Killing Time (One-Eyed Jacks) (4 page)

“Not deep enough, apparently.” His gaze narrowed on hers. “How do you know about Operation Slam Dunk anyway?” Even the press hadn’t gotten wind of what had happened that night. He had his own theory about the tap dancing that had gone on behind the scenes to accomplish that silence.

“Like I said. I know everything about you.”

And then she proved it, nut-shelling the case that the Navy had laid out against him with cold-blooded accuracy.

He tried not to listen as she hammered him with bullet points.

Dereliction of duty . . .

Disobeying direct orders . . .

Reckless endangerment . . .

The list went on and on, and all led to the conclusion that he
had
been responsible for the death of his men and those villagers.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, but couldn’t stall a cold sweat that compounded his queasiness as vivid memories of that night gnawed at him like rats.

The helo spinning out of control . . . the ground rocketing up to meet them as he fought to right the bird.

The crash . . .

The explosion . . .

The fire . . .

The stench of blood and burned flesh.

The deal that had cost him everything.

Not a day or night went by that he didn’t see those images. Didn’t hear the screams. Didn’t do his best to forget.

And this woman had brought it all back.

Who was she?

And how the fuck had she gotten that information?

He couldn’t get past that question. The after-action reports, the court-martial transcripts . . . everything about OSD was supposed to have been deleted from the DOD database. No one was supposed to have access to any of it.

Taggart and Cooper, the two other surviving members of the One-Eyed Jacks, had been brought up on charges with him. He knew they wouldn’t talk. He hadn’t had contact with either one of them in eight years and yeah, they hated his guts now, but there was no way in hell they were going to talk—they had the same stakes riding on silence as he did.

“Truth hurts, doesn’t it, Brown?” she asked into the thickening stillness.

“What do you
want
from me?” he ground out. And then it hit him.

“You lost someone over there.” The sudden insight blared through his headache and the nausea.
That’s
what this was about. Someone she cared about had died in Operation Slam Dunk. Somehow
she’d gotten hold of the file and she held him responsible.

Join the club.
Everyone
held him responsible.

“No, I didn’t.”

He honed in on her eyes, knowing what he’d see in them even before he called her on it. “You’re lying.”

“And you’re avoiding. Seven men in your unit died that night. Dozens of civilians . . . many of them children. All because you decided to play Captain America.”

He clenched his jaw until he thought his molars would crack, hating her for throwing the lies in his face. Hating himself for taking it.

“You led those men to their deaths.” She got right in his face again. “You got those people caught in the crossfire. Because you were hotdogging. Because you were playing games with people’s lives.”

“The hell I was!” he roared so unexpectedly she flinched and stumbled backward. “The hell I did!” He strained violently and futilely against the cuffs, desperate to get at her.

He collapsed back on the bed, defeated. Wrung out.

Silence rang in the wake of his shouted denial. He despised himself for the sudden weakness that washed over him, obliterating his bid for apathy. But, Christ, now that he’d said it out loud, he didn’t seem to be able to stop saying it.

“The hell I did.” It came out on a whisper this time, his voice broken, his defenses destroyed.

Humiliated that he’d let her crack him, beyond
his limit with her bitch goddess accusations, he turned away, his eyes stinging, his vision blurred—but not before he saw pity momentarily soften her features.

Fuck her. He didn’t need her pity.

But goddamn, he could use a drink.

Eva steeled herself, watching Brown’s façade crumble. It was a painful thing to witness. Stripped down, naked emotion—that’s what she’d just seen in his eyes. Anguish. Pain. It was all there. Because he was guilty? Because he
wasn’t
guilty? Because he’d sold out rather than fight to prove his innocence?

She pulled it back together and fought the unwanted compassion she had promised herself she would not feel toward this man. No matter how beaten he looked. Guilty or innocent, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was finding out who had dropped the OSD file into her life, why they’d done it, and who was after her because of it.

She was a smart girl. She figured she’d been chosen to open this can of worms because she had the means and skills to delve into the underbelly of the defense department’s dirtiest secrets—and she had the motivation. Ramon.

“If you were innocent of the charges, why make the deal? Why not defend yourself in court?”

For a long moment, he wouldn’t look at her. Finally, he swiped his cheek against his shoulder . . . and she steeled her defenses again. She was actually relieved when he turned his head and Primetime was back—all attitude, arrogance, and defiance.

“You’re the one with all the answers,
chica.
You’re telling me you haven’t figured it out?”

“Enlighten me,” she said, her voice firm.

He made a weary sound, then actually answered her question. “You can’t fight city hall. Or the combined might of the U.S. military.”

She moved back toward the bed. “But if you’re innocent, as you claim you are—”

“Oh, please. Prisons are full of innocent men. Just ask ’em. They’ll all tell you the same thing. They didn’t do it. No one buys that, either.”

She breathed deep, fighting the urge to believe him. “So . . . what? Someone set you up as a scapegoat?”

“Scapegoat, slow-moving target. Take your pick.”

“Then who
was
responsible for what went wrong that night?”

He pushed out a humorless laugh. “If I knew the answer to that question, do you honestly think we’d be having this conversation?”

“You’ve got to have some ideas.”

He slowly shook his head. “None. And you know what? I don’t give a shit anymore. But I do care about how you got your hands on that file.”

He held her gaze for a long, challenging moment,
making her uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t explain. Maybe because underneath all that bluster, an unexpected hint of vulnerability bled through.

Or maybe because she really did want Brown to be a good guy after all. Ramon had been a good guy—one of the best.

•   •   •

“It’s Jane,” she said when Stingray answered his phone. Jane Smith was one of the many aliases that protected not only her identity, but her bank accounts—many of which the man on the other end of the line had filled quite nicely. He wasn’t her only source of income but he was one of her most lucrative. He was, however, the only one who shared her bed.

“I’d started to think you’d forgotten who signs your paychecks.”

Even though he was thousands of miles away, his voice rang crystal clear through her earbud. Before they’d finally met face-to-face, she’d known him only as Stingray. But after doing a couple of jobs for him, she’d had more than a passing curiosity about what this particular man looked like. She’d been fairly certain he was American. Now she knew everything about him. “Yes, well, I’ve been a little busy.”

The smell of exhaust from the busy street one story below rolled in through the open doors that led to a small, narrow terrace adjacent to the one belonging to room 203, where her assignment plus one were totally unsuspecting. The plus one both intrigued and amused her.

Perspiration trickled between her breasts as she moved away from the doors and lay down on the bed. “Your girl’s a mover.” She stared at the languid ceiling fan that did little to cut the night’s suffocating heat. “Keeping up with her has pretty much taken all of my attention.”

“She’s not
my
girl. She’s your assignment. Please tell me you haven’t lost her.”

Because she understood he had much on the line, and because the sound of his voice tripped a lot of triggers other than anger, she let the insult slide. And because she was his business associate first, his lover second, she never forgot her professional code. Always keep the customer happy. “I’ve got her.”

“So what’s going on?”

“At the moment we appear to have a little hostage situation.”

“You’re not serious.”

She heard the laughter in his voice along with the surprise. She had always liked his laugh. Liked his no-nonsense manner. The first time they’d ever done business, she’d found herself thinking that if she ever met him, she was going to screw him. His smoke-and-whiskey voice—a pleasant departure from the guttural Arabic or Farsi contacts she so often dealt with—had
that
kind of effect on her.

“Have you ever known me to joke?”

“Point taken. So fill me in on what’s happened since you landed in Lima.”

“She made a beeline to
El Tocón Sangriento
—I
wouldn’t recommend the sangria, by the way—where she came on to this guy like a seasoned
pepera
girl.”

“
Pepera
?”

“
Pepera. Brichera
. Streets of Lima are full of girls who rob and drug men who can’t keep it in their pants.”

“Consider me educated,” he said with another hint of a smile in his voice.

Yeah. She had definitely fallen in lust with that voice.

“So, she seduces him—he’s already drunk so it’s no big trick—lures him outside into the alley, drugs him, and hauls him to this dive of a hotel. Last time I checked, she had him cuffed to the bed.” Before setting up her audio surveillance, she’d made a foray out onto the terrace with a mirror on an extendable shaft. It hadn’t taken much to size up the situation. “She’s keeping a bead on him with his own gun. The drunken fool fell for her honeypot trap like an amateur.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“I’m supposed to know that? You sent me to watch her, not introduce myself to her playthings.”

And as with all of her jobs, even for him, she made a point to limit her information to absolute need to know. She didn’t want to know motive, she didn’t want to know their history; she only needed to know what he wanted done.

“Describe him to me. No. Wait. I have a feeling I can tell you exactly what he looks like. Big guy? Tall? Diamond stud, left ear? Silver screen material?”

He was spot-on right. “So you know him.”

A heavy silence passed. “Yes. I know him.”

Despite the pulsating heat of the city sifting in through the open doors, the dangerous undercurrents in his voice shot a chill down her spine. The hair on the back of her arm stood at attention as the adrenaline rush she always craved mainlined through her bloodstream.

“Have you been able to eavesdrop on their conversation?”

“If you mean, did I install a bug, the answer is no. They got here before I did, so there was no opportunity to plant one. I did get a room next to theirs, however. Lucky for you I never leave home without my Stealth Gear.”

The little black box amplified sound; the supersensitive ceramic contact microphone fed into a pair of earphones for audio monitoring and allowed her to listen through walls several inches thick. The device was reliable to a fault, unless there was an air gap in the wall that could garble the transmission and provided the batteries didn’t die. Unfortunately, there was an air gap so her intel gathering was limited.

“I’ve only been able to pick up bits and pieces of their conversation. One thing keeps coming up. Something about Operation Slam Duck?”

A long silence, then a correction. “Slam Dunk.”

“Yes. That could work. Whatever it is, they’re pretty angry at each other. She’s accused him of getting
a bunch of people killed in Afghanistan. For the most part, he’s telling her to go take a flying leap.”

“Sounds like Brown.”

Whether she liked it or not, now she knew the man’s name. “Friend of yours?”

“I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he said, ignoring her question, which in itself was telling. He definitely knew Brown. Interestingly, the steel in his voice was heavy with regret.

Her pulse rate kicked up again because she knew where this was heading. Most of her contracts started out as surveillance and ended up as something different entirely. Which was why she never traveled without the MP5K.

“Change of plans,” he said abruptly. “Take them both out. Tonight.”

Anticipation kicked up her heart rate. Now things got dicey. And lucrative. “It’s going to cost you.”

“Triple the agreed-upon amount.” No hesitation. “Deposit to the same account?”

All righty then. “That will work, yes.”

“The money will be there within the hour.”

She smiled. “And may I say that I not only like the way you do me, I like the way you do business.”

“I don’t want either one of them leaving Lima alive.” The lethal edge in his voice said that friendly conversation was over. “Make it look like a lovers’ spat. A drug deal gone sideways. I don’t care. Just get it done and get out of there.”