Beyond Limits

by Laura Griffin

  No. No, she could not. “Sure.”

  “Will you stay here tonight?” She tipped her head back and looked at him. “Please?”

  * * *

  Elizabeth lay beside Derek, tracing a pattern on his chest. She ran her finger over the scar there and then trailed lower, to the one along his rib cage.

  Her throat tightened, and she stopped tracing. Instead, she slid her thigh over his and nestled closer. His body felt warm and solid, and she tried to keep her mind in the present. If she could focus on his arms around her, she might actually get some sleep tonight.

  “People do it, you know.”

  She turned her head. “What?”

  “The long-distance thing.” He eased his arm out from under her and propped himself on his elbow to look at her. “It’s tough, but it works. Not always but sometimes.”

  She slid her leg away and rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling. The bathroom door was ajar, letting a wedge of light into the room. “I don’t want a relationship like that.”

  “With me, you mean.”

  “With anyone.” She sat up against the headboard and pulled the sheet up.

  “What’s so bad about it?”

  She stared at him. “We’d never see each other, for one thing.”

  “We would when I have leave.”

  “That’s what? A few weeks a year?” Frustration welled up in her chest. Why did he want to talk about this right now?

  “That’s a cop-out, and you know it. You just don’t want to try.”

  She looked at him there in the dim light. He was propped on his elbow, staring at her, all muscular and perfect and scarred and determined.

  Her heart felt sore. He thought she was weak. And she wasn’t. But she knew herself a lot better than he did, and she wished he’d at least try to understand.

  She reached out and brushed her finger over his knuckles. “Have you ever been to a place, and it’s so different from what you’re used to—you’re not there that long, but it’s so different that you notice every detail?” She watched him. “Maybe somewhere exotic, like the Himalayas or the rain forest or, I don’t know, somewhere underwater?”

  He nodded slightly.

  “That’s what it was like with you. I memorized every detail. And then you were gone, and it was really hard.” She met his eyes, and her nerves fluttered as she let the words come out. “I missed you so much. It took me a long time to deal with that and accept that we were too different. The circumstances were too impossible. It was hard to face up to, but I did it. And I don’t want to have to go through that again.”

  She saw the frustration in his eyes, and she could tell he still didn’t get it. He’d always been the one to leave, not the one left behind.

  “There was so much waiting and worrying,” she said. “I would have these moments of panic every time I watched the news. And I’d read in the paper about some suicide bomb or some helicopter crash, and I’d look for some hidden clue that it was or wasn’t you involved.”

  His brow furrowed, but she kept going.

  “I know how you are, how when there’s trouble you run to it, not away. I knew you guys were in on that raid before Gordon even told me. I knew it in my bones, Derek. It was so dangerous—who else would they send?”

  “This isn’t really about me, is it?” His voice had an edge. “This is about your dad.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe in a way. I know what it’s like to lose someone important. The hurt is so deep I can’t even explain it. And I know how hard it is after. I don’t want that kind of fear in my life again. It’s taken me years to get away from it, and I know that’s not what I want. Can’t you try to understand that?”

  He held her gaze for a long moment. “I understand fear better than anybody. Part I don’t understand is giving in without a fight.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A faint buzzing noise jarred Derek awake. He stared up at the ceiling and felt a heavy weight on his chest. Snagging his jeans off the floor, he dug his phone from the pocket.

  “Vaughn.”

  “You up?” It was Luke.

  Derek sat up and glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth. She was out cold, her arms tucked snugly under the pillow. She didn’t move a muscle as he got up and pulled on his jeans.

  She’d been so wrung out that she’d completely crashed. He knew from experience that she didn’t like emotional drama, but last night had been pretty maxed out.

  “You there?”

  “One sec.” He opened the glass slider and stepped onto the balcony. Although balcony was being generous. It was barely big enough to stand on—maybe if you were a hobbit sneaking a cigarette, but that was about it. He slid the door shut behind him and blinked up at the sun.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I just talked to Hailey, and I’ve got some intel.”

  “You just talked to her?” He checked his watch. It was 0600 in California.

  “This was last night. She was going through some shit, and she asked me to come to her hotel to talk.”

  “And you went.”

  “Hey, fuck you, Mr. Self-Righteous. I didn’t touch her.”

  Derek hoped for Hailey’s sake that Luke was telling the truth. He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Do you want this or not?”

  “I do.”

  Derek definitely wanted it. He looked out over the kudzu-covered bayou that separated Elizabeth’s hotel from a freeway packed with morning commuters. This thing, whatever it was, was ramping up, and the feds were still chasing their tails.

  “Rasasa,” Luke said. “I don’t know if it’s a name or a place or what, but Hailey said it’s something Khalid was talking about during her captivity.”

  “Rasasa.”

  “Yeah, you roll the R. I think it’s a person, but it could be anything. I figured you could pass it along to the FBI. Can you reach Elizabeth?”

  Derek glanced over his shoulder. The bed was empty now. “Yeah,” he said, stepping back into the room.

  So much for the naked send-off he’d been hoping for. But the bathroom door stood ajar, and the shower was running, so maybe he had a chance.

  “She mention anything else?” Derek asked.

  “Not really.”

  Derek scrubbed his hand over his face. “Okay, well, let me know if she comes up with something more.”

  “I will. So are you back yet?”

  “Nah, I’m still in Houston.”

  “I thought you were driving.”

  “I am.”

  The water went off, and Derek watched Elizabeth’s perfectly wet and perfectly naked body step out of the tub.

  “Listen, I gotta go.”

  “Right. Got it.” Luke laughed, and Derek knew he’d figured out exactly why he was still in Houston. “Hey, don’t stick around too long. We’re wheels-up Thursday.”

  “I know.”

  Derek shoved his phone into his pocket and stepped into the bathroom as she was wrapping herself in a towel. She looked wary, maybe a little uneasy around him in the cold light of morning. She was typically so restrained all the time, and last night’s maelstrom of tears and emotion and lust had caught them both off-guard.

  She moved to step past him, and he caught her arm.

  “ ’Morning.”

  “ ’Morning.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. Not exactly the full-frontal assault he would have liked, but it was friendly.

  “How’s the arm?” he asked, looking down at her bandage.

  “Fine.”

  Uh-huh. He’d bet it hurt like a bitch.

  “Who was on the phone?” she asked, slipping out of his grasp to walk to the closet.

  “Luke. Hey, does the name Rasasa mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “I don’t know.” His phone vibrated, and he tore his gaze away from Elizabeth to read a text from Cole. The message was long an
d rambling, and reading it prompted him to shuffle his plans for the morning. He texted back a response.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  He looked up. “Hailey Gardner.” He tucked the phone away. “Luke talked to her last night.”

  Her eyebrows tipped up as she slipped past him again—fully dressed now, unfortunately—into the bathroom. She wore another one of those crisp white shirts with charcoal slacks. She ran a brush through her hair, eyeing him in the mirror. “I didn’t know he’d been in contact with her.”

  The implication was that Derek had known and hadn’t told her. He didn’t want to get into it. “Mind if I use your shower?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Of course not.” She leaned close to the mirror and swiped mascara on her eyelashes. “I have to go, though. Gordon called from the hospital.”

  “How’s Lauren?”

  “Good.” She applied lipstick. Then she stuffed all her makeup into a zipper bag. “They moved her to a private room. Also, the motel clerk is awake now. Gordon’s bringing in a forensic artist, hoping she’ll be up for an interview. He wants me to sit in, see what develops.” She paused. “Are you getting on the road today?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Her gaze dropped to his chest, and she looked like she wanted to say something. He waited, but nothing came.

  “I’ve got to check something out first,” he said. “Cole sent me a new lead on a gun dealer, so I’m going to follow up.”

  “You should let us do it.” She lifted her gaze, and her voice was businesslike. “You don’t want to be late reporting for duty.”

  “I’d just as soon handle it. Where are you going to be later?”

  Someone knocked on the door, and she glanced across the room. “That’s Torres.” She pulled her still-damp hair into a ponytail, then squeezed past him again and went to the dresser.

  “Where will you be later?” he asked again.

  “After the hospital? Probably the office.”

  She put on her belt, threading it through her holster as he eased closer to watch. When he’d first met her, the gun had been a major turn-on. Now it was mostly a reminder of what he didn’t like about her job. She thought his job was dangerous? He’d been with her a week, and she’d been knifed and shot at.

  She finished buckling and looked up. “Why?”

  “I’ll catch up with you before I go. Keep your phone on.”

  More knocking. She grabbed her jacket off the chair and shrugged into it, watching him. “If you can’t, I understand,” she said.

  He pulled her to him and kissed her hard. When he let her go, she blinked up at him. “Keep your phone on.”

  * * *

  It would have been a tricky interview anyway, but with Jamie still groggy, communication was difficult. Gordon seemed determined, though, and by mid-morning, he’d cut through all the hospital’s red tape and had one of the nation’s top forensic artists on-site and ready to get to work.

  Fiona Glass had a stellar reputation in law-enforcement circles, and Elizabeth had felt a wave of relief upon hearing she was on the case. Her relief disappeared, though, when the artist announced that she didn’t want any investigators sitting in on the session. The witness’s comfort was of paramount importance, especially when that witness had been the victim of a violent crime.

  So Elizabeth spent the better part of the morning pacing between the waiting room and Lauren’s hospital room, where her family was gathered around waiting for her to emerge from the fog of pain meds.

  Elizabeth had just poured her third cup of too-weak coffee when the sound of heels on linoleum had her turning around.

  “You’re finished?” She hurried up to the artist.

  “We are.”

  Elizabeth had expected Fiona Glass to be an artsy, earth-mother type, but instead, she looked more like an attorney. She pulled a legal-size file folder from her leather attaché case and handed over a drawing.

  Elizabeth took one look at the color portrait, and her breath caught. “It’s Rasheed.”

  “You know him?”

  She looked up, then down at the drawing again. Done in colored pastel on buff-colored paper, the picture was a nearly photographic likeness of Omar Rasheed, right down to the dark mole on his nose that Elizabeth hadn’t even realized she’d noticed before.

  She studied the flinty look in his eye, and her stomach tightened. She remembered the same defiant expression when they’d faced off on that rooftop.

  Elizabeth cleared her throat. “This is—it’s incredible. I can’t believe you got this much detail with the witness as injured as she is. And medicated, too. Didn’t she have trouble communicating?”

  “Communication barriers of one form or another are the rule, not the exception,” she said. “Try interviewing a traumatized three-year-old whose first language isn’t English.”

  Elizabeth nodded, still taken aback.

  “As witnesses go, she was slow to respond and definitely tired but very clear about what she saw.”

  “It’s an impressive drawing,” Elizabeth said, “but it doesn’t help us much from an investigative perspective. We already have this subject ID’d. And unfortunately, he’s dead.”

  The artist tipped her head to the side. “Jamie tells me there was another man she remembers entering the motel room, but she only saw him from the back, so I wasn’t able to get a sketch. I got the other subject, though.” She slipped the first drawing back into her folder and tugged out another. The sharp scent of fixative wafted up as she handed it over. “This one we just completed.”

  Elizabeth’s pulse jumped. “You got the woman.” She studied the drawing. Auburn hair, as she’d suspected. Dark eyes, olive skin, strong cheekbones. She was beautiful, and it was no surprise she’d managed to seduce Matt Palicek into helping her.

  If, in fact, she had.

  “This person’s new,” Elizabeth said. “So this is definitely a lead.”

  “But . . . what? You seem unsure.”

  “Not about the drawing. It’s just—we’ve put together a list of potential subjects. Females. And unfortunately, the only photos we have of them are from childhood.”

  She nodded. “Well, obviously, recent is better, but we get IDs based on age-progression drawings all the time. A huge part of what I do involves missing children. In many cases, I’ve been able to age the picture ten, twenty, even thirty years and get something that bears an uncanny resemblance to the adult.”

  “Really?”

  “Certain features of the human face remain the same from infancy all the way into adulthood. You’d be surprised.”

  “I am.” And Elizabeth knew she sounded skeptical, but she wanted to be convinced.

  “Take the shape of the nostrils, for instance, and the shape of the eyes. The eyebrows, too—although some women alter that cosmetically.” She stepped closer and pointed at the portrait. “Look at the contour of the mouth here. See the seam where the lips meet? Very hard to change that. Also, the way the tops of the ears line up with the eyes and where the earlobes line up with the nose. Even with orthodontics or plastic surgery, those features are nearly impossible to alter.”

  “You make it sound like an exact science.”

  “Well, I don’t want to oversell it,” she said. “We are dealing with a drawing based on someone’s recollection. If we were comparing two photographs, it would be exact. However, I should point out that you have something going for you in this case.”

  Elizabeth stared at the picture, trying to guess.

  “The hair,” the artist said. “Cowlicks, widow’s peaks, those features don’t change over someone’s lifetime and are easy to notice.” She traced her finger over the woman’s hairline. “See? She has a widow’s peak. It was one of the first things Jamie mentioned.”

  Elizabeth studied the drawing, fascinated. Her pulse was racing now, and she wanted to rush back to the office and look at the photos they’d compiled of the female relatives of the terrorists.
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br />   A shadow fell over the paper, and she glanced up to see Potter.

  “That’s her?” he asked, frowning.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we need a name to go with the face.” He looked at her. “Where’s Gordon?”

  “At the office. Why?”

  “I just got a call from Interpol. You know the name you passed along this morning? They’ve got ‘Rasasa’ on file as a nickname for Ahmed Rasheed.”

  “Ahmed,” she repeated. “The brother who was killed in the drone strike?”

  “Reportedly killed. Turns out they had visual confirmation on the ground but no DNA. That particular detail got left out of the file on our end.”

  Elizabeth’s stomach twisted. “You’re saying it’s possible he’s alive?”

  “Very much so,” Potter told her. “It’s also possible he’s here.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth clicked open the e-mail attachment, and the image appeared on the screen.

  “Fatima Rasheed,” she said. “She’s seven years younger than her brother Omar, which makes her twenty-four.”

  Gordon’s brow furrowed as he studied the photograph, which showed eight members of the Rasheed family standing inside an upscale shopping mall in Dubai.

  “How old is she there?” Torres asked.

  “Ten.” Elizabeth glanced up at the picture. “So she’s not fully veiled, only the head scarf.”

  “And where’d you get the photo?” Gordon asked.

  “NSA. They’ve been watching this family since 9/11.”

  Torres sighed heavily, and Elizabeth looked at him across the table.

  “What?”

  “I’m not seeing it.” He nodded at the second image, the forensic drawing, which was displayed on-screen alongside the family snapshot. “I mean, yeah, there’s a resemblance, but so what?” he said. “Same could be said about a lot of women. What about Zahid Ameen’s female relatives?”

  “We don’t have photos,” Potter said.

  “Ameen’s from Saudi Arabia,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Women are much more limited there. Many wear the niqab, which covers the face except for the eyes. They’re not supposed to mix with men socially. They aren’t allowed to drive, and they’re required to have a male guardian to go anywhere, even the doctor’s office.”