Jesus. What could he possibly say to that?
He didn’t say anything, just turned to look at the surf. And then he said the only thing he could think of, the same thing he said whenever Derek or Mike or Cole called him up after a mission and needed to get his head right.
“You want to go get a drink?”
Chapter Twelve
By the time Elizabeth threw in the towel on her train wreck of a day, it was already tomorrow. The night air was heavy with humidity as she crossed the mall parking lot and started searching for her car. A pickup rolled to a stop beside her, and the passenger window slid down.
“Get in,” Derek said.
She stared at him. He was in the same clothes he’d had on three hours ago, and his face looked just as grim. Those brown eyes drilled into her, and she knew it was pointless to argue.
She climbed into the truck. It had a king cab and plenty of legroom. Glancing around, she realized it was the first time she’d actually been in a space that belonged to him. How many hours had she spent thinking about this man, and yet she knew so little about him?
He exited the lot onto a street that was nearly deserted. He didn’t seem to want to talk or tell her where they were going, and she didn’t feel like asking.
She stared out the window, watching the parking lots and storefronts whisk by. The area seemed eerily calm compared with a few hours ago, when it had been swarming with emergency vehicles. Even the news vans had gone home, because they still hadn’t figured out that tonight’s suicide jumper was an international terrorist. It was a stroke of luck that would run out at some point, probably by morning. ME offices were known for leaks, and the Bureau’s interest in the autopsy had surely attracted attention.
Derek drove a few blocks and pulled into Finnegan’s. The place wasn’t crowded, and he had no trouble finding a space for his big pickup.
Elizabeth sat in silence for a moment, gazing at the neon beer signs, feeling numb. She flipped down the visor and checked the mirror, but her appearance was beyond help. Her makeup was smudged. Her shredded blazer was in a trash bin at the urgent-care center, and she was down to a bloodstained white blouse that did nothing to conceal her bandage, not to mention her gun.
Derek opened her door and held out his leather jacket, obviously reading her mind. She slid from the truck and slipped into it. It was warm and heavy and smelled so much like him it was like being wrapped in his arms.
What was she doing here?
He led her to the door and held it open. The place was busy but not packed. She’d expected him to want one of the cozy dark booths, but he took her to the bar instead. Her mind flashed back to a pub in San Francisco.
“This feels familiar,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “You planning to get me drunk again?”
“Maybe.”
She cut him a look as she slid onto a stool. A curvy blond bartender walked up and beamed a smile in his direction.
“Hi. What can I get y’all?” The smile was for Derek, but she aimed the question at Elizabeth.
Her mind went blank. She couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted to drink.
“Martini?” Derek prompted.
“God, no.” She shuddered. “I’ll have a bourbon and Coke.”
Derek ordered bourbon on ice, and for a while they simply sat there, not talking, staring at the TV above the bar. Tension radiated from his body. He was still ticked off about Ameen, but she wouldn’t apologize for that. She’d offered to give him a tip, not a daily briefing.
“How’s your arm?”
She glanced at him, startled. “Fine.”
“How many stitches?”
“Twelve.”
His jaw twitched, and he glanced up at the TV. “Does it hurt?”
“They numbed it at the clinic.”
He looked at her. “That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s fine.”
But he watched her steadily, and she could see he knew she was lying.
The bartender slid their drinks in front of them. Elizabeth took a sip. It felt cool going down but immediately warmed her stomach.
“You never told me about Ameen.” Derek tipped his glass back.
“That’s right.”
He watched her, waiting for an explanation.
“There are a lot of things I never told you about. You’re not on the task force. I’m surprised Gordon even let you into the room tonight. What were you doing there?”
“Looking for the phone.”
The phone. Gordon was obsessed with it. When Derek had first entered the mall, he’d seen Rasheed talking on a cell phone. But when he did the pat-down on the rooftop, no phone. Nothing had turned up at the morgue, either, which meant Rasheed had ditched it somewhere.
Derek was watching her now, clearly wanting an update.
“We still haven’t recovered it,” she told him. “We’ve got an evidence response team at the mall, searching trash cans. In the meantime, we’re combing through security footage. Whoever he was meeting is probably on there. Possibly Ameen.”
“You have a recent picture of him?”
“In my files.”
“I’d like to see it,” he said, “although I doubt it was him today.”
She sipped her drink. “You mean because of the red cap?”
“I think it’s someone Rasheed doesn’t know,” Derek said. “But whoever it was, he was in disguise, believe me. These guys know all about facial-ID software.”
“It’s worth a shot. Interpol’s got a new software system that’s much more advanced. It can match people based on only a profile. Potter’s trying to get someone over there to analyze some footage for us.”
His expression hardened at the mention of Potter.
“Don’t look like that.” She stirred her drink with the slender red straw. “He’s not all bad, you know. You guys are just different.”
She could tell he didn’t like even being mentioned in the same sentence with Potter. As Derek had pointed out earlier, the man wasn’t a field agent. He wasn’t a man of action. To Potter, gathering intelligence was something you did at a desk.
Derek was action personified. He was constantly moving, maneuvering, seeking out a tactical advantage.
Elizabeth checked her watch and felt a pang of guilt. It was well after midnight, and the evidence team was probably still scouring that mall—all for the sake of a phone, which was now their most promising lead, even though it was most likely a burner that wouldn’t yield any useful clues. Only hours ago, they’d had Rasheed in custody—an actual person who could have revealed an entire terrorist plot targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Rasheed had been their best hope of heading off the attack, and now he was dead.
Pain pounded behind her eyes. She rested her elbow on the bar and rubbed her forehead. “What a screw-up.”
“What is?”
“Today.” She looked at him. “We could have all of them under surveillance right now, do you realize that? We could have agents surrounding some apartment somewhere, preparing to take down the entire cell. And what do we have? Nothing. God, why did I let him see me? It was the weirdest thing. I wasn’t anywhere near him, and he turned and looked right at me.”
“It happens.”
“It didn’t happen to you.”
“I’m a frogman. I’ve had slightly more training at being invisible.”
She watched him, picturing him creeping down some dark alley, armed to the teeth and wearing night-vision goggles. She didn’t like to picture him working, because she hated to think about the dangers of what he did.
“It goes back to biology,” he told her. “Predator versus prey. Animals in the wild know when they’re being hunted. They have a sixth sense about it. They get itchy.”
“You’re saying I walked into the mall and made him itchy?”
“No, you walked into the mall and you looked right at him. Never do that. They teach you that in sniper school. When you’re pursuing a target, don’t stare at it, don’t arouse that sixth sense, especially someone like Rasheed. People spend years in a war zone, their instincts get honed. They sense when they’re in the crosshairs.”