Kate drummed her fingers on top of the stainless-steel interrogation table. Other than the skeletal chair she'd claimed and the empty one opposite her, there was nothing else within these four claustrophobic walls save the closed door across the room and her increasingly raw, jangled nerves. If anyone had told her as little as two and a half hours ago that she'd be spending the afternoon in an interview room at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, she'd have dragged them to the VA hospital in Little Rock to see Dr. Manning...for a psych eval of their own.
And yet, here she was, waiting none-too-patiently for over ten minutes to speak with yet another Army CID agent. Though like her, the man was no longer authorized to carry those credentials. Of course, the removal of Joe's badge had been a bit more violent and definitely more permanent than her own.
But the strangest part of all?
While the entire two-and-a-half hour journey to get inside this room still felt surreal, it also felt good. She felt good.
What the heck was up with that?
She knew what Dr. Manning would say. Fortunately, the shrink hadn't had a chance to return the voicemail she'd left when she was still in Arkansas, driving to whoever's surgical consulting office that really was in Manchin, so she'd yet to suffer Manning's I told you so firsthand.
Okay, so the shrink wouldn't actually use those words.
But Kate could hear them...and she was definitely feeling them. She had been since the moment she'd cleaned the figurative bloodstains from her very own silver bullet and given Fort Leavenworth's current commandant a call. Despite the fact that Colonel Stillwater was away from Leavenworth and at the Pentagon for a day of back-to-back meetings, the senior MP had picked up. She'd worked with Stillwater on more cases than she could count during her Army career. That professional history, combined with the hefty medal no one seemed able to get past, would probably have been enough to swing her pending meeting with Joe, but she'd also done a personal favor for Colonel Stillwater years ago when the man had been a major.
Neither of them had spoken of it since. But it seemed picking up the man's wife—then a lieutenant—for solicitation and driving her home to face her husband and her own bout of combat-infused PTSD, instead of taking the woman to the stockade, had earned Kate the right to a private, off-the-books meeting with Joe Cordoba today. It had also earned her the hastily arranged military hop that Colonel Stillwater had set into motion. The one that had flown Kate from the Little Rock airbase to Kansas.
The moment the C-21A had landed at Fort Leavenworth, she'd been greeted by an MP master sergeant she'd also served with, and had been driven straight to US Disciplinary Barracks where it seemed the entire cadre had wanted to shake her hand.
Ironically, not because of that medal.
They'd wanted to meet the former agent who'd sent one of their newest and most notorious prisoners to them, all wrapped up with a gilded bow stapled to his head.
The only thing off about the entire experience was her weapon.
Because her trusty 9mm was literally off—of her.
It didn't matter that Leavenworth had a zero-weapons policy, guards and staff included. Braxton PD uniform aside, she felt flat-out naked without her Glock.
Jittery.
And the longer she sat at this table, waiting for the MPs to hook up Joe's shiny new bracelets and bring him here, the more jittery her nerves were getting.
She tried smoothing her fingers over the orange face of Max's watch, then slowly twisting it around the elastic bandage on her wrist, but neither helped. She was too keyed up with everything else that was ricocheting around in her head.
Namely, the fact that she was about to see Joe. Talk to him.
Be forced to listen to him in return.
Only this time, she'd be seeing all those stolen organs and the decaying, discarded husks of her dead brothers and sisters in arms piled up around him.
Kate caved in to Manning's relentless advice and tugged her iPhone off her utility belt. She should've been forced to relinquish that upon her arrival at the Disciplinary Barracks too, as any normal visitor would've been. But it seemed there was a silver lining to that battered star after all. While her phone had been noticed by every MP she'd met, not a one had held out their hand and asked for it.
Hence, the phone was now in hers. And stored within were electronic versions of the ABC worksheets Manning had been having her fill out for over a week now.
Would filling one out now while she waited—actively thinking about what she was feeling and why—really help temper the tension that was beginning to ratchet in tighter with each passing minute...before it morphed into a full-blown panic attack?
She was just desperate enough to try.
But as Kate tapped into the CPT app on the phone, she discovered that her impact statement was still loaded up. That very private, searingly painful statement that Manning had asked her to write two weeks ago on why she really thought things had gone down the way they had that day—and how the fallout had affected her life.
The statement Lou had read.
The statement she couldn't help but reread now.
I hate that goddamned Silver Star. It's a lie. I'm a lie.
The ambush might've happened because of Joe. But Max's death—and the death of Sergeant Cutter and Private LeBeck—they're all on me. Hell, even that Afghan kid's death is my fault. Yeah, he was there to rape me again. But if I hadn't been so shaken and desperate, I would've been able to incapacitate him instead of murdering him.
But most of all, I should have been able to save Max. I was an MP before I became CID. Our motto: Assist. Protect. Defend. I failed at all three—spectacularly—and Max paid the price. I'm the one who should be missing my head, not him.
You want the emotional fallout? Okay, I hate looking into the mirror. Seeing what's left of my face. It's not that I don't deserve what I see, because I do. But it's a constant reminder and inescapable proof that my dad was right. I never should've enlisted. And I sure as hell wasn't cut out to be CID. If I'd stayed in Braxton where I belong, Max would be alive. Another agent would've been in my spot that day—a real one. He or she would've saved Max and the other two soldiers who'd survived the ambush. Hell, if the other agent had known Joe the way I supposedly did, he'd have figured everything out sooner and there wouldn't have even been an ambush.
I hate myself for sleeping with Grant. I hate myself for being so screwed up and desperate to connect with someone that I couldn't see who Grant really was. And I hate myself for not realizing who Joe was either. Every memory I have of Joe, Grant and my entire goddamn Army career is tainted, which is pretty much my entire life. I hate myself for liking Burke—and, hell, not seeing him for who he really was either. I hate myself for killing a kid. I hate myself for not getting to Cutter and LeBeck in time. Most of all, I hate myself for letting Max die.
It should have been me.
It was too late. The panic had set in.
Kate jackknifed to her feet as the sweat began to pop out along her flesh, turning cold and clammy as it pooled beneath her armpits and soaked into her deputy shirt. She spun around, her nervous boots eating up the length of the cramped interview room as she attempted to force the surrounding air to slow its path through her lungs.
She did another about-face and retraced her march.
Then did it again. And again.
Damn it, she shouldn't have sent that vague, I'll be out of touch text to Arash. She should've called the man instead. Shared her plans. Arash was co-lead on this case. And smart. Humiliating or not, the detective also knew how tightly wound she was over these murders and everything else in her life right now. He'd have probably talked her out of coming here—or at the very least, insisted on accompanying her.
How the hell had she ever thought she could do this alone?
Talk to Joe. Know if he was telling her the truth?
Every day of the last five years of their decade-plus friendship had been filled with the foulest of lies and she'd never even been suspicious. What made her think she'd be able to recognize them now? Trust her instincts? And, yeah, her so-called judgment?
Damn it, she should leave. Before it was—
Too late.
Kate stiffened as the door to the interview room opened. She nearly dropped her phone, her fingers visibly fumbling as she slotted it into her utility belt.
Fortunately, Joe hadn't caught her display of nerves, just the three MPs who escorted her neon-orange, jumpsuit-clad former partner into the room.
The MPs politely ignored her minor freak-out.
As for Joe, her old friend appeared to be actively avoiding her. His dark stare remained fused to the tiles beneath his black low quarters as a buff, Hispanic sergeant and a female corporal walked him all the way up to the table, ensuring the shackles at his ankles didn't get tangled in the legs of the chair as he sat.
An equally buff Asian corporal moved in to secure the steel cuffs at Joe's wrists to the interrogation table.
Kate didn't argue. That was the deal she'd struck upon her arrival.
Her old colleague, Master Sergeant Becker, had agreed to allow her and Joe to speak in the room alone, and with the door closed—so long as she remained on her side of the table and Joe remained cuffed to his.
Kate waited as the sergeant ushered the two corporals out, returning the senior MP's crisp nod as he paused at the door.
"We'll be right outside, Deputy. If you need assistance, just holler."
She wouldn't.
The door closed.
Joe finally looked up. His lips were pressed into that bruised half-smile the man tended to give whenever he was pushing through a particularly shitty stretch of life.
Welcome to the club. Hers had been going on four years now.
And this past month? It had become damned near unbearable.
Because of him.
"Fancy meeting you here, Holland. Bit out of your way, eh?"
"It is. Had to a call in a favor and climb aboard a C-21A just to get here. But you could've refused to see me." She'd half expected he would.
Truth be known, she'd hoped for it as she'd made that call to Stillwater and, again, for pretty much her entire flight.
But Joe hadn't refused.
"I'd never turn my back on you." The man's bruised smile faded into thrumming humiliation—as it should. "Kate, I know you don't believe me. But I—"
"You're right. I don't." Nor did she want to hear whatever excuse he'd been about to give. Though something Master Sergeant Becker had told her was bugging her. "I understand I'm your first visitor."
Joe nodded. "I saw my lawyer a few times when I was housed across the way while he worked out the details of the plea. But, yeah, you're the only one to stop by following my sentencing and my move here to the SHU." The shoulders beneath that neon-orange fabric kicked upward—but she'd knocked down enough doors with those same shoulders in Afghanistan and Iraq to know the nonchalance in that shrug was fake. "Anyway, that's how it's gonna stay for the duration."
Now there was a surprise.
Because the "duration" Joe's lawyer had worked out in that agreement was life without parole in exchange for a guilty plea and full disclosure of every single detail that Joe remembered about Madrigal Medical and the murders of all those soldiers and vets. Joe had been damned lucky the Army had been willing to bargain for those details too. Otherwise, he'd have joined that bastard Nidal Hasan and the six other death-row inmates housed in a remote corridor of this same prison complex.
Those neon orange-clad shoulders tried pushing out another shrug, only to falter. Indifference hadn't hung this one up, though. Pain had.
And Kate knew why.
Joe's wife. Where was she?
Kate would've expected Elise Cordoba to be settled into a nearby Kansas farmhouse by now, along with the woman's overflowing animal entourage. Elise was the love of Joe's life; she'd been so since junior high. Not to mention the reason Joe had gotten sucked into that nauseating black-market organ harvesting scheme in the first place. Deathly ill from a lifetime of type 1 diabetes, Elise had evidently believed Joe had purchased a kidney for her five years ago on the Pakistani black market. It'd been a lie. Elise hadn't received a single kidney from a seriously desperate soul who'd received a pittance in return, she'd been given Sergeant Tanner Holmes' entire life-sustaining pancreas and kidney block—for free. Monetarily, anyway. In return, Madrigal Medical had received the former CID agent's assistance when needed to conceal any and all future murders of his fellow brothers and sisters in arms.
Had the stress of Joe's arrest and incarceration taken its toll and dealt the woman a serious setback?
Concern simmered to the surface, unbidden.
Kate shoved it down.
Damn it, she wasn't here for this. And she was not here to care. Not for Joe or his wife. Not anymore.
Because Elise hadn't come forward when she'd finally figured out just how many organs she'd received and from whom they'd come, had she?
Still, Kate was curious. "Did something happen to your wife?"
Joe blinked. Then frowned. "You didn't read it, did you?"
The letter. The one Elise had sent to plead on her husband's behalf. Or so Kate had assumed. Either way, she'd handed the envelope to Lou, still sealed. Kate shrugged. And this time, the indifference was real. "I gave it to my boss. Sheriff Simms handled whatever exculpatory info Elise thought—"
"That's not what was in there." Joe shook his head slowly, almost sadly. "Kate, I'm guilty. I admitted that to your sheriff even before he booked me while you were getting that gunshot wound stitched up. I asked Elise to pass along a personal apology from me to you for the gunshot—and everything else—that's it. Well, and the news."
She ignored the apology reference and everything it covered, even as she regretted asking, "News?"
"She's pregnant. Sixteen weeks now. I didn't know until after the arrest, because Elise didn't know. At least not then. She told me when I was able to make my first call. That was the last time I spoke to her—and the last time I ever will."
He'd cut Elise from his life? Completely?
That was difficult to swallow.
Joe and Elise had been married for over a decade now—since the day after she and Joe had graduated from MP school. Hell, he and Elise had been trying to have a kid for at least that long. Why would he kick the love of his life to the curb now?
But Kate knew. It was right there in the shadows of those dark brown eyes. In the slight tinge of pink that lay beneath that dusky skin. Once again, there were too many missions, too many cases worked together for her to fail to recognize it.
Shame.
Joe knew she'd seen it too, and it pissed him off. He came up swinging, verbally at least, straining against the steel cuffs that were locked to his wrists as he surged halfway up from his chair. "Christ, Holland. Don't you pity me, because that is not what this is about. Much less who. I don't give a shit about myself. Look at how your bastard of a father contaminated your life, and he wasn't even in prison."
"And guilty."
"Yeah—" The cuffs clattered against the rail, settling onto the table as Joe sank back down into his seat. "—and guilty."
She waited for him to meet her stare, then nodded. Because she might know this man well enough to know what was really behind that outburst—but Joe was damned well going to have to spell it out. "That's it, isn't it? You don't want your kid growing up knowing an honorable, decorated soldier was murdered and posthumously labeled a traitor before the entire world to give him or her life."
"Would you?"
Hell, no.
And despite her best efforts, she could feel that insidious pool of pity Joe had rejected oozing back in, smothering out the anger and the disgust.
Damn it, he had no right. No matter what had happened in the past. No matter how many times this man had saved her ass while they'd been over there, he had no right to get to her. Not anymore.
It was time to get back on track.
She wasn't here for some IED-riddled stroll down memory lane, much less for herself. She was here for Aisha Kharoti and Tahira Larijani—and the woman who was about to be violated, stabbed and set on fire next. Because if she couldn't figure out what Dr. Basque was hiding—and how it was connected to those first two deaths—there would be another one.
And if she didn't get her head on straight, that coming death would be her fault.
Kate reached for her utility belt and removed her phone. She clicked it on and opened up a new page in her notes app. Setting the phone down on the table, she scooted it across until it was within reach of those shackled hands.
"I came here for a name."
Joe glanced at the blank screen, then her. "And you think I have it? Still?"
Oh, he knew this name—and he would be coughing it up. "You remember the case we worked way back at the beginning? That bastard of a warlord we picked up outside Kandahar? The one with an...unnatural fondness for young boys."
Even Joe couldn't keep the disgust from pressing into his lips. "Yeah. I remember that fucker. What about him? 'Cause I also seem to recall him disappearing during a personal pit stop that turned violent while he was being transferred to Bagram."
"He did. But before he left Kandahar, you spoke to him a couple of times. Alone. At least, you thought you were alone. I was outside the interrogation room during your last run at him, waiting to speak to you about another case. I heard you brokering a deal with him. That shit's life—and the ability to live it outside of Afghanistan—for his Taliban contacts. I want to know who was on the other end of our side of that deal." Because that name had been active in Afghanistan and around the greater Middle East right about the time that Lily Basque's identity had been created—at least according to the dates on those documents that Regan Chase had found and forwarded.
There weren't too many people pulling double duty for the CIA and the US Marshals' WITSEC program in those particular neighborhoods back then.
Most likely one.
And Joe had worked with him.
"Kate, that name's classified."
"I know."
He shook his head. "The guy's still in the game. And he's not a lightweight. There could be repercussions—for both of us."
She knew that too. The terse phone call Regan had received from their mystery man had also confirmed that the body attached to that name was still active and operating overseas and undercover—and not afraid to abuse his position or anything else to remain so. Why else call?
That was why she'd had to fly here to collect the name in person. Despite Joe's current, already-incarcerated-for-life sentence and surroundings, it was the only way he'd give it up. Because, eventually, Joe's part in spilling it would come out.
It always did.
Like her, Joe knew that too. Just as she'd known, even as she'd made her arrangements with Colonel Stillwater and boarded the C-21A, that it would take seeing her face to face to tip Joe over the edge and into cooperation.
Why?
He still wanted to apologize. Needed to.
Why else had he asked Elise to send that letter?
Joe continued to sit there, silent. No doubt weighing the rest.
Ironically, in this particular prison with these particular inmates—namely, the fact that every single one had taken the oath to defend their country against all enemies, foreign and domestic—there was still a rather notable distinction between homicide...and treason. And depending on the name Joe gave her and the circumstances surrounding how Joe had come by that name, the latter just might apply.
For him.
She didn't care.
Because the former agent sitting across from her in that neon-orange jumpsuit with his legs shackled and his wrists locked to this table? He owed her.
She turned her face far enough to her left to give him a damned good reminder as to the depth of that debt.
Joe took in the full force of the mottled scars and collection of equally ugly pockmarks that his betrayal had permanently carved into her flesh and nodded. He picked up the phone and tapped out a succession of letters, then switched it off before sliding it back across the table as far as those cuffs would allow.
He kept his fingers on the phone, however. As though in doing so, he'd be able to maintain his contact with her.
As if.
"I wish you'd read that letter from Elise."
Why?
She now knew exactly what it contained. Joe was sorry. Not that he'd murdered his fellow soldiers and vets, mind you, but that she—one of his former partners and closest friends—now knew him for the monster he truly was. And that bothered him.
Big fucking deal.
Except—her part in all this still bothered her. Tortured her.
What the hell had she missed?
Joe sat there while she studied at him at length, searching every inch of those familiar, dusky features until she'd reached those dark, fathomless eyes and delved within, until she was combing the man's very soul.
And then, she gave up.
She had no choice.
There just wasn't anything else to see.
No remorse. Not even a trace. The shame she'd noted earlier was simply because he'd been caught. Exposed for the hypocritical murderer he really was. Period.
And if there was nothing to see now...how on earth could Art Valens have picked up on it back then?
How could she?
"You'd do it all again, wouldn't you?" Cover up the slaughter of all those soldiers and vets. Even knowing how it would all turn out. That he'd end up here.
"To save Elise?" He nodded calmly. Sincerely. "Yeah, I would."
Bastard.
He pulled his breath in deep, purging it on a soft, ragged sigh that somehow managed to tumble across the table...and into her. "Everyone has a price, Kate. Everyone. Most people are just lucky enough that no one ever finds theirs. I know you—"
"Thirty-nine."
His dark brows furrowed. "What?"
"The number: thirty-nine. Or possibly thirty-nine, thirty-nine. Or even thirty-nine, nine. Do any of those combinations mean anything to you? Biblically or Qur'anically?" Or, heck, "Even secularly?"
After all, the ex-CID agent in front of her might be a certifiable demon conceived at Lucifer's feet, but he was still scary smart. A profoundly skilled investigator. How else had Joe been able to do what he'd done for so long? Fool everyone he'd fooled.
All those CID agents.
Regan was right. Hell, so was Dr. Manning.
And her dad?
That particular asshole might even be wrong. At least about her.
Kate could feel the seismic shift within, even as the admission filtered through her brain. Her heart. It was something to consider. And it felt good. Damned good. But it was also something she'd have to think through later. After she'd left this place.
This man.
Joe leaned forward. "Do those numbers concern your current case? The one I assume you need—" He dipped his chin to the phone still tucked beneath his fingers. "—this name to solve."
"Yes. Do they mean anything at all? Especially if carved into a raped and charred Muslim woman's thighs?"
"Jesus. That's some case you've landed." But the shoulders beneath that bright orange fabric pushed up once again, even as the head above turned slowly from side to side, regretfully. "I can't think of anything those numbers might apply to in the Bible or in the Qur'an. Sorry. But I'll ask my guard if he'll call—"
"No, thanks." She leaned forward and slipped her phone from beneath Joe's hands before he could stop her, then stood. "I've got a flight to catch."
Asking had a been a long shot, and it'd failed.
It was time to leave. Finish working her case. A case she would be solving.
Despite what her own bastard of a father had believed.
The C-21A airframe, pilot and crew Colonel Stillwater had standing by to take her back to Little Rock were at her whenever disposal, but Joe didn't need to know that.
"Kate—"
She shook her head, cutting him off as she headed across the room, not even bothering to glance back as she did so. She'd gotten what she'd come for. That name in her phone—and, stunningly, the return of her professional confidence.
She was done.
They were done.
She reached for the handle to the door.
"Damn it, Kate! You have to listen to me. Please. I didn't know you would be on that mission. In that Humvee. I'm—"
"Sorry?" She spun around, shattering her agreement with Master Sergeant Becker as she stalked over to the table—right up next to Joe so that she could vent her hate directly down onto him. And then she bent even closer as she tapped the mottled ridges and valleys of her now mutilated flesh. "Take a good look at your fucking mea culpa—friend. But don't think this is the only mess you left behind. You should see the scars on the inside. Do you know how many times I was raped, buddy?"
He swallowed hard. "No."
She actually managed a smile as she stared into those filthy pools of regret that had the nerve to glisten up right in front of her.
But the twist was grim.
"Me neither. But based on the number of DNA profiles that came back, I entertained at least half a dozen of those bastards before I came to. For how many rounds? Who knows?" After all, DNA could only reveal so much. "But I do remember the teenager whose throat I was forced to slit to prevent my final rape. I remember it so well, I can still see the kid's face every time I close my eyes—when I'm not getting a full-on flashback of that ambush, including sound and smell, or the aftermath of the bullets that took out the back half of Cutter and LeBeck's brains. And let's not forget Max. I see his severed head hitting the ground, rolling across the dirt. And, of course, feel myself wrapping it up and clutching it as I tried to find my way out of that shithole—the location of which you knew about for every goddamned second that I was stuck there. Hell, I'm still stuck there. Who knows if I'll ever find my way out? Again, because of you."
With that she straightened, whirled around and headed for the door.
"Wait! Please—"
The door slammed, severing Joe's final excuse and leaving it trapped in that room with him as she nodded to the trio of waiting MPs before heading down the corridor to pick up her Glock.
It was time to get the hell out of here. Joe could rot in his brand-new digs for all she cared.
But he might not.
The US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth was a unique place. Unlike the rest of the nation's federal prisons, there was no time off for good behavior. Those incarcerated at the USDB tended to do ninety percent of their allotted time. And those who did that time were unique too. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines once trained to fight the nation's wars; to relentlessly track down, rout and kill her enemies. An unfortunate number of whom had then turned around and used that training to ruthlessly brutalize and even murder their fellow citizens closer to—and at times inside—their own homes. Indeed, forty-one of the USDB's inmates fell into the latter category.
Hardened lifers to a man, all with very little left to lose.
As a former Army CID agent, Joe had helped to put at least six of those lifers here...in the same place where he'd be spending the remainder of his pathetic days.
Every morning of which Joe would be forced to wake—and wonder—if one of those six had decided to make this morning his last.