Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  As dawn approached, the city awoke. With the sun came the end of curfew, and people—mostly women—poured onto the street.

  Within minutes the stalls in the square were unlocked and opened, lines already queuing up for bread and fruit.

  Sophia stepped out of the alleyway and into the stream of similarly clad women, one of whom nearly knocked her over—blasted veils.

  Blasted veils—blessed veils. The apprehension she’d been carrying for hours faded as she blended with that crowd, as she became one of many—anonymous and unidentifiable beneath her robe and full veil.

  She knew with certainty that she’d finally lost the American.

  Because when it came to following someone, no one could possibly be that good.

  Tess had fallen asleep.

  It seemed almost criminal to wake her. Of course, maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe all Jimmy had to do was allow himself to be “caught” tippy-toeing out of Tess’s pantry, wearing only his boxers and a very satisfied smile on his face.

  He’d already stripped out of his clothes—the heat tonight was nearly unbearable. He messed up his hair as he heard the kitchen door open and Rivka and Guldana quietly came inside their house.

  “Where are they?” he heard Guldana whisper.

  “Maybe up and out, early?” Rivka replied.

  “Maybe,” Guldana echoed skeptically.

  The sheet Tess had used to cover herself had slid down off one arm. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, and her short hair was neatly arranged.

  “Or maybe not yet even gone to sleep,” Guldana said, as sharp-eyed as always. “Those pillows over there are undented. And look—someone’s gone somewhere without his trousers.”

  Rivka would be fooled if Jimmy stepped out from behind this curtain right now. But Guldana would take one look at Tess—and she would look—and she would not see a bride who’d just shared a night of passion with her new husband. She would ask questions, watch them closely, whisper to Rivka, wonder what they were up to. . . .

  Tess wanted that upstairs room. Jimmy tried to convince himself that that was his only motive as he stripped off his boxers and crawled beneath that sheet.

  She stirred as he tried to nudge her over. There just wasn’t enough room for the two of them. He was practically on top of her.

  But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  And indeed, she reached for him, pulling him closer, warm and sleepy and soft and sweet-smelling and . . .

  Oh, yeah.

  “Rivka’s home,” he breathed into her ear, hoping she wouldn’t take his expanding response to her too personally, but before he could apologize or even shift back, away from her, she kissed him.

  And okay, all right. That was good. It no doubt looked freaking realistic, because it felt unbelievably real. Jimmy tried to project himself out of body, to look down and see what Rivka and Guldana would see when they peeked behind the curtain.

  They’d see a man who wanted to get laid more than he wanted to keep breathing.

  They’d see a woman who had spent all of the night, right up to that point, completely untouched.

  He quickly tousled Tess’s hair and pulled her T-shirt—not the sexiest of nightwear for a new bride—up to her neck.

  She stopped kissing him long enough to yank her shirt up and over her head—after the Gentleman’s Den that shouldn’t have been such a surprise, yet it still was. Because there she was, the Tess of his dreams, lying naked beneath him, with that slow, sleepy smile and those freckles on a nose that was almost too cute to describe, and he was so totally gone.

  He was male, he was human, and it was a classic example of cause and effect. Breasts in the face—Christ, she was even more beautiful than he remembered—caused a definite physical response he could no longer hide.

  He’d been mostly holding his own up to that point, but it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Or rather, it made the camel, so to speak, impossible for either of them to ignore.

  And yet Tess didn’t seem to mind. She kissed him again, or maybe he kissed her—Jimmy wasn’t sure. But either way, she wrapped her arms around him in the most convincing embrace. She even rubbed up against him, making a sound that was unbelievably sexy. It was a sound that even Rivka, who was nearly completely deaf in one ear, had to have heard.

  “What was that?” Jimmy heard him ask his wife. He didn’t hear Guldana’s response because—hey now!—Tess had reached between them, wrapped her fingers around him and . . .

  No condom, no condom! What the hell was she doing? The sheet was covering them, they didn’t actually need to . . .

  But he couldn’t pull away from her. Not while Rivka and Guldana were sneaking up to the curtain-covered doorway.

  It was right then, as she guided him down and pressed her hips up, as he slid deeply inside of her with nothing between them, groaning aloud at the sensation—soft, wet, hot, it was sex with the volume cranked up to a hundred and eleven—that he realized she was still half asleep.

  Or rather, he realized this at the very moment she finally and fully woke up.

  “Oh, my God!” she said.

  From Rivka and Guldana’s perspective, as they pushed aside the curtain, it surely seemed as if Tess were reacting to the sudden appearance of an audience.

  But Jimmy knew better.

  He leapt off her as Rivka roared, “What’s going on in my house?”

  Jimmy scrambled for his boxers even as Tess yanked the sheet up and around herself. “I’m sorry,” he said in both English and the K-stani dialect Rivka and Guldana spoke, as he thrust first one leg and then the other into his shorts. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. I just . . . I thought . . .” Come on, Jimbo, stop babbling and stick to the script! But oh, Christ, what was the script?

  His entire brain was scrambled, and all he could think about was Tess and how badly he wanted to finish what they’d started. What he’d started, because, damn it, she wasn’t even awake when she, when they . . .

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, but Tess wasn’t looking at him.

  “We didn’t expect you home so soon,” she said to Rivka and Guldana.

  Rivka looked at her, looked at Jimmy, his face stony, his eyes cold. “I must ask you to leave my house immediately. All of you.”

  Guldana touched her husband’s arm. “They’re American. They’re young. Don’t you remember being young?”

  Tess reached for Jimmy, her fingers warm and solid against his leg, as Guldana murmured, “Besides, we need the money,” to her angry husband.

  Jimmy looked down into Tess’s face, into her eyes.

  “James,” she said as she squeezed his leg, sending him a silent message with her eyes. Come on, Nash, get back in the game. “Honey. I think you better introduce me.”

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  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  She sensed him before she saw him, as she was washing the sweat and grime of the night from her face.

  Or maybe she smelled him when she turned off the water.

  Not that he smelled bad. Just different. Warm. Male.

  American.

  There was no way he could have followed her through that market. No way. And yet . . .

  Sophia slowly turned from the sink, her face and hands dripping with water, half hoping that fatigue and fear were playing tricks on her, making her sense and smell things that weren’t really there. Maybe this old hotel still played host to the spirits of guests from the past. She’d heard once that Leonardo DiCaprio had stayed here, en route to some on-location movie set in the Far East—was it Thailand?

  Maybe . . .

  But no such luck. He really was standing there. The American from the factory, from Lartet’s bar.

  He was leaning against the pink-tiled wall of the ladies’ room, arms folded casually across his deceptively slight-looking chest.

  Fear crashed sharply through her, but she was completely cor
nered. Even if she could reach the windows before him, even if she could get them open, they were too high up and too narrow to squeeze through. There was nowhere to run—nothing to do but stand there, looking back at him.

  He’d somehow gotten through the locked door in the outer room without her hearing him come in.

  He’d somehow followed her all the way back here, to the hotel. . . .

  “How did you—”

  He cut her off. “I’m pretty sure I get to ask the questions first.”

  It took every ounce of willpower she had to keep her eyes on his face, not to glance toward the pallet she’d made of stolen blankets—her bed—under which she’d hidden that second little gun. What she wouldn’t give to have it right now, in her hand.

  Instead he handed her the clean rag that she was using as a towel, and she dried her face with shaking hands.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

  Sophia nodded, but she didn’t—couldn’t—believe him.

  “All I want is to talk.” He had a nice voice, a mellow baritone that had the slightest trace of a Western accent. “Sophia.”

  She met his eyes—they were light brown, almost exactly the same color as his nondescript hair—but she could see only intelligence and a constant alertness there. There was no recognition, no awareness, no indication he knew he’d hit a giant cash jackpot.

  Of course, with this man, this magician who had followed her through that crowded marketplace, that didn’t mean anything.

  He was much older than she’d thought when she’d seen him both in the bar and in the dimly lit factory—not in his twenties, or even in his early thirties. No, up close, in the hard morning light, she could see that it had been several years since he’d crossed to the other side of forty. He had lines on a face that, from a distance, she never would have described as handsome, although looking at him now, up close, she didn’t know why not.

  His nose was straight, practically patrician, and the rest of his features were equally even and pleasant-looking, although his mouth was thin, his lips tight. He had lines around his mouth and crow’s feet at the outer corners of his eyes. On most people those would be called laughter lines, but she got the sense that this man didn’t spend enough time laughing to warrant that label.

  “Do you mind if we sit?” he continued. “Out there?” He gestured behind him to the former sitting room, now empty of easy chairs. “I’ve been on my feet most of the night.”

  As had she.

  Who was he, what was he, to have been able to follow her the way he had? And what, exactly, did he want from her?

  “Are you CIA?” she couldn’t keep from asking, even though she knew that he couldn’t possibly be.

  His answer was “No,” and his amused smile chilled her. He thought it was funny that she might mistake him for a government agent, which meant that he was probably one of those ex-pats who had no loyalty to their former country, or to fellow Americans.

  She was so dead.

  Sophia let him lead her, his fingers firm and his hand warm through the sleeve of her dress. Together they went into the outer room, where her robe and the veil he’d taken from her at the factory lay by the door.

  Thoughtful of him to return them. Not that she’d need them for more than the ride to Bashir’s palace.

  She caught sight of herself in the big wall mirror. Even in the dimness of that windowless space, her dress was exotically sheer—but not too sheer in this light to reveal her collection of cuts and bruises. Because of that, she was better than naked—she was nearly naked and shimmering. Her terror shone around her, too, and she hoped he couldn’t see that as clearly as she could in that mirror.

  With a quick glance in its direction, she saw that he’d relocked the door. If she tried to run, it would take some time to throw back the bolt and pull the door open and . . .

  No. Best thing to do was figure out a way to get to the gun that was beneath the blankets of her bed.

  Her bed.

  She could see in the mirror that the American had noticed her glance at the door. Good. Let him think she was considering escape in that direction. She looked at the door again, a quick flick of her gaze, just to give him something to focus on.

  Because unlike at the factory, he now seemed unaffected by her outfit. Which meant it was going to be more difficult than she’d hoped to get over to her bed.

  “You have a last name?” he asked as he gestured for her to sit against the wall that was farthest from both the door and the inner room.

  Sophia nodded as she lowered herself to a sitting position.

  He sat on the floor, too, right in the middle of the room, blocking both her route to the door and to that gun.

  His eyes were carefully on her face and she shifted, pretending to get comfortable, testing him, and . . . Sure enough, his gaze dropped. Only briefly, but it did drop.

  Okay. Okay. He was human after all. If she worked this right, she could play out this scenario—bed him, then kill him, then run.

  Think. Think. What had she already told him? How could she use that best to win his trust—or at least make him close the gap between them?

  Back at the factory, she’d told him that Dimitri was dead. Bashir, too. He’d guessed her name—Sophia—but he didn’t appear to recognize it, although she also knew that he played his cards close to his vest. He was impossible to read.

  If he did know Dimitri, or at least of Dimitri, he might also know that Dimitri had a wife named Sophia. And if he knew that, and if she gave him a false last name now, he’d know she was lying and . . .

  “Ghaffari,” she finally answered him. She couldn’t afford to have him think she was lying about anything. “My name is Sophia Ghaffari.”

  He didn’t react. He didn’t even blink. “You’re Dimitri’s wife?” His voice was blank, too—devoid of either skepticism or belief.

  “I was his wife,” she said. “I told you. He’s dead.”

  He was silent for a moment, then, “Yes, you did. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She made herself laugh, but didn’t say anything more. She had to wait until he asked. If she volunteered too much information, it would come out sounding like a story.

  After an eternity, the American spoke again. “I guess you heard me tell Lartet that I have money for Dimitri—money that a mutual friend owed him.”

  She knew where he was going with this and shook her head. “That’s not why I followed you. I don’t want your friend’s money.” Not quite true—she wanted all the money she could get. But it was only a matter of time until everything this man had in his pockets belonged to her.

  And if she could manage it, she would kill him after he took off his T-shirt and those cargo pants.

  What she wouldn’t give to be rid of this awful dress, to have real, Western clothes to wear—pants—even if they were too big. She could cut and color her hair and hide in plain sight among the Western relief workers. . . .

  “Why did you follow me?” he asked.

  She answered that one truthfully. “Because I knew everyone Dimitri knew, and I didn’t know you. I wanted to know who you were and who this friend of yours was.” Back at Lartet’s bar, she had dared to hope that this American might be able to help her—that he really was some do-gooder relief worker who’d be enough of a sucker to lend her a hand. But he’d made it more than clear back at the factory that that wasn’t the case. “But there is no friend,” she asked him now. “Right?”

  He nodded in agreement, watching her with eyes that seemed able to see inside of her head. “Yeah. That’s just an easy way to find someone. Free money, you know? People come to the surface, even out of deep hiding, if they think someone’s going to hand over some cash.”

  Sophia made herself hold his gaze, telling herself that he couldn’t really read her mind. She tried to make the eye contact something sexual, to infuse it with interest. “So, who are you, then?” She let her gaze wander lazily down his body. He wore his T-shirt loose,
size large when in fact he was barely a medium. That was how he managed to look thin when he really wasn’t. “You’re good, you know,” she told him.

  He smiled slightly in return and as she looked back into his eyes, she saw it. Heat. He was attracted to her. Her heart actually skipped and the rush of triumph made her breathing unsteady. But she held his gaze as he shook his head, as instead of answering her he asked, “When did Dimitri die?”

  This entire conversation was surreal. That she could sit here and talk about this, as if it had happened to someone else, as if she hadn’t really been there at all . . .