbo with the young guys. He threw his back out and missed work for a week.

  I tried to comprehend the mind-set that would make the leap from divorce to a death sentence. No dice. My mind, already overloaded, attempted to step out. I felt as if I was watching our impromptu meeting from somewhere near the ceiling. “And the crowd?” I heard myself ask. “What were they yelling?”

  “I guess the mother became a dissident after that,” Cole said softly. “They were shouting things like ‘Women Deserve Life,’ and ‘Laws for Women,’ which drove the entertainment seekers crazy. I guess they tore up the bodies pretty badly.”

  “Why . . . ” The word didn’t come out right, sounded more like a wail. I coughed. Tried again. “What crime were they convicted of?”

  Cole shoved his fingers through his mass of hair. Right now I thought its wild tangles perfectly reflected all our feelings. He said, “The old man told me that she and the younger woman had been executed for fomenting rebellion against the government.”

  So. The ladies hadn’t murdered their kids after all.

  My mind took me back to that moment at the plaza and drew me a parallel. Big stage. Expectant crowd. A show that made you feel you’d stepped into hell on earth. And in actual hell, the Magistrate putting on his own show. Acting out his own murder scene. Staging my spectacular rescue.

  On earth the mahghul had descended like a flock of evil mutant pigeons and fed on the hate, fury, and fear of every single person in that crowd.

  The Magistrate was no different. No better than a parasite, he wanted to feed on something that he could only get to while I was in ephemeral mode and rocketing toward Raoul. But what? I had a feeling there was only one way to find out.

  But now was not the time. Cole had continued his story, explaining how he’d sweet-talked the old man into faking a heart attack. The resulting diversion allowed them to slip away.

  Dave slapped his hands on his thighs. Guy-speak for, “So let’s get on with the stuff we came to do, shall we?” “Cam, have you still got the DVD?”

  He nodded. “It’s in my pack.”

  “Okay, then, let’s head upstairs and tape off a mock-up of the hotel. If we work quickly enough we can get a couple of run-throughs done before daylight.” He looked at me, playing his part to the hilt. “You guys are gonna have time to do this tonight, right?”

  “Sure,” I said enthusiastically. As if I had any idea where Vayl might be at the moment. Or if he’d even be in the mood to pretend we were still working with the Spec Ops folks after the blowup between us.

  They turned to go.

  “Wait,” I said. They all looked at me. Great. The last thing I wanted was an audience. “Dave, can we talk a second? About family stuff?”

  “O-kay.” His tone told me I’d better have a damn good reason for delaying him when he had important work ahead. I led him into the kitchen. Once we were facing each other across the island I dove in.

  “Dad’s had an accident. Shelby said a woman hit him while he was riding his cycle and he’s pretty torn up. He’s in intensive care.”

  I stood there a full thirty seconds. Waiting for something. Anything. But he didn’t react at all. Except to scratch his neck until I wondered if he was going to make it bleed. Finally he said, “Okay. Let me know if you hear anything else.” And he walked out.

  “Wow, that went so well,” I murmured. “I wish I had more bad news for him. Maybe I should call home. See if his storage unit’s burned up. Or if somebody’s stolen his identity.” I squashed the urge to chase after him, shake him until his teeth cracked together, and yell, “What the hell is wrong with you!” He was a grown man with his own well-developed ways of coping. And as the Queen of Denial, it was hardly my place to tell him they weren’t going to help him sleep any better at night.

  I entered the living room in time to see Dave clap Cole on the shoulder. “Good work tonight,” he said. “You want to join us?” He jerked his head toward the door at the end of the hallway, which stood open and led to the upstairs apartment.

  “Sorry, Dave, I already have plans for him,” I said.

  Cole polished his nails on his shirt. “Obviously I’m going to have to start charging more for my services.”

  Both men laughed and Dave gave him another slap on the back, which made Cole cough. I waited until I could hear Dave’s footsteps on the floor above us before I said, “Cole, I need you to come with me.” I headed for the front door.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as he trailed after me.

  I looked over my shoulder, letting him see the steel in my eyes. “Hunting.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cole and I perched on the roof of Anvari’s, peering over its edge at the dimly lit street below. The thin sliver of moon helped not
at all as we searched for the tall, gaunt form of Asha Vasta. Or, better yet, the purposeful stride set off by the tiger-carved cane that was unmistakably Vayl. As I explained to Cole, Asha was my quarry, Vayl his.

  “You want me to follow the boss?” he’d asked, as if I’d just told him to bait a grizzly with a rib eye while doing an Irish jig through the clover.

  “He can feel me,” I explained. “And I’ve got to keep tabs on him. The second he makes contact with Zarsa again I need to know.” He shook his head. “Oh, come on, Cole. You know if he turns her it’s going to be a disaster for everybody involved, especially her kids.”

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” he assured me. “I just can’t believe you have the nerve to ask without offering something in return.”

  I bit my lip as I recognized the look on his face. This was hardball Cole, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was on his mind. But I had no other choice. “What do you want?”

  “A date. With you.” He glared at me, like I was already trying to weasel out of it. “A real one, where you wear a dress and I ogle your butt when you’re not looking.”

  I sighed. “Cole —”

  He took my hand. “I know you have major reservations about us. And Vayl’s making you crazy. Whatever. Just give me this.” His grin turned evil. “Or I won’t play.”

  Well, shit in a stovepipe, Jaz. Now you’re really going to be in a bind. But what choice do you have?

  “Okay.” We shook on it. I called him a blackmailer. He told me my ass belonged in a picture frame in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And we decided to look somewhere else for our prey.

  Since Vayl was my highest priority, I took Cole back to the Oasis. From there we followed his trail for miles, along wide, well-lit boulevards lined with cypress trees and narrow brick-paved streets where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. We strode past billboards advertising Chanel No. 5 and hand-painted signs of the Statue of Liberty with a skull where her face should be. Our trail took us past high-rises and ruins, soccer stadiums and mosques. The juxtaposition of modern against ancient was so extreme it actually lessened my surprise that the country found it so difficult to plot a middle course toward any goal. Finally we reached the edge of the city, where a dilapidated auction barn packed mostly with sheep, goats, and donkeys sprawled over an area roughly the size of a city block.

  We crouched beside the fence of an outdoor pen in which three groups of five or six camels each stood or laid according to their preferences. “Oh my God!” breathed Cole. “This is our chance!”

  “What are you talking about?” I whispered as I tried to figure out what Vayl would want with a sheep or goat.

  Sacrifice,

  my mind whispered. I told it to shut the hell up. Zarsa probably just needed to ride a donkey around the house three or four times as part of some symbolic journey to her new life.

  Yeah. Sure

  .

  “You’ve heard of cow tipping?” asked Cole.

  “I’m from the Midwest,” I answered. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I’m thinking we put a Middle Eastern twist on it and do some camel tipping tonight!”

  “Cole, I hate to burst your bubble, but —” He was already inside the pen. “Cole!” I hissed. “Get back here!”

  He rushed over. “You got any advice for me?”

  I looked into his sparkling eyes and thought,

  Aw, screw it. He wants to believe, let him

  . “They’re supposed to be asleep,” I told him. “You see any sleeping camels out there?”

  He took a good, hard look. “Yeah.” He nodded excitedly. “A couple. You gonna come help me?”

  “No. I’ll stay out here and keep watch. Now, you just tiptoe up to one of those sleeping camels, nice and quiet so you don’t wake him, and give him a hard shove on the shoulder. Basically what happens is he’ll be so startled when he wakes up he’ll fall right over on his side. Cool, huh?”

  “Awesome!”

  “Now, don’t let him kick you, because he’ll for sure kill you.”

  “Do I look that stupid?”

  I stared at him until his feet started to shuffle. “Okay, no.”

  “Good answer. Now, come on, woman. Some support for the big, brave man going off to have the adventure of his life!”

  I shot my fist into the air. “Go for it!”

  Cole leaned in. “I was thinking more along the lines of a long, juicy kiss.”

  “Before our first date? What kind of girl do you think I am?” We shared a grin, remembering our first meeting and the fact that it had ended with a spectacular lip-lock. One of those spur-of-the-moment things neither of us would have attempted in any other situation.

  I watched Cole kick it into stealth mode like an off-duty ninja and had to stifle a giggle. The camels observed him approach with the bored attention of animals who’re too damn tired to give a crap. Only the ones lying down were asleep, but Cole decided a big female standing in the center of the pen was enjoying forty winks. He snuck right up to her, planted his hands on her broad side, and gave her a huge shove.

  She swung her head around, looked him right in the eye, and spat in his face.

  “Oh, very funny,” he said when he got back to the fence and found me laughing so hard I kept snorting every time I stopped to breathe.

  “You have a brand-new stench about you,” I noted, my face beginning to ache from the size of my smile. “What do you call it?”

  Though by now his face was clean, he wiped his sleeve across it again. Then he wrinkled his nose. “How about Gagfest?”

  “Yeah, I think that describes it pretty well. When we find Vayl, I suggest you stay way behind him.”

  “Can we just get out of here?”

  “Okay. But I’ll never forget the look on your face. Not as long as I live.”

  “Me! What about her?”

  “You mean the camel?”

  He nodded. “Seriously. I don’t think she even knew she was going to hawk a loogie until it crossed her lips. Did you see her blinking at me with those enormous eyelashes of hers? I’m telling you. She was as surprised as I was.”

  I couldn’t help it. Despite the absolute gravity on his face, I let out a hoot of laughter. Within moments Cole had joined me and we stood there, in the middle of one of the most dangerous countries we’d ever entered, tee-heeing like a couple of best girlfriends.

  And that was all it took. “Cole, I’ve got it!”

  Total bewilderment. “You do?”

  “It was what you just said. About the camel? About her not being aware of her own actions? I’ll bet that’s the same deal with the mole! Think about it. Dave can’t imagine who’d betray him. And we haven’t been able to pick anyone out, either. Because the mole

  himself

  isn’t aware.”

  Cole considered my idea. “It makes a lot more sense from a Spec Ops standpoint too,” he finally said, warming up to my theory. “I mean, you might get some treasonous types in the general military population, but once you get into the elite groups, I don’t see it happening. Especially not in this case.”

  “So let’s work this out,” I said as we began tracing Vayl’s path back toward town. “The Wizard is a necromancer. How does he get control of one of Dave’s men?”

  “Well, I guess he kills one, does his mumbo jumbo, and sends him back to the unit.”

  “That’s some amazing power,” I replied. “Every one of them seems pretty vital. I can’t imagine one of them being dead. Except —” The words froze in my throat. I stopped walking. Cole got ahead of me, realized I wasn’t beside him, and came back to stand in front of me. He peered down into my face.

  “Jaz? Are you sick?”

  I nodded.

  Actually, yeah, I’m feeling pretty queasy right about now

  . “David’s dead. Or undead. Or, I don’t know, something other than alive,” I whispered. “He told me it happened on a training run. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe that’s just wha
t the Wizard wants him to remember. He sure doesn’t get very choked up about it when he tells the story.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “That he’s working for Raoul. Only . . . ” I thought back to the conversation we’d had after his first medic had been killed. “He already knew all the details about my visit upstairs. So the Wizard could’ve implanted a false sense of purpose too.” No, wait a minute. The first time Raoul and I had met face-to-face in his high-roller suite in Vegas, I’d asked him if David had come to the same place. But he hadn’t given me a straight answer. He’d said, “In a way.”

  Oh man, oh man, oh man. Did something go wrong while Dave’s soul was winging across outer space? Did Raoul have him and somehow . . . I don’t know, lose his grip to the stronger, meaner pull of the Wizard? How does that work anyway? Or — could it really be that Dave was given a choice in the matter and he preferred the Wizard’s work? No. Impossible. There must be some logical explanation.

  Honest to God, if I didn’t have to wear a damn hijab I’d have pulled my hair out. I couldn’t imagine a worse possible scenario. Because if I was right. If my brother was the victim of the Wizard — I leaned over, put my hands on my knees as I felt the bile begin to rise — that meant as soon as the son of a bitch was done with him, David would die for good.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ask any warden of any prison facility in the world. There’s something about isolation. You think you’re a pretty tough cookie. You think you can take being cut off. Having no one to share your thoughts with. No one to turn to. Until you find yourself curled up in the corner, crying like a baby. I’d gotten close to that once. Losing a fiancé. A sister-in-law. A crew of close, personal friends and the steady support and affection of a twin. Yeah, I had a damn good idea how it felt to be alone. It’ll make you crazy, that’s what.

  To say I didn’t relish the thought of facing that prospect ever again in my life was a massive understatement. Along the lines of mentioning that Pamela Anderson’s had some work done. Or that TV news agencies occasionally slant their stories to interest viewers. But as Cole and I trudged toward an ancient temple where my stunned brain could no longer deny that Vayl had probably stopped to do a number on the animal he’d taken from the auction yard, I realized I might just have to walk down that long, empty road again.