Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He started with her outstretched arms, and she immediately winced.

  “Sorry,” he said. What he was doing shouldn’t have hurt.

  “Scraped elbows,” she explained.

  Ah. He tried to make his touch lighter. But she winced again when he reached her shoulders.

  “Scraped everything,” she amended. “From the quake. I’m lucky I’m alive.”

  “How long have you been working the street?” he asked, and she glanced back at him, over her shoulder, just as he moved his hands down and across her breasts. Hell of a time to make eye contact. And nope, definitely no Magnum .357 hiding there.

  “I haven’t been,” she told him, but then her eyes filled with tears and she turned away.

  Yeah, right.

  The muscles in her stomach were tightly tensed, and as he reached between her legs, he tried to make his touch as impersonal as possible. To his surprise, she didn’t try to make the contact sexual. In the course of his Agency career, he’d patted down working women a time or two, and they’d sent him a very obvious nonverbal message during that portion of the search.

  This blonde stood stone still.

  Decker quickly finished, moving his hands down one leg and then the other.

  “Done,” he told her.

  “What, you’re not going to check to make sure I don’t have a grenade up my ass?” Her voice shook.

  “If you do, you can keep it,” he said. “Sophia.”

  She inhaled—he couldn’t quite call it a gasp—but he knew he’d guessed correctly. Back in the bar, he’d noticed how carefully she’d watched Lartet as he’d received that note from the burka-clad boy.

  As she—Sophia—now turned to look at him, Deck could see her realize both that he’d merely been making a wild guess, and that she, in turn, had given herself away.

  She made a choking sound that he first thought was laughter, but quickly realized were more tears. Noisy tears this time. And this time she couldn’t seem to make them stop.

  “I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry.”

  If this was an act, it was a damn good one. And it got even more dramatic when the K-stani on the floor started to stir. Deck wished he had a miniature Tony award to give her as well.

  Sophia lunged for her burka. “He can’t see me!” she said. “Don’t let him see me!”

  He held her robe out of reach. “I thought you didn’t know who he was.”

  “I don’t,” she said between her sobs. “I only know who he might be, who he might work for.” She looked at Decker beseechingly. “Please.”

  It would have been heart wrenching. If he were fourteen.

  “Not Michel Lartet?” Decker asked.

  “Besides Lartet.” The K-stani man groaned, and she moved so that Decker was standing between them, so that she was at least partially hidden behind him.

  “Who, Sophia?” he asked.

  “Don’t call me that in front of him!”

  “Who?”

  “The man who killed Dimitri Ghaffari,” she whispered. “Padsha Bashir.”

  Shit. “Ghaffari’s dead?” he asked, knowing that he shouldn’t trust anything that came from this woman’s mouth. Just as he’d noticed her back in the bar, she’d obviously noticed him—and listened in on his conversation with Lartet. Still, his gut instinct was that it was probably true. Ghaffari probably was dead. It would explain why the man had dropped off the face of the earth.

  Sophia nodded, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “Bashir’s dead, too.”

  No way. He definitely would have heard about it on the streets tonight if warlord Padsha Bashir had gone to his heavenly reward.

  Still, it seemed clear that she believed it to be true.

  There was fear and there was feigned fear—and no one was that good an actress. This woman was terrified.

  But whoever this mysterious Sophia was, unless she was beyond desperate, she wasn’t going anywhere without her burka and robe—not in that dress, in this city.

  Decker decided to experiment. He kept her outerwear over his arm as he crossed to the man on the floor, as he purposely turned his back on the blonde. With one well-placed tap, not as gentle as a lullaby but as effective, he put the K-stani man back to sleep.

  When he turned around again—what do you know? She was that desperate—she’d pulled a total ninja.

  He would’ve liked a chance to talk to the K-stani man who was drooling on the dusty floor, but he knew he could always find him at Lartet’s.

  So Decker took his belt back—no point leaving behind souvenirs—giving Sophia a few more seconds’ lead time. Then he followed her out of the factory and into the night.

  Tess took her phone and her penlight, and explored Rivka’s house.

  There was a sitting room off the kitchen on the first floor, and beyond it another room, but when she tried the knob, the door was securely locked.

  It didn’t really matter—it was obvious she wasn’t getting phone coverage anywhere on the ground floor.

  She kept her phone open and out in front of her, much in the way Mr. Spock held his tricorder as he and the away team from the USS Enterprise investigated a newly discovered Class M planet on Star Trek.

  She climbed the stairs to the second floor, where there was a hallway and two more of those locked doors. Maybe, during all those episodes, when Spock was checking the gadget’s little screen, he was really just looking for intergalactic phone service.

  “Searching for service . . .” said the message on her phone’s display, ellipses trailing off into infinity. “Searching for service . . .”

  Oh, come on. This phone had worked on the roof of that church. And unless a strong wind had already taken out the sat-dish . . .

  She went up more stairs to the third floor of the house, refusing to believe her beloved technology could fail her so utterly.

  It was there, on the minuscule landing just outside of what looked to be the only real bedroom in the narrow three-story building, that there was a tiny celebration of LED fireworks on the display screen of her phone.

  “Who would you like to call?” the text message now cheerfully asked.

  Tess went into the quiet of that empty bedroom, the carpeting thick and plush under her feet. This room had a private bathroom—currently sans running water, of course—a huge walk-in closet, and a king-sized bed. It was obviously the room that their host, Rivka, shared with Guldana, his wife of twenty-five years.

  It was the only room in the entire house where Tess would have Internet access.

  “Shoot,” she said. How was she going to manage this?

  “It’s better than having no communications access at all,” Nash said from the doorway, making her jump about three feet into the air and drop her penlight.

  When she’d crept past him in the kitchen, he’d been lying with one arm over his eyes, breathing steadily.

  “I thought you were asleep.” Tess picked her light up off the floor.

  “I was just resting,” he said. “You do have coverage up here, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But not downstairs?”

  “No.”

  Nash was silent. They both were, just looking at each other in the shadowy dimness.

  Her betrayer of a brain kept flashing pictures of him naked in her bed, of his face above her, his eyes heavy-lidded with desire as he . . . as they . . .

  Oh, God.

  If she was remembering that more times a day than she would ever admit aloud, what must he think about whenever he looked at her?

  Although it was quite possibly worse to think that he never thought about their night together at all. It was depressing to consider that it was something that simply never crossed his mind, completely unmemorable and forgotten.

  “I’m sorry about before,” Nash said, just as she asked, “Is Deck back yet?” They had to stop doing that—both talking at once. People did that when they were uncomfortable with each other, when they had to work to think of things
to say.

  “No,” he said. “He’s not. He’s . . . You shouldn’t worry about him, he’s—”

  “I’m not worried about him.”

  “Okay. That’s . . . okay.”

  More silence as he glanced at the bed, at the filmy curtains blowing gently in the breeze from the windows. “I guess we’ll have to move into this room then, huh?”

  “And what? Rivka and his wife will sleep in the pantry?” Tess snorted. “I don’t think so. I know I wouldn’t if—”

  “They won’t have to sleep in the pantry,” Nash told her. “There are other rooms in this house—Guldana’s law offices.”

  Rivka’s wife was a lawyer? Had been a lawyer was more like it—under the current regime, women weren’t allowed to practice law.

  Unless they did it behind not just closed doors but . . . Suddenly all those locked doors made sense.

  God, Tess couldn’t imagine having her career—everything she’d worked so hard to achieve—taken from her. Simply because as a woman, she was no longer permitted to do such work.

  Like Guldana, she’d probably keep on working, and just pray she didn’t get caught.

  “It’s dangerous for them, isn’t it?” she asked. “Having us stay here?”

  “They don’t know who we are,” Nash said, “or what we do. But yeah, it’s definitely a risk for them. It’s a risk for us, too. If they found out what we’re really up to, they might turn us in—to win some look-the-other-way points from the local warlords, you know?”

  They might also win some sort of reward money. Like nearly everyone in K-stan, they could probably use it.

  “We should clear out of here,” Nash continued. “It’s one thing if they offer us their room, another entirely if we ask for it. That’s just not done. And if they find us in here, that would be thought of as shockingly rude.”

  Because it was rude to be in here without their host’s permission. But as far as asking went . . . Tess narrowed her eyes at Nash. “You’re somehow going to make them offer us this room?”

  “Yeah,” Nash said. “Actually, we are.”

  We. Oh, no. “I’m not going to like this very much, am I?” she asked.

  He laughed. It was rueful, and she knew she wasn’t just going to dislike his plan, she was going to flat-out hate it. “Definitely not.”

  Great. Just great.

  “I’m guessing Rivka’ll get here about twenty minutes after sunup, after the curfew ends,” Nash told her as she followed him back down the stairs, back into the kitchen. “That gives us a couple of hours. But we should probably be ready for him in case he returns earlier.”

  Tess turned to look at Nash, but he purposely wasn’t meeting her gaze.

  “So,” she said, trying to be brisk and matter-of-fact. And trying to inject a little humor into the situation. “Which side of the bedroll do you like to sleep on? The right or the left?”

  Ah. Eye contact. For all of his shortcomings, the man certainly did have pretty eyes. “I’m not going to make you do that,” he said. “It’ll be enough that I’m in there with you.”

  “Sleeping where?” she asked. “Have you been in that pantry? Because we’re either spooning, or you’re sitting up. Which is no way to sleep.”

  Nash looked behind the curtain and swore softly. “I didn’t realize . . .” He turned back to her. “Okay. No problem. I’ll be out here until I hear Rivka coming home. But then I’m going to lie down next to you, make it look like we’ve been together all night, okay? Be aware that’s going to happen. Don’t be on autopilot and go into self-defense mode on me, all right?” He reached up gingerly to touch the back of his head. “Believe it or not, I’ve already had enough pain for this entire mission.”

  “So you’re going to just . . . stay awake?” He’d told her they had several hours to wait.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not,” she countered. “I’m worried that you’re going to fall asleep out there and Rivka’s going to come back before you wake up. I really need to be upstairs in that room, James. Or I need to figure out a way to get phone service down here. I mean, I could put a sat-dish right on the roof but—”

  “No.” They both knew that that would be the equivalent of flying an American flag overhead, and then wearing FBI windbreakers over CIA T-shirts. Hello! Here we are! Notice us!

  But if she could get a dish way up high, higher than the church down the street, way up on the roof of the Grande Hotel . . . She didn’t say it aloud, but Nash certainly knew what she was thinking, because “No,” he said again. “Nuh-uh. I’ll get you that room. I’m not going to fall asleep.”

  “But if you do—”

  “It’s not going to happen.”

  “But—”

  “Look, I don’t sleep much when I’m home in my own bed. And after a day like—” He stopped. Swore.

  “After an awful day like today,” Tess whispered.

  Nash—Jimmy—actually looked embarrassed.

  “I had nightmares,” she told him. “When I fell asleep in the wagon.” Her dreams had been a terrible montage of dead and injured children, of grieving and frantic parents, of pain and sorrow and fear, and the persistent, ever present stink of death.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and really meant it. Probably because he knew what it was like to wake up sweating, heart pounding . . .

  “It’s a natural reaction,” she said. “Having nightmares, or even being unable to sleep after seeing . . .”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” But it was clear that he believed that while having a nightmare was acceptable for her, such rules didn’t apply to him.

  “You’re allowed to be human, too,” Tess told him quietly.

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said again, but again she knew he didn’t believe it. “I’ll be in in a few hours, when Rivka gets home.”

  He turned his back then, focusing on the contents of his bag.

  Tess had worked at the Agency long enough to recognize when she’d been dismissed, but she still hesitated before going behind the curtain.

  Because Jimmy Nash was in trouble. She’d worked at the Agency long enough to recognize that, too.

  “I’m here if you need me,” she said quietly.

  He turned to look at her, one elegant eyebrow raised in a perfect “Oh, really?” look, loaded with innuendo.

  “To talk,” she repeated, and, cursing him for being a jerk and herself for being a fool, she pushed past the curtain, all but scurrying into the pantry.

  Sophia climbed through an open window into a room that was sparsely furnished. It was obvious that the woman living here could ill afford a thief stealing her second-best burka.

  But she was trapped in this neighborhood with the sun about to rise, and she didn’t have a lot of options. She had to steal this robe and veil—it meant the difference between life and death.

  Taking the faded and carefully mended garment from the hook, Sophia dressed quietly, praying that its loss wouldn’t create unimaginable hardships for its previous owner.

  She knew she couldn’t delay—she still wasn’t convinced she’d lost the American. Still, before she went back out the window, she took the ring from her finger—the ring that she’d hoped would help her pay for the falsified papers and passport she’d need to get out of the country—and left it dangling from the hook that had held this robe.

  She quietly hit the street, keeping to the shadows, noting the lightening of the sky in the east.

  There was no sign of the American. But that was nothing new. Sophia had been running away from him for hours now, and from the very moment she’d left the factory, there had been no hint that he was there—no footsteps behind her, no movement in the shadows. She didn’t even have that uneasy sense of being watched.

  But it had been so laughably easy to get away from him, she was sure he’d let her go.

  And why else would he have done that if not to follow her—to see where she went, whom she was working with, where her loyalties
lay.

  She was not—was not—going back to her hiding place in the Hotel Français until she was certain he was no longer watching her. Having a safe haven with a source of water was beyond valuable. She would keep moving, keep running for days if she had to, before she returned there.

  But she wouldn’t have to.

  She’d led the American in circles in this part of town, moving not just through alleys but also across rooftops, wanting to keep as close as possible to the Saboor Square marketplace.