Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  So if Tom didn’t like that, well, Deck wished him luck with the new company and this mission, but . . .

  Tom had told him to chill out and sit back down.

  “He asked me to look up a guy named Dimitri Ghaffari,” Decker told Nash now. “See if he and his American partner are good candidates for recruitment to Tom’s team. We don’t have a name for the partner—in fact that could be something Ghaffari made up to build his reputation. It rings of urban legend: Ghaffari and his rich American backer.

  “Tom doesn’t know much about him, but Ghaffari’s name has come up often enough over the past few years. Apparently he did import/export out of a home base in Kazabek. Business has tanked since the K-stani government deteriorated.”

  The warlords who were running most of the country these days wanted to keep the West out, and people like Ghaffari had made a living bringing it in.

  Ghaffari could well be looking for work, and his loyalties no doubt would be on the side of those who supported capitalism.

  “He might’ve been killed in the quake,” Nash pointed out.

  “Yeah.”

  “Everyone we know in Kazabek might’ve been killed in the quake.”

  “Yeah.” That was a sobering thought.

  “This assignment already blows,” Nash said.

  “Yeah,” Decker agreed. But if that laptop was real, and there was even the slimmest chance that it was somewhere in the rubble, with even just the smallest portion of its hard drive intact . . .

  “You have any nickels on you?” Nash asked. “We’re flying in to Ikrimah, and, well, I usually have enough time to pick up a few rolls of nickels from the bank.”

  Decker dug through his pockets. He had only a few mixed in with the pennies and dimes. He gave them to Nash. “Maybe the bookstore has an extra roll.”

  “Ah.” Nash managed to smile. “Good idea.” He looked over at Tess again, but then caught Decker watching him. “I honest to God didn’t know about . . .” He shook his head.

  “There was nothing to know,” Decker said, and went to help Tess find a book to read on the flight.

  KAZABEK, KAZBEKISTAN

  The first aftershock had caught her unprepared. Sophia had forgotten how intense it could be, much like another earthquake itself.

  After escaping Padsha Bashir’s palace, she’d found her way to the old Hotel Français, near City Center, where she had lived with her parents when she was barely ten years old, an entire lifetime ago. The hotel had been crumbling and in ill-repair even then, and she’d heard two months back—before she’d foolishly accepted Bashir’s invitation to that ill-fated luncheon where Dimitri had been served his final meal—that the Français had shut its doors. The old wreck had been sold and was scheduled to be either restored or demolished in the very near future.

  But Sophia had lived in Kazabek for long enough to know that the very near future could be any time between the end of the year and the end of the decade. It wasn’t likely to be sooner, because, in K-stan, changes of that magnitude took time.

  And sure enough, the building was still standing. Part of the roof had decayed, but as she made a slow circuit of the rambling place, she could see that the walls weren’t cracked—at least no more than they had been before.

  The basement door was locked, but locks had never been a challenge for her. She opened it without doing any damage. No one would know she’d gone inside.

  The entire hotel was empty, all of the furnishings and wall hangings missing, and all the towels and the maids’ uniforms that had lined the little corridor by the laundry room gone.

  On the first floor, outside what had once been a restaurant, she found the ladies’ washroom. Comprised of two small rooms, one a former sitting area, now empty, the other filled with sinks and stalls, it had a door that locked, a cool tile floor, and most important, windows way up high on the interior wall, looking out over the center courtyard. If she burned a candle in there at night, the light wouldn’t be seen from the street.

  If she had a candle.

  The water, amazingly, still worked. It came, with a gush of rust and slime, from the faucet of one of a row of sinks that lined one mirrored wall.

  Sophia let it go until it ran clear and then she drank. She washed using the soap still in the glass globes—apparently not everything had been taken from the hotel. The soap was thick and congealing from age and evaporation, but she used it to wash not just her torn and bleeding feet and the most recent cuts on her arm where Bashir had reminded her of the sharpness of his sword, but all of her. Everywhere he or one of his horrible friends ever touched.

  She even washed her hair, wanting to be rid of the perfumed scent of the palace.

  She had virtually nothing but the nearly transparent white gown and the sheet—she washed those, too—that she’d wrapped herself in after killing Bashir. No real clothes, no passport, no papers, no money, no food. No friends who would be willing to help her.

  Because Bashir’s nephews would seek revenge. The entire city would be searching for her, eager for the reward. It would be a big reward—the kind that could turn her friends into her worst enemies. With her blond hair, she had to be careful. She’d be easy for anyone to spot.

  After checking that the door was locked, she wrapped herself in that wet sheet and lay down on the tile floor, exhausted and needing to sleep.

  And, for the first time in months, able to sleep.

  She may have had nothing, but she had water and she had her freedom.

  Mere hours ago she’d been little more than a prisoner, a slave to a man she despised. Compared to that, she was now far richer than her wildest dreams.

  WORLD AIRLINES FLIGHT 576, SAN DIEGO TO HONG KONG

  Tess looked up from her book to see the flight attendant standing in the aisle of the plane with a tray of champagne flutes.

  The only seats available at such short notice on this intercontinental flight had been in first class. What a shame.

  Tess smiled and shook her head—no thanks—and, ignoring the murmur of voices around her, returned her attention to her book.

  It was a somewhat anemic spy thriller that had been written during the Cold War. The hero was a James Bond type who reminded her a little of Jimmy Nash. He was tall, handsome, and extremely skilled, clever with a dry wit. But like most fictional secret agents, this character never, ever whined and complained to his support staff.

  It was remarkable how often authors left out those particular moments—the scenes where the superagent comes striding into the office, scowling at everyone and demanding to be told why no one had let him know before he went to Turkey that his credit card had expired last week.

  Yeah, Tess would’ve liked to read the scene where Miss Moneypenny pulls the e-memo titled “See Me NOW About Your Credit Card’s Impending Expiration” from James’s email box, prints it out, and hands it to him, then tartly asks him what more he would like her to do to keep him informed, especially when he’s too busy wining and dining some babe in a black leather catsuit to read his blasted email.

  She looked up as Nash returned from the bathroom and, with a smile, slipped past her into the window seat. The difference between no Nash and Nash was like night and day, and she had to force her gaze back to the open pages of her book. Reading with him sitting beside her was a challenge. The man had an enormous presence.

  He could a fill an entire room—let alone the small first-class cabin of a commercial airliner—with just a smile.

  It was similar to the way he’d filled the car that night, as he’d driven her home.

  She’d left her own car in the parking lot at the Gentlemen’s Den, and wouldn’t be able to pick it up until morning. That bar fight Decker and Nash had started had escalated, and the entire street was blocked with police and emergency vehicles.

  The helicopter that scooped them from the roof of the strip club had brought them to Agency headquarters, where Nash had quickly claimed the keys to the last of the loaner cars in the lot.
/>   “Come on, I’ll give you a lift,” he’d told her.

  But Tess had hesitated before climbing in. “Don’t you have, like, other things to do?” she’d asked. “Debriefings . . . ?” Didn’t Decker need him?

  But Nash had smiled his best smile. And the combination of that smile plus the white tank-style undershirt—she still had on his dress shirt—that hugged his chest and showed off his muscular shoulders and arms actually made her heart skip a beat. Her response to him had been both tacky and clichéd, but true.

  So she’d gotten into the car. Accepted the ride. With her eyes wide open.

  Tess couldn’t remember what they’d talked about on the way to her apartment. Nash was good at keeping a conversation going, though, at keeping it light and easy.

  There had actually been a parking space open in front of her building. Was it possible he’d arranged that, too? Or maybe he was just born lucky. He’d parallel parked the way he did everything—with confidence and skill.

  “I’ll walk you up.” He didn’t ask, he told her. Tess looked at him, and he smiled very slightly. “That way you can give me back my shirt.”

  She didn’t want or need any excuse to let him come up.

  But she just smiled back at him as they got out of the car and went up the steps, as she unlocked her apartment door and led him inside.

  “Can I get you something besides your shirt?” she asked, unfastening the buttons as she went into the kitchen, starting at the bottom and working her way up. “Beer, soda . . . ?” Condom?

  Was she really going to do this?

  “A beer would be great.” Nash, tall, dark, and almost unbelievably gorgeous, followed her.

  Yes, she was.

  The apartment’s last tenants had redone the kitchen with a cow motif gone mad, and he clashed with the kitschy wallpaper and stenciled cabinets. It was like seeing James Bond in bed with the cast from Oklahoma!

  “Cute,” he said as he looked around him.

  “Yeah, right,” she said, reaching into the refrigerator for two bottles of beer. “Try living with it.” She twisted off the tops. “I eat out a lot.”

  Not quite the truth, unless out could be defined as the takeout she ate at her desk at work, eyes on her computer screen.

  Still, as far as comparisons went, she was closer to Bond than Aunt Eller. And after she handed him one of the beers, she proved it.

  Because she also handed him his shirt, taking him completely by surprise for the second time that night.

  Her audacity made her own pulse race, but really, they both knew damn well why he’d come upstairs. And if she’d had any doubts at all, they were erased by the look that was now in his eyes, and by his smile.

  It was a real smile, not one of those loaded-with-meaning player smiles that he’d been giving her most of the night.

  “I don’t like playing games,” she told him. “Let’s be honest about what this is, okay?”

  Nash laughed. “Thirty seconds ago I knew what this was,” he admitted. “I have to confess that I don’t anymore. I . . . I really like you, Tess.” He looked away from her as he laughed again, as if his words had surprised him as much as they’d surprised her. Surprised and maybe even embarrassed him.

  Of all the things she’d expected him to say . . .

  Tess put her beer back down on the counter and reached for him, and then, God, his arms were around her and she was kissing Diego Nash.

  Who really liked her.

  “Tess,” he gasped as he kissed her harder, deeper, again and again, as he pressed her closer to him, so that she couldn’t miss the fact that he was fully aroused. “You don’t know how badly I’ve wanted to do this. How much I need . . .”

  There was a desperation to both his mouth and hands that she hadn’t expected, a clumsiness broadcasting a lack of control that thrilled her. She’d imagined that making love to Nash would be exquisite, but that it would be something he would do to her. She imagined he’d remain cool and almost aloof, as much a pro at this as at everything else he did, while she was the one who would come undone.

  Instead he nearly broke the zipper of her jeans, swearing and apologizing until she shut him up by kissing him again. He even tripped over his own pants in his haste to remove them while she led him down the short hall to her bedroom.

  She didn’t have to remind him of their need for a condom, but she did have to help when he fumbled with it, and then . . .

  The sound he made as he filled her made her laugh aloud, but then he kissed her hard, harder, as he drove himself into her again and again and again. It was only because she was so turned on by the raw, nearly mindless intensity of his passion that she came, too, in a hot rush, when he climaxed.

  “Earth to Tess,” Nash said, and she realized he’d reached past her and taken two glasses of champagne from the flight attendant’s tray, and was now holding one in each hand. God only knows how long he’d been attempting to get her attention, while she’d been thinking about . . .

  “Sorry,” she said, nearly dropping her book as she reached to take one, trying not to let their fingers touch, but unable to prevent it. Oh, God.

  He toasted her before taking a sip. “Here’s to us.”

  “To . . . ?”

  “It’s our one-week anniversary.”

  Ah, yes. That. “To us,” she echoed.

  “That must be a really good book,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She took another sip of the wine. It steadied her enough to be able to smile at him somewhat vaguely—the kind of smile someone would give someone else when they were completely engrossed in a book.

  Nash had gotten a pillow and blanket from somewhere, and after polishing off his champagne—tossing it back like a glass of whiskey—he settled back in his seat. “Wake me when we start our approach into Hong Kong.”

  He was going to sleep now, thank God.

  Tess lifted her book—and realized she’d been holding it upside down. Perfect.

  Nash didn’t have his eyes closed yet—damn it. But he wasn’t laughing at her. “I know what you’re thinking about,” he said.

  Okay. Don’t panic. Unless he was a mind reader, he couldn’t possibly know. “Really?” she said, praying he truly wasn’t a mind reader.

  “Your first time out there,” he said. “Heading to Kazabek. It’s okay to be scared. It’s normal.”

  “Ah.” He’d thought she was thinking about their assignment. “I’m ready for this, you know.”

  He nodded, just looking at her.

  So she asked him, “Were you scared? Your first time out?”

  “I was too young and stupid to be scared,” he told her—a real surprise. She hadn’t expected him to say anything at all. Let alone that.

  But then he closed his eyes, which was exactly as she’d expected, exactly as she’d intended.

  Didn’t it figure that, as desperate as she’d been just moments ago for him to stop looking at her like that, she now wished for the exact opposite.

  “How old were you?” she asked.

  His eyes opened and he gazed at her for several long moments before he spoke. “First time People First sent me to Kazabek was in . . . it must’ve been 1997. I was twenty-eight.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  IKRIMAH, KAZBEKISTAN

  Will Schroeder climbed onto the bus.

  Jimmy could not believe it.

  He was definitely on some kind of weird bad luck streak.

  He’d slept through most of the flight to Hong Kong. The flight here to Ikrimah had also been relatively uneventful—considering he was sitting inches away from Tess Bailey the entire time.

  During the last few hours of the trip, he and Tess had drilled procedures and done a whole lot of worst-case scenario type war-gaming. He was now as convinced as he
’d ever be that she knew what to do and where to go if Godzilla attacked Kazabek and they were temporarily separated from each other in the panicking crowd. She also knew what to do in the event of a permanent separation—such as if Godzilla went and stepped on him.

  And he’d repeated, ad nauseam, the importance of checking for the all-clear signal anytime she returned to their K-stani home base. Deck usually used a short length of rope hanging innocently from the knob of the main door. Tess should never walk in, even to an area that otherwise seemed secure, without checking to make sure that that rope was there. Checking for it needed to be an instant habit, and she assured him she would not forget.