Heatseeker (Atrati)

by Lucy Monroe

  “Not anymore, there isn’t, but the one outside with the prisoner will have heard the shots. Why didn’t I hear yours?”

  “Jayne carries a silencer for her gun.”

  “She’s gonna be more pissed than a rattler caught in a hoedown when she finds out you stole her sidearm.”

  “I needed a weapon.”

  “Yeah, Calamity Jane, you sure did.”

  “What’s happening?” Jamila demanded, pulling against Rachel’s hold on her arm. “Who is this man? How did you come to be here? You were a tourist … in Helwan, lamenting the lack of good coffee.”

  “I’ll explain everything later, I promise, but we’ve got to go. We don’t know what kind of contingency plans Lavigne has in place for when his home gets breached and whether that guard set off the alarm or not.”

  “Right.” Cowboy led them to the front door, not the back. “Kadin and Neil will be here with the other Land Rover.”

  Kadin was already rushing in through the door when they reached the front of the house. He took in Rachel and the woman beside her before scanning the entry for anyone else. “Sit-rep,” he barked at Cowboy.

  “Two tied up in the kitchen. One incapacitated. One dead.”

  “Two dead,” Rachel corrected. “Lavigne is also shot, but he was still alive when I left him unconscious upstairs.”

  Neither man asked why she hadn’t killed him, and she was glad. She could hardly claim that she couldn’t kill. She’d proven that she could, but she wasn’t a murderer.

  And that’s what she would have been if she’d assassinated a man who was already incapacitated.

  “Ralph Giroux is secured,” Neil said over the comm-link. “The guard won’t be locking up other autistic men for a long damn time.”

  “Where’s the Land Rover you came in?” Kadin demanded of Rachel.

  “Over there.” She pointed toward where she’d left the SUV parked.

  “We’ll take it and Miss Massri back to the safe house. Spazz and Cowboy will take Ralph Giroux.”

  “Spazz, I’ll need a secure line to Roman as soon as we get to the house,” Kadin said over the comm-link.

  Neil replied, “You got it, Trig.”

  “You’re arranging transport back to the States?” Rachel asked, sure she knew the answer.

  “After.”

  “After what?”

  “Egypt.”

  “Why are we going to Egypt?” she asked, startled by his reply. “We can’t just dump Jamila and go.”

  Jamila said nothing, and Kadin just shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “Then why Egypt?”

  “Dr. Massri is going to find out sooner rather than later what happened here tonight, and he’ll give orders for anything incriminating in Chuma’s and Lavigne’s possession to be destroyed. He may even decide to go underground himself.”

  Jamila looked stunned. “My … my father? If by underground you mean living without all the luxuries life has to offer, that would never be acceptable to my father. But why would he do such a thing?”

  Rachel had to let that go, too intent on the implications of what Kadin had said. “We have to beat him to it.”

  But why was Kadin acting as if this was still Rachel’s case? One that he had every intention of helping her close?

  “Incriminating? My father? Abasi, too, is a … wanted criminal?” Jamila asked, as if the full import of Kadin’s words had just hit her as well.

  “He was,“ Rachel emphasized. “He’s dead, Jamila.”

  “You shot him.”

  “Yes.” And an agency shrink would probably talk her into claiming regret so she could go back to work, but deep inside, Rachel didn’t think she was sorry.

  Or ever would be.

  She valued human life, but she wasn’t at all sure men like Abasi Chuma were anything but monsters under the façade of human skin.

  Jamila’s eyes burned bright with anger. “Thank you for shooting Abasi.”

  This woman might have been victimized, but she was no victim.

  “So, Abasi … and my father … were wanted criminals?” Jamila asked again as they reached the Land Rover.

  Rachel handed Kadin the keys. He took them, his brown eyes making promises that poked at the numb bubble where her emotions were.

  “Yes, Miss Massri,” Kadin said, turning from Rachel but somehow making her feel that his attention was still fully on her. “Abasi Chuma was a criminal guilty of crimes against many countries. As is your father.”

  “Abasi did not live to face trial, but I cannot be sorry.” Jamila climbed into the backseat.

  Rachel followed, wanting to be close if the other woman started to break down. And who wouldn’t, after going through what she just had?

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Jayne’s voice demanded over the comm-link.

  Rachel pulled the earbud from her ear. When they got back to the safe house would be soon enough to deal with the other TGP agent.

  Kadin was talking in the front seat as he drove away from Lavigne’s house. Rachel did her best to tune him out.

  “I know where my father keeps his important files.” Jamila spoke quietly, as if to herself.

  But Rachel replied, anyway. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You said Abasi and my father were criminals,” she said fiercely. “Abasi deceived me into believing he was a different kind of man. And so did my father. He and my father were great friends. But your man … he implied that my father is dangerous now.”

  Rachel was going to deny that Kadin was her man, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. “Yes. I’m sorry, Jamila.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, unless it is becoming my friend under false pretenses, as I think you must have. But then, you must have had very good reason to do so.”

  “The security of a nation.” Rachel wasn’t grandstanding.

  It’s what the agents of TGP did. They kept America secure.

  Or did their very best to, anyway.

  Jamila nodded. “You will want my father’s private files. The ones no one else is supposed to know about.”

  Rachel was sure Jamila was right. “Where are they?”

  “In our home, but you won’t be able to get to them without me.” She paused, her expression lighting with satisfaction. “It is tricky, but I figured it out.”

  “Jamila, you need to stay here at the safe house where no more harm can come to you.” Even as Rachel made the claim, she didn’t know if she could keep the promise it implied.

  She didn’t know if Whit would bring Jamila in now or if he would wash his hands of his impulsive agent and the woman she was trying so hard to protect. The safe house was Atrati property, anyway. She couldn’t make commitments to its use.

  But Jamila had to stay safe.

  Jamila’s dusky jaw hardened, bringing a developing bruise there into stark relief. “No, I want to help take my father and Abasi down.”

  “Abasi’s dead.”

  “His reputation isn’t. My father is alive … he was very much alive when he left me alone in that house with full knowledge of what type of man Abasi was.” Jamila’s tone was filled with anger and betrayal so deep, it was clear her father had broken the familial bond of love and duty between them.

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said inadequately.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. You stopped him.” The vulnerability of the newly traumatized showed on Jamila’s face for a brief moment. “I thought Abasi was a better man than my father. I thought he was my future.”

  “He did a good job of hiding his true nature from you.”

  “Yes, he did.” Jamila’s harsh laugh had Kadin’s head jerking in attention. “But he was even worse than my father. At least, I think he was. Maybe my father is just as bad, and I only saw some of what makes him the man he is.”

  Rachel didn’t know what Jamila meant by that, but she was starting to suspect that the other woman’s protected and cosseted upbringing was as much a subterfuge as Chuma
’s supposedly caring nature had been. “What happened tonight?” she asked.

  “You saw what happened.”

  “Were they trying to get information out of you?” Rachel asked, desperate to know if her connection to Jamila had brought this on the other woman.

  “They showed me a picture on Abasi’s phone. It was attached to a text message someone else had sent him. The words made no sense. This is her.”

  It made sense to Rachel. Her captors had sent a picture to Chuma, proving he hadn’t seen her before ordering her taken to Morocco where she could be tortured for information.

  Jamila continued. “It was of you, but you were tied to a chair, with marks on your face. Your eyes were darker, like I remember them from Helwan. You looked bad. They wanted to know if I’d ever seen you before.”

  “You told them about the coffeehouse.”

  “No.” Jamila shuddered. “I was scared. I didn’t understand why Abasi had taken me into a bedroom with Mr. Lavigne. They were looking at me in a way that made me uneasy. It was … what is that American expression? Something was off.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, but before that, too. The way Abasi had been acting since I arrived in Marrakech. He wasn’t even at the hotel when we arrived. The way my father had been behaving. He was on edge, violence just under the surface. I had seen him this way before, and it did not bode well for me.”

  Later Rachel would ask the other woman to explain that further, but Jamila needed to get this out, and she wasn’t about to interrupt her.

  “For the first time, when I was with Abasi, he frightened me. Badly.” Jamila looked at Rachel, an unexpected and almost unbelievable sparkle of mischief in her espresso brown eyes. “Besides, I learned long ago that I got more freedom with subterfuge than honesty.”

  “So, you told them you’d never seen me before?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why did he hurt you?”

  “Because he wanted to, and Mr. Lavigne wanted to watch. I could tell he liked hurting me. It excited him.” Jamila’s voice dripped with revulsion. “Abasi told Mr. Lavigne that he knew I was ignorant, but he had no intention of losing this opportunity.”

  Jamila went silent for several seconds, her thoughts her own. When she spoke again, her tone was devoid of emotion. “Apparently, my father had been putting him off about being alone with me. Before now.”

  Rachel didn’t understand. “He was going to let you marry the man.”

  “I know.” Jamila’s voice shook with betrayal and hatred. “My father is not the civilized man he seems to the world and insists I pretend he is to others.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He beat my mother to death and told me she deserved it, had driven him to it. He used to beat me, but I learned to be obedient and quiet.”

  Rachel had never suspected such a dark past in the innocent woman’s behavior.

  She thought maybe she was seeing the true Jamila Massri for the first time. It made Rachel question her own judgment. Had she seen what she wanted because of the similarities between Linny and Jamila?

  She had to approach a subject she knew was going to be difficult. “You need to see a doctor.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Jamila.”

  “No one else is going to touch me.”

  “You need clothes and a shower,” Kadin said from the front seat. “You’ll get those at the safe house.”

  “She needs a doctor,” Rachel said fiercely. Kadin needed to back her up on this.

  “Mrs. Abdul.” That was all Kadin said, but Rachel had to trust him that it meant what she needed it to.

  “Okay.”

  “It will take Roman a little time to get transport to Helwan in place. Jamila will have time to collect herself.”

  The young Egyptian woman needed more than time, but Rachel wasn’t going to say so and risk having Jamila believe Rachel saw her as damaged.

  “Okay,” she repeated, the only answer she could give.

  “You saved me,” Jamila said, the hollow quality in her voice worrying Rachel. “You came for me.”

  “You didn’t deserve to be in that place.”

  “But now the evidence you so clearly seek is in jeopardy.” Jamila had grasped the situation quickly, proving she was much smarter than her father or Chuma had ever given her credit for.

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “No, clearly it is yours … because you came after me.”

  Rachel just stared at the other woman, not sure what to say.

  “You believe in the right and the good. I noticed that when we chatted over coffee every day.”

  “I …” Did she? Still? After everything?

  “You did the right thing. I do not know how you knew what was happening to me, but you came in and stopped it.” Jamila’s eyes took on a glazed quality. “You shot them, as if you had all the power.”

  “You had power, too. You could have lost it when I told you we had to go, but you didn’t. You ran with me, made it possible for me to protect you.”

  “It’s not enough.” Jamila held Rachel’s gaze. “Who are you?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Rachel Gannon. I’m an agent of the United States government.”

  “CIA?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not something I can divulge.”

  “So, tell me what you can … Rachel.”

  Rachel did, asking questions of her own now that Jamila was aware her father was involved in criminal activity.

  Jamila spoke a name.

  “What?” Rachel asked. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “I do not know, but he is the one man who makes my father turn pale and sweat when he calls.”

  The idea was a startling one. “But he’s a politician.”

  Not a small-time politician like Dr. Massri, but a man high in Egypt’s new government who had made the impossible transfer from the old one. A big man. Constantly in the public eye.

  Not the right profile for someone involved in this organization, much less higher still in the food chain.

  “It’s not his political leanings that make my father so keen to please him.” Jamila tugged the suit jacket she wore tighter around her. “You wait and see, when you start going through my father’s files, you’ll find a connection to this man.”

  “Your father will go to prison—you understand that, right?”

  “Not if the people he works for find out he’s been exposed as a liability.” Jamila’s absolute certainty that Dr. Massri worked for others blew their theory that he, or even Lavigne, was the man in charge.

  “What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

  “I watch shows, online… . I’m not supposed to. Especially American and British programming, but I do. I know how these things work. The people above my father aren’t going to let him turn state’s evidence.”

  Jamila claimed to have gotten her information from watching television, but Rachel wondered if there wasn’t more to it. She didn’t have a simplified view of crime and punishment, as so many people did.

  “Do they have that kind of system in Egypt?” Rachel asked, rather than digging deeper right then.

  “He won’t be taken to the United States?”

  Rachel shook her head. “That’s not the way my agency works. It’s more expedient if he’s tried in his own country.”

  “You assume he’s breaking Egyptian law.”

  “An organization like the one he’s part of doesn’t make distinctions on where they get the intelligence and technology they sell.”

  Jamila nodded. “My father wouldn’t care, either. He spouts all that political patriotism, but he didn’t care who won in the latest conflict. He would have worked with either side. He only cares about his own power, but mostly about money. My father loves being rich and derives great satisfaction from flaunting his wealth.

  “He claims that is how he courted my mother, showering her with gifts. He convinced her to leave Englan
d and return to her family’s ancestral homeland as his wife. That did not work out so well for her. My father does not take care of anyone. He puts more value on his possessions than people. He would never dream of breaking one of his objets d’art the way he broke my mother.”

  “Your home is filled with nice things?” Rachel probed, remembering comments Jamila had made that had alluded to such.

  “Nicer things than even a doctor can afford in our country.”

  Finally, Rachel understood how Jamila had so quickly accepted that Abasi Chuma had been a criminal and why her mind had automatically processed that her father was one, as well. “You already suspected he wasn’t only a doctor.”

  “Why would a man like him get involved in politics? He does not wish to become a servant of the people. He enjoys the accolades he receives for what he does, but they are not enough. It’s all about money for him. He has probably taken some bribes in his day. I never understood why he did not seek office. Surely the bribes would have been lucrative were he to wield more power, but now I … think I understand.”

  “He is involved in something that makes him a lot more money than political bribery.”

  “You wondered why my father arranged the marriage to Abasi.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “I wondered, too, believing that Abasi and perhaps my father loved me after all. Now, I think Abasi must have offered something my father valued more than he did me.”

  Rachel had no answer for that. Both men were monsters.

  “The people who are supposed to value you, they don’t always,” Kadin said into the silence of the car. “That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be.”

  “You do not think so?” Jamila asked.

  “I know it. You are so important, Miss Massri, that Rachel risked her life and her career to get you out tonight.”

  “Is this true?” Jamila asked.

  Rachel could only nod. She didn’t want Jamila feeling bad, but she understood why Kadin had said what he did. He cared, like Rachel did, how Jamila saw herself. Kadin wanted the young Egyptian woman to know she was worth someone else taking a risk on her behalf.

  “But why? You barely know me.”

  “I know you deserve a better future than a man like Abasi Chuma would give you. You are a lovely, kind person, Jamila. You deserve so much better than what happened tonight, than the way your father has treated you your whole life, it sounds like.”