by Misty Evans
“Fuck you and your mother too,” Bad Guy Two spit.
“Dude, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t said that.” He tweaked the guy’s broken arm, shoving his face into the mud, suffocating him. The big guy flailed around, and after a good goddamn minute, Jax allowed the man to come up for air. “Start talking, asshat. Who sent you after us? What do you want?”
“The spook, who else? We’re going to kill the rest of you.”
The man laughed as if this were a fun little game. The image of Ruby dying sent Jax’s rage demon howling.
The man tried to flip Jax off to the side. Hit Jax with one of his booted feet and the demon inside Jax snapped.
Bad Guy Two met his Maker a moment later.
As the man’s body went limp, Jax climbed off of him.
Save a life. Take two. It seemed his scale was never in balance.
And Hayden, the life he’d saved only a few minutes ago, wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Wet and muddy from his tumble with the second bad guy, Jax brushed dead leaves from his pants and started back for the Escalade. Behind him, a sudden explosion rocked the night.
Damn right. SFI, one. Bad Guys, zero.
Chapter Eighteen
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RUBY PACED INSIDE the clinic, feeling slightly claustrophobic. The place wasn’t small, but she didn’t do well without windows. Thanks to one of her first assignments in the smuggling tunnels of the Gaza Strip where she’d almost died during an explosion, she had an aversion to being underground.
Elliot had been in surgery for nearly two hours. Jax was in there assisting Dr. Maria Oswalo, a woman with a beautiful, flowing South African accent and a placid demeanor that Ruby was sure hid a very clever intellect. Dr. Oswalo and Beatrice had exchanged nothing but a few murmured words before the doctor and two nurses whisked Elliot and Jax away to the operating room.
Beatrice had suggested Ruby shower in the clinic’s locker room. Locker room was an overstatement. The place was barely bigger than a supply closet with a tiny shower head poking out of a cement wall. The overhead fluorescent light had made her look like a zombie in the oval mirror hanging from a wire.
She opted to wash her face in the sink, and had borrowed some scrubs to replace her clothes that were covered with Elliot’s blood.
What Jax had done to save him was incredible. She’d known of his medical background even before he’d told her about his parents—she had run a background check on him—but she hadn’t realized how talented he was. A part of her could now understand his parents’ disappointment over him abandoning a career in the medical field in order to join the US Navy.
What they’d done to him wasn’t right, and she hoped somehow, some way, they might work it out as a family down the road. She’d always been close to her family, and even though they thought she was a filing clerk at the CIA and knew nothing of her overseas exploits, she loved them dearly and couldn’t imagine being estranged from them.
For years, she’d wrestled with lying to them, but it was for their own safety as much as hers. When she’d ended up in Chicago on probation, she’d told them the CIA had sent her there for training on a new filing system. She’d gone for Sunday dinner and enjoyed the quiet of normal life for an afternoon. Hopefully, she’d be done here by the end of the week and back in Virginia before the next Sunday dinner rolled around.
Although, she would miss her mom’s homemade cherry pie.
Ruby hit the end of the hallway and turned on her heel to pace to the opposite end. Zeb was walking toward her with a cup of coffee in his hands.
They met in the middle. “Thought you might need a pick-me-up,” he said.
She accepted the coffee and the warmth of the Styrofoam cup shocked her. Her hands were freezing. “Any word?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
“Seems like an awful long time, doesn’t it?”
His gaze went past her, over her shoulder. “Nah. Digging out a bullet can be tricky. It hit close to his femoral. The artery might even have been nicked, which explains the hefty amount of blood he lost. Keeping him stable and performing surgery is a balancing act. I wouldn’t worry yet, girlie.”
Girlie. Rolands had called her the same thing. “Your brother okay?”
Trace Hunter had told them that the men in the truck had run Chief Rolands off the road. He’d hit a tree, his airbag going off, and was about to be on the wrong end of a gun when Hunter had intervened.
“Yep. The ambulance arrived shortly after we left. He’s at the hospital. I checked on him a little while ago. He’s got some bruises and a whole lot of pissed-off-ed-ness, but he’ll live.”
“I’m sorry for all the trouble Elliot and I have caused.”
Zeb’s focus came back to her. “Are you kidding? I live for this shit. What’s an old field operative like me gonna do anyway?”
Jax had told all of them that the last man he’d killed had said he was after Elliot, that the rest of them were going to die. But who was after El and why?
Zeb and Ruby started walking back to the others. “Do you miss it?” Ruby asked. “Fieldwork?”
“Hell, yeah. Best days of my life.”
“And now you work for Beatrice?”
He half-nodded. “I subcontract on occasion.”
As they approached the room where everyone was waiting, Ruby heard a familiar voice. Jax.
Her feet picked up speed.
Sure enough, he was in the room, his scrubs covered with blood, a weary look on his face.
Ruby’s heart sank to her feet. “Is he…?”
Seemed like she was asking that a lot in the past twenty-four hours.
Jax shook his head. “We got the bullet out and Dr. Oswalo sewed him up. He lost a lot of blood, needed a few stitches, and has a couple of bruised ribs. It’s going to take a while for him to recover.”
“Did he say anything else?” Beatrice asked. She was sitting on the couch with her feet up. Hunter stood next to her, quiet and still as a mannequin.
“Not a word.” Jax crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the door frame. “Any idea what nightshade is?”
“Not a what,” she said. “A who.”
“Nightshade was a senior military intelligence commander who once ran a secret branch of counterintelligence,” Zeb said. “His real name is Christian Pierce.”
Beatrice sipped from a Styrofoam cup with a teabag in it. The clinic didn’t have fruit smoothies apparently. “He disappeared in Northern Africa in 2008 after a raid on a private camp there. The US believed Mohammed Izala kidnapped him, but they never found any evidence to confirm it. No body was ever found, dead or alive. It’s possible he was interrogated and killed.”
Zeb plopped down in a chair. “Or he may still be a prisoner. Either way, the US believes he gave up intel on military operations that has crippled us multiple times in the Middle East and Northern Africa.”
“The Moroccan 5,” Ruby murmured. “We always thought they had insider information about the US targets they picked in foreign countries.”
“What was a senior commander doing in a private camp in Northern Africa?” Jax asked. “Surely not on vacation.”
“And what does he have to do with Elliot, James, and Nelson?” Ruby added.
“We don’t know why Commander Pierce was at that camp,” Beatrice said. “My guess is, he was making a deal with someone high up in one of the political groups who wanted to overthrow a local government.”
“A political coup?” Ruby asked.
Beatrice nodded. “As you know, at times when the US wants someone out of power, and needs to make a deal, they send in a high-ranking, discreet military commander to do the job. As to what that has to do with Agent Hayden and the others, well, if Commander Pierce is alive and missing in action, it’s possible Homeland is using CIA and NI operatives to try to locate him. Agent Hayden may have received that assignment and availed K
eon James and Abdel Al-Safari to help him locate Commander Pierce.”
Jax ran a thumb along his jawline. “Once Hayden found the commander’s location, the US could call in the SEALs to rescue him.”
“And Augustus Nelson?” Ruby asked. “What is his connection?”
Beatrice shifted in her seat. “Either Keon James shared information with his almost-brother that got him killed, or Agent Hayden and James were using some of Nelson’s underworld contacts in Northern Africa to try to locate Commander Pierce.”
Ruby rubbed the back of her neck. She ached all over and could barely keep her eyes open. Beatrice and the others were now saying Elliot wasn’t a traitor. Her heart loved that idea, but it all made her head spin. “So who killed James and Nelson and nearly killed Elliot? Who sent those men after us?”
“At this point,” Zeb interjected, “why may be the better question to ask. If we figure out the motivation behind all of this, it will lead us to the murderer.”
Ruby had a better idea. She shifted her tired gaze to Jax. Her eyes felt like they had sand in them. “How long before Elliot wakes up and can answer our questions?”
The lines around Jax’s mouth tightened. He shook his head. “The man underwent major surgery, Ruby. It’s going to be a while.”
Damn. She needed answers now. Surely there was some way for Jax and Dr. Oswalo to wake him up sooner.
The thought pulled her up short. Elliot had actually died by her estimation—for a few seconds, anyway, until Jax had resurrected him—and here she’d been mentally whining because he was still out cold from surgery. What was wrong with her?
All during her time with the Agency, they’d drilled it into her: Mission first and always. Above her own wants and needs. Above the well-being of the people involved.
As she looked around at the men and one woman in that room with her, she knew that the mantra she’d always used to keep her focused was bogus. Total bullshit. Regardless of what the Agency wanted from its operatives, people mattered more than the mission.
Still, frustration burned inside her, mixing with her exhaustion. “If you guys hadn’t killed all four of those men who came after us, we could have interrogated one of them and found out who sent them.”
Trace Hunter and Jax shared a look. One that said they didn’t like being second-guessed.
Beatrice didn’t seem to like it either. “Those men wouldn’t have given up anything, Agent McKellen, and we didn’t exactly have time to grill them. As you’ll recall, it was imperative we get Agent Hayden to this clinic.”
“The Escalade is big, but it ain’t that big, girlie,” Zeb added. “We were at maximum capacity as it was.”
Everywhere she looked, she was met was hostile glares. Each and every person in the room was as tired as she was, and they’d gone beyond what most people would have done to help her.
Time for a little gratitude. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to come out as ungrateful. I’ve gone from believing my partner was innocent, to wondering if he was guilty, to coming full circle and believing he’s innocent again. The Agency lied to me. Elliot lied to me. I’ve burned my career. It’s been one long, shitty day.”
“No need for apologies,” Beatrice said. “We’ve all been in your shoes.”
Had they? Probably so. Beatrice was evasive and manipulative when she wanted to be, but spoke the truth. Ruby toyed with the Rock Star bracelet. “No, I do owe you an apology. You’ve been nothing but helpful. Elliot’s alive because of you. All of you.”
The glares receded. The heavy air in the room lifted.
“The thing is,” Ruby continued. “I don’t like unanswered questions, and our lives are all still in danger until we get those answers. I need to know if Elliot has been actually trying to find this Commander Pierce while acting as my partner and I need to know who took out the only two leads I had to prove Elliot is innocent of killing Al-Safari. Obviously, James and Nelson knew something that got them killed. I need to know what that was and if Keon James was right…that there’s a cover-up going on and someone double-crossed him.”
Beatrice’s cell rang and she fished it out of her pocket. “Yes, Rory.”
She was silent for a long moment, her face expressionless. “Please get confirmation on that, asap. Yes, I understand.”
She hung up, and after inserting the phone back into her pocket, she looked up with consternation etched on her face.
“What is it?” Jax asked.
“I believe I may know who is after Elliot,” she said.
“Who?” everyone asked at the same time.
Her brows knitted. She rubbed her oversized belly. “Rory has been doing an exhaustive facial recognition search on everyone at the club the other night when Keon James was killed.”
“And?” Zeb asked.
Her face showed a touch of disbelief. “Facial recognition has identified a man whom we know to be involved in all of this.”
Ruby felt goose bumps rise on her arms. “Who?”
Beatrice stared at the floor for a moment, then raised her piercing blue gaze to Jax. “It seems that known terrorist and member of the M5 jihad group, Abdel Al-Safari, is currently in Chicago.”
FUCKING A, HIS ears had to be deceiving him. Either that, or Beatrice Reese was pulling one horrible joke on him.
“Al-Safari is dead,” Jax said, tired, confused, and a little pissed off. This was no joking matter.
It occurred to him that Beatrice wasn’t one to joke. She didn’t kid around, found sarcasm childish, and never teased anyone, not even her husband, that Jax had ever heard.
And yet this had to be a jest, a prank. Beatrice was punking him.
Hard.
Her unwavering gaze said differently. “Rory got a match from TracRec.”
Ruby had the same half incredulous, half irate look on her face, as if she wanted to shake some sense into Jax’s boss. “Rory is wrong. It must be someone else.”
A crease laced across Beatrice’s forehead. “While Rory is, on occasion, incorrect, TracRec never acts erroneously. It labeled a man outside the club after the mass evacuation as Abdel Al-Safari. The footage came from a compilation of cell phone videos Rory was scanning. Rory checked the club’s video footage and caught what he believes to be the man inside before the gunshots, but Al-Safari kept away from the cameras so he can’t confirm.”
“Maybe you’re not hearing me.” Jax pushed off from the wall that had been holding him up. His legs protested, the day from hell taking its toll on his body. “Abdel Al-Safari is dead, boss. I was there when it happened. Hell, I tried to resuscitate the guy. He—or Elliot—blew his brains out. Whoever TracRec picked up on, it’s not Al-Safari.”
Beatrice’s eyes hardened. “I’m inclined to disagree. The TracRec facial recognition software is the foremost technologically advanced system there is. If it registers that the man known worldwide as Abdel Al-Safari was in Chicago last night, then I have no doubt he was.”
Hunter, who’d been silent like usual, rubbed his thumb over his chin. “Which means the man in Marrakech whom you thought was Al-Safari,” he said to Jax, “was really someone else.”
Ruby moved so she was standing next to Jax, as if physically adding her support to him as well as to his argument. “I don’t believe that. Elliot and I were following Al-Safari and the Moroccan 5 for years before we caught up with them. I saw Al-Safari’s face on several occasions. The man we took into custody in Morocco was the same man in the Moroccan 5.”
“Who confirmed the man’s identity to begin with?” Hunter asked.
Ruby started to speak, halted. “Shit,” she whispered and looked at Jax. Disheartenment showed in her eyes.
“Who was it?” he asked her gently. “Elliot?”
She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them and nodded curtly.
Shit was right. Elliot had mislead her in more ways than one.
But it didn’t confirm or repudiate the guy’s innocence.
Repudiate. What a fucking Be
atrice-like word.
Jax rubbed his eyes. He needed food and sleep, and for this goatfuck of an assignment to be over. Except then, his time with Ruby might be over too.
Good thing he hadn’t eaten in a while because his empty-as-hell stomach revolted. “So who the hell was the guy in Morocco?” he ground out.
“Wait,” Ruby said, brightening. “Homeland confirmed Al-Safari’s identity after his death.”
When everyone—including Jax—gave her a hello, think about it stare, her countenance dimmed again. “Right. Duh. Elliot, and/or his handler at Homeland, fudged the confirmation, didn’t they? But why?”
“But why, is right.” Zeb was stuck on the reasons behind all the fallacies and illusions the Department of Homeland had orchestrated. “That’s what I’m saying. We need to know the why before we can nail the who.”
“Does Al-Safari have any known brothers?” Beatrice seemed to be on her own mental train of thought. “Any close male relatives?”
Ruby brightened again, apparently following the train. “You think the man at the club is Al-Safari’s brother? Like a twin?”
“Not at the club,” Beatrice said. “The man who died in Morocco. The man you were led to believe was Abdel Al-Safari. It’s possible the real Al-Safari had a look-alike and he sent that man to act in his place when it came to dealing with Elliot, knowing that at some point, Elliot might renege on their deal and take him back into custody or kill him.”
“A look-alike?” Jax asked. “You mean like the men Saddam Husain had who stood in for him in public?”
“It’s believed bin Laden had several as well,” Zeb added. “Many leaders have used them over the years to protect themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mohammed Izala has a few himself.”
Beatrice sent a glance at Hunter, then Zeb. “What are your thoughts?”
Hunter conceded the floor to Zeb with a nod. Zeb said, “Agent Hayden and Keon James were trading secrets to Al-Safari’s look-alike in an attempt to get proof of life or death on Commander Pierce. Abdel, himself, was probably completely out of it. If Pierce was indeed alive, the US was willing to trade some big ass secrets to get him back, so Homeland fed Agent Hayden, who in turn fed them to Keon James, in hopes of rescuing a man with far more military intelligence in his little finger than we can imagine. What they were feeding Izala was probably nothing in comparison, but Izala didn’t know that.”