Heatseeker (Atrati) (12 page)

The blond shrugged, his face cracking into a smile. “No doubt, if she was anything like you. But I don’t mind that Chuma’s sexism worked in our favor.”

“That it did.” The other man, a big guy with shoulder-length brown hair, moved into her view, his hand reaching out as if he was going to touch the blond.

The blond tensed and shifted so the hand did not connect with his face, his smile slipping. But there was warmth in his indigo eyes she had a feeling he didn’t know was there.

The over-muscled body of the other man jerked, and a look of pain tightened his features before the corner of his lips tilted slightly. “You’ve got an amazing smile, sugar.”

“And you are so full of Texas bullshit, you could fertilize your daddy’s hay fields.” The words were harsh, but the tone wasn’t, and those indigo depths were still warm with emotion.

If his wince was anything to go by, the big man with gray eyes didn’t notice the tone or the emotion in the other man’s gaze.

There was some history here, and if Rachel wasn’t so worried about Jamila, her curiosity would have her working to figure it out.

She hadn’t just gone into the DEA to prove something; she’d realized her curious nature could work for more than figuring out the latest news even before the most accomplished gossips in her hometown did.

“Find out anything interesting?” A large hand landed on her shoulder, while Kadin’s other pushed the door all the way open in front of her.

Rachel maintained her composure, but just barely.

Ignoring the sounds of surprise at her presence coming from inside the room, she looked up at Kadin. “I didn’t hear you coming down the hall.”

It bothered her. She was definitely not operating her A-game yet.

“You were too interested in what was going on in this room. I have to wonder, though . . . were they talking about Abasi Chuma or fighting with each other again?”

She didn’t bother to answer but was unsurprised that Kadin realized there was something going on between the other two mercenaries, as well. The man had always been too observant to be fooled by anything but his own self-delusions.

Kadin ushered her into the room. “In case you don’t remember meeting them before, this is Neil Kennedy.” Kadin pointed to the blond. “Our resident computer and technology geek. We call him Spazz.”

“Spazz?” she asked, thinking the name didn’t match the man, who could have fit in at any corporate computer lab with his Van Halen T-shirt (from the David Lee Roth era) and loose-fitting jeans.

“I get a little wired when I drink too much coffee.”

“Yeah. Anything over half a cup,” the Texan interjected.

She smiled and dipped her head, wishing she could pretend she hadn’t seen the hand extended toward her. “Nice to meet you.” She forced herself to reach out and brush his fingers with her own before jerking her hand back to her side. “Rachel Gannon. But I’m sure you knew that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Neil let his hand drop without any evidence of offense at the marginal handshake. “This behemoth is Cowboy, name self-explanatory as soon as the man opens his mouth. Though his parents still insist on calling him Wyatt.”

Cowboy tipped his hat, not offering his hand, and she had to stifle the urge to thank him.

“There’s no call for name-callin’,” Cowboy grumbled at Neil.

A wicked gleam came into the dark blue eyes. “Hey, I can’t help that you and Kadin are the brawn and I’m the brains of this outfit.”

“What does that make Peace?” Kadin dryly asked.

The computer geek grinned and winked at Rachel before answering. “In a class all his own, man.”

Cowboy’s laughter was rich and warm, reminding Rachel that not all men were evil. Even if they let you down when you needed them most. Her gaze slid to Kadin and got caught there.

He was looking at her as if he was reading her mind again.

“So, I was just telling Cowboy that Chuma and his men are coming into Marrakech,” Neil said, bringing Kadin up to date on her aborted attempt at eavesdropping. “They’re hypothesizing that Rachel must have made it to the road and hitched a ride with someone.”

“It took them two full days to come to that conclusion?” Kadin asked, his tone tinged with disbelief.

Cowboy moved to lean against the table Neil had his computer set up on, his hips resting inches from the other man. “Chuma doesn’t think much of a woman’s fortitude, Trigger.”

“He finally decided his men had lied about how much torture they’d subjected her to.” Neil looked like he wanted to move but wouldn’t let himself.

Rachel understood that need to show no weakness. “That’s not a bad thing, Mr. Kennedy.”

She wasn’t going to call him
Spazz
. This man might get wired on coffee, and his lethal edge showed in glimpses here and there, but
Spazz
? It just didn’t fit. The technology specialist was too controlled.

“No
Mr.
Anything here, ma’am. Just call me Spazz. Everyone else does.”

“I don’t,” Cowboy said with a defiant glint in his gray eyes.

Neil acted as if he hadn’t heard, but the way his nostrils flared told a different story. He looked almost panicked as the other man shifted just a tiny bit closer.

Wanting to take the attention off the man she was feeling an unexpected kinship with, she said, “Call me Rachel, please.”

“We’ll work on it, ma’am, but you know how the old saying goes,” Cowboy replied. “You can take the man out of the military, but it’s not so easy to take the military training out of the man.”

“I understand that.” She shot a sidelong glance at Kadin, registering clearly now that the black fatigues weren’t standard military issue.

Close but not exactly, and the gray-on-black insignia of a stalking panther with
Semper Paratus, Semper Fatalis
under it didn’t resemble any military badges she’d seen.

She hadn’t noticed earlier because she had been so certain Kadin would never leave the Marines. So her mind had supplied her with the information that the fatigues were military, but the truth was, only black-ops agencies clad their people in black, even in a war zone.

“So, what, exactly, are all you guys, you Atrati, if you aren’t military?” She’d originally assumed they were all Marines.

Another oversight she could blame on her prior expectations. It certainly didn’t jive with her current observations. Cowboy’s hair, hat, and boots were hardly the norm for a jarhead.

“We’re Atrati,” Kadin said simply when the other two remained silent and speculative in the face of her question.

“Yes, but what, precisely, does that mean?”

“We’re a private black-ops company the government and others contract for specialized assignments.”

That statement still told her nothing concrete.

“Like TGP?” she probed.

“Not really. Like I said, we’re privately run, and we aren’t a spy agency so much as a black-ops force. The Goddard Project calls us in when they want to control the outcome on an op rather than releasing it to the CIA or FBI.” Kadin’s expression went flat. “But we don’t take our orders from the U.S. Government or its agencies.”

“I don’t imagine either of our bosses is feeling ‘in control’ of this op right now.”

“No, I don’t imagine they are.” Kadin didn’t seem too worried about that prospect.

“Are you in trouble because of me?” she still asked.

“I make my own decisions.”

She nodded, accepting the non-answer for what it was. Kadin took responsibility for his choices, regardless of whether or not his superiors agreed with them.

And she was frankly less worried right now about either her or Kadin’s careers than she was about Jamila Massri. “We need to determine Jamila’s whereabouts and Chuma’s plans for her.”

“That would be Marrakech,” Neil Kennedy said, succeeding this time in shocking Rachel right into sitting down.

It couldn’t be that easy, could it? “She’s here?”

Why had Chuma seen fit to bring the young woman to Morocco? Were Rachel’s worries founded? Had Abasi Chuma sussed out the connection between Jamila and Rachel?

“Or will be shortly.” Cowboy reached for some papers and shuffled through them, finally pulling one out. He pointed to a highlighted line. “Chuma said something about Miss Massri’s father coming to Morocco and bringing her with him.”

“But why would he bring her here?” Rachel asked, worry tightening her gut even as her analytical mind began working on the reasons for Dr. Massri’s arrival in Marrakech. “Unless he suspects she’s part of an information leak.”

“Or he wants her company,” Neil said in a tone that said he wasn’t sure that was an improvement on the situation.

Rachel agreed wholeheartedly. She shifted on the wooden chair, fidgeting with the hem of her scrubs top.

No matter how Rachel looked at it, this could not be good. Jamila’s wedding wasn’t scheduled to take place for another three months, but that didn’t mean a man like Abasi Chuma would want to wait that long for intimacy. No matter what the cultural norms.

If her father really cared about Jamila and her future, would he have contracted with a monster for her hand in marriage?

“So, she’s on her way here?”

“That’s what the man said,” Cowboy agreed.

“Spazz?” Kadin prompted, as if he expected something more.

“I tracked her and her father on a commercial flight from Cairo. First-class. They flew into Menara,” Neil said, naming the airport on the outskirts of the ancient city. “And have reservations at a privately held hotel here in Marrakech that caters to the rich and famous.”

“Chuma is footing the bill, I bet,” Rachel said with disgust.

“No takers on a sure thing.” Neil typed on the ultrathin laptop in front of him. He made a sound of surprise, his brow furrowing. “An entire block of rooms is being paid for by Massri, not Chuma. They’ve been reserved for use for the past forty-eight hours even though they’ve been empty. Or at least there’s no record of anyone actually checking in.”

Cowboy looked smug. “Chuma expected to be back in the city the day he arrived in Morocco.”

“It looks that way,” Neil agreed, the lethal edge to his demeanor pronounced for a brief moment.

“So, we go in and extract Jamila before Chuma gets down from the mountain.” Rachel wasn’t letting that sadist get his hands on the young innocent.

“You don’t have clearance to bring her in, or to break cover to reveal the truth to her,” Kadin pointed out.

“I need to call Whit.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Cowboy asked.

Neil nodded as if agreeing with a statement rather than a question, his expression understanding. “Sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”

She looked up at Kadin to see how he was taking the talk of insubordination from his team, but he was looking at her. And the only expression on his face was one of interest.

“I won’t compromise the operation without warning him first.” She wasn’t going to leave Jamila to dangle in the wind, but Rachel’s loyalty to her agency was too deep to take any steps without at least giving Whit a heads-up first.

Besides, she believed in her boss. He would finally see the need to bring Jamila in. He had to.

Kadin nodded.

Neil said, “I’ll set the call up.”

“Why can’t I just use your satphone?” she asked Kadin.

“Extra protocols are in place for communications with TGP. Your agency hasn’t kept its invisible status in Washington by accident.”

“Don’t know how invisible it’s going to be with the recent audit of the State Department going on. Those Tea Party politicos have got it in for the Oval Office and Whitney’s agency for sure. And their investigator has sickening skills on the computer,” Neil said as he typed furiously on his laptop.

No one said anything to that. Politicians were always putting one agency or another on the bubble. Sometimes rightly so; sometimes it was nothing but political grandstanding. Rachel personally loved the president and had little time for the Tea Party.

She knew other agents who felt different, but no one got into it over their political beliefs. Not in TGP offices, anyway. Whit had a strict no-discussion of religion, politics, or personal diets policy in place.

Even though everyone knew he wasn’t a fan of any of the grandstanders, and particularly not the Tea Party. His wife, on the other hand, had her fingers in a lot of political pies. The woman was downright scary, and Rachel shuddered to think what would happen if she ever found out about TGP.

But TGP had weathered the McCarthy years, the Nixon fiasco, and the Clinton scandal without discovery. Surely, this latest burst of political interest would swirl around and over them, too.

Interrupting her thoughts, Neil handed her a headset. “It’s a direct line to your director’s office.”

She’d barely gotten the earpiece to her head when she heard the Old Man’s voice barking, “Whitney here. Where in the
h-e-
double-toothpicks is my agent, Marks?”

“It’s Rachel Gannon, sir.”

“Rachel.” A soft sound came over the headset, as if Whit had sighed in relief. “How are you feeling, agent?”

“I’m doing better than I was three days ago, sir.” She didn’t have to fake the slight break in her voice.

She was better, a lot better, but her voice box had been strained to the point of whispers and pain.

“No doubt. No doubt. You’re being called in from the field. Another agent will take over the investigation.”

“That’s not necessary, sir.”

A snort of disbelief came through the phone, and then a no-nonsense tone saying, “It is. Absolutely. Your cover is either blown or, at the very least, compromised.”

“But I got most of the information we needed.” Or Kadin’s team had. “We have photos.”

“Send the digital files in; we’ll start running facial-recognition software immediately.” He didn’t ask how the pictures had been obtained or whom they were of.

Andrew Whitney didn’t waste time on what he considered unnecessary dialogue.

“Yes, sir.”

“When will you be Stateside?”

“Sir, there is still the matter of Jamila Massri.”

“What matter? Has something significant changed on that front?”