Out of Sight (6 page)

AJ curled her fingers into her palms. She desperately wanted to reach him on some level. Wanted him to be pleased with her, with her performance as an operative. She wanted,
needed,
his validation. Frustrated, she dug her short nails into her soft palms until she concentrated on that pain instead of the pain of disappointment crushing her chest.

She shouldn't need his validation. Damn it. She really shouldn't. He was nothing to her. Nothing more than her boss on this op. Nothing more than her hero. Nothing more than a man she'd looked up to, sight unseen, for the last eighteen months of her life.

He looked at her over his shoulder. "I was outside the whole time you were in there, Cooper," he said quietly, as if he'd read her mind. "I wouldn't have let it get that far."

AJ felt a huge wash of gratitude. "I wasn't worried."

He faced front again. "Right."

Feel the warmth,
AJ thought, glaring at his back. Talk about unbending. He must've been raised by wolves.

"Okay, maybe a little worried," she admitted. "But you must have been worried when you were in prison, too, right?"

"Can't remember."

"Would you mind me asking how you landed there?"
A mistake you made, right?

"Yes."

AJ waited a beat. Honest to God, the man took the word "uncommunicative" to a whole new level. "Don't hold back, Kane. Feel free to tell me how you really feel, in as many words as you need."

"Fine. You want to know? Trust was misplaced. Someone didn't obey orders," he said after a few minutes of heavy silence. "The result was that five good men were tortured to death right outside my window. After a while I started praying that my turn would come soon. Is that enough info for you, Cooper? Or would you like the gory details?"

AJ pressed her fist to her stomach. She'd read the bare bones of the report. Over and over and over again. She didn't need the details. The images of what she
thought
might have happened were etched in her brain. It had probably been considerably worse than anything she could've come up with.

Kane Wright had never, as far as she knew, made any mistakes or missteps in his eight-year career, so whoever had screwed up had died. Did he feel responsible somehow?

"Sorry for dredging that up. That was a shitty thing to do. Just because I'm feeling sorry for myself doesn't mean I have the right to stir up your old memories."

"Doesn't matter anymore."

Yes it did, she wanted to argue, but talking to the back of his head was getting her nowhere fast. "I'm sorry I asked."

"So am I, Cooper. So am I."

They rode the rest of the way up to the eleventh floor in silence, and when the door opened he was the first one out. AJ caught up with him, and walked beside him when he turned left down the hall. With her Sig Sauer in her hand, her gaze shifted constantly as she kept a sharp eye on their surroundings. Raazaq's men could be anywhere.

If she went to Fayoum alone and then screwed up this opportunity again, she could wave her T-FLAC career good-bye. Of that she was a dead certain. Of course, if she screwed up while she was on her own, it was pretty much a certainty she'd be dead. So worries about her career were pretty much moot.

If she got on the plane and went home with her tail between her legs, they might send her out on another op again sometime. In fifty years or so. Maybe. Or, more likely, they'd insist she take the damn desk job they'd offered her in the first place. Even more likely, they'd boot her ass out of the organization so fast, she'd get whiplash.

She'd go to Fayoum.

And this time she wouldn't miss Raazaq.

It wasn't an option.

Decision made. Debate over.

Strangely enough, now that she'd made up her mind, fatigue dropped from her shoulders like an old jacket she'd shrugged out of. There was bounce in her step, and a tiny burst of energy dazzling through her bloodstream. This wasn't over.

She wouldn't be going home in disgrace. She'd show Kane. She'd show them all!

The endless corridors smelled of urine, cumin, and poverty. Babies cried behind closed doors, and large, black cockroaches crawled the walls and crunched underfoot on the filthy, cracked linoleum. Nothing like the posh Hotel Ra.

One more turn in the labyrinth of filth and they came to a blue-painted door. El 101. It looked like the Hounds of the Baskervilles had clawed at the chipped and faded paintwork to get in. "Got the k—" Her mouth snapped shut.

The door was closed, but not latched. AJ tightened her grip on the Sig. She wouldn't be caught flat-footed again. Weapon held in both hands, she motioned she was going in.

He nodded.

They burst through the door, Kane high, AJ low.

She did a quick visual scan of the large, shabby room. Her nose wrinkled at the rank smell in the place, and she quickly started breathing through her mouth.

Nothing was out of place that she could see, but there was definitely something wrong. Something…

Weapon at the ready, she rounded the dirty beige sofa, making certain her eyes followed the same line as the barrel of the Sig. Constantly in motion, she scanned her surroundings.

Shabby. Cheap. Transient. A typical safe house. Nothing unexpected.

Living room. Open-plan kitchen. Two bedrooms.

Quiet as a tomb.

Smelled like one, too.

Narrow-eyed, she turned in a slow circle, the Sig leading the way, keeping Kane in her peripheral vision. He moved soundlessly about the room and into the kitchen. For a large man he walked as silently, and as gracefully, as a dancer. AJ completed her circle.

Something on the sofa snagged her attention. She stared for several moments at the obscene splash of dark brownish-red on the oily cushions.

Droplets of blood sprayed out in a high-velocity pattern from a central point on the middle seat. Resting smack dab in the center lay a small object. A small
bloody
object.

Clearly something severed right where it lay…

"Jesus God!" she whispered. The blood drained from her head.

Kane came back around the bar separating the kitchen from the living room. "Nothing. I'll check the be—"

AJ pointed. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yeah," he said grimly, coming up beside her. "If what you think it is is someone's tongue."

"Oh, crap…" She breathed a little heavier through her mouth, and looked a bit paler under the dirt, but she took it well. Thank God she didn't freak out. He had enough to deal with.

AJ's head turned toward him, but her eyes were still glued on the gory calling card, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. She blinked, then switched her focus and looked at him steadily—in control again.

He'd never noticed just how green her eyes were before. Must be her pallor and the dirt. He'd never seen anyone with eyes quite that clear, pale, summer grass color.

Christ. He
really
didn't want AJ Cooper here. A woman—hell, nobody—should have to see shit like this. Looking at her standing there in her filthy black clothing, her face pale and streaked with dirt, her sleeve torn from a gunshot, Kane felt every protective instinct inside him rear up and shout. She was made for silk sheets and candlelight, not cordite and blood.

She shouldn't—Christ.What the hell was he thinking? She wasn't his to protect. Cooper was an operative. It was her job to deal with things like this. She'd made the choice to enter the game. Now it was time to learn the rules.

She cleared her throat. "Whose?"

"Only two choices. Struben or the houseboy."

"God, what's that smell?" She frowned, absently rubbing her forehead. "Never mind. Let's get the search over with. I doubt they left any other evidence, but we can check, anyway. I'll take this one. You take that one."

"Yes, ma'am," he said tongue in cheek. He'd gotten the closest bedroom and, he suspected, the source of most of the stench.

Weapon up and ready, he moved through the doorway. His glance was swift and all-encompassing.

The bed had been slept in. Struben. He'd been napping, had been hauled up and out of it, taken by surprise. A Glock was exposed by the strewn bed pillows, but there'd been no time to fire it.

The prints of several pairs of feet on the carpet indicated at least four men besides his operative. Struben had had the shit beaten out of him against the far wall—blood splatter indicated blunt force, probably many well-placed fists, then he'd been dragged across the carpet—here, more indications of a scuffle, more blood. A
lot
more blood. Fresh. A body's worth of blood and fluid puddled on the matted carpet.

Kane's gut twisted. They'd hauled the man, battered and bleeding, into the living room to interrogate him. When he'd refused to talk they'd cut out his tongue to show they meant business, and then dragged him back into the bedroom. Kane could see how it all had played out. It ran like a video in his brain.

Struben had still been alive. His nails had left striped furrows in the matted carpet on either side of his body as he lay bleeding. He'd tried to crawl. Fallen over. Here. And here.

They'd offed him. Right
here.
Three feet from his fully loaded weapon.

The foul smell wafted from the small adjoining bathroom. The door was ajar. Kane kicked at it. Hard.

Stuck.

Bingo.

Wedging his shoulder into the eight-inch gap, he used his full weight to force the door, and whatever was behind it, to move enough for him to see inside.

Struben. Or what was left of him.

"Jesus. You didn't go quietly into that good night, did you, you poor, sorry bastard? "

He'd bled out, but defensive wounds on his hands indicated he'd got in a few good hits. Too few, too late.

"Anything?"AJ called, coming into the bedroom soundlessly.

"Don't come in here." Kane's voice was grim. She'd been cool so far, but this was sure to set her off.

"Why no—" She narrowed her eyes, then the penny dropped. "Oh, hell. Who?"

"Struben."

"Let me in there." She came up behind him and lay her hand on his arm. "Call for cleanup."

Kane glanced down at her fingers on the black fabric covering his forearm. Her slender hand was filthy, the short nails broken and chipped. He didn't know why he noticed her hand, or how fragile it looked. All he knew was, he didn't want her to see what the tangos had done to Richard Struben.

"He's beyond help," he told her flatly, braced for her tears, and probably hysteria.

"Yeah, I know," she said gently, but he saw the shudder that coursed through her body. "Dead operatives are an unpleasant reality in our business, aren't they?" The rim of her full lips was white, and a rapid pulse skittered at the base of her slender throat as she stood, straight as a soldier, looking at the carnage. "It doesn't get easier to deal with, either, does it?"

"Wait in the other room."

"It's okay—I'm okay. Let me do my job." She looked at him through cool green eyes that looked a hell of a lot steadier than he'd expected.

She'd seen death close up and personal a few months before. Was her therapist right? Had she worked through it? Kane would have said no yesterday. But now? Maybe. Curious, he stepped aside. AJ slid between his body and the door-jamb, then crouched down beside Struben's body. Teeth biting her lower lip, she felt, unnecessarily, for a pulse at his throat, then gently closed the man's staring eyes.

She stepped over the body, and turned on the water in the sink to wash her hands. She caught Kane's eye in the mirror.

"I'll call it in," he told her. "Go ahead and collect what we'll need. I want us gone before the garbage detail arrives."

Calmly she finished washing her hands, her booted heels inches away from a dead man, who looked like a raw side of beef, and smelled like a latrine.

Her throat worked as she dried her hands then stepped over the body a second time. "I wasn't finished in the other room. Be right back."

A few seconds later he heard her puking her fear out in the kitchen. He was tempted to go in there and help her, but he knew damn well she wouldn't appreciate it right now.

While water ran in the other room, he made the call. Arranged cleanup of the body and told Control they were on the way to the Ra.

Christ. The hits just kept on coming. "Clear," AJ said, coming back into the room. Her face had been scrubbed clean. Her eyes were shadowed, but she met his gaze with a steel he hadn't noticed in her before. She'd puked, yeah, but so would most people when faced with what had been left of Struben. And damned if Kane wasn't a little impressed that she was holding it together.

"How well did you know him?" she asked.

Kane stuck the phone back in his pocket as AJ picked up the unused Glock, checked it, then inserted the gun into her belt in back. She went to the closet and pulled open the door. Finding a black canvas duffel bag, she tossed it on the bed and started filling it with the few items she found in the closet. Clearly she needed something to do with her hands. They wouldn't have any need of Struben's clothing.

"Well enough to be pissed off seeing him like that," Kane said, going to the nearest bedside table and removing a flat black bag. He tucked it inside his galabayya and waited while she finished packing the duffel. She opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again without saying anything. "What?" he asked.

"They tortured him." AJ didn't bother to hide a shudder as she zipped the duffel closed. Her face was dead white but she was maintaining. A man had to admire her for that.

"Would he have talked?" Kane wondered aloud. He'd never met Struben before the briefing. He hadn't liked him on that occasion, but that didn't mean he didn't feel pity for the poor bastard being turned into hamburger meat. And for having the bad luck to have Kane Wright on his team. Damn it to hell. Yet another man to add to his list. The sooner he got rid of Cooper, the better he'd like it. "He—he's been with T-FLAC for about four years. He was a sexist jerk, and an a-hole, but he was an exceptional operative, and well trained. So, no. He didn't talk." She straightened, holding the duffel.

"Are you prepared to risk our lives on the belief that Raazaq didn't discover our next move from Struben?"