Free Fall

Jose stopped short. Stunned. And it wasn’t often he lost his cool. But fiery denial pumped through him as he realized how bad he’d screwed up, everything he’d missed, things that put Stella in danger. Because somehow he overlooked an American traitor in their midst all this time.

He tightened his grip, making damn sure his gun didn’t waver as he pointed it at the supposed student hostage, Sutton Harper.

***

Stella ground her teeth in frustration.

She hadn’t made it to the door before Mr. Brown blocked her exit. When she pushed, he reminded her she wouldn’t make it more than three steps before he flipped her. She could fight, but with his martial arts training, odds really weren’t in her favor.

Mr. Brown and his damn odds. Usually they got along well, feeding off each other’s analytical perspectives. Not so much today.

Meanwhile, she was stuck inside the command center, still freaking watching Jose in harm’s way and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Her eyes were riveted on his face on the video screen, the camera angle showing the back of the man he’d detained. And given the preliminary sensor readings from their military hazmat experts, those containers were filled with toxins every bit as horrific as she’d originally feared. The details on the cloth hadn’t been a distraction. This threat had been horrifically real, which bolstered her fears that the second cloth could hold even more information. If she wanted to get her hands on that, she would have to play by Mr. Smith’s rules. And she would.

As soon as she saw for herself that Jose was all right.

The decontamination stalls were already going up in record time. Guys in suits were herding Jose, his PJ teammates, and their captives toward the tents and hoses. Jose was struggling and shouting something that was lost in the frenzy. She wanted to be out there and shout right along with him.

Nobody cared about the fact that the VP’s wife may well have wrapped herself in a major message about the current crisis.

She pivoted back to Mr. Brown, the guy who’d usually seemed most open to reason and calm. Yet right now he was not budging.

Reining in her temper, she searched for the logic that had carried her through past cases—had gotten her through her recent hostage horror. “With all due respect, sir, you don’t need me here. What harm is there in letting me secure the second cloth? I’m the person who decoded the first one.”

“You mean the cloth you decoded through game playing rather than bringing us into the loop right away?” He nudged his glasses, his smile downright condescending.

“The way I see it, bringing you into the loop isn’t going that well for me right now. Because quite frankly, I’m not feeling the interagency love.”

Where was Mr. Smith? She never thought she would want the help of Mr. Uptight, but right now she felt like she was being torn in two. She needed to find out what was on that pattern—she’d already hedged her bets by asking one of the tech guys to capture up-close images in case she couldn’t secure the actual cloth.

She ached to be outside with Jose. She tracked his progress as he and the guy with him ducked behind the decontamination curtain. Normally they would have just stripped down and hosed off, but the proprieties here made that impossible… made it impossible for her to see him.

She clapped her hand on top of her head, her ball cap still in place. Reasonable, be reasonable. “I just want to be in the loop. I could be wrong. There could be nothing there. But if I’m right? I’m guessing you don’t want the hellfire that will rain down on your head if you say no and you’re wrong. Sir.”

He pushed his glasses up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Interpol agents… pain in the ass.”

“Why thank you.”

His glasses slid back in place. “Go see your boyfriend and by the time you get back, I’ll have the kanga here for you to inspect.”

“Thank you, Brown…” Or whatever his real name was. She sprinted toward the door, then called over her shoulder, “I could use a dedicated computer and a scanner.”

“Want, want, want…” He pushed open a side door and waved her through. “Just hurry it up before Smith finds out I let you leave.”

“Thanks, really. I owe you.” She ducked under his arm and out into the cacophony outside.

Ropes held back the crowds that had waited for hours to watch the festivities. Sirens wailed from an older local police car, lights rippling on top of the other security vehicles. Flashing her badge, she sprinted across, toward the canvas stalls with water flooding underneath. Decontamination units.

Her heart kicked harder in her chest. She jogged faster, wishing she had Jose’s marathon skills. Right now, she felt like she was running on fumes. She’d come to Africa so confident in her ability to take charge of her life, solve the mystery of her mother’s death, and bring change to women and children.

Instead, she was nursing a broken heart and barely staying ahead of destruction at every turn.

She held up her badge again to a local soldier. “I’m on the team working with the men in there. I need to check on…” Jose… “on my guys.”

He eyed her shield more closely, then gestured with his weapon, motioning her through. Splashing through what could well be tainted water, she pushed through to a new set of ropes around the shower stalls. Men in chemical suits sprayed down a row of totally buff men in their skivvies. But she saw only Jose.

Alive.

Thank God, alive.

She soaked up the sight of him, of the lean vitality, the strength of his taut muscles and honey warm skin. His hair turned even darker slicked back. Sun glistened off the water sheeting down his back as he turned, turned, turned, and finally faced her. His deeply brown eyes went wide with recognition as their eyes held.

Just like that first time she’d seen him pulled from the sea into her boat, she felt that spark of something special, of her body acknowledging his. And for a woman of logic, this whole soul mate thing was totally knocking her for a loop. She’d expected to fall for the man most reasonably suited for her.

Not one who battled alcoholic demons and vowed he couldn’t give her the kind of forever she craved. But she couldn’t imagine living that dream with anyone else. Which left her pretty much confused as hell. All she knew right now was that he was alive. He’d faced the possibility of a horrific death without so much as a blink.

And he would do it again and again and again, because that’s the kind of man he was.

Her nose clogged and she hadn’t even realized she was crying. Damn it. She swept the back of her hand over her face, smiled at him, and shrugged. Sure, she shouldn’t be here and she was probably raising more than a few eyebrows.

He shook his head and shouted, but his words were carried away by the roar of hoses. He swiped a hand over his face and pointed to the other row of decontamination cubicles, the one where the trio from the truck had been taken.

What was Jose trying to tell her?

She looked closer at the third man and… recognized Sutton Harper. Her fellow captive from the compound. A student she’d trusted for her month undercover.

The man who’d carried that length of cloth from their warlord captors.

***

Jose was running out of uniforms.

His latest uniform was in a toxic waste bin and he’d been given a set of camos without patches until he could get to his own clothes. He scrubbed a hand over his damp hair, his eyes tracking Stella walking along the rope line until finally they met at the end. She flung herself at his chest hard and fast before pulling away.

“You’re okay?” She searched his face.

“I’m good. No flesh melting off,” he joked—sorta. “We got to the catering truck in time. Exposure appears to be minimal.”

But she had to know this already. Maybe she just needed to hear it from him, and God, it felt good to remind himself now that the aftermath of it was hitting him. He touched her shoulder and guided her out of the path of two guards. He thought about taking her inside, but work would intrude a helluva lot faster there. For just a minute, he needed to look at her and let that steady Stella logic ground him.

“Jose, what in the world was Sutton doing in the decontamination booths?”

Didn’t she know? He’d called in the student’s involvement over his headset, informing Smith right away.

“Sutton was inside the truck with the toxins.” And now the student was wearing sweats and walking between two guards escorting him to… hell, he didn’t know. He wasn’t in that loop. “You really didn’t hear that the student turned? I told Smith over my headset as soon as I recognized Sutton.”

“I had no idea. He didn’t tell me anything.” She gnawed her lip for a second. “But then I went off headset for a while. I’m not even really supposed to be out here now.”

“I’m glad you came.” The way they’d left things this morning, the way he’d walked out on her while she’d slept… Shit. What if he’d died and that was the way their relationship ended? “Stella, I’m…” He wrestled with the right words.

“It’s okay. Whatever you’re thinking, just hold onto the thought and we’ll talk when there’s not so much adrenaline clogging up our brains. Things are moving fast.” She cupped his face. “I have to get back to work… things are crazy at the command post. And no doubt the whole Sutton factor complicates everything. We’ll have to review everything we heard from him. And there’s a second cloth…”

She cut her sentence short, her eyes apologizing.

He squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. I don’t have a need to know. You do your job. I do mine.”

“That’s kinda become ‘our song.’” Still, she didn’t move and neither did he. The worst was over, right? For now. It was a matter of untangling the piece to start nabbing bad guys, which put the ball back in Mr. Smith’s court.

He heard his team walking up behind him even though they walked like f**king spooks. He stepped back from Stella.

Brick held out an arm to her like he was some frickin’ tuxedoed date. “Interested in your own team of Special Ops escorts back to the command post? We’re all headin’ that way.”

“Thanks; you guys are probably ready to get through your debrief and find food.”

Fang trotted alongside, getting ahead then falling back, racing ahead again, puppy style. “I feel like that damn song… should I stay or should I go? This place is crazy. Do they want our help or not?”

Data clipped alongside at an even-measured pace. “The vice president’s wife is emphatic on that subject. You can be sure today’s events won’t send her running.”

An odd sense of déjà vu rolled over her. “My mother said the same thing every time she would leave for her next Peace Corps mission. She would tell me about how little girls here were hurt… She waited until I was fifteen to explain that ‘hurt’ was a euphemism for female circumcision.”

Fang tripped over his overlarge puppy feet. “Shit, Stella. Is it even okay to say those words out loud? Just… Shit.”

Data scowled. “In a culture where it’s estimated over ninety percent of the females experience that…”

“Argh!” Fang thumped his hands on either side of his head. “Makes me want to kick some pirate ass for all those girls and for that boy we picked up too… Ajaya.”

Bubbles cocked his head to the side. “You think the kid’s innocent?”

Jose didn’t know what to believe anymore, not after Sutton. And now that Ajaya had been mentioned, why hadn’t the teen said anything about Sutton’s involvement? Perhaps he hadn’t known, but it was quite possible he had. How much was truth and how much was a setup? Ajaya was the one who’d told Stella about the code in the kanga cloth in the first place.