She carefully opened the closet using only the tip of her gloved finger. A familiar scent hung in the air, and she tried to place it.
“You smell something?” she asked.
“Mildew.”
“Besides that.”
“Cheap-ass piña colada air freshener.”
“Besides that.” She stepped into the bathroom, home to the remaining four on the top five list for prints: faucet handle, shower handle, toilet flusher, and toilet seat, a high-probability area for male prints.
The bathroom had one of those one-piece shower stalls. This one had rust stains near the drain and was surrounded by chipping caulk where it didn’t quite meet the wall. Nothing had been left behind on the shelf, not even a microscopic bar of soap for the next Happy Trails guest.
Elizabeth stepped back into the sink area and glanced around. On the linoleum floor, she noticed a row of copper-colored droplets. She crouched down for a closer look. Then she stood and examined the sink again, where she spotted a copper-colored smear on the faucet handle.
A memory hit her, and she was inside a cramped apartment in Fairfax, Virginia, two years after her father died, during what her mother called “the lean years.” She could see her mother primping in front of the bathroom mirror, getting ready for a date as Elizabeth looked on, brimming with resentment.
Why do you have to wear all that pancake stuff?
Her mother had bristled. You think you’re always gonna look like that, Miss Priss? Just wait till you hit forty.
Those had been the days before Richard. Before Glenn. The days of coupons, and ramen noodles, and home dye jobs in the bathroom sink. Her mother’s color had been Clairol Light Ash Blonde, and it smelled faintly of ammonia—just like this motel room.
Elizabeth’s stomach suddenly felt squishy. She crouched down and studied the droplets, along with the strand of long hair caught against the baseboard.
Her throat went dry.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked up at Torres. “I can’t believe I missed it. We all did.”
“Missed what?”
She stood up and glanced around, panicking. How had she, of all people, been so blind? How many clues, how many possible leads, had she overlooked?
“The mystery accomplice,” she said. “The driver. The one who bought the Chevy and murdered the college student and picked up Rasheed in Del Rio. The one who’s been here, laying all the groundwork for all this.”
“What about him?”
“I think it’s a woman.”
Chapter Seventeen
Derek left another message for Cole as he sped out toward the firing range. If anyone could help him out right now, it was the team’s best sharpshooter. But he wasn’t picking up. Odds were, he was already on a plane.
In another shit development, Derek’s entire team had been called back early. They’d been ordered to report for duty at 0800 Thursday, less than two days away. They were going OCONUS—out of the continental United States—and although the CO hadn’t given details, Derek knew this was no training mission. If everyone’s leave was being cut short, it meant something bad was heating up in some terrorist haven.
The timing sucked. Something was already heating up here in Houston, one of the country’s largest cities, which also happened to be home to damn near every member of Derek’s family. The body count was rising, and Derek was a thousand-percent certain the Houston sleeper cell was gearing up for something big. And while Elizabeth seemed confident that her task force could handle it, Derek wasn’t so optimistic.
The feds had world-class investigative resources—he’d give them that—but the problem was their tactics in the field, where it mattered most. Even if they managed to make a few arrests, Derek had no confidence whatsoever that they’d conduct the kind of intensive interrogation needed to uncover a plot in time to put a stop to it. The way things had been going lately in Washington, some pencil pusher would probably make sure anyone the task force did arrest had a goddamn lawyer at his side before they asked him a single question. So unless the task force managed to bag up every last member of the terror cell or figure out their selected target, then the attack was on.
And from what Derek could tell, the feds didn’t have a clue what that target was. Which was a slight problem. A little gap that needed to be filled. Right along with the names and locations of the four known tangos, who might only make up a small portion of this cell.
As for reporting back to base in forty-two hours, Derek wasn’t happy about it.
The other reason he wasn’t happy was Elizabeth. His sudden departure would only prove what she’d been saying earlier—that he was never here, that he was always jetting off on some training mission or some top-secret op.
And she was right about that. He was gone a lot. But he saw no reason why that meant he couldn’t see her tonight. If anything, his abbreviated time made spending tonight with her even more urgent.
He thought of all those months he’d spent away from her. He’d wanted her for so damn long that after she’d blown him off last winter—and she’d hate this—he’d made getting her to sleep with him a personal conquest. He’d been determined, and his determination had gotten him what he wanted.
Only it wasn’t what he wanted now. Not completely. Not after last night.
He pictured her pushing him onto his back and taking control. He pictured the look on her face as she let go of all those tightly held inhibitions. She’d blown away his wildest fantasies. It was amazing. But it was a problem, too, because now instead of some fantasy, he had the real thing to think about, and he couldn’t do what she claimed she wanted, which was leave her alone.
Just forget it. Yeah, right. He wasn’t forgetting anything. And as soon as this next op ended, he was hauling his ass straight back to Texas. Or maybe he’d even fly. He’d do whatever he needed to do to see her again.
But that was getting into relationship territory, which she’d said she didn’t want, at least not with him. She’d made that clear. He wasn’t relationship material, probably because he wore greasepaint and boots to work and jumped out of planes for a living. Maybe she wanted a relationship with some doctor or lawyer or some suit from her office. Someone who was around consistently and didn’t go wheels-up at a moment’s notice. Maybe someone like Jimmy Torres or even Gordon.
Would she sleep with Gordon Moore? He had no idea, but just the thought was enough to make him crazy. The idea of her sleeping with anyone while he was gone made him completely batshit.
But did he really want a long-distance relationship? He honestly didn’t know. He knew he wanted Elizabeth alone tonight, so much it was burning a hole in his gut. Seeing her again was his objective, and he planned to clear any obstacle she tried to throw in his path.
Derek slammed on the brakes as he nearly flew past the turnoff to the firing range. He hooked a sharp turn onto the gravel road as his phone rattled in the cup holder. It was Cole.
“You get the callback?” Derek asked without preamble.
“I’m headed out tomorrow.”
“Driving?”
“Flying,” Cole said.
“Listen, any chance you’re at the range right now? I just pulled in.”
“I’m at my sister’s place. Why?”
Derek turned into the parking lot and found a space. The crowd was sparse, with it being a Monday—just some guys who looked like off-duty cops, maybe getting in a few mags before the swing shift.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Derek said. “If I needed to get my hands on a Krinkov, a Super-Shorty twelve-gauge, and an AAC Honey Badger, who would I talk to?”
Silence on the other end.
“That’s some serious hardware,” Cole finally said. “A Honey Badger fully automatic?”
“Yeah. You know anyone around here?”
“I know a few guys, but you’d be looking at some coin. That’s quite a list.”
“I don’t want to buy it. I need to know who might have sold
it recently.”
“How recently?”
“Last few weeks,” Derek said. “I have a feeling the buyer came into a nice payday.”
Cole got quiet. Then he asked, “Is this about the tango who took a dive off that roof?” There was a touch of jealousy in his voice, and Derek knew that if there was something going down, Cole wanted to be a part of it.
“I need the name of someone local,” Derek said, answering the question indirectly.
“Shit, I don’t like the sound of that, but lemme ask around, see what I can get.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Hey, you want to come out tonight? Grab some beers before we head back?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got plans.”
“Yeah, I bet you do.” Cole sounded like he was smiling now. “Be sure to tell her hi for me.”
Another call came in as Derek hung up. The Delphi Center.
“Hey there.”
“Derek, it’s Mia Voss.”
“I figured.”
“I completed those tests on your boots,” she said, and something in her voice set off a warning bell.
“Yeah, I was going to swing by there tomorrow on my way back through.”
“This won’t wait till tomorrow,” she told him. “I’m coming to you.”
* * *
“Our facial-recognition software is cutting-edge,” Elizabeth said. “It’s good against disguises, even plastic surgery. But the best countermeasure out there is a burka.”
Gordon watched her skeptically from across the conference table. He and everyone else in the room clearly weren’t sold on her female accomplice theory.
“All this is based on a smell?” Gordon asked.
“It was prompted by that, yes, and then an eighteen-inch-long hair recovered from the motel room,” she said. “I believe we should seriously consider the idea that the elusive accomplice we’ve been searching for could be female. I mean, why shouldn’t it be a woman?”
“How about a couple thousand years of tradition?” Torres said. “How about strict religious beliefs? Their whole motive for this thing is their anti-Western ideology.”
“Their strict religious beliefs didn’t keep them away from the Pussycat three nights running,” Lauren countered. “Looks to me like they’re willing to bend the rules when it suits them.”
“Let’s get back to the facts,” Gordon said. “Did anyone at the motel actually see a woman coming or going from this room we’re looking at?”
“Not that we’ve been able to locate,” Elizabeth said. “But one of the maids told us she heard what she thought was a female voice coming from the room one morning when she walked by.”
“Maybe they had one of the Pussycats over,” Torres said.
Elizabeth glanced around, frustrated. “Let’s just assume for a minute that Tango Two is a woman. It makes their plot so much easier, especially in terms of facial-recognition software.” She focused her attention on Gordon. “The vast majority of the faceprints in the terrorist database are male. If she had a decent passport, a good forgery, she could have walked right through immigration posing as a British national or a Canadian or someone from any of our other non-visa countries. We don’t have her prints or her photo on file, so how would we know?”
“It would be in keeping with their MO,” Lauren said, throwing her a lifeline. “We know two of these guys posed as Latin American businessmen so they could get over here and then sneak through a border tunnel. With the right passport in hand, a woman wouldn’t even have to sneak.”
“What do we know about these guys’ wives and sisters?” Torres asked Gordon.
He was leaning back in his chair, contemplating the whiteboard where investigators had taped photos and biographical info about the two known terrorists. The two unknowns—the driver of the Chevy Cavalier and now the passenger from the narco sub—had no pictures on the board yet, only big red question marks.
“Neither of them is married,” Gordon said. “As for sisters, we’re running that down now. What we do know is that Rasheed and Ameen lived in London at the same time and attended the same mosque.”
“So lots of connection points, and maybe that extends to others in the family,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, but isn’t the whole family on a watch list?” Torres asked.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, “but even if they are, what do we really know about the women? That’s my point. We don’t have their images or prints on file. And while we’ve been busy combing the globe looking for the men, one of the women in either of these families could have slipped into this country months or even years ago to start laying the groundwork for an attack.”
The door opened, and Potter entered the room, juggling an armload of files.
“Hi.” He glanced around, then dumped the folders at an empty place at the table. “Updates on the families.” He opened a file. “Neither Ameen nor Rasheed is married, which we already knew. As for sisters, between Ameen and Rasheed, there are four. Add the sisters-in-law, and we’re up to eight.” He glanced around the room. “Ameen’s brother has three wives, and Rasheed’s brother Ahmed had a wife.”
“The brother who was killed in the drone strike?” Elizabeth asked. “Maybe it’s the widow.”
“Doubtful,” Potter said. “She’s actually in the system, because she attended college in England, which was where they met. The Brits have a jacket on her from when she applied for a student visa.”
“What about pictures?” Gordon asked.
“Those are much harder to come by,” Potter said. “We have Rasheed’s sister-in-law, like I mentioned. But other than that . . .” He thumbed through the papers. “It’s thin. We have a couple of surveillance pictures from public venues. Of course, the women are covered. The only shots we have that show any facial details are from years ago.” He pulled a picture from one of the files. “Here’s Rasheed with his family at a soccer match. He’s nineteen in this picture, and the only reason it was taken was that his father is standing next to the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., which attracted the Agency’s attention, so they caught the shot.” Potter stepped over and pinned the photo to the board with a magnet.
“We should focus on Rasheed’s family,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe losing a brother to a drone strike caused one of the sisters to shirk gender traditions and join the jihad.”
“If her parents would allow it,” Potter said. “These two families are very conservative.”
Elizabeth glanced at Potter’s mountain of files, then at Gordon. He and Torres still looked doubtful, which was probably a good indicator of how the rest of the team would react when they heard this theory.
“We need to confirm this one way or another,” Torres said, “so we don’t waste everyone’s time. What do the CSIs have from the submarine?”
“Still working on it,” Gordon said. “But we have a new lead on who might have been the passenger in the submarine, assuming he’s the one who murdered the ship channel worker, Palicek. The victim’s Avalanche was discovered in a vacant lot a few miles from the scene where the body was dumped. Someone had doused the front seat with gasoline and set it on fire.”
“Probably to destroy prints,” Lauren said. “Which makes me think they know we have them on file. Any chance we can get anything useful?”
“From the truck, it doesn’t look good,” Gordon said. “But police recovered a discarded gas can not far from the vehicle, and the prints on that might give us our best lead yet about who killed Palicek.”
“What about evidence from the motel?” Torres asked.
“We’re waiting on DNA from the motel room and also the Chevy Cavalier,” Gordon said. “Preliminary tests can tell us whether we’re dealing with any female subjects, but that may not mean anything. Just because a woman was in the motel room at some point or in the car—even if her DNA’s all over the steering wheel—that doesn’t mean she’s a terrorist. It’s not like we have DNA on file to compare it to, and it could have been left by someo
ne not involved.”
“What about familial DNA?” Elizabeth suggested. “I’ve seen it used to solve cases before. We have Rasheed’s from the autopsy. We can find out if the DNA at any of these crime scenes is from the same family line. And if so, if there’s a Y chromosome.”
Gordon nodded. “Good idea, but that technique works best with people who share the same mother. As Potter pointed out, a lot of the men in these families have multiple wives. How many wives does Rasheed’s father have?”
Potter shuffled through one of his folders. “That would be . . . three. Rasheed’s mother was the first, which is sort of an honor position.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Gimme a break.”
“We should talk to the lab,” Potter said. “See what they can come up with comparing the profiles.”
Elizabeth glanced at the clock. “That could take days or weeks. What about now? We need to talk to that motel clerk.”
“Agreed,” Torres said. “If she checked them in or even saw them coming or going, she probably noticed whether they had a woman with them.”
“We sent a pair of agents over to her home earlier, but she wasn’t there,” Gordon said.
“Did they stay?” Elizabeth asked, thinking about Palicek and the murdered college student and the stripper who was now in hiding. “If she saw anything at all, she’s going to need protection.”
The door opened again, and Gordon’s assistant ducked in to give him a message. Gordon read it and shot a look at Elizabeth.
“Send them in,” he told the assistant.
A moment later, a beautiful young woman stepped into the conference room, followed closely by Derek.
Chapter Eighteen
Elizabeth’s first thought was that this was Lexi, the dancer from the Pussycat, but Derek introduced her as Dr. Mia Voss from the Delphi Center crime lab. Mia was dressed casually in jeans and sandals. She declined Gordon’s offer of a chair, preferring to stand beside the whiteboard.
“I dropped by Delphi a few days ago,” Derek said, also standing. “I asked Dr. Voss here to run some tests for me, see if we could learn something about what our friends in Asadabad were up to when we raided their compound.”
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