Flashpoint (11 page)

He could see that he’d surprised the hell out of her with that—and possibly even offended her, too. So he pushed it even further. “When you get back to D.C., you’re going to find a message on your answering machine from the Agency, offering you a field position. You could have it all, you know. The job you’ve always wanted. And Deck.”

She gave him a look that clearly said
You are such a jerk
. “Are you coming? Because I’m going in two minutes, whether you’re with me or not.”

“I thought you just told me that Decker said—”

“Screw Decker. Screw
you
, Jimmy. I’m not going to play your mind games.”

“Yeah, like you weren’t trying to con me?” He touched her then, the same way she’d touched him. “Thank you for being so great out there today—”

She slapped his hand away. “I wasn’t conning you. I was trying to—” She broke off.
“God.”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

“You were trying to what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let you know that it was okay to talk about it. You’re wired so tightly shut—”

“Yeah, well, where I come from, that’s how you stay alive.”

“Where
do
you come from?” she asked, looking hard into his eyes as if she’d find the answer there.

Her question stopped him dead.

“I know you’re not really from Connecticut,” she continued.

“What the fuck does it matter where I’m from?” Okay. Stop. Apologize. But he didn’t get a chance.

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m worried about you,” Tess said. “And okay, maybe you can pretend that’s just some female hormonal reaction to having slept with you, but Decker’s worried about you, too.”

He tried to shrug it off—all of it. Including the way that her visible flinch at his harsh words had made his stomach hurt. Including the way that she hadn’t then turned from him, but instead took a step
toward
him. She was
worried
about him. And as for Deck . . . “Deck worries about everyone.”

“He worries most about you,” she said. “I see him watching you, and lately . . .”

“Okay, you win.” Jimmy couldn’t talk about this anymore. He couldn’t even think about it. “Let’s go get that sat-dish in place.”

Once they went out Rivka’s door, they’d have to be completely silent. Thank you, Jesus.

Tess turned away—probably to hide her triumphant smile. “You better get changed, then.”

“Not a chance.” That made her turn back to him, but he read only surprise on her face. She was either really good, or truly sweet and completely triumph free. “You’re the one who needs to change,” he told her.

She didn’t comprehend.

“Play this little scenario out in your head,” he said. “You’re out on the street, creeping around after curfew, dressed like one of Delta Force—you’ve got everything but the combat vest and the AK-47. What do you think’s going to happen if you get caught, looking like that?”

“I have no intention of getting caught.”

She was serious. “If you have no intention of getting caught,” Jimmy pointed out, “then you should have no need for a sidearm.”

Tess lifted her chin as she informed him, “I know how to use it.” With her eyes slightly narrowed as she gazed at him, she looked like Minnie Mouse doing an impersonation of Clint Eastwood.

Laughing at her right now would be bad.

But all he had to do was picture her stopped by one of Padsha Bashir’s patrols and the urge to laugh vanished.

“I don’t doubt that you do,” he said. “But if we
do
get caught—and I’d like to point out that no one ever
intends
to get caught—you’re not going to be carrying a gun. Or dressed like GI Jane. It won’t fit with the story we’ll use in case we do get caught, so go back there and put on the clothes you were wearing earlier today.”

She didn’t move.

“That wasn’t a request,” Jimmy said.

“What story?” she asked.

Jesus Christ. Okay. “We’re newlyweds, it’s been a rough day, we had our first fight. You ran out of the house, I followed.” Jimmy made it up on the fly. “ ‘I’m so sorry, Officer, Tess completely forgot about the curfew. She was just so upset. You know how women can get, ha, ha, ha. I promise it will never happen again, sir.’ ”

“You know, with that kind of attitude toward women, it’s a wonder that men in this country ever get laid.”

“Women are property,” Jimmy said. “You don’t ask your horse if it wants to pull your cart today.”

“God.” Tess looked at him as if the oppression of women in third-world countries was his idea. She turned away, turned back. “What if they look in my bag and discover the satellite dish and power pack?”

“You must’ve taken the wrong bag at the airport. You’ve never seen this equipment before in your life. You thought you were grabbing your clothes.”

She nodded. Turned away. But again she turned back. “What did we fight about?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What do people who were just married fight about?”

Tess thought for a moment, then smiled. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “We had a fight because you’re a total idiot.”

She crossed to the table, waiting until her voice on the tape finished a sentence. “. . . like to see an action movie that ends, you know, after the nuclear bomb has been defused, with the heroine walking away from the hero’s romantic overtures, saying, ‘Yeah, right, like I want to spend the rest of
my
life in couples counseling. No thanks.’ ”

As Jimmy watched, Tess clicked off the machine and went behind the curtain to change her clothes.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

When Decker said, “Dimitri Ghaffari,” the overwhelming response from the people of the street was “Michel Lartet.”

Lartet ran a private “club” for Westerners who couldn’t go a week—or a day—without a drink in the otherwise dry city of Kazabek. Decker didn’t know the Frenchman personally, but he’d been to his establishment a time or two, back about five years earlier. It was right after a car bomb sprayed shattered window glass onto the patrons of the restaurant in the street level of the Kazabek Grande Hotel. Forty-seven people had been hospitalized, four had died.

And it could have been worse. The car’s driver could have gotten even closer to the twenty-eight-story hotel and taken out that entire half of the building.

Needless to say, the Grande had shut down operations for the weeks it took to move the restaurant into the huge ballroom in the hotel’s windowless basement.

During those weeks, business at Lartet’s club had boomed.

Nowadays, the club was a whole lot less crowded. Not counting the recent influx of relief workers, there just weren’t that many Westerners left in the country.

Which meant it was entirely possible Dimitri Ghaffari was gone, too. Out of all the people Decker had spoken to, none had seen Ghaffari in months. But they all agreed that if he was still in Kazabek, Lartet would most likely know how to find him.

Inside the “club,” in the basement of a butcher shop, Decker took a table along the wall opposite the bar. Sitting there, with his back against the concrete blocks of the building’s foundation, he could watch both the front and rear entrances with little effort.

He recognized Lartet behind the bar—he was a big man, with some excess bulk and not a whole lot of hair. Lartet had glanced up, taking note of Decker as he came in the door, but other than that, he didn’t appear to pay him much mind.

Besides Lartet, there were nine other men in the place, most of them Europeans. One was American, and two were young K-stani men. They were dressed in decidedly Western garb, and appeared to be either good friends or employees of Lartet.

Out of the lot of them, only the American posed a potential immediate threat. He was staring at Decker, sizing him up. There were two bottles of vodka on the bar in front of him, one empty and one half-full.

Decker was picking up a heavy drunk-and-looking-for-a-fight vibe, so he met the man’s glare for maybe three seconds—just long enough to let him know that he wasn’t afraid. If the American was looking for an easy target to intimidate, he needed to look elsewhere.

And then he dismissed the guy. Deck purposely turned his attention to the five burka-clad prostitutes sitting quietly off to the side, while still keeping the American on the edge of his radar.

At first glance, based on the size of their feet, he would’ve bet that all the prostitutes were really women underneath those heavy robes. But only four of them were looking submissively at the tables in front of them. The fifth was surreptitiously checking him out.

Which probably meant she was either a man with small feet, or not Kazbekistani.

Lartet gave a nudge to one of the young men, gesturing toward Decker with his chin. The man slid off his barstool and approached.

“May I get you a beverage from the bar, sir?” he asked in flawless English.

The American and the fifth prostitute were no longer the only ones looking at Decker now.

“A beer.” He answered in the local dialect, loudly enough for his entire audience to hear. “In a bottle or can. I’ll open it myself.”

Ahh. He could almost hear the murmur of approval as the entire bar seemed to take a breath and nod its collective head. Whoever he was, he drank like all the other ex-pats in this part of Kazabek. With extreme caution.

Although they didn’t know him by name, he was one of them.

The American sitting at the bar stopped watching him so closely. The man didn’t turn his back, he just turned down the volume of his glare.

The fifth prostitute was now pretending to gaze at the table in front of her like the others, but Decker knew she—or he—was really still scoping him out.

There was another possibility, of course. She could well be a K-stani woman, but one who had been raised in the West. Or maybe she was a newcomer to the trade, just recently gone into business, so to speak.

The waiter brought him his beer—foreign, exotic, and imported, a Bud Lite in a can—and ceremoniously washed off the top.

“Thanks,” Deck said, this time in English.

He wiped the top dry with the edge of his T-shirt, popped it open, and took a swig.

He’d sit here, drink the beer, watch the room. When he finished this one, he’d order another, and this time Lartet would bring it over himself.

Decker would invite him to sit. They’d start with small talk. The weather. The quake.

Dimitri Ghaffari.
Have you seen him lately?

And maybe—if Decker picked up the right vibes and signals from Lartet—they’d then talk about al-Qaeda leader Ma’awiya Talal Sayid.

Decker took another sip of beer, glancing again at the fifth prostitute’s feet. They were dirty and battered, as if she’d run barefoot over gravel, but they were definitely female feet.

Weren’t they?

She was still watching him. Of course maybe she had some kind of super-pross sixth sense that told her he was a good target tonight—that he was disgusted with himself for continuing to think so relentlessly about Tess Bailey. Bailey was on his team, which made her untouchable. Period, the end. Deck was disgusted with Nash, too, for actually making him consider the possibility that Tess might be an exception to his unbreakable rule.

The truth was, it wasn’t Decker’s rule that was going to keep him from finding whatever it was he thought he might find in Tess Bailey’s arms.

It was Tess herself who was going to keep that from happening.

She was still completely hung up on Nash. She was good at hiding it, but it was there.

No, Deck had missed any chance he’d ever had a long time ago.

And somehow that prostitute knew that. The same magical way she knew that tonight Decker was particularly desperate for sex.

Mindless, no-strings sex with some beautiful stranger.

It would help dull those images of dead children that were cluttering up his head. It would replace those errant thoughts of Tess, of what could never be.

The fifth prostitute with the dirty feet and what had to be stolen sandals, because they were much too big, looked up at him from across the room.

Decker held her gaze as he finished his beer, as he felt his body respond to the glitter of her eyes. He’d never paid for sex before. Not ever.

Desperate or not, he wasn’t about to start now.

He lifted the empty can, signaling the barkeep to bring him another beer, and the world started to shake.

“What the . . . ?”

“Aftershock,” Nash said into Tess’s ear.

They had slipped into an alley to avoid a passing peacekeeping patrol. Nash had pulled her behind a pile of bricks and building supplies. Together, they’d squeezed into an area that she would have had trouble fitting in by herself.

Nash’s arm was around her waist—it helped if she thought of him as Nash, not Jimmy—and he held on to her as the earth shook.

She still couldn’t believe what he’d said to her tonight.

Decker told me that if you weren’t on his team . . . he’d be chasing you down the street.

Was that why Deck had hired her? Not because he thought she’d make a good field operative, but because he wanted to shag her? Had he and Nash talked about her, after she and Nash had . . . Oh, God. She could just imagine their conversation.
She’s not all that pretty, and her thighs could use some toning, but she’s low maintenance and she doesn’t need a lot of foreplay.

And wasn’t
that
a very icky thought?

A shingle from one of the buildings that was sheltering them crashed onto the ground and shattered.

“Ow!” Nash said.

She hadn’t thought it was possible, but he pulled her closer, tucking her head down and shielding her with his body.

“Ow! Shit!” he said. “We better run for the street. Keep your head covered! Stay close—”

She started to move, but just like that, it was over, and he caught her, holding her even more tightly. The sudden stillness was almost as freaky as the shaking had been when it first started.

“Are you all right?” Nash asked her. His voice sounded odd.

“Yeah. Are you?” She half expected him to make some kind of joking comment about the way the earth always seemed to move when they were in such close contact.

But “I’m fine” was all he said, pulling her out into the alley. Despite the curfew, people were spilling out of their houses and into the street.

There was more than just milling about in the open happening here—people were hurrying down the road, probably going to check on their grandmothers while they had the chance.

“This is great,” Tess told Nash as they joined the crowd. “If we move fast, we can probably make it all the way downtown, to the Kazabek Grande Hotel.”

Nash stopped short. “You said there was a church just down the street that was probably tall enough—”

“To get us phone coverage right in this area, yes,” she said. “Its steeple is high enough do the trick. Probably. But if we want to be able to communicate from anywhere else in the city, the best place to put a dish is the roof of the Grande Hotel.”

“It won’t be after it falls down,” Nash said. “Which it’s going to do, any minute.”

“Well, until it does, we’ll have operational phones.” Tess started down the street but he didn’t follow. She glanced back at him but didn’t stop, and he finally ran to catch up.

“There’s no way you’re getting into the Grande,” he said curtly. “That entire part of the downtown area was evacuated after the quake. All of the buildings have severe structural damage—one of them in that neighborhood already came down. The area’s completely cordoned off.”

“Yeah, Decker showed me that photo,” Tess told him. “There’s yellow police tape blocking off those streets. It’s not going to be hard to get past that.”

“Except if we cross that line, the police will think we’re looters and we’ll be shot on sight.”

“Then we better not be seen.” Tess sidestepped a toddler who had run, laughing, into her path. She was glad
some
one was having fun tonight. She glanced back at Nash. “That
is
your specialty, isn’t it?”

“Stop.” He caught her arm. “This is bullshit. There’s no way you cleared
this
with Decker. No way. I’m not letting you near the Grande. You want to prove how good you are, you’re going to have to do it another way.”

He was dead serious.

He was also bleeding.

“You’re hurt,” she realized.

Nash followed her gaze and reached up to touch his neck and then the back of his head. He winced and his hand came away red with blood, but he shrugged. “It’s not that bad. Heads bleed more than—”

“You got hit by a tile,” she guessed, and guessed correctly based on his reaction—or rather lack thereof, “hard enough to make you bleed. And it doesn’t occur to you that might be something I’d need to know, so when you keeled over I’d at least have a half a freaking
clue
?”

“It’s not that bad,” he said again, looking around to see who else might’ve noticed her rising voice. “It’s just—”

“A ding,” she finished for him. “Yes. Right. I know.” She was furious and terribly, terribly upset. If Decker had appeared out of nowhere, she would have hauled back and socked him. She wanted him to have hired her for this job because she was skilled, because she was a good field operative, not because he liked the way she looked without a shirt. That was something she’d have expected from Nash, but not Decker. Never Decker.

Damn it. Damn Decker.

And damn Jimmy Nash for being right about her wanting to prove how good she was. She was guilty of wanting to do some serious hotdogging.

And not just to impress him and Decker either.

“You were right,” Jimmy said. “I should have told you. I really didn’t realize how hard I got hit. I’m sorry.”

And just like that, her anger was gone.

“I’m sorry because you were right, too,” she whispered. Her eyes were filled with tears—where did they come from? Oh, God, she wanted that anger back, because this feeling of sadness, of sorrow, of hurt, of regret and wistful longing it had left in its place was not helping her at all.

All of the emotions of these last few minutes were teetering on top of those from this terrible day, from this week, from these months since she’d invited Jimmy Nash into her life. . . .

Please don’t let her start to cry.

If he reached for her, she was going to break down completely.

But Jimmy kept his distance. “If we hurry, we can get the sat-dish on the church and get back to Rivka’s in time to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t sleep,” Tess said, steeling herself. She could do this. She did
not
have to fall to the ground, weeping. And she could be concerned about this man because he was a teammate, no more, no less. “Not until Murphy checks you out. If you have a concussion—”

“I don’t have a concussion.” Nash actually laughed. “It’s barely a scratch.”

Ah. Scornful indignation came roaring back, thank God. “And you know this because you’re some kind of genetic mutant who can see the back of your head?”

“I know this because if it were more than a scratch, it would be bleeding like hell.”

“Funny,” she said. “It looks to me as if you’re bleeding like hell.”

“Trust me,” he said. “If I were—”

“Zip it,” she ordered. “And sit down so I can see if your
ding
needs stitches.”

The overhead lights continued to sway, long after the building stopped shaking.

It was the only sign in the bar that the aftershock had ever happened. No one reacted. No one got upset. No one so much as blinked.

Sophia watched as Michel Lartet brought two more cans of beer to the little American’s table. There were two Americans in the club tonight—the big one at the bar who’d been there when she’d arrived, and this littler one who’d come in after.