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Gunshots hit the top of the debris barrier. It erupted in tiny explosions of sand, grit, and powdered stone. Bits of stone pelted her.
From his place, she heard Sandesh return fire. The gunfire above her ceased, but she heard a car start up. Rev.
Fuck.
Blow up, already!
The explosives detonated.
A plume of smoke and dust and an ominous moan, like from an ancient warrior who’d taken one too many arrows. She hit the ground. A wave of heat pounced over the barrier, bringing a hot spray of gravel that clawed at any exposed skin.
Dust and grit steamrolled the air, embedded into every pore, coated her lashes, rushed into her throat, and clung to her esophagus. She coughed and hacked and crawled forward. Blind. Blinking. Eyes tearing. Her ears rang. Her head spun.
Smoke and gray dust meshed with the air, keeping her from seeing the headlights until they crashed over the barrier and nearly on top of her.
Gravel and debris landsliding down. She pinched her eyes shut, then cracked one eye open enough to see the wheels of the car spinning. The car rocked at the top of the barrier, vacillating like a seesaw, front wheels beating against air. Two blurry shapes flung themselves out.
She pointed her gun. Shooting with one squinty eye. She heard bullets hitting metal. She fired again as she ran.
Chapter 31
Crouched by the small sniper hole, Sandesh fired at one of the two men who’d flung themselves from the car. He hit him in the gut. The guy tumbled down the barrier. The other guy dove back behind the car.
Damn. His sight line was blocked. He kept up cover fire, shooting at the car to keep the man down.
A spray of bullets hit near his hole, and he flung himself backward.
Justice tore from around the building, motioned to him, and climbed into the truck cab. He put the tip of his rifle through the cement wall and fired to disguise the truck starting.
He ran, threw himself into the driver’s side of the truck, hit the gas, and sped forward while breaking the bad news. “Five. Likely six left.”
She shook her head. “No fucking way. I killed more than that.”
She wasn’t lacking in the self-confidence department.
The moment the front of the truck came around the building, they took fire. Bullets ricocheted and dinged into the steel hull. He jammed the gas.
“Left, hard left,” Justice shouted.
He spun the wheel. She turned, aimed, shot. Boom, boom, boom. “Got one.”
Got who? A shot like that, in motion, no way. He floored it down the street, dodged a chunk of concrete. The second car came out of nowhere.
Sandesh banked. Justice had her arm hooked around the headrest as she took out the pin on a grenade, leaned out, and tossed it wild-thing style.
Ba-boom. He gripped the wheel. The truck jerked forward. Through his rearview, he spotted the car lit by orange flames.
He looked over at her. “You hit them.”
She leaned back against the seat, black eyes slick with velvet confidence. “They weren’t that far away.”
Chapter 32
Seated at the desk within his Mexican compound, Walid clicked off his phone. The ache in his lower back—which had started at the hotel when he’d been flung down to avoid the assassin—screamed. And outside, the rain came down in buckets. Thunder cracked against the sky. Lightning painted the mountains with white streaks.
Walid needed a voice like thunder, needed to shake the world from its axis.
Whoever was behind his brother’s murder had sent a woman.
A woman.
It would not stand. For this woman’s actions, many other women would suffer. He would dedicate his life to putting them in their place. To overturning the imbalance. The awful imbalance where a great man, with vision and courage and beauty, could be destroyed by a creature that history knew aligned with snakes.
He slammed his fist on his desk again and again and again. Pens shifted. The computer password screen flashed on. His phone bounced along the blotter. His back barked with pain.
He welcomed the pain. The anger. He needed his rage to distract him. He would grieve later. After everyone responsible, especially the one most responsible for his brother’s death, were brought to him.
A knock sounded against his door.
Walid adjusted himself in his seat. “Enter.”
Dusty, former FBI and his current right-hand man, walked into the office. Typically American, he wore a baseball cap emblazoned with USA. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a confident stride and an almost brutally handsome face under a field of wavy brown hair.
Despite his casual smile and the lilt of his Southern accent, Dusty was a complete professional, a man who inspired loyalty from his men. A skill Walid had treasured along with his many other skills.
Dusty nodded as he came forward. “These new guys you’ve brought in are a real pain in the ass.”
Walid’s eyes swept over Dusty and the two “pain in the ass” men who had searched Dusty and followed him inside. Aamir’s men, the very ones who’d saved Walid. Men so devoted to his brother that their loyalty had passed to Walid like an inheritance.
So the American thought of the addition of the men as an insult. Good.
It had been Dusty’s men, the ones he’d hired, who’d allowed the assassin to enter Aamir’s suite. If he had the energy, he’d explain to Dusty how lucky he was to be alive.
“What word do you have of my brother’s killer?”
“The supplier in Jordan has tracked the stolen product back to a charity at a refugee camp. The same one that sewed up our assassin. It’s run by a Jordanian woman, a doctor. She has ties to an American charity run by a soldier, former Special Forces.”
This pierced the rage-armor, but only for a moment.
“Name?”
“Sandesh Ross.”
Walid leaned forward. His back complained. “Are you saying this man, this Special Forces soldier, uses a charity to funnel women? Could he be the one who sent the original warning to us, who told us to come to Jordan?”
Had they walked into a trap?
Dusty tipped back his baseball hat. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what the woman, Salma, knows. She’s shut down operations. And he’s disappeared.”
“She knows something, if these women have scattered like roaches. She could tell you who has taken my brother’s”—he almost choked on the word—“wife.”
“Probably.” Dusty cursed. “We’ll find out. Just give us some time on that.”
Walid’s head snapped up. He could barely contain his rage. But he kept his voice very soft. “We do not know where the stolen women went. We do not know who sent us the warning. We do not know what role this Special Forces man played. We do not know who the leak is among your men. Enough. I need answers.”
Dusty rolled his shoulders. His expression said he was fighting hard to stay in control. “It has to be someone outside of camp personnel. Someone not directly tied to us. There is no other explanation.”
Walid considered, seriously considered, killing Dusty. But. No. He still needed the man. Dusty was the one who had the loyalty of the men here. And until Walid could focus his attention away from his brother’s killer, he needed Dusty.
“I think it’s time we assign this task to another.” He motioned to Aamir’s man. The man nodded. And Walid felt mollified by the instant agreement and by the way Dusty took obvious affront. To drive home the point of his demotion, Walid directed Dusty, “Take the guard down to the cellar. The one who let the assassin into Aamir’s room. I want to see what he remembers.”
Chapter 33
Justice sat on the edge of the lumpy bed, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she kept the recently acquired burner cell pressed to her ear. The headache-inducing scent of overly bleached sheets didn’t help her nerves. She couldn’t even pace inside the claustrophobic Israeli hotel room.
