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

B
ack at her apartment
, Alyssa showered and dressed, trying not to think about Zach and their conversation. It had stirred memories and dark thoughts. What if he was right? Would she be okay when the bomb was real? And it would be real next time. This was Al Shabah they were dealing with.

She grabbed her leather jacket for warmth and went down to Lattes and More. Frank made up her vanilla latte and the caramel macchiato. Mr. Almadi sat in his usual seat watching out the window.

Outside in the alley, she went to Rob’s lean-to holding both coffees. He wasn’t sitting in his usual spot.

“Rob?” she called.

A metal clang drew her eyes to the back of the alley. Rob shuffled forward, his eyes darting to the street behind her. “I’m glad to see you, Detective Alyssa.” He waved a large, stained brown envelope. “I have something important to show you.”

She raised her brows. She did not want to know what those stains were from. “Want your coffee first? I find I always think better with caffeine in me.”

“This is more important than coffee.” He waved the envelope in emphasis and a waft of pungent body odor reached her. “This is really important. Like national security important.”

She sighed. Rob seemed almost manic today. She thought he’d been getting better, almost lucid, and ready for help in getting off the street.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he yelled at her. “You have to believe me. I’m not crazy.”

Disappointment shot through her. He was edging from manic into aggressive. She really didn’t want to have to do something about that. She took a careful step back and placed his coffee on the ground before holding up her free hand.

“Hold on Rob,” she said. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. It’s just unexpected is all. I haven’t even had my coffee.”

“Forget the fucking coffee.” He kicked his cup and the frothy mixture splattered over the brick wall of the coffee shop.

“Take it easy, Rob.” She used her cop voice, a deeper, edgier version of her own. “I want to help.”

Still holding the envelope, he ran his hands through his grimy hair. “I know,” he said. “I know. But no one else believes me. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Here.” He thrust the envelope at her. “It’s all in here.”

She started to open the envelope.

“Not here!” Rob waved his hands at her. His gaze darted all around. “Look at it when you’re somewhere safe.” He ran to the end of the alley and checked the street. “Someone’s been following me. I might have to go to ground. If you need more information, then…” He looked all around, as if searching for something. “If you need me, put a coffee cup in front of my place.”

“And then you’ll come back?” she asked.

“And then I’ll find you.”

That did not sit well with her. She had visions of him showing up at her apartment. Should she start distancing herself from him? But looking at Rob now, she knew she couldn’t abandon him to the street. Something about him called to her. She wanted to save him… Wanted to know that he could be saved.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll look at it somewhere safe and I’ll leave a cup if I want to talk to you.”

He nodded, his arms hugging himself. “I knew I could count on you. I knew it,” he said. He backed into his alley. “Remember the coffee cup. I’ll be around if you have questions.”

She nodded and turned away, hoping Rob settled and tomorrow she could talk to him about getting real help.

On the subway to the Bureau she sipped her latte and opened the envelope. Inside were scrap pieces of paper, what looked like receipts, and a handful of papers with the edges torn. She froze when she saw them. Arabic writing covered the sheets.

She frowned. It appeared to be a poem on one sheet. She flipped to the next. A story. “One Thousand and One Nights.” The next showed basic words in Arabic including the numbers one through ten.

She sighed and flipped quickly through the rest. All basic text from what she suspected was some kind of Learn to Speak Arabic class. She prayed Rob hadn’t broken in anywhere to steal these papers. She’d definitely have to talk to him tomorrow. Maybe it was time to call in some help for him, or track down his family.

She pushed the papers back into the envelope and shoved it into her messenger bag, then pushed Rob from her mind. She needed focus today. They had to figure out Al Shabah’s plans.

She tapped her fingers on her leg, over and over again. She couldn’t let people be killed again. Not if she could stop it. She would work with Masters in order to stop Al Shabah. She would borrow some of the Ponytail Guy’s yoga-Zen if it killed her.

Z
ach didn’t see
Alyssa run again over the next two days, and she was completely professional at the Bureau, with no hint of humor or personality when she spoke with him. It irritated him almost as much as spinning his wheels while they waited for Al Shabah’s next move.

Without knowing who exactly they hunted for, there wasn’t much they could do besides go over the old cases and profile too many people. Masters snapped at everyone to work harder and longer. But it wasn’t enough.

At the end of the second day after the “box bomb,” as they called it now, he and Marc entered a conference room and secured an encrypted link to have a video chat with the E.D.G.E. team.

“Did Ghost find anything in theatre?” Zach asked, referring to Sarah and her CIA contacts in Iraq.

Blackwell shook his head on the screen. “Nothing. If anyone actually knows who Al Shabah is, they’re not talking. Ghost believes he keeps his identity known only to his top advisors.”

“Well, that’s not a fucking lot of help,” Marc muttered.

“I’m sending you the rest of Alpha team,” Blackwell said.

“Hold off, sir,” Zach said. “The agent in charge has us running on a hamster wheel. If we can tap into these networks, then we can do our own search.”

“Probably more efficient,” Marc said.

“Agreed,” Blackwell said. “I have a team waiting. Just give the word and they’ll be at your hotel in two hours.”

Zach scrubbed his face with his hand. “We’ll check in again tomorrow, sir.”

“Good hunting.”

They signed off. Time to go grab some sleep. It had been a long and fruitless two days. Maybe tomorrow they’d find a lead on Al Shabah.

And maybe tomorrow Alyssa would respond to him again.

A
lyssa watched
the early morning sun glint off the building’s windows across from her apartment. It had been three days since the box bomb. They needed a break in this case. Soon.

She decided to stop by Rob’s cardboard lean-to, since she hadn’t seen him in the last two days and she wanted to check on him. She bought her latte and his caramel macchiato, but he wasn’t sitting out front like he usually did.

“Rob?”

His lean-to had fallen to the side and a dirty blanket lay in the middle of the alley. A newspaper blew by her ankles. The wind must have knocked his home over. She wondered if that happened often.

She glanced back at the busy street before walking further into the relative quiet of the alley. She stopped beside a full dumpster. The scent of urine and rotting food made her nose wrinkle. “Rob?”

Had he gone into hiding? Dammit, she should have gotten him help. She set his coffee down in front of his lean-to. His signal to come back, though she really hoped that he didn’t take the cup as a sign to show up on her doorstep tonight.

Had his paranoia made him move on? Guilt weighed on her. She should have done more to help him. Did she really think a caramel macchiato was doing anything? She sighed. Now wasn’t the time to beat herself up over this. With a last look at the deserted alley, she left.

At the office, Masters drove them hard. She couldn’t fault his expertise or logic in his search for Al Shabah, no matter whether she liked him personally or not. He followed all leads on the box bomber, using information about the flashbang, camera footage, DAS, flight manifests in the two weeks previous, train manifests, and even informants on the street. He paced the office like a bear just woken from hibernation, but she could understand his frustration. They all felt it.

She leaned back from her terminal, where she was double-checking flight manifests for the last two months with anyone traveling to the Middle East. It had been a couple of long days with not much to show for them. She rolled her neck to get the kinks out.

“Here, let me.” Zach’s warm, calloused hands shifted her braid aside and he rubbed his thumbs up her neck to the base of her skull. Her body instantly responded by turning into a limp pile of urges and sighs. It took her too long to pull away.

“It’s okay. There’s no one here,” Zach said. “Riley brought in bagels and everyone’s mowing down in the conference room.”

She leaned back and, without having to ask, Zach lifted his hands back to her neck.

“Just for a minute,” she said, unable to resist the magic of his touch. Her head dropped forward as he massaged the stiffness from her muscles.

“Why are you so worried?” Zach asked.

She didn’t bother to pretend not to know what he meant. “It’s not appropriate,” she said. “Neither is the way you look at me.”

His touch lightened and he stroked his fingers down her neck, sending shivers through her. “Neither is the way you look at me,” he said.

She cleared her throat and pulled away. He dropped his hands back to his lap and watched her with that steady gaze. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be concerned with what was appropriate, Firecracker.”

“I’m not usually, but I’m also not looking to give people a reason to talk about me.” She shook her head. “It’s more than that. I can’t have a flirtation at work and be taken seriously. Maybe you can, but as a woman, my co-workers’ respect lives and dies on my reputation. It’s something I learned in the military. And it’s true as a police officer too.”

He sighed. “I understand. It’s a double standard that no one wants to acknowledge.”

She tilted her head. “You’re okay to just leave this alone?”

A smile played on his lips. “I didn’t say I was okay with it. Just that I understood.”

“Will you stop?”

He sat back in his chair. “Alright, I will try to tone down my
looking
,” he said. Then a mischievous glint appeared in his eyes. “But I demand something in return.”

She crossed her arms, trying not to smile back. “Seriously? Are you trying to blackmail a police officer?”

“Yes,” he said unrepentantly. “Your brother Jake mentioned a great pizza place that I had to go to,” he said. “I think you should come with me tonight.”

Hadn’t she just covered this? She opened her mouth to protest when he raised a hand to stop her. “As a friend,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like to eat alone?”

She eyed his tall, muscular physique and gorgeous face. “Somehow I can’t picture you eating alone.”

He didn’t smile. “I eat alone more often than not.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “My job requires a lot of traveling. I don’t have a lot of time to meet people outside of work.”

She studied him. He was telling the truth, not just trying to play on her sympathies. She could handle one dinner. “Fine, but just dinner. And we can discuss work,” she said. “Which pizza place?”

“You drive a hard bargain, Firecracker. The place is Vezzo’s on 54
^th
and Lex.”

It was a bit of a walk from her apartment, but she could make it easily enough on the subway. “I know it. I’ll meet you there.”

She frowned as she left the room and headed back to her desk in the main area, feeling like she’d lost the battle somehow. She sighed. It didn’t matter. It was only a dinner. Once they’d captured Al Shabah—and she refused to think of any other alternative—he would head back to wherever he came from, and she’d likely never see him again.

She could have dinner with him. He may be gorgeous, with his dark skin and angled cheekbones, but he was her brother’s friend and if that wasn’t enough, a co-worker. A definite no-no. So even though he was the first man in a long time to make her heart beat faster, she was going to keep it professional.

No drooling.

She sat at her desk and went through her messages. There was one from a beat cop in her neighborhood that she’d known in the academy. She called him up.

“What’s up, Joe?”

“Al, good to hear from you. I just wanted to let you know, there was a jumper on the subway last night near your street, and I’m sitting with the body now waiting for the M.E. to clear the scene.”

“So why’d you want me?”

He paused. “The homicide detective on the scene says the guy jumped, but my gut says something’s off. But more than that, I think he was a vet. He was wearing a BDU jacket with a corporal’s rank. He deserves better than to be written off so quick.”

Joe had been in Afghanistan for a tour, so she knew he was being loyal to a brother-in-arms and didn’t want the vet dismissed as so many of them were. Finding Al Shabah was her priority, but taking an hour out of her day to help out a fellow officer and a potential vet was an easy choice for her.

“They’ve detoured the train on this line, but it won’t be long before the M.E. clears the body,” he said.

“I understand,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

S
he told
Drew where she was headed and took one of the Bureau’s unmarked cars to make the run. She pulled into the subway stop in her neighborhood ten minutes later.

She strode onto the sidewalk on Broadway and flipped her badge at the street cop who went to block her path. She hustled down the stairs to the number one line and welcomed the respite from the wind. Joe stood at the turnstiles. His short, squat frame belied his speed and strength, as she’d found out when they’d run the academy’s obstacle course. He smiled when he saw her.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“Who’s the detective on scene?”

“Raymonds.”

She barely suppressed her groan. “You couldn’t have told me that before?”

Joe shrugged. “I know you like a challenge.”

He led her down another set of stairs to make it to the level of the train in question. Five officers held the scene—one at each end of the platform, two near the scene, and one near Detective Jack Raymonds.

Raymonds was a fifty-year-old sack of steel, will, and stubbornness. The fine broken capillaries in his nose and cheeks gave him a ruddy appearance and also told people what he liked to do in his off-time. Though his love of whiskey never followed him into the job.

“Hey, Jack, what do you have?”

Raymonds turned slowly at her question and took a moment before he responded. He was old school, never really believed women should be a part of the force. They’d had a couple of run-ins before she’d been selected for the Counterterrorism Bureau.

“Officer Harrison, to what do I owe this honor?” He narrowed his eyes at Joe as he spoke.

“That’s Detective Harrison. It’s understandable you might forget in your advancing years.” She grinned at him innocently.

“Cut the crap, Alyssa. What are you doing here? Last I heard, the fancy pants in the Bureau weren’t interested in day-to-day police work.”

“I got a call that this case might interest me.”

He scowled. “Make sure you remember that this is my case.”

She held up her hands. “It’s all yours. I’m just here to observe.”

He surveyed Alyssa until she raised an eyebrow at him, keeping her face calm.

Jack grunted. “Well, I hope you haven’t had breakfast. We’ve got a jumper.” He turned and stomped over to the edge of the platform. She followed and swallowed hard when she looked down.

Clothing, blood, and bits of body parts made a macabre collage on the tracks below her. The train had done a serious number on the guy. She’d known it would be messy, of course.

A young officer waited on the tracks, a few steps from the mangled body, his nose scrunched but his eyes eager.

“Any ID?” she asked the rookie.

“Not that I can see, Detective,” he said.

“Satisfied?” Jack asked, watching her, not the scene.

She looked back at the victim. “Brown hair, jeans, and looks like a camouflage jacket. Probably male. Maybe homeless.” Something jostled in her memory as she stated the description out loud.

“The M.E. should be here any minute to clear the body,” Jack said. He checked his watch.

She pressed her lips together. She had a job to do, and she wouldn’t allow Raymonds’ impatience to stop her.

She jumped down onto the tracks beside the rookie. He stepped back and almost tripped over the nearby train rail. She ignored him and knelt. A hand, severed just above the wrist, lay by the rail. Dirt encrusted the fingernails.

Blood soaked the dark dirt around the tracks. The smell of shit, guts, and blood dragged memories to the surface that she tried to keep buried. She breathed through her mouth but the smells seemed to coat her throat with a slickness that made her want to gag.

“Definitely homeless,” she forced herself to say over the rising bile. “See the hand? The grime indicates a life on the streets.” She moved to where the head lay. It had been somewhat hidden by the shadow of the platform, but she knelt by the bearded face. The man’s brown eyes were open wide, unseeing. She bit her lip and swallowed hard.

“I know him,” she said.

“What?” Raymonds said. “Who is he?”

She stood up, her shoulders slumping. “A homeless guy who lived beside my building. Rob.”

Raymonds huffed. “Rob? That’s all you’ve got?”

She glared at him. “I don’t make it a point to interrogate every homeless person I see.”

“Detective Raymonds,” Joe called from the steps, interrupting their standoff. “The M.E. is here.”

Raymonds stomped away, muttering under his breath.

“Asswipe,” she said.

“Excuse me?” the rookie said.

She sighed and looked back at what remained of Rob’s body. Why had he done this? Had the paranoia finally gotten to him? She pulled on a pair of latex gloves the rookie handed her and squatted again beside the body. She’d almost gotten used to the smell. Almost.

She used a pen to poke at his jacket, trying to ignore the dark stains on it and the softness of the crushed body inside.

“There wasn’t any ID in his pockets,” the rookie said.

She nodded. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. “Why’d you do it, Rob?” She was about to stand when a glint of metal caught her eye. She pulled the jacket open further to see a ball chain around his neck. Her heart sank further.

Using the pen, she lifted it off the headless corpse. Dog tags. She held them up, still using her pen, and squinted at a bloodied tag.

“Rob Steiner,” she said to the M.E. and Raymonds, who stood on the platform watching her now. “He was a vet.”