Chapter Eight
Luke was hyperaware of the fact that he hadn’t shaved in three days and he smelled like ass from his six-mile run. But Hailey didn’t seem to notice as she took a seat at the graffiti-covered picnic table in the middle of the courtyard. He’d considered taking her to his apartment . . . for about a nanosecond. But the place was a mess, and he was pretty sure he’d left a condom wrapper on the table by the couch.
He sat downwind of her on the bench. She wore a black windbreaker that swallowed her and probably belonged to her dad or maybe her boyfriend, and she’d flipped the cuffs up. Under the jacket, she had on one of those clingy black yoga outfits. She also wore Adidas running shoes, no socks, and she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. The sporty look had always done it for him, and her stretchy top showed off a very nice rack. And he was probably going straight to hell for thinking about her breasts right now, but they were right there in front of him, and he couldn’t help it.
“You look surprised to see me,” she said.
“You could say that.”
Last time he’d seen her, she’d been sitting on a gurney in the base infirmary waiting to have her arm set. Her face had been tear-stained and filthy, and Luke had been trying for weeks to forget the shattered look in her eyes.
“One of my college roommates lives here,” she said. “She thought maybe I could use a break, so . . . she invited me out for a visit.”
He just looked at her.
“She lives up in La Jolla,” she added, because he was sitting there like a moron, not making this any easier for her.
“So you’re staying up there, or . . . ?”
“I’m at the Del.”
The Del. As in the Hotel Del Coronado. He remembered that she came from money—at the time of the raid, her family had actually been trying to help MedAssist come up with the ransom money. Ten million dollars. They had to be seriously loaded to think they could even get near an amount like that.
She glanced around the courtyard, probably second-guessing her decision to come here.
He still couldn’t believe she was here. The feds on his street were starting to make sense now. Derek had told him that when he’d dropped in on Hailey at her parents’ condo, she had her own private security detail. So the feds hadn’t been tailing him. They’d been tailing Hailey, who’d been tailing him. He’d bet the white Toyota down the street was her rental car.
Damn, it was weird to see her.
“How’s your arm?” he asked.
“Fine.” Her smile was tight this time. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded about her ordeal. Although he doubted a minute went by that she didn’t think about it.
“How are you?” she asked.
The look of concern on her face made his chest tighten. She was worried about him? He wasn’t the one who’d come home in a cast. Or a pine box.
“I’m doing all right.” He thought of his alcohol-fueled sex binge. “Most days, anyway.”
“That’s good to hear.” She looked down at her lap. “So there’s something I need to tell you. Two things, really.” She touched her hand to her neck and cleared her throat. “Sorry. This is harder than I thought.”
Luke waited. Dread pooled in his gut as he thought about what on earth she could have traveled hundreds of miles to tell him. Even if she’d come out here to see a girlfriend, she’d still gone to the effort of finding him at home.
She met his gaze. “First, I want you to know how sorry I am. About Sean Harper.”
His throat burned. “Thank you.”
“You two were close, I take it?”
He nodded.
She looked down again. “I could tell. Everything you did in the helicopter . . . the way you talked to him. I’m sure it was comforting to him to hear your voice right then.”
As he bled out, she meant. Luke had been elbow-deep in Sean’s blood, and by the time they’d loaded him onto the medevac plane, he’d barely had a pulse.
She looked across the courtyard at a pair of abandoned scooters. “I keep thinking about that day—the first day—about how if we’d taken another route, or left earlier, or had one more car in our convoy, none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t.” He put his hand on her knee, then quickly pulled it away. “You can’t think like that. Take it from me. You can’t think like that, or you’ll go crazy.”
For a moment, she just stared at him. Then she said, “The other thing I wanted to say is thank you.”
He didn’t respond.
“What you guys did for me . . . what you did—”
“It’s my job,” he said, and it came out too harshly, because she looked stung. “I mean, you don’t have to thank me. It was—” My pleasure to rescue you? If he said something that stupid, he should be strung up from the nearest tree. “It was my privilege to be able to help.”
Which sounded only slightly less idiotic. She was staring at him now, no doubt thinking he was a total asshole, and he didn’t blame her.
“So . . . how long are you in town?” he asked.
She bit her lip as she looked at him, and he prayed she was going to get off the serious stuff. He wasn’t good at shit like this. It was no secret that his bedside manner sucked. It was even a joke in the teams—his bedside manner consisted of bedding as many women as possible in any manner he could.
And if she’d been able to read his mind right now, she’d probably run straight back to La Jolla.
“My plans are kind of up in the air,” she said, looking away. “I was thinking a long weekend.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy your stay.”
The silence stretched out, and the only sound was the faint noise of a TV in one of the nearby apartments. She stood up, taking her cue, and he felt a mix of relief and disappointment as he stood, too.
She was leaving. This was it. He’d probably never see her again. Something clawed at his stomach, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what to say or how to keep her in the courtyard of his slummy apartment for even a minute longer.
“Well . . . ’bye, then.” She held out her hand, cast and everything. “It was good to see you.”
Elizabeth sat on the floor of her hotel room amid case files and cartons of Thai noodles. After a marathon team meeting, they’d downshifted into sweatpants and carryout food.
“I still can’t believe I’m here.”
Elizabeth glanced over at Lauren as she picked at her noodles. “Why?”
“Do you realize we’re working for Gordon Moore? I can’t understand why he put me on this team.”
Elizabeth set her carton aside. “He works in mysterious ways.”
“You, I get,” Lauren said. “You’ve worked for him before. But why me?”
“Because you’re an expert on the Saledo cartel, and they play an important role in this. And because you’re a great agent.”
She snorted.
“What?”
“I won’t argue,” Lauren said, “but really, come on. Let’s get real. I’m a good agent, yeah, but this task force already has a token female.” She reached for Elizabeth’s carton. “You finished with that?”
“Help yourself.”
Elizabeth had thought long and hard about why she’d been picked for this task force, and she doubted it was because she was a token female. She had the sneaking suspicion that Gordon had put her on the team specifically to keep tabs on Derek. Gordon was manipulating her, and by getting closer to Derek, she was playing right into his hands.
“Anyway,” Lauren said, “I don’t want to look a gift assignment in the mouth, so . . . done worrying about it. How’d breakfast with your friend go?”
“It got cut short.” Elizabeth slurped her drink. “I had a meeting.”
Her mind flashed to today’s encounter with Derek on the firing range. And even more unexpected, her encounter with his mother. SEALs often seemed like superheroes, capable of death-defying feats of strength and bravery. Sometimes it seemed like they came from another planet, so it was almost surprising to discover that Derek came from a tree-lined street in suburbia.
His mom had seemed so normal. So friendly. And clearly bursting with curiosity about why an FBI agent would want to talk to her son.
“That’s it?” Lauren stared at her. “That’s not much of a review.”
“It wasn’t much of an event.”
Elizabeth watched Lauren finish off the noodles and thought about whether to tell her about Derek. She felt awkward. Opening up about her personal life didn’t come naturally.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Lauren asked. “Are you hung up on this guy?”
“What? No.”
She was saved from further explanation by a knock at the door and jumped up to answer it. “That’ll be Potter.”
Lauren sighed. “So much for girl talk.”
It was standing room only the next morning in the briefing room.
“Something’s up,” Torres muttered as he grabbed a patch of wall space next to Elizabeth.
Torres was right. There was a definite tension buzzing in the air. The entire team was here, and the only hint that it was Saturday morning was that several agents wore workout gear instead of their usual suits, as if they’d been called in on their way to the gym. Elizabeth had a feeling their morning plans were about to get disrupted.
Gordon strode through the door, closely followed by his tech expert from Washington. He looked over the assembled troops and motioned for everyone to sit. He sank into a chair as his assistant flashed some slides onto a screen.
“Several updates,” he said briskly. “As you all know, Interpol uses one of the most advanced facial-recognition programs on the planet at border checkpoints. What you may not know is that that system was recently upgraded. They just implemented a state-of-the-art software package that allows them to identify, match, and cross-check literally millions of faces a day with unbelievable accuracy. Today it identified these two men.”
Two separate pictures appeared of men standing at immigration checkpoints. Elizabeth recognized Rasheed.
“Both of these images were captured ten days ago,” Gordon said. “The man on the left is traveling under the name Martin Delgado, but you’ll recognize him as Omar Rasheed.”
“Who’s the man on the right?” Torres asked.
“As of now, he is our biggest problem.” Gordon paused and looked around. “His name is Zahid Ameen. He’s on the terrorist watch list for numerous bombings and was most recently implicated in an attack on a bus in Kabul.”
The image of a charred bus carcass flashed onto the screen.
“Sixteen schoolchildren died in this bombing, all girls, along with twelve adults. The bus was on its way to a newly opened school.”
Silence fell over the room.
“Ten days ago, Ameen boarded a flight from Athens to Caracas, Venezuela, that landed just hours before Rasheed’s flight. One week ago, Rasheed entered the U.S. with a Mexican coyote, most likely through border tunnels controlled by the Saledo cartel. We believe Ameen did the same.”
“What do the Venezuelans have on them?” The question came from Lauren, who was seated across the room.
“Nothing,” Gordon said. “Or at least, nothing they’re willing to share. Our relations with them haven’t exactly been cozy lately.”
Elizabeth’s stomach tensed as she looked at the mangled bus. Sixteen schoolgirls. There had to be a special place in hell for someone who would do that.
“If he’s on a watch list, why didn’t they pick him up in Athens?” Lauren asked.
“His passport worked,” Gordon said. “And he’s had some plastic surgery recently. Looking at our previous photos of him, there isn’t much resemblance, so it’s no surprise they missed him. But this new biometric security software they’ve got—it’s beyond anything anyone’s ever seen before. Its matches are amazingly accurate. Based on this intelligence, we are now operating under the assumption that both Rasheed and Ameen are within our borders, and they’re working in tandem. We believe they have contacts here. And we believe they’re planning an attack.”
Gordon turned to face the screen displaying the charred bus. “With Ameen involved, we know that no target is too soft—schools, shopping malls, subway stations. Heavy civilian casualties are his trademark, and he’s completely without conscience. We are pulling out all the stops to find him. Every agency in Homeland Security is engaged in this manhunt.”
“How about enlisting outside help?” Elizabeth suggested.
“We have,” Gordon said. “Interpol has been cooperative, and they’re working on the Venezuelans.”
“I meant American help. Special ops people, like SEALs. Hunting terrorists is what they do.”
Gordon’s jaw tightened. “That’s right. But what they don’t do is conduct operations on U.S. soil. That’s our job.”
“What about the DEA down in Del Rio?” Lauren asked. “Are we still working on that license plate?”
“No new leads on the plate, but we’re pursuing another angle. Our lab techs have enlarged the surveillance image and are trying to get a number off the vehicle registration sticker affixed to the windshield. If they’re successful, it could lead to a name and address of this mystery accomplice.” He looked at Elizabeth, whose idea it had been, and she felt both proud and relieved to have come up with a fresh lead.
“You think it’s the same person whose print is on the laptop?” Lauren asked.
“Could be,” Gordon said, “but we won’t know unless we get our hands on that Chevy and have a chance to recover prints. Personally, I’d rather get my hands on the terrorists.
“Meanwhile, our cyber-crimes team is focused on the chat-room angle. Torres and LeBlanc are working with the Del Rio agents, in case they come up with something new.”
A young admin stepped into the room and whispered something in Gordon’s ear. He listened a moment, nodded, and then sat forward in his chair, clearly ready to wrap up the meeting.
“Each one of you has a job to do. But I need you to be ready to move the second we get word on that car registration. SWAT is on standby if and when we get an address.” He stood up. “That’s it.”
Everyone filed out as Gordon reached for the phone in the middle of the table.
“LeBlanc, wait.” He muted the call. “You’ve been in touch with our SEAL friends, I take it.”
She glanced at the phone, wondering who was on the other end—someone important enough to adjourn the meeting. She looked Gordon in the eye. “They’re eager to help, sir. They’ve seen this sort of carnage up close, so they’re in a unique position to understand the threat we’re facing. Plus, they’re skilled at tracking terrorists.”
“They’re also skilled at killing terrorists. Your friends in particular have a personal vendetta, as one of their teammates died in the operation that started all this. Make no mistake. If those SEALs find Rasheed, they will take him out, and we’ll never even know they were there. The FBI’s objective is to apprehend these men, interrogate them, and put a stop to their attack.”
His look was intense, and she glanced over his shoulder at the burned-out school bus.
“But—”
“You have a job to do, LeBlanc, and we don’t have time to waste.”