with it.
She’d just lifted the reins when her cell phone rang, the Looney Tunes riff she’d installed upon returning home from Berzhaan. Her horse startled, head raised and ears swiveling, and she shifted seat and leg just enough to reassure him. The Velcro closure of the pommel bag yielded to her grip and she slipped the phone out just as it was ready to give up on her and switch over to voice mail.
She didn’t bother with much of a greeting. Very few people had this number. “I’m here,” she said, without hesitating to check the caller ID.
“Miss Jones.”
“Shaw Jones,” she corrected the man, hunting her memory for a name to go with that familiar, gravelly voice.
“We need you back at Langley.”
She stilled. The DDO, that’s who she had on the other end of this call. Deputy Director of Operations. The man who would make the ultimate decision about her readiness for working counterterrorism.
Except he wouldn’t be calling her himself if that’s what this was about. In fact, she couldn’t think of any reason he’d be calling her himself.
Without asking any of the questions bouncing around in her mind, she said, “On the soonest flight, sir.”
“We’ll have a chopper pick you up in forty-five minutes. I assume you can get down off that mountain by then?”
She didn’t even ask. He’d talked to Christine. He had the best GPS tracking system in the world and the tech to latch on to her protected phone…it didn’t matter. He knew what he knew. “If this horse is as good as advertised,” she told him, already heading toward the trail and mentally calculating where she could cut downhill between switchbacks.
But his next words stopped her short. “You should know,” he said, “JOXLEITNER missed his pickup.”
Selena froze in the saddle, her world spiraling in around those words. No sight, no sensation, only the barest awareness of the horse prancing sideways beneath her. Not Cole. Not now. “He—”
“You’ll be briefed on the plane.” The man hesitated— not out of uncertainty, that was clear enough. Out of courtesy, to give her more time to process the news. “We’re sending you in to bring him back.”
Chapter 6
Selena handed over the reins as the helicopter approached, calling back her apologies for bringing in a hot horse even as she sprinted off for her bungalow and the lightweight suitcase she’d brought.
The young woman working the stables—what was her name, Teal?—this morning didn’t seem surprised. In fact, she grinned widely and waved as Selena left her behind. Typical precocious Athena student. Christine didn’t seem surprised by the turn of events, either, and as Selena came bursting back out of the bungalow, Christine met her with an electric golf cart, gesturing for Selena to toss the suitcase in the back.
Selena almost said, How—? but Christine preempted her. “I got a call. No, I don’t know why. I just know that chopper’s here for you.”
Selena said, “Cole.”
It was enough. Christine’s mouth set in a grim line as she revved the little cart up to its top speed, not waiting for Selena to settle into place. They zipped past a line of young women running with light packs, gleaming with sunscreen against the desert morning sun. “Athena!” the girls shouted after them.
Selena knew how fast information spread here. The girls, returned from their field trip, knew who she was, what she’d done in Berzhaan, and what she was doing at the Farm—and all before they’d finished brushing their teeth. She grinned, for an instant lost in flash memories of her own days here.
And then suddenly she was clasping Christine’s hand in a goodbye, climbing into the massive Bell 430 helicopter while ducking rotor wash and dragging her suitcase along behind. Christine stood by the cart at the edge of the wash, her short white hair whipping in the wind and her hand protecting her eyes. Selena pointed at her borrowed boots as she reached for the door. “I’ll send them back!”
Christine waved off her concern with a you must be kidding look and Selena settled back into the seat, buckling up as the pilot lifted off. Better to think about boots than to think about Cole.
Briefed on the plane. No kidding.
Selena sat in the luxurious Bombardier Learjet, slowly realizing that no amount of ventilation could obscure the results of her hasty downhill ride. Selena sweat, not so bad. Horse sweat…definitely lingering. “Sorry,” she’d said to the pilot of the lightweight craft as he’d greeted her upon boarding. “I was—”
And he’d already been nodding. “So I see. Well, make yourself at home in a different kind of leather seat. There are materials waiting for you on the table.”
Selena jammed her suitcase into the overhead and dumped her shoulder-slung leather briefcase—worse for the wear since Berzhaan, but she wasn’t about to give it up—on the window seat as she plunked herself into the aisle seat at the executive table. The folder waiting there was red, sealed with official stickers, and shouted I’m full of secret stuff. She instantly broke the seal, somehow restraining herself from dumping the contents wholesale onto the table. At some point the plane rolled down the runway and lifted into the air, but she couldn’t have said when.
There wasn’t all that much material in the folder. A summary, for her benefit: Cole had been called back into the field because they’d seen a perfect opportunity to use the Berzhaani reporter persona he’d established during the hostage crisis before he’d removed the disguise and ended up blazed across the front page of national and international newspapers. Au naturel, so to speak.
She took a moment to absorb the irony of that. Cole had come to Berzhaan unauthorized, on his own time, and ultimately had been released from his contract because of it. The agency hadn’t even paid for treatment of the leg he’d broken in the process of helping to defeat the terrorists, although the state department had happily picked up the bill. But now the CIA had called on Cole to use the very persona he’d developed during that incident.
These are your people now, she reminded herself, and went on to read the mission brief.
Cole Jones had gone to Berzhaan to locate and retrieve a Afghan man lost in mid-defection—Dr. Aymal. Selena went hunting for a first name and didn’t find it, and then realized the man must be Pashtun—a culture that generally took on surnames only to make dealing with Western nations more convenient. Aymal was this man’s lone name, and he didn’t appear to have any need for such convenience.
Feeling the pressure of the allied hunt for terrorists across the Mideast, Aymal had made the leap to the other side, reaching out to the States with promises of information about both Iran-to-Iraq weapons sales and impending terrorist strikes across organizations. CIA officers had gotten him from Afghanistan to Berzhaan…and then lost him and nearly one of their own in an ambush. Aymal, it seemed, had gotten away but still had nowhere to go.
Cole had gone in to find him. To do what he did best, which was to navigate his way through high-stakes circumstances that couldn’t be planned to the last detail. Going into Berzhaan, he’d had only a number of contacts and pickup arrangements.
And this time, he’d missed one.
