Maverick

by Lisa Marie Rice

  “Sounds awful,” he murmured in her ear, kissing her jaw.

  Claire tilted her head so he could have better access. He had a heavy beard and hadn’t shaved. His jaw rasped against hers. She loved it. All those tiny bites of reality—the raspy skin, the calluses on the hands that were stroking her ribs, the heavy pelt of chest hair tickling her back—they grounded her. Pushed the nightmare even further away.

  “And there was someone after me.”

  Dan suddenly went very still. “Who was he? Do you remember?”

  Claire closed her eyes. In her nightmare it had been dark, as if even light itself had been suffocated. The man’s skin had reflected the dark red of the walls, and his eyes had had a violent red gleam in them. And yet… and yet there had been something familiar about him. Something about the cast of his face, the shape of his head. The way he had tilted his head, studying her coldly. The way he’d said her name in a low whisper. Claire.

  “Um. No. I didn’t recognize him. There were bits and pieces that seemed familiar, but isn’t that how nightmares are? I guess you just cobble together flotsam and jetsam from daily life and they roil around in your subconscious and come shooting up at night as dreams. Or nightmares, in this case.”

  “So, he was chasing you?”

  Claire nodded. “It was—it was so horrible. He didn’t run after me, he just… glided. And he called my name, Claire. He had lifted his rifle and was sighting through it. You woke me up just as he was pulling the trigger.”

  He gave her another little kiss on her jaw. “You know, they say you can never die in a dream. You wake up beforehand. Always.”

  She’d read that, too, but… “I don’t know, Dan. It seemed so, so real. Big chunks of it felt more like a memory than a dream. And there was something about the gunfire…”

  Claire fell quiet. Dan let her be, letting her think it through. She turned it over in her mind, trying to pin down the sensation. It was one of the still-clear memories of the nightmare, the wild shots, coming rat-tat-tat, without rhyme or reason.

  So totally unlike the way well-trained soldiers shot.

  That was it!

  “The gunfire bursts were indiscriminate, just someone pulling the trigger of an automatic and letting go. Yesterday, in the hotel and at your house, whoever those men were, they were observing fire discipline. There were no wasted bullets, they fired in controlled bursts. Instead, in my dream, in the nightmare, they just let go. There was no fire discipline at all.”

  She wasn’t a DIA analyst any more but she had been. She’d been paid to notice things like that.

  “That was what it was like in Laka, wasn’t it?” she suddenly asked Dan. “It must have been, even if I don’t remember it. Third world soldiers on a rampage don’t respect fire discipline, I know that. I read in the after-report of the siege in Laka that something like a million rounds were expended in a couple of hours.”

  “Yeah. They were firing like crazy.”

  Claire opened her mouth, then closed it.

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “I—" She huffed out a breath. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “If it’s nothing, then there’s no reason you can’t say it.”

  “You’ll think I’m stupid.”

  As an answer, he picked up her hand and brought it to his mouth. “I don’t know how I could do that, when I think you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.” His breath was hot over the palm of her hand. He pressed a kiss there, then brought her hand back to the covers. “You want to tell me?”

  It was hard to tell him something she barely understood herself. “Um. OK. There was something—something about the dream that reminded me of Laka. The day of the bombing. Only that’s crazy, because I don’t remember that day. Anything about it. And yet the two things are—" she pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes closed, concentrating fiercely.

  Her shoulders lifted on a big sigh and dropped. This was so hard. Just putting things into words made them dissipate, like trying to catch smoke in your fist. “Somehow they’re connected. It’s like my memory of that day in Laka is coming back, but it’s not. It’s like a memory of a memory. I told you it sounded stupid.”

  “Actually,” Dan mused. “It doesn’t. It sounds like real memories are pushing up into your conscious mind, only there was trauma there, it’s like your mind is sounding you out to see if you can take it, so the info starts out as dreams.”

  “Nightmares.”

  “Yeah. Nightmares. Anything else?”

  “No, I—" This was going to sound really crazy. “Well, yes. At times, I get a flash of Bowen, of all people, connected with these nightmares. And come to think of it, there was something… almost Bowenesque about this monster trying to kill me. Which is of course crazy, because Bowen would have no reason to kill me. Unless he gets homicidal whenever a woman turns him down.” Which didn’t make sense. Bowen was certainly not sex-deprived. He’d been screwing everything not nailed down all over the world. “And of course you have to factor in that all CIA personnel are nuts to begin with, by definition.”

  “Except McKenzie wasn’t there that day.”

  Bells jangled in her head, and made it hurt.

  “Well… that’s the thing. Whenever I hear that, whenever I read that, it just sets off all my alarms. I don’t know why.” She gave a half laugh. “You know what? That first afternoon here, when you repeated that Bowen wasn’t at the Embassy the day of the bombing, I just—well, it just sounded wrong. So I logged on in my hotel room and I checked the DIA report. And, sure enough, Bowen was in Algiers and I’m officially crazy.”

  “You checked a DIA report? How’d you do that? Wouldn’t you need a password?”

  “Yes, of course. All reports are accessible by password only. But the thing is, though they took my badge and I’m no longer on the employee rolls, they forgot to cancel my password, so I was able to get in.”

  Dan got out of bed, slid into a pair of jeans, went to the hearth, and laid two logs in the fire. He came back to her and sat down on the edge of the bed, thigh to thigh, frowning. “Let me get this straight. You checked on the DIA report on the Laka bombing?”

  Claire nodded. She missed his warmth at her back.

  “Did you just read it through or did you check for Bowen’s name?”

  “The report was sixty pages long and I was tired, so I went to the document search function and looked specifically for Bowen McKenzie. Why?”

  Dan’s frown deepened. He turned his head toward the stone hearth. There was a whoosh and then a loud crackle as the dry wood caught fire. The resin in the bark popped loudly, a friendly echo of the gunshots she’d heard in her nightmare.

  He shrugged, the hard muscles in his shoulders bunching and releasing. “I don’t know. You check for Bowen McKenzie’s name and, what? Four hours later someone breaks into your room. Coincidence, you might say, but I don’t believe in coincidence.” He pinned her with his dark gaze. “I was told McKenzie was in Algiers but I never really checked it. Can someone fake or alter a report?”

  “Absolutely not, that’s—” Claire began huffily, then stopped.

  “What?”

  She picked at the lint of the wool coverlet. It was government issue and had probably covered the strong young body of a US soldier somewhere in some desert or jungle. Her hand clenched in the rough wool, then unclenched.

  Dan put his hand on her shoulder and shook it a little. “Claire, what?”

  She frowned. “It was a PDF file, and unchangeable. But… I guess if someone really knew what they were doing they could make some changes. Delete a name, for example. Change the wording.”

  “Could you do it?”

  Well, what the hell. If she were still in government service, admitting that she could change an official report would have gotten her into immediate trouble. But she wasn’t in government service any more. The US government had divorced her. She was a free agent. “Um, yes. If I had a strong enough incentive,” she added primly.
/>   “And how could you know if someone had messed with the report?”

  As if pulled by a string, Claire rose to her feet, snatching up a tee shirt from a chair to cover her nakedness. There was a grunt of disappointment behind her and she turned to smile at Dan. It had been a long time since anyone cared whether she was naked or dressed.

  Claire crossed to the laptop and fired it up. “Hmm. You couldn’t tell from the report itself if it’s been altered. But nothing is ever lost on hard drives. Everything is still there. You just have to go deep into the system and find the cache file on the hard drive. A little like mining for gold underwater.”

  “Can you do it?”

  She was already pounding the keyboard, sitting down just as Dan shoved a hard wooden chair under her.

  “Oh yeah,” she said softly. “I can do it.”

  And she did. It took her half an hour, during which she kept blowing out her breath in frustration and slapping the table in anger. She nearly took Dan’s .45 and shot the laptop through its treacherously slippery heart.

  But finally, finally, drifting deeper and deeper into DIA’s system, so deep she was half expecting demersal fish to drift across the screen, she found it. The original report, written in haste by Harold Stella, the guy who took her place in Laka. He’d obviously used secondary sources, and the dateline was November 27, two days after the blast, which meant he’d been flown in and conducted hasty interviews on the fly in a bombed-out building.

  It was a fleeting mention, a backhanded one, actually, coming right after the listing of those who had been at the Ambassador’s house. The only mention of Bowen also included her name. Bowen McKenzie and Claire Day were not present at Ambassador Crocker’s Thanksgiving reception.

  The line had been amended in the official report to read—Claire Day was not present at Ambassador Crocker’s Thanksgiving reception, and Bowen McKenzie was in Algiers in secret talks with Deputy Premier Abdul Azziz.

  Claire studied that sentence. The original didn’t state where Bowen had been, just that he hadn’t been at the reception. Someone had changed the report to specifically state that Bowen had been somewhere else.

  But…

  He’d been there. She was sure of it. How could she be sure of it? Claire sat back and blew out a frustrated breath. “So—was Bowen there or not? And does this have any importance or not?”

  Dan nodded. “Oh yeah, I’d say it’s important. The bombing was an attack of a foreign entity on U.S. soil.” It was true. The Embassy compound had extraterritorial jurisdiction and was considered American soil. It was exactly as if an attack had been carried out in New York or Boston or Chicago. “It was the first successful bombing of a U.S. Embassy since 1998. Something like ten million dollars’ worth of food aid and medicine was destroyed. A lot of things changed, overnight, after the attack. The Red Army was wiped out, and Mbutu consolidated his power. Mbutu has a stranglehold on the country and its resources now, and his strength is backed by us. Bowen’s made his reputation becoming Our Man in Africa and they say he’s eyeing a political career.”

  Claire blinked. “That’s right, you told me. It sounds so very weird. So un-Bowen.”

  Dan leaned over and wrote Bowen McKenzie in the Google search field and pressed enter. Two hundred thousand hits came up. Claire quickly read the top twenty while Dan talked.

  “Our guy’s been very busy this past year. He helped put the Embassy back in shape, and he acted as Mbutu’s right-hand man for a while—with presumably the blessing of State and CIA—in shutting down the Red Army. Money and munitions simply poured into the hands of the central government. The Red Army didn’t stand a chance. I think there might be a few stragglers somewhere in the bush, but they’re not in any position to do anyone any harm.”

  “Money and munitions,” Claire mused. “That could be a lot of corruption right there.”

  “Well, whatever you’re thinking, that’s not it. McKenzie didn’t set himself up as some power behind the throne or anything, though I imagine he could have. Mbutu’s brutal, but he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. McKenzie could run rings around him. Instead, McKenzie quit the CIA and got some rich guys to set up this huge foundation focused on West Africa, which he manages. They distribute free medicine to the Makongans. Antiretroviral drugs, anti-malaria drugs, you name it. And now they’ve extended the scope of the foundation and Laka is a marshalling point where they funnel in medicine to West African countries.”

  Claire gaped. “So, Bowen became, like, a philanthropist?” Oh man, this did not square with the Bowen McKenzie she knew. The Bowen she knew was shallow and self-centered and, well, horny. The Bowen she knew didn’t even care for the wife he apparently had squared away in Virginia, let alone poor, sick Africans.

  “Yeah,” Dan said wryly. “I know.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “What can I say? Maybe the bombing made him see the light.”

  “Maybe.” But she didn’t believe it. Not for one second. People didn’t change that much. “Though he wasn’t there, remember? The report said he was in Algiers’”

  Dan nodded. “Secret talks with the Algerian Deputy Premier.” He jerked his thumb at the netbook. “Said so, right in that file.”

  “What was the Deputy Premier’s name again?”

  Dan shrugged and shook his head. “Don’t remember.”

  Claire was already back at the keyboard. “Never mind. Saint Google will come to the rescue. Deputy Premier, Algeria. His name is Abdul Azziz…” She suddenly pulled in a shocked breath. “Oh my God.”

  “What? What is it?”

  Claire turned the screen so Dan could see better.

  Abdul Azziz tuè par mysterieux assassin.

  He was frowning. “I don’t read French, but I do recognize assassin. What happened?”

  “Abdul Azziz killed by mysterious assassin.” Claire read the article all the way through. She started at the top and translated for Dan. “This is an article from Le Temps, the largest French-language newspaper in Algeria. Dated November 27 last year.” Claire’s eyes met Dan’s. November 27 was two days after the bombing. She translated the rest. “Deputy Premier Abdul Azziz was killed today by a sniper as he was entering the Ministry of Agriculture. Deputy Premier Azziz was supposed to address representatives of farmers’ organizations to discuss new rules for exporting agricultural produce to the European Union. As he was walking up the steps of the Ministry, he was felled by a 7.62 bullet from a sniper rifle. No organization has come forward claiming responsibility for the assassination. Abdul Azziz was born in Oran on September 28, 1978… blah blah blah. The rest is his life. My God, Dan. He was killed two days after meeting with Bowen—“

  “After supposedly meeting with Bowen,” Dan said grimly. “At this point, we don’t have any corroboration at all that Bowen was there and not in Laka.”

  “And Azziz was killed by a Nato bullet.”

  “Yeah, it was definitely a bullet Bowen would have had access to.”

  Claire couldn’t see Bowen getting his hands dirty, but she could see him ordering someone else to get his hands dirty. “Not to mention he’d have access to a sniper, too.”

  It was an open secret. In danger zones like Laka, the local CIA agent would have several operatives on call. Not intelligence types like Bowen, but real hard-asses. SpecOp types who could get any kind of wet work done for you.

  But… much as she would love to have Bowen be the villain, it didn’t make sense. The pieces didn’t fit together at all.

  Claire’s satphone buzzed and she looked at Dan. Only Jesse had the number.

  “I’ll get it,” Dan said, while Claire read through the article in Le Temps once more, on the off chance that a second reading would prove more enlightening than the first.

  Dan was grunting now and again into the satphone, listening to Jesse’s report. He finally closed the connection and sat for a moment, head down.

  Dan’s default expression was grim. Now he looked like he’d just been told the Apocalypse was com
ing after all.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. A big fat nothing, still. No trace of the guy from the hotel, no trace of the guys who attacked my house, no trace of the guy or guys who torched your house. Nada. They could have been beamed down from outer space to do the job, then beamed back up, for all we know. And we’ve got Marcus on our side, who’s no slouch, and Jesse said that Marcus said that the fire inspector down in Florida knows his stuff, too. This is bad shit.”

  It was. Claire knew full well that in police work, if nothing was found in the first 24 hours, it was a very bad sign. Cases went cold very fast.

  Marcus was a DC cop, a homicide detective in one of the murder capitals of the country. Very soon he’d be knee deep in new homicides and would have to relegate her case to the back burner.

  “We can just hole up here,” Dan said, jaw muscles clenching. “Wait it out. No one can find us. I hate the thought of just sitting here, but at least you’d be safe.” He was wound so tight every muscle of his torso showed, the tendons in his neck standing out. “One thing is for sure. No one’s going to hurt you, ever again. Not while I’m alive.”

  She looked at him. Bare-chested, he looked like a force of nature. Dressed, you just saw that he had very broad shoulders and looked very fit, but take those clothes away and he was breathtakingly ripped. She’d felt him all over, and all over he was like warm steel.

  His muscles were the real deal, the kind of muscles you developed from a hard life, not in a gym. He wasn’t handsome, not by a long shot, but the billion pheromones of sheer utter maleness more than made up for that.

  He was smart and capable, he’d been a good soldier, he was apparently a successful businessman now.

  This magnificent man had just placed his life in her hands.

  He’d just stated his willingness to put his entire existence on hold until they could eliminate the danger to her.

  He wasn’t like her. He hadn’t spent the past year completely cut off from the world, doing nothing. No, he’d spent the past year building a new life and a new company from the ground up. And he was making a success out of it too.