by Cherry Adair
She'd wanted nothing more than to get out of that meeting and prove herself.
Then Kane strode into the briefing room. Dressed from head to toe in unrelieved black, he was a striking man, and her heart had done a different kind of hop, skip, and jump just looking at him. Heat speared into her from head to toe. The kind of hot awareness she'd never experienced before. AJ had never reacted to a man on such a purely physical level in the past. But then, her reaction hadn't been solely physical then, either.
Meeting him in the flesh had put another dimension to the man on the page. He'd just returned from Istanbul, and long days under a blazing sun had turned his skin a deep tan, and shot golden highlights in his dark shaggy hair. His lean strength and six-foot-three height had added an elegant cache to the black chinos and dark T-shirt he wore. A girl would have to be dumb and blind not to sit up and take notice seeing the snug fit of cotton stretched across those broad shoulders, displaying his flat stomach and impressive abs. His long legs made short work of circling the conference table to find the only vacant seat—the one opposite her.
He'd flicked a dismissive glance her way, his eyes a dark, dark blue, holding no warmth whatsoever, and then without expression returned his attention to the head of the table, where their superior immediately started outlining the mission.
She'd found out Kane Wright's displeasure was as ruthlessly clipped as his dark chocolate voice. It had taken her several minutes to grasp the fact that while she'd been sitting there trying not to drool into her coffee cup, he was informing the table at large that he didn't want to use such an important mission as a training vehicle for a rookie.
He'd wanted to go to Cairo alone, and made no bones in saying so. His dark eyes told her, in no uncertain terms, he considered her unsuitable. Worse than useless. AJ wasn't used to a man looking at her that way. There was a first time for everything.
Disinterest. Dismissal. Disdain. All emanating from Kane Wright was bad enough. The fact that everyone sat there discussing her unsuitability for the job and their doubts she would be able to pull it off made her want to scream.
She'd almost died after she'd been shot. And while AJ didn't expect their sympathy, she did expect them to give her the benefit of the doubt. She'd bitten her tongue on her anger, and rationally explained why she should accompany Kane Wright and his team to Cairo.
In the end they'd relented—only because she was, by default, the only one suitable for the job.
Kane had been harder to convince. But he'd finally agreed under duress. Severe duress.
Now, she thought, he'd believe, they'd all believe, he'd been right. Not only had AJ messed up her own chance to prove herself, she'd no doubt put a crimp in every other rookie's chances. From here on out, they'd be more careful about taking an unproven agent out on an op of this magnitude. And it was all her fault. She sighed again.
"Don't sulk," Kane said, mistaking her sigh for petulance. AJ shook herself out of her reverie to look at him. It was impossible to see the good-looking guy under that eighty-year-old face. Gray hair, crepey skin, rheumy eyes. She tried to see where the makeup ended and he began. But the application was flawless. She wasn't three feet from him and she would swear that papery, wrinkled skin was the real deal.
"I never sulk," she told him, to set the record straight. She had a few other skills in her female arsenal, but sulking wasn't one of them. "I was just thinking—"
"Save it."
"Oh, yes, sir! Didn't know thinking wasn't allowed."
"If you'd done less thinking and more shooting, we wouldn't be in this mess."
"Nice of you not to beat me over the head with my failures, though. I really appreciate it, sir." What'd she have to lose by telling him what she was thinking? He was already sending her home in disgrace. What was left? A spanking? Another tongue-lashing? A curl of something dark and hot and yearning opened up inside her at that imagery, and she figured she must have hit her head harder than she'd thought.
He shook his head and firmed those old papery lips into a grim line that told her he was done talking. She shut up, too. Streetlights blinked past as they drove through the predawn city, and AJ kept her face forward while she weighed her options.
Not only was she determined to kill Raazaq, a man in the top ten of the U.S.'s Most Wanted Terrorists list, she had to prove she had what it took to be one of T-FLAC's best operatives.
She had to prove it to herself.
To Kane Wright.
To Mac MacKenzie, her psych instructor, who had warned her that her aggressive need to succeed would get her killed if she didn't learn to control it. Fine. She was controlling it. Look at me, Mac. See? AJ Cooper biting her tongue.
All she needed was one more chance.
It didn't help that her hero worship for the man stoically driving the car was mixed in with a healthy and very unwelcome case of lust, which she hadn't been able to shake on the twenty-two-hour plane ride over here. In the last three days her emotions had gone to hell in a handbasket, and the last man, the absolutely last frigging man she should have any romantic interest in was Kane Wright.
The man was a loner. Did not play well with others. Was a perfectionist. Brooked no mistakes from himself or anyone else. And was intractable, unfriendly, and cranky.
Hells bells, AJ thought, scrunching down in her seat, closing gritty eyes, now that she thought about it, she didn't even like him!
The car slowed and she opened her eyes to look around.
The safe house was on the West Bank of the Nile on the edge of the newly reclaimed Imbaba district. It was a high-rise hovel. Peeling paint, graffiti, and broken lower windows proved it wasn't one of the newer buildings in the recently spruced-up neighborhood. In fact, it was just a taller version of the crumbling tenements surrounding it. Kane pulled their vehicle into the building's basement parking garage just as dawn broke over the city through a smoggy golden haze.
Things were looking up. He'd brought her here before hauling her off to the airport.
AJ huffed out a grunt of relief as he pulled into an empty parking slot and shut the car off. She was flat-out exhausted, and figured he must be, too. Flea-bitten or not, the safe-house apartment must have a shower and a toilet in working order. And a bed. She needed a shower, food, and a horizontal surface to crash on for a few hours. Then she'd sit down and figure out how to salvage her reputation and do the job she'd been sent to Egypt to do.
"Do I get to shower and nap before you haul my ass off to the airport?" she asked, unsnapping the frayed seat belt as soon as they stopped. The fact that she hadn't had a full or decent night's sleep in over three months was immaterial.
"You'll have plenty of time for a nap on the plane," he said shortly, reaching for the door handle without even glancing her way. "Just stay downwind of the civilians."
AJ got out of the car and slammed the door behind her a little harder than necessary. Dickhead. He didn't smell any better than she did.
If he were her brother, Gabriel, she'd give him a good solid punch to the solar plexus. But her quick temper had landed her in trouble and written up more than once, and she was already one of Kane's least favorite people. AJ bit her lip even harder. She didn't have to be one of his favorite people.
Don't kill him, she thought determinedly, and don't kiss him, either. Just do your job. Do it well and go home. Mission accomplished.
Kane's dusty black galabayya swept about him like the wings of a raven as he walked around the back of the car to join her. Still in character, although they were the only two people in the parking garage. AJ noticed his shoes. Battered and old, they looked insubstantial and as fragile and worn as he did. He looked Arab, talked apple pie, and was as emotionless as a robot.
In short, a perfect T-FLAC operative. "Move it," he said, indicating the elevator on the far side of the cavernous, and almost full, parking garage.
AJ gave him the finger behind his back, but she bit back a smart-ass retort and caught up with him. She pushed the elevator
button and blinked moisture into her dry, tired eyes as she leaned against the wall to wait for the car. Damn, she could fall asleep standing up. She pushed herself away from the wall. "When do you leave for Fayoum?"
"You're not coming."
The doors jerked open, and she stepped in, leaving him to follow. "I didn't say 'we,' did I? I heard you the first dozen times. Give it a rest, okay? I got the message."
He hit the floor button. Eleven, she noted absently as the car started ascending in rumbling fits and starts that didn't fill her with confidence. Great. Blow her big chance, then die in a plunging elevator in a rat-infested hotel. Just perfect. She'd go down in T-FLAC history as the biggest loser to ever walk through their doors.
Gabriel would have to change his name in self-defense.
"Some people need to be told more than once."
AJ heard her back teeth grind together as she said tightly, "Well, I'm not one of them." He could talk until he turned as old as he looked. Whoever got to Fayoum first could take out Raazaq. She'd be there first. She'd make sure of it. When he dropped her off at the airport she'd split. He wouldn't have to know she'd disobeyed orders until after the hit was done.
It was a risk, disobeying a direct order. But on the other hand, when she'd taken out Raazaq and done her job, the powers that be at T-FLAC would see she'd used her own initiative and be pleased.
The elevator was slower than molasses in winter and jerked and hesitated every few feet as if it were too tired to make the trip. Standing side by side, they faced the doors. AJ shot him a surreptitious glance under her lashes. His normal closed look was made even more obscure by the makeup.
What was he thinking? Nothing good, judging by the set of his jaw.
A couple of years ago Kane had been imprisoned for two months on an op. His report had, frustratingly, been sealed. Just the bare facts were on record. Six men had gone into Libya. Five men killed in action. Kane imprisoned for two months. Kane returned home.
End of story.
Maybe bringing that back to him, getting him to relate to what had just happened to her, would soften him up a bit. Remind him that once upon a time, he'd been vulnerable, too.
"I guess I was lucky." AJ shuffled back to lean against the wall as they rose in fits and starts. "Thank God they didn't get around to torturing me. You showed up in the nick of time."
"It wouldn't've been pleasant," Kane said laconically, not bothering to look at her.
Right. "Not pleasant" was one way to put it. She shivered just thinking about the shrieks and screams of agony she'd listened to in there. Of course, she wasn't being tortured now, either, but it was damn unpleasant, just the same. "You were held captive in Libya, right?"
"Yeah."
Okay. That didn't open up a dialogue, either. The man was as uncommunicative as a clam. He'd been tortured for months in that hellhole in Al Jawf. During her second month at the Academy, she'd pored over what there was in the report. Reading between the lines, and empathizing, sick to her stomach at man's inhumanity to man. How had he withstood what they'd done to him? How had he survived?
How had he ended up in that prison? Had it been his mistake or a mistake by one of the others on his team?
"I'm sorry, it must've been hell," she said softly to his back. A massive understatement, she knew. Damn it. She was a fairly intelligent woman. Knew how to conduct a lively conversation most of the time. But with Kane Wright she felt ridiculously inept and tongue-tied. It didn't help that he was pissed. Or that he was being stubbornly unresponsive to her olive branch.
AJ curled her fingers into her palms. She desperately wanted to reach him on some level. Wanted him to be pleased with her, with her performance as an operative. She wanted, needed, his validation. Frustrated, she dug her short nails into her soft palms until she concentrated on that pain instead of the pain of disappointment crushing her chest.
She shouldn't need his validation. Damn it. She really shouldn't. He was nothing to her. Nothing more than her boss on this op. Nothing more than her hero. Nothing more than a man she'd looked up to, sight unseen, for the last eighteen months of her life.
He looked at her over his shoulder. "I was outside the whole time you were in there, Cooper," he said quietly, as if he'd read her mind. "I wouldn't have let it get that far."
AJ felt a huge wash of gratitude. "I wasn't worried."
He faced front again. "Right."
Feel the warmth, AJ thought, glaring at his back. Talk about unbending. He must've been raised by wolves.
"Okay, maybe a little worried," she admitted. "But you must have been worried when you were in prison, too, right?"
"Can't remember."
"Would you mind me asking how you landed there?" A mistake you made, right?
"Yes."
AJ waited a beat. Honest to God, the man took the word "uncommunicative" to a whole new level. "Don't hold back, Kane. Feel free to tell me how you really feel, in as many words as you need."
"Fine. You want to know? Trust was misplaced. Someone didn't obey orders," he said after a few minutes of heavy silence. "The result was that five good men were tortured to death right outside my window. After a while I started praying that my turn would come soon. Is that enough info for you, Cooper? Or would you like the gory details?"
AJ pressed her fist to her stomach. She'd read the bare bones of the report. Over and over and over again. She didn't need the details. The images of what she thought might have happened were etched in her brain. It had probably been considerably worse than anything she could've come up with.
Kane Wright had never, as far as she knew, made any mistakes or missteps in his eight-year career, so whoever had screwed up had died. Did he feel responsible somehow?
"Sorry for dredging that up. That was a shitty thing to do. Just because I'm feeling sorry for myself doesn't mean I have the right to stir up your old memories."
"Doesn't matter anymore."
Yes it did, she wanted to argue, but talking to the back of his head was getting her nowhere fast. "I'm sorry I asked."
"So am I, Cooper. So am I."
They rode the rest of the way up to the eleventh floor in silence, and when the door opened he was the first one out. AJ caught up with him, and walked beside him when he turned left down the hall. With her Sig Sauer in her hand, her gaze shifted constantly as she kept a sharp eye on their surroundings. Raazaq's men could be anywhere.
If she went to Fayoum alone and then screwed up this opportunity again, she could wave her T-FLAC career good-bye. Of that she was a dead certain. Of course, if she screwed up while she was on her own, it was pretty much a certainty she'd be dead. So worries about her career were pretty much moot.
If she got on the plane and went home with her tail between her legs, they might send her out on another op again sometime. In fifty years or so. Maybe. Or, more likely, they'd insist she take the damn desk job they'd offered her in the first place. Even more likely, they'd boot her ass out of the organization so fast, she'd get whiplash.
She'd go to Fayoum.
And this time she wouldn't miss Raazaq.
It wasn't an option.
Decision made. Debate over.
Strangely enough, now that she'd made up her mind, fatigue dropped from her shoulders like an old jacket she'd shrugged out of. There was bounce in her step, and a tiny burst of energy dazzling through her bloodstream. This wasn't over.
She wouldn't be going home in disgrace. She'd show Kane. She'd show them all!
The endless corridors smelled of urine, cumin, and poverty. Babies cried behind closed doors, and large, black cockroaches crawled the walls and crunched underfoot on the filthy, cracked linoleum. Nothing like the posh Hotel Ra.
One more turn in the labyrinth of filth and they came to a blue-painted door. El 101. It looked like the Hounds of the Baskervilles had clawed at the chipped and faded paintwork to get in. "Got the k—" Her mouth snapped shut.
The door was closed, but not latched. AJ tightened her
grip on the Sig. She wouldn't be caught flat-footed again. Weapon held in both hands, she motioned she was going in.
He nodded.
They burst through the door, Kane high, AJ low.
She did a quick visual scan of the large, shabby room. Her nose wrinkled at the rank smell in the place, and she quickly started breathing through her mouth.
Nothing was out of place that she could see, but there was definitely something wrong. Something…
Weapon at the ready, she rounded the dirty beige sofa, making certain her eyes followed the same line as the barrel of the Sig. Constantly in motion, she scanned her surroundings.
Shabby. Cheap. Transient. A typical safe house. Nothing unexpected.
Living room. Open-plan kitchen. Two bedrooms.
Quiet as a tomb.
Smelled like one, too.
Narrow-eyed, she turned in a slow circle, the Sig leading the way, keeping Kane in her peripheral vision. He moved soundlessly about the room and into the kitchen. For a large man he walked as silently, and as gracefully, as a dancer. AJ completed her circle.
Something on the sofa snagged her attention. She stared for several moments at the obscene splash of dark brownish-red on the oily cushions.
Droplets of blood sprayed out in a high-velocity pattern from a central point on the middle seat. Resting smack dab in the center lay a small object. A small bloody object.
Clearly something severed right where it lay…
"Jesus God!" she whispered. The blood drained from her head.
Kane came back around the bar separating the kitchen from the living room. "Nothing. I'll check the be—"
AJ pointed. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yeah," he said grimly, coming up beside her. "If what you think it is is someone's tongue."
"Oh, crap…" She breathed a little heavier through her mouth, and looked a bit paler under the dirt, but she took it well. Thank God she didn't freak out. He had enough to deal with.
