Tess touched his hand. Her fingers were actually cool. In this heat. How did she manage that? “I’ll be careful.”
“Yeah, I know you will.”
She squeezed his hand. “You be careful, too.”
While Tess distracted Will Schroeder, Jimmy was going to walk the perimeter of the newly modified target area around the hospital.
The information from Sayid’s autopsy report had made him significantly revise his estimate of how far the terrorist leader might have been able to walk after being injured in the quake.
And he had been able to walk.
His ribs, his shoulder, and his right arm had been badly broken, but the damage to his legs was minimal.
He’d had a head injury, but cause of death was internal injuries.
Tom Paoletti had reported that Sayid’s hospital files listed him as conscious but extremely confused at check-in. He was unable even to ID himself, yet he’d told the triage medic that he’d walked there. That medic had probably assumed anyone ambulatory to that degree could wait to see a doctor. He’d blown it big-time by sticking Sayid into a makeshift bed in the lobby without checking his blood pressure—which by then was probably dropping fast.
According to hospital records, Sayid had bled to death within a matter of hours.
With his injuries, he simply could not have made it to the hospital under his own steam from more than a few very short kilometers away. And that was assuming he had a giant S on his T-shirt.
Jimmy had checked a map and noted that Padsha Bashir’s palace was still well inside the revised target area.
In addition to walking that newly outlined perimeter, he was intending to find the most severely damaged part of the palace and walk the most obvious route from there to the Cantara hospital.
While Tess led Will Schroeder on a wild goose chase.
Putting herself in danger, god damn it.
Tess broke into his thoughts. “Seriously, Jimmy. I know this thing with Decker is distracting you. Be extra careful out there today.”
And now, from Will Schroeder’s point of view, it looked as if she were gazing at him with concern in her eyes—because she was gazing at him with concern in her eyes. Because she thought Decker was distracting him.
“I’ll be fine,” he told her. “I’m not the one who’s pregnant.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not either,” she said, but she dropped his hand and took a step back, just as he’d intended. But she knew that, too. She shook her head as she looked at him and laughed. “Congratulations—right now I honestly hate you.”
She wasn’t supposed to be amused. And yet he couldn’t keep from smiling back at her. Damn, she was cute when she smiled like that. Cute, and smart, and . . . “Try to find out what Will Schroeder knows,” Jimmy ordered her, mostly because smart women hated being ordered around.
“You’re that certain he’s going to follow me. Instead of you.”
“Yes, I am.” There were many reasons why, when forced to choose between following Jimmy or following Tess, Will Schroeder, ace reporter, would choose Tess.
Because she was a woman, because she was young, because Will didn’t know her and would assume he had a better chance at wheedling information from her, because Will had surely noticed the way Jimmy looked at her. Because . . . “Will’s good at what he does,” he told her. He glanced over at the neighbor’s yard. And there he was. Will Schroeder. Trying to hide. And failing. Christ. “Good at some things.”
“Apparently he was good enough to find us here at Rivka’s. You know, we should just go over there, tell him about Sayid and the laptop, and offer him an exclusive on the story if he works with us.”
Jimmy laughed. “Yeah, right.”
Tess adjusted her scarf, trying to get air underneath it. “What exactly do you have against him?”
“He’s a reporter. Isn’t that enough?”
“The members of the Fourth Estate can be our friends,” she told him. “Valuable friends.”
“Ready, sir and ma’am,” Khalid called.
Jimmy started for the wagon.
“Did you really sleep with his wife?”
“What?” Jimmy turned and looked at Tess. “Where did you hear that?”
“It was just something he said—implied really—when he got off the bus yesterday.”
He could tell from her eyes that she believed it, believed that Jimmy was not just capable of, but highly likely to.
“It’s a long story,” he said, which was stupid because number one, he didn’t owe anyone an explanation for anything he ever did, and number two, they were both better off if she judged him and found him less-than. “That’s synthetic.” At her blank look, he added, “Your scarf. You need to get one that’s made of cotton.”
Tess nodded. “And, hmmm, he changes the subject.”
“Cotton breathes. You’ll be much cooler. I’ll pick one up for you.”
“You know, really, all you have to say is ‘None of your business.’ ”
“None of your business,” Jimmy said.
“Unless, of course, it is my business. Unless it’s something that I need to know because I’m going to be dealing with this guy and—”
“Yes,” Jimmy told her. “The short answer is yes, I slept with his wife. He hates my guts—you two can start a club—but be careful. He’ll probably try to charm your pants off. Literally. Don’t let him get too close.”
And now he could tell that she’d changed her mind. Now she didn’t think he was capable of . . . How the hell had that happened?
“She didn’t tell you she was married, did she?” Tess guessed. “That must’ve hurt.”
“None of your business.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t remember anymore.”
She laughed. “You’re such a liar. It was Jacqueline—Jackie—Bennett, wasn’t it?”
How the hell did she know that? “Did Decker tell you—” He cut himself off. Of course Decker hadn’t said a word. Tess was a comspesh. No doubt she’d done some homework on Will Schroeder. With her hacking skills, she probably knew more than Tom Paoletti did about all of them. Except Jimmy. His records had been deleted.
Except, of course, that one file that the Agency kept buried so deep that not even Tess would be able to find it.
Good thing.
He could just imagine the information it contained.
James Nash, aka Diego Nash, aka Jimmy the Kid Santucci, b. 11 August 1969, White Plains Hospital, New York. Mother: Marianna Santucci, b. 1950, d. 1987. Father: unknown.
It would include all kinds of lists.
Periods of incarceration. February 1982 through January 1986, Bedford Juvenile Center. August 1988 through January 1989, Sing-Sing Correctional Facility, Ossining, New York.
Felonies committed. Grand larceny. Assault with a deadly weapon. Conspiracy to commit murder—a trumped-up charge added to his record when he’d refused to turn state’s evidence on Victor Dimassiano, the man who’d been the closest thing he’d ever had to a father.
Assignments he’d taken while at the Agency.
Deletions he’d performed for his country.
That particular list alone would make her back off for good. After fifteen years, it was several pages long.
No, if she knew more about him than other people did, it was only because he’d made the mistake of telling her about himself on that crazy night he’d gone to her apartment.
“What do you want me to say, Tess?” Jimmy asked her now. He got closer to her, too close, and lowered his voice. “That I loved her and she broke my heart?”
She was looking up at him, those big eyes wide, ready to believe that bullshit, ready to make him out to be some kind of romantic hero. Ready to . . . How had she put it when talking about Khalid? Ready to worship at the altar of Nash.
God help them both.
He was having a hard enough time keeping his hands off of her, and when she looked at him like that . . .
“I
fucked her,” Jimmy said flatly. “And the only heart that was broken was Will’s.”
Once again, he was holding her elbow much too tightly. He let her go, disgusted with himself for too many reasons to list.
She didn’t say anything as she followed him over to the wagon. And then she couldn’t say anything because Khalid was sitting there. She just looked at Jimmy as he helped her onto the wagon, as she made herself as comfortable as possible on the hard wooden seat next to the K-stani boy.
Jimmy couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze more than briefly. “Sorry,” he said. He wondered if she knew that his apology was for more than his rude words. He was sorry for so much—all the way back to his inconvenient birth.
“I’m sorry, too, James,” she said, and freaking meant it.
He stood there, like an idiot, watching as the wagon cleared the gate, because she was looking back at him.
“Be careful,” she called. “No dings today, okay?”
It was lunchtime before the reporter came close enough to talk to her.
Tess sat in the minuscule amount of shade thrown by Khalid’s wagon and cut open the corner of the military-issue meal-in-a-pouch that Jimmy Nash had put in her bag back at Rivka’s.
Spaghetti and meatballs was written in no-frills default computer print on the outside of the plastic, but whatever was inside had the consistency of pudding. Or baby food.
“It helps if you put it inside your shirt for a few minutes,” Will Schroeder said as he approached. He was smiling at the look of horror and disbelief she was sure she was wearing. “That way it’ll heat up—at least to body temperature.”
“I’ve already opened it,” she said. “No way am I putting it in my shirt now.”
Will Schroeder had a nice, friendly smile in a pleasant enough face, although his sunglasses kept her from seeing his eyes. With the fair skin of a redhead, he also wore a hat to help protect himself against the sun. Tess could see traces of sunblock along his hairline and beneath his ear. Even using an SPF 30, he probably had to reapply it frequently to keep from doing a total lobster.
As the official spokeswoman for the Freckle League, she could relate.
“It’s actually kind of nice that this stuff is slightly cool,” she said, shading her eyes to look up at him. “Although I think it’ll help if I stop thinking of it as spaghetti and meatballs. If I gave it a French name, maybe I could pretend it’s gourmet soup, served chilled, from a four-star restaurant.”
He laughed and motioned to the remaining patch of shade. “May I?”
“Of course. It’s Will, right?”
He nodded as he sat down. Held out a hand. “Schroeder. From Boston.”
They shook. Between their two right hands, they were wearing five different Band-Aids. It made Tess think of Jimmy Nash and his dings. Of course, there wasn’t much that didn’t make her think of Nash. She’d done little else all morning long, in between praying that she’d get her period and praying for a freak snowstorm.
“Tess Nash,” she said. “From . . .” She laughed. “I don’t know where I’m from anymore.” Certainly not Iowa, where she’d been born. Or even San Francisco where she’d moved with her mother after her parents’ divorce. “I lived in D.C. for the past few years, but Jimmy, my husband—we were just married—is from Boston, too. He’s with People First.”
“Yeah,” Will said. His smile didn’t fade, not a bit. “I had the pleasure of meeting Jimmy in Bali a few years back.”
Pleasure? “Yes, he told me,” Tess said, just as pleasantly.
“I met Larry there, too.”
It took her a moment to realize that by Larry he meant Decker. Jimmy and Larry. Larry and Jimmy. Just a coupla American guys.
Right.
“Let’s cut the crap,” Will said, still smiling. “Shall we? I know you’re not a relief worker—none of you are.”
Tess calmly ate her lunch. “Soupe glacée de tomate au boeuf,” she said. “It actually does taste better if you think of it that way.”
“Don’t worry,” Will said. “Your secret’s safe—for now.”
Did he actually think she was worried about right now? She glanced up, certain of what she’d find—that no one was within earshot. He’d have made sure of that—he had secrets to hide, too.
Tess tried to catch Khalid’s eye from across the yard. If he came toward her, this conversation would have to be postponed. But Khalid was deep in discussion with several other young K-stani men, no doubt still talking about this morning’s explosion and the ensuing column of smoke that still rose from a street just blocks away.
Rumors of a suicide bomber spread faster than the fire that had been caused, in fact, by a relatively small-sized gas leak.
It was dangerous enough here in this earthquake-battered city without bringing suicide bombers into the equation.
Vague threats from low-level reporters didn’t even rate a mention.
“I want answers to some questions,” Will said, and his threats got a little less vague. “Or I’ll start pointing fingers and naming names—and you’ll all be on the next flight out of here so fast . . .”
“You will, too,” Tess pointed out. There was probably a way to eat gracefully from this type of plastic pouch packaging. Practice would no doubt help.
He shrugged. “I already finished the job I came for—last night I filed a story about the quake.”
Shit.
Will was grinning, because he was sure he’d won.
Which he had. Unless she spun this situation on its side. Tess calmly finished her MRE. Working from the support office at the Agency, she’d handled media manipulation plenty of times in the past. Leaking information to the press was part of psychological operations. Psyops was an invaluable tool to a team in the field.
Because these days the bad guys got their news from CNN, too.
But although Tess had been the “unnamed source” in too many news reports to count, she’d always contacted those reporters and leaked the story under her precise conditions. She’d always been completely in control.
The trick here was to somehow trump Will Schroeder’s threats and end up on top. Tess knew what she had to do, but first she’d try to rattle him. “Jimmy told me what happened in Bali. You know, with your wife.”
He was good—his surprise was limited to a two-second freeze that he covered with laughter. “Ex-wife,” he corrected her—but it was just a tad too casually. And if that weren’t a clue, his body language all but screamed how very little he cared. Which of course, meant that he did care. Very much.
But Tess just nodded. “That’s probably for the best, considering—”
“That Jackie was a lying whore?”
Tess was fascinated and couldn’t keep from asking more, despite the fact that she had a limited amount of time to deal with Will’s threat. Their lunch break was almost over. “She’s an investigative reporter, too, isn’t she?”
Will’s bio on the newspaper’s Web site mentioned that he’d spent a number of years teamed with photojournalist Jacqueline Bennett, who’d recently won a whole slew of awards for her pictures from inside an Indonesian terrorist training camp, taken in the aftermath of the bombing in Bali—pictures printed not in the Boston Globe, but rather in Time magazine.
Those photos had enabled the local government, who was working with both the U.S. and Australia, to send in a task force of SEALs and SAS to shut down the camp. The Agency had used the photos, too, to apprehend more than a half dozen high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders who’d left the country before the camp’s takedown.
“Yeah, if by investigative you mean she fucked the right people to get photo ops.” Will laughed. “I saw her on Jay Leno, talking about how dangerous it was getting those photos. How risky. Yeah, the biggest risk she took was that the condom might break. And now she’s the media’s darling. Queen of the fucking decade.”
Which was he more pissed about—the fact that his wife had been unfaithful, or that she’d scooped a huge story
and kept his name off the byline?
“Marriages don’t last long in either of our two businesses,” Tess said diplomatically.
Will laughed again. “Yeah, like you and Jimmy are really married.”
“We are.”
He didn’t believe her—not a good sign. “My condolences.”
Enough was enough. “How long have you been with the Globe?” Tess asked. “Seven years? And then three before that with the Middlesex News?”
He looked at her over the top of his sunglasses, his eyes very blue. “Am I supposed to be impressed that you know—”
Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint Page 24