Free Fall

Her voice pierced through his thoughts as they reached the mobile command center.



“I think he’s scared shitless and would do anything to stay safe. I think there are countries that use children as soldiers and weapons for the very reason that we’re vulnerable in that arena. We’re wired to back off when a kid’s involved.”



Great. He hitched his hands on his hips. Just f**king great. “I guess this is where we step off. Good luck with that second cloth.”



She winced. “Unless I’m about to lead us all on a wild goose chase.”



“Hey!” He caught her eyes with his and held firm. “You’re a rock star operative who got us here in time to avert a disaster of epic proportions. I have faith in you.”



She snorted on a laugh. “Just call me the JLo of Interpol.” Stella stepped back, looking at the whole team. “Glad you guys are okay. Good work out there. Jose, I’ll bring you in the loop if I can.”



Pivoting away, she flashed her badge to the guard, swiped it through the security lock, and disappeared inside. He watched the door close behind her, scratching along the tightness in his chest.



Brick coughed, loudly.



Jose startled and realized—damn it—he’d been staring at the door like a lovesick puppy. Most of the team started hoofing it away before he could bite their heads off and started walking toward the west side of the building, where they would give their statements of what went down.



Brick held back, striding alongside him, one stubborn determined step at a time. Great guy to have guarding your back, but the pigheadedness wasn’t always convenient.



“Fine,” Jose conceded. “Say it.”



“What?”



“Don’t play cutesy. You’ve been giving me that wise old married guy look like you know better than me about everything. So either speak your piece or back the f**k off.”



“You’re in a mood.”



He hadn’t fully grasped that himself until just now. “It’s been a crappy couple of days.”



“You were worried about Stella.”



“You think?” He’d been through hell and back, more than once, and now he was screwed, trying to figure out how to make things right with her.



“Why don’t you just marry her and put yourself out of your misery?”



His neck itched. Things weren’t that simple. “Just because you tied the knot doesn’t mean everyone else is cut out for the happily ever after gig with two-point-five kids and a picket fence.”



Brick nodded slowly, lumbering alongside. “So you’re moving on. Okay then, now that we’re clear on that… Who’s the new lady in your life?”



“There isn’t one and you know it.”



“Fair enough. I can help. Sunny has this great friend she met at a recycling fair. A hot babe, truly, blonde with an unbelievably awesome rack. But don’t tell Sunny I said that part or she’ll kick my ass then serve me those granola bran pancakes of hers.” He shuddered. “Anyhow…”



“Quit with the mind games,” Jose interrupted, stopping outside their door, the rest of the team already climbing the steps to go inside the concrete building for interrogation. “I’m not interested in seeing anyone else. There? You got what you were fishing for. Are you happy?”



“Why would I be happy, dude?” He clapped him on the shoulder. “I feel bad for you. Because for whatever reason, you keep turning your back on an incredible woman who, honest to God, seems perfect for you.”



Brick’s hard-hitting truth made heading into a CIA debrief sound like a cakewalk. Jose didn’t bother denying a thing.



The words rolled around like acid inside him. “I’m not a total idiot. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know. She is perfect. I get that. Man, I really do. She’s not the problem. I am.”



***



“Henry Pope, we’re very disappointed in you.”



Fear gripped the CIA agent in an icy hold at odds with the sweltering sun overhead. Nothing compared to the heat these bastards kept pouring onto him. He hadn’t been able to think of anything but the hell they were putting his family through back in the States while he was stuck over here. “I did what you said, damn it. I sent all the transcripts of Sutton Harper’s debriefs. I covered his ass when he slipped away instead of leaving the country.”



“But he got caught and that could create a real problem for your family.”



A scream sliced through the crackling connection. Charlotte. In agony. Oh God, he was going to lose it.



“You bastard, let her go.” He hissed, terrified of being overheard by one of the spies crawling all over this place. Even more terrified of what was happening to his wife.



Her scream dwindled to a low moan. Whatever they’d done to her had stopped. She was still alive. For now.



“Daddy,” his daughter, Ellie, sobbed hysterically in the background, hiccupping with fear. “Make them stop hurting Mommy. They cut Mommy. Daddy!”



“No, goddamnit, stop!” He wanted to howl out his frustration, to claw his way across continents and oceans to get to his family, vulnerable and alone because of him. He considered just turning himself in, sacrificing his career and even his life for his family.



He’d heard about agents being blackmailed, flipped because of one mistake. He’d never thought it could happen to him. But they were that damn good at finding a person’s vulnerability.



“Henry,” the mechanical voice came on again. His own personal demon. “Henry, we’ve been very generous with you. We paid off your gambling debts so you wouldn’t lose your job and your family wouldn’t lose their pretty house.”



Slumping back against a concrete wall, he felt the weight of his own guilt hammer down on him. Even now, the addiction whispered to him, tempting him to win enough money to take his family and hide from everyone forever.



But he owed these bastards too much and they were too well connected to crime syndicates around the world. If he betrayed them, there wasn’t a hole deep enough for him to climb into. They would find him, find his family, and slaughter them all.



He dragged his wrist across his damp eyes. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”



“Piddly little tasks to test your competence and your compliance. Dry runs for this mission. We thought you were ready, now we’re questioning that assumption. I hope you can come through for us, Henry. Your wife’s life depends on you.”



His head thudded back against the concrete wall. He had no choice. No way out. Only the hope of buying time. “What do you want me to do?”



“Kill Sutton Harper.”



Chapter 12



Rain hammered the roof of the airplane hangar. Rain, of all things. Rare as hell in this part of the world, but choosing today to make her life more complicated.



Stella assessed Sutton Harper as he glared at her from across the interrogation table. She rolled a mango between her hands while Smith and Brown observed the interview from off to the side. She’d been given the lead on this for now since she’d spent the past month with the traitor.



Apparently they’d both been pretending to be a student.



Harper was posturing and he was tough, tough enough to make her wonder how long he’d been involved. He looked so benign in surgical scrubs and wet hair from his decontamination shower—for a toxic bomb he’d brought into a crowded reception. She’d been questioning the treacherous bastard for well over two hours with only minimal success. She could only hope when analysts reviewed his statement that they could detect some thread, some inconsistency that could be traced back further until his story unraveled.



What had she missed before, when she’d been undercover with the students? After weeks cultivating a friendship with him, she should have picked up on something. She was a trained professional, for God’s sake, and she’d totally missed she was brushing elbows with a monster who’d joined forces with separatists bent on killing thousands of innocent civilians just to make a statement. At the moment, she didn’t feel all that confident in her professional skills.



But she had backup. Smith sat silently like a human lie detector watching every move while Brown took notes on his tablet, doing his standard gig calculating odds—the consummate professionals.



As much as she wanted to be a calm expert here, her stomach was still in knots just thinking of Jose standing in a decontamination booth, how things could have been so much worse. She could have been grieving over his body.



The thought of him dying…



She fought back the urge to scream and focused on her next tack for finagling a misstep from Harper.



“You and that teenager Ajaya really played us when the kid raced out of the woods.” She rolled the mango back and forth, steady pace, not giving anything away by pitching faster. “You two must have been laughing the whole time you were pretending to be held hostage. Did you two stage the meet up ahead of time? Or was it just dumb luck?”



“The boy didn’t know anything.” His hands cuffed, Harper forked his fingers through his blond curly hair, exhaustion straining the corners of his eyes. “Ajaya was too low level to be a part of the plans.”



“Plans?” She whipped the fruit from palm to palm. “That’s a mighty benign word for killing thousands of people with a bio toxin guaranteeing them a slow torturous death.”



“But it would make for great television, press… all those contorted bodies would create such dramatic images. People perk up for drama. They pay attention to drama.” His brown beady eyes followed the mango with an almost hypnotic regularity.



Good.



“What message did you want people to hear with your drama?”



He looked up sharply. “Like it would make any difference if I told you. You work for the government.”



“So that’s it? You’re… what? Antigovernment?”



“I’m protesting.”



“Easy to protest when you have chemical suits stored in the truck so you don’t have to suffer the fallout.” She raised an eyebrow. “Yes, our people found them.”



“Hey, Stella, don’t look at me that way. I’m not a total bad guy. I tried to help you get to that helicopter. I told you to go without me.”



And a piece of the puzzle slid into place. “When we were escaping, you fell and freaked out, tripping the land mines. You did that on purpose to slow us down, to make us miss the helicopter.”



Shrugging, he worked his wrists inside the cuffs. “I improvised. It all worked out in the end.”



He stared back without the least hint of guilt or shame. Damn sociopath.



She leaned closer, damn grateful there was a table between them or it might be impossible to resist the temptation to take him apart herself, piece by piece.



“Harper, you didn’t help me get to the helicopter when you tripped those mines. You cost us our flight out, risking a night in the jungle. And you turned in innocent students to be taken hostage.” To be tortured. To be murdered.



She pushed images of their faces, people she’d spent weeks with, getting to know them, sharing food and tents. She couldn’t let memories of them terrified and in pain distract her, not now. The best way to give them justice and honor the two who’d died? Do her job. Bring this traitor down.



He sneered at her. “Not so innocent after all since you were a plant, a spy. I knew there was a snitch in the group.”



No use debating with a mass murderer on the difference between international law enforcement agencies with rules of engagement and warlords slaughtering for profit. She just let him talk, knowing he would eventually dig himself a deep, deep hole.



“I have to give you credit, Stella…” He grinned. “You don’t mind if I still call you Stella, do you? Anyhow, I never thought it was you. I actually suspected that anthropology student from Maine. They thought he was just trained well at resistance. Sad to think the poor bastard died for nothing since he didn’t really know anything.”