single small, high window. The one that would hurt the most—and the one her chosen victim, the man still scrabbling around on the floor trying to find a way to clamp both hands to his bleeding buttock at once and not leave himself entirely vulnerable from the front, had been prepared to use on these women.
She crouched before him, the Beretta held in a deceptively casual grip in the hand that rested on her knee, and gave the knife a speculative look before she turned her gaze on the man.
“Woman,” he said. “American. You are nothing to me. Your people betrayed us.”
Kemeni, all right, even if his tan and green clothing hadn’t given him away. Kemeni, and convinced that the recently deceased Frank Black had been working with the States when he’d supplied the rebels with arms. Instead, Black had done so at the behest of Jonas White, a man who liked to play whole countries as if they were game pieces, and whose name popped up in connection with far too many successful black market ventures.
“My people were never behind you,” Selena told him. “And fortunately for my ego, you’re nothing to me, either.” Except a source of information. “Are you just out to curdle some cheese here, or is there some purpose behind this attack?”
“Our business is not for your ears.”
“Shouldn’t have shot you in the ass,” Selena muttered. “I scrambled your brains.” She gave a meaningful heft of the knife, eyeing various parts of his body in the most obvious way. And then she slid her eyes over to the woman who comforted her sister.
The man took note. His expression grew more stubborn.
“Well, maybe you aren’t Kemeni after all,” she said. “The Kemenis have honor and purpose—of a sort, anyway. But these women have more honor than you.”
The man’s face darkened; his lips worked. “I spit on your—”
Selena prodded him with the knife in the vicinity of his bloody butt cheek. “Don’t,” she warned him. Then she held the knife out to the woman in the punjabi. When the woman hesitated, Selena gestured with the knife, affirming her intent.
The woman’s fingers wrapped around the hilt to grow white at the knuckles, a grim determination taking over her expression. “No one need know how he died,” she said softly. “They need not know it was I.”
“Might as well pin it on me,” Selena told her. “Although if he answers my questions, perhaps you could settle for scarring him in some way that he would never admit came from a woman’s hand.”
The woman only smiled.
“You cannot expect me to take this seriously!” the wounded man shouted.
Selena had to give him credit. For a man bleeding badly from his tush, his bleeding partner offering nothing but the sullen silence of someone who hopes not to be noticed, he had courage.
Or perhaps he simply truly didn’t understand his situation.
Selena gave him a beatific smile. “I expect you to take it very seriously.” She used her gun to tick off points on the fingers of her other hand. “Point—I speak seriously kickin’ Berzhaani. Point—I’m very good from this end of a gun. Point—Did you see me sweat when I took you boys down? Now take a moment to think. Think hard. What sort of American woman are you likely to find here in the heart of Berzhaan with all these things in her favor?”
Someone to take seriously, that’s who.
He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to hold on to his self-righteous rage and scorn, glaring at her from deep-set eyes just made for the expression.
“Did the Kemenis send you?” she asked.
He didn’t answer directly—but he looked away. It was enough.
“I gather they didn’t send you to behave like this in particular.” She tapped the muzzle of the Beretta thoughtfully against her knee. The motion kept his attention on the weapon—helped him to realize that this was no lady’s pistol, but a gun of sturdy heft that fit comfortably in her equally sturdy hands. That she wielded it without a second thought. “But here you are, causing trouble in an otherwise unremarkable location. The shrine is fascinating, but not a political touchstone.” And the Kemenis, suddenly bereft of their American benefactor, were desperate. Desperate enough to make a real move on the country’s power base? Her eyes narrowed; for the first time she let a glimpse of her anger show through. “But this is close enough to Suwan to cause alarm…close enough to draw off troops in response.” And I’ve just initiated that by calling in. And now the capital would be more vulnerable to terrorist action.
Again he looked away, trying to hide the subtle retreat with an uncomfortable shift to relieve pressure on his wound.
“You’re a sacrifice,” Selena said. “Contributing to a larger goal….”
Suwan…the embassy…the capitol. One or all of them, the real targets.
He glared again, and the curl returned to his lip as he opened his mouth to say something crude.
She smacked her pistol against his shin, a casual but precise blow that struck the crucial nerves there, numbing his leg with excruciating pain and with very little effort on her part. He made a wordless noise of surprise and gaped as his eyes watered, mouth quickly pursing for more imprecations.
“Don’t,” she said sharply. “Just…don’t.” She exchanged a glance with the woman who now held the knife, saw the uncertainty rising there and straightened. “I’m not sure,” she said to the woman, “but it might well be that his humiliation is complete without any extra scarring, especially if he were cast out at your doorstep in a pretty bundle for the National troops. It’s entirely up to you, of course. I’m afraid I have to leave now.”
The woman in the chador leaned toward the other, murmuring something worried.
“A boy,” said the first woman. “Did you see—?”
Selena nodded. “I sent him up to the shrine to hide, with the promise I would take all blame for it. I’m sure he’s waiting for you there.”
“Thank you,” said the woman in the chador, sitting for that moment like a queen on her throne instead of a nearly violated woman on her thoroughly rumpled bed. But she could not hide a quivering twitch of her mouth or the tears of relief welling in her eyes.
Selena thought it was her cue to leave. That and the distant sound of helicopter blades thumping the air. She emerged from the house with caution, the automatic gunfire still clear in her memory—but either no one else had intended to come to this far end of the town, or the arriving troops had caught their attention. She made it to her Russian Moskvich sedan without incident, folding herself into the driver’s seat with the Beretta in easy reach. She hoped to swing around the village and make it into Suwan without any trouble—but if trouble came along, she’d be ready for it.
She had to reach the embassy. She had to warn the ambassador…and she had to warn Berzhaan.
The Kemenis were rising.
Chapter 2
C olin Jones slung his duffel through the door of the modest D.C. condo he shared with Selena. Modest by choice and lifestyle as
