Page 47 of Her Fearless Warrior

Linc rested his thighs against the hospital bed, beside her legs. “Okay, what is your secret?” he asked.

“They don’t make it easy to find you. I tried asking for you when I was back home, but I couldn’t. Sad. It was sad. I was sad.”

Linc pulled his head away from her lips and looked down at her. “I looked for you, too. I was hoping you would be in Turkey or D.C., but you weren’t.”

“No, I was in France on a job. It was long-term, so I sublet my apartment. Were you sad, Linc? Were you sad like I was, that you couldn’t find me?”

“Yes, Leila, I was sad.”

“Leila, I’ve been timing your icepack,” Katherine said. “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

“What?”

“You can take off your ice pack,” Linc said softly.

He reached up to her face and helped her with the elastic band that held the ice pack in place. He winced when he saw just how bruised her cheek was. He’d always noted the swelling, but, with her light brown skin, it hadn’t been as noticeable. But up close, Linc could clearly see the bruising.

“Thanks for your help,” Leila said, then smiled and winced. “I wonder if the wonderful drugs are wearing off. He told me that aligning the bones together was going to hurt, that’s why he kind of put me under. Then he said it would hurt for a few days afterward. But this level of pain is ridiculous.”

She looked over at Katherine and smiled. “We can bitch about being in pain now. We’re not in the hands of Suitman.”

She was sounding a little bit more sober.

“Ladies,” Kostya interrupted. “Have you both had a chance to speak to Agent Earnst with the CIA?”

“I did,” Leila said. “He reminds me of every manager I’d ever met at CIA Headquarters. He has the personality and brains of a potato. Why they put paper-pushers in charge, boggles the mind.”

“My team knows about the diamonds, and the prisoner exchange, but Linc and I, and the others, are having a hard time wrapping our head around the idea that Vugar Gadirov went to the trouble of killing and kidnapping American civilians just for five million in diamonds.”

“So do I.” Leila said.

“Me too,” Katherine said from her bed.

“But Agent Eager Scout didn’t agree with my hypothesis that Vugar was up to something bigger.”

Kostya rubbed the back of his neck. “My people have put together quite a file on Vugar, and there is not a chance in hell that he risked the kidnapping and killing of Americans for a five-million-dollar payday.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can do about it. This is an Elijah thing. Seriously, I was brought in as a translator and to help smooth things with Katherine and Robert Landry if they thought the cover project wasn’t on the level.”

“If that’s true, how did you find out about the diamonds? Why did CIA Headquarters set you up with the prototype phone?” Linc asked.

Leila lightly touched her swollen cheek. She prodded it for a minute, clearly taking a moment to decide how to answer his question.

“Elijah thought he’d been made and that either Felix or Sam was a plant. He told me a day before we went to that conference room for a meeting. It was supposed to be with the Syrian Minister of Health and Services. Of course, that was going to be all bullshit. Elijah clued me into being the smoother before we left the states. I went to CIA Headquarters and got the phone. They had another phone in the lab that they could do all the bells and whistles. I could grab their data, plant malware, listen in on their conversations, everything.”

“Did you meet with Jerry before?” Linc asked.

“He’s new to me. I’m pretty sure that if I had met him, I would have skipped the assignment.”

Linc looked over at Kostya and saw he was smiling too.

“Well, that explains the phone. When did Elijah tell you about the diamonds?” Linc asked.

“Two or three days ago? Whenever Sunday was. He was worried that either Felix or Sam was a plant. He told me to never be alone with either one of them. How is Sam doing?” she asked.

“He was sitting up when we walked by,” Kostya answered. “Do you know about Elijah?”

“His prognosis is good. He’s stable. They operated on his brain, and they put him in that coma until his brain stops swelling,” Katherine answered.