Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  And when he’d seen her sitting there, alive and unharmed, he’d nearly fallen to his knees and wept.

  That reaction had scared him almost as much as thinking she was dead.

  So he’d made up that story about needing to get in touch with Tom Paoletti. And he’d erased the frantic message he’d left on her voice mail.

  But she was Tess. Smart and sensitive and clever enough to put seventeen missed calls and one wild-eyed son of a bitch together, to figure out the truth.

  And instead of looking her in the eye and admitting he was in uncharted territory and quite possibly losing his mind, he’d closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

  He could practically feel her frustration, her questions, her need to talk to him on that ride home.

  But he’d kept his eyes tightly closed.

  Then she did it. “Sleep,” she whispered. “Really go to sleep, Jimmy, as long as your eyes are closed.” And she’d started running her fingers through his hair. “My mom used to do this when I was little,” she told him softly, “when I had trouble relaxing.”

  And somewhere between wherever they were and Rivka’s, Jimmy had actually done it. He’d fallen asleep.

  So completely that he didn’t wake up when they went through the gate into Rivka’s yard. And he didn’t wake up when Tess lifted his head and replaced her lap with a mere pillow.

  He’d slept for nearly six hours in that wagon, shaded by an umbrella that Guldana had dug out of the storage shed and watched over by Khalid, who sat nearby.

  Tess, on the other hand, had spent all of those hours hard at work, tracking Dimitri and Sophia Ghaffari through cyberspace.

  He’d woken up with a headache and a sense of panic—not a good combination.

  Khalid had informed him that Decker had checked in and set up a meeting—this meeting—for seven o’clock. It was now 6:58 and the motherfucker was on the verge of being late. Again.

  Jimmy himself had had just enough time to splash water on his face and go looking for Tess—to apologize for failing to assist her, for sleeping the entire day away. Christ, when was the last time he’d done that?

  But she had already been on her way out to the barn. And before he could even open his mouth, she’d dropped that bomb about Will Schroeder.

  “Sit down,” she told Dave and Murphy now in that elementary schoolteacher tone that some women could do so well.

  They sat, their inner eight-year-olds unable to defy her.

  “They probably heard about that time in Istanbul when I threw Camilla Riccardo off the hotel roof,” Jimmy volunteered.

  Tess turned her ferocious glare on him. “Why do you say things like that?”

  He was trying to regain control by being flip. It usually worked. He tried again, adding the smile that usually got him laid. “Because I love it when steam comes out of your ears.”

  She was unmoved. “You’re just perpetuating the nasty rumors,” she said as sternly as she’d spoken to Dave and Murph.

  But schoolteachers had never frightened him, even as an eight-year-old. “Maybe I like the nasty rumors,” he countered.

  “Maybe you do,” she threw back at him. “God forbid you ever allow yourself to feel too happy.”

  Jimmy laughed his disgust. “Don’t even begin to psychoanalyze me, babe. You don’t know me at all.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “You’ve made certain of that.”

  Decker closed the barn door behind him, and they all turned to look at him. Dave, Murphy, Nash, and Tess.

  Sweet Tess.

  Who, seconds earlier, had been standing there, looking at Nash with her heart in her eyes.

  The tension in the barn was so thick it had practically formed a thunderhead churning in the rafters above them.

  Nash was as close to becoming unglued as Decker had ever seen him. And Tess now looked as if she were about to break her own knuckles, she was clenching her fists so tightly. Anything to keep from bursting into tears.

  Decker sighed.

  She looked bone weary and miserable, as if the stress from the past few days was sucking the very life out of her.

  It was entirely his fault.

  For bringing her here.

  And for leaving her alone with Nash last night. Nash, who hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of her despite Decker’s threats. He’d confessed as much this morning.

  She was all over me.

  Jesus, blame it all on her, you weak-willed son of a bitch.

  No doubt about it, he was going to kick Nash’s ass, first chance he got. And get his own ass kicked right back, which was fine. He deserved it, fool that he was for thinking his warning would keep Nash away from Tess.

  Decker had been too deep in his own misery this morning to register exactly how big of a goatfuck this entire mission had become, from every possible angle. Shit, where Nash and Tess were concerned, it had been a goatfuck before the word go.

  Everything about this situation underlined the inherent wisdom of his policy to keep work and sex absolutely separate. If he ever had the chance to work for Tom Paoletti again—and as each hour slipped past, that seemed less and less likely—he was going to insist on leading only all-male teams.

  That would handle the work part.

  As for the sex . . .

  Maybe in a year or two, Tess would be over her infatuation with Nash.

  And maybe by then, Decker would have forgiven himself for taking advantage of Sophia Ghaffari.

  Yeah. Maybe.

  It would sure as hell help if he could find her and get her safely out of Kazbekistan.

  “So my day sucked ass, too,” he said, breaking the silence, and Murphy, bless him, laughed.

  “Who’s got good news for me?” Decker came farther into the barn. “What do you say, Dave? Can we pack it up and get the hell out of Dodge? Tell me please, sweet Jesus, that you found Sayid’s laptop this afternoon.”

  Dave Malkoff shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I have nothing concrete—just a whole lot of public opinion that seems to imply Sayid was, indeed, staying with Bashir for an undetermined amount of time before the quake.”

  Decker looked at Murphy. “Murph? You sitting on that missing laptop over there?”

  “I wish. I’m still working on locating most of my contacts, boss. Although if you want some good news, Angel called. The caterer’s agreed to do the wedding lunch for only twenty bucks a plate.” He laughed. “I think she went into the negotiations flashing a few tattoos and packing some major heat. You can take the girl out of the gang, but you can never really take the gang out of the girl.”

  “Why do I get the sense that you wouldn’t dare call Angelina a girl if you weren’t halfway around the world from her?” Decker asked, glancing over at Nash, who had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning against the barn wall, pretending to relax.

  “You got that right,” Murphy agreed.

  It was remarkable, really, how awful Nash looked. His clothes were stained with sweat and dirt. He was rumpled, as if he’d wrestled wild dogs in the dusty road before taking a long nap. Deck could see the line dividing clean from dirty near his partner’s ears and around his jawline. Nash had splashed water on his face rather haphazardly, as if the intention had been to wake himself up rather than to wash.

  Which meant that it was possible that Nash had actually slept for part of the afternoon.

  Which might explain the current friction—current additional friction—between him and Tess. If she had let him sleep for more than the three and a half minutes that he usually allowed for a combat nap . . .

  “I was approached by Will Schroeder today,” Tess reported, her voice carefully void of all emotion as she sat on an overturned bucket. “Since he already knew that you and James weren’t your average relief aid workers and threatened to make that public knowledge, I made a deal with him.”

  And so much for Decker’s theory about the too-long nap. She’d made a deal with Will Schroeder. Jesus. He didn’t dare look
at Nash.

  “I told him the truth—about Sayid. I thought our not getting kicked out of K-stan was more important than any one member of our group’s . . . discomfort at the idea of working with Schroeder,” Tess continued, carefully not looking at Nash either. “The pros seemed to outweigh the cons. He gets an exclusive story—but only when we’re ready to give it to him. We get his silence—and an extra set of eyes and ears out there. As long as he follows our rules—”

  Nash couldn’t keep silent another second. “What makes you think he’s going to follow your rules, when he’s never followed anyone’s rules before?” he asked, pretending to laugh, pretending he was merely amused. But then he shook his head. “Never mind. It’s too late. We’ll just have to clean up this mess after the shit hits the fan.” He turned to Decker, still trying to play it übercool.

  Although Deck knew his partner well enough to know that beneath that oh-so-casual attitude, Nash was beyond pissed off. He was, as Nash himself so aptly described it, on the verge of shitting monkeys.

  “Unless you want me to make a preemptive strike,” Nash continued, now speaking directly to Deck. “I could find Schroeder and take him out of the equation.”

  Tess made a disgusted sound as she looked at Nash for the first time since Decker came into the barn. “Right. Decker’s going to tell you to go and kill Will Schroeder—”

  Nash turned and smiled at her. His smile didn’t quite hide the fact that the muscle in his jaw was jumping. “I wasn’t talking about killing him, although now that you mention it, that does sound appealing,” he countered. “But no, I was thinking more in terms of a back alley ambush. A concussion and a broken jaw’ll get him sent back to the States. Although I better give him a broken leg, too, don’t you think? He’s a persistent prick. A nice rap with a length of pipe, right beneath his knee’ll keep him from doing any international traveling for a good long—”

  “Stop,” Tess said, her eyes looking very large in a face that was far too drawn and pale. “No one here thinks you’re even remotely funny.”

  Murphy shifted his weight, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

  Again Decker broke the silence. And changed the subject. Taking sides was not going to help the team dynamic right now—although he was securely with Tess on this one. Will was a potential threat that she’d done her best to keep contained. “Needless to say, I didn’t locate Sophia Ghaffari. Any luck finding info we can use to track her? Tess?”

  His comspesh stopped glaring at Nash and turned her attention to a pad of paper that she pulled up off the floor and onto her lap. “I don’t know, sir. I’ve got what seems like a lot of useless details. Hers and Dimitri’s last known address and phone number.” She looked up at him. “I tried calling, but the entire landline system’s down.

  “I’ve got Ghaffari’s business address—same as his home.” She pulled some loose pages from the back of the pad and stood up, heading toward him as she continued to speak. “I did a cross-reference, and found that Furkat Nariman and his family are currently residing at chez Ghaffari, and that a transfer of property ownership was put into his name five weeks ago. Nariman is one of Padsha Bashir’s closest advisors. He also happens to be an outspoken advocate of GIK support of al-Qaeda.”

  She handed Decker three pages, copies of documents printed out from her computer, then stood close enough to point to the signature line on the first.

  She smelled like Emily. Well, okay, not exactly like Em, just similar enough. Like a clean American woman—like sweet shampoos and fresh-scented deodorant.

  Sophia Ghaffari had smelled like a soap scented with herbs and spices that were more exotic, more like the musky aroma of incense—at least to his American nose. Whatever it was, it hadn’t completely masked the sharper smell of heat and sweat.

  Of fear.

  “Here’s where the document should have been signed by the previous owner—Ghaffari,” Tess pointed out.

  Decker focused on the paper before him. It had been signed in a loopy and distinctive hand, the name quite clear—Padsha Bashir.

  “Shit,” Decker said.

  Nash came over to look, too. Dave and Murphy were right behind him.

  “And check this out.” Tess pulled the second sheet onto the top. “I hacked into Ghaffari’s bank records. His accounts, both business and personal, to the tune of over a half million U.S. dollars—” Murph let out a low whistle as Tess pointed to the line that read U.S. $537,680.58. “—were emptied and closed on the exact same date as that property transfer,” she told them.

  “And lookie who signed the withdrawal slip,” Murphy said, tapping the page with a finger that was twice the size of Tess’s.

  “Padsha Bashir,” Tess said. “Again.”

  Dimitri Ghaffari was dead. Sophia had told Decker the truth, at least about that. This was proof enough. In order for those finances to be transferred the way they had, Dimitri Ghaffari had to be dead.

  “He just signed both of these documents as if the house and that money were his. And look at this.” Tess flipped to the third page. “Across town, just an hour later that same day, there’s a neat little deposit into Bashir’s account. Same exact dollar amount. He didn’t try to alter it or hide it or—”

  “Why should he?” Nash cut in. “The money, the house—it was his.”

  Tess still didn’t get it. She looked at Nash as if he were speaking Dutch.

  “He married her,” Nash said tersely.

  Dave was more exact. “Padsha Bashir married Sophia Ghaffari. At which point everything she owned became his.”

  Tess shook her head. “But there was no marriage certificate.”

  “There wouldn’t be,” Dave told her, “at least not one documented in computer records. Not if it was done in a religious ceremony.”

  “And from what we know of Bashir,” Nash added, “it was a religious ceremony. Probably done within minutes of Mrs. Ghaffari achieving her widowhood.”

  “Minutes? My God,” Tess realized. “Are you saying that Bashir killed Dimitri Ghaffari and then . . . ?”

  Instead of being indicted for murder, he’d married Sophia—and gained complete possession of Dimitri’s home, Dimitri’s money.

  Dimitri’s wife.

  Sophia had told Decker she’d been a prisoner in Bashir’s palace for two months.

  Two months.

  She’d told him. She’d asked for help, and he treated her with suspicion and mistrust.

  “Did you find any information that might help me locate Sophia now?” Decker asked Tess.

  She looked down at her notepad, shaking her head. “It doesn’t look good. I found two previous addresses. Various shipping and import permits—records of fees paid, that sort of thing. A long list of mentions in the weekly English-language newspaper—gossip column stuff. Lots of background on Ghaffari. He went to school in France, worked for a few years at an uncle’s import business in Athens, spent five years in the Greek Islands, running some kind of windjammer-type cruise business—you know, high-class cruises on sailboats for tourists? That was right before he came to Kazabek.”

  “Oh, man,” Murphy said. “You ever been to Greece? It’s gorgeous. All blues and greens and white sand. To willingly leave that for the Pit . . . You’d have to be crazy. Or running from the law.”

  “Or in love,” Dave suggested.

  Murphy and Nash turned and looked at him. Decker, too. It was such a non-Dave thing to say.

  “What?” Dave said defensively.

  Tess was the only one who took it in stride. “Yes,” she agreed. “That’s my guess, too. Especially since shortly after his arrival in Kazabek, when Ghaffari makes his first appearance in the newspaper gossip column, he’s accompanied by his, quote, beautiful American wife, unquote.”

  She looked at Decker then, and he knew from her hesitation that she was about to hit him with bad news.

  “This is already more information than I’d hoped for,” he said.

  “Yeah, well . . . I found very little
mention of Sophia at all,” she reported. “There’s no record of their wedding, no engagement announcement, nothing like that—and I searched Greek, French, and U.S. databases as well. Almost any time her name appears on Kazbekistani documents, she’s Sophia Ghaffari. Without knowing her maiden name, there’s no way I can find out where she came from—and I’m having no luck finding it. I mean, someone knows it. Someone has to know it.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s no guarantee that knowing her maiden name would provide us with any information we could use to locate her right now,” Decker tried to reassure her.