Free Fall (20 page)

“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.”

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.”

She forced herself to keep rolling the mango without so much as a wince. Because that “archeology student from Maine” had been undercover from the CIA and they’d killed him during the interrogation.

Her chest went tight with… She capped the emotions.

Later, she would deal with that information, maybe climb up on a roof and scream out her rage at the top of her lungs. For now, she had to do her job, to put together the rest of the puzzle, pull in the other players responsible for today’s attempted attack, because no way did those three men in the truck plan this alone.

Mr. Brown stood, setting aside his tablet. “Agent Carson, I believe it’s time for you to turn the interrogation back over to us.”

The ominous tone in the agent’s voice had Harper fidgeting in his seat. The bastard was fine with seeing people suffer and die for his big stance against “the man.” Torture was strictly forbidden, but she knew there’d been breaks in protocol. She wasn’t sure she trusted Smith and Brown. They’d brought her in here for a reason and now they were just dismissing her?

“Carson…” Smith nodded toward the door. “I hear you should check your computer. Mr. Jones is waiting to direct you to a place we set aside for you.”

Mr. Brown tapped his iPad. Realization kicked in. She set aside her mango. Her computer—images of the second cloth. She had a different role to play, one she felt a helluva lot more confident in: breaking codes.

With one last look at the seemingly innocent face she’d risked her life to save, she swallowed back disgust and angled out the door. Once it clicked closed behind her, she sagged back in exhaustion.

Sure enough, Mr. Jones was waiting, wearing his outback hat and his sleeves rolled up, jacket ditched. The humidity from the rain made the temps worse. “How’d it go in there?”

Stella glanced back at the door. “He’s a great liar because he has absolutely nothing in the way of a moral compass. He’s into the next thrill—he called it drama. God, when I think about…” She couldn’t travel that pathway in her thoughts; she just had to know one thing first. “The team that secured the truck and the toxin—are they okay? Any ill effects after the decontamination?”

“They’re fine. Your guy—Cuervo—is fine.”

She nodded tightly, giving herself one selfish second for relief before getting back to business. “What about the teenager? Ajaya? Is he here too? Did you get anything more from him?”

“He’s in the room next door.” He took off his hat and swiped his wrist across his forehead. “The teenager isn’t as innocent as he likes to play it. He’s still holding back. But do I believe he’s responsible for a bio toxin being released at a national media event? No. I think he’s a foot soldier.”

“That fits.” Although so much else still didn’t make sense. She didn’t have a sense of the big “why” to all of this. What were the warlords or separatists responsible for this attempted attack trying to achieve other than chaos? It didn’t make sense. There was always a reason… “I believe Harper when he says Ajaya wouldn’t have had access to that level of information. I don’t think they would have trusted him with keeping that kind of secret.”

“But if they planned on killing the hostages, which I’m sure they intended…” Jones slapped his hat back on his head. “They still would have kept their circle tight in case the teenager got captured.”

“Or turned, which he did.” Brainstorming with Jones was actually helpful. She liked this guy with his honest eyes and a professionalism that went beyond his Cowboy Troy act. Her gut told her he was one of the good ones—but then her gut hadn’t been all that reliable lately. “He’s been doling out what little information he could, holding back details for when he needed them. He’s smart. But in comparing his statements, I found a place he contradicted himself. He said he was taken by people posing as electricians. Then he said his math teacher—a man named Mr. Gueye—was responsible.”

“Maybe they were working together?”

“Could be,” she conceded.

“The clock is ticking for us to sort through it all.” He gestured toward the row of computers. “Yours is just around the other side, at the end, in a cubicle for privacy.”

She’d gotten what she wanted… But for once, work held no allure. She wanted to be a civilian, free to check on the people she cared about. Free to check on Jose.

Mr. Jones tapped his watch and snapped his fingers. “Your cubicle. Go.”

Snapped his fingers at her? Really?

She wove her way past the row of computers with CIA and military monitoring Predator feed and recordings of ongoing interrogations. Circling past the end of the row to the sectioned-off cubby where her computer and work waited.

And Jose?

Her feet grew roots as she stared, stunned. She blinked. Looked again. But her weary eyes didn’t lie.

Jose sat in her seat, waiting for her.

***

Jose wasn’t sure why Jones had given him the okay to sit here by Stella, but he wasn’t arguing. Being with her here in the hangar was better than sleep. As long as he had his eyes on her, he knew she was safe. He couldn’t give her what she needed in the long term, but he could damn well protect her now. So he sat and watched while she worked. A low hum of activity swelled over the cubicle walls.

His PJ buddy Data would have understood more about the intricacies of the programs she input. Jose just studied her face and gauged the success of her efforts by every nuance of her expressions. The way she scrunched her freckled nose, furrowed her forehead, chewed on her bottom lip…

Shit, it wasn’t going well.

Was there anything even there on that second cloth? Or was this all some crazy coincidence? This part of the world had been in chaos for so long maybe there wasn’t a bigger plan. He swiped a hand over his face, then reached for his cup of coffee. Getting philosophical wasn’t going to solve anything. Today, his primary goal, his mission, was to keep Stella safe.

He set down his lukewarm coffee. “Any good news to share?”

“I wish.” She sagged back in her chair, her red braid swinging. “I’ve already tried the original code that worked on the first cloth and ruled that out. I’ve run dozens more, even programs I’ve written. I’m convinced there’s something here. But more complex, which makes me all the more certain I’ve got a lead, some kind of list. I just wish I had more time…”

“Keep working it.” He tugged her braid lightly, then paused to thumb down each curve. “I have faith you’ll find the answers.”

Her laugh came out choked, stressed. “I wish I had your faith, but my confidence is a little shaky today. I should have known about Harper. Damn it, when I think of you risking your life to get him out of there…”

She squeezed her eyes shut, then turned back to the computer, jabbing keys.

“You did everything you could. We didn’t suspect him either. You’re the epitome of chill in the workplace. The last thing you should do is second-guess yourself.” His hand slid up her braid to cup the back of her neck reassuringly. He could offer her this, now.

“Chill? Hardly.” She launched a new scan then turned her chair to face him. “I get upset.”

“Like when?” He rested his hands on her knees.

“Well, I didn’t much enjoy being held hostage or running away from a building blowing up.” She counted down with fingers. “And the whole tetanus bio toxin thing still creeps me out.”

“You never showed a sign of nerves through this whole crisis.” He squeezed gently. “You’ve been damn amazing, Stella.”

“That would have been a waste of time when seconds counted.”

“That’s called not losing your cool.” He kissed her on the nose, fast, unable to resist her. Hell, when had he ever been able to resist her? “I rest my case.”

Her nose scrunched and she pulled her knees away. “I’m a trained professional. It’s my job. That’s different from being freaked out.”

Actually, now that he thought about it, his vision of her shifted. “You’re a code breaker. I would have expected you to stay in a vault somewhere listening to clicks and reading bizarre printouts. That’s what you’re wired for, but you came here to put your mother’s ghost to rest. That’s admirable.”

She looked at the computer, then back at him, half grinning. “There’s no sunlight in a vault. My serotonin levels would be shot all to hell.”

He laughed along with her, her smile tapping some of the tension from him. “Things are tough right now, worse than tough. You can take the stress out on me if you want.”

“You’re propositioning me?” She cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know. Seems like maybe I’ve made this relationship too easy for you.”

“What in the hell gave you that idea?” he barked in surprise.

She linked fingers with him. “Our relationship was too simple. I just fell into your arms and told you I loved you.”

“What planet are you living on?” Following this woman’s “logic” was damn near impossible sometimes. “From where I’m sitting, nothing between us has been simple or straightforward. I still don’t understand half of what went down.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, talking about so much more than just how they’d met, how they’d fallen love. “The parts I do understand are tearing me up inside.”