Killing Time (One-Eyed Jacks) Read Free

plane was the only thing he owned of any value and that was hocked up to his eyeballs. Woman scorned, then? Did he know her from somewhere? Had he done her wrong ? That didn’t fit, either. He wouldn’t have forgotten a face or a body like hers.
    So . . . what? What did she want?
    Nothing good. The only thing he knew with any degree of certainty was that so far, he didn’t much like her agenda.
    “Tell me what happened in Afghanistan,” she said without so much as a blink and with absolutely zero warning.
    His heart stopped.
    Afghanistan?
    And oh, hell, no, he didn’t like her agenda at all.
    Eyes narrowed, he searched the face that had turned his mind to mush and landed him in this fix.Nothing computed. Nothing but the knot tightening in his chest, tripping a defense mechanism that demanded he not let her see him sweat.
    “So.” He focused through a blinding headache. “You’re one of those .”
    A finely arched brow lifted. “One of those ?”
    “One of those women who likes to talk before she does the big nasty.”
    She gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “I’ve got more needles. You want another one? Go ahead. Keep giving me crap.”
    He didn’t have much more crap to give. He was running on empty here. His mouth was bone dry. His head spun. And then there was the obvious. He tested the cuffs with a disgustingly weak jerk. The plastic dug painfully into his wrists.
    He gave her a squinty-eyed look that was all for show. “You got a name? Or should I call you Mata Hari?” He had a sick feeling he’d want to call her a lot of things before this was over.
    She sat back with a sigh and crossed her arms. His Beretta—a little over two pounds of cold steel nestled snug against her left breast—presented an image he would not soon forget. Neither would he forget the scent that stirred in the stagnant air when she moved.
    “The only thing you need to know about me, flyboy, is that I’m the person asking the questions. Now tell me what happened in Afghanistan. Tell me about Operation Slam Dunk.”
    The look on her face and the authority in her voice suggested that she already knew.
    That couldn’t be. No one knew about OSD. No one was supposed to know. Not his family. Not his friends. And sure as hell not this woman who stared at him like he was week-old roadkill.
    He dragged his gaze away from her chest and smiled to hide his panic. “That would be a big go to hell.”
    She leaned forward and gave him a cold, calculated once-over that made his gut tighten. “Fine. Then I’ll tell you .”
    He shot her his best “I could give a rip” grin and kept up the pretense of a man who didn’t suspect his past was about to come crashing down around him in an avalanche of shit. “Since I’m what you call a captive audience, go ahead, sweetheart. Knock yourself out.”
    •   •   •
    “ Hola, señor. I need a room, please. One night only.” Jane Smith—per her passport—deliberately spoke in less than perfect Spanish as she set her utilitarian duffel bag on the floor at her feet and her Lonely Planet guidebook on the check-in desk in front of her.
    She knew what the bored desk clerk would see if he ever bothered to glance away from his Angry Birds game long enough to look at her: a tired, thirty-something Anglo testing her limited Spanish skills, dishwater-blond hair twisted into a haphazard knot on top of her head, pale blue eyes behind an unfashionable pair of glasses, her unremarkable face flushedfrom the heat of the city and drawn a little tight with stress—no doubt caused by having to check into this decrepit hotel on Calle San Ramon . Her matching TravelSmith vest, khaki pants, and nondescript olive drab camp shirt, with her passport carrier looped around her neck, resting on modest-sized breasts, cemented the image. The weak, carefully staged, “I’m not an ugly American” smile added the perfect camouflage.
    Even if he bothered to look at her, the night clerk would never remember her in