by Linda Conrad
Chaos erupted in the room. Shouts in several languages bounced off the walls. Guns were pulled from under jackets. The door banged open and a shot rang out. And somewhere in the back of her mind she thought she heard the balcony’s glass doors sliding open.
But she was too busy to notice. She appropriated a gun from one of the hulking bodyguards with a smooth move he never saw coming and then headed through the crowd toward the Nigerian, who had been standing closest to the balcony. She caught a glimpse of him before he ducked out through the open balcony doors.
Oh, no you don’t. We’re twelve stories up. You’re mine, you bastard.
Tarik was inside the room and fighting to reach Jass O’Reilly before he could think twice about it. His mind had blanked when the head of Taj Zabbar secret police had put that dagger to her throat. Tarik had been intrigued with her from afar for years and the idea of his fantasy woman going down in a slash of bloodshed had moved him to action.
But by the time he overpowered the Russian and put him out of commission, she was nowhere to be found. Had she ducked out the front? Impossible. That exit was now clogged with men in various stages of being apprehended.
He twisted around and as his eyes darted across the room, he realized two unsettling things. The suitcase was missing from the table and the two Taj Zabbar reps were gone.
Worse, with another sweeping glance, he noted both the Nigerian and Jass had also disappeared. But they could not possibly have gotten past him. They’d both been too close to the balcony when the sting went bad.
He would have to consider the Taj Zabbar later. Right now he needed to back up his former comrade in covert operations.
When he barged through to the balcony, Tarik was hit with another shock. Jass and the Nigerian were leaning over the balcony wall, wrestling over a Ruger .357 Magnum. The Nigerian had a good fifty pounds and six inches on her.
Tarik’s weapon was useless under the circumstances. He couldn’t get off a clean shot. He held his breath and moved in closer, waiting for a moment to let the Nigerian learn of his presence—the hard way.
But the longer their struggle went on, the more he could see Jass weakening. The Nigerian had her bent over backward with her upper body hanging out over nothing but night air.
Tarik couldn’t wait. He had to make a move now.
Grabbing the assailant by the shoulder, he tried to turn the Nigerian around to face him. But right at that moment Jass made her move, too.
She hooked her leg around the Nigerian’s knees and used all her power trying to bring him down. But Tarik’s shove had overbalanced the assailant and all three of them slid closer to the balcony wall.
Horrified, he watched as both Jass and the Nigerian slipped over backward and disappeared completely into the black night. With a roar, he dove over the wall, landing tenuously on the ledge beyond.
“Help me, you idiot.” The small voice coming from below him finally cleared away the hazy panic in his head as Tarik spotted her fingers gripping the edge.
“Jass.” He flattened himself on the ledge and made a grab for her arms.
When he felt the warm skin of her wrists and fastened his hands around them, he began to murmur quiet encouragement. “I’ve got you. Take it easy.”
She groaned. “Stop talking and pull me up.”
Earlier the breeze off the ocean had been benign and gentle. Now it felt like a full-force gale. He latched one arm around the balcony wall and hoped to hell he could drag her up one-handed. It would do no good for both of them to take a header into oblivion.
Whenever he’d thought of Jass in the past, he’d never thought of her as particularly thin or small. But with a spurt of much needed adrenaline, he raised her up over the edge without a lot of effort.
Son of a gun. They were still alive.
Dragging her closer to his chest, he waited until his breathing slowed and he could actually feel his extremities again. That was as close to death as he ever wanted to go.
Jass pushed at his chest. “How about we move to a solid surface?” She came to her knees and reached for the balcony wall. “I suppose you expect a thank-you for saving my life.”
Suddenly irritated, he pulled them both over the wall to the balcony floor. “I would rather get an explanation as to why you felt it necessary to bust in on my sting.”
She stood in bare feet with her wig askew and dusted off her hands. “Not your sting, pal. Mine. I’ve been chasing that Nigerian for months and now you’ve ruined our chances of ever questioning him. You owe me.”
Damn.
“My mistake,” he muttered as he turned toward the suite doors.
He left her standing there trying to figure out what he’d meant. If he’d known how ungrateful she would be, he might’ve left her swinging in midair.
Now he had the sinking feeling he was going to live to regret tonight’s entire heroic episode.
Chapter 2
She was completely screwed.
Jass ran her hands through the auburn mop on her head that laughably passed for her real hair and squared her shoulders to face the music. Ed Langdon, her CIA handler, and General Gus Wainwright, the head of their interagency Task Force, came through the conference room door. Tarik Kadir was right on their heels.
She jumped up and stood as still as if she were at attention. It was barely twelve hours since the Nigerian had gone to his heavenly paradise and Jass hadn’t had much sleep. For most of the night she’d been too busy trying to interrogate the men who’d been captured in the hotel room and, when that became futile, working desperately to salvage something from the fiasco of last night. She had come up empty-handed on all counts.
For the last hour she’d been sitting quietly in the American consulate’s office waiting for her scheduled meeting with Ed. Jass had been going over all her moves from last evening’s sting, still trying to piece together how things had gone wrong. When she’d originally designed the plan for last night, she was positive nothing could prevent it from becoming one of her biggest career highlights. Capturing a man that the Agency had been seeking for the last three years had seemed the perfect path to advancement.
The fact that General Wainwright was here in Monaco—that he’d felt it necessary to fly in from the states, did not bode well for her rising career at all. The general motioned for her to sit and she took her first breath since he’d walked through the door. Somehow she had to survive whatever came next with her job intact.
Tarik Kadir plopped down in the seat next to hers. Her senses started reeling. She could actually feel heat emanating from his body, even considering his place at the table was well over two feet away. She scooted her chair a little farther to the side, but it didn’t help.
Glancing at the ex covert agent out of the corner of her eye, she found him staring back at her. Besides being insufferable, the man was also a rude bore.
He flashed her a crooked grin from behind his benign-looking black-framed glasses. Was he in some sort of disguise this morning? She knew for a fact that the man did not need glasses for his eyesight. Last night in a tux he’d been delicious to look at. Like the billionaire playboy sheik he was rumored to be. But this morning, the hand-tailored button-down shirt and soft suede jacket made him look unpretentious and conservative.
Bull. Did he really believe anybody would miss the aura of controlled power or the watchful intelligence hiding underneath the traditional cut of his coal-colored hair or in the eyes behind those ridiculous fake glasses?
“You still waiting for a thank-you for saving my life?” she asked while trying hard to sound unaffected.
“I don’t waste much time on fantasies.” The look he gave her was so full of erotic meaning it sent her pulse racing and made her mouth go dry.
She tried to inch farther away but found herself hugging the wall as Ed and General Wainwright seated themselves across the table.
The general’s forehead furrowed as he began, “Well, Special Officer O’Reilly. It seems your crack plan f
or capturing the Nigerian turned into a royal cluster f…” He stopped, looked slightly flustered about almost using the crude military expression meaning disaster, and then cleared his throat. “Either of you two have anything more to say about what happened last night?”
“Everything would’ve worked out if he hadn’t stepped in.”
“If the DOD had listened to me about the Taj Zabbar building weapons of mass destruction in the first place, we could’ve worked this sting together and nothing would’ve been lost.”
They’d both spoken at the same time and their words were more or less blown away in the confusion. Exasperated, Jass folded her arms over her chest and sat back.
The general pinned her with a steely gaze. “Did it once occur to you to ask what item could’ve been big enough to induce the Nigerian to come out of the shadows and attend last night’s sale?”
“I figured it was big drug deal or maybe U.S. counterfeit currency plates, sir. Rumor has it the Nigerian has been raising funds and buying into moneymaking schemes all over Europe.” Jass was becoming more uncomfortable by the second.
The general waved his hand dismissively. “My fault. I should’ve seen this coming when I approved your plan.”
Next he turned on Tarik. “You thought you recognized Special Officer O’Reilly in her disguise. Is that right?”
Tarik nodded once.
“And yet you went out on the balcony to rescue someone you knew to be a competent officer and turned your back on the briefcase containing a nuclear device.”
Tarik’s face paled and his jaw became impossibly hard.
The general surprised him by flashing a grin. “I guess we’re all treading in deep water over this screwup. Let’s see what we can do to make it right.”
Jass didn’t like the sound of that. She had no intention of ever doing anything with the infuriating sheik Kadir.
Tarik could see the frustration building on Jass’s face. He knew what that was like. He’d been trying for months to convince the DOD, and General Wainwright in particular, that the Taj Zabbar were a serious and growing danger to the world. Up until this morning, he hadn’t succeeded.
He forced his attention back to the general. “I just finished speaking to my brother at Kadir headquarters, sir. The briefcase has disappeared—along with the Elder bin Khali Taj Zabbar. We’ll pick him up again, though it might take some time. But Darin did get a line on that other matter you asked about.” He took a breath. “Seems our technical unit has been hearing the same rumors over the social networks that your units have, and we’re fairly sure the Taj Zabbar will be involved in that upcoming auction, too.”
“Then that gives us a place to start fresh together.” The general tilted his head to address Jass. “We caught a break when another DOD split task force captured an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan last week. The Pakistanis have been interrogating the man and yesterday obtained a major piece of intel.”
Tarik watched as Jass’s expression went from resigned and frustrated to hopeful and eager. She was arresting to look at with her exotic mix of cultures. Not classically beautiful, but expressive and fascinatingly intense when she thought she wasn’t being observed. A man couldn’t avoid keeping his eyes trained on that face. At least, not this man.
“It seems our Russian from last night’s auction had another partner,” the general continued. “Someone still operating in the wind who supposedly has one more auction scheduled for next week.”
“Another briefcase bomb? Surely not. That’s—”
The general’s hand chopped the air to stop her words. “No, another bomb would’ve been impossible to sneak out of Russia, even for a genius like Karolek Petrov. But it seems there is one more item up for bid that’s worth paying a king’s ransom—at least for terrorists.”
Jass sat up a little straighter. “A detonator or timing device of some sort?”
“Good point. It’s possible. We don’t know for sure.” General Wainwright folded his hands on the desk and stared down at them. “Whatever it is, it’s big. All we know are the identities of some of the bidders and the approximate location and date. We need to know the rest.”
Jass’s eyes rounded and dilated. Bless her fiendish little heart. Tarik could see she was almost drooling over the potential of being given such a plum assignment. When she learned the truth, that this was going to be his sting—not hers—he had a feeling her expressive face would be speaking a different language.
“Do we have a way to firm up the location?” Jass asked the general.
She was starting to believe this would be more of a golden opportunity rather than the end of her career. She snuck a look at Ed, her handler, and was puzzled by his narrowed expression. He apparently knew something she did not.
“The auction will definitely be taking place in Brazil,” the general answered with authority. “The Russian’s partner, also one of the Russian mob but not as clever as Petrov, has developed a network headquartered in Rio. That much we know for sure. The Kadir family’s intel unit has put feelers out and we expect to have better information as we get closer to the date.”
The Kadir family intel unit? What the heck was that? And what the devil was wrong with their own CIA intelligence? No wonder Ed was not looking too happy.
Jass pinned her lips together to keep from making a remark she might regret later. She was still convinced she was only a hairsbreadth away from being kicked out of the Task Force over last night’s screwup. The way this new mission turned out would make all the difference to her career.
She had to keep her job. It was her only chance to live up to the high standard her father set years ago. Thank God it appeared she was being given the opportunity.
“Special Officer O’Reilly, your background file says you can speak both Russian and Farsi. Is that correct?” The general had his gaze trained on her face.
“Yes, sir. My mother’s family was originally from Iran and I spoke Farsi before English. I learned the Russian language for a covert op a few years back.”
“Well, Farsi is not perfectly suited for this mission but we can make it work. The Russian is pivotal.”
He was going to make her the operative in charge of the mission after all! Relief nearly brought her to tears. Jass was thrilled to get the badly needed superior position to make up for the one she’d messed up. Taking a deep breath, she turned to study Kadir. What was his role here? Informant? Adviser?
Whatever it was, she hoped they wouldn’t have to work together too closely or for terribly long. The man rode her nerves whenever his gaze raked over her body. Which was pretty much every time she’d ever run into him.
“We’ve devised a sting to take advantage of a couple of lucky breaks.” The general turned to Ed for an affirmative nod, then continued. “First, about a month ago, ICE agents apprehended a woman who’s been on Homeland’s watch list for years. She’s an international illegal arms dealer with no allegiance to any country and who seems devoid of any scruples about the deals she makes.”
“The Messenger?” Jass knew of only one woman who might fit that criteria.
The general nodded grimly. “As a favor to us, Homeland has kept the lid on her capture. We’re sure nothing has leaked out to any of the intelligence community.”
Jass was positive he was correct. She’d been following the exploits of the mysterious woman known as the Messenger for years and knew nothing of her capture.
Turning to Tarik, the general explained further. “This shadowy female dealer’s real name is Celile Kocak. Originally Uzbekistani from Russian and Turkish decent, as I understand. Her exploits in the field of buying and selling arms have been embellished over time, yet no one had ever seen a picture of the woman.
“Now that we have her in custody,” he went on. “It turns out she has a few years on Special Officer O’Reilly. But other than that, the two could easily pass as sisters.”
Wow. Think of that. The mysterious woman who had captured her imagination for forever looked
enough like her to be a sister. Jass was enthralled by the idea of passing for such a deadly and merciless criminal on a sting.
From his position next to her, Tarik cleared his throat. “You said there’d been two lucky breaks?”
“Indeed. Under intense interrogation we’ve learned that this Kocak woman has been scouring the market for the last few months, looking for special arms to buy for another mysterious character. A shady Middle Eastern sheik who goes by the name of Abu Zohdi. We’ve been trying to track him down, and he’s recently turned up in an English jail in the Bahamas—although they didn’t know who they had in custody.
“This middle-easterner is one extremely dangerous and rich terrorist,” the general went on to explain. “With close ties to al-Qaeda. And the Bahamians were about to release him due to lack of evidence. It was only by pure luck that we obtained his whereabouts from the Kocak woman before he was long gone.”
“We have Abu Zohdi in our hands now?” Jass knew that name too and was beginning to worry about where the general’s explanation was heading.
“Momentarily. In the meantime we are continuing to interrogate the Kocak woman, trying to learn what kind of arms will be for sale in Rio.”
Yes, the more information she had before going in, the better prepared she would be to disrupt the sale. “Excuse me, General Wainwright, but what result do you anticipate from our mission? Is it more important to capture this other Russian or to take control of whatever weapons are for sale?”
The general raised one eyebrow and she almost giggled at the silly picture he made. “I trust you will not hesitate to confiscate anything as potentially dangerous as a nuclear bomb if it’s placed right in front of you, Officer O’Reilly. Not this time.”
Her smile faded in that instant. She felt her cheeks warming and was glad for her golden skin tones. Fairer women had a more difficult time disguising their embarrassment.
“Yes…uh…no, sir.”
“Your job on this sting is to get your partner inside that auction to meet all the bidders. Gather information. Intel is your ultimate assignment with the Task Force, remember.” The general narrowed his eyes at her. “Your handler will give you further instructions once we get a clearer picture of what’s going on inside.”
