Hard to Trust (7 page)

After waiting for five minutes without a reply, she knew she couldn't wait any longer. Getting out seemed to be the best option for the time being. A known enemy was always preferable to an unknown one.

Peeking into his bedroom door, she spotted Jake sleeping, fully dressed, on top of the bed. He commandeered the bed like he seemed to commandeer everything else. His arms and legs were flung wide, covering nearly the width of the bed, while snoring filled the air.

For a minute or two she felt kind of bad. He'd been good to her so far. Saved her butt back in Alexandria. But early on she'd learned she could only help herself.

No doubt he wouldn't be sleeping so peacefully if he worried she might be able to escape. She spotted the blinking light and easily found the alarm system hidden inside the front closet. It was trickier than the normal run-of-the-mill alarms. It had a fingerprint-driven mechanism to both disarm and arm, which had her stumped for a second or two. This wasn't the CIA's sophisticated eye reader, so she should be able to lift a reasonable print from the coffee cup he'd been using, transfer it onto tape, and then use that to deactivate the machine. The worst that could happen was half the building would be awakened by an obnoxious noise.

Less than five minutes later, she had it disarmed. Piece of cake.

*  *  *

Jake got out of the shower and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. "Tessa."

Nothing. Not a sound.

His shoulders tightened as he walked toward her room. Why did he think he could trust her?

He'd become complacent. In a strange city, with the bad guys breathing down their necks, he figured she'd cling to him. But he'd overestimated her need for independence. He should have figured that with her background, she'd feel the need to strike out on her own.

Undecided whom he might be angrier at, her or himself, he slipped into his boots and yanked on his coat. He naively thought she'd fallen for his charm. Instead she'd been pretending.

At least he'd planned for this contingency and inserted a needle-sized tracker in the interior of her backpack. That would be assuming she didn't find it first and destroy it.

He grabbed his go bag and threw in an AR-15 pistol, a couple rounds of ammo, a flashlight, some flexi-cuffs, and a first aid kit. As he walked out the door, he turned on his phone and accessed the program to track her progress. While berating himself would serve no good purpose, he couldn't help but think he should have put a little more Tylenol PM in her drink.

From what he could tell, it looked like she was on the Lower East Side where her friend Nick Stamos lived, and was still moving. The guy had been in Afghanistan with her when everything went down. It would make sense that she might want to give him a heads-up if she truly believed the people after her were somehow connected to that attack. But why not call him, or send him a text? Why go there in person? He grimaced. There were only a few reasons, and none of them were good.

On top of being a potential murderer, the woman was a pain in the ass. She didn't want to be helped, didn't want to be rescued, and did everything in her power to piss him off. As soon as he tracked her sorry ass down, he was going to call Jennings and tell him he wanted no part of this assignment.

He'd been played. So played it wasn't even on the too-stupid-to-live radar.

You still haven't figured it all out, have you, Jacov?
Petrovich's words echoed in his head, mocking any progress he might make.

He hailed a cab. Tracking her progress while they wove through the busy streets at nearly midnight was easy with the state-of-the-art device he'd installed. Unless, of course, she'd found it and attached it to a dog or something.

What about this Nick guy? Was he a former lover? A friend? A partner in her crimes?

Once again, he'd fallen into a trap. Tessa Graham, the woman who had fooled him into doing something utterly and completely stupid.

Trusting her.

Tessa's indecision and fear cost her a few precious moments. Not knowing her way around Manhattan cost her a few more. But her drive to be safe and with someone she trusted seemed to overshadow any misgivings she might have. Okay, she didn't totally trust Nick, and he was being a pain, wasn't answering his phone or responding to the text she'd sent him, but at least she knew him and recognized all his foibles. Even if she felt the tiniest bit guilty about leaving Jake in the lurch with a compromised security system.

Despite the traffic, the trip didn't take long. She readjusted the contents of her backpack along the way, searching for something she might be able to use in a pinch. Just in case. On hyper-alert, she felt a need to watch her back. Something she was always aware of, but she felt like when she wasn't on assignment that she wasn't as vigilant. Except now everything in her life had suddenly morphed into a twenty-four seven combat situation.

Over the last couple of days she'd learned to assume the worst and be proactive. She could only hope it wasn't a result of the PTSD the CIA shrink had warned her about. Nope. She shook her head. It was not her imagination that several men broke into her townhome with the express purpose of causing her harm. She also wasn't imagining things when Jake Shaw rode up on his white horse saying he'd rescue her.

Pfft. As if.

Gun. Check. Extra round of bullets. Check. C-4. Check. Her laptop with everything she'd saved from every assignment she'd been on, embedded and protected so that anyone putting in the wrong retrieval key would automatically destroy the material. Of course, she had it saved out in the cyberspace world as well, but retrieving that would be a shot in the dark by anyone other than her.

The part that didn't make sense was why the CIA would cover up and pretend Alex was dead. And why did the memory of Alex's words that prevented them from killing her in Afghanistan keep knocking around her brain? And what in the hell did it have to do with Russians? When she'd blurted that out to Jake, it was like someone else had taken over her speech function momentarily. It came out of some reptilian part of her brain she didn't recognize.

Before she had the time to ponder the matter any further, the cabbie stopped in front of Nick's building. After paying, she got out and approached the door. The lock on the downstairs entrance prevented admittance except by key or being buzzed in. She punched in his number and listened as the phone continued to ring until voicemail picked up. Undeterred, she held down the buzzer and tried to annoy him enough so that he'd have no choice but to respond. But that didn't work either. When ten minutes had elapsed without any response, sweat beaded on her upper lip, and her heartbeat raced.

She drew in a shaky breath and forced herself to move on to Plan B. And think positive.

Maybe he'd gone out? Unlikely, given his propensity toward being a recluse, but anything was possible.

Everything in her itched to get inside, but she needed to be cautious. Given the steady stream of pedestrians, using her file to pick the lock might raise attention. Patience. Sooner or later someone would open the door.

She tried to appear casual, even while everything in her wanted to scream as she waited not-so-patiently for an opportunity to present itself. Finally a group of women barreled out the door looking like they had primped for a night of clubbing. She held the door for them and muttered, "Thanks, keys at the bottom of my purse." Without giving them much of an opportunity to see her face, she charged up the steps, making it to Alex's apartment on the third floor in less than a minute.

She hit the landing slightly winded, but it had more to do with nerves than exertion. A tingly sensation tracked down her spine. She glanced at her watch—a little before midnight. Two apartments lined either side of the hallway, one facing the street, the other facing the building behind. She'd been there before and knew Nick's place faced the street.

But it was the complete and utter silence that made her fingers tremble and her knees go weak. That and the nauseating roll in her stomach forewarning of trouble.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention while dust swirled around the perimeter of the tent. Having a hint of a breeze might stave off the stream of water coursing down various parts of her body.

Not only was she sweating her ass off because Alex thought she could get Amir to relax and tell her some juicy tidbits, the guy hadn't made so much as a sound. She had to wonder if the guy could even talk.

Was he deaf? Mute? Based on his lack of response, she had to wonder.

A sound from outside filtered inside. Amir got even twitchier. Maybe he wasn't deaf after all. It sounded like a camel nuzzling to her.

The desert winds stilled. The groaning and bleating of the camels came to an abrupt halt as the whiff of something intangible but sinister trailed in the air.

She moved her hand from the table to the gun she kept strapped to her leg. A tingle settled in the curve of her spine, setting off a series of pinpricks up her skull as she removed her gun from its hiding spot as discreetly as possible.

The winds started up again, making the sides of the tent vibrate, like the prop department had suddenly turned back on the industrial-sized fan. Sand blew into the tent, swirling about the confines. Maybe there was an uptick in Amir's skittishness, because despite the mundane-ness of the moment, something set off her radar. She launched herself over the table, bringing Amir to the ground with her. Seconds later a bullet tore through the side of the tent while she and Amir wrestled for control along the sand-covered floor.

Sensations and the sounds of that moment in Afghanistan seemed to envelope her in those ten or so steps down the hall. Fear, as her constant companion, snaked up her back, grasped its gnarly arms around her neck, and squeezed. Maybe she had PTSD like the shrink told her, because it felt like she'd been hurtled back into the day everything in her life shifted. She closed her eyes and drew in a breath to calm herself and tried to focus on where she was. New York, outside her friend Nick's apartment, rather than surrounded by desert.

Everything about the aloneness of the moment made her want to give in and scream until she couldn't anymore. She was a loner by nature, but the sensation pounding in her chest pleaded for company at this moment in time. Replicating that all-encompassing fear was not a good headspace to be in. Despair threatened to unhinge the last spot of sense in her psyche.

Breathe.

Focus.

She placed her ear against the wooden door of Nick's apartment. Why couldn't she hear his TV blaring? He liked his TV and music loud. There was no in-between for him. Twenty-four seven. It drove her crazy when they were together on assignments. He said he needed white noise to soothe his wounded soul. She could relate to the wounded soul part, but she took a more proactive method of helping her wounded soul.

Her breath hitched as she yanked the gun from her backpack.

Knock. Knock. Knock
.

Nothing.

She drew in a breath, covered the doorknob with her shirt, and twisted. Somehow she wasn't surprised when the door sprang free.

She drew her gun even as the all-too-familiar smell of blood lingered in the air. Tears sprang to her eyes as she sensed what she'd find. Through concerted effort she forced herself to detach and focus.

On the table in the living room, Chinese takeout, complete with chopsticks in the cardboard containers, lay half eaten. An empty bottle of wine without so much as a glass in sight. Straight from the bottle. That was so Nick. She even managed a half-smile at the memory of him downing a bottle in record time on numerous occasions.

She checked the kitchen next, but it was small and spotless. Nothing marred the counter or floor. She peeked out the window leading to the fire escape, hoping maybe he was sitting outside despite the frigid temperatures. But of course he wasn't.

The bathroom was vacant, free from any sign of disturbance. Maybe she was wrong about the sensation in her chest—the memories swirling about her mind evoked images too horrific to contemplate right now.

Except for the closed door at the end of the hall.

One room left to check. Despite her extensive training and everything she'd witnessed in her career, her heart rat-ta-tat-tatted inside her chest as she covered the knob with her shirt and turned.

The room was dark except for the lights flickering from the sign on the café across the street, producing throbbing graphics along the walls and ceiling. She kept her gaze focused toward the upper part of the ceiling, waiting until she was ready. Finally, she shifted her scrutiny to the bed.

Blood.

Lots of it.

Oh my God.

Nick lay on the bed, blood leaking from his body and seeping into the sheet and spreading to the mattress beneath. The bright red color suggested it had been recent. Maybe less than an hour. She bit back the wail desperate to escape her lips.

Had her phone conversation to him triggered this whole problem? It couldn't be a coincidence that he'd been killed even while somebody tried to kill her. Paranoia wasn't paranoia if it was grounded in reality.

He'd been with her that day in Afghanistan. She'd shared with him her discovery. Now he was dead. Just like Alex. Everything inside her knew she was next.

Even though the urge to run skittered down her backbone, she fought it back. This was not a time to wuss out. She needed answers, and maybe there'd be some clues as to what happened. Wasting the opportunity would be silly. She could fall apart later.

Detach
.

Like the flipping of a deadbolt, she disengaged her brain from the roiling emotions as she morphed into professional mode.

They'd staged it to appear as a suicide, with a pill bottle propped on the nightstand and bloody wrists. But it was a surface job, either because of expediency or design. A halfway decent detective would read this as a murder scene within the first few minutes.