Read Incriminating Evidence Online
Authors: Rachel Grant
Cressida gave Dr. Hill her own nod of thanks then took a sip of her shooter. He tipped his head in acknowledgement, but his smile was entirely different from the one he’d given Suzanne. Good. Not just good. Perfect. She might survive this horrible evening after all. If only the translator would show up, she could head to her hotel room and get a few hours sleep before her early flight.
Suzanne stood. “I’m going to talk to Patrick.”
Cressida laughed. “He’s
Patrick
now?”
“Well, if I’m considering having sex with him, I really shouldn’t think of him as ‘Dr. Hill’ anymore.”
Cressida smiled and shooed her with wave. “Go. Hit on the world’s foremost oceanographic explorer. Leave me all alone after what I’ve just been through.”
“If he’s upset you punched Todd, I might be able to convince him not to tank your grant.”
“Well, in that case, give him a blow job, and tell him I suggested it.”
Suzanne winked at her. “The things I do for friendship.” She crossed the bar with the confidence of a woman who always got what she wanted, and Cressida admired her self-assurance.
Alone at the table, she glanced around the noisy nightclub. It was a beautiful, sultry night, in a hot, beguiling place. It was a shame that in this moment, it was the last place in the world she wanted to be.
She pulled out her cell phone. They were seven hours ahead of DC, meaning it was around three in the afternoon there. She tapped out a quick text to her friend, Trina, telling her Todd was in Turkey and asking if she could find out if he’d been acquitted.
As she waited for a reply, she watched Suzanne and Dr. Hill—
Patrick
—on the dance floor. With Suzanne’s entertainment for the night set, she would happily leave, but she still needed the translations.
“My uncle pulled strings to get me out of the US before the trial.”
Cressida jerked her gaze up to see Todd on the other side of the table. She again curled her fingers into a fist. “I don’t give a damn.”
He shrugged. “I’m here because I have unfinished business. With you.”
She jumped to her feet and planted both fists on the table. She enunciated each word carefully. “You do
not
have unfinished business with me. Our business ended the day you stole from the department.”
“Excuse me, Miss Porter? Is this man bothering you?”
She turned to see Hejan, the translator. The wiry Kurd stood in a broad, menacing stance. Todd was bigger, but somehow Hejan managed to look meaner.
She smiled, grateful he’d arrived. He was late, but still his timing was perfect. Her conversation with Todd was decidedly over.
Todd let out an angry roar and slammed the table into her hip. Knocked sideways, she fell, landing hard on her side on the foul nightclub floor. Stunned by Todd’s sudden violence, she was even more shocked when she twisted around to see he held her translator by the throat.
What the hell?
Todd was many rotten things, but he’d never been violent. In decking him, she’d been the one to cross that line. She surged to her feet, ignoring the pain in her hip, determined to intervene before Todd hurt Hejan. Strong arms grabbed her from behind, stopping her. “Let me go!” She struggled against the person who held her.
“Never get in the middle of a dog fight,” the man said in a low tone that didn’t disguise his American accent.
It was over in a flash. One moment, Todd’s hands were wrapped around Hejan’s neck, the next, Todd was being shoved toward the entrance by Hejan, who held a knife to his throat. Hejan ejected Todd from the club then turned to face the packed room of frozen onlookers. The sharp tip caught the light as Hejan sheathed the blade in a practiced, unconscious motion. The shiny surface was clean and bloodless.
He hadn’t hurt Todd, he’d just gotten rid of him. Shocking, but efficient.
She had trouble breathing at how deftly and quickly Hejan had wielded the vicious blade. If she’d stepped in, she could have been seriously injured, or at the very least, she’d have thrown off Hejan’s smooth timing.
The arms that had held her were gone, and she twisted to face the man who’d stopped her, but there was no one behind her. She scanned the faces of several men who sat alone or in groups, wondering which one had stopped her, but no one met her gaze. All eyes were on Hejan as he crossed the lounge to her side.
She almost wondered if she’d imagined it—the chokehold, the knife. It was crazy. “I’m sorry,” she said to Hejan, knowing how vastly inadequate the words were.
The young Kurd shrugged, like it was no big deal. The other patrons returned to their revelry. The world resumed spinning.
She didn’t know what else to say. She reached for the table and pushed it back to line up with the others that ringed the dance floor. Hejan dropped into Suzanne’s vacated chair at the same time Cressida resumed her seat. “I’d offer to buy you a drink,” she said, “but you’re Muslim.”
He smiled. “I’ll have a Coke.” His gaze flicked down her side. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low, raspy voice she could barely hear under the loud music. Todd
had
hurt him.
“I’m fine,” she lied even as her hip throbbed.
He reached into a thin satchel he wore slung across his chest, plucked out an envelope, and handed it to her. “The map and a digital recorder. I recorded translations of the map in several different dialects, so you can hear the pronunciation. Each one is in a separate file, so you can easily play the place names for locals when they don’t understand you. There is a key for the files in papers.”
“I’ve never considered using a digital recorder like that. I can see how that will be helpful. Thank you.” It was brilliant, actually, but she worried how much it would cost her. “I must owe you for the recorder. They aren’t cheap.”
He waved her off. “The university provided it. You must return it when you come back next week, or they’ll bill you for it.”
She let out a small sigh of relief. She’d return it first thing because free was a price she could afford. “Perfect.”
Next, he slid a small card across the table. “My brother’s phone number.”
She tucked the card away, grateful for it. Hejan’s brother, Berzan, had agreed to act as her guide and translator for the week. A guide was vital for this trip, because southeastern Turkey—which bordered Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and was far more conservative than the west—could be considered unsafe for almost any American, especially now, with ongoing fighting with ISIS along sections of the Syrian border. Add to that the fact that she couldn’t speak Kurdish, Turkish, or Arabic, was a woman traveling alone, and her trip was risky at best.
She’d spent the better part of six months planning this excursion—made thankfully cheaper because she was already in the country for the underwater excavation—and had no choice but to make the trip alone. At one point she’d planned to ask Todd to join her, but that ship had crashed, burned, and sunk. Of course, once she’d learned that he was a thief with shady Jordanian connections, she had to wonder if he’d had ulterior motives for being interested in studying ancient illicit trade routes in Kurdish territory.
* * *
I
an couldn’t believe it. The woman with the mean right hook was the next link in Hejan’s cell. He’d been ready to believe Hejan had only intervened because she needed help, but then Hejan handed her an envelope with a mark on the corner. The signal the envelope contained the microchip.
Hejan hadn’t told Ian the courier would be unwitting, which meant this woman could well be a true conspirator who’d knowingly accepted the job of delivering the microchip to the leader of a Kurdish terrorist group. It rankled that he’d considered her interesting—attractive, even—when it was possible she was a traitor.
“Are you certain she’s American?” Zack asked through the earpiece.
“Her accent is American.”
“That can be faked.”
Ian studied her again. Turkey had a wide range of ethnic groups with an equally diverse set of physical attributes. The woman’s dark hair, eyes, and deep tan could easily pass for Middle Eastern. She bore a strong resemblance to the actress Natalie Portman, who, if he remembered correctly, was Israeli. But the way the woman moved, the way she talked, even the way she punched…her mannerisms were all American. “Not under stress like that. She wasn’t faking; she wanted to stop the fight. No way could she have hidden an accent.”
Twenty feet away, the pretty traitor tucked the envelope into her purse.
Ian spoke softly into his drink. “Can’t get a read on this. It’s so…blatant.”
“Get her picture, so it can be run through the known associates database.”
Ian rolled his eyes. He’d been at this far longer than Zack and didn’t need to be told his job.
Rookies.
“Already sent it.”
Hejan and the woman chatted for another minute, then she yawned and glanced at her watch. Hejan nodded and stood. She caught the eye of her blonde friend and waved.
The blonde smiled and returned her attention to the American man she’d cozied up to. It was odd that the blonde hadn’t checked on the brunette after the fight.
The brunette wore a short, midnight blue dress with a snug top cut low enough to reveal that impressive cleavage. She draped her purse over her shoulder just as a man walked by and bumped into her. The bag slipped and dropped to the floor.
She bent to retrieve it with reflexes that showed she hadn’t had much to drink. While she bent over, Hejan got a prime view of her ass while Ian got a glimpse straight down her top. He corrected his initial assessment of her cleavage from impressive to downright spectacular, but a quick glance at Hejan revealed the man’s gaze was fixed on the fallen purse, not the blatant display.
Yeah. Hejan had definitely passed her the chip, and now he was worried.
She slung the long purse strap across the opposite shoulder, so it crossed her chest and wouldn’t be easy to dislodge again, then she swept her long hair off her neck and twisted it in a knot that somehow managed to stay up without a fastener.
With her hair up, her high cheekbones became more prominent. She went from being simply pretty to…well, something more. Irrelevantly and involuntarily, he found himself wondering about her eye color.
Focus, dammit. The microchip is now in play.
Hejan and the woman headed for the exit, but not the main one, which emptied onto the busy Antalya street. No, they went through the hotel entrance. The woman had a hotel room?
Shit.
“Grab her drink and see if you can get a print.” Ian instructed Zack. “I’ll follow and get her room number.”
She had a microchip that held information wanted by at least three countries and two terrorist networks. Ian couldn’t lose her. If she managed to pass it up the line—unwitting or not—then a terrorist organization would have access to the funding they needed to plan and implement a major strike. Ian’s orders were clear: follow the chip, but if there was any chance he’d lose it, take out the carrier by whatever means necessary to stop the data from reaching the group leader.
Hejan was playing a dangerous game, and unwitting or not, the woman was in it up to her beautiful unknown-color eyes.
* * *
I
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About the Author
Four-time Golden Heart® finalist Rachel Grant worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for storylines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco, survey and excavation of many prehistoric Native American sites in the Pacific Northwest, researching an historic concrete house in Virginia, and mapping a seventeenth century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.
She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children and can be found on the web at
www.Rachel-Grant.net
.
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