No Rules (10 page)

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before meeting his gaze. “I’m afraid,” she said in a last desperate plea.

“Of what?”

She gave him the sad truth. “Everything.”

He reached across the desk to cover her cold hand with his warm one. “Donovan will keep you safe, Jess. Trust him.”

Defeat clutched at her ribs. Trust an admitted killer who had brought her here by force? Not for a second.

Chapter Seven

She stood motionless, her insides clenched into a fearful ball that might never loosen. Fighting nausea, she tried to find the peaceful center Dr. Epstein had told her to go to in her mind, but it was gone, swept away by the tsunami of panic crashing over her. She barely registered Evan’s gaze darting past her to someone passing by.

“Avery, would you help Jess get ready please? See that she has everything she’ll need. You should be able to leave before evening.”

Jess turned. Avery had paused in the doorway, looking her over with unmistakable condescension. “Fine.”

“Start with shots.”

Avery’s mood seemed to improve. “You’ll need several; better hope you don’t have a bad reaction.” She smiled.

“I don’t need shots. I’m current on all inoculations.”

Avery arched a skeptical eyebrow. “I doubt it. Measles, mumps, whooping cough, tetanus, chicken pox, flu, typhoid.” She looked at Evan. “What else?”

“Hepatitis A. Rob will know if there’s anything else. I’m sorry you have to get them all at once, Jess, but it can’t be helped.”

“As I said, I’ve had them. Taking precautions with your health is the responsible thing to do,” she said, a direct quote from her mother. When Evan still looked doubtful, she folded her arms and said, “Call Dr. Cynthia Reed in Houston. She’ll confirm it.”

“I will. And if you’re right, good for you.” He looked at Avery and nodded toward the door. “Skip the shots for now, just give her a supply of Cipro for traveler’s diarrhea.”

Looking disappointed, Avery motioned for Jess to follow. She did, hurrying to keep up with Avery’s brisk pace as they went upstairs. “I’ll need to go through your wardrobe and see if you have anything suitable,” Avery told her as they walked. “Then we’ll get whatever you need from our supplies here.”

“You have a wardrobe department?” Just how big was this operation?

“More like an extension of my closet. But we go to a lot of countries where traditional Islamic dress is mandatory for women, so I keep a lot on hand.” She eyed Jess, doing an obvious comparison between them. “Something will fit you.”

The three suitcases that Donovan had ridiculed suddenly seemed insufficient, considering what she’d left at home. “I packed for cold weather. I imagine Egypt is hot.”

“It’s pretty nice in November, actually, but you won’t really need to worry about the temperature. We need to cover your arms and legs.”

“You mean because it’s an Islamic country?” She followed Avery into her room and went to a suitcase. “Can I wear long pants?”

“If you were just a tourist, yes, but not for the cover we’ve devised for you.” Without waiting for an invitation, Avery slung another suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it with all the authority and care of a homeland-security agent at the airport.

“Please be careful with those knits. Don’t unroll them.”

But Avery skimmed right past most of the clothes, apparently rejecting everything. “All the cosmetics are fine, and any jewelry you have as long as it’s not cheap. Real gold and silver, no costume stuff.”

“I didn’t bring much. I was going to a funeral.”

The word caused Avery to pause for a moment, a brief hesitation that caught Jess’s attention. As did the flash of pain across her face. It was another reminder that these people had been Wally’s family more than she had. She felt she should address it somehow, but didn’t know what to say, and then the moment was gone. Avery tossed her padded jewelry pouch on the bed. “We’ll set you up with the look you need.”

“What do I need? What exactly is my cover?”

“You’ll be the well-bred, well-educated American wife of an Egyptian businessman. That way we don’t have to worry about making you blend in as much. Tyler will be your bodyguard, which gives him a plausible reason to always be with you. Women don’t walk the streets unescorted, not anyone who knows the culture, anyway. I don’t suppose you speak Arabic?”

“No. Is that a problem?” Hope flickered that it might totally disqualify her.

Avery squashed it. “No. It would have been nice, but Tyler knows a little, and many Egyptians speak English.” She added handfuls of underwear to the cosmetics and toiletries she’d piled on the bed while Jess bit her tongue and tried not to criticize. One long-sleeved blouse made the cut. From the third bag she selected two pairs of shoes—sensible loafers and black heels. Avery turned, giving her a critical look up and down. “You’re almost my size. We should be able to find you some warm-weather clothes that will work. Come on.”

Jess trailed her to another room full of closets, rolling racks, and dressers that were packed with enough to stock a small store. This evidently served as their supply room. Avery began plucking clothes from a stuffed closet—an ankle-length skirt, two short-sleeved tops, and two pairs of rubber-soled shoes made more for comfort than style.

“Won’t long skirts be kind of hot?” she asked.

“You don’t have a choice. I’ll give you a couple short skirts and sleeveless tops, too, but as the respectable wife of a Muslim man, you can’t show your arms or legs in public.
Abayas
will take care of that. You’ll wear a
hijab
, too.”

Jess wasn’t sure which was which, but several large scarves and dark robes were added to the pile of clothes in her arms. She looked at the pile, thinking she might as well go into culture shock now and save herself some time. The scary plane trip was only going to be the beginning of her problems.

“Try this on,” Avery said.

She blinked, then focused on the rings Avery held out to her. “Holy shit, is that real?”

“Of course not. Well, not the diamonds. The gold probably is.”

Jess laid the pile of clothes on the bed and gingerly took the wedding-ring set. Sliding the rings on her finger, she stared at the large diamond flanked by two slightly smaller ones. They caught the light and sparkled just like real ones.

Avery frowned. “They look a little loose.”

“They’ll be okay.” She turned her hand, mesmerized by the gaudy display of wealth. “My husband must really love me.”

“You’re posing as a trophy wife in every sense of the word. A showpiece and a mark of his success. If you want to call that love, go ahead.”

It was too bitchy to ignore. Jess gave her a hard look. “Maybe if you just tell me what you have against me, we can work it out.”

Avery gave a short, bitter laugh. “If you don’t know, then you really are ignorant about love.”

“Fill me in.”

“Fine. Your dad was a good man. A
great
man. He deserved your love and respect and your lack of it pisses me off.”

She was getting tired of hearing it from people who didn’t know the other side of the story. “He may have been a great man, but for fifteen years he was a lousy father.” It may not have been his intent, but it was her reality.

“Or maybe you were a lousy daughter.”

“I was…” She couldn’t even finish it. Glaring at Avery, she said, “You don’t know a damn thing about my relationship with my father.”

“I know he repeatedly risked his life to save others, and all you can think about is what he didn’t do for you. In my book that’s selfish and small-minded.”

So he saved people; she was getting tired of having that thrown in her face, as if she should feel guilty for wanting his attention when other people’s lives were at risk. “Maybe while he was saving others, he should have tried a little harder to save me. There are all kinds of captivity, you know. I was a victim, too.”

If everything Donovan told her was true, she was being unfair to her father, but she wasn’t feeling especially fair right now. She was feeling picked on.

Avery’s lip curled with disgust. “Really? What kind of victim were you? Were you held by gun-waving lunatics who killed aid workers because they helped the wrong people? Did you see someone hold a machete to your mother’s throat and threaten to use it if your father didn’t do as he was told? Because I did.”

Avery advanced on her, and Jess retreated a step, wide-eyed at the sudden fury. As if she’d suddenly opened a dam, Avery’s anger poured out in a flood of words. “Tell me how bad it was, Jess. Did you witness your little sister being raped in front of you? Used, then discarded like she was broken, because she was? Did you watch a twelve-year-old huddle in corners and cry in terror and beg you to kill her before the violence and degradation could happen again? Did you lie awake at night, knowing the same fate awaited you if they got tired of the younger one and help didn’t come?” Jess shrank back, but Avery leaned into her, eyes blazing. “Did you, Jess? Is that how bad it was for you? Because that’s what it was like for me, before your father and five others found the jungle encampment where we were being held and killed every one of those bastards who were holding us.”

“You…You were a victim?”

She wouldn’t have thought Avery could look angrier, but her jaw twitched with murderous tension at the question. “I was a
hostage
, along with my family and three other people, a religious group doing humanitarian work in Venezuela. I was
not
a victim, and I never will be. And neither will anyone else, if I can help it. That’s what Wally saved me from. So, sorry if he missed a few birthday parties and your middle-school soccer games while he was saving people’s lives and probably their sanity. I guess that was really selfish of him.”

Avery’s sarcasm didn’t even sting, not when it was so obviously justified. Jess’s knees turned watery, and she sank slowly to the floor, leaning against a tall dresser. Her stare went blank, her vision filled by the memories and resentments she’d held close for so long. They didn’t compare to the nightmarish pictures Avery had supplied. She’d thought her childhood had taken a giant detour, but Avery’s had been much worse.

She must have sat there for a long time because she gradually became aware of Avery squatting in front of her. “Jess?”

She blinked and struggled to focus on the pale, delicate features that obviously concealed a personality as hard as steel. Now she understood why. “Donovan”- she began, then switched to his first name, the name his friends used -“Tyler told me you were in the Army. But you weren’t like them, you didn’t join Omega afterward because you were looking for something to do with your training, did you?”

“No. I joined the Army to get the training I needed to be part of this team. It’s a boys’ club, hard for a girl to break into, but I wanted nothing else from the minute that Omega team rescued me. Wally knew that.”

“He helped you get in?”

“He tried to discourage me. When he couldn’t, he finally let me join.”

“He was your mentor.”

“In many ways, yes. And my hero.”

She could only imagine how they’d compared in her father’s mind, the sheltered, timid girl in Houston and the bold young woman who had dedicated her life to freeing others from brutal captivity. She admitted softy, “You’re right. The work he did with the Omega Group was more important than staying with me. More important than being my father.”

Avery said nothing. She’d made her point, and they both knew it. Still, regret lingered inside Jess, selfish as it might be. Since Avery was watching patiently, as if waiting for an explanation for how she could have been so self-centered, she put it into words. “I just…” She cleared her throat, but still only managed a whisper. “I just wish he could have saved me, too.”

“Saved you from what?”

Jess licked her lips. “From my mother.”

It sounded so lame, but Avery folded into a more comfortable position, cross-legged on the floor at Jess’s side, watching her curiously. “What did your mother do to you?”

She gave an embarrassed shrug, dismissing it in advance. She knew how life with her mother would sound to Avery—tame and harmless compared to being held by rapists and murderers. “Nothing violent, it wasn’t like that. She’s mentally ill. Paranoid and agoraphobic. She was certain governments had the power to do anything, good or bad, especially after she thought they had mounted an operation to save my father.”

“They didn’t. They couldn’t, not without giving away a CIA operation.”

“We didn’t know that. And Mom never told me about Omega, but said my dad was trying to work against the government and the CIA, that they’d come after us for that. She’d always been the kind who was afraid that any bad thing that could possibly happen was going to happen to her family, and once it had, she knew it would happen again. She developed elaborate fears of spies and counterspies and assassins. It’s a sickness. Pretty soon it got worse, extending to every part of our lives. Life was dangerous, and we couldn’t be too careful. If it hadn’t been for my grandparents in Houston who stepped in and helped, I’m not sure she would have let me out of the house.”

It had been a daily struggle for Jess, but it sounded tame after hearing what Avery had been through. Still, the young woman nodded in acknowledgement.

“No wonder you were in therapy.”

And that was only the half of it. But Avery didn’t need to know the rest.

“You should have called Wally. He would have helped.”

“I couldn’t. We didn’t have a phone.”

Avery blinked. “Everyone has a phone.”

“Not people who think the government will use it to listen in on their lives. No phone, no radio, no TV. Newspapers were instruments of propaganda and electronic equipment was suspect. The freaking
mailman
was suspect. No one could be trusted, and anything that could go wrong, would. My mother lives in fear of everything.”

Avery winced in sympathy. “That’s nuts.”