I Am Justice (Black Ops Confidential 1)

So why come to Jordan? Why not organize PR from the States? That would’ve made more sense, considering the attitude about the structure of the IPT she’d shown in her mother’s office.

It shouldn’t bother him, but it was almost like she was a war tourist. Here to look around. Or like she was patting him and Salma on the head, saying “Good job” while getting to what she thought was the real work. But that made no sense.

He watched Justice as she knelt on the floor in the trailer beside a young woman with one arm. The woman showed her designs that would be used for the shirts once they had the equipment. She’d drawn the designs herself. Justice praised her, genuinely praised her, because the woman drew stunning designs.

Justice cared. He could see that she cared.

“You have got to stop staring at me.”

Sandesh’s skin heated as Justice turned those join-me-in-the-dark eyes on him. A few of the English-speaking women laughed at her teasing.

Sandesh held Justice’s gaze. Mostly because he could think of no way to force himself to stop looking. “Can I have your camera?”

She raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. She put one hand on her thigh, steadied herself, and took the camera from around her neck. She held the camera out to him. He took it.

“I mean, if I’m going to stare, I should at least do something a little useful.”

She eyed him skeptically, but the woman who’d been showing her the designs took the initiative. She moved closer to Justice and put her arm around Justice’s shoulders. And the two of them smiled. He snapped photos as the other women around them showed an interest and posed for the shots.

The moment seemed full of promise. These women, who’d been through so much, lost so much, even of themselves, had a deep strength. They were ready to take their pain and create a new future.

But Justice? He couldn’t figure her out.

Chapter 14

The Four Seasons in Amman really played up the whole desert aspect. Desert-tan marble floors, walls, ceiling, chairs, and even the uniforms on some of the staff were tan. It made Justice, dressed in all black, stick out like a sore thumb.

Good thing only her eyes showed.

She wore the traditional niqab and abaya. A burka, with its mesh screen for the eyes, would’ve made her stand out more here. Most of the Jordanian women wore only the hijab head scarf, nothing over their faces, and had some style going on with jeans or fashionable clothes. She’d opted for an abaya, an all-black, bland, loose-fitting dress.

Nice thing about the regional customs was a woman assassin didn’t have to work too hard to go undercover. Just pop in a couple of blue contacts and ghost around.

She sat in a lounge area off to the side of the check-in desk with an open book of Sufi poetry. She didn’t feel even close to poetic. She felt fidgety.

The Brothers Grim were staying here in a two-bedroom suite for two weeks. Only two weeks. They usually met every two years for at least a month, but had changed plans. They were being awfully cautious. Which made Momma’s paranoid delusions seem that much less paranoid.

Distress winged up and brushed frantic feathers against Justice’s breastbone. Her meeting with Momma before she’d come here had been damning.

Not one of her own. Please not that.

She couldn’t imagine facing a day without one of her four closest siblings.

But right now, that wasn’t something she could think about. She had other things to worry about. The patched-together plan wasn’t foolproof.

Sure, Momma had placed a reliable connection at the hotel. A former rescue, who’d get Justice a key to the suite and ID, but not a weapon.

And Justice couldn’t get a gun past hotel screening, and surely not past whatever security Walid and Aamir would have at the room.

So she’d be going with plan B. Poison.

Not too difficult to get a good poison when one of your twenty-eight siblings was a leading chemist at one of the top chemical manufacturers in the world, a.k.a. Parish Group Holdings.

But it also meant Justice would be vulnerable. She’d have to go in when the Brothers were scheduled to go out. She’d need to get a uniform. She’d have to sneak in for turndown service with nothing but some mints in her pocket. She’d appear harmless. She wouldn’t even have cleaning solution on her.

Just a little pouch containing a substance that would first make the Brothers sick, like a bad case of food poisoning, and then kill them.

The poison had been developed from a cyanide derivative. She’d have to put it somewhere the Brothers alone were guaranteed to use. Toothbrush seemed the best option. Momma had said, “It works remarkably fast.”

It better.

She just hoped the Brothers’ security thugs wouldn’t find the pouch on her. It wasn’t huge, but large enough to create a bump that could be felt by the guards. And suspicious-looking enough that if she’d had to carry it onto a public plane, she would’ve been sweating bullets. Every assassin should have their own plane.

Having the pouch and knowing all that could go wrong with poison made her the most nervous. She wished she could’ve had something a little more direct. More deadly. Beggars can’t be choosers. Hotel security was strict. Another reason she’d checked into this hotel under a false i

dentity. That gave her a reason to sit here, scanning the hotel.

Her eyes perked up as she spotted her prey.

One of the Brothers. Not Aamir, the slick one who dressed like a GQ model, but the younger one, Walid. Early forties, lanky with the start of a belly; dark-black hair; sharp, brown eyes; and a scar that looked like a rope burn along his neck.

She watched him sweep across the lobby and near an elevator surrounded by a two-man security detail. His guards seemed casual. Almost too casual. That could work in her favor.

Walid changed course abruptly. His guards stayed at the elevator, holding it open. What the hell?

Walid marched directly past Justice’s alcove to get to the concierge. He smelled like expensive cologne.

Fuckedy fuck. He was so close. She nearly dropped her book and attacked.

She held steady as Walid, with his raspy voice and oh-so-coy British accent, asked the concierge to change his dinner reservation for tomorrow night, moving it up one hour.

The concierge didn’t miss a beat interpreting the language. He looked at his watch, as if seeing into the future. “I will do so right away.”

Walid thanked him, turned on his shiny, black loafer, and went back to the elevator.

Luck of the Irish or luck of the draw; if there were a deity dedicated to saving women’s lives, that deity had clocked in for Justice.

Yeah, it meant moving the timeline up on her assassination plan. Ignoring Momma’s reconnaissance-first rule, but this was too good of an opportunity—both Brothers wouldn’t be in their room. If all went according to plan, the Brothers would be dead within forty-eight hours.

Chapter 15

Inside his spacious hotel suite, one of Walid’s guards handed a suit for dry cleaning to the hotel staff. It wasn’t until the staffer moved off and the guard kept the door open that Walid noticed him.

Looking like a Bollywood film star in his buffalo-leather racing jacket over a white V-neck, with his black beard trimmed tight against his sharp jawline, his brown eyes alight with mischief, Aamir strolled into the suite. And brought with him the sun.