Beyond Limits (9 page)

“He’s in the deck.”

All eyes swung toward Elizabeth. She cleared her throat. “The deck of most-wanted terrorists, according to our military. We interviewed the SEAL team who raided his compound recently. They’ve been trying to take him out for years.”

“Wish they’d succeeded,” Potter muttered.

Another click, and they were looking at a close-up. Again, the surveillance footage was grainy, so it was hard to make out the details of the face.

“This may not look like much,” Gordon said, “but our biometrics experts believe there’s a ninety-percent probability it’s Rasheed.”

“He looks empty-handed,” Torres said. “If he’s armed, it’s got to be something small.”

“Where’s he going?” someone asked.

“That’s what we need to find out,” Gordon said. “Could be meeting a ride. Could be hitchhiking. Or maybe he walked to the bus depot on the other side of town, where he could have picked up the four thirty to Houston.”

“What time was this video taken?” Elizabeth asked.

“About four ten.” Gordon let that hang in the air. “Is the timing a coincidence or part of a plan? We need to find out. We also need to find out his target, and we can’t assume Houston just because of the maps recovered by our SEAL team. Keep an open mind, people. Maybe Houston is a staging area for an operation elsewhere. Or maybe it’s the location of a sleeper cell that’s now on the move. We can’t let ourselves get tunnel vision, or we’ll miss something important.”

Gordon tapped his computer. The software-generated image of Rasheed reappeared on the screen.

“Study this picture. Memorize it. He’s five-eight, one-forty. He speaks excellent English and is very familiar with Western culture. He does not look threatening, which is why he’ll blend in. But let me assure you, he is very dangerous. He’s become one of Al Qaeda’s top operatives.” His gaze met Elizabeth’s. “As Agent LeBlanc pointed out, the military believes he’s a formidable opponent, and so do we.”

Gordon looked at his assembled team. “If Rasheed did, in fact, slip through a back door, then he’s inside our borders. And you can be sure he’s here for a reason.”

After months of colorless desert, the brightness of the Texas hills seemed like a Disney movie. Derek let the summer air hum through his pickup as he steered up the tree-lined road.

His thoughts drifted to Elizabeth, as they had for most of the trip. Derek had a head for details, and when it came to Elizabeth, there wasn’t anything too small to lodge itself in his brain and drive him crazy. He remembered her shivering on the sidewalk in San Francisco. He remembered the rain glistening in her hair. He remembered the warmth of her mouth and her curves under his hands and how willing she’d felt when they’d left the bar. He remembered touching her, tasting her, and knowing heaven was just a few blocks away.

But then the booze had hit, and it was game over. She’d puked her guts up outside his hotel, which—in her book, apparently—was an unforgivable party foul. Not that it mattered to him. He couldn’t count the number of times one of his buddies had heaved up his liquor on the way home from a bar. But Elizabeth had been mortified.

It was his own fault. He’d suggested the pub. And he’d kept the drinks flowing, along with the teasing and conversation, because she’d finally seemed to relax around him. It was a side of her personality she didn’t share much, but he’d seen it then, and he’d seen it again last night, and it wasn’t just the alcohol. The chemistry was back. Yes, she was still wary, but he planned to get past that. Soon. He had ten days’ leave remaining, and he didn’t plan to waste a day of it
not
getting to know Elizabeth LeBlanc better, no matter what roadblocks she threw at him. He was a SEAL, for Christ’s sake. He thrived on challenges.

His phone rattled in the cup holder, and he smiled as he picked it up.

“Hey.”

“Hi, it’s Elizabeth. Looks like I missed your call? I was in a meeting.”

Her voice was all business. And she probably had no idea that he’d spent a good portion of the last twelve hours dreaming up ways to get her naked.

“So . . . did you make it home yet?” she asked.

“Almost. Decided to take a little detour first, drop in on a friend.”

She got quiet, and he wondered if she’d take the bait. Male friend or female? Was she even the slightest bit curious?
Come on, Liz.

“Listen, I’m glad you called,” she said. “I wanted to apologize for rushing off last night. It was one of those things.”

“No problem. What about you? You make it home yet?”

“Ha. Not unless Home Suites counts as home. But I made it to Houston okay.”

“Any progress?”

Silence as she debated what to tell him. “With regard to the target, no. But there have been other developments.”

He didn’t respond. Sometimes the most convincing argument was none at all.

“I can’t share the details,” she added, “but it looks as though someone on the terrorist watch list may have managed to slip through the border and—”

“Who?”

“I can’t—”

“
Who?
”

Another pause. “Omar Rasheed.”

“There’s an international manhunt on for the guy. How the hell’d he get in?”

“I can’t discuss details,” she said, “but it basically looks like he came through a back door.”

“Meaning Mexico.”

“He was spotted at a truck stop in Del Rio—that is, if it
is
him. The footage is a little blurry, so we’re relying on facial-identification software.”

“You check the surveillance cams? Get a look at his contact?”

Another pause. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. And I can’t go into all this with you.”

“If he got out at a truck stop, he probably had a contact there waiting,” Derek told her. “Or he used the stop to get a message out. ‘I’m here, pick me up at the bus depot,’ or whatever.”

“We do this for a living, you know. We don’t need you to—”

“Fine, all right. I don’t want to fight with you. But Rasheed’s in Texas? Jesus. That’s not good.”

Someone started talking in the background, and he heard her muffled response.

“I have to go,” she told him. “Enjoy your leave. I hope you get a chance to relax. Take care, okay?”

And that was it.

He hung up, pissed. And not just because she’d managed to blow him off again.

Relax? Was she serious? One of the most-wanted terrorists in the world was in his own backyard, and the supposedly best law-enforcement agency on the planet didn’t have a goddamn clue what he was doing there. Dread tightened Derek’s gut as he continued up the drive.

He caught a glimpse of his destination through the trees. It sat high on a hill. The gleaming white building looked like a Greek monument that had been airlifted into the heart of the Texas Hill Country.

The Delphi Center.

Besides being home to some of the country’s brightest forensic scientists, the place was a decomposition research facility. Derek watched a buzzard swoop down into some trees and guessed he hadn’t lucked into a squirrel. No, they studied people here. The very dead kind.

Derek pulled around to the back of the building as he’d been instructed. He turned into a service lot and spotted the woman he’d come to see, who happened to be his best friend’s wife.

Derek parked his truck and got out. He barely had the door shut when Kelsey threw her arms around him in a tight hug.

“Hey, Kels.”

“I’m glad you’re home.” She choked on the last word, and Derek got a lump in his throat as he stepped back to look at her.

“I’m so sorry about Sean,” she said as her eyes filled with tears.

“Me, too.” He glanced over her shoulder at the woman standing beside the service door. She had reddish-blond hair and wore a white lab coat. “You’re Dr. Voss, I take it?”

“Mia.” She stepped forward and smiled. “Kelsey and Gage have told me so much about you.”

Derek shot Kelsey a look. “Uh-oh.”

“So what’d you bring us?” Kelsey asked, recovering her composure.

Derek reached into the truck bed and unlocked the toolbox mounted behind the cab. He pulled out a smaller, portable black toolbox.

“A pair of beat-up, dirty-as-hell A.T.A.C. boots.”

“All Terrain, All Conditions,” Kelsey said. “Gage has some just like that. You want us to analyze them?”

“If you would.” Derek had filled her in a little over the phone but hadn’t gone into detail.

“What exactly are you searching for?”

“I don’t know.” He gave her a level look. “I been in some sketchy places recently. Think maybe I tracked something out.”

“ ‘Sketchy’ such as . . . a bomb factory?” She studied his face for clues. Being married to a former SEAL, she knew the score. He couldn’t tell her the details of his mission, not even the location.

“What do you think we
might
find?” Mia asked. The woman was a microbiologist and probably needed to know which tests to run on the boots.

“Explosive residue, biological material, could be anything—which is why I’ve got them packed in an airtight metal container.”

“Wow.” Kelsey frowned. “Don’t they have people on the base for this?”

“They do,” Derek said. “But some new intel came through in the last few hours, and I started thinking about it while I was on the road. I know you guys work with weapons-grade materials here, so I figured you’d be set up to take a look, maybe run a few tests.”

“We’re happy to.” Kelsey glanced at him. Her eyes welled up again, and she was looking at him the same way his mom did when he’d been away a long time, that look of
I thought I might never see you again.

His job was hard on the people left behind, which was one reason he’d never been much on relationships. He’d seen too many of his friends try to make it work and get burned.

Derek shifted uncomfortably. “So . . . if you’ll tell me where to take this?”

“Right this way.” Mia swiped her ID badge over a panel. The service door opened, and he followed her inside.

Elizabeth had never been a runner. It was a weakness that almost did her in at the FBI Academy.

Sit-ups, yes. Push-ups, okay. She was surprisingly decent at chin-ups. But running? Nope.

She plodded along the sidewalk beside Lauren, sucking in oxygen mixed with car exhaust from Houston’s early-morning commuters. Breathe in, breathe out. One step at a time. She focused on the scant patches of grass along the pavement, trying to imagine a more scenic route than the four-lane street lined with fast-food joints and strip centers.

She stopped at a corner and bent over to catch her breath as she waited for the light to change. She’d always hated those peppy, supercharged joggers who bobbed impatiently at intersections, refusing to break the pace.

“You got it?”

She glanced up at Lauren. She wasn’t a bobber, either, but she looked much less winded.

“It’s
hot
,” Elizabeth wheezed.

“Humid.” She stretched her arms over her head. “Ninety-percent humidity, which is worse than the heat.”

The light changed, and they pushed onward. She could see the hotel. Four blocks left. Her skin was drenched, and her scalp was starting to tingle.

“Hurt, agony, pain—love it!” Lauren said, quoting the signs posted along the obstacle course at Quantico.

Elizabeth stifled an obscene gesture. She imagined Derek. She’d seen him running on the beach in San Diego once, and it was a sight to behold—shoulders back, skin glistening, muscles rippling as he ate up the sand with his powerful strides. He’d made it look easy. Fun. Beautiful, even.

She reached the hotel parking lot and stumbled to a halt.

“Good run,” Lauren chirped.

Elizabeth slouched against a lamppost and scanned the lot for her boss’s Taurus. At least he hadn’t left for the office yet—a good sign.

A phone chimed, and she and Lauren reached for their fanny packs. They couldn’t go anywhere without sidearms and electronic leashes.

“Mine,” Elizabeth said, fishing out her cell. She sucked down a breath and tried to sound normal. “Hello?”

“How was your jog?”

Derek.

“How’d you know I was jogging?” She glanced around.

“IHOP across the street.”

She pivoted again. Sun reflected off the windows, and she couldn’t see him, but she spotted a gray F-150 parked in the lot.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Taking you to breakfast.”

Her stomach did a little somersault, and she glanced at Lauren.

“Your friend’s invited, too.”

“I don’t have time for breakfast. I have a meeting soon. And I need to shower.”

“And you need breakfast. Come on. Don’t leave me hanging.”

He clicked off, and Elizabeth stared down at her phone.

“Hot date?”

She glanced at Lauren. “A friend dropped by. He’s from Houston,” she added, as if that explained it.

“A breakfast booty call.” Lauren grinned. “You go, girl.”

“It’s not a booty call, it’s pancakes.”

“Yeah, right.” She started toward the hotel.

“You want to come?”

“No way.” She gave her a wave over her shoulder.

Elizabeth glanced at the IHOP and then at her hotel room. She should shower first, but . . . what if he showed up at her door and wanted to wait? The idea of being in a steamy shower with him anywhere near her was impossible. She didn’t trust herself.

She walked to the IHOP and ducked into the ladies’ room to clean up before venturing into the dining area. It wasn’t hard to spot him. All she had to do was follow the wistful looks of the waitresses milling near the kitchen.

She slid into the booth. “How’d you find me?”

He smiled. “You told me where you were staying.”

“I said ‘Home Suites.’ There are probably half a dozen here.”

“Yeah, and this one’s by your office. I told you, Liz, don’t underestimate us spec ops guys. We’re not as dumb as we look.”

She perused the menu, trying to get her heart rate under control. She was still winded. And maybe a little flustered from sitting across the table from a ridiculously hot guy wearing jeans and cowboy boots. He could have been a Levi’s ad.