by Paula Graves
She closed her eyes, feeling sick. “Quinn, I don’t know the name of the man who debriefed me. He never told me, and I never asked. I’d never seen him before—”
“He may not have been CIA at all,” Quinn murmured. “He may have been contracted by whoever wanted to hide your captors’ identities.”
“But Mitch Jefferson okayed the interrogation.”
“Jefferson left the CIA last year. Took early retirement.” Quinn’s voice darkened. “Now I’m wondering if that’s just a coincidence.”
Amanda passed a hand over her burning eyes. “I don’t want to believe it. Jefferson seemed like one of the good ones.”
“He could have been a dupe. If the order came from high enough up—”
“How high up?” she asked, appalled.
“Very. Too high for me to reach, which is why I’m bypassing the CIA altogether.” He sounded impatient. “Listen, I can’t stay on this line much longer. You do what Damon asks. Okay? I wouldn’t ask it of you if I thought there was a better way. You’re running out of time, and all those bastards need is to get lucky just once.”
“I’ll do it,” she agreed. She’d already decided she would.
“Go answer the door.” He hung up the phone.
She stared at the phone for a second. Then a soft rapping sound at the front of the house set her nerves jangling.
She did as Quinn asked, opening the door to Damon North. He stood in the doorway, holding a large canvas bag. “You talk to Quinn?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get ready to go.”
Her eyes widened. “Now?”
“If you stick around, Cooper will come back and try to talk you out of it.” Damon motioned for her to let him in the house. “You know you’ve got to do this.”
“Don’t you have to set something up?” she asked as they went back to the guest room to gather her gear.
“Already done.” He set his bag on her bed, unzipped it and pulled out a camouflage coverall. “Here, wear this.”
She looked up from her duffel bag, her hand still on the butt of the SIG Sauer she’d selected from her small collection. “You and Quinn were pretty confident I’d lay my neck on the line for you, huh?”
“You’re not doing this for us. You’re doing it for yourself. You’re the target. We figured you couldn’t give up the chance to finally stop running away.”
She looked down at the pistol in her hand. It was sleek, black and deadly. But it might not prove to be much protection against a small army of ruthless, well-trained men on a mission.
Running away didn’t seem like such a bad option.
But once a person started running, it was next to impossible to stop. Sooner or later, you had to turn around, plant your feet and make a stand. Might as well make hers while she was still in fighting condition.
“Okay,” she said, pulling ammunition from the bag and grabbing the compact Walther she liked to carry in an ankle holster as a backup weapon. She belted the holster around her ankle and rose to face Damon, who was holding the coverall open for her. She stepped into the legs and zipped up the front. “I need somewhere to put my holster.”
Damon pulled a camouflage belt out of the bag. She belted it around her waist and clipped her holster to the belt, then went across the room to the desk by the window.
“What are you doing?” Damon asked as she scrabbled through the drawers.
“I need to leave Rick a note.”
Damon shook his head. “He’ll come after you.”
“He’ll come after me if I leave here without a note.” She found a small notepad and a pen in one of the drawers and jotted a quick note. “I’m telling him I’m going for a long walk and not to expect me back until four.” Rick said he’d be gone a couple of hours, which meant he’d be back around three. She’d get a three-hour head start before he started looking.
If she was lucky, it would all be over by then.
One way or another.
Chapter Fifteen
Maddox Heller’s place in Borland, Alabama, a town about twenty minutes from Maybridge, seemed pretty ordinary at first glance. Nestled at the end of a winding, wooded road, the two-story farmhouse sat on a small clearing about thirty yards back from the road. The front yard was mostly wooded, shaded by towering pines, while behind the house, a natural garden spread out, inviting and abloom with daffodils, hyacinths and tulips.
Rick parked in an empty place in the driveway and walked up the flagstone walkway to the front door, wondering what he’d find inside. Rick had never met Maddox Heller, but the former Marine had been notorious for a while a few years back, shortly after the embassy siege that had led to the long period of instability in Kaziristan.
As the State Department’s chosen whipping boy, Heller had faced a dishonorable discharge and plenty of blame from the media and politicians eager to deflect attention from their own slow reactions to intelligence-agency warnings of impending unrest in Kaziristan.
Then another crisis came along, the news cycle rolled on and Heller had disappeared from the headlines.
Rick knew him only by the newspaper photos he’d seen and the still shots cable news and broadcast stations had put on-screen while sensationalizing his story. He expected to find a slightly older version of the Marine Heller had been when the story erupted.
Instead, he found a cheerful-looking man with sandy hair worn a little long and at least two days’ growth of beard on his smiling face. He wore jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt stained with the same grape jelly currently covering the sticky fingers of a dark-haired toddler perched on his hip.
“Sorry about the mess—Daisy’s going through the terrible twos.” Heller started to reach out his hand to shake Rick’s, spotted the jelly goo on his palm and drew back with an apologetic smile. “Iris will be here to take her off our hands in a second—she’s on her way home from the nursery.”
“If this is a bad time—”
“No, come on in.” Heller had a strong Southern drawl, far stronger than his own, which so much time out of Alabama had muted and tempered. “Daisy Mae, your mama’s gonna have to give you a bath in the middle of the day. What do you say to that?”
“Baf!” Daisy patted her father’s face with delight, leaving grape-jelly stains on his cheeks.
“You got any kids?” Heller asked as he led Rick into a comfortable, lived-in den. He grabbed a large pink diaper bag off the sofa cushion and dug inside, still gripping his daughter on his hip. He pulled out a small, flat box and handed it to Rick. “Can you open that and give me a wipe?”
Rick complied, answering Heller’s earlier question as he handed over the wet wipe. “No kids,” he answered, thinking of Amanda. She seemed about the least likely candidate for motherhood he knew, and given his experience with his own mother, who hadn’t been able to take motherhood or marriage to a small-town cop, he wasn’t going to force any woman into a life she couldn’t handle. “Don’t think it’s in the cards for me.”
Heller took the wipe and went to work on the toddler’s sticky hands and face. The little girl struggled to keep away from the wipe, making a game of it. “I’d have said the same thing a few years ago. Until Iris came along.”
“Who made the mess in the kitchen?” A woman’s voice floated in from somewhere near the back of the house, making both Heller and the baby turn in that direction, grins on their faces. A moment later, a slim, pretty woman with dark, wavy hair and bright brown eyes entered the room, her eyes alight at the sight of her family. “I see it was a peanut butter and jelly day!” She held out her arms and the toddler wriggled against her father’s grasp until he set her down. She raced to her mother on plump, churning legs.
The woman picked up the little girl and gave her a big kiss. “Sorry I’m a little late—Lily dropped by with Casey and Seth—” She stopped short, realizing there was someone else in the room. “Oh, hi. You must be Rick. I’m Iris Heller.”
“I told her we were expecting you,” Heller explai
ned.
“I’ll just take Daisy to the bathroom to wash up and then we’ll go outside and play before it starts getting colder.” Iris gave her husband a quick kiss and headed down the hallway, out of sight.
“I didn’t know someone else would be here.”
“Iris knows everything I know at this point, and I assume you’re here to find out what I know, right?”
“Right.”
“So let’s get started.” Heller wiped his hands and face with the wet wipe and tossed it in a nearby trash can. “Jesse faxed me over the sketch of the man who tortured your friend. I’ve got to say, I was a little surprised by it.”
“Why?”
Heller picked up a folder sitting on a nearby desk and opened it, pulling out a fax copy of the sketch. “I think I know this guy. He was a little younger when I knew him, and his hair is longer in this picture, but I’d just about swear it’s a guy I knew named Khalid Mazir.”
Something about the name seemed familiar, but Rick couldn’t place it. “And why’s that surprising?”
“Because the Khalid Mazir I knew was a bright, Westernized kid. His daddy was the deputy minister of finance for the regime in place when al Adar took the embassy under siege. Old Zoli Mazir ended up gettin’ killed a couple of weeks later in a car bombing outside the ministry building.”
Rick had to admit, Khalid Mazir didn’t sound like a likely suspect for an al Adar operative. “Maybe Khalid just looks like this guy.”
“Except for this birthmark.” Heller pointed to a kidney-shaped dark mark just under the left eye of the man in the sketch. “Khalid Mazir definitely had this same birthmark.”
“So maybe the kid radicalized after his father’s death.”
“Or before,” Heller said bleakly.
“So, is it just me, or does it still seem pretty unlikely that Khalid Mazir would bother putting out a hit on a woman he tortured three years ago?”
“Actually,” Heller said, “I’d say it’s pretty damn likely, when you consider what the man is doing these days.”
“Which is what?”
Heller met Rick’s gaze, his slate-blue eyes dark with concern. “Running for president of Kaziristan.”
“I CONTACTED SALVATORE BECKETT and told him I knew where to find you.” Damon North drove up the winding mountain road, taking the turns at scary speeds.
Amanda clutched the dashboard and held on, her heart thudding wildly in her chest. “How’s this going to work? Is Quinn sending backup for us?”
Damon darted a glance her way but didn’t answer.
Her stomach dipped. “Tell me we’re not up against an army of mercs alone.”
“We can’t drag an army of our own into the woods. They’ll see us coming and all hell will break loose.”
“We’re supposed to take on the whole crew ourselves?”
“Sort of.”
“Stop the car.”
He looked over at her. “Don’t be stupid.”
“You’re talking about a suicide mission—but I’m guessing you’re not the one who’ll be in the crosshairs, am I right?”
“I’m not going to put you anywhere near the crosshairs.” Damon sounded sincere, but Amanda’s trust was stretched past the breaking point.
“Just tell me what you’re planning.”
“I need you to back me up.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to meet them. I’m going to tell them that the Coopers double-crossed me and that they’ve hidden you away somewhere. I’m going to convince them that I’m the only chance they have of finding you.”
“This isn’t about getting them off my back at all, is it?” She stared at him in disbelief. “This is about getting you back in with MacLear.”
“Not for real. This is about finishing the job Quinn and I started a few years ago.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know what’s real or not?” She shook her head, furious at herself for putting herself in such a dangerous position.
“Didn’t Quinn tell you to go with me?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what his agenda is. He’s a professional liar, and he’s put agents in the line of fire before if he thought the risk was worth it.”
“Just please—trust me. It’s important that we don’t take this group down yet. There’s someone bigger involved. Quinn and I are both convinced of it, especially the way things are going in the Barton Reid investigation. Someone’s pulling strings, and we’re about to lose everything we’ve worked for.”
Amanda’s lips thinned with annoyance. “Not my problem.”
“Damned well is your problem. As long as the SSU operatives are still out there, gunning for hire, then people like you will always be in the line of fire. Quinn told me you weren’t the kind of agent who worried only about her own skin.”
“I’m not an agent anymore,” she said blackly. “And I have other people to worry about.”
“Yeah, well, this way, you’re keeping the Coopers out of the battle zone. Isn’t that what you want?”
It was—of course it was. And there was a part of her that knew Damon was right—catching a small portion of the mercenaries today wasn’t nearly as valuable as infiltrating the whole group and strategically weakening them from the inside out so that the whole group might one day topple all at once.
But Damon’s plan wouldn’t do a damn thing to end the limbo her own life was in at the moment.
In the back of her head, she heard Alexander Quinn’s voice, low and intense. Do the job. Everything else is secondary.
She just wasn’t sure she believed that anymore.
RICK TRIED CALLING ISABEL’S house from his car, but nobody answered. He had ID blocking on his cell phone, which would prevent Amanda from being able to tell who was calling, even if she knew his number. He wasn’t really surprised that she let the call go to voice mail.
He called Jesse and caught him up on what he’d learned from Maddox Heller. “He seems pretty sure that the man in the sketch is Mazir. Which could definitely explain why there’s a hit squad after her.”
Jesse spat out a profanity that made Rick’s eyebrows arch. His brother was usually unflappable. “From what I’ve read, Mazir is running as a democratic reformer.”
“I seem to recall a few dictators who claimed to be representing the people before they rose to power and showed their real faces,” Rick growled. “If Amanda were to tell the press what Mazir did to her, the kind of torture and treachery he’s capable of—”
“Whatever he’s planning for Kaziristan would be in jeopardy,” Jesse finished for him, his voice grim.
“Exactly. I’m heading to Isabel’s—”
“I’ll meet you there.” Jesse hung up.
Jesse wasn’t the only Cooper at Isabel’s house when Rick arrived. The whole gang was there, and they didn’t look happy.
“Where’s Amanda?” he asked as he looked around Isabel’s living room and didn’t see her.
“We’re not sure,” Isabel answered. She was sitting at the small desk in the living room, her laptop computer open in front of her. “I checked the bedroom when I got here about ten minutes ago and found a note from her saying she went for a walk by the creek. But I’ve been up and down the creek and didn’t see any sign of her. Not even footprints.”
“But we did find tire tracks in the dirt at the edge of the driveway.” Wade pulled out his cell phone and showed Rick an image on the small display screen. “They don’t match any of our vehicles. But we think it may match Damon North’s vehicle.”
“And you said the surveillance cameras on the visitor parking lot were too intrusive,” Jesse said to Rick, his smile grim. “I’ve got Branson in security pulling the surveillance shots of North’s vehicle. He’ll be emailing them to Isabel any minute.”
“I’ve already emailed her this picture for comparison,” Wade said. “If we have a good shot of the tire treads, we should be able to figure out if it’s Damon’s Subaru.”
“Email’s here,” Isabel said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
They crowded around the laptop as Isabel brought up the images on the email from the office. There were three shots from different angles. The third shot, taken from almost eye level, seemed the best chance of getting a good look at the tires. Isabel increased the image size, and the distinctive crosshatch tread came into view.
She pulled up the track Wade had shot with his phone.
“Same tread,” Shannon murmured, looking at Rick.
The rest of his siblings turned to look at him, as well.
An ache started forming deep in his gut. “Maybe he made the track when you brought him by here last night.”
Jesse shook his head. “I drove. The Subaru stayed parked at the office.”
“I think we need to conclude she’s with Damon,” Megan said. “The question is, did she go willingly?”
“Where’s the note she left?” Rick asked Isabel.
“Over here.” Shannon crossed to the coffee table and picked up a folded sheet of paper. She handed it to Rick.
He read over the simple note. Cabin fever setting in. Taking a walk by the creek. Don’t worry, I’m armed. She had signed it with her initial.
“She went willingly,” he said aloud.
“How do you know?” Shannon asked.
“She signed the note with her initial. We had a signal, back in Kaziristan, when we were seeing each other. Amanda and I agreed that if something happened to one of us and we had a chance to leave a note, the signal that we were in danger would be signing our full names. If everything was fine, we’d sign with the initial. She wants me to think everything’s fine.”
“Which means Damon convinced her it would be better for her to go alone, without your interference.” Megan stepped closer, putting her hand on his shoulder. “She knew you didn’t want her to put her neck on the chopping block.”
“She should have trusted me.”
Isabel turned away from the laptop. “She didn’t want to argue and she didn’t want to see you get hurt.”
