Compared with the sorts of deformities some surviving al Adar victims had to live with, misshapen nails and a few scars on her torso seemed small nuisances. She knew her fate could have been much worse.
Besides, some of the worst scars of her ordeal remained hidden inside.
She gently pulled her hands out of his grip. “They wanted me to tell them about a man they were looking for. I’m pretty sure they knew I was CIA, so you’d think they’d have asked about state secrets, wouldn’t you?”
“A man?”
“I didn’t even know who he was. But they seemed to think I knew where they could find him.”
She saw Rick’s eyes narrow. “Did they tell you his name?”
“They called him The Doctor. They seemed to think I would know who they meant.”
The odd expression on Rick’s face persisted, but she felt too ill and tired to try to figure out what he was thinking. She hadn’t wanted to talk about her ordeal in Kaziristan in the first place, and right now, the call of the bed behind her was growing strong.
“But you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t. I tried to pretend I did—so they wouldn’t just kill me before I figured out how to get away from them.”
He reached up and brushed away the lock of tangled hair that had fallen in her face. “Smart lady.”
She smiled a little at his praise, forcing herself to ignore the way even that light touch made her whole body tingle with awareness. “Toward the end, I was beginning to think I was being stupid, instead. Prolonging the ordeal when I could have just gotten it over with.”
“But you got away.”
“I did.” She told him about Malid, the guard she’d targeted the day she’d made her escape attempt. “He had a large scar on the left side of his forehead—I figured he’d had a head injury at some point in his life that left him slightly brain damaged. He spoke Kaziri with a strong rural accent and a thick-tongued speech impediment.”
“Go for the weakest link.”
She nodded. “I tricked him into loosening my shackles. Once he got close enough, and I had him off guard, I just followed my training.” If Malid hadn’t been a quick-tempered brute, she might have felt a little sorry for what had surely happened to him after his superiors in the organization discovered he’d allowed her to escape.
“So you saw where they were keeping you.”
“One more safe house bites the dust.” She grimaced. “Of course, they were long gone by the time I made it to an American checkpoint and could tell them who I was and what I knew.”
He reached for her hand, twining his fingers with hers. She let him, grateful for the warmth of his touch. She saw in his dark eyes that he’d guessed what had happened next.
“I was a liability to the CIA at that point,” she said aloud. “Since they couldn’t trust that I hadn’t given up secrets, they reassigned anyone whose cover identity I could have compromised. They changed the location of checkpoints. Alexander Quinn was removed from the Kaziristan station.”
“They burned you.”
“Not quite as dramatic as people might think, but yeah. I was officially persona non grata at the agency.” She looked down at her short, slightly misshapen fingernails and almost laughed. They seemed the perfect metaphor for her life—cut off, tamped down and nowhere near what it used to be.
“Did they give you your new identity?”
She nodded. “They did what they could for me.” She touched her cheek, where the exposed nub of her broken tooth had started to ache a little. “I guess I should have expected they’d do something like put a tracker chip in my tooth. They’d want to be sure I wasn’t getting into any trouble.”
“We sure know how to pick employers, huh?” He flashed a rueful smile.
She found herself smiling in response, even though a moment earlier, her thoughts had been bleak. “Guess we do.”
“I should have had Eric look at your tooth while he was here.” Rick made a sympathetic face. “Does it hurt?”
“Just a little. I’ve hurt worse.”
His brow furrowed. “Why don’t you go back to bed and try to get some rest?”
She sat up straighter, lifting her chin. “I’m fine. I slept all the way here, and I got some sleep last night—”
“On a hard cave floor. And you slept about an hour in the car. Rest.” He stood, tugging her hand to pull her to her feet. “At least until dinnertime.”
She let him lead her back to the bed, and even allowed him to tuck her in without a peep. But as he started to leave the room, she cleared her voice and called his name.
He turned to look back at her. “Yeah?”
“I can’t stay here.” The words came out soft and fragile, so she cleared her throat and continued in a stronger voice. “I shouldn’t have gone with you back in Thurlow Gap. I put you in danger, and now your family is in danger.”
“It won’t be the first time,” he answered quietly. He turned and walked out of the room.
She leaned back against the pillows, her head starting to ache again. She closed her eyes, not so much to try to sleep as to shut out the homey comfort of Isabel Cooper’s guest room.
Rick might think he and his family were prepared for what was coming their way, but Amanda knew better. Whether her pursuers were rogue MacLear agents, as evidence would suggest—or al Adar sleeper agents who’d somehow slipped into the country undetected—they’d almost certainly followed the satellite signal from the receiver in her porcelain crown. Which meant they weren’t working alone.
Someone in the CIA was working with them.
WHEN RICK WALKED OUT the front door, Isabel was sitting at the top of her front porch steps, a glass of iced tea beside her and her slim, jeans-clad legs tucked up nearly to her chest so her feet could rest on the second step down. She picked up the glass and made room for Rick to join her.
He sat beside her, his bones creaking a little. “Thanks for doing this.”
“You know a Cooper never turns down a person in need,” she answered, a wry tone to her voice.
His little sister had grown a bit cynical over the years. Having their mother walk out of her life when she was still in elementary school hadn’t been an auspicious start. But working nearly seven years with the FBI tracking down domestic terrorists and losing her partner, Ben Scanlon, in a bomb blast about five months ago? Rick suspected most of his sister’s bleak worldview came as a result of that event.
She hadn’t had the heart to stick with the bureau after Scanlon’s death. Jesse had convinced her to come home and take her place in the security agency he was building, just as he had with Rick. All of his brothers and sisters were working with Jesse now—Izzy had been the final holdout.
“She wants to leave. Thinks she’s putting us in too much danger by sticking around.”
Isabel nudged his shoulder with hers. Fortunately, it was the one without the bullet wound. “Is she?”
“Probably,” he conceded. He told his sister about the GPS transmitter in Amanda’s crown. “She said a CIA dentist repaired the tooth.”
“So you think the CIA sent a black-ops unit to hunt her down?” Isabel sounded skeptical.
“I have no doubt they were tracking her. She and the CIA didn’t really part as friends.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not like the FBI where you can just turn in your notice and go. The CIA is different. You know that.” He didn’t add what Amanda had told him about her captivity. That was her story to tell.
“Some folks at the FBI weren’t all that happy to get my resignation,” she murmured regretfully. “I left some investigations in the lurch.”
“Are you sure you made the right decision?” His sister didn’t seem any happier working for Jesse than she had been working for the bureau.
He knew she was still grieving her partner’s death. But had she made things worse by leaving the FBI?
“Rick, you look so tired. Maybe you should go home and get a little rest yourself.”
He looked over his shoulder toward the house. His head told him she was right. He hadn’t had much sleep since the night before last, and he’d also suffered an injury and a stressful twenty-four hours. He could use a nice big meal and a long night’s sleep.
But he didn’t like the idea of being very far from Amanda. Not until they knew a lot more about what was going on.
“Okay, how about this?” Isabel said with a grin. “I’ll pack a bag and go live at your place for a few days, and you stay here with your ex-girlfriend. Just don’t do anything in my house that would make me want to hurl.”
He reached over and mussed her hair, making her squawk. “Brat.” As she finger-combed her dark hair, he added, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Sure—it’ll give me a chance to go through your stuff and learn all your secrets.” She shot him a grin that reminded him of what a sneaky little smart aleck she’d been when they were younger. No wonder she’d joined the FBI.
“Okay. I’ll take you up on that. You go pack and I’ll do the same.” He pushed off the steps, grimacing as his injured arm protested.
Before heading back to his house, he stopped at the office to see if Jesse was around. His eldest brother was in his office, going through the day’s case reports.
He looked up as Rick entered, his brows lifting slightly at the bedraggled sight of him. “I was wondering if you were going to stop by to tell me what’s going on.” He waved toward the chair in front of his desk.
Rick sat and looked warily at his brother. “I figured Wade would’ve caught you up.”
“He did, to a degree.”
“But you want your pound of flesh?” Rick snapped. He immediately regretted it, but there was no taking it back.
“I’m not trying to bust your chops here. I need to know if there’s anything I can do to help.” Jesse’s expression darkened. “It sounds like your friend has a price on her head, and that could put this company, not to mention our family, in danger.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Jesse’s lips pressed to a tight line. “Then act like it.”
Rick took a deep breath. He didn’t know why five minutes with his older brother turned him into an adolescent idiot. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Jesse’s expression softened. “How’s your arm?”
“Hurts like hell, but I’ll live.”
“So, is Amanda Caldwell her real name?”
Rick shook his head.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Yeah, but I can’t tell you.”
“Okay.” Jesse reached across the desk and pushed a folded newspaper toward Rick. “This afternoon’s paper. Page six.”
Rick flipped the paper open and scanned the sixth page. His eyebrow notched upward. “Barton Reid’s trial has been postponed?”
“The case seems to be falling apart. Luke and Abby are a little on edge about it.”
Rick couldn’t blame them. His cousin Luke had just gotten out from under an ongoing death threat from a South American drug lord who’d been hounding him for years. Now he had to contend with the case against Barton Reid going south, which might put him and his wife back in the crosshairs again. Reid had been behind terrorizing Abby to learn what evidence her late husband had found to incriminate Reid.