Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(29)

He slid out of the booth, then leaned back in. When I went to turn my head, he grabbed my chin and held me still. “Go home to your boyfriend. And your mutt. Two days. We know where to find you.”

“If anything happens to someone close to me,” I said, “the deal is off. I’ll take the intel and go straight to the Feds and the devil be damned.”

“Such a little shit.”

He released me, and I caught a glimpse of close-cropped blond hair and a pockmarked cheek before the back of his hand slammed into my face. Tears sprang to my eyes, and blood flew from my nose.

“Bit of advice,” he said. “Don’t piss me off. And don’t try your hand at poker.”

He straightened and walked away. The drunk staggered after him. Maybe they’d been in cahoots. I pressed a napkin to my nose. When the bleeding stopped, I lifted my blouse to check the damage. The wound wasn’t much more than a scratch. Or that’s what I told myself. But it was deep enough to bleed like a mother. I grabbed another cloth napkin from the table, folded it, and pressed it against the wound, then tucked my shirt back in, grateful it was dark enough to hide the blood.

Then I yanked out my phone and shot a text to Zarif.

Assaulted at airport. I think Hamid killed.

A response came immediately. You OK?

Still breathing. Okay was relative. I was alive.

I sat in the booth for a while longer, until the bleeding and shaking stopped and the wild rage banked down to a slow smolder. Gonzo sat with me.

Good job, he said. Live to fight another day.

“That why you volunteered for the mission that got you killed?” I asked, trying on snarky.

It fit better than fear.



I was halfway through the security line when I came out of my fog enough to notice a flurry of activity outside the passageway leading toward the terminals. The passenger line stopped moving forward as security agents closed crowd-control ropes and spoke into their radios. On the far side of the cattle chute, two policías went by at a run.

Around me, people—tourists, mostly—chatted in nervous voices.

“I heard some dude was killed,” said a guy in a Hawaiian shirt. “In the men’s bathroom.”

“My sister is out there,” said a woman, looking at her phone screen. “A guy was knifed. She got the news from an airport employee.”

My phone buzzed with a message. I pulled it out. A text from an unknown number. The hair rose on the back of my neck, as if I already knew I’d find something terrible.

Hamid, I thought.

I opened it.

A blond, acne-scarred man wearing a once-tan shirt and green khakis sat slumped in a rain of blood between a toilet and a tiled wall. His large-knuckled hands lay in his lap, the fingers of one hand curled around a knife.

My tormentor.

Someone had slit his throat.





CHAPTER 8

How, one might ask, does a regular citizen get caught up in the shadow lives of men and women who live by subterfuge, conspiracy, assassination, and treason?

All it takes is a single wrong step.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

I shuffled onto the plane as if my feet were shackled. The ticket Zarif had purchased was for the window seat in the front row—first class. The attendant took one look at my bloodied shirt and wounded face and maybe came to her own conclusion about the kind of company I kept. But she was kind, offering a pillow and a stiff drink. I accepted both and tried to shut out the image of the man with the bloody second smile beneath his chin.

But my mind kept circling around the thug’s death, wondering who had seen fit to eliminate him from the equation. Wondering who else had a dog in this fight. If I was lucky, there was someone aside from me and Zarif who cared about Malik’s survival. Maybe the mysterious Strider, the rescuer Malik had mentioned.

If I was unlucky . . .

I shifted in my seat, all too aware of forces swirling invisibly around me.

Did I still have forty-eight hours? Or had that deal died along with the man?

A businessman took the seat next to me. He gave me a polite nod, then leaned back with his own drink, a set of noise-canceling headphones, and the Wall Street Journal. Maybe he was a businessman. Maybe he belonged to Zarif, or to the Alpha.

At this point . . . whatever.

As the plane lifted into the air, I leaned my forehead against the window and touched my fingers to the cold whiskey glass. I watched the lights of Mexico City spread out below me, pinpricks in an ocean of darkness.

Malik, falling away from me while I sat at an impossible distance. I went to Mexico hoping to save his life. But all I’d had to offer was a handful of promises.

Try taking that to the bank, young man.

An icy breeze wafted through the cabin, as if someone had opened a door. I gripped the arm rests and turned in my seat.

Behind me sat two dead men, staring at me with molten eyes. Two of the six men whose lives I’d taken months earlier, while on an investigation with the Denver PD. The men had been killers, rapists, torturers. But they’d also been sons, brothers, husbands. And I’d killed them.

Our ghosts are our guilt.

You failed, one of them said, his lips a ruin.

You will always fail, the other sneered.

They scowled at me, their presence an accusation I had no way to refute. How do you apologize to the dead?

“Can I get you a blanket?”