Flashpoint (13 page)

Except Jimmy couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to sleep.

Maybe that’s what was going on here. Sleep deprivation was used as torture in some countries. It was used to break people down, to get them talking. Maybe that was why he was saying things he’d never said to anyone.
It feels too easy.
Shit.

He stood up. “Am I going to freak out your neighbors if I walk into the kitchen like this?”

Tess was still sitting on the floor. She had the strangest expression on her face. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? That’s how you got stabbed.”

“Dinged.” He went into the kitchen—the blinds were closed—and found his beer.

“The first two didn’t hear you coming.”

Jimmy didn’t have to turn to know that Tess had come to stand in the doorway. He could see her clearly enough in his peripheral vision. She’d put her robe back on. What a shame.

“So you made sure the third one did,” she continued softly. Gently. As if she were talking to a frightened animal or a small child. Or someone she cared about very deeply.

And Jimmy knew the truth. He was here because he liked her. He really,
really
liked her. And she liked him, too.

He was here because his hands had been shaking far too often lately, and he wanted someone to forgive him for all of his sins.

He needed someone to know, instead of just guessing or assuming from all of the rumors that regularly circulated about him.

“It wasn’t intentional,” he told her. But yeah. He must’ve made some noise. . . .

“And yet it was still too easy,” she whispered.

How did she know that? He didn’t even know it himself until she said it.

He couldn’t look at her. Not even from the corners of his eyes. He finished his beer and turned to the sink to rinse out the bottle.

He heard her coming toward him. Felt her warmth. And her slight hesitation.

But then she put her arms around him, hugging him from behind, her arms around his chest, her body pressed against his back.

It took him by surprise. He’d been expecting a tentative hand on his shoulder or arm, not this full embrace.

“I’m glad that it’s easy,” she said fiercely. “I’m glad that you’re stronger and smarter and better trained than those men on the roof—than everyone that you go up against. I’m glad that you’re the one who walks away. Just . . . oh, Diego, next time give yourself permission to do it without getting . . . dinged.”

He didn’t know what to do or say in response to that, and when he opened his mouth, “My name’s Jimmy” came out.

She was smart, but he didn’t wait for her to figure it out. He explained. “Diego’s not my real name. Well, it sort of is. It’s Spanish for James, but . . .”

“Jimmy,” she repeated. She kissed him. Right on his back. Next to his shoulder blade.

He wasn’t sure what it was that made him keep talking. It might’ve been that tiny kiss—a kiss that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with tenderness and genuine caring. Or maybe it was her arms around him, or the solid warmth of her body against him, or the fact that he could speak to the bottom of the kitchen sink, to the tiny, smiling cartoon cow that looked up at him from the decorative knob of the drain strainer, without risk of the cow turning away in disapproval.

“I get dinged up a lot,” he admitted. “Sometimes I think I might . . .” The cow smiled up at him. Tess held him tightly.

But he couldn’t say it. He didn’t even really know what he was trying to tell her.

Tess spoke then, her voice quiet as that cow smiled on. “Do you think you’re somehow trying to, I don’t know, punish yourself? For being so good at . . . what you do?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not that so much as . . .” Oh, Christ. He wanted to leave. Why didn’t he? It would take almost no effort to break free from her arms, to pull his clothes back on and walk out the door. He could get into the Agency car and drive until the sun rose, the radio up so loud that he wouldn’t have to think.

Instead he stood there as she whispered, “What, Jimmy?” As she struggled to understand.

Which was a pretty freaking enormous task, since he didn’t understand any of this himself. “It hurts,” he said. It was the best he could give her.

She was smart enough to know that he wasn’t referring to his leg, or even how difficult it was talking about this. He could almost hear her thinking. “And . . . that’s somehow a good thing?”

“Fuck! I don’t know!” He turned to face her. “I’m sorry. Forgive me—”

“It’s all right,” she said. Her eyes weren’t filled with loathing or disgust, just sweet understanding, despite the fact that she couldn’t know what he was trying to tell her, couldn’t know really why he was angry.

So Jimmy did the only thing he could do. He kissed her. “Tess.”

“I’m here,” she said.

And she was.

The American and the Kazbekistani man had both vanished.

They were gone.

Sophia had watched them turn the corner from some distance back—first the American, and then the K-stani. It looked as if the K-stani man had broken into a run, and she’d picked up her own pace.

But now she was at that same corner and the street was empty. She pulled back her veil, hoping that would help her see them. But the entire area was deserted.

It was weird—doubly so because there were no alleys or side streets for someone to duck into to hide.

And this really wasn’t so much a street as it was a driveway. Moonlight glinted off the windows of the long, low factory buildings that lined both sides of the narrow passageway. Their entrances were back around on the avenue she’d come from, so there wasn’t even a doorway to slip into. She could see loading docks farther down the drive—much farther than the K-stani man could have gotten, even if he’d sprinted at an Olympic gold medalist’s speed.

It was a dangerous choice of paths to take while out past curfew. If a police patrol approached, there’d be nowhere for her to hide.

She ventured only a few steps down the driveway before stopping again.

As much as she hated to admit it, she’d lost them. It was far too risky for her to continue. Being stopped by the police would be a death sentence for her. It would mean a swift delivery to Padsha Bashir’s nephews.

The American had said he’d go back to Lartet’s in a few days. She’d watch for him to return, this time from a nearby alley.

Because she wasn’t going into Lartet’s again.

Not until she went there to kill him.

Sophia retraced her steps back around the corner and—

She was grabbed, a hand clamped hard over her mouth and nose, her body slammed up against the bricks of the building.

No, that wasn’t the building she’d hit. It was a man. He hauled her up and through a window and into the factory before she could fight, before she could think, before she could scream.

But of course she couldn’t scream, because his hand was over her face, keeping her from making any noise, keeping her from getting any air.

And she couldn’t fight either, or even reach for her gun, because he had her in such a secure hold that struggling got her nowhere.

He pulled her back into the darkness of some kind of office—her leg hit the metal of a desk with a clang—and out a door, down a corridor. Even though it was futile, she was struggling, and her head connected with the doorframe so solidly she saw stars. Or maybe the stars were from the fact that she couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear much of anything but her heart pounding and . . .

And then she could see. As she was dragged through yet another doorway, she saw moonlight through the tall factory windows. It was shining on some kind of conveyor belt, on the hard concrete floor, on the crumpled body of the Kazbekistani man who had followed the American out of Lartet’s bar.

And now Sophia could think, too, despite the panic that gripped her from the lack of air. She knew she was going to die because, although she’d been careful, she hadn’t been careful enough.

It was the story of her life—how fitting that it should be the story of her death as well.

The American—her killer—had realized he was being followed not just by the K-stani man, but by her as well. He’d turned down that particular corner, onto that factory driveway, on purpose. He’d gone up and into this window, and into the factory. She should have seen that that was a possibility. In hindsight, she realized that those windows that lined the drive were all relatively low to the ground. It wasn’t an obvious or easy way inside—it would require both strength and skill—but it
was
a way in, and the American had taken it.

And then he’d waited for the K-stani man to come around the corner, to run past, thinking he’d lost the American down by the loading docks. But the American—she’d thought he was little back in Lartet’s bar, but he had arms like steel—had gotten behind his pursuer and dragged him here, inside.

When the American had realized she wasn’t going to take any chances and walk down that driveway, he must’ve quickly found his way to the front of the building and come out of that office window instead, and, heaven help her, she needed air.

And then she got it, as he ripped the burka from her head, as he released his hold on her, yanking her robe from her body as she fell—as he pushed her down onto the hard floor.

And Sophia realized as she lay there, gasping and sucking in precious air, that the K-stani man was only unconscious. His hands were tied behind him with a belt. The American wouldn’t have bothered to tie him if he were dead.

“What the hell . . . ?” Incredulity rang in the American’s voice, and as she looked up she saw it on his face, too. Pure disbelief on a hard face that belonged to a man who had arms of steel, a face that he quickly tried to hide with that expressionless mask she’d seen him wear while talking to Lartet.

She knew she was not what he’d expected to find beneath that burka, her blond hair gleaming in the moonlight, the white gauze of her gown nearly transparent.

He was not what she’d expected to find either. He was smart, he was strong, he was very good at staying alive. An alpha male in a beta’s body. The kind of man who knew how to make money when everyone else was starving, to stay on top when everyone else was going under.

The expressionless mask he was wearing, however, didn’t completely hide his very male reaction to her very visible female form. She’d seen a similar flash in his eyes back in the bar, and she knew she had a fighting chance.

“Please,” Sophia said, reaching up toward him with one hand, her voice thick with the tears she’d been holding back for months. “Oh, please, I need your help!”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

“Who are you?” Decker asked.

The woman glanced toward the unconscious Kazbekistani man lying over by the window, on the cold concrete of the factory floor. “I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “Not here. Not in front of him.”

The tears in her eyes overflowed and poured down her beautiful face.

Deck had lived plenty long enough to know that things were seldom what they appeared to be. Especially when it came to both tears and beautiful faces.

“Who is he?” he asked her, gesturing to the man on the floor.

“I don’t know.” She was lying. She was also an American. She sat up. Adjusted her dress. Watched him watch her as she sat up and adjusted her dress.

Yeah, those tears were a special effect. As was the dress. Which, despite being torn and bloodstained in places, was one hell of a dress. It was barely a dress at all.

She had a body that worked well with that outfit, despite the fact that she’d obviously been knocked around by someone in the recent past. It was hard not to stare, and she well knew it.

Was this what all K-stani prostitutes wore beneath their robes?

Business should have been booming.

Decker considered himself not easily distracted. And he was definitely . . . distracted.

The tiny revolver that he found in the pocket of her robe helped him focus.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he ordered as he checked the safety and pocketed the little firearm. She was wearing a ring on her right hand that she’d kept turned inward to her palm at the bar. If it was real, it was worth a small fortune.

Blue eyes flashed up at him. At least he thought they were blue. They might have been green. He couldn’t tell for sure in this light. Whatever color they were, she was used to using them to her advantage.

Although, truth be told, when she was wearing that dress, most men weren’t going to be looking into her eyes.

“You really think I’m concealing another weapon?” she asked, using her hands to wipe her face. As if her tears were something she was embarrassed by, something she didn’t want him to see. It was a nice touch, as was the trace of dark humor in her voice. He liked women who got a kick out of irony. She gestured to her outfit. “In
this
?”

Except for one small piece of limestone, soft and crumbling—a sample for her rock collection?—the robe’s other pockets were empty. And as far as Decker could tell, there was nothing sewn into the lining, either.

“I don’t suppose you’re carrying any ID?” he asked.

She shook her head, wiping her nose with the back of one pale, slender hand. Her nails were bitten down to the quick. “I have no papers, no passport. They were stolen, months ago.”

Decker nodded. “You’re probably going to think I’m just using this as an opportunity to cop a feel, but I really do need to make sure you’re not carrying another weapon.”

She gazed up at him with those innocent eyes in that delicate, heart-shaped, porcelain-complexioned face. It was a searching look, as if she were trying to read his mind.

It was times like these he wished he’d bought a carton of those little Oscar award key chains he’d seen in that souvenir shop in Hollywood. They were small enough that he could carry a few with him at all times and hand them out to people when they gave a really outstanding performance. Like this one.

“I understand,” she finally said and, keeping her hands clearly in sight, although still trying to hide that ring from him, she pushed herself up and off the ground.

As Decker watched, she faced the wall, put her hands against it, and spread her legs.

Sweet Jesus.

She stood—purposely, he had absolutely no doubt—in the brightest patch of moonlight that was shining in through the window. Lit the way she was, she might as well have been naked.

And standing the way she was . . .

Hello.

He could see through her dress. She had intricate lines—hennaed designs?—on her arms and upper body.

There was no way she had a weapon on her. Except Decker knew that was what she wanted him to think, by standing in the light, by standing in that particular position. It was what she would want him to think if she
were
carrying a knife she could use to slit his throat.

So—what a pity—he had to run his hands over that body.

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?”