Beyond Limits (32 page)

“How’s the arm?” he asked, looking down at her bandage.

“Fine.”

Uh-huh. He’d bet it hurt like a bitch.

“Who was on the phone?” she asked, slipping out of his grasp to walk to the closet.

“Luke. Hey, does the name Rasasa mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“I don’t know.” His phone vibrated, and he tore his gaze away from Elizabeth to read a text from Cole. The message was long and rambling, and reading it prompted him to shuffle his plans for the morning. He texted back a response.

“Where’d that come from?”

He looked up. “Hailey Gardner.” He tucked the phone away. “Luke talked to her last night.”

Her eyebrows tipped up as she slipped past him again—fully dressed now, unfortunately—into the bathroom. She wore another one of those crisp white shirts with charcoal slacks. She ran a brush through her hair, eyeing him in the mirror. “I didn’t know he’d been in contact with her.”

The implication was that Derek
had
known and hadn’t told her. He didn’t want to get into it. “Mind if I use your shower?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Of course not.” She leaned close to the mirror and swiped mascara on her eyelashes. “I have to go, though. Gordon called from the hospital.”

“How’s Lauren?”

“Good.” She applied lipstick. Then she stuffed all her makeup into a zipper bag. “They moved her to a private room. Also, the motel clerk is awake now. Gordon’s bringing in a forensic artist, hoping she’ll be up for an interview. He wants me to sit in, see what develops.” She paused. “Are you getting on the road today?”

“That’s the plan.”

Her gaze dropped to his chest, and she looked like she wanted to say something. He waited, but nothing came.

“I’ve got to check something out first,” he said. “Cole sent me a new lead on a gun dealer, so I’m going to follow up.”

“You should let us do it.” She lifted her gaze, and her voice was businesslike. “You don’t want to be late reporting for duty.”

“I’d just as soon handle it. Where are you going to be later?”

Someone knocked on the door, and she glanced across the room. “That’s Torres.” She pulled her still-damp hair into a ponytail, then squeezed past him again and went to the dresser.

“Where will you be later?” he asked again.

“After the hospital? Probably the office.”

She put on her belt, threading it through her holster as he eased closer to watch. When he’d first met her, the gun had been a major turn-on. Now it was mostly a reminder of what he didn’t like about her job. She thought his job was dangerous? He’d been with her a week, and she’d been knifed and shot at.

She finished buckling and looked up. “Why?”

“I’ll catch up with you before I go. Keep your phone on.”

More knocking. She grabbed her jacket off the chair and shrugged into it, watching him. “If you can’t, I understand,” she said.

He pulled her to him and kissed her hard. When he let her go, she blinked up at him. “Keep your phone on.”

It would have been a tricky interview anyway, but with Jamie still groggy, communication was difficult. Gordon seemed determined, though, and by mid-morning, he’d cut through all the hospital’s red tape and had one of the nation’s top forensic artists on-site and ready to get to work.

Fiona Glass had a stellar reputation in law-enforcement circles, and Elizabeth had felt a wave of relief upon hearing she was on the case. Her relief disappeared, though, when the artist announced that she didn’t want any investigators sitting in on the session. The witness’s comfort was of paramount importance, especially when that witness had been the victim of a violent crime.

So Elizabeth spent the better part of the morning pacing between the waiting room and Lauren’s hospital room, where her family was gathered around waiting for her to emerge from the fog of pain meds.

Elizabeth had just poured her third cup of too-weak coffee when the sound of heels on linoleum had her turning around.

“You’re finished?” She hurried up to the artist.

“We are.”

Elizabeth had expected Fiona Glass to be an artsy, earth-mother type, but instead, she looked more like an attorney. She pulled a legal-size file folder from her leather attaché case and handed over a drawing.

Elizabeth took one look at the color portrait, and her breath caught. “It’s Rasheed.”

“You know him?”

She looked up, then down at the drawing again. Done in colored pastel on buff-colored paper, the picture was a nearly photographic likeness of Omar Rasheed, right down to the dark mole on his nose that Elizabeth hadn’t even realized she’d noticed before.

She studied the flinty look in his eye, and her stomach tightened. She remembered the same defiant expression when they’d faced off on that rooftop.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. “This is—it’s incredible. I can’t believe you got this much detail with the witness as injured as she is. And medicated, too. Didn’t she have trouble communicating?”

“Communication barriers of one form or another are the rule, not the exception,” she said. “Try interviewing a traumatized three-year-old whose first language isn’t English.”

Elizabeth nodded, still taken aback.

“As witnesses go, she was slow to respond and definitely tired but very clear about what she saw.”

“It’s an impressive drawing,” Elizabeth said, “but it doesn’t help us much from an investigative perspective. We already have this subject ID’d. And unfortunately, he’s dead.”

The artist tipped her head to the side. “Jamie tells me there was another man she remembers entering the motel room, but she only saw him from the back, so I wasn’t able to get a sketch. I got the other subject, though.” She slipped the first drawing back into her folder and tugged out another. The sharp scent of fixative wafted up as she handed it over. “This one we just completed.”

Elizabeth’s pulse jumped. “You got the woman.” She studied the drawing. Auburn hair, as she’d suspected. Dark eyes, olive skin, strong cheekbones. She was beautiful, and it was no surprise she’d managed to seduce Matt Palicek into helping her.

If, in fact, she had.

“This person’s new,” Elizabeth said. “So this is definitely a lead.”

“But . . . what? You seem unsure.”

“Not about the drawing. It’s just—we’ve put together a list of potential subjects. Females. And unfortunately, the only photos we have of them are from childhood.”

She nodded. “Well, obviously, recent is better, but we get IDs based on age-progression drawings all the time. A huge part of what I do involves missing children. In many cases, I’ve been able to age the picture ten, twenty, even thirty years and get something that bears an uncanny resemblance to the adult.”

“Really?”

“Certain features of the human face remain the same from infancy all the way into adulthood. You’d be surprised.”

“I am.” And Elizabeth knew she sounded skeptical, but she wanted to be convinced.

“Take the shape of the nostrils, for instance, and the shape of the eyes. The eyebrows, too—although some women alter that cosmetically.” She stepped closer and pointed at the portrait. “Look at the contour of the mouth here. See the seam where the lips meet? Very hard to change that. Also, the way the tops of the ears line up with the eyes and where the earlobes line up with the nose. Even with orthodontics or plastic surgery, those features are nearly impossible to alter.”

“You make it sound like an exact science.”

“Well, I don’t want to oversell it,” she said. “We
are
dealing with a drawing based on someone’s recollection. If we were comparing two photographs, it would be exact. However, I should point out that you have something going for you in this case.”

Elizabeth stared at the picture, trying to guess.

“The hair,” the artist said. “Cowlicks, widow’s peaks, those features don’t change over someone’s lifetime and are easy to notice.” She traced her finger over the woman’s hairline. “See? She has a widow’s peak. It was one of the first things Jamie mentioned.”

Elizabeth studied the drawing, fascinated. Her pulse was racing now, and she wanted to rush back to the office and look at the photos they’d compiled of the female relatives of the terrorists.

A shadow fell over the paper, and she glanced up to see Potter.

“That’s her?” he asked, frowning.

“What do you think?”

“I think we need a name to go with the face.” He looked at her. “Where’s Gordon?”

“At the office. Why?”

“I just got a call from Interpol. You know the name you passed along this morning? They’ve got ‘Rasasa’ on file as a nickname for Ahmed Rasheed.”

“Ahmed,” she repeated. “The brother who was killed in the drone strike?”

“Reportedly killed. Turns out they had visual confirmation on the ground but no DNA. That particular detail got left out of the file on our end.”

Elizabeth’s stomach twisted. “You’re saying it’s possible he’s alive?”

“Very much so,” Potter told her. “It’s also possible he’s here.”

Elizabeth clicked open the e-mail attachment, and the image appeared on the screen.

“Fatima Rasheed,” she said. “She’s seven years younger than her brother Omar, which makes her twenty-four.”

Gordon’s brow furrowed as he studied the photograph, which showed eight members of the Rasheed family standing inside an upscale shopping mall in Dubai.

“How old is she there?” Torres asked.

“Ten.” Elizabeth glanced up at the picture. “So she’s not fully veiled, only the head scarf.”

“And where’d you get the photo?” Gordon asked.

“NSA. They’ve been watching this family since 9/11.”

Torres sighed heavily, and Elizabeth looked at him across the table.

“What?”

“I’m not seeing it.” He nodded at the second image, the forensic drawing, which was displayed on-screen alongside the family snapshot. “I mean, yeah, there’s a resemblance, but so what?” he said. “Same could be said about a lot of women. What about Zahid Ameen’s female relatives?”

“We don’t have photos,” Potter said.

“Ameen’s from Saudi Arabia,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Women are much more limited there. Many wear the niqab, which covers the face except for the eyes. They’re not supposed to mix with men socially. They aren’t allowed to drive, and they’re required to have a male guardian to go anywhere, even the doctor’s office.”

“Because of the strict rules,” Potter said, “we know next to nothing about the women of Ameen’s family.”

“Put Ahmed Rasheed’s wife back up there,” Gordon said.

Elizabeth clicked the mouse and changed the image. Yes, some of the basic features were similar, but the resemblance wasn’t nearly as strong.

“I think it’s the sister, Fatima.” She clicked the girl’s picture back up. “I know it is.”

“You can’t be sure,” Torres argued. “Not if we’re basing this on a drawing.”

“But look at the hairline, the way it points down in the middle. It’s right there. Even if she changed her name, she can’t totally disguise her appearance. I’m telling you, the woman we’re looking for is Fatima Rasheed.”

“Why are you so sure?” Gordon leaned back in his chair, frowning.

“She has motive, means, and opportunity.”

“Motive being her brother was killed in a drone strike,” he said. “But we now know he probably
wasn’t
killed.”

“Even if he wasn’t killed, he was still targeted by an American drone,” Elizabeth said. “That’s enough to inspire hate.”

“What’s the last concrete info we have on her?” Torres asked.

“She entered Turkey four years ago. Her father has relatives in Istanbul, and we assume she was staying with them.”

“That’s before the drone strike,” Gordon pointed out.

“Yes, but it’s what she did after that we need to be concerned about. What if she joined the cause? What if someone helped her put a new identity together, and she got on a plane to Canada or Mexico or maybe even New York City? I’m telling you, Fatima Rasheed is the face of this operation.” She waved a hand at the screen. “If you think about it, it’s perfect. Look at all we have on her. A snapshot of a little girl. She’s a face we’d never expect. But I believe she
did
do this. I believe she got herself over here and started laying the groundwork, finding a safe house and buying a car and coordinating all the meetings, gathering everyone together.”

“What about eliminating witnesses?” Torres asked. “That college kid who sold his car to them—he was murdered before Rasheed and Ameen got over here. You’re saying she did that?”

“Why’s that so impossible?” Elizabeth asked, getting annoyed. “A woman can hold a pistol, same as anybody. This kind of thinking is playing right into their hands, you guys. They know we’re resistant to the idea of a female terrorist. And they’re using that to their advantage.”

Elizabeth looked at the faces around the room—all of them male and most of them skeptical. Why was this so difficult to believe? Maybe they didn’t like the idea of hunting down a woman.

She wished Lauren were here to back her up.

“Okay, so what about Ahmed Rasheed?” Torres asked. “Do we have confirmation he was aboard that submarine?”

“We’re still waiting on the print from that gas can,” Gordon said.

“But it’s looking likely,” Potter added. “Hailey Gardner remembers Khalid talking about someone named Rasasa. That’s Ahmed’s nickname, and it means
bullet
. He’s got a reputation as an expert marksman, and we’ve got video footage of him teaching shooting at an Al Qaeda training camp.”

Gordon tapped his pen on the table. “If Ahmed Rasheed is alive—which hasn’t been confirmed, by the way—it would make for an interesting scenario. It puts the idea of an assassination back into play. But the discovery of the narco sub had led us to believe they were trying to smuggle in a chemical weapon.”

“Do we know this for sure?” Torres asked. “That there was a bomb aboard that sub?”

“Word from the lab is the submarine tests positive for explosives residue,” Gordon said. “Despite water washing away much of the evidence, they were still able to detect trace amounts.”