by Cindy Dees
They broke out of the grove, and Rebel moved up to his right side to walk beside him. He murmured, “Why did you follow Jamshidi away from the archery venue?”
“He fled from me. I saw him in the bleachers using a sniper’s spotter scope to look at the American archer. Then he swung his scope down the line to look at your girl. I started to move toward him and he jumped out of the stands and took off. That seemed like suspicious behavior, so I followed. I wanted to see if maybe he would hook up with Laurel and Hardy.”
She fell silent, so he finished for her, “Instead, he lured you into an isolated area and turned the tables by jumping you.”
Rebel muttered, “I think we should add him to our suspect list. He acted like the kind of guy I would expect Mahmoud to have in his cell.”
“Agreed.”
“You should have questioned Jamshidi when you had him down. Asked him what Mahmoud is up to.”
Avi glanced down at her. “He wouldn’t have told us anything, and it would have tipped off Mahmoud that we’re onto him.”
Rebel snorted. “When that guy reports back to Mahmoud that a woman was following him in the woods, Mahmoud will know without a shadow of a doubt that the Medusas are here and that we’re onto him.”
Avi grinned. “Jamshidi may not tell his boss that a woman and some random guy in the woods made a fool of him.”
Rebel rolled her eyes at him as they approached the archery venue once more. “Thanks for the completely unnecessary bailout,” she muttered.
“Anytime,” he responded sincerely.
She veered away to go stand behind the American archer once more, and he fell in behind Hadassah, who was just finishing up her last end. The scoreboard showed her in sixth place overall. A few of the top contenders were yet to shoot in the afternoon’s preliminary session, but the Israeli woman was assured of making the single elimination round. The Israeli coaches were enthusiastic, and the entire Israeli contingent was noisy and happy as they boarded an athlete bus for the ride back to the Olympic Village.
But Avi’s thoughts were dark. What was Mahmoud up to, with a full Special Forces team embedded in the Iranian delegation? Would the guy make some grand gesture to attack a huge venue, maybe in retaliation for economic sanctions against Iran, tightened again recently by the international community? Or would Iran go after one of its regional neighbors—Iraq or Israel being the obvious targets? Or would it go after America? From the pulpits of mosques, Iran’s populace was frequently incited against the US.
Either way, his gut warned him that something bad was coming. And soon.
Chapter 9
Rebel went off Piper-and-Zane-watch at midnight, handing off the video monitors to Gia Rykhof, who showed a lot of promise for becoming another excellent live photo intel analyst for the Medusas. She had a gifted eye for detail and her information processing speed was improving rapidly. Rebel gave her three more months before she would be up to full speed with the best analysts in the US military.
About five minutes after twelve, Rebel’s phone vibrated with an incoming text. The name associated with the phone number was TDAH. Frowning, she opened the message.
This is Avi. Are you off work? Would like to talk.
She replied, Yes. Just went off duty. In person or by phone? And TDAH?
Tall, Dark, and Handsome.
Rebel rolled her eyes. He was, indeed, tall, dark and handsome. But ego, much? Another text came through.
Meet where we last kissed in ten minutes. Come dressed for work.
Dressed for work as in geared up for special operations? Surely, he couldn’t mean anything else. She jogged to her room and put on black jeans, a black turtleneck, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She strapped on the fanny pack that was actually a disguised utility belt. It held a razor-sharp field knife, zip ties, a small first aid kit, flashlight, flares, lock picks and various other bits of equipment that might come in useful. The Medusas hadn’t been given permission to carry pistols when they deployed here, and she felt half-naked without a firearm. But she did know how to fight with that knife.
And she was proficient in unarmed combat, of course. Not that Avi had given her any chance to prove it, earlier. She was still annoyed at how he’d busted into the middle of her fight, tackling her opponent as if she wasn’t capable of taking care of the guy herself. Sure, it had been chivalrous of Avi to help out, but she got the feeling he still didn’t take her seriously as a soldier. And that rankled.
She slipped out the rear exit of the American security headquarters, hugging the building out of camera range, and slid around the corner to the spot where she’d kissed him last night. Strong, familiar arms wrapped around her, drawing her up against that warm, hard wall of muscle that made her feel so safe.
“Miss me?” Avi murmured against her mouth.
“No. I’ve been too busy doing my job to think about you,” she mumbled back.
“I’m devastated. I thought about you all day.”
She pulled back a little to glare up at him. “I didn’t say I wasn’t thinking about you. I just didn’t have time to miss you.”
“I love it when you’re all prickly and indignant.” He kissed his way across her cheek and nuzzled her neck just below her ear, sending crazy bolts of something shooting all through her body. The tingling ended in her fingertips and toes, leaving everything in between warm and wanting.
“Why do you like me prickly? That makes no sense.”
He laughed quietly against her collarbone. Good grief, the things his mouth was doing to her skin! “You’re cute when you puff up and act all tough.”
“Cute? Am I going to have to drop you to get you to quit calling me that?”
He lifted his head to grin down at her. “You can try. Anytime.”
Her gaze narrowed. Sometime soon, when he least expected it, she was going to put all six foot three of him on the ground. She’d trained against men every bit as big and strong as him, and she knew exactly how to leverage her lower center of gravity to win against a much-bigger opponent.
“Kiss me, Rebel. For I did miss you, today. I thought about this moment all day long.”
His mouth closed on hers, and everything he’d made her feel last night came rushing back. The strange sensation of being wanted and seen as attractive flowed over her once more. All the sizzling desire low in her belly, all the breathless pull of him drawing him into their kiss, deeper and deeper, was all right there.
Heat burned across her skin. She must be bright red from blushing so hard. It was the curse of her fair skin. She could never hide embarrassment—or apparently, desire. Oh joy. Because she loved being a completely open book to Avi, compliments of her involuntary autonomic reactions to him. Argh.
They kissed until they were both breathing a little too hard, their hands roaming a little too much, their bodies straining toward each other a little too eagerly. They were totally going to end up in bed together sooner rather than later at this rate.
Gasping for air, Rebel broke off yet another smoking hot kiss crammed full of passion and unabashed lust from both of them. They absolutely had to stop unless she wanted to have sex with Avi right here, right now.
“Why did you tell me to dress for work?” she managed to pant.
He stared down at her, not comprehending. It took a moment for the raging desire blazing in his eyes to retreat just enough to be replaced by understanding. He closed his eyes as regret wreathed his face. “Right. Work. I can always count on you to bring us back to that.”
“I beg your pardon?” she snapped. “I’m not the one who texted me to meet you in work gear. What else was I supposed to think except that you have something security-based planned tonight?”
Avi dropped his forehead to rest against hers lightly. “You’re right, of course. I’m the one who suggested work. And I do have a scouting mission planned. Just give
me a second to collect myself, here. You do...bad things...to my concentration.”
As in she destroyed his focus on work? That would actually be pretty darned wonderful and give her all kinds of warm fuzzies if there weren’t terrorists circling around the Olympics at this very minute, planning who knew what.
She felt his chest expand in a slow, deep breath. He held it for several seconds and then exhaled slowly. She recognized the four-count breathing technique she’d been taught to calm fear and focus the mind.
The next time he inhaled, she breathed with him, willing her body to chill out, ordering her lust to take a hike. The breathing exercise helped a little—but not a lot. Her body still buzzed with desire, her nerves jangling more than she cared to admit.
“Follow me,” he finally muttered low.
“Where are we going?”
“Iranian headquarters. Thought we’d have a look around.”
They slid into the shadows at the back of the Iranian building during a tiny gap when both rotating security cameras were pointing away from their path of approach. When Avi pulled out a fistful of lock picks, she realized with a start he wasn’t just talking about looking in the windows. Holy cow. This was an aggressive move. Far too aggressive for Gunnar Torsten. They were at the Olympics, for crying out loud. If the two of them got caught breaking into the building of another delegation, they would be thrown out of the Olympics so fast their heads would spin.
“Are you nuts?” she muttered.
“No. I’m curious.”
“Yeah, but...this isn’t a good idea.”
“Have you got a better one for finding out what these bastards are up to?”
She huffed. He had a point. Still. This was wildly dangerous. “What about their security system?” she breathed.
“Gonna pick the lock on the control box and disable it,” he muttered back.
Ahh. “Need help?” She was excellent with locks. Her fingers were sensitive and Major T. said she had a real knack for breaking and entering.
“Nah. I got it.”
She watched over Avi’s shoulder as he did a reasonably credible job of picking the lock on a gray metal utility box. These buildings were originally designed and built to be part of a college campus and hadn’t been wired for high security. Otherwise, this box would be safely tucked inside the building. But she was happy to exploit the weakness on behalf of her country, tonight.
Avi opened the gray door protecting the circuit breakers for the building, and together, they quickly traced the circuits. Working simultaneously, they threw the four circuit breakers for the security cameras and the door alarms. Then, moving quickly, they padlocked the box shut once more and hurried to the back door of the building. Avi pushed the door handle’s thumb latch down and cracked the door open. No sound, and no lights.
Of course, the lack of a blaring claxon didn’t guarantee that a silent alarm hadn’t tripped somewhere else in the building. But as far as she could tell, they were in the clear. She nodded at Avi and followed him inside. If the layout of this building was anything like the American or Israeli buildings, the communications center would be in the front of the building, beside the lobby. Back here would be the commercial kitchen, laundry, janitorial closet and storerooms.
Avi opened the first door on the right and they slipped into the laundry. It was a large space with several industrial washers and dryers, but nothing special jumped out at Rebel. Avi led the way into the kitchen next, and again, nothing unusual caught her attention.
They crossed the hallway and eased into a storeroom next.
Now, that was interesting. A large gun safe sat awkwardly in the middle of the space, clearly brought in here by the Iranian security contingent in the past few weeks. A second locker, obviously hardened to contain ammunition, stood beside the gun safe. They were different models than the standard ones provided by the IOC for each security delegation. These looked significantly stouter than the IOC models.
Now, why would the Iranians need more substantial safes than everyone else?
Man. She would love to know exactly what kind of weaponry the Iranians had locked inside those things. What had Mahmoud brought into the country for his guys to play with? His team’s gear would tell her and Avi a great deal about what the jerk had planned. If there were explosives in one of these safes, even just grenades, that would prove to the IOC that the Iranians were up to no good.
Avi picked up a chair and set it down beneath the ceiling-mounted light fixture just inside the door. He climbed up quickly and reached around the flat glass fixture to unscrew the lightbulbs inside. She put the chair back while he moved over to the safes to have a look. Quickly, he took pictures of all sides of both safes.
“You’re not planning to try to break into those, are you?” she asked under her breath.
“Maybe. I have a little safecracking training. You look around the rest of the room while I work on these.”
She moved deeper into the space, beyond the hulking safes. It was fully dark inside the windowless storage area, and she pulled out her flashlight, dimming it to its lowest beam before turning it on.
This space held a hodgepodge of sports equipment and assorted other stuff. There were massage tables, an empty ice bathtub, spare Iranian tracksuits, random sports gear and a huge pile of empty suitcases.
She pulled out small squares of cloth and randomly swabbed a dozen of the heftiest suitcases, then stowed the bits of cloth in a plastic zippered bag. She would test the cloth for explosive residue when she got back to the American compound.
As she was putting the baggie back in her pack, she glanced to one side and spied something that caught her attention. A dozen metal cylinders, like diver’s oxygen tanks stood on the floor in one corner of the storeroom.
What did a bunch of world-class athletes need oxygen for? Sydney was right at sea level, and it wasn’t like Olympic athletes tended to suffer from respiratory disorders. Some sort of oxygen loading therapy for pre-or post-performance for the athletes?
She snapped a quick picture of the tanks and moved on. A thorough search of the rest of the storeroom yielded no weapons, no tactical gear, no smoking guns to indicate that Mahmoud and company had anything nefarious planned.
“I’m done,” she whispered as her search brought her back to Avi’s side.
He murmured, “It would take me a couple of hours to get into these safes. Each one has upgraded locking mechanisms, which is informative in and of itself.”
“I’m ready to move on,” she responded.
He nodded and was just pocketing his picks when, without warning, the storeroom door rattled. Avi had locked it from the inside when they entered.
The sound of a man cursing under his breath in Farsi was audible inside. And a jingle of keys.
No, no, no! They were going to get caught—
Her adrenaline spiked at about the same instant her training kicked in. She knew what to do next. Hide in the shadows. Let her dark clothing do its camouflage work and don’t move. The human eye perceived movement much more readily than it picked out stationary shapes.
She backed away from the door quickly, heading for the safes where Avi had already slipped around behind the big one. The hallway door opened and a slash of blindingly bright light spilled inside.
She froze, caught out in the open. Oh God. Was he armed? Was he was going to shoot her? No way could she claim to be pulling an innocent prank. This was a break-in, plain and simple, and her clothing and gear in her belt would give her away.
The silhouette of a man loomed in front of her, and she forced herself to stop, consciously suppressing the urge to turn and bolt. The Iranian was coming out of a brightly lit hallway into total darkness. He wouldn’t be able to see squat.
Still. She felt naked standing out in the open right in front of the man like this. Slowly, she eased her right foot backward.
Shifted her weight. Slid her left foot back.
The man half turned to fumble at the light switch and she took several quick steps while he was distracted. Thank God. The bulk of the gun safe was now between her and the Iranian.
Any second now, the guy would pull out a flashlight, and by then, she and Avi had to be hidden—or in position to jump this guy and knock him out. But the fallout of someone having been inside the Iranian building and taking out one of their people would be gigantic. Not getting caught at all was the only decent alternative.
The Iranian swore under his breath and continued to fumble around with the light switch.
Taking advantage of his focus on the wall and his turned back, Rebel gave a quick tug on Avi’s sleeve and then faded backward quickly, keeping the gun safes between her and the Iranian as she glided deeper into the shadows. The best hiding place in the room was behind that giant stack of luggage, and she made for it now. Hopefully, Avi would get the message and follow her.
Thankfully, he did. She slipped behind the pile of suitcases and slowly sank into a crouch while Avi did the same beside her. They couldn’t see whoever else might come into the storeroom nor could they track the guy already inside, but at least that meant the Iranian guy couldn’t see them, either.
Someone swore in Farsi, and she heard the light switch being flipped back and forth quickly, clicking ineffectively. Eventually, the Iranian retreated, and the hallway door shut, throwing the storeroom into blackness once more.
“Let’s go,” Avi bit out low.
He paused beneath the light fixture, and lunged, his thigh parallel to the round. He patted his leg and pointed at her.
Got it. He wanted her to use him as a ladder and screw in those lightbulbs again. She ran to him and climbed up on his leg quickly. She reached up, but her hand barely reached the underside of the glass plate covering the bulbs.
A strong arm went around her waist and Avi lifted her off his leg. He stood up to his full height, and abruptly, her fingers banged the ceiling. Working fast, she reached behind the glass fixture and screwed in the bulbs.
