Prologue
He should've killed himself when he had the chance.
A bullet to the brain, a makeshift noose about his neck—hell, even standing hip-deep in water and smashing his fist into a light socket. Anything would have been preferable to this. Definitely quicker. His left leg was broken. At least, he was pretty sure. He'd lost count of the number of times that goddamn iron pipe had slammed into his shins, but he was fairly certain he'd felt the bone crack a minute ago.
Or was that an hour?
How long had he been dangling from his wrists inside this sweltering box?
Days? Weeks?
Months?
He no longer knew. All he knew was the pain. He welcomed it. It gave him something to concentrate on in place of their incessant questions.
One of the bastards was at his ear again, the man's foul breath spilling over his face. If only the fucker would whale that pipe into his stomach instead of his kidneys for a change. He just might be able to puke on him. He settled for second best. Gathering the saliva he'd hoarded, he spewed it into that yammering mouth. Too bad his eyes were swollen shut. What he'd give to see the turd's expression.
He felt it instead as another rib went the way of his shin. He inhaled sharply, then wished to heaven he hadn't.
Breathe!
Can't. Goddamn it, he'd lost a lung. No, wait—it was there. Merely collapsed, the air knocked halfway to Mecca.
The haji was in his face again. Taunting. "Save yourself, kafir. No one else will. Surely not Allah."
It was true. He had no illusions. They'd been shattered long before his leg and his ribs. Nor would God—this asshole's or anyone else's—deign to help. When push came to shove, the good Lord couldn't be bothered to save his own son.
No, it was up to him. And her.
Time.
It was all he had left to offer. To her and his country. He'd be damned if he'd held on this long, only to blow it now.
"This is the last time I ask, kafir. Where is she?"
He found another ounce of spit and used it.
A strangled groan ripped free as the pipe crashed into his collar bone. Unlike his lung, this dent wasn't popping back out. He dropped his chin to his chest, sucking in stale air and his own bloody spittle as he fought the plea clawing up his throat.
He was dimly aware of the scrape of metal on metal in the blistering existence that followed.
Perhaps the bastard was right and there was a God, because somehow, he found the strength to open his left eye. Just a crack. The haji on his far left was bending over a heavy-duty, deep-cycle battery, attaching a pair of jumper cables. The ends had been stripped down to bare, taunting wire. The man crammed his fists into rubber gloves, then retrieved the cables and snapped the raw ends together.
Twelve chilling volts sparked and spitted to life. More than enough to stop a human heart. They wouldn't even have to douse him in seawater for max effect.
He was drenched in blood and sweat.
"Last chance, kafir."
"Go to hell."
The wires closed in. A split second later, his entire body convulsed—broken bones and all—as white-hot lightning ripped through his groin. And then his body went slack, twisting in the nonexistent wind…until the wires returned.
Again and again.
Somehow, the words he'd been holding back left the fog of his splintered brain and invaded his tongue. He was pleading with them now. Shamelessly.
Another jolt, and the truth tumbled free.
That's when he knew it was over.
He never saw the haji move, only smelled the blessed absence of that putrid breath beneath the stench of his own burning flesh.
Then he heard the words. "كيلل هيم."
Kill him.
He shut up. It was done. The most important mission of his life—and he'd failed.
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Chapter 1
Her reprieve came early. Two days, six hours and fourteen minutes—and not a second too soon.
Air ripped through Mira's lungs as she vaulted down from her aerobic climber to follow the shrill of her cellphone out of the bedroom of her Washington, DC, sublet. The phone rang again as she raced past the galley kitchen and into an equally cramped living room. Adrenaline surged, supplanting desperately courted, exercise-induced endorphins as she reached the coffee table and caught sight of her caller ID.
Ramsey. A case.
For a split second, guilt battled with her own selfish need.
Need won.
Mira dragged in a steadying breath as she grabbed the phone. "Who died?"
"And hello to you, too, Special Agent Ellis. If I'm not mistaken, it's almost midnight there. Odd time to work out…especially since you're supposed to be on vacation."
Vacation her ass. Try fourteen days of forced leave. And the man who'd ordered it was on the other end of her line.
"Blame the neighbor's cat. He's still spending his nights trying to seduce the stone planter outside my window."
"This the cat that got run over last month?"
Crap.
Silence more pregnant than the five remaining felines infesting the alley filled the line.
"Still having trouble nodding off, eh?"
"Nope."
Nodding off wasn't the issue. It was the inevitable waking shortly thereafter that was slowly driving her insane—despite the mandatory shrink sessions this man had also ordered her to attend.
Mira stared at the bottle of scotch that'd taken up residence on the closest end table following her first session. At least the glass beside it was empty—and clean.
Now.
"You want to talk about it?"
She flushed, and not because of the offer. It was his tone. The raw compassion infusing the line didn't belong to William H. Ramsey, Special Agent in Charge of the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service's Washington Field Office—it came from Bill, the closest thing to a father she'd ever truly known.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Mira turned her back on the half-empty bottle and checked the clock above the fireplace. Ramsey and her instincts were right. It was almost midnight. Worse, though she'd been working out for nearly an hour, she wasn't breathing hard anymore. Amazing what a fresh case of PTSD could do for the body.
At least on the outside.
Mira concentrated on the disembodied voice of a stewardess running through preflight checks as it spilled out of the phone and into her right ear. It beat listening to the piercing wail that'd been haunting her days and nights for almost two weeks.
"Hon—"
"You want to tell me why you're calling from a runway, or am I supposed to guess?"
The silence returned—even with the droning stewardess—and this time it was terse. Bill had left. Special Agent in Charge Ramsey had taken his place and he was not happy that she'd cut him off.
Mira clamped down on her phone, waiting for the reprimand she deserved.
Ramsey sighed instead. "There's been a murder. Captain Teresa Corrigan. She was a Navy JAG. Worked out of the Pentagon, espionage cases mostly."
Mira sifted through her memory. "Never heard of her."
Not surprising. She snagged a rumpled, but clean hand towel from the laundry basket she'd left beside the couch the night before. She'd been investigating the scourge of the Fleet for six years now, but that didn't mean she'd met every lawyer in the Judge Advocate General's office, especially those working espionage. Even before Ramsey had taken over the DC field office, she'd tended to work violent crimes and for good reason. She appeared to have a knack for solving them.
Mira mopped the perspiration from her face and hooked the towel over her shoulder. "What do we have?"
"Not much. It's not even our case. Yet. The captain's body was found earlier this evening—in her bed. Her townhouse is a couple blocks northeast of Dupont Circle. As you can imagine, there are…issues."
She'd just bet there were. And every one involved jurisdiction.
Dupont Circle was located within spitting distance of the White House and a good three miles from the Washington Navy Yard, the closest naval facility. Not only did jurisdiction for the captain's murder not automatically fall within NCIS' purview, it fell squarely within the DC Metropolitan Police Department's. Nor was MPD's current chief known for passing off cases, especially when the victim was high-profile.
The disembodied voice of the stewardess saturated the line once more, asking passengers to turn off their phones. Mira ignored the request along with Ramsey as she headed out of her living room. "We could use the national security card."
"We may have to. But, so far, we don't have cause. And if MPD finds out we pulled a fast one, it'll piss off their chief in a major way. I'd like to avoid that if possible."
So would she. Cops had long memories.
Mira reached her bedroom and grabbed a suit from her closet. The plane's engines cut in as she tossed the dark-blue jacket and slacks on her bed. "Who caught the case?"
"Detective Dahl."
"Jerry Dahl?"
"The one and only."
Mira grinned. She knew exactly why Ramsey had called her. It had nothing to do with a preemptive whine-fest from some agency shrink and those four remaining psych sessions. But it did have to do with her. She and Jerry had history. The kind that made a cop grateful. Indebted even.
"I'm on it."
Mira filed the JAG's address into her brain, hanging up as she headed into the bathroom to turn on the shower. By the time Ramsey's plane touched down in DC, the JAG's case would be hers—and she did not plan on letting go. Because if she worked the resulting investigation hard enough, she just might not have time for those final shrink sessions…mandatory or not.
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The blue and white strobe-lit circus was in full swing when she arrived.
Mira eased her black Chevy Blazer in behind the dozen MPD cop cars, crime scene vans and unmarked SUVs clogging the townhouse-lined street. She was willing to bet her own federal credentials that at least one of those Explorers was registered to a colleague from the J. Edgar Hoover building across town.
Confirmation came in the approaching clean-shaven, twenty-something Boy Scout sporting a pinstriped tie and higher-end version of her JC Penney's navy-blue special.
Definitely FBI.
Judging from the no joy stamped along the Feebee's jaw as he tossed his shiny, stainless-steel crime scene kit in the nearest Explorer, Jerry had already won at least one pissing contest tonight. Fortunately, she'd long since discovered that the Scouts were only partially right. Sometimes it was prudent to come prepared…and sometimes not.
Or at least, to not look like it.
Mira retrieved the bare necessities from her own battered crime kit, smoothing the protective booties, latex gloves and a few other crucial items into her trouser pockets as she bailed out of the Blazer and into the freezing night.
At least the snow and ice from the freak Christmas storms that had hit the entire eastern half of the country had finally melted.
She suppressed a shiver as she headed for the blood-red brick facade of the JAG's Victorian townhouse, making it to the crime scene tape before an MPD uniformed patrol stopped her.
"Excuse me, ma'am. I—"
She flashed her credentials. "Special Agent Mira Ellis, NCIS. I'm here to see Detective—"
"Mir!"
Jerry's rough-and-ready Irish form bounded through the townhouse's gaping door and down its half-dozen stone steps. Mira was still tucking her credentials home as Jerry elbowed the uniform aside so he could reach over the wrought-iron gate to haul her into his generous warmth for a soul-balming hug.
"Damned good to see you. Though, given the customer inside, I can't say I'm surprised." Jerry eased back, patting the side of her face as if he had forty years on her instead of twenty—and she let him. "You look great, Mir."
She laughed. "You look gray."
His grin deepened, splitting into the lines bracketing his lips. The same lines stress had begun to carve in during the fiasco that had heralded the twilight of Jerry's own career with NCIS. "I see that mouth and those manners haven't improved."
"Nope."
The uniform cleared his throat.
Jerry spared the kid a glance as he swung the gate wide and waved her in. "She's with me, Mandello." Jerry hooked his arm about her shoulders and gave her another squeeze as they headed up the stone steps. "I'd heard you were back in town. Meant to holler sooner but the murder biz kicked into hyperdrive this fall. Winter hasn't been any slower, especially with that weird rash of snow and ice. Then the news broke on New Year's Day about that goddamned Marine." Jerry shifted his hand to the back of her neck and gently nudged her into the townhouse's narrow, empty foyer, his voice scraping low as they halted. "I left a message for you at the field office."
Mira focused on the closed door of the ground-floor condo, unable to deal with that all-too-seductive compassion face to face and from this man any more than she had over the phone with Ramsey. "I took a couple weeks off."
Whether she'd wanted to, or not.
"That's what I figured." He gave her arm a final squeeze, then dropped his hand. "How you holding up?"
"You know me."
His clipped nod was tempered by two years of working together across abutted desks…and a few stark confessions on both their parts as Jerry's mentorship had drawn to a close. "They making you see someone?"
"Yup."
"Don't fight it."
She blinked.
"Yeah, I know. Blame it on Shelli. I never told you, but things weren't all that great between us before that little shit accused me of tugging on his pecker. And after they found the photos he planted on my hard drive? Let's just say they got worse."
That surprised and infuriated her. "I could've sworn she believed you."
"She did. Shell and I had other issues, ones there weren't easy solutions to. That lying shit's antics just made it all worse. And I don't have to tell you that exoneration counts for piss in this field. Suspicion lingers—even after your electronic sleuthing blew Internal Affairs out of the water. Hell, it got so bad that I seriously considered bailing on nineteen years and heading off to parts unknown."
It was her turn to squeeze Jerry's shoulder. "I wish I'd known."
But she had. And the life-weary detective pulling a set of protective booties from the pocket of his own JC Penney's special had known it too. Mira had received the same tainted kiss from her so-called colleagues and friends at the beginning of the end of her painfully short-lived career as a naval officer. One false accusation, and three grueling months at the Fleet's nuclear power school in Goose Creek had been flushed down the tubes—though, unlike Jerry's, her charges hadn't been leveled maliciously.
Not that it mattered. Nor had her own subsequent exoneration. She'd still gotten the looks from her former fellow sailors. The whispers. Worse, the three a.m., self-doubting what-ifs egged on by an increasingly empty bottle of booze.
Like Jerry, she'd finally bailed. He'd landed at the MPD's detectives' desk. Three years before his rude awakening, she'd turned her back on the Fleet and applied to its watchdog agency, NCIS. But for her own fucked-up first career, she wouldn't have been able to salvage Jerry's. The irony hadn't been lost on either of them at the time.
Guilt cut in for thinking she could abuse that pain now to snag a case…no matter how desperately she needed distraction.
The guilt deepened as Jerry offered her the booties and an exculpatory shrug. "You needed to focus on yourself, not me. You deserved that slot in Yokosuka. You'd worked your ass off, and I didn't want to see you blow it by looking back."
He was right. If she'd known he needed her, she'd have stayed in DC. At the very least, she'd have made the time to check in on him when she'd been back this way for a few months to work a joint investigation nearly a year and a half ago.
Mira swallowed her regret. "So what happened?"
How had he gone from shrinks are evil incarnate to the poster cop for therapy?
"Shelli. It got to the point where I'd come home and dump everything on her. She finally had it. Said I had to see someone—with or without her—or else. Chicken shit that I am, I chose without. Damned if it didn't help. I still go now and then, to touch base and vent. We're both happier and things have never been better between us."
"I can tell. You look fantastic."
Jerry grinned as he ran a hand over the silver that had firmly overtaken the ruddy thatch at his temples. "Despite the frost?"
"Absolutely. Makes you look distinguished." That couldn't hurt in this town.
"Plus, it scares off the pups. You should've seen the one the FBI sent to try and steal this gig."
"I did. He had his tail between his legs as he crawled into his SUV."
"Good. Gloves?"
"Thanks."
Jerry pulled a pair from his jacket, his gaze narrowing suspiciously midway to handing them over. "You have your own, don't you?"
"In my pocket. Booties, too."
"I'll be damned. At least you had the brains to leave your kit in the car."
She smiled. "I did learn from the best."
Presumption was more than a pet peeve with Jerry. It was a cardinal sin.
He tossed the gloves to her anyway and turned to the stairs that presumably led up to the JAG's third-floor condo. "Put 'em on. I left your partner alone in the captain's study."
Partner? Since when?
"The field office sent another agent?" Irritation surged as Jerry nodded. Why hadn't Ramsey mentioned it? "Who?"
"Guy named Sam Riyad."
She shook her head. "Don't know him."
"Me neither. But I've been retired five years. He's FCI, by the way, and new to town."
That explained it. Still, "You left him in your crime scene unattended?" She didn't know whether to be stunned or impressed. As Foreign Counterintelligence, Sam Riyad was all but guaranteed to be a far cry from experienced detective. Closer to spook. A category that fell somewhere below shrink in Jerry's book.
Or had.
Jerry shrugged. "Wasn't my first choice. Someone busted the combination locks on the JAG's filing cabinet and safe. Dumped the contents everywhere. Appears to be casework mostly, but some of it's marked NOFORN. If there's higher classified material lying around—much less missing—I don't want to know. Someone's gonna be navigating shit's creek before this is over as it is, and it ain't gonna be me."
A sage pronouncement if there ever was one. But unlike Jerry, she still answered to the brass at NCIS. She had no choice but to grab an oar along with her fellow mystery agent and start paddling.
Mira was about to follow Jerry up the stairs when the MPD uniform poked his head into the foyer.
"The medical examiner's here, Detective."
"Damn. Okay, on my way."
Mira waited for the uniform to leave. "You want me to loiter outside 'til he's done?"
Jerry shook his head. "If you were gonna screw me over, you'd have done it long before now. Might as well stay for the main attraction. I'll work it out with my boss later."
"I appreciate it."
"So get your butt up there before I change my mind. She's in the bedroom at the end of the hall."
"Thanks." Mira was halfway to the second floor by the time Jerry headed back out into the dark. Another uniformed cop stood guard at the third floor, just outside the JAG's door. She donned the protective booties Jerry had given her and produced her credentials. "Special Agent Ellis, NCIS. I'm with Detective Dahl. He's briefing the ME."
Mira added her name and stats to the crime scene roster and entered the condo's surprisingly chilly foyer. She swore it was colder in here than it was out front. Worse, an unmistakable odor tainted the breeze that drifted up the hall in question.
Had someone opened a few windows to combat that smell?
Or had the killer left them open?
Glancing into what was clearly the JAG's study, she caught sight of a buck-naked, swarthy hand reaching for a sheet of paper on the desk and stiffened. "What the hell are you doing?"
The owner of the hand froze as he retrieved the sheet. Turned. A split second into her first glimpse of the equally dark, distinctive features above that neatly cropped, mosque-ready mustache and beard—and the man's surname and coloring made sense: Saudi.
Disdain tossed another log onto the fire of her fury.
The source appeared impervious to both as he reached into his suit jacket with his free hand so he could flash his badge. "Special Agent Sam Riyad, NCIS. I'm assisting—"
"Wrong. What you're doing is blowing this for us."
"Us?"
She flashed her own credentials for the third time that night. "Mira Ellis; I work out of the field office. Where are your gloves?"
"In my car. But this isn't part of the crime scene—"
"Yes, it is." The whole damned condo was. Meaning every single item within every single room was evidence, until Jerry deemed otherwise.
As for the sheet of paper that had made it into Riyad's naked hand, one look at the fingers holding it, and the compromising prints they were leaving behind, and Jerry would toss them out on their collective asses.
Former colleagues, old friends and classified hot potato or not.
Riyad's cheeks flushed as he appeared to accept that he had indeed committed the most basic of procedural violations.
Mira ignored the man's embarrassment in favor of her surging panic as she caught the faint thump of boots climbing the stairs. Any second now and the ME would be passing this room—and Jerry would be with him.
Talk about shit's creek.
She tugged the spare gloves from her suit pocket and tossed them to her de facto partner. "Hurry."
She'd deal with the fallout of extraneous prints with Jerry later.
The thumps reached the third-floor landing and came to a halt outside the condo door as her fellow agent blew precious seconds working the first of his 'size-large' hands into her 'size-small' gloves. The thumps resumed.
"Turn around."
The boots reached the study door as Riyad complied, and continued on. Jerry's loafers did not.
"Everything okay?"
Mira caught the soft snap of a successfully sheathed second glove as she pivoted to the door. "Yup."
Jerry nodded. "Let's get in there then. The ME's ready to do his thing. By the way, this one prefers to work in silence, even at crime scenes. Talking's okay—just not to him. At least, not until he's finished."
Curiosity piqued, Mira abandoned Riyad to the study and followed Jerry down the hall. They passed a meticulously pristine galley kitchen and followed the increasingly nauseating stench of days-old death into a bedroom that was anything but.
"Jesus."
Jerry cracked his gallows grin. "Ah, Mir. Didn't realize you'd found religion."
She shook her head. "I haven't."
Another few rooms like this, and she never would.
At first glance, the JAG's private sanctuary looked a lot like the public bathroom Mira had woken in almost two weeks earlier, skull throbbing, ears ringing and her entire body covered in blood—and worse. The fallout had been everywhere.
Then…and now.
Mira swallowed the bile that threatened as the rooms and victims merged. One male, one female. One Marine, one Navy. Both so senselessly dead. Her increasingly tenuous hold on the present must've shown, because Jerry's hand found her shoulder once more. A solid squeeze infused with a bald, but reassuring been there, survived that, and you will too followed.
She dragged in an icy, death-laden breath as she cupped her hand over Jerry's to better cling to his support. To her surprise and relief, his simple touch worked a heck of a lot better than some shrink's endless questions and rambling, esoteric platitudes.
For the first time in two weeks, she managed to shake loose the past. Jerry's hand fell away with it.
The present remained.
This room, this blood.
It was everywhere, staining damned near everything. The gauzy sheers bunched at the corners of the iron four-poster were splattered with it, as were the pale peach walls beyond. Hell, even the mint-green area rug was covered in smeared swathes and the distinct arcs of dark arterial spurts. Damned near a hundred tented, yellow crime scene numbers were scattered about the room, some nestled in amid the blood, others marking remaining evidence of interest. But those weren't what drew her attention.
It was the body.
The victim was naked and tied spread-eagle atop a rumpled, once-white coverlet. It was a good thing they knew the JAG's name, because battered, bruised and painfully bloated forms did not make for easy ID's. But that wasn't the worst of it. Their victim had been violated in at least two orifices. In the mouth—and lower. A filthy gag spilled from blackened lips, while the bulk of the wine bottle that'd once complemented the shattered goblet on the floor was visible between the woman's legs.
The sheer amount of blood confirmed that the JAG had been alive for damned near all of it.
She turned to Jerry as the eerily mute ME leaned over the body to insert a thermometer into the JAG's liver. "Whoever did this wanted something. Badly." She'd lay odds, the bastard also had a serious issue with women in general or this woman in particular, too.
Given that the woman was a lawyer, her instincts were leaning toward the latter.
Jerry nodded.
"But judging from the contusions—not to mention the depth of that bottle—I don't think he got it."
Another nod.
Mira caught sight of an antiqued photo frame on the nightstand. An intriguing square of smudged paper lay folded up beside it. But as she stepped forward to get a better look at the square of paper, the photo shanghaied her attention. The paper's mysteries on hold, she took another step. Like the rest of the room, the glass covering the photo was splattered with blood. She could make out the outline of a man and woman beneath, striking the standard hand-in-crooked-arm pose snapped at the beginning of countless formal military functions. Both the man and the woman posing within wore Navy Dress Blues.
But something about the dimpled, sweetheart curve to the woman's jaw teased at the recesses of Mira's brain.
She arched a brow toward Jerry. "May I?"
"Go ahead. Initial photos are done."
She eased the frame from the nightstand, flipping it so she could unlatch the prongs on the reverse as the ME cut the scarf securing the victim's right hand to the bed. Mira slid the photo free, her stomach bottoming out as the couple came into view.
Shit.
"What's wrong?"
Mira held up the photo, drawing Jerry's attention to the impressive diamond on the woman's left ring finger as the ME cut the second scarf from their victim's wrist. The JAG's swollen fingers came into view as the ME drew her arm down from the headboard.
The rings matched.
Disappointment bit in as Mira realized she'd lied to Ramsey on the phone earlier, albeit unwittingly. Not that it would matter. Nor would Riyad's procedural gaff. She'd lost this case all on her own and not because of what she'd done right here and now—but because of what she hadn't done…seven years ago.
"Mir?"
"She got married."
"Who?" Jerry jerked his chin toward the victim. "Captain Corrigan?"
Mira nodded.
"That a problem?"
And then some. "You remember the kid that damned near killed your first career?"
"Yeah?"
Mira stared at the obscenely mutilated body on the bed. "This is the woman that obliterated mine."
CLICK HERE for more information on
Choke Point
Book 4 in the Deception Point Military Thriller Series
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