Page 3 of Fear No Evil

Magdalena Montoya Ellis had been a shoo-in for the CIA. Not only was she fluent in Spanish and French, but her father was a public corruption section chief for the FBI. The Ellises were patriots. Morocco was her third assignment, following Bogotá and Caracas. Here, she portrayed herself as a French fashionista, selling clothing at a boutique not far from thewarehouse in question. Befriending the foreman, Kamal, had been laughably easy.

With very little coaxing, Kamal had taken her out to dinner and for leisurely evening strolls along the waterfront. He hadn’t pressured her for intimacies, thank God. In fact, he’d spilled everything there was to know about the shipments bound for Russia‍—their point of origin and how they would get there.

Now, it was plainly apparent Kamal had been testing her. No doubt he had fed her a string of lies, and a mole in the CIA had reported them all back to him, proving Maggie was a spook, as he obviously suspected.

I’m sorry, Kamal.Despite his radical political convictions, she had genuinely liked the man, though he didn’t hold a candle to her college sweetheart. And Kamal must have liked her, too, because his bodyguard, Farid, whose fists were the size of hams, could have easily killed her. Instead, he’d roughed her up and walked away. At least, she hoped he had.

I have to get out of here.

With the help of the rough earthen wall next to her, Maggie managed to get vertical. Blood slid from her split lip to her chin before dripping onto her Christian Dior blouse.

Gritting her teeth, she shuffled toward her apartment building, a two-story structure of dried clay, entirely whitewashed. Through her one good eye, she plumbed the shadows, terrified Farid would return to finish the job.

The neighbor’s dog began to bark as she reached the building. She stilled, looked, and listened.

Was the dog just barking at her…or was Farid nearby, watching her every move?

The courtyard, with its burbling central fountain and decorative blue tiles, stood quiet. Everyone was having dinner, as evidenced by the aroma of roasting lamb and mint tea.

One ragged step at a time, Maggie dragged herself up the stairs to her second-story flat. The fine hairs at her nape prickled as she spotted her door ajar. Someone had come this way before her, if they weren’t still here. Too bad her Ruger was tucked in the drawer by her bed‍—at least it used to be.

Approaching her door, she listened again. The dog stopped barking, a reassuring sign. What a relief Miles, her half-brother, and his bride, McKenzie, who’d lived with Maggie for several months, had just returned to the States.

Porcelain shards crackled under Maggie’s pumps as she waded inside. So much for her collection of ornamental plates, torn off the wall, shattered and scattered like confetti. They were supposed to be souvenirs from her Moroccan tour.

She would be lucky to have herself as a souvenir at this point.

Eyeing her semi-dark living room, Maggie absorbed the scene of cushions and pillows strewn across the Persian rug for which she had haggled fiercely at the outset of her tour. She hoped to see it again one day‍—only possible if it wasn’t stolen by the time the CIA packed up her stuff and sent it stateside.

She headed for her kitchen, where every dish had been pulled from the cupboards and smashed. Glass and ceramic crunched and squealed beneath her soles as she limped toward the sink. God forbid they’d found her Agency phone, hidden in the false bottom of a Lysol spray bottle.

With a groan, she retrieved it from under the sink, removed the false bottom, and breathed a sigh of relief as the phone fell into her hands.Buíochas le Dia, Thanks be to God, as Jake used to say.

Following a wary glance behind her, she entered the passcode, then the lettersE-X-I-Ton the alphanumeric keypad. That would bring an extraction team to the escape-and-evasion point within one hour. Maggie swallowed hard and ended the call.

If she could make it there in time, she’d be whisked away. Not exactly a triumphant withdrawal, as had been the case in Venezuela two years earlier, when she’d been rescued with a thumb drive full of priceless intel‍—not to mention the most astonishing thing of all: Jake Carrigan, her first and only love, had been the SEAL in charge of the extraction team.

What an exhilarating moment that had been! He’d tucked her under his protective wing and delivered her to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf, only to vanish on her as suddenly as he’d vanished from Paris.

Maggie had made inquiries later, discovering that not only was Jake a Navy SEAL, but he’d been trained by the CIA’s Special Operations Group to protect case officers like herself‍—which was crazy because the time she’d checked on him before that, he’d been working for the Peace Corps. Never in a million years would she have pictured Jake as a Navy SEAL, let alone a SOG.

Limping toward her bedroom, Maggie paused at the sight of her mattress flipped onto its side. The drawer of her bedside table stood open, so the Ruger was gone. Turning away, she skirted the colorful pillows in her wrecked living room to get to her balcony.

How am I going to make it to the exfil site?

With pure Ellis determination, that was how. At her balcony door, she took one last look at the apartment she’d called home. It had never occurred to her that she would be leaving with her tail tucked between her legs.

At least I’m alive.

She stepped outside, pulling the door shut. Her escape-and-evasion plan involved going over the railing, dropping to the flat rooftop of the adjacent building, and crossing that to a fire-escape ladder that would put her on a different alley, one that zigzagged toward the coast. Easy peasy. In a nondescriptmosque about a klick away, an asset would be waiting for her. Supposedly, there was a tunnel under the city that led from the mosque to the ocean, where the extraction team would pick her up.

If she made it that far.

Pausing for strength, Maggie inhaled the warm Moroccan air, forever infused with the sweet and savory scents of couscous,ras el hanout, and fresh-bakedkhubzbread. Her thoughts flitted to the local baker, an informant who was always glad to share the local chatter, like whose son fancied whose daughter.I’ll miss this place.Probably because the French-influenced culture here reminded her of Paris and the joyous months with Jake.

A glance at her watch prompted Maggie to get moving. Only how was she supposed to climb when she could barely even stand?

Lifting her gaze to the stars obscured by a desert haze, the words Jake had shared with her more than once came to mind.“One day, Lena, you’re going to figure out that you can’t save the world by yourself. If you ever need help, just reach up. God’s right there, waiting for you.”

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