True Deceptions (True Lies) (16 page)

Then the soldiers stepped toward Cassie.

Chapter Twelve

S
imon left Dane and went to meet up with Cassie. She’d be excited to find out she was finally a player. Her expertise would be the game changer in this assignment. They could
buy the drones from one source, probably Dane, and completely retrofit them to the needs of the North Korean businessmen, keeping the new and improved capabilities developed by Cassie off the radar of international groups looking for serious destructive power.

When he arrived at the Raytheon display, he couldn’t locate her. He called and texted. No response. Toying with some of the exhibits, he kept one eye and one ear on the crowds at all times. Thirty minutes passed while he was waiting.
Was she lost?
He called her phone again and received no answer. She knew never to turn her phone off.
Ever.
He texted her again and even sent her an email. No reply. Perhaps she’d gone to the restroom.

A tall, blonde woman among mostly dark-skinned men in uniforms should not be difficult to find, but the only blonds he saw as he pushed through the crowds on the way to the restroom were several male members of the Swedish military. He stood outside the restroom door for several minutes before asking a woman to check for her inside. A minute later, the woman emerged with no news.

Where was she? A woman who never veered from the rules and, who followed his orders at least ninety-nine percent of the time would not take off without telling him. Not here. He clenched his fist. If one person, any person, harmed her, he’d regret his decision a million times over.

He needed a plan. He returned to the Raytheon display and asked them to contact him if she came back. A few U.S. and German companies he’d done work with in the past also promised to contact him if they saw her.

Three hours turned into four hours, which turned into six. Where the hell was she? The hotel had been contacted, but he hesitated before calling in the SOFEX security team. He and Cassie didn’t need that much exposure. Something happened to her. Something bad. He wanted to believe everything would work out, but if something smelled like shit, it generally was.

Cassie’s disappearance didn’t annoy him like the times he’d lost partners to South American jails or Russian hit squads. She was more important to him than a typical partner. And that made this whole situation even more frustrating. If he didn’t know where she was, he couldn’t help her.

After going over every possibility, no matter how remote, he contacted the one person who would give him the most crap—Tucker.

“When did you last see her?” Tucker sounded as angry as Simon felt.

“She left me while I spoke to one of my contacts.” No way in hell was he mentioning his lunch with Dane.

“This assignment must be completed, and you lost our most valuable asset?”

“The same one at whom you aimed your Walther P99? Yes. Can we go through diplomatic channels to find her?”

Simon could hear Tucker’s exhalation through the phone. “One major problem. She’s American.”

“That was your call. Why the hell would you make her American and tie our hands.”

Tucker paused a few moments before responding. “It was necessary for the assignment.”

“You’re an idiot. Your cool maneuvering may end the assignment before it begins, unless you either locate her or find me a replacement.” The idea of someone replacing Cassie stuck in his throat and made him want to reach through the phone and kill Tucker. “Help me find her. If you have to involve the Prime Minister, do it.”

“I’m not your puppet, Dunn. Don’t threaten me.”

“Let me rephrase, then. If she’s not located in the next twenty-four hours, I will drop my assignment, fly to London, and personally rip your heart out and shove it up your arse.”

The line went dead.

A fear swept through Simon, as big as a tsunami, threatening to completely derail his control. He couldn’t lose her. He wouldn’t lose her. His heart would burst if the woman he cared for even more than Nicola disappeared from his side. He’d never survive it.

At the hotel in Amman, he questioned as many colleagues as he could without drawing too much attention to himself. No one had seen her. Sitting in the bar, he watched Dane arrive with a few U.S. military officers. If Cassie was acting as an American, he’d better start using his American contacts.

“Dane, do you have a minute?”

“For you, anything.” He looked over Simon’s shoulder. “Where’s your companion?”

“Missing.” Simon didn’t have time to play games with Dane. He explained how she hadn’t met at their designated spot after lunch.

Dane raised his eyebrows. “She’s not exactly the easiest person to hide around here. Are you sure she didn’t take off on her own?”

“She wouldn’t leave without telling me. She’s American and has been gone almost eight hours now.” He frowned. “Can you contact the embassy and see if the authorities have located her?”

“Give me some time, I should be able to find her.” Dane pulled out his phone and began to dial.

C
assie didn’t understand why she’d been arrested. No one spoke English. She only knew a man was abusing a woman, two bystanders did nothing to help, and the military had arrived. Instead of receiving assi
stance, both she and the woman were put in handcuffs and pushed into a police van, while the men walked away laughing. The woman had regained some of her energy and sat with her hands together, chanting something to herself over and over.

Cassie didn’t cry. She didn’t fight. A fog covered her senses and drugged her into a stupor. At first all she’d wanted was Simon, and she’d called out to have someone contact him. After the van doors had closed and they’d driven for what seemed like hours, she’d stopped asking. They’d ignore her anyway.

The van arrived at a white stone building surrounded by a large black iron gate. Guards in military uniforms, carrying assault rifles, stood at the entrance. Two women in black uniforms with white scarves covering their hair pulled the beaten woman out of the van and then grabbed for Cassie. She tripped. Her knee plowed into the asphalt. Pain tore through her leg. A jagged hole ripped in the fabric of her skirt exposed a bloody wound. No one, however, rushed to her aid.

She lifted her skirt to look more closely at the wound, but a security guard yelled at her and yanked it back down. Blood seeped through the material and oozed from the rip. She remained sitting, unsure of putting weight on her leg. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed a large stone and it was stuck halfway down her windpipe, making her breathing difficult. She rocked her body back and forth, but she didn’t cry. Not yet. Not in front of the guards who had placed her in this hell. They left her on the ground, standing over her with large rifles at the ready. Did they think she’d run? She was too much of a coward.

Several other women, some in shabby robes and others in more Western clothes, arrived in police cars and vans. The police pushed them toward Cassie and the woman from the SOFEX compound. One newly arrived woman had a deep gash on her forehead. Blood smeared across her face and her right eye was swollen shut. Two of the women sobbed and pleaded in Arabic. Others remained silent, their heads bowed in submission.

When the group grew to seven, they were led into the building through heavy doors and then down long gray hallways. In a small empty room, female guards began to strip the prisoners. Several women cried out as guards pulled their clothes off and left them standing naked. One older woman, marked by deep lines and blemishes on her face, wore a constant scowl. She stripped off her clothes and stood completely naked with her shoulders back and saggy breasts thrust forward.

Although Cassie towered over the guards and the other prisoners, she tried to minimize her presence by slumping forward and standing in the back of the room. She didn’t understand the orders, as she didn’t understand Arabic. Instead, she followed the example of the women around her. The humiliation of the situation almost broke her, but she carried on without complaint. She removed her pencil skirt, her blouse, her bra, and her panties. One hand automatically dropped over her crotch and the other covered her breasts.

The guards lined the women up against the wall. Six medium to short women with dark hair and dark complexions lined up next to Cassie. Standing there, at least six inches taller than the next tallest woman in the room, with her long golden hair shining brighter than the darker hues of the other woman, she’d never felt so alien and alone in her life.

A black beetle crawled across the floor and over one of the women’s feet. The woman either didn’t notice it, or didn’t care. Cassie stepped back, away from the path of the bug and stopped short of leaning on the dirty wall. One by one, the guards forced the women into showers and scrubbed them until their skin became red and sore.

When Cassie stepped under the spray, she shivered at the cold water. Someone sprayed a bottle of something gross toward her. She shut her eyes against the onslaught. The taste of melted cardboard dripped into her mouth. Her stomach rebelled at the nasty taste. She tried to rinse it out in the shower water, but the water was worse than the soap. A guard held a large brush on the end of a long handle and began to scrub her skin. When the brush scraped her injured knee, Cassie gasped and tried to cover it. The guard smacked her other leg with the back of the brush until she stood straight again.

After the torture of the shower, they moved to an examination room, still dripping wet. The scrape on Cassie’s leg stung. She limped across the floor and waited. A chill shot through her. Her limbs trembled, and she lifted her hand to her mouth to keep from being sick. The stone wedged in her throat still made it hard to breathe. Did anyone speak English? If they did, they refused to acknowledge her.

A woman in a lab coat arrived, her hands already gloved. One prisoner went before Cassie. The woman searched between the prisoner’s legs, in every possible crevice and when the nude prisoner cried and tried to push the guard’s hands away, she received a slap across her cheek to stop her protests. The guard did not change gloves between prisoners. Bile rose up from Cassie’s knotted stomach, knowing whatever disease the first woman had would be hand delivered to her. She prayed the woman was healthy. Whoever went last would fare the worst.

Another woman in a lab coat, older and carrying an iPad, rushed into the room and started to argue with the first. The older woman must have won the argument. She took over the exams with a calmer demeanor… and a box of gloves to change into between each patient.

As fingers pushed into her most vulnerable places, Cassie tried to shut out the humiliation. The cavity search, however, cracked her composure and darkened her soul. She bit her tongue until the coppery taste of her own blood rid her mouth of the lingering nastiness of the soap.

All the prisoners were directed into the shower again to clean up after the examination. As they walked by the new lab coated woman, she spoke softly to each prisoner. She nodded to Cassie. Her lips were pressed shut, but there was empathy in her eyes. And for a moment, Cassie felt some of her tension dissipate. Someone in the prison seemed compassionate. It would have to be enough for now. The woman not only protected them from cruelly indifferent contamination, but she gave them another consideration as well. Warm water. It sprayed over them, uncramped tense muscles and took away a bit of the fear, even though the water still smelled, and the soap was still nasty.

Cassie received a blue dress to wear. The material scratched her sensitive, scoured skin, but it was better than the shame of being naked in a room of strangers. The guards led her down another gray hallway and through three sets of locked doors. No other prisoners followed.

She noticed everything around her. The cracks in the wall with white sodium deposits leeching through. The water stains on the gray cement floor. The women dressed in the blue prison garb, who sat quietly in their cells, some with a cellmate, other times alone. Their heads lifted when she walked by, and they stared at her, an obvious foreigner. A few called out to her in a foreign and unsettling wail. She didn’t know if she was being cursed or prayed for.

The guard stopped at a small, empty cell at the far end of a hallway. When she motioned for her to enter, Cassie froze. This was jail, in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand the culture, didn’t know what her options included, if she even had options. The guard patted her arm to coax her in. Once Cassie crossed the threshold, the guard slammed the door. The echo thudded through her chest and knocked out any remaining emotion.

The cell contained a bed with a beige blanket and a navy blue pillow. The pillow was stained white. From tears? From something more insidious? A toilet and small sink sat in the corner, rusty and cracked. She sat on the bed, numb, staring through the bars into the hall. There was no cell across from hers, only a gray wall with no window. She heard shuffling in the next cell, but otherwise the only noises were hollow and industrial sounds from another part of the building.

Her knee hurt and her body shuddered from a chill that emanated from the inside and spread through her until jerky tremors shook her limbs. She curled into a fetal position and allowed her tears to fall.

Chapter Thirteen

F
or what seemed like a day and a night, Cassie sat in solitary confinement. No one spoke to her or acknowledged her existence. Guards dropped off food she didn’t recognize and warm glasses of water. The water tasted salty, as thoug
h they’d taken it from a dirty fish tank, but it was better than the water from her sink.

Her skin itched constantly. The only thing to observe in the cell was the comings and goings of the bugs crawling around the floor and walls. They didn’t bother her, and she didn’t bother them. If one crossed her imaginary boundary, she flicked it away, but refused to kill it.

When she woke from a long, uncomfortable sleep, a middle-aged man, dressed in black, was standing outside of her cell, staring at her through the open door. She’d only seen female guards since arriving behind the walls of the prison. The man leered at her. His dark, narrowed eyes examined her body head to toe. She shifted back in the bed to the corner of the cot. Her stomach, sick from the food they’d given her, contorted into a punch-in-the-gut type cramp. She wanted to escape, but that was impossible.