Page 5 of Fear No Evil

By the time they reached the top of the stairs, the burst of gunfire was over. Jake bore her through an open door, out onto a long, dark pier where starlight winked through the haze overhead, and a warm, wet breeze blew over them.

He stepped down into a rigid-inflatable craft that rocked against the pier, then sat with her across his lap. The boat pitched as several more SOGs jumped in. The stealth motor thrummed to life, scarcely audible over the slapping water. Cooler air streamed over her as they pulled away.

Up and over waves they went, kicking up sea spray that swirled around them and dampened every inch of her. The glow of the Casablanca cityscape faded, leaving nothing but a star-studded sky above and waves below that subsided into swells.

Jake asked his men to report in. One of them indicated he’d been nicked by a bullet, but nothing too serious. Another stated that the target was dead.

Jake scowled down at her. “Did you know you were followed?”

She had trouble getting her tongue to cooperate. “Possibly.”

“Who did this to you?”

There was no mistaking his fury, but she wasn’t authorized to tell him. “My fault. I was played.”

He adjusted his hold, cradling her like he never meant to let her go. The thighs she sat across were as dense as tree trunks. The gangly young man she’d loved in Paris had morphed into something more.

She had so many questions to ask him. But she was too drugged to speak.

Their motor cut off abruptly, and a hulking shape emerged from the dark, scarcely visible against the night sky. They coasted silently into an enclosure‍—the port of a Navy vessel, given the smell of motor oil and steel and the sound of sloshing water. With a low hum, the jaws of the port closed behind them, and the lights blinked on.

Half a dozen sailors stood around what resembled an indoor swimming pool. They helped to moor and stabilize their craft.

Jake managed to clamber off the RIB without handing her off to anyone. Maggie’s head lolled on his shoulder. Her wet clothing made her shiver. Even so, the urge to fall asleep was overwhelming.Stay awake!But the morphine he’d given her was most likely dosed for a man twice her size.

His boots rang along a metal corridor before he ducked into a room that smelled of antiseptic. When he laid her gently on a gurney, she clung to the sleeve of his night ops uniform.

“S’ay wi’ me.”

Her request made him hold her gaze. He didn’t wear glasses anymore. The Navy must have corrected his vision.

“You need a doctor, Lena. And I can’t stay.”

His terse reply betrayed a certain level of frustration. Was he mad at her? Sensing him about to leave, some desperate emotion pushed tears into her eyes. “Don’t go.”

With a firming of his lips that was all too familiar, he peeled her left hand from his sleeve, regarded her bare fourth finger for a split second, and then brushed his lips across her knuckles.

The sweet gesture made her heart clutch.Oh, Jake, I miss you!

“Be well.” He released her, then swiveled on his soles, ducked out the door, and disappeared.

Again? Her heart unraveled like a spool of thread. Why did Jake blow in and out of her life like this without any explanation? It was crazy.

CHAPTER 2

She was crazy. At least Maggie Ellis feared that was the case, though the in-house psychiatrist at the CIA called it PTS, Post-Traumatic Stress‍—not necessarily a disorder unless it never went away. She shook her head, lamenting her weakness. One bad experience, and suddenly she was falling apart? Ellises were made of sterner stuff than that. But Dr. Richards had prescribed a twelve-month hiatus from casework, and Maggie had been given an analyst’s job at Langley.

Just two months in paperwork purgatory was enough to make anyone go nuts; Maggie couldn’t fathom doing another ten. Gritting her teeth the entire time, she became a nine-to-five desk jockey while doubling down on convincing Dr. Richards that she was all healed from her nightmare in Morocco.

And apparently, he’d fallen for it, for she’d received instructions this last week to pack a suitcase for an overnight in New York City to meet with her boss’s boss. This morning, she’d taken the Amtrak from Union Station in D.C. to Penn Station in Manhattan. She went straight to the hotel to check in and to change. And now she was braving the August heat by walking to the clandestine CIA station instead of taking a taxi.

Her destination was just six blocks from the hotel and only one block from the United Nations Headquarters. A brisk walk past the latter would dispel her jitters.

She wouldn’t have been summoned here unless she was about to get briefed on a new assignment.Buíochas le Dia. Funny how she never forgot Jake’s Gaelic phrases. But what if she wasn’t ready?

To bolster her confidence, Maggie wore a black sheath dress under an emerald-green cropped jacket that matched her eyes. It was a little too warm for the jacket, even one with three-quarter sleeves. To compensate, she wore her long raven hair in a ponytail that twitched behind her as she walked.

The staccato of her leggy stride turned the heads of men and women alike, assuring her she looked her best. But even with a newly purchased Ruger strapped to the inside of her left thigh, her gaze darted nervously toward every door and alley as she coursed the sidewalk.

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