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Loosely translated as:
“Look, if you spooks are running O’Donnell and the Delta guy, do not make a fucking mess by allowing them to get picked up by the Mumbai Police. Get them out of the country or kill them yourselves, we don’t give a fuck so long as State doesn’t have to grin for the cameras and do the oldplausible deniabilitydance for you CIA cowboys who don’t follow rules, ethics, morals, or fucking common sense. Over and out, bitches. USA forever.”
Rhett forced a dry chuckle, then pushed his chair back from the desk and groaned. Kaiser had obviously seen this, which meant Benson would know in a few minutes.
Know that the dead woman was Scarlet.
That O’Donnell and Wagner were alive.
That maybe the game had swung back in their direction again.
“Shit. Shit.Shit.” Rhett slammed his palms down on the desk, then balled his fingers into fists. It’s all right, he told himself. Yeah, it would have been nice if Scarlet had finished the damn job. But this wasn’t a disaster. Benson and Kaiser couldn’t prove that Scarlet had been an NOC asset—hell, that was the whole point of the NOC program. Which meant they certainly couldn’t prove that Rhett had activated Scarlet. It would still be Rhett’s word against Paige’s if Senator Robinson got involved.
Though of course a dead woman in Wagner’s hotel room would make Paige’s story a hell of a lot more believable, Rhett worried. Enough that even right now Kaiser and Benson might decide to change tactics, go to Robinson anyway, roll the dice that the Senator would believe Paige and not Rhett.
Would they cancel the meeting, Rhett thought as he rubbed his mouth, then plucked feverishly at his lower lip. And if they didn’t, should Rhett even show up there?
Hell, maybe it was time to admit defeat, he wondered with a sinking heart and rising venom at the thought of losing. Cut a deal with Kaiser and Benson, agree to resign, bow out of the game, submit to blackmail yet again, bend the knee to those two crafty old coots, acknowledge that they’re the alphas and you’re just a whimpering beta-dog.
No fucking way, snarled his shadowy alpha-dog ego.
Take them both out, came the darkly exciting whisper from his venomous heart. So what if you go down with them. Do you really want to live out your days in the shadow of defeat—especially toBenson?
Red rage burned in his heart, but Rhett swallowed the anger, reminded himself that Benson was counting on Rhett not being able to stomach defeat, not being able to cut his losses and bend the knee, slink off into the shadows to lick his wounds.
It took several agonizing minutes, but Rhett finally talked himself down, returned to a modicum of rationality, told himself that the plan hadn’t changed, that he would still go to the meeting calm and composed, pretend like he knew nothing about O’Donnell, swear with practiced serenity that he’d ended it with Paige after Benson’s phone call, that Paige was a woman scorned and hell, they all knew what a bitch who’d been dumped was capable of saying to get back at the man, right?
“Right.” He exhaled the stale air from his lungs, blinked the burn from his eyes, reached for his laptop to shut it down.
And noticed that the State Department Alert contained three attachments.
Three images.
He clicked the first.
A file photograph of Ice Wagner. No surprise there.
He clicked the second.
A passport photograph of India O’Donnell. No surprise there either—though her eyes still unsettled him.
Then Rhett clicked the third photograph.
Police photo of the dead woman from the hotel room, sprawled on the carpet, blood-soaked uniform, eyes half-open in death, a strange calmness on her beautifully tragic face.
A face that drained all the blood from Rhett’s own face, maybe from his entire body, like his heart had stopped and somehow reversed its beat, sucking the life-force out of him, leaving just an empty gasping gagging gaping shell of a man who’d seen a ghost from the past, a past that was bubbling up like poison from the swamps of his dark soul.
Scarlet?
No.
No!
Rhett turned his face and vomited.
His body heaved as he retched again and again like demons were screaming their way out of his racked body, tearing at his insides, ripping his soul to shreds. His vision was splintered blackness, his body seizing up like he was being electrocuted.
“No!” he rasped, falling to his hands and knees on the floorboards, hunching over and dry-heaving until nothing came out but saliva streaked with blood. “It can’t be. It . . . itcan’t!”