Desert Dark (35 page)

“Jack possessed a single-minded determination regarding his career goals. That's why I chose him to investigate you. He was the perfect recruit: eager, intelligent—but malleable. Not like you. From the moment I read your profile I knew you'd be trouble. But Jack . . .” He sighs. “Jack disappointed me. We supplied all the evidence he needed, but his feelings for you interfered with his job. He told you, didn't he? That I still suspected you.” Nadia doesn't answer. “I knew I'd lost him.”

Past tense. Jack was malleable. Jack's already dead
. “How will you explain two student murders?” she asks. She hears Hashimoto
Sensei's voice in her head:
Be smart, Nadia-san. Keep him talking. You are stronger than this
.

“Won't everyone be surprised when they find out you and Jack were
both
working as double agents. We'll plant the gun that shot Alan between your mattress and box spring. We'll throw in a couple one-way plane tickets to Afghanistan. Imagine, terrorists right here on our own campus.”

“But Libby and Alan know it wasn't me. We were together when Alan was shot. Are you going to kill them too?”

“No one will doubt you were working with someone. Your accomplice has been apprehended already.” The dean points to Jack's body on the carpet. “I understand he was not with his team when the shots were fired. Trust me, Nadia. I'm doing you a favor, taking care of this situation in-house. If Alan's grandfather gets a hold of the people he thinks shot his grandson, things will take an ugly, ugly turn. You would be
praying
for death.”

So he does know
. “What do you mean?”

“Never you mind.”

The noise in her head begins to quiet. “Who are you working for?”

“You're full of questions tonight, aren't you?”

“You're going to kill me anyway; why not indulge my curiosity?” The steadiness of her voice shocks her.

Dean Wolfe smiles. “I work for America.”

“You're not CIA.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “The CIA can't do what we do. The CIA merely identifies problems. My organization eradicates them. We are called the Nighthawks. We're not bound by the rules of the United Nations. We do what the president is incapable of—we protect the citizens of the United States of America by any means necessary.”

Nadia slips her hand in her pocket. She wraps her fingers around the deer gun.
He won't kill me here if he doesn't have to—too messy. But if he takes me to the desert, my body may never be found
.

“We are a small assembly of men and women who
know
what goes on out there. We have no red tape to cut through; we do what needs to be done. If that means we eliminate an enemy of the state, we do so, regardless of his—or her,” the dean pauses to glare at Nadia, “international standing. It is absurd that known enemies of this great nation are allowed to create and maintain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I don't care what the Geneva Convention states. Anti-American organizations must be abolished.”

“And Damon is part of this?” Nadia guesses.

“Damon's done all he can for us. He isn't a team player. He went over his contact's head, refused a direct order—to kill
you
, by the way—and jeopardized our entire operation. A man who won't follow orders makes for a useless agent. I knew he'd fail us eventually. Damon has no ideology. He is motivated by his need for vengeance. Once he completes his revenge fantasy, he will have no loyalty to us whatsoever. The shot in the canyon was meant for Damon, not Alan. It's a shame too. We put a lot of time and money into that boy. Maybe too much time, as it turns out. He's smarter than we knew.”

“How so?”

“Damon has amassed evidence against us. But his time is limited; we know how to find him. Sadly, if he'd died in the canyon, you wouldn't be here. We would've handed his body to the CIA. With Damon's death they'd have their double, you would be exonerated, everybody goes home happy. But our shooter missed.”

She doesn't bother pleading—swearing to keep his secrets. Wolfe is not stupid. “Your cause sounds just,” Nadia lies.

“Don't bother, Miss Riley. I have no thoughts of recruiting you. I didn't want you here, and I don't want you there.” Wolfe strolls to the door. “Where is he?” He looks into the sitting room.

As he turns his back, Nadia leaps from the chair and rolls across his desk, firing at him as she launches herself over the wood. Her head hits the lamp and it shatters on the floor, leaving the room in darkness. Wolfe responds faster than she expects. He
drops behind the abandoned chair and fires back. A searing pain pierces her side, like she's been stabbed with a hot poker. She slides off the back of the desk and falls to the floor.

Her ears ring from the closeness of the short-barrel shot. She can't remember if the deer gun is a single-use weapon. To be safe, she tosses it aside and withdraws the second gun from her pocket. Her eyes rapidly adjust to the darkness. She pulls herself into the empty space under his desk. Wolfe's heavy breathing surrounds her. The heaving sound closes in from all around—both sides, above her.

She realizes she's making the noise.

I can't stay here. I'm trapped
. Nadia holds her breath and listens. The ringing continues. It's all she can hear. She crawls to the side of the desk. With her back against the wood, she pokes her head around the corner.

Wolfe has left his position behind the chair. She scans the room, looking for a dark shape or movement.

Can I make it to the door? Is he still in the room? He'll shoot me in the back when I run. Maybe he left—is he in the sitting room waiting for me?

Nadia creeps around to the front of the desk. She crouches on her knees and peers through his doorway into the sitting room.

She hears a whisper on the carpet near the broken glass.
He's on the other side of the desk
. She's a moment too late.

“Drop it,” he says from behind.

He'll kill her. She has no doubt. These are her last moments on earth. Death closes around them, watching, waiting.

“Drop it!” he yells.

She rolls onto her back and fires. She hits his right shoulder. The force of her shot knocks his arm back as his weapon discharges. His bullet screams past her ear. It lodges into the floor beside her head.

Wolfe drops his gun as he cries out. He touches his shoulder. He stares at the blood on his fingers. His face reddens and twists in anger. He drops to his knees, grabs at her neck. She pushes her
gun into his abdomen and fires again. The feeble
click, click
of an empty gun responds.

“Single-use, Nadia,” the dean grunts through gritted teeth, squeezing her throat. Flecks of spit fly from his mouth and land on her face. His breath is heavy and sour. “You should've paid closer attention to your training.”

His grip tightens around her neck. She claws at his hands but they're like steel. She tries to force her arms between his, to push his hands apart, but his elbows are locked. No oxygen finds her lungs—no blood pumps to her brain. She doesn't have much time.

Sensei's voice in her head:
Seven seconds
.

“Less mess,” he whispers, “but such an ugly way to go.”

Six seconds
.

Nadia's face grows hot. The pressure behind her eyes builds to an unbearable level. Darkness swallows her peripheral vision; all she sees is his sneer.
Five
. The room quiets.
Four
. Her body weakens.
Three
. She remembers the poisoned pen.
Two
.

She slips the pen from her sleeve and clicks out the tip. With her last second of consciousness, she jabs the sharp, poisoned needle between his ribs.

Wolfe releases his grip and grabs at the pen. Nadia rolls onto her side, retching. Each inhalation feels like knives in her trachea. The dean leans forward. His shallow breathing rasps through his mouth in quick, tiny breaths.

He falls face down and lays motionless beside her.

She feels weak, and very tired. Nadia touches her stomach. The burning continues and she doesn't know why. Her hand is wet, the color of dark wine. The blood still seeps. Her shirt clings to her; a warm, sticky wetness.

The urge to drift off is overpowering. She always thought at the moment of death she'd find the will to fight, to live. But she doesn't have the strength. She doesn't care anymore. She just wants to sleep.

This isn't so bad
. Nadia closes her eyes to succumb to the ocean of peace.

Someone shakes her. “Leave me alone,” she whispers, her voice inaudible.

“Hold on!” The voice is too loud, intrusive in her silent space. “Please, hold on! An ambulance is on the way!”

Summoning all her strength, Nadia opens her eyes. The last thing she sees before her heart stops beating is Hashimoto Sensei leaning over her.

Damon tries to control the rage building in his chest. His thoughts wander back to the canyon and his blood pressure spikes, squeezing his heart. The cold air whipping across his face doesn't cool him—it infuriates him. Reminds him of a drill back in Baltimore. His trainers filled a hot tub with ice water in the dead of winter and made him stay in till he passed out. Then they'd warm him up and do it again.

Tortured and starved him in the name of education. He'd only been fourteen.

Deep breaths, man. You'll get yours
.

He hadn't chosen this line of work. He'd been recruited by the director of the public library—the man who'd greeted him and his little brother every week. The director had been impressed with Damon's book choices: organic chemistry, evolution, the art of warfare, true stories written by ex-military. Occasionally he and Damon would grab a sandwich after the library closed. Then one night Roberts joined them.

Damon refused their first few offers. Yeah, the money tempted him, but risking his life to serve his country wasn't how he planned to make a buck. Plus, he was responsible for Gabriel: picking him up at school, dropping him at the rec center. He
told Roberts, “Even if I wanted to join you—which, no offense, I don't—I've got my little brother.”

But after Gabriel's death, they got through.

The pickup truck driving him from Phoenix to the small border town of Nogales, Arizona, skids to a dusty stop. He jumps down from the bed.
“¡Gracias!”
he calls to the driver, tapping on the tailgate. He waits in the shadows, watching the empty intersection, thinking about his little brother. If Damon hadn't been so self-involved, if he'd joined the Nighthawks the first time they asked, Gabriel would still be alive. Damon would've known what he was seeing, known what to do.

He'd identified the vehicle. Picked the driver out of a lineup. And because of some stupid technicality, that son of a bitch walked right out of the police station with his high-priced lawyer. The police couldn't do anything.

Agent Roberts came back to him a few months after Gabriel died. Didn't say a word, just touched his shoulder and handed him a Polaroid. The man who killed his baby brother, face up on the pavement, eyes open wide. His blood filling the cracks in the concrete. A bullet hole in the middle of his head. He'd seen that shot coming.

The next day, Damon Moore began his training.

He considers heading back to Phoenix straight away to seek his revenge, but common sense outweighs his anger. He'll get even with Hayden. If he goes now, it'll be like showing up late to the party. And he makes a point of never being the last man to arrive.

Anyway, it'll be a lot more fun if Hayden doesn't see it coming. Damon pictures him now, scared, pacing the floor. Every noise shooting fear through his body.

He better hope I get to him before Granddaddy Cohen figures out what went down
.

A block away, on the corner of Mariposa and Grant, Damon finds the pay phone with the false bottom. The trap door is hidden under the heavy metal box that collects the coins. He slides his knife along the edge to loosen the seal. These phone booths are scattered across the country in case an agent needs to bolt.

At the start of his training Damon spent hours memorizing the locations, four to a state. Every weekend for two years, while his mother thought he was stocking shelves in a warehouse, Damon studied the ins and outs of clandestine operations. He pored over the manuals: lock-picking, cover and concealment, basic code-breaking, escape and evasion. And a never-ending list of Black-Ops case files.

The box is stuck. Damon jams his knife inside, up to the hilt, and then sharply twists. Basic physics. He pries the metal. Inside, he finds the plastic-wrapped package. A truck drives by his corner and slows. Damon slips the parcel under his arm and bends down to tie his shoe. The truck moves on.

The weight of the thick envelope feels good in his hands. He slices it open: tucked inside is a passport with no photo and a unisex name, a loaded gun, a prepaid Visa card and three thousand dollars cash. He's sure his former employers don't mean for him to benefit from the stash, but they haven't had time to clear out the boxes.

Damon waits until the Shop-Mart opens. He's tired, but alert—on the lookout for irregular activity. He watches the first wave of staff and customers as they enter the store. Everything looks cool, so he goes in.

He buys new clothes and clean shoes—a half-size too big in case anyone tries to track him, a roll of double-wide clear packing tape with a matte finish, and an iron. A pack of razor blades, and he's good to go.

He stops by the photo shop to request a passport picture.

In the bathroom he uses the baby-changing station as an ironing board. He cuts a piece of tape the length of a passport page. With steady hands, he smoothes the tape over the photo. He irons the page to heat-seal the edges and trims the excess with a razor blade.