Beyond Limits (8 page)

“Not me.” She sipped her beer and rested the bottle on a ledge beside him. “I was the geek always holed up in the library.”

“Who taught you darts?”

“My dad.” She threw another one. Outer bull’s-eye this time.

“He must be good.”

“He was. Darts, pool, fishing. He taught me all of it. I was the son he never had.” She glanced over and saw by his expression that he’d noticed the past tense. “He died when I was twelve.”

“It’s a shame he never saw you graduate from the Academy,” Derek said. “Bet he would have been proud.”

Derek was right. As a public prosecutor, her dad probably would have been pleased to see his only child go into law enforcement.

“My mom was there,” she told him. “And my stepdad.” Which wasn’t nearly the same, because she didn’t even get along with her mother. She made her last throw. Triple twenty again. He watched her, obviously expecting her to say more. But she didn’t like to talk about her family.

She wrote the score on the chalkboard, ignoring his expectant look.

Ever since her dad died, she’d had this feeling of being adrift. Her mother had felt it, too, and she’d run straight from her grief into the arms of an older husband. For years, Elizabeth had felt so much anger toward her for replacing her dad so quickly. And for giving into such blatant insecurity.

Elizabeth had tried to create her own security, using good grades and hard work. She’d set goals for herself and then stubbornly pursued them. She recognized the same trait in Derek—his relentless need to push. His tenacity. She doubted he’d be like that in a relationship, though. He was a SEAL. It defined him and dominated his life, and he couldn’t truly commit to anything more.

But so what? Since when was she looking for commitment?

Derek watched her over his beer as she plucked the darts from the board. She knew the gleam in his eye, and it put a familiar tingle in her stomach. She’d never aspired to be one of his one-night stands. But there was something thrilling about the idea, too. She imagined spending an entire night with him and not letting herself regret a minute.

A cheer went up across the bar. She glanced at a TV as the Diamondbacks scored a home run.

She handed over the darts, and Derek stepped up to the board.

“So this task force you’re on,” he said. “You managed to narrow down the target yet?”

“You mean in Houston?”

“I grew up in Houston.” He threw a sixteen. “It’s a pretty target-rich environment. You’ve got the ship channel, the refineries, a former POTUS. And then there’s about six million people who’d be affected if someone managed to get a dirty bomb into the country.”

“You know, now that you’re stateside, this isn’t your job anymore. That’s why we have this little thing called the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“So you haven’t narrowed it down.” He threw another dart.

“We’re working on it. You don’t have a lot of confidence in our people, do you?”

“People make mistakes,” he said. “Even feds.”

“Happens in the military, too.”

“Absolutely. Thing is, in the military you make a mistake, maybe you get your foot blown off. People learn to pay attention. Err on the side of being cautious.”

“You don’t think we take this seriously?” She was getting annoyed now—not only by his attitude but by the fact that she’d allowed herself to be lured back into this conversation.

Once again, he was using her for information. And by being here with him, she was allowing it to happen.

“Your friend Potter—”

“He’s not my friend,” she said. “He’s down from Langley. I met him yesterday, same as you did.”

“Okay, that proves my point.” He finished his turn. “He’s not a field man.”

She sighed. “How about we don’t talk about work anymore?”

He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “Fine by me.” He retrieved the darts and updated the score. “What do you want to talk about?”

She had no idea.

He propped a shoulder against the wall, and his mouth curved as she stepped in front of the board again.

“What?”

“Nothin’ at all.” He said it with the low drawl that had bothered her when she first heard it. But she’d learned to like it, especially when it was accompanied by that slow half-smile.

She ignored his look as she focused on her throws.

Another cheer from the bar, and he glanced at the TV. “This is what I miss most,” he said.

“Losing at darts?”

“People out, watching the ball game, having some brews.” He lifted his bottle. “This stuff’s not easy to come by in some of the places we go.”

And women? Did he miss them, too? From the moment they’d stepped in here, he’d been turning heads. Maybe he was used to it, and it didn’t even faze him anymore.

She finished her turn and handed the darts over to him.

“Must be hard being away so much,” she said. “I can’t even imagine it.”

“I can’t imagine anything else.”

She tipped her beer back and watched him as he threw a bull’s-eye. Even playing darts, he looked athletic.

“So you ever gonna tell me about that scar?” He glanced at her.

“We said we weren’t going to talk about work.”

His gaze narrowed. “That happened at work?”

“It’s a long story.” She turned her attention to the ball game.

“I’m listening.”

She looked at him, at the laser-sharp focus of his gaze.
I’m listening.
Just the thought made her chest tighten. He
was
listening. And she felt the urge to let her guard down, to let him in. But she knew where that would lead.

One kiss. That was all it had taken to get her in this much trouble. They hadn’t even slept together, and somehow he’d managed to shake up her world for an entire year.

He’d wanted to sleep with her in San Francisco. He’d been very upfront about it, inviting her back to his hotel room after they’d gone drinking at a pub following what—at that point—had been the single worst day of her career.

Sometimes she wished they’d gone through with it. She’d probably be embarrassed now, but at least she’d be able to place him solidly in the category of Drunken Mistakes. As it was, whenever she thought of him, she felt this burning curiosity.

What would it have been like?

She might never know, because instead of sleeping with her, he’d tucked her into bed and crashed on the sofa. In the morning he’d pulled on his cowboy boots and acted like it was no big deal.

He was still watching her, waiting.
I’m listening.

He really was. And it felt so good to see him, to be near him. She felt more alive and awake in the last hour than she had in months, and she knew it was
him
. He had this effect on her. But if this was what it felt like just being near him, how would she feel if he ever really touched her?

Heat sparked in his eyes, and he stepped closer. “Liz . . .” He slipped his hand around her waist. “You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Looking at me like that.”

Noise and people swirled around her as she gazed up at him, and they may as well have been the only people in here.

“When you look at me that way . . .” His hand trailed up and settled on her shoulder. He was going to kiss her, and she watched him, heart thudding.

Her phone chimed, and she stepped back. She looked around and spotted her purse under the table. Fishing the phone out, she found a text from Jimmy Torres.

“Shit.”

Another message came in, this one from Gordon. Her stomach knotted as she read the words.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

She glanced up and started to tell him. Then she clamped her mouth shut.

“Nothing.” She dropped the phone into her purse. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”

E
lizabeth caught the first flight out before sunrise. By the time she landed and picked up her rental car, rush hour was dissipating, and so was her energy. She pulled into the office and did her hair and makeup in the parking lot before locking her suitcase in the trunk and rushing inside. After hurrying through security, she found the entire task force squeezed into a conference room.

Elizabeth slipped inside. Every seat was taken around the table, so she grabbed a bit of wall space beside Torres.

He did a double take.

“Who’s this?” she mouthed, nodding toward the far end of the room, where a man stood talking.

He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “ICE.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So this lead had come from them.

“It’s something we’ve been worried about for some time,” the ICE agent was saying. “It’s a back door, and they’ve used it before.”

Gordon was watching her from the head of the conference table. He’d wanted her here ASAP, so here she was. A little harried, yes, but she was present.

“The most serious attempt was several summers ago,” the agent continued, “when a Mexico-based Al Qaeda cell tried to smuggle a truck bomb up through one of the border tunnels.”

Elizabeth glanced behind the ICE agent, where a screen showed a black-and-white still shot of a dark minivan. It was parked beside a gas pump, and the image looked to have been taken by a surveillance camera.

“How far is this entry point from that location?” someone at the table asked.

“Not far at all. And the turf is controlled by the same cartel, the Saledos. They basically control all routes in and out of there and sell access to the highest bidder, which in this case might be foreign terrorists.” The agent tapped on a laptop sitting open on the table, and a video filled the screen. The black-and-white footage showed the minivan pulling up to the gas pump. Elizabeth squinted at the grainy picture, not sure what to look for. Movement.

“There.” The agent paused on an image of several people dashing away from the vehicle. “That’s him.”

“Any ID on the woman?” someone asked.

“No, but she’s believed to be Nicaraguan. Same for a few others who were in this vehicle. The coyote transporting them works for the Saledo cartel. Another coyote”—he tapped the laptop, and a mug shot came up—“Manuel Villareal, works for a rival cartel that’s horning in on this route. When Villareal got jammed up in San Antonio trying to offload his cargo, we pulled him in for questioning. He’s got a long sheet, so it took him no time to lawyer up. But that’s when he surprised us. Next thing we know, his lawyer’s offering up a deal. Probation for his client in exchange for a tip about a rival coyote getting paid twenty grand to, quote, ‘smuggle an Arab over the border.’ ”

“How good is this tip?” someone at the table asked. “I’d think this Villareal guy would say anything to avoid jail time.”

“Holmes, you want to take this one?” The ICE agent gestured to his left, and Elizabeth was startled to see Lauren leaning against the wall.

“Special Agent Holmes has been investigating the Saledo organization for some time now,” the agent said. “She interviewed the suspect.”

Lauren made eye contact with Elizabeth. “Villareal’s one of our frequent fliers.” She glanced around the room. “And it comes as no surprise he’s trying to wiggle out of some prison time by throwing one of his rivals under the bus. Villareal’s boss finds out he got arrested making a delivery, he’s going to want payback. He probably figures he’ll get some leniency if he screws over a rival while he’s in custody.”

“You think he’s reliable?” Gordon asked.

“Villareal? No. He’d sell out his grandmother to avoid prison,” she said. “But it’s hard to see how he could make this up. This tip about smuggling someone of Arab descent came out of nowhere, just hours after our office got the memo about the missing terrorist who was thought to be targeting Texas. And so far, his story’s holding up.”

“Villareal and this other coyote both pulled over at the same truck stop in Del Rio, a place known to be friendly to traffickers,” the ICE agent said, pointing to the screen. “You can see Villareal’s pickup here, in the background. He claims that while he was getting gas, he actually saw this guy Rasheed getting out of the other van. The surveillance footage you see here corroborates that claim.”

“How would Villareal know who it was?” Torres asked.

“He didn’t,” Lauren said. “But when we put a photo array in front of him, he picked him out right away. Omar Rasheed.”

The picture on the screen changed. Elizabeth recognized the photo from yesterday’s briefing. It showed Rasheed as he’d appeared in one of the recruiting videos, seated cross-legged on a carpet against a backdrop of anti-American graffiti. He wore traditional Afghan dress and had a dark beard. Another picture appeared on the screen: Rasheed standing behind a blindfolded Ana Hansson just seconds before he slit her throat.

The ICE agent sat down, and Gordon stood to take over the meeting.

“This is what Rasheed looked like several weeks ago. And this”—he tapped the laptop again, and another picture appeared—“is what we believe he looks like now.”

Elizabeth recognized the doctored FBI photo showing a clean-shaven man in a collared shirt.

“He’s thirty-three. Comes from a large family in Dubai. He attended college in London, where he was radicalized. Then he moved to Afghanistan, where he’s made a reputation for himself by recruiting and training for Al Qaeda.”