Edge of Courage (Edge Security Series Book 5) (3 page)

A scuff of noise from the front door jolted her upright. She clicked out of the database just as two ISIS fighters strode through the main door of the building. They didn’t acknowledge her as they walked by her little room.

She knew them. They were drivers for the al-Khansa. They went down the hall toward Asqa’s office. Sarah breathed out and opened the database again. Blackwell had asked her to locate two different people. One was a CIA agent who’d gotten swept up by a standard ISIS raid. He’d been in ISIS custody for three days now.

And one was Claire Hayden, the beloved daughter of a British MP, one who’d been enticed to join the holy movement of the Islamic State to fight the imperialism of the West.

Stupid girl.

Sarah stiffened. There was the agent’s name. Malik Zerjawi was William Patel’s cover name. Dammit, he was being held in the main HQ building. That didn’t bode well for him. It was where they interrogated prisoners. She memorized the location and continued to search for the girl.

A commotion sounded farther inside the building. She logged out of the system and went to the hallway. The two drivers dragged a woman between them. Her veil had fallen off, exposing her face. She had a split lip, a bruised cheek, and pale gray eyes. When she yelled at the men, it was with an English accent.

Sarah smiled under her veils. Luck was on her side today. She’d just found Claire, her next mission from E.D.G.E.

D
ylan’s arms
tightened around her, bringing her closer to his hardness. They lay entwined under his sheets. Heat curled through her, making her smile as she blinked awake.

“I like when you smile at me,” Dylan said, his voice deep and rough from sleep. He leaned close for a kiss.

A crash sounded.

Sarah bolted upright in bed, alert and ready to fight.

And alone.

The pang of loss distracted her for only a moment as she took in her sparse bedroom in Mosul decorated only with a bright quilt and an overflowing bookshelf.

She slid a knife out from under her pillow and cracked her door open, listening hard. She and Rakin lived in a house just on the edge of the crowded downtown district. It wasn’t a large house, more like a two-bedroom apartment with a basement. A basement with a hidden and locked room.

Moving soundlessly into the short hall, she peered into the kitchen. Rakin knelt on the floor, a tin by his side and a pile of white crystals in front of him.

Anger lanced her as she stepped forward. “Did you just dump my sugar? Do you know how much that costs?”

“I’m cleaning it. Relax. I saved most of it.”

She grit her teeth and went to take a shower. It was just spilled sugar. They could get more. But she couldn’t get the anger to diminish. She turned the water on for the shower. Cold again.

She stood still under the stream of icy water, letting it cool her heated skin. It wasn’t the sugar. She knew that. It was the dream. It was always the same. Their last morning together. Before she’d decided to end it. For her sake as well as his.

In the shower, she tried to scrub all thoughts of Dylan away, forcing herself to focus on the problem at hand: how to rescue Claire Hayden. Work always helped her get herself under control.

By the time Sarah was dressed and sipping tea in the small kitchen, she had herself under control. Agent Ice reigned.

She pressed her lips together at the thought of the name and set her cup down on the scarred table. She shifted her feet when Rakin sat so he wouldn’t bump them.

“Why didn’t you follow Claire yesterday?” he asked quietly.

She sighed. “I told you, I didn’t have to,” she said. “I found her in the brigade’s database, listed under the
sabaya
. I know where they took her.”

“I know, but I hate the thought of her with them.” Rakin’s British accent started to show. It always did when he was pissed about something. His accent showed more and more of late.

“Why are you angry? Is it because she’s British? Does that make what they’re doing worse somehow?” Sarah asked.

He seemed to deflate. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Sarah crossed her arms. “Try me.”

“She’s from home,” he said softly, but his gaze challenged hers. “And I don’t think you really know what that means.”

She didn’t move, though she wanted to hunch from the verbal blow, but she didn’t think Rakin had really meant to hurt her.

“Fine,” she said in a neutral voice. “But you know I couldn’t just walk off my post. I could have blown my cover. We know where she is; we can get her out.”

He shook his head. “It’s easier to snag her on the street than for me to rescue her from one of those bloody whorehouses.”

“Easier for you? We do this together, remember?”

“What can you do? You’re just…”

Sarah went cold as anger filled her. She let that anger and coldness fill her voice and her eyes. “You’ve been here too long, Rakin, if you think that I’m not as capable of rescuing this girl as you.”

He shoved away from the table and stalked into the living room, and held aside the drape covering the front window. He peered out into the early morning light. It was after dawn and the first call to prayers.

“You’re right,” he said finally. “I have been here too long.” He let the curtain fall back into place. “Did I tell you Ahmed asked me again to marry you?”

“What?” The change in topic threw her. She went to the front room, her fists clenched at the thought of her slimy neighbor wanting to be with her. “I thought you’d already told him no.”

“He thinks I’m just driving a hard bargain.”

“What is his problem?”

Rakin shrugged. “He’s got an elderly mother and needs a young wife.”

“A slave, you mean.”

Rakin sighed and faced her. “I presume you have a plan to rescue Claire?”

Sarah smiled. Rakin always came around. “Of course.”

T
he next day
, Sarah shuffled with hunched shoulders as she pushed a tea cart through the crowd at the souq. The street market overflowed with tiny shops selling everything from food and spices that scented the air, to clothing and even tools. The colorful displays contrasted sharply with the black-veiled women and their somber men.

Rakin walked ahead of the cart. He pretended to ignore her, as any good man in Mosul did with his sister, at least the men who didn’t want to attract the attention of the ISIS soldiers patrolling the streets.

He dropped back a little and didn’t look at her veiled figure as he spoke Arabic. “Follow the plan.”

Sarah scowled, though Rakin couldn’t see it, and answered him in the same language. “I always follow the plan.” She gave the large cart a shove over a bump in the street. The top held carafes of tea and tins of cookies that clinked together as the cart moved; underneath was an empty cabinet meant to hold extra supplies.

“Unless the plan doesn’t work,” she muttered.

“I heard that,” Rakin said. “This girl’s life depends on us. You’re sure you can impersonate the woman?”

She fairly growled. “I won’t get caught.”

He grunted and strode to the front of the slow-moving cart. He wore the traditional
dishdasha
, a long closed robe that went to the ankle on most men, but to mid-shin on him, showing his white linen pants. He walked slowly, but nothing could quite hide his athleticism or the dangerous look in his brown eyes.

She kept her head tilted, as if she looked down. Her
niqab
covered her face except for her eyes, but the sheer black veil she wore over it covered her gaze. No one around her could tell that she studied her surroundings as much as any soldier in enemy territory would. Her black
abaya
draped long and loose over her, hiding her petite but muscular frame, kept in shape by long sessions in their basement.

Sweat dripped down her back. It was the end of September, and even so, the temperatures in northern Iraq normally went into the nineties. Wearing layers of stifling black clothing, veils as well as gloves, did nothing to help cool her down.

Maybe Rakin was right. Maybe they’d both been here too long. Because right now, she’d kill for a shower and then to throw on a tank top and a pair of shorts. And she’d finish with a loaded thin-crust pizza and a glass of pinot noir. Her stomach rumbled.

No. She’d survived the scorching summer here and now more than ever she had to stay. Not only did Blackwell still depend on her, she’d also had a barely functioning underground railroad in place to help enslaved women and children. The network was still too fragile for her to leave. The people she’d recruited were too scared to stay together without her. She needed more time with them.

As an ex-CIA agent and an E.D.G.E. operator, Sarah had more than enough skill to gather the intel E.D.G.E. and Blackwell requested, but the situation here in Mosul was so much worse than she’d expected. The people so much more in need of help. She couldn’t turn her back.

Still, she’d love to be home and have that glass of wine, or maybe a cold beer. That would taste amazing right now. And a cheeseburger. Oh yes. A cheeseburger with bacon. Lots of bacon.

Her stomach knotted, not just with hunger, but with regret. She had teased Dylan often about his love of bacon. It had been her last meal with him. She’d convinced him to skip the fancy restaurant for a quick dinner and an evening spent at his place. She’d laughed so much that evening, before he’d made her melt in his bed.

Her good-bye note had burned a hole in the pocket of her jeans the whole time. After a night of passion, she’d slipped out in the early morning and left the note behind.

It was for the best, she reminded herself.

She almost missed seeing Rakin’s fingers twitching on his right hand. She hunched further. Maybe it
was
time to get out. If she didn’t focus and get her head straight, then she could easily lose it. She squashed all thoughts of food, her apartment, and the man who haunted her dreams.

Her heart rate accelerated when she saw what—or rather, who—Rakin had signaled about. Two men dressed in white
dishdashas
and turbans, sporting long beards, stopped by her cart. They were members of the
hisbah
, the male version of the al-Khansa.

These men could definitely put a damper on the rescue plan. The house where the girl was being kept was still two blocks away.

She did a quick check of her clothing, ensuring none of her skin showed and her veils were in place. Members of the
hisbah
had the capacity to beat or detain her or Rakin for not complying with the ISIS mandate for dress and decorum. The men shouldn’t have any issues with them, considering she had no skin showing and Rakin acted as her
mahram
.

“
Chay
for us both,” the taller one said in Arabic. “And some of your
hajji badah
cookies.”

Rakin took the men’s money while she brought out two
istikans
for the tea. She scooped raw sugar into the bottom of the small glass cups, and then poured a cardamon-scented black tea into them. She set the
istikans
down on the cart’s top where the men could reach them, and then offered the almond and cardamon cookies from the batch she’d baked yesterday.

She fidgeted with putting away the tin of cookies and checking the canisters of tea while Rakin spoke with the men about the weather. When the men set down their empty
istikans
, she began to push the cart again.

They made their shuffling, meandering way to their target. They’d borrowed the large tea cart from a neighbor, one who never sold in this souq. Rakin had told him he’d wanted to supplement his measly income. Everyone had a measly income now that ISIS had taken over.

They eventually reached the large sand-colored, flat-roofed house with the eight-foot-high stone wall. Pillars of white marble framed the double-doored front entrance. Sarah had worked at this particular house before, guarding the girls inside. ISIS gave its fighters the captured non-Muslim women and girls, the
sabaya
, as sexual rewards. This was the place where the men received their reward.

It sat on the edge of the souq, within blocks of both the al-Khansa headquarters and the main ISIS headquarters. Men entered and left the building by the front gate; most spoke with excitement, nodding at the soldiers on guard there.

Sarah took a large metal carafe in one hand and a metal pail lined with cloth and full of cookies in the other. She nodded at Rakin and left him selling tea and gossiping.

She walked along the stone wall to get to the back alley and the women’s entrance. As she walked, she added a slight limp and rounded her shoulders more. She became just like the tea woman who came to this place every day.

Trash was piled almost as high as the wall, with flies buzzing around it. She lifted the latch on the gate and entered, nodding at the guard on the inside who had his AK-47 slung over his shoulder. He didn’t bother to look at her. No woman came to this place who didn’t belong.

Sarah had studied the tea woman’s routine when she’d been on duty here before. She knew how the woman walked, talked, and acted. Yesterday, Sarah had slipped something into the woman’s own tea to make sure she stayed away. The poison mimicked food poisoning. The woman wouldn’t be able to leave her bed today.

Sarah continued to limp through the dusty patch at the back of the house that held a stone bench and a dry, tiled fountain with a statue in the middle. It had been of a woman holding an urn, but its head and chest had been smashed. Dahab had said it was forbidden to have a statue of an unveiled woman.

The house itself must have once been a fine home for a rich Iraqi. It had fallen into disrepair since ISIS had taken the city. The owners had either fled or been executed. Now it housed one of the worst atrocities of the Islamic State.

She made her slow way to the back door, emphasizing her limping gait before knocking timidly on the door. A double-veiled woman answered; she wore her gloves even inside. Sarah catalogued her quick movements, straight posture, and her position at the back door.

Dahab.

“You’re late,” Dahab snapped. “Fill the trays in the front room.”

Sarah nodded like the tea woman would, keeping in character. She hurried her stride as she walked through the kitchen, throwing more sway into her walk as if to accommodate a leg that didn’t fully bend or straighten and couldn’t support her full weight.

A young girl, maybe ten years old, washed dishes in a bucket at the sink; by her uncovered face and the bruise on her cheek, Sarah knew she was one of the Yazidi
sabaya
kept here. Thousands of women and children had been captured by ISIS and used or sold as sex slaves.

Sarah hadn’t seen this little girl before. The Yazidi people were
kuffar
, or infidels, who lived in Kurdistan and northern Iraq, whom ISIS targeted and systematically exterminated. Most of the female prisoners in this house were Yazidi.

The girl’s gaze found Sarah’s and her blue eyes, not uncommon among the Yazidi people, reminded her of another’s eyes, those of a man she’d left behind. Her heart broke at the fear and desperation she saw on the child’s face.

“What are you looking at, girl?” Dahab’s short whip whistled and struck the girl across her shoulders.

She cried out and went back to washing dishes, her head bowed.

Sarah’s gut tightened with the need to react but she stayed her hand, again vowing to kill this woman before she left Iraq.

“Stupid girl,” Dahab muttered. “Soon you’ll be moved upstairs where you belong.”