Was it her imagination, or had those guns just moved in closer?

The gun muzzles pointed at Selena, and her partner, Dobry, trapped her gaze and didn’t let her look to the people beyond. Inside she raged for freedom, wanting to strike and fight and even lose rather than stand here unresisting.

Dobry’s next words shocked her. “This woman is one who knows your people. She saved your homes in the past.”

The pause was excruciating. The magistrate, an older man with a full, gray beard, walked deliberately around Dobry to examine Selena. She knew this man would not hesitate to order their deaths if he truly thought they were a threat. “I was here this past winter,” she said. “I called for help when the Kemeni rebels attacked.”

“There was a woman here,” he agreed. “We know she was Selena Jones, of the American FBI. That she worked against terrorism.” Then he smiled. “What we don’t know,” he said, “is who you are.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Eyed Dobry and found him eyeing her back.

Because of course, they didn’t have any papers on them to prove their identities.

Dear Reader,

Offered the chance to go back and revisit Selena’s world, is there anyone here who thinks I so much as blinked before leaping to my feet and wildly waving my hand— “Me! Me! Oh, pick me!” (The muse has no shame, really.) For while I had an extensive chance to explore Selena’s character in Checkmate and to learn a little about Cole, I didn’t really have the opportunity to see how they were together. How would they work as a team, at home and in the field? And given more “air time,” what sort of fellow would Cole turn out to be?

Along with all that, I wondered, what would it be like to be Selena, trying to cope with the events of Checkmate as she went on with her life? The answers made for a delightful writing experience, and I hope they make for good reading, as well. Enjoy!

Doranna Durgin

Comeback
Doranna Durgin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DORANNA DURGIN

spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures—and with a new touchstone to the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and which she instills in her characters.

Doranna’s first fantasy novel received the 1995 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award for the best first book in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres; she now has fifteen novels of eclectic genres on the shelves. Most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera and works with horses and dogs. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of titles at www.doranna.net along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos and a link to her SFF Net newsgroup.

Dedicated to my own teammates:

Duncan, Belle, Jean-Luc Picardigan and ConneryB.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 1

Someone’s following me.

Selena’s heart rate skyrocketed higher than expected, surprising her with reactions left over from months ago. Reactions that came from two intense days inside the Berzhaan capitol during which she outwitted, outran and outlived the terrorists who’d taken everyone else in the building hostage. Now that familiar tension zinged through her body—a body she somehow kept walking at a normal pace. Outwardly oblivious, inwardly on high alert.

Except this was the modest little Virginia town closest to the CIA training facility called the Farm, and if the description sleepy didn’t quite do it justice, bustling went too far. On a crisp early fall evening, headed from the family-owned pharmacy along the main street to the sports shop, Selena was in no danger from terrorists. Down the sidewalk, a teenage girl walked her dog. Across the street, a middle-aged couple shared an ice-cream cone. A man in running shorts headed down the sidewalk away from Selena; a woman in more sensible sweats jogged in place, waiting out one of the town’s few signal lights. Vehicle traffic was sporadic, heavily populated with the practical rather than the luxurious.

And still, someone followed her.

Selena Shaw Jones didn’t waste time doubting herself. Never did. Doubt hadn’t gotten her out of Berzhaan alive. She’d done that on her own, using her wits and her grit…and trusting her instincts. So now, without changing her stride, she headed past the big brick structure of the sporting goods store, ducking down the alley beside it. Choke point. Anyone following her would stand out clearly if he so much as hesitated at the intersection, while the alley itself was dark enough to hide Selena from a casual glance.

Except she quickly realized she could go one better. The old brick building’s deeply inset windows, half a story above her, offered plenty of ledge for a woman quick and nimble. The darkened panes meant an unoccupied room and no one likely to notice her or give her away. Up she went, scraping knuckles and ignoring the stinging pain as she caught her balance, crouching with her back to the brick and her eyes on the alley entrance. Her left hand crept beneath her black leather duster to her back pocket and pulled out the knife clipped there, thumbing the short tanto blade open. A blade meant for close work, with wicked angles of hard steel.

And yeah. Here they came. One at first, hesitating on the decision to enter the dark area. And then a second, meeting up with quick whispers and a few restrained gestures. One male, one female, features deliberately obscured by deep jacket hoods.

Selena wiped a trembling hand along the thigh of her navy cargo pants. Tailored enough for casual chic, they nonetheless had the flexible pocket capacity she wanted. She’d become quite fond of the style since it had served her so well in Berzhaan, holding a plethora of small improvised weapons for her private guerrilla war against the Kemeni rebels. She wasn’t so fond of the trembling. Not fear, that trembling. Just awareness. Readiness. A need to act.

Come a little closer.

And oh, they did. They tried to cover it, as the man playfully backed the woman into the darkness, nuzzling at her ear and murmuring something to make her laugh. But Selena saw the surreptitious glances, even from within their hoods. They were looking for her. They wondered if she was hidden in some dark corner or if she’d found a hidden exit. She pushed her back against the brick, waiting…

Until finally they’d gone beyond her.

She leaped down from the windowsill, cat-light, and covered the ground between them in a mere pounce. Just enough time to put the knife up to the side of the man’s hood-covered neck before shoving him, hard, against both the woman and the wall. The woman’s eyes widened; the man froze at the sharp touch of metal as it pierced his jacket through to his skin. Impulses left over from Berzhaan surged through Selena, urging her to be swift and final. A quick stab into the man’s neck and a forward slash of her arm—messy but effective—and she’d get the woman with the end of her swing.

Get real, Selena. This wasn’t Berzhaan. These two weren’t good enough to pose an immediate life or death threat.

And then she recognized the woman—saw enough of her to know those rounded features, that stubby nose. Shock made her step back, but not without shoving the man aside and off balance. By then she’d recognized him, too.

Students. From the Farm, where she’d been teaching these past months.

But they shouldn’t be here—not trailing her. She’d played rabbit for them before, but never unknowingly. “What the hell—”

She didn’t have time to finish, not with the woman’s eyes going even wider as a pair of hands clamped down on her arms. No more thinking, then, just reaction. Pure adrenaline hit. She yanked herself forward, sliding those hands down to her wrists, and then she whirled, her captured arms twirling over her head in a fast, deadly dance. They faced each other only for an instant, his now-crossed hands still on her wrists, and then she jerked back with her right hand to throw him off balance, jammed her right leg in behind his and shoved him backward. He fell over her leg—so simple, so effective—and she levered him around his own arm. He twisted to fall facedown in the gritty soil and even then she didn’t stop, shoving the arm up high and landing on his back just as the joint cracked. By then her knees were on her attacker’s spine and the knife at the base of his skull.

She knew better than most how little it took to kill a man that way.

“No!” The woman leaped forward as if to grab Selena’s arm and thought better of it, hovering without touching. “He’s with us! He’s the trailing eye!”

Selena’s fierce intent abruptly faded away into nothing more than a pounding heart. Of course they’d had another “eye” on the team. Why he’d been so foolish as to come up on her from behind, bodily yanking her out of a confrontation that had nearly been resolved without him, she couldn’t imagine. Now he moaned in pain, afraid to move. She stabbed her blade into the ground in pure disgust. “Goddammit, what were you thinking? What were any of you thinking, following me on my personal time?” She yanked the knife free and folded it, standing away from the man so the other two could check on him. Dislocated shoulder, for sure. She still hadn’t gotten a good look at him—didn’t even know which student she’d disabled.

But as pure reaction faded, thoughtfulness returned. Enough thoughtfulness to know there’d be an aftermath to this moment. The injured man would lose his place in the class. Conversations would be had, explanations demanded. She swore again, more softly this time. And finished the question she’d once started. “What the hell are you doing out here? Didn’t anyone apply a sanity check to this little stunt? What did you think would happen if you followed me without bringing me in on the exercise?” She looked down at the injured man. The other two had carefully moved his arm so they could roll him over, and she recognized him well enough. Not a great student, but not a bad one. Not generally this stupid. She reached into the deep pocket of her leather duster—a little worse for wear, this duster, but repaired well enough after the previous spring—and fumbled for her phone.

The woman looked at her, eyes big all over again, and then going suddenly narrow. “You were supposed to know. We thought you knew.”

A noise from the sidewalk—someone had finally noticed the ruckus. Selena snapped her head around to face the new arrival, ready to drive him off with a few snappy orders and the badge jammed into her pocket.

Instead she found Steven Dobry. The burly Farm instructor and CIA technical ops expert was older than Selena, his features and bearing an unremarkable and perfect canvas for demonstrating his disguise strategies to the students. He didn’t do a very good job of hiding his own desire to be in the field, or his skepticism that Selena—younger, female and formerly FBI—had ever belonged there. Dobry said, “I’ve already called for help.”

“Suddenly,” Selena said, “this all makes a certain twisted sense.”

“Nothing about this makes sense.” Dobry waved at the scene before them. “What the hell is this all about?”

Selena shook her head. “No. Nice try, but no.” She released the phone and let her hand settle in her pocket. There, he wouldn’t see that she had it clenched. But on the outside she’d found her cool, the guise of the experienced FBI legate and specialist in international counterterrorism. She’d attended embassy balls and palace dinners; she’d negotiated with heads of state and walked through terrorist territory in more countries than Dobry could even imagine. “That’s your question to answer. You knew they couldn’t tail me undetected.”

“Did I?” He raised an eyebrow at her, visible enough in the faint fan of light from the closest streetlamp.

Fury swept through her, along with the sudden understanding. “You thought they could do it. You figure I’m full of crap, and you were going to prove it. This wasn’t a training exercise…it was an exercise in embarrassment. My embarrassment.” She narrowed her eyes at him, her fist still clenched inside her pocket and her voice deceptively casual. “And how’s that working out for you?”

The woman looked over at Dobry, anger rising on her face. “You used us. You set us up!”

Dobry sent a cold look Selena’s way. “It’s a shame you overreacted so badly. This should have been a perfectly safe exercise.”

“It could have been,” she agreed. “If you’d let me in on it. Not to mention it would have been infinitely more challenging—I could have led them on quite a chase before I dumped them. But instead you sent them out cold and green. I’ll bet you didn’t even warn them not to take me on.”

“He was no threat to you!”

The woman stood up, now freely glaring. “And how was she supposed to know that? She didn’t even know it was us.”

Selena heard sirens in the background, still faint and far away. “You knew my background, whether you believed it or not. You lied to your trainees. You left me out of the loop. Me? I’m just a CIA officer on my private time who reacted exactly as I should have. I know who I’d rather be when it comes to facing the DDA over this.”

“Damned cold bitch, aren’t you?” His sullen anger told her she’d scored a point.

“No,” Selena told him. “I’m smoking hot. Too bad you’re only now beginning to figure it out.”

The DDA—Deputy Director of Administration, the ultimate boss of the Farm—didn’t actually put in an appearance for the chewing-out phase. The Director of Training and Education handled the job just fine on his own. Equally scathing on both their counts, troweling the blame thick. Selena thought she imagined frustration when he looked at Dobry and concern when he looked at her.

On the other hand it could have just been a twitch.

But unlike Dobry, the DDA knew her background. He knew the CIA had offered her a spot high in the counterterrorist hierarchy, but that as she had healed physically from those several intense days in Berzhaan, as she had debriefed and reported and followed through on the incident, the need for an extended period of lower stress had made itself clear as well.

Selena hated it. She saw it as weakness. Yes, she’d spent two days fighting for her life—and yes, during that time just about everyone she’d seen had been trying to hurt or kill her. She’d saved the lives of the prime minister and most of the hostages. Outgunned and outmanned, even on the brink of what seemed like certain death, she’d managed to convey information to lurking rescue forces. She’d won, dammit.

These days, she felt like maybe they’d won, too. Instead of surging forth into her new life, she’d ended up here, instructing. De-stressing. There’d been that one clandestine meeting with Oracle shortly after her return from Berzhaan, but she wasn’t of any great use to that supersecret fledgling intelligence agency as long as she was here. Recovering.

Not that the teaching position was a bad thing in and of itself. She was good at it; she enjoyed it. She just wanted more.

She wasn’t likely to get it as long as she was doing things like turning clueless newbies into broken bits of student. At least the injured trainee would be allowed back for the next session. Small consolation, but one that Selena held on to.

So she didn’t make excuses to the DDA—he knew exactly why she’d reacted with force, and he knew she’d pulled her punches or the injured trainee would be a dead trainee. She limited her responses to acknowledgments and she glared at Dobry’s back on the way out of the Farm’s administration building, holding her anger tightly inside. When she would have walked away, heading through the dark night and the newly falling mist, he hesitated.

“Selena—”

The anger snapped. She pivoted, glaring at him with such force that he fell silent. She said, “Don’t, Dobry. Don’t even try to pretend what happened tonight was my responsibility. I’ll take it like a good soldier for the director, but you haven’t earned that from me. If you hadn’t disrespected me and used your students to prove the point you thought you had, none of this would have happened.” She took one step toward him, lowering her voice into the dangerous range. “And it better not happen again. Not this, not anything like it.”

He paused, that sullen expression lurking and an overlay of his own anger on top of it. Finally he said, “You don’t belong here. Maybe not for the reason I first thought, but you don’t belong here. The CIA doesn’t take on FBI castoffs. They broke you…let them fix you. The rest of us here don’t need your problems.”

Selena let the words sit there until he seemed to give up on a response at all. What she felt underneath—half-believing the validity of his words, half-believing she couldn’t be fixed at all—stayed private. Hers only. She kept her voice matter-of-fact, devoid of the intensity that had startled him a moment earlier. “Too bad that’s not your decision to make.”

And this time she did turn and walk away, heading for the sophisticated gym inside what looked like a perfectly picturesque barn. She hit the locker room to strip away her leather duster, the navy cargos and black trail sneakers, and replaced them with black spandex. Shorts and sports bra and attitude, all of which she took to the gym. She put on a pair of lightly padded gloves and tackled the workout bag, pounding the dust from it with fist and foot alike. She pounded out what was left of the adrenaline, chasing the unfinished feeling left from the alley encounter. Unfinished, because she’d pulled her punches even after the trainee had grabbed her from behind, invoking body memories of life and death in the hands of the rebels-turned-terrorists. Tafiq Ashurbeyli, with his gun jammed to the back of her head. With his body pressing her against the wall. With his men ambushing her when she’d thought herself as of yet undiscovered, unknown.

She wished the punching bag was Dobry, or the dead Kemeni leader, or any one of the men she’d been forced to kill.

She wished it hadn’t been that poor stupid trainee.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. That was Cole’s voice, popping up in her head. Cole, who’d dropped everything to sneak inside Berzhaan when the terrorists struck. Who’d put up with her in the months since, just happy enough she was still alive. A rededicated marriage, and he’d meant it. And now a ghost of his voice said, If you were as bad as you think you are, you wouldn’t care so much.

Cole.

She glanced at the wire-covered clock, eyes bleary with sweat. Eleven o’clock. He’d be waiting. He’d had a meeting this evening—something to do with his security consulting job. It was a position he’d once called laughably easy, by which she knew he’d soon be bored. But he’d taken it so they could stay together—so for once they could both be at work in the same country. In the same city. Even in the same temporary housing. Talking about children and family life and not particularly getting anywhere with either.

Selena cursed and thudded her fist into the workout bag—this time without any force behind it, and she used the motion to push herself away and head for the locker room. She pulled on the sweat suit she had stored there, transferring her badge, her knife, and her ID to the kangaroo pockets of the hoodie. She slammed the locker closed on the remainder of her things, twisting the token lock in place. The students might ply their newly learned skills on the neat row of locks, but they knew better than to actually take anything. Another time, she might have left a booby trap for them. Something involving a paint ball.

But not this time. This time she hesitated at the barn’s big sliding door, squinting into precipitation now too hard to call mist. Moderate rain. Not enough to deter her.

She felt someone’s eyes on her and turned to discover a figure by the corner of the barn. He stood in the shelter from the rain, just close enough to identify as the male trainee from earlier in the evening—the one who’d been lucky, and come away intact. He stood hunched, his hands in his pockets, his posture straightening as he realized she’d seen him. But he hesitated, his mouth just barely open—on apology rather than accusation, Selena thought, but she was in a mood to hear neither.

She turned away and ran into the dark rain.

Cole Jones dropped for a few push-ups, just enough to get his blood moving. Then he returned to the paperwork spread over the kitchen counter and pondered whether this particular client needed the super-duper countersurveillance electronics, or the super-duper-whooper version.

He thought the super-duper would do. But these people had money and they seemed to like to spend it. He shook his head at the papers and contemplated letting a game of darts make the choice. The countersurveillance protection, he could provide. The security, he could provide. Dealing with the people? Another mind-set altogether. He found himself constantly fighting the urge to sell them some Florida swampland just to see if he could. Not that they were stupid people. By no means.

Just not possessed of much imagination.

Cole’s own imagination was getting lonely. Time for a Selena Sanity Fix.

He perked up at the sound of the key in the town-house door. A two-story town house, every bit as big as their own apartment in D.C.—bigger, even. But it had a closed-in feel; more rooms, but smaller ones. Not as airy. Didn’t feel like home at all.

On the other hand, it felt like they were getting away with something just being here together. Cole left his papers and headed for the door, hesitating at the kitchen entry just in time to find Selena standing in the entry hall. Dripping, bedraggled, cheeks flushed and breath still coming fast. He didn’t even have to ask. She’d tried to out-batter and outrun her demons again.

She hadn’t yet acknowledged that it didn’t really work. Like a drug, the effect wore off. Like a drug, it seemed to take more and more out of her each time.

He didn’t have to ask what had triggered her this time. He’d known since receiving her phone call from town that she’d have a hard night. He held out a hand. Wordlessly, she removed wet shoes, then stripped off her soaked sweats and gave them over to him. Given his own personal clothes management, he would have tossed them on the floor of the small laundry closet—but for Selena, he hung them in the bathroom. Passing the thermostat on the way back, he turned it up a degree or two.

He found her at the darkened living room’s picture window, staring out rain-smeared glass into the darkness. Still in her workout shorts and sports bra top, all long, lean muscle and more angles than most women. Unless, from this view, you looked at her ass.

Cole always looked at her ass.

He adjusted his jeans to allow for the predictable response, and went to join her. He knew enough to make noise as he entered the room, and to wait for the slight shift of her head that meant she’d heard him, lost in thought as she was. Cole had enough of his own nightmares to respect hers…and he’d seen her in action. He respected that, too.

He came up behind her, snaking an arm around her long waist to flatten his hand against her stomach. Hard abdominals met his touch, as tense as the rest of her. He kissed her bare shoulder next to the black strap and rested his chin there, as glad for her height as ever.

It made for a good fit.

She didn’t resist as he snugged her back against his chest. He said, “You’re not one of the bad guys. It wouldn’t upset you like this if you were.” And he didn’t know why she snorted softly in true amusement, but it didn’t really matter because she relaxed slightly under his hand, fitting in more securely against his chest and making him regret the old collared polo he had on. He kissed the side of her neck, lingering there.

She said, “If only I hadn’t—”

He snorted back, right against the soft skin of her neck, and then nipped that skin lightly in apology. But his voice held no sign of doubt. “And what if some guy on the street had grabbed you like that? Do you think he’d be in it for fun and games? You reacted just right, darlin’.”

“Then I should have stopped sooner. I should have known the guy was with the two I’d already exposed.”

He shrugged; he knew she’d feel it. “Lena, they train us. They send us out into the field, and they make us who we are. They want us because of who we are. Dobry is the one who put his trainees at risk. Dobry is the one who’s ripe for a lawsuit—from you as much as from that poor dumb kid.” Not so much younger than either of them, that trainee hadn’t been. Not physically. Emotionally…psychologically…just an infant.

Selena released a pent-up huff of air, amusement at the thought of bringing suit against Dobry. “Well, I am a lawyer.”

“See?” he said, speaking the words into the satin skin below her earlobe. “He’d never know what hit him. You always have that effect on me, too.” He slid his hand lower, over skintight spandex, and tugged her bottom back into his growing erection. He managed to lose half of her next words, his eyes closing, his breath catching.

“—miss it?”

“Um,” he said. “What?”

Not that she was immune to his touch; she tilted her head slightly so he could nuzzle aside her wet hair, tasting salt and rain. “Being in the field.”

Ah. Guilt of another sort, also on her shoulders. He’d been a contract operative for the CIA before the incident at the Berzhaan capital—before he’d been caught on film and tape and digital media, tangled up in crutches and an air cast and heading to meet his equally battered wife at the steps of the capitol.

He had one of those pictures, an eight-by-ten glossy, tucked away. It captured everything about their marriage worth saving—the intensity of their feelings, fierce and devoted and out there on their faces for the world to see. It captured Selena’s grit, her triumphant emergence from the smoking, battered building—bruised and bloodied, beaten and shot and nonetheless coming down those steps on her own two feet.

Of course, it also captured his scruffy blond hair and charming all-American features, devoid of the disguise he’d worn on his way into the situation. He had, at that moment, become a liability to the very agency that found his operational flexibility to be such an asset. No more laid-back, come-what-may exfiltrations, no more flying by the seat of his spy pants.

They hadn’t even picked up the bill for his broken leg. He’d come after Selena in spite of the CIA, not because of it.

So now he played at security consulting, appeasing paranoid companies and individuals whose imagined problems far outstripped their reality.

Good money, though.

And it would do, for now.

Selena tensed in his arms; he blew gently against her neck. “Relax,” he said, and used all his breaking and entering skills to dip his fingers inside the waistband of that darned spandex. “Just thinking. Of course I miss it. But the leg’s just now getting back to where it’ll hold up to real stress.” He pushed against her without thinking and nearly lost his train of thought again. It wasn’t just the touching, the contact, the delicious pressure…

It was knowing what she’d do to him if she ever turned around and took him on.

He cleared his throat. “And anyway,” he managed, “this is great timing. Being in the same country as each other for more than a week at a time is definitely an asset when it comes to the whole family thing.”

Oops. That had been a mistake. The whole family thing hadn’t gone so well. A for effort, not so great for results. They’d checked; they’d learned that Selena’s erratic cycles were more than just inconvenient. That getting pregnant would take a lot more than what happened naturally every time they got their hands on each other. And then it came…her words soft, a little sad. “And look how well that’s turning out.”

“Ah,” he said, regret making his throat hum. “Darlin’, that’s turning out just perfect.” And it always did. Perfect moments of intimacy, pillow talk cementing the bond that had once been fracturing.

Not to mention the marriage counseling.

He realized he’d introduced a rhythm to his movement against her, and that the blood was fast draining from his brain as she accepted his words and matched his movement. He was doomed if he kept talking, because he would soon be babbling nonsense. “We’ll find a way, but in the meantime…just…” That last word turned into a strangled noise as she offered up a little twist of her hips, her stomach muscles tensing beneath his hand. When had his other hand crept up to cradle her breast? He had no idea. He pulled her tighter, but it didn’t keep her from turning in his arms and wrapping one long leg around his hips so they met properly, all the right spots in all the right ways. While he was still gasping from that, she somehow shucked out of that spandex.

“Oh, thank goodness,” he said fervently. And he wasn’t sure how he ended up on the floor on his back, or when she’d gotten his jeans off, or how she’d so quickly positioned herself to take him in, but it didn’t matter. He gasped, and he rocked his head back, and he said, “Oh…thank—”

And she laughed, and she took him on.

Chapter 2

Selena rustled in sleek aquamarine silk and pretended the opulence of the faux ballroom didn’t strike chords of the Berzhaani capitol building; she ignored the czar-like splendor, the chandelier and filigree and rich wallpaper. She smiled at the trainee beside her, stuffed into a tux one size too small and pretending it didn’t matter, and she rattled off a final, emphatic Russian phrase. He frowned in concentration.

“Bzzt!” she said, imitating the Jeopardy buzzer. “That was a joke. The daughter of the Russian diplomat sees that you aren’t charmed by her, and goes to look for better company.” She turned her back on him, spotted Cole on the other side of the room wearing a tux that fit him very well indeed, and gave him a slow wink. He hiked his eyebrow just enough to let her know the dress did indeed perfectly match her eyes and turned a bored look to the young lady who was so earnestly trying to impress him.

Young. They were so young. But they were good, or they wouldn’t be here. They’d learn.

Behind her, the desperate young man said, “But it wasn’t funny.”

She had pity. She turned back to him, champagne flute elegantly balanced in hand, the ambience of the staged diplomatic reception surrounding them both. “It is if you’re Russian.”

As this student should have done—but probably hadn’t—Selena had already memorized the exact layout of the room. She knew who stood where, and which student had slyly disappeared from public view to attempt her assignment of bugging a small reception room—nothing too challenging, this first time out. She knew which of the instructors circulated, relaxed and enjoying their role-playing for the evening. She knew the location of the special guests—such as Cole—who added extra flair and a sense of unknown for the students. She’d spotted one of the other students on special assignment simply by his withdrawn nature, and knew there was a third, someone good enough to keep her or himself unnoticed so far.

The injured trainee wasn’t the only one conspicuous by his absence. Others had left the Farm—dismissed, or dropped out. Those remaining were halfway through their training, and tomorrow Selena would take up the counterterrorism classes with intent. Until now the instructors had bled counterterrorism work into the other classes—token introductions to favored weapons, to profiling, to interrogation. She’d assisted them as needed, but she hadn’t put her own program into full bore. Not yet.

It hadn’t worried her. Her entire career consisted of educating the right people in the right way so they could best work with the United States to prevent terrorist actions, sometimes even when those people had no intention of learning at all. These trainees, on the other hand…they could only be called motivated.

And now the young man who had been flirting with the daughter of a Russian diplomat lifted his head and said, “I get that! The joke! ‘Czechs sitting in Red Square eating matzo with chopsticks’!” And as she inclined her head at him, his eyes widened slightly in a way that had nothing to do with their conversation. Just enough to get her attention, not quite enough to tell her anything.

Until someone slammed into her from behind, hard enough to knock her off balance. Never so off balance she couldn’t recover, though her champagne splashed across several surprised faces as she lost her glass. Never so off balance she couldn’t whirl in response, heeding the flare of fierce reaction that immediately sparked deep within her chest.

But no. This wasn’t the Berzhaan capitol building it resembled. It was a group of people in a fake embassy playing fake roles with the earnestness of those who understood their lives might one day depend on it. So Selena clamped down on the fierce impulse to do fierce harm and drew herself up into her most offended huff, spewing Russian invective even as she turned around.

And came face-to-face with Steven Dobry.

She knew in an instant that this had been no accident at all. That Dobry had known just what he’d been doing— this venue, this moment—and that he’d meant for her to turn on him. To prove she’d overreacted several days earlier when his trainee had gone down at her hands. To prove that she’d do it again.

Except he’d lost this chance. She’d done only exactly as she should have. She saw in his eyes that he knew it, too—but he didn’t have the wherewithal to stammer an apology in character. She spit a few more Russian words at him and turned her back to stalk away.

No one in the room was stupid. They’d all know he’d acted deliberately, even the students who had no real clue about her days with the Kemenis. She’d be lucky if there wasn’t speculation…if someone didn’t sort through rumor to find truth so they’d all know.

It’s what they were training these young men and women to do.

As Selena huffed toward the exit of the grand ball-room—stairs that led to a richly appointed hallway and then out the door to the very ordinary eastern Virginia countryside—a dashing figure cut her off. Deliberately dashing, with that very charming, that so irresistible look on his face. Extreme self-confidence—cockiness, even— and a lick of bashful charm. He offered his elbow and said, “May I find you conveyance?”

She said, “That would be most kind.”

“And may I kick yon gentleman’s balls up into his throat on your behalf?”

Selena pretended to consider. “Why, yes,” she said. “Yes, you may.” And then she glanced at Cole and said, “Just don’t get me fired.”

Cole cast a regretful look back into the theater of the evening, finding Dobry in discussion with someone by a side exit. “Maybe not, then,” he said, and led her up the short, wide tier of steps. “Maybe another time, when my perfectly justified response might be less easily traced to my perfectly reasonable self. I do like that dress, by the way.”

“I wore it for the poor young man who received most of my flying champagne. Easily distracted, I’m afraid.” But as they turned into the hallway, Selena hesitated, her hand still on Cole’s arm. Hmm, a nice welcoming committee, the Director of T&E himself. And coming out a more discreet exit into that same hallway, Dobry and the supervising instructor. A third man, unknown to Selena, seemed to mean something to Cole. Tension hardened the muscle of Cole’s arm under her fingers, and she gave a little squeeze.

The director looked at Dobry and said, “Are you done with this?”

“For the record—” Dobry started.

“No,” said the director. “I mean, are you done with this? Because I am. These scenarios are to train our incoming employees. They are not springboards for your own clumsy whistleblowing. If I have a concern, I’ll handle it. If you have a concern, then you tell me and I’ll handle it.”

Selena listened with remote respect, showing no sign of the surprise she felt; Cole’s arm relaxed under her touch. “Sir,” she said, when the director turned to her after receiving immediate assent from Dobry.

“And you? Are you done with this?”

“I was never part of it.” Simple words, sincerely said.

The director considered them a moment, then nodded. “Good. Now, I’m expected inside. I believe we’re just about to reveal one of our evening’s operatives. Always a dramatic moment. In the meantime, I believe you two—” and he indicated Cole and the unknown man “—have something to talk about.” He nodded at them all and walked briskly down the hall. After a hesitation, Dobry followed.

“Walk with me,” the remaining man said, the only one of them not dressed for an evening of high entertainment. Not even in a suit, but khaki pants and a thick sweater and warm ankle-high hikers. He cut his gaze toward Selena, and Cole laughed as he ran his hand along the neatly hung coats on the hall rack, stopping at Selena’s.

“Nope,” he said. “She comes with me. We’ll walk together.”

And that’s how Selena learned the CIA was pulling him back into the fold, back to black ops and back to the intense risks they’d both so recently left behind.

Away from everything they’d been trying to build.

Chapter 3

Thousands of miles and several weeks away from that CIA training exercise, Selena hit the three-mile marker of Goat Camp Trail and stopped to tip her head back and slug a generous amount of water. With the late October dry heat and three thousand feet of altitude in the stark, majestic White Tank Mountains of the Arizona desert, she knew better than to short herself on water.

One of her first lessons at Athena Academy, as it happened.

If she turned south to Black Canyon, she could close her eyes and imagine the terrain beyond, all the way to the five-hundred-acre tract of private land where the academy tucked in against the base of the White Tanks. The stables snugged up closest to the stark, scrubby wilderness, a place of majestic saguaro cactus and startlingly beautiful flowers, with stunted, scattered paloverde and ironwood the closest things to trees that the area could offer. The saddle of land held more than its share of them, giving shade to students who habitually pushed themselves hard both physically and mentally. Science labs, survival hikes, group bonding exercises, rock climbing, endurance swimming… Athena knew how to turn out a well-rounded young woman. Young women such as Selena, who had started her prelaw work long before she actually hit college, or such as her fellow Pandora group member Kim Valenti, code-breaker extraordinaire before she found her niche with the National Security Agency.

Yep, she could just about see it from here, even if only in her mind’s eye. In fact, if she really wanted, she could easily cut through the rugged terrain and approach Athena from behind.

But today she stayed to the public trail, honoring park rules and moving fast and light for her morning workout—a quick jog along Goat Camp where the terrain allowed, confident climbing where it didn’t. On to Mesquite Canyon, where the steep ground offered up plenty of loose rock to send the unwary tumbling down…no thank you. She’d gotten her quota of cholla spines within her first year at Athena. Not to mention prickly pear, creosote bush and that close call with a bark scorpion. Everything living in this alienesque landscape seemed to sting or stab or prickle.

And yet she loved it here.

Not so surprising she’d heard the call of it even from across the country at the Farm.

Especially not surprising with the conflict now constantly roiling through her head and through her heart. She’d hoped to calm her mind, to let her strong early foundation reemerge, eliminating the self-doubt that had grown since she’d accidentally pulled a man’s arm out of joint.

Accidentally.

“Who does that?” she asked herself out loud, muttering through a nearly closed mouth to keep the sandy grit out of her teeth when a sudden gust of wind hit her hard enough to flap her shirt.

It hadn’t been too bad until Cole had been whisked off to do whatever it was the agency thought only he could do, even after they’d washed their hands of him in Berzhaan. Then she’d had more time to think—more time than she could fill with workouts in the gym and on the running path. More time to worry about what this separation would do to them, and why Cole had agreed to go in the first place. They hadn’t had time to talk before they snatched him away; nothing but a quick good bye kiss and separation right there at the Farm training exercise, the Russian princess left on her own. But she’d made it through the end of the training session and then she’d known just what to do. She’d come here.

She picked up the pace, anticipating the slowdown on the Mesquite Canyon trail. No good came of taking such footing for granted, and she didn’t. Once she hit the ramada at the end of the trail she picked up a jog, finishing off the ten miles when she reached the borrowed bike parked at the Goat Camp trail head.

Four miles back to Athena…long enough for her trail-cleared mind to clutter up again. Full of self-doubt, full of concern. Pedaling was no distraction at all.

When Cole was here, she’d turned to him for her strength. He believed that she’d be able to leave her Berzhaani demons behind, and for a while that made a difference. Several precious months of being in the same house, in the same country, and now he was gone again. They hadn’t started their family; they hadn’t resolved their future.

They’d damned well convinced each other that they had their now. That their now was good.

Selena heard her own harsh breathing and realized she was doing it again. Her legs burned as she sped along the closest thing to a main road in the area and she forced herself to straighten on the bike, one hand lightly keeping it on course as she swooped around a turn, coasting. Even in this dry air she’d worked up a sweat, and she pulled her water bottle free of its clip and squeezed lukewarm water into her mouth.

By the time she reached the school, cruising past the dorms to reach the paved circle through the staff housing, her flushed face was dry of sweat, but her hair under the helmet was still soaked. Selena parked the bike at the little bungalow that principal Christine Evans had offered for the visit. She went straight inside for a shower, then grabbed a protein bar as she combed out her hair, squinting at the length and contemplating a cut. Done, she glared at herself, giving her flat lower belly a resentful poke. Selena was long and lean from head to toe, and it seemed nothing so curvy as pregnancy would ever even temporarily alter that theme.

She wondered if Cole had truly considered that possibility.

She pulled a wide-toothed comb through shoulder-length hair to tame it into order, and clipped it carelessly at the back of her head, up off her long neck. It was a severe look for the strong bones of her face—long and lean like the rest of her—so she pulled a few tendrils loose to soften her jawline and take attention away from the little cleft in her chin.

Cole liked that cleft. But Cole wasn’t here.

Selena straightened the shower curtain and hung the bath towel and went out to the little kitchenette to grab some more ice water. Handy thing, this bungalow. Small but complete. Trust Athena to have extra housing on hand for alumni visits. Trust Christine Evans to understand how visiting the school could provide the grounding needed by its graduates, so many of whom had gone on to excel in the high-stress, high-risk jobs for which Athena had so ably prepared them.

Trust Christine to be waiting outside her door with a handful of letters and an invitation to walk around the campus. “Slowly,” she added. “You’ve already had your workout for the day, if I don’t miss my guess.”

Selena accepted, slipping on a pair of leather Teva sandals and slipping out the screen door. When Selena had attended school here, Christine had been mentor and supervisor; in the intervening years, her visits had allowed that relationship to mature into mutual respect and affection. They weren’t close—but then, Selena had very few people she would call close. Not her divorce-scattered and complicated family, not the fellow students at college who’d been intimidated by her acumen with law and language, and not her coworkers from her years of traveling overseas as an FBI legate. Trust, yes— that had been necessary to function in her role of building counterterrorism relationships in the tumultuous regions in which she worked. But not true, deep friendship.

Only Cole.

Now for the first time she looked at Christine with a friend’s eyes and realized that the older woman actually looked her sixty-plus years. Though her shoulders were as straight as ever, reflecting her army officer’s training, her short gray hair had gone almost entirely white. Her stride didn’t hold quite the assurance it had just over a year earlier.

Of course, getting shot in the abdomen would do that to a person.

“Are you well?” Selena asked, and they both knew the deeper question behind it.

“You should ask the students,” Christine said, raising one wry eyebrow.

Selena laughed. “They wouldn’t dare suggest otherwise.”

“Then there’s your answer.” Christine held out the letters. “From some of your classmates. I have permission to share them, of course. It’s one way we can all keep abreast of one another’s lives.”

Selena felt a stab of guilt. When was the last time she’d written such a letter?

Christine might well have seen it on her face, for she waved away the moment. “You were a Pandora, Selena Shaw. None of you turned into letter writers. Holiday cards will suffice.”

Selena laughed, short as it was. The Athena students matriculated in seventh grade, starting in a class of thirty, divided into small groups. By the time they graduated, they’d learned to live as a team, work as a team and compete as a team. The Cassandras had been one of those groups, legendary under the leadership of Rainy Carrington—and cohesive enough that when Rainy had died two years earlier, the remaining Cassandras had rallied and proved not only that she had been murdered, but that her death was part of a larger plot, one involving the international crime magnate Jonas White.

Jonas White. The same man who had masterminded the hostage snatch at the Berzhaani capitol eight months ago, trapping Selena inside the building with the rest of them. The man Selena had killed in order to save Berzhaan’s prime minister, and one of the few deaths that had failed to haunt her in the months since.

But Selena hadn’t been in the Cassandras. She’d been in the Pandoras, where instead of one-for-all, the girls had decided that they could most effectively serve their group by being the strongest possible individuals. I work alone first and best was the Pandora motto. Kim Valenti, Diana Lockworth, Ashley Sheridan and Selena made it to graduation, and all four had gone on to make an international difference in recent years.

Interesting, then, the circumstances under which she’d recently seen Kim and Diana.

And because she was thinking of that meeting, Christine startled her by smiling—as sentimental an expression as Selena had seen her display—and saying, “It’s nice to see that you do manage to work well as a team when necessary.”

Selena hid her startled reaction at Christine’s apparent synchronicity with her thoughts. After all, that recent Oracle meeting had been beyond clandestine. In fact, she still didn’t know who played the role of Delphi, the Oracle contact. Delphi had been the one to warn her about impending terrorist action in Berzhaan right before the hostage crisis; Delphi had been feeding her such tidbits for years, mining information from various security agencies in a highly secretive effort to overcome the interagency turf wars. And though Selena knew she was far from the only one at the receiving end of Oracle’s information, she’d been startled to discover that her fellow agents were also former schoolmates. Kim Valenti had been at that meeting, as had Diana and few more recent graduates. An unofficial Athena force.

And then there was Allison Gracelyn, the meeting’s facilitator—daughter of Marion Gracelyn and currently an NSA programmer. While still at Athena, she’d developed what turned into AA.gov, the Athena Academy Web site, but she’d kept a low profile since then. Selena couldn’t help but wonder just what she’d been up to behind the scenes…and just what she was up to now.

Selena’s reaction, checked as it was, must have given something away, for Christine’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Whatever you wandered off to think about… I was referring to you and Cole.”

Oh. Right. Work well as a team. That they did.

When they had the chance.

“We’re trying,” Selena said. “Maybe we’ll get another chance to work in the field together.” She realized that their rambling pace had taken them toward the stables, forty stalls worth of well-trained horseflesh. Arthur Tsosie had been the stable master here when she’d been enrolled, a quiet man with a lilting tenor voice and full of as much people sense as horse sense. It was nearly impossible to recall riding here and not think of the Navajo Codetalker, and how he so quietly and ably shepherded such prodigies as Athena encouraged. “I should take a ride,” she said, a total non sequitur that Christine accepted almost as if she realized that the most important parts of their exchange had indeed just happened in Selena’s mind.

“Feel free,” she said. “Just after dawn is still best. Tomorrow the girls will be back from their visit to the base, so you’ll want to beat them to the best of the trail horses.”

Luke Air Force Base. Along with trips to the Indian nation reservations, the weeklong survival course in Yuma, a week of study at the Flagstaff observatory, Christine made sure the girls got out to the base, to hospitals, to police stations…to see how people and organizations worked together.

And how they didn’t.

After all, there’d be no need for Oracle if the CIA, FBI, NSA, or recently created Homeland Security actually shared their intel as effectively as they all claimed to. But Selena knew better than to let her thoughts wander there again, not with Christine’s sharp eye on her. She changed the topic to inquire after the latest crop of Athena freshman, and led Christine to the barn to point out a few horses Selena might enjoy. And Christine let her do it, which Selena took as the gift it was.

Dawn brushed the mountains a pale taupe as Selena rode out—borrowed boots, borrowed helmet, but her own schooling tights with leather knee patches and bright lime racing stripes up the outside leg. The horses might have changed since her time at Athena, the stable master might have changed, but the trails were the same, and she knew right where she was going—a zigzaggy route through the clumpy brittlebush, skirting the various cacti and looking out at terrain unobscured by any significant presence of tree or shrub. The odd paloverde, a few scrubby creosote bushes. Low desert mountains: skeletons of the earth. She took her dun gelding through a series of switchbacks to the summit as the light turned from diffuse to etchingly sharp, and after forty-five minutes of rugged riding, she came to the three-thousand-foot summit.

There she dismounted, loosening the saddle girth a notch and sitting cross-legged with the reins loosely in hand, a process that let her know how much her body would pay for this particular emotional exorcism. Didn’t matter how fit she was…nothing used riding muscles but riding muscles. The gelding bobbed its head a few times to see if she really meant it—they were really just going to stand here—and then snorted loudly into the morning air, mouthing the bit a few times before finally settling into a hip-shot stance of equine patience.

“Just watch,” Selena told it. She waited, the southern part of the Phoenix valley spread out before her as the sun rose. The earth warmed and soon enough she saw the first of them—dust devils borne of a cold night followed by the desert sun on flat, hard earth. They spiraled sandy dirt into the air, creating miniature funnels that curved into the sky and danced capriciously across the ground, lifting tumbleweeds high into the sky. Selena grinned, watching them, remembering her younger self doing just this thing. Back then, she’d appreciated the power of the things—compact, giving way before no man, rising and subsiding on a whim. Now she saw their freedom and imagined that feeling in herself. Free from the impact of her past, from her unfulfilled future…free from herself.

Oddly, she thought about Oracle. She thought about her self-doubts, and how it surprised her that she’d been invited to the recent meeting. A meeting called not because of any particular current crisis, but because Delphi, the code name of the person behind Oracle, thought it was time to be proactive instead of reactive. They’d discussed the potential ramifications of the fall of Lab 33, the organization that had been behind Rainy Miller Carrington’s death among so many other things. Be ready, the carefully prepared notes had told them all. At any time, you might be needed to follow up on the information still being gathered in the wake of Lab 33’s downfall.

For starters, there were the Spider files. One of Oracle’s agents had been at work deciphering them, discovering a collection of incriminating records against highly placed people. Prime blackmail material. We need to know more about the person behind these files, the agenda stated. Be alert for any references to the code name “A”—now possibly known as Arachne—or events related to anyone on the attached eyes-only list.

She could do that. No problem.

High alert: there are indications of imminent terrorist action on U.S. soil. Current priority is to pin down the details.

She could do that, too.

Except that she, like Cole, was now a known face, a highly recorded face. And she was damaged goods, already relegated to teaching duty while the CIA waited to see if she got her act together.

Not that she wasn’t good at teaching; in a way, it’s what she’d been doing all along, albeit with the foreign dignitaries with whom she’d been trying to establish counterterrorism partnership programs and not in a classroom. Pulling together the material was second nature, starting with the U.S. counterterrorism policy. First, make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals. Second, bring terrorists to justice for their crimes. Third, isolate and apply pressure on states that sponsor terrorism…

And she knew firsthand how those policies translated to real-life action, so who better to explain it?

But it wasn’t what she wanted to do, was driven to do. She didn’t want to teach others how to deal with terrorism…she wanted to deal with it herself.

Damaged goods.

She hadn’t been damaged goods when she’d been here at Athena. She’d been young, with the confidence of the young. She’d been…

Strong. Capable. Gulping down the learning she’d been offered, the self-defense and sharpshooting and athletic training along with the languages and politics and peeks into the inner workings of law-enforcement agencies. Looking forward, not back. Not tied down by family, by relationships…by experience.

Selena closed her eyes, felt something in her chest swell and open, reconnecting to that younger version of herself. The unscuffed version, still bright and shiny new and full of all the fervent intention Athena could nurture to the fore. It was still there. Just remember to look for it.

When she opened her eyes, it was to another budding dust devil in the sere valley below. She smiled at the sight, and told her gelding, “See that? I told Jonas White that I was the Road Runner. But I think now I’m the Tasmanian Devil.” She watched a dust devil grow, sweeping up dirt and debris. Then she nodded, getting to her feet and dusting off her behind, but not ever taking her eyes from the churning column of air. “Yeah. I like that. Somehow I don’t think Taz carries a lot of baggage.”

As if to prove the point, the dust devil spit out a tumbleweed. Selena laughed out loud at it and gave her surprised horse a pat. “I think I’m on to something,” she told the gelding, and reached for the girth billets of the close contact-saddle. Not that she thought she’d find herself suddenly, miraculously unaffected by those days in Berzhaan or by what she’d done there.

But it was a start.

Chapter 4

Oops.

One really Big oops.

Cole yanked the defector—his defector, now, after weeks of hunting—out of the line of fire, and they both stumbled into a tiny doorway alcove. A tiny Berzhaani doorway alcove with a securely locked door. How the hell had he ever agreed to come back to Suwan?

As if there’d ever been any question. Cole, would you like to come back to black-ops fieldwork for this one job, after which we’ll say wham, bam, thank-you ma’am and drop you like the hot potato you are?

Of course he’d said yes.

A shot pinged against the pale stone of this old home, showering them with chips and dust. The defector’s hand tightened on Cole’s arm. “You have a plan. You must have a plan.”

“For this?” Cole laughed, short and entirely mirthless. “Sorry, Dr. Aymal. This isn’t your lucky defection.”

For the man had made it out of Afghanistan without incident, escorted and flanked by CIA exfiltration experts, and then they’d handed him over to the Berzhaan team— who should have seen him onto a plane headed for the States. But a little bobble here, a little bobble there…they’d lost him. Cole didn’t yet have the full story on that, but if the guy’s luck held true, he could well see how it had happened.

Because who’d have thought Cole would be under fire from his former fellow CIA contract employees? Dark ops men of superhero proportions who hadn’t re-upped, but who instead had come to the Middle East to work for a security consultant. Until now, Cole had thought they still worked for that man.

He’d been wrong.

Boy, had he been wrong. Walked right into this one, didn’t you? Whoever they worked for now, they weren’t on Cole’s side any longer. And they were bold. Bold enough to open fire in the narrow streets of this dignified old neighborhood on the edge of Suwan.

“C’mon, Jox!” The voice of a man who’d once worked beside Cole shouted out from behind cover across the street. Worked beside Cole closely enough to know the nickname based on his CIA station name. Definitely not working alongside Cole any longer. “Get real! Give it up. We’ll even let you walk away.”

But not Aymal. That was a given.

And Aymal was too important to risk. He carried a mental map of weapons-exchange locations—and key pieces of intel regarding an impending terrorist strike. None of which he had divulged so far, nor seemed inclined to divulge until his feet hit safe ground. U.S. ground.

Was his fake nose slipping with his sweat? Cole gave it a firm nudge, as though he were pushing up glasses; there was no give. Just the expected itch. Without turning around, he said to his defector, “Tell me that if I manage to get you through this alive, you’ll put half the terrorists hiding in Afghanistan out of business.”

“Most certainly,” Aymal assured him. Eagerly, too. The guy spoke some English; he had to know the offer Cole had just received. “I’m certain your government considers me a valuable asset.”

“Oddly, I consider me a valuable asset, too,” Cole muttered, scanning the roofline across from them. Two-story stone buildings lined the street, butted up side to side. A woman’s balcony jutted out of the second story, elaborate scrollwork framing the screening that allowed ventilation but kept the women out of sight. Seemed like there should be some way to use that…but no. Too far to the side.

Then he caught a glimpse of movement on the roof. Hmm. Give it up? I don’t think so. To his once-friend-nowenemy, he finally shouted, “I don’t see that happening.”

“Trust is such a fleeting thing,” the man shouted back. “Too bad you don’t seem to have much choice.” He unleashed another shot at them to prove his point and it skipped over the corner of the stone and across Cole’s side, right through the leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He flinched, cursed, and didn’t give it so much as a cursory inspection. If it burned that damned bad, it was a surface wound. Behind him, Aymal, too, flinched—away from the solid impact of the bullet in the wooden door.

Cole really hoped there was no one home.

To their pursuer, he said cheerfully, “There’s always choice.”

But he wasn’t looking at the car that hid the two men, and he wasn’t about to return fire in this populated neighborhood. Instead, he looked up.

Yup, there was someone on the roof. Three little figures, clutching a stick bat and a big red ball and a—okay, he didn’t know what that last thing was. Didn’t matter. It would do the trick. He waved at them, a wiggle of his fingers. Selena would smack that hand just for bringing the kids into this—what if they were our own?—but they were safe enough. To his newly sworn enemy, he called, “They do have cops in this neck of the woods, you know.”

“I happen to know they’re busy right now,” the man said, all too confident.

Dammit. They must have arranged a diversion. Cole looked at the kids again, made up his mind. “Get ready to move,” he murmured to Aymal.

“Where?” Aymal’s voice held a desperate note. A not unreasonably desperate note.

Cole nodded at the car currently serving as shelter for the two men who’d chased them this far. “There.”

“But—”

“Look, you do your thing with your defector stuff, and I’ll do mine with the getting-us-out-of–this-alive stuff, okay? Be ready.” And he looked back to the roof, motioning to the kids. Move to your right. Universal gesture language, carefully performed by the hand not holding his semiautomatic pistol. Clearly puzzled but just as obviously curious, the kids shuffled over until he stopped them. Right over the bad guys, they were—bad guys who were running out of patience, and who fired off a couple of shots to express their displeasure. “Seriously,” Cole told Aymal, not taking his eyes from his new allies, “we’re gonna move. Any minute…” A new gesture for the kids, then, though drop your toys was a harder one to convey.

But then understanding dawned, and the kids looked to one another and to the toys in their hands. Also clear enough in any language. Are you sure? Do you really mean it?

Cole gestured more emphatically. I really, truly mean it. And grasped Aymal’s abaya with the same hand that held the gun, careful to keep his fingers outside the trigger guard.

“Jox, last chance!” Still behind the car. Still beneath the kids, who shrugged at one another, not frightened as they might be. They were up on the roof, out of sight of those below.

And gunfire was clearly not a new experience for them.

They released their toys. Bat, ball and unidentified dropping object, plummeting down just behind the men who had Cole and Aymal cornered.

Aymal yelped, “Na baba!”

A defector with a wealth of languages at his disposal. Cole didn’t speak Barzhaani as well as Selena, but knew the equivalent of you’ve got to be kidding! when he heard it. “Not kidding,” he said, cheerful enough as he watched the toys fall—timing his move, waiting for the inevitable curse or shout of surprise—

There. Now. He gave Aymal a jerk of a jumpstart and sprinted all out for the car, crouched low, ignoring the burn of his side and the hot trickle of blood there. First things first…he slid in behind the car, yanking Aymal close and holding his finger to his lips in what he hoped to be an unnecessary warning.

Their diversion quickly ran its course. The operative-gone-merc snarled, “Damn smart-ass kids.” And then he raised his voice, full of annoyed impatience. “Time’s up, Jox. We’re coming in!”

A pause. A second man said, “What the hell does he think he’s doing? If he could get into that house, he’d have done it already. He’s got to know he’s outgunned. And the rest of our people will be here before the cops even get close.”

“I don’t know, but I’m getting bored.”

“Jeez, Hammer, get down! What do you think—”

“Relax, Buzz. Don’t get girly. Looks like we got lucky.”

Yeah, pretty much in your dreams. Cole kept his hand up, cautioning Aymal to silence, and listened carefully. His leg ached mildly under the strain but held strong—good and healed. And then the brush of cloth against metal told him what he needed to know—the men were creeping around the front of the car, still slow and cautious, still waiting for Cole to spring to life. As Cole intended to do…just not how they expected. He gestured Aymal around the back of the car and by now Aymal had caught on, moving silently with a glimmer of hope. Cole peered around the back bumper to make sure the far side of the car was clear, then hauled Aymal around with purpose. A quick peek though the back windows of the diminutive Zaporozhets sedan revealed the Dolph Lundgren look-alike and his unwieldy sidekick to be engrossed in their approach of the alcove, a situation that wouldn’t last long. Like Cole, they wore hooded abayas over western pants, and wouldn’t stick out in a crowd. But even after several days in the long robe, Cole still found maneuvering in it to be unwieldy.

Such as when one had the need to spring full bore along the street, running as lightly as possible and waving back over his head at three small co-conspirators, not looking back but hearing just a hint of a giggle drifting down in the still air. As soon as he found a gap between buildings he ducked in, bouncing off the far building with one hand and checking behind to make sure he still had Aymal.

He did. And Aymal looked astonished. “We’re still alive,” he said, and patted himself as if to make sure he was still all there. He looked much more at home in his own abaya, which covered the same white kurta and pants Cole wore. Once out of sight they could pull off the abayas and continue with their new looks—the one thing about the day’s plan that hadn’t gone awry.

Yet.

“Alive so far,” Cole agreed. They jogged as fast as they could through the narrow space and popped out the next street over, where Cole spotted an old Russian Niva transport and headed straight for it.

“Na baba,” Aymal muttered.

“Relax.” Cole checked the door handle on the way by. If it had been locked he would have kept right on walking but no, luck was on his side this time and he stopped, smoothly opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat to drop his gun by the stubby transmission hump gearshift and immediately twist down under the dash of the diminutive—really diminutive—SUV. “Try not to look conspicuous, okay?”

“I am conspicuous,” Aymal said, reaching for dignity. “So are you. And you bleed.”

“Yeah, I bleed. Not a big deal. Just don’t hover.”

Aymal decided to lean against the wall to check a convenient problem with his foot and by then Cole had the vehicle started and straightened to find Aymal staring. “What’re you waiting for?”

“We can’t just take it.”

“You’re not really up on this terrorist-defector stuff, are you? Of course we can just take it. You heard the man— the police are at a convenient diversion. And we’ll be careful with it. Very careful.” Cole didn’t wait for Aymal to close his door before shoving the gear stick into First and peeling away into the street, using just enough restraint to avoid telltale tire squealing.

Aymal twisted to look out the back window, and when he was finally satisfied there was no immediate pursuit, he straightened, assessed their route, and said, “We should be heading for the airport.”

“To the pickup?” Cole shook his head. They were already out of Suwan, heading south in a land that almost immediately looked uninhabited, arid rocky steppes without so much as a forlorn little hut to speak of civilization. “We missed it, buddy. They’re long gone. We’re going in deep until I can arrange something new.” Something he could trust. He shifted gears to turn, pushed the speed back up until he hit the low cruising speed of this road just south of Suwan, and fumbled in the satchel lying across his thigh. The newly perforated satchel. “Dammit,” he muttered, and took his second hand off the wheel, holding it steady with his knees as he flipped the satchel open.

“Dawana!” cried Aymal, grabbing the steering wheel.

Cole narrowed his eyes for a quick glare even as he pulled his cell phone out and reclaimed the wheel. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“Bebakhshid,” Aymal said, but he didn’t sound very sorry.

“You aren’t really comfortable with the whole notion of guns and action, are you?” Cole pulled the phone antenna out with his teeth, flipped the thing open, and had his thumb headed for the pertinent speed-dial number before he realized the phone had no signal. Big surprise, given the way this had all gone so far.

“I worked at a desk,” Aymal informed him. And then, at Cole’s surprised glance, he added, “Someone has to.”

True enough. And Cole’s briefing had focused more on the particulars of getting the man out than the particulars of who the man was. He jammed the antenna against his chest to collapse it and left the phone sitting between his knees.

“Where—”

“Two choices,” Cole told him. “We can drive around in circles hunting a solid cell signal, looking obvious and pathetic. Or we can hole up somewhere and ask around until we find someone who knows where to pick up a good signal, at which point I will venture forth and bravely make some phone calls.”

“Hole up…you know this area?”

“You’d be surprised,” Cole said, feeling cheerful again. The distinct lack of pursuit turned out to be quite a mood enhancer. “More choices—we go south and hit silkworm people territory, or loop around to the north and see what can be done in Oguzka. I happen to know they have no love of people who solve their problems by shooting other people.”

“How—”Aymal stopped himself with a shake of his head.

“Faith,” Cole said. “Have faith. Do you think they would have sent me if I couldn’t do the job?”

“Your first attempt to make contact with help put us in this stolen car, fleeing bullets and leaving a blood trail.”

Cole glanced down at the blotch of red seeping through his abaya. “Trail? That’s just a single footprint, and we’re bringing it along with us. Anyway, intel didn’t know those guys had done a flip-flop on us. They’re gonna know, though.” And he said no more, for of the village he was comfortably certain.

They had, after all, been extremely grateful when his wife had saved their collective butts eight months earlier.

Chapter 5

Selena settled into the saddle, ready to head back to Athena—and from there, back to work. Back to Virginia, to prepare for her upcoming evaluation—and after that, either back to the Farm or back to Langley. Either way, she’d deal with it.

She’d just lifted the reins when her cell phone rang, the Looney Tunes riff she’d installed upon returning home from Berzhaan. Her horse startled, head raised and ears swiveling, and she shifted seat and leg just enough to reassure him. The Velcro closure of the pommel bag yielded to her grip and she slipped the phone out just as it was ready to give up on her and switch over to voice mail.

She didn’t bother with much of a greeting. Very few people had this number. “I’m here,” she said, without hesitating to check the caller ID.

“Miss Jones.”

“Shaw Jones,” she corrected the man, hunting her memory for a name to go with that familiar, gravelly voice.

“We need you back at Langley.”

She stilled. The DDO, that’s who she had on the other end of this call. Deputy Director of Operations. The man who would make the ultimate decision about her readiness for working counterterrorism.

Except he wouldn’t be calling her himself if that’s what this was about. In fact, she couldn’t think of any reason he’d be calling her himself.

Without asking any of the questions bouncing around in her mind, she said, “On the soonest flight, sir.”

“We’ll have a chopper pick you up in forty-five minutes. I assume you can get down off that mountain by then?”

She didn’t even ask. He’d talked to Christine. He had the best GPS tracking system in the world and the tech to latch on to her protected phone…it didn’t matter. He knew what he knew. “If this horse is as good as advertised,” she told him, already heading toward the trail and mentally calculating where she could cut downhill between switchbacks.

But his next words stopped her short. “You should know,” he said, “JOXLEITNER missed his pickup.”

Selena froze in the saddle, her world spiraling in around those words. No sight, no sensation, only the barest awareness of the horse prancing sideways beneath her. Not Cole. Not now. “He—”

“You’ll be briefed on the plane.” The man hesitated— not out of uncertainty, that was clear enough. Out of courtesy, to give her more time to process the news. “We’re sending you in to bring him back.”

Chapter 6

Selena handed over the reins as the helicopter approached, calling back her apologies for bringing in a hot horse even as she sprinted off for her bungalow and the lightweight suitcase she’d brought.

The young woman working the stables—what was her name, Teal?—this morning didn’t seem surprised. In fact, she grinned widely and waved as Selena left her behind. Typical precocious Athena student. Christine didn’t seem surprised by the turn of events, either, and as Selena came bursting back out of the bungalow, Christine met her with an electric golf cart, gesturing for Selena to toss the suitcase in the back.

Selena almost said, How—? but Christine preempted her. “I got a call. No, I don’t know why. I just know that chopper’s here for you.”

Selena said, “Cole.”

It was enough. Christine’s mouth set in a grim line as she revved the little cart up to its top speed, not waiting for Selena to settle into place. They zipped past a line of young women running with light packs, gleaming with sunscreen against the desert morning sun. “Athena!” the girls shouted after them.

Selena knew how fast information spread here. The girls, returned from their field trip, knew who she was, what she’d done in Berzhaan, and what she was doing at the Farm—and all before they’d finished brushing their teeth. She grinned, for an instant lost in flash memories of her own days here.

And then suddenly she was clasping Christine’s hand in a goodbye, climbing into the massive Bell 430 helicopter while ducking rotor wash and dragging her suitcase along behind. Christine stood by the cart at the edge of the wash, her short white hair whipping in the wind and her hand protecting her eyes. Selena pointed at her borrowed boots as she reached for the door. “I’ll send them back!”

Christine waved off her concern with a you must be kidding look and Selena settled back into the seat, buckling up as the pilot lifted off. Better to think about boots than to think about Cole.

Briefed on the plane. No kidding.

Selena sat in the luxurious Bombardier Learjet, slowly realizing that no amount of ventilation could obscure the results of her hasty downhill ride. Selena sweat, not so bad. Horse sweat…definitely lingering. “Sorry,” she’d said to the pilot of the lightweight craft as he’d greeted her upon boarding. “I was—”

And he’d already been nodding. “So I see. Well, make yourself at home in a different kind of leather seat. There are materials waiting for you on the table.”

Selena jammed her suitcase into the overhead and dumped her shoulder-slung leather briefcase—worse for the wear since Berzhaan, but she wasn’t about to give it up—on the window seat as she plunked herself into the aisle seat at the executive table. The folder waiting there was red, sealed with official stickers, and shouted I’m full of secret stuff. She instantly broke the seal, somehow restraining herself from dumping the contents wholesale onto the table. At some point the plane rolled down the runway and lifted into the air, but she couldn’t have said when.

There wasn’t all that much material in the folder. A summary, for her benefit: Cole had been called back into the field because they’d seen a perfect opportunity to use the Berzhaani reporter persona he’d established during the hostage crisis before he’d removed the disguise and ended up blazed across the front page of national and international newspapers. Au naturel, so to speak.

She took a moment to absorb the irony of that. Cole had come to Berzhaan unauthorized, on his own time, and ultimately had been released from his contract because of it. The agency hadn’t even paid for treatment of the leg he’d broken in the process of helping to defeat the terrorists, although the state department had happily picked up the bill. But now the CIA had called on Cole to use the very persona he’d developed during that incident.

These are your people now, she reminded herself, and went on to read the mission brief.

Cole Jones had gone to Berzhaan to locate and retrieve a Afghan man lost in mid-defection—Dr. Aymal. Selena went hunting for a first name and didn’t find it, and then realized the man must be Pashtun—a culture that generally took on surnames only to make dealing with Western nations more convenient. Aymal was this man’s lone name, and he didn’t appear to have any need for such convenience.

Feeling the pressure of the allied hunt for terrorists across the Mideast, Aymal had made the leap to the other side, reaching out to the States with promises of information about both Iran-to-Iraq weapons sales and impending terrorist strikes across organizations. CIA officers had gotten him from Afghanistan to Berzhaan…and then lost him and nearly one of their own in an ambush. Aymal, it seemed, had gotten away but still had nowhere to go.

Cole had gone in to find him. To do what he did best, which was to navigate his way through high-stakes circumstances that couldn’t be planned to the last detail. Going into Berzhaan, he’d had only a number of contacts and pickup arrangements.

And this time, he’d missed one.

What were you thinking, to leave me? To leave us?

The brief didn’t make any suggestion as to what might have happened. It noted only that no Westerners had been reported as killed or jailed since Cole’s arrival in Suwan, Berzhaan’s capital city.

A city Selena had recently come to know all too well.

And that’s why she was here—in this plane, on the way to Langley in her riding tights and boots and aroma. Because she was Cole’s wife, and the only person who had the barest chance of anticipating Cole’s moves. Because she knew the city.

And because the city knew her. It loved her.

And it owed her.

By the time they reached Langley—setting down on a private airstrip, hustling off to the McLean campus in the waiting car—Selena was more than ready for a shower and change of clothes. But her clean-cut escort indicated there was no time for such luxuries. The young woman smiled pleasantly and said little, walking Selena through the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building, expediting her passage through security, stowing her luggage in a small locked room. They headed up to the fourth-floor main entrance to the New Headquarters Building, moving too quickly for Selena to catch the view of the OHB from the skylighted entry corridor. But when they hit the atrium, Selena dug in her heels just long enough to take in the four stories of airy windowed space, to get a good look at the three suspended aircraft models overhead. She recognized the Blackbird and squinted up at what looked like a drone of some sort.

“I’m sorry,” the young woman said. “But they’re waiting for us. We really can’t linger here.”

Nor did she want to. Not with Cole’s fate in question.

Odd. Until the previous winter in Berzhaan, neither of them had ever seen the other in action. Even then, they’d merely passed each other in the midst of chaos, hesitating long enough for a quick exchange of information across the room. Before that they’d gone their separate ways while working, aware of what the other was doing only through vague hints and innuendos.

Now suddenly Cole’s life depended on her, and unless she was mistaken, they would very much see each other in action before this was over.

She wondered if it would feel as strange then as it did at this moment.

Her guide led her through the atrium to the six-story tower on the other side, and they entered the glass-sided elevator to ascend to the fifth floor. The door at which they finally stopped opened into a room lined with windows and a view of the landscaped courtyard, fish pond and manicured trees.

Selena noted those things only absently. For sitting around the table of this little briefing room with its high-tech presentation options and Aeron chairs were several people she didn’t know…and one she did.

Steven Dobry.

He looked her up and down, pausing visibly at the lime seam stripes on her schooling tights. “Nice.”

She didn’t respond. She suspected that were their situations reversed, Dobry would still be up on the mountain, and it was enough. Nodding a greeting to the others, she pulled her eyes-only folder from the briefcase and dropped the briefcase to the floor, sitting in the empty chair with a pad of paper and pen neatly waiting for her. Then, since everyone else had ice water at hand, she poured herself a glass from the pitcher in the center of the table and helped herself to a croissant. The sandwich she’d had on the plane hadn’t nearly done the job.

The busywork gave her a chance to assess the others in the room. Just three of them: Dobry, the man she belatedly recognized as the individual who’d pulled Cole out of the training event at the Farm, and a woman she didn’t know. “All right, I’m here,” she said. “And the sooner I get back to Berzhaan, the better.”

“That’s the idea,” the woman said. “My name is Janet, and this is Randy.”

Selena raised an eyebrow as she bit into the croissant. No last names, even for this? Janet smiled at her. “You’ll be working with the station chief in Berzhaan. There’s no point in cluttering the situation with distracting details.”

Selena swallowed without chewing. “Cole is over there somewhere,” she pointed out. “You can trust that I won’t be distracted from that.” Whatever he was thinking when he left, I intend to put us back together.

“Really?” Dobry said. “I thought the whole reason you were teaching at the Farm was that you couldn’t be trusted at all.”

The woman aimed a disapproving look at him. “This operation will depend on teamwork. We chose you, Mr. Dobry, because of your expertise with disguises and your familiarity with Ms. Shaw Jones, although your language skills for the area are only passable. We expect you to go in under a subtle cover, and to be available to obscure both your identities when necessary—the instant it’s necessary. If we’ve made a mistake, we can rectify it before we waste any more time.”

Dobry was smooth enough, Selena would give him that. “My words weren’t well chosen, but this is something we really should put on the table.”

“That’s fair enough.” Randy No-Last-Name put down the pen which had only hovered over his pad. Dobry’s pleased nod disappeared fast enough when the man pinned him with an unwavering look. “But you should keep in mind that if we find it necessary to shuffle the team, you’re the one who’ll be going back to the Farm.”

Janet didn’t let the words linger before moving on. “We’ve considered the circumstances which sent Ms. Jones—”

“Shaw Jones,” Selena said. “Or better yet, Selena.”

Janet nodded. “Selena, then. Monthly evaluations have shown satisfactory progress. The details of last month’s incident at the Farm and the aftermath actually played a significant part in the decision to move forward with this ops plan. Selena’s reaction was an excellent example of a trained field officer reacting to a perceived threat. And we trust enough time has passed so that any awkwardness resulting from the incident is gone.”

In other words, we’re all adults here. Let it go, Dobry.

And Dobry considered it. He looked at Selena, chewed his bottom lip for the merest instant, and nodded. “Right,” he said. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

Right, Selena thought. Because if they looked any more closely at the incident, he might have to answer questions about his own judgment that night. Up until now, he’d covered his ass by standing by his original response, that he’d simply been taking appropriate initiative to assess what he saw as a potential problem. But scrutiny wouldn’t do the claim any good.

Randy said, “Your station chief is Stan F. TRAMMEL. Selena, your station name is now Elaine P. BLUEMAN, and Steven will remain George M. FLEAGAL. All communiques will come to you via the station at these names. Selena, I assume you know that overseas case officers refer to one another by their station names alone.”

In fact, Selena knew this wasn’t always the case, but close enough. She nodded. She’d had months to learn the ins and outs of her new alphabet family, and she’d absorbed much of it from Cole long before now, including the convention of using all-caps for a case officer’s last name. But she raised her hand, just briefly—interruption rather than a request to speak. “I think I’ve missed a step.” She sent an even look in Dobry’s direction, weighed his probable reaction and went ahead anyway. “I don’t understand why I’m being partnered with anyone at all. I’ll have the backup of the local station, and I’m sure Langley’s resources will be at my disposal as well.” Not to mention Oracle. Although that last wasn’t a fact that anyone here could know.

Janet looked at her with her agency face on, but Selena thought she saw a gleam of understanding. “Although you have significant Berzhaani government and security contacts and we expect you to work this op under the cover of your own name, there’s a good chance you’ll also end up working the streets. In fact, we assume that’ll happen. When it does, you’ll need a man on your team.”

Selena winced at the thought. Under those circumstances, Dobry would have the initiative.

But the man had no agenda in Berzhaan. Had no reason to do anything other than his best, grabbing the opportunity to return to the field on a permanent basis.

And the hell of it was, the CIA was right. In the business section of the city, she could wear Western clothes and a modest attitude and get by just fine. But without the cachet of the embassy behind her, without official business to wear on her sleeve, she’d have to be much more careful in the outlying areas.

And if she knew Cole, he’d dug himself a little hidey-hole for Dr. Aymal so he could then go sniff out his options. A hidey-hole she’d have to find, and that she had no chance of finding if she was hanging out in the embassy trying to pull strings.

Dobry’s expression had turned earnest. It wasn’t one she’d seen on him before, and she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. “Look, I don’t have exactly the same stakes as you, but this man is a CIA operative in trouble and the asset is carrying invaluable intel. I’ll do everything I can to get them out of there.”

Selena nodded an acknowledgment, but Janet was the one she looked to. Don’t make me ask it.

Janet was no dummy. She volunteered the information. “Because of Selena’s experience in Berzhaan, she’s to be the senior operative.” She raised a hand as Dobry’s mouth opened. “However—Selena, I trust that you understand this is an unusual situation. FLEAGAL is an experienced officer. Take advantage of that fact.”

Selena nodded. “Gratefully,” she said, and meant it. She’d use anything that would help her find Cole and get them all out of there alive. She shifted in the chair—Aeron or not, she’d been sitting for far too long, especially in the wake of that wild ride down the mountain.

Janet’s mouth pursed; she tapped the closed file folder in front of her. Red, like Selena’s. “Do more than tolerate one another,” she reiterated. “Work together as the team we know you can be. Because there’s more to this asset than you know—information we received right before this meeting. Aymal’s former case officer briefly regained consciousness. He doesn’t remember much, but he does know that Aymal mentioned the terrorist attack will be soon— and that it will involve a school.”

God, no. Not kids. She’d have to tell Delphi for Oracle as soon as possible, although the Oracle system probably would soon have the intel. She closed her eyes, trying to assimilate the additional urgency—another layer on top of her concern for Cole. For a moment it all mixed together, her remembered fears for the schoolkids she’d ultimately saved from the hands of the Kemeni eight months earlier, her instant protectiveness of any child, her ongoing efforts to have her own children with Cole.

But then, none of it was anything new. She’d been working for the next generation from the start, creating cooperative counterterrorism programs in allied countries as an FBI legate. She hadn’t thought she’d ever be in that particular position again, but the responsibility suddenly clicked into place, as snug as the shoulder harness for her Beretta. “When do we leave?”

Randy must have been the go-to guy, the details facilitator. He smiled, and looked satisfied. “I’ve reserved a couple of spots on a Starlifter leaving Bolling within the hour. BLUEMAN, you can pull things from the suitcase you had in Arizona, and you’ll also find a suitcase already packed. It has both Western and Berzhaani-style garments, as well as your personal effects.”

Selena stopped short of reacquiring her croissant. “You went to the town house.”

“While you were in the air,” he agreed. “And there’s a travel outfit in that overnighter by the door.”

She opened her mouth, then decided to fill it with a torn piece of croissant rather than words. Just doing his job…and doing it well at that. After she swallowed, she said, “Thank you. Do I have time to change before we leave?”

Dobry frowned in doubt. “How fast can you do it?”

At that moment, she thought, What would happen if I ditched him and showed up alone at the plane?

Tempting. So tempting.

Taz would do it.

But Selena wouldn’t.

Not yet.

Instead she left her chair for the overnight bag and zipped it open with economical purpose, pulling out a deep turquoise shirt knit in a chunky, exaggerated weave, and a pair of her black cargo pants. She nodded approval at Randy, and then grabbed the bottom of her shirt—she was halfway to pulling it over her head before Janet laughed, a quietly amused sound.

Randy glanced at Dobry and said drily, “Point taken, but there’s a bathroom just down the hall that will do. I think we can spare the thirty seconds it’ll take for you to reach it. Not to mention it has a mirror—there’s makeup and jewelry in that case, too.”

Selena dropped her shirt and grabbed the overnighter. “Works for me.” She looked back at Dobry on her way out. “Faster than you can flush a urinal.”

When she returned just moments later, she found them up and waiting. She grabbed her croissant and a cream-cheese bear claw, wrapping both in a napkin and shoving them—along with a bottle of water—into her briefcase. At Dobry’s raised brow she said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m still making up for breakfast. I get cranky without my corn flakes.”

“Can’t have that,” Dobry said, trying to make it sound lighthearted and failing. Selena left the overnighter in her chair—let the CIA have the horse-imbued riding tights, and she’d buy Athena another pair of boots—and breezed out the door ahead of him, close on Randy’s heels. Once in the hallway, Janet said, “Randy will see you to the plane from here. Good luck, FLEAGAL… BLUEMAN.”

But it hadn’t taken luck to get Selena out of that embassy alive the previous winter. It had been persistence and a determined exploitation of all the tools she had on hand, from a sheaf of flying papers to decorative marbles and dry ice. It had been teamwork with Cole—an unusual remote teamwork where they’d each simply trusted the other to do what was necessary.

And now she was just as determined to do it again.

To judge by the action of the Starlifter crew, they’d been holding off departure. As soon as Selena and Dobry set foot on the plane, the pilot and co-pilot started takeoff procedure, assisted by the two flight engineers. One load-master double-checked the security of the pallets as Selena and Dobry settled into aft-facing seats, their gear stowed by the other loadmaster.

Selena waited for the crew to button up and take their own seats; takeoff wasn’t far behind. Once they were in the air one of the loadmasters offered them some MREs, and Selena was glad to supplement the pastries. She found herself with beef enchilada and used half the water from her appropriated bottle to trigger the flameless chemical heater. The loadmaster just grinned at her as Dobry ate his beef ravioli cold, shaking his head at Selena’s offer of the rest of her water.

After they tucked the resulting garbage away, Dobry cleared his throat and said, “I meant it, you know. I’ll do what I can to make this work—I want to stop that terrorist attack as much as anyone. Schoolkids? No way. And you’ve got Cole—JOXLEITNER—to worry about, but I’ve got my own motivations.”

“Motivation enough to get over how you feel about me?” Selena asked, and the loadmaster who’d been sitting with them suddenly found the need to inspect the pallets again.

“I don’t—” Dobry started, and stopped with a frown. No point in pretending, and he’d seen that.

Selena didn’t even try. “I took a lateral leap to a position you don’t think I deserve. Now I’m out in the field and you don’t think I’m good for that, either. Don’t even try to tell me those things don’t matter to you.”

He frowned, shaking his head. “I won’t. But other things matter more.”

She looked steadily at him, waiting for any sign of doubt, for his eyes to shift away from hers. They didn’t. She said, “Just keep that in mind. Whatever you think about me, getting Cole and Dr. Aymal out of Berzhaan is all that matters.”

“No arguments,” Dobry said, and when he saw her doubt, he added, “Look, I just want to get back in the field. I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize that. Anything.”

And that, she believed.

Chapter 7

The U.S. embassy in Berzhaan seemed strangely like home. Its exquisite Sekha carpets crafted from native silkworm, old-world light fixtures, rich inlaid woodwork…wonderfully familiar. Even the smell of the place— strong coffee mixed with wood polish and a slightly dry smell of age, reminiscent of old attics everywhere—spoke to her. Selena took a moment to breath deeply of it, ignoring Dobry’s impatient hovering and the emerging soreness from her hard ride down the mountain. Then she turned to the marine on guard desk duty and said, “We’re here to see Dante Allori.”

The young man returned her an inscrutable look, as if the statement wasn’t the least bit outrageous. “Do you have an appointment?” He knew perfectly well that she didn’t.

“Call Bonita,” Selena suggested. “See if she wants Selena to come up for a quick visit.”

Doubt sneaked out. “Selena Jones?” Maybe a little respect, too.

“Selena Shaw Jones.” She pointed at the desk phone and smiled, a little too sweetly. “Give it a try. Or don’t, and see what happens when she learns I was here.”

That got through to him—as did the fact that she knew Bonita, the ambassador’s personal assistant, well enough to say it. He reached for the phone, eyeing her as it rang through, and spoke a few quick words.

Selena smiled as he stiffened and held the phone away from his ear slightly. When he hung up, she offered, “Bonita has a way with words, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the young marine said, putting some starch back in his shoulders as he nodded at the sleek, latest and greatest metal detector arch.

“New toys,” Selena observed. She pulled out her weapons, which had conveniently bypassed customs security checks as they slipped in through the States-occupied airfield west of Suwan—an airfield that provided operations support for the limited U.S. presence in Berzhaan and through which she and Dobry had entered the general population to reach the CIA station, emerging complete with a convincing set of papers. First her sturdy Beretta Cougar, meant for strong hands and long fingers. A variety of knives—the short tanto blade she’d had at the Farm, a lock blade Buck and a tiny stiletto she’d adopted after her previous Berzhaani adventures with the ice pick. She had a length of braided monofilament in her pocket, but left it there; the detector would ignore it.

Still, the young marine muttered something about “worse than a Klingon” as he secured her batch of goodies away in their own little lockbox. Even Dobry looked at her askance as he handed over his Smith & Wesson snub nose. “The point,” he said, “is to avoid conflict by avoiding detection. Or weren’t you paying attention to the classes we taught?” He certainly had. His new identification had included pictures in which he looked subtly but significantly different, and by the time they’d left the local CIA station, his appearance matched those photos—darker brows, colored contacts, a mole, a pair of distracting, trendy glasses with thick frames, and padding around his torso that turned his fit, burly frame into an entirely different shape. Five minutes to apply, two minutes to rip away.

But Selena had grown used to his barbs; over time she’d decided it was the only way he knew how to be. The marine had not, and bristled as he took the little revolver. Ah, youth. Selena felt old at twenty-seven, but she only smiled at Dobry. “Been there, done that,” she said, waiting for him on the other side of the detector. “A good backup plan or two never hurt anyone.”

The marine said, “I only wish I’d been here when you took down those terrorists last winter.”

“No,” Selena said gently, “you don’t.”

“Ma’am,” he said by way of apology, and made Dobry go through the detector three times.

“Selena! You look so much better without the blood. I’ve never considered it a suitable accessory.” Bonita actually rose from her chair, leaving her powerful domain—the phone lines, the scheduling tools, the customsized petite chair—to greet Selena. Her lips were stained their usual power-red, and today her nails matched. Such touches seemed out of place on a mature, gray-haired woman, and Selena knew darned well Bonita did it on purpose just to see who’d fail to take her seriously.

“Blood?” Dobry said, and eyed Selena as she drew back from the hug Bonita gave her. “From the hostage situation. Of course.” He already seemed tired of hearing about it. Poor Dobry. He didn’t look like the kind of man who took well to having his assumptions challenged, and his assumptions that Selena had arrived at the CIA overbilled, under-experienced and fading fast were taking a good hard hit.

“Goodness, no.” Bonita turned to him as if only then noticing him. “From the incident in Oguzka that morning.” She beamed at Selena. “I was so proud to hear you shot that one terrorist in the ass, my dear. Entirely appropriate. You didn’t mention on the phone that you’d brought a friend.”

Selena bit back a grin. Bonita in full keep ’em off balance mode. “This is Steven Dobry. We’re working together on this one.”

“This one what?” Bonita returned to her chair to survey Dobry over her neat desk. But Selena only waggled her eyebrows, and Bonita laughed. “Can’t blame me for trying,” she said. “The ambassador is waiting for you. Lucky you—you were the perfect excuse to delay a meeting he’s been grumbling about for days.”

“He’s doing well, then?” For Dante Allori had been shot during the hostage incident, and although it had seemed a minor wound at the time, a man of his age and physical condition didn’t always come back from the simple things.

“I’ve said as much in my e-mails, so I don’t see how repeating myself will do any good. You’ll just have to go see for your own eyes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Selena said, and led Dobry to Allori’s office, knocking gently even as she opened the door.

“Selena!” Allori rose from his desk—bigger than Bonita’s, and nowhere near as neat—and smiled hugely at her. “What, no blood today?”

Dobry muttered, “Good God.”

“He means the hostage thing, not the village thing,” Selena assured him. “Dante, you look well!” In fact, the man had lost a significant amount of weight, and although his face held more lines and his hair more gray, he exuded a new vigor where before he’d only exuded dignity.

“Let’s just say I recently had a life-changing experience,” he told her. “New priorities. New tailor, too.” He patted his sleek suit lapels and leaned forward to take her hand, drawing her around the desk into a fatherly hug. “You, too, look well. A little thin, perhaps. A little ragged around the edges. Could be we took different lessons from those days?”

“Could be I’m still learning mine,” Selena said, all too aware of Dobry’s presence. “Dante Allori, this is Steven Dobry. We’re working together. I wanted to drop by and let you know I was here…and that I’ve got my ears open.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Just that we’re missing some people.”

Allori sat in his massive leather chair and tipped it back to regard her, then Dobry. “Mr. Dobry,” he said, and nodded an acknowledgment of Dobry’s presence. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the interesting little incident yesterday—wild west gunplay in one of the quieter old neighborhoods of this dignified city, involving several children?”

Selena recoiled at his words. “Children?”

“Not to worry. They’re safe. They somehow got it in their heads to drop their playthings on the heads of the Clanton brothers from the roof of their building.”

Selena smiled, brief though it was. Cole. Who else? Cole, through and through. Finding the unexpected, using every opportunity at his disposal. Trapped by the terrorists, she’d found she had a lot more in common with him than she’d once thought.

And it gave her a place to start.

“I’m not sure how I can help you,” Allori said, though he’d been watching her face and knew he’d said something of significance to her.

“You already have,” she told him.

Dobry cleared his throat and said, “Anything you can tell us that doesn’t quite seem ordinary could be of help. We’d also be pleased if you could advise us on the best locations for acquiring local information. We have some information, of course, but—”

Allori cut him off with a frown. “Your best source of that information is standing beside you.”

Selena trod lightly. Carefully. “We haven’t had much opportunity to put our heads together,” she said, saving face for Dobry—for if he’d listened to her, if he’d truly believed her capable in her legate posting here, he’d have known better.

“Ah.” Allori nodded his understanding. “As for the other, you have my complete cooperation. Things out of the ordinary it is.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, one quick riff and then silence. “As delighted as I am to see you, Selena, I’m surprised to find them asking this of you. And without official cover, unless I’m mistaken.”

“Don’t worry about me, Dante.” Selena couldn’t hide her grim response, not entirely. “I would have volunteered for this one, given a chance.”

At that, Allori’s perceptive gaze narrowed slightly. He knew Selena chose her words with care, and that they were to be plumbed for significance…and that whatever was happening, it was of personal importance to her. So again he nodded, and then he turned on his public persona for Dobry’s benefit. “Have you eaten yet? I know of a place you might find interesting.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.