I Am Justice (Black Ops Confidential 1)

But she was safe. Sandesh’s partner, Victor, had a contact that had gotten them over King Hussein Bridge and into the West Bank. He’d given them food and water and even clothes.

Well, he’d done his best. She currently wore men’s white boxers and a T-shirt. This wasn’t exactly the Ritz. The sound of Sandesh in the pipe-rattling shower nearly drowned out Momma’s voice. “Justice, I need to know what you’ve told this young man.”

“He knows nothing about the League.” She swallowed what felt like a lie. He didn’t know about the League, but he wasn’t an idiot.

Momma made a stern tsking sound. “M-erasure is painless. Harmless. And in this case, we only need to alter his memory very slightly. Not removing actual events, but shifting only those moments of heavy suspicion and distrust, where he suspected you and our operation. When he thinks of it, he will dismiss his suspicions and be reassured it was the price of doing business in the area. Nothing more.”

Harmless? Really? Momma would see it that way. But just because you employed and trained some of the greatest scientists in the world, women who could not only implant memories but erase them, didn’t mean you should use that power.

Not on Sandesh. But she’d deal with that threat once she got back home. “Did you take care of security at the school?”

“Of course, I increased it. But we already have the best security of any school in the world.”

Momma. She didn’t mess around. “How long until you arrange to get me out of here?”

“A few days. I’m working on covering up your abrupt departure.”

“Am I a suspect?”

“No. You did good going to Zaatari. There is no one to connect Justice Parish with what happened at the hotel.”

“And Salma? Is everything still okay there?”

“Yes. Sandesh has taken care of her. He mobilized his volunteers at a speed that I envy.”

Justice had to agree. Sandesh and his IPT cofounder, Victor, actually managed to locate and organize two former soldiers fighting with the Kurds. Even now, they were protecting Salma and the women she’d rescued in a secure location while they waited for the volunteers from the States to arrive in Jordan. And he’d done it while keeping Justice’s secret.

Which is why she wasn’t giving Momma anything on Sandesh. She owed him her life.

The running shower switched off. “Okay. Thanks for all your help. Got to go. Love you.”

“Love you, Daughter.”

Justice listened to Sandesh moving in the bathroom. She could hear him grab a towel and dry off. There had been only one towel, so he was using the one she’d used.

She couldn’t help smiling at the idea of him wiping himself down with a towel that had been against her body. She tried not to imagine him all sexy, wet, and naked. Whoops. Too late.

Crossing her legs again, hair still damp from her own shower, she familiarized herself with the threads of red and brown in the hotel room’s carpet. Things were getting crazy.

Even though Amal was safe, Salma had had to close up shop. Damn. She never should’ve involved Sandesh and Salma. In one fell swoop, she’d crippled a charity that had been doing a lot of good, turned an honorable man into a fugitive, and brought attention to the League they couldn’t afford.

Ugh. Don’t think about that. Or about those women Salma’s charity helped, so eager to learn, so excited and joyful despite the pain and uncertainty of their lives.

She rolled onto her side, stared at the closed shower door, and tucked her legs into a fetal position. She had to remember she’d killed Aamir. She’d done it.

So why did she feel like such shit?

She’d thought once the man who’d killed Hope was dead, she’d feel better. Something like relief. Something like she’d earned the sacrifice of Hope’s life.

But now the pain of losing Hope had only been added to by the regret of destroying Salma’s and Sandesh’s good work and putting her family in danger.

The bathroom door opened. Sandesh walked into the room, bringing the smell of hotel soap and warm steam. He wore only boxers and had the abs and pecs of a man who needed no help getting laid. Damn. He worked out.

He stopped on seeing her checking him out. A grin spread across his face. “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely.’”

He’d left out the “more temperate” part of that line. She smiled, very much aware that her white cotton undies and tee did little to cover her. “So in addition to being smoking hot in boxers and providing expert cover fire, you also recite Shakespeare. Guess that’s not something you learned in the military.”

He walked to the bed. His eyes jumped along her body, caught the curve of her hip, followed it up. He shook his head. “As a kid, my mom read poetry and Shakespeare to me.”

His mother. Justice had heard him call to check on her a short time ago. “Was she okay when you called?”

“She’s doing the same. My partner at the IPT, Victor, goes over nearly every night and reads Shakespeare to her while she eats dinner. He says sometimes she likes it.”

“Victor of the many contacts sounds like a good guy.”

“He is. Most of the time.” That last seemed almost like a warning. His eyes, which had wandered again down her body, traveled back up to her face. “He would like you.”

“What about you? Do you still like me?”

He sat on the bed. It dipped with his weight. He was close enough that she could feel the moisture and heat on his skin, see the sky-blue of his eyes grow serious, detect a subtle tightening along his sharp, kissable jaw. That couldn’t be good.

He put one arm back, supporting himself with his hand. “You’re a vigilante. And you’ve started a war.”

Okay. They were going there.

She raised herself up on one hand, so they were eye level. “No. Men started the war. I’m just defending my sisters.”

“Men? Not me. I didn’t start this war. You dragged me into it.”

He had her there. “But you’re a good man; why not fight bad ones?”

His lips pressed together then relaxed. “Because I’ve tried that way. Tried it until I didn’t recognize myself. And that’s not my job anymore. There has to be more than that, Justice. That can’t be my only choice.”

He was right. Her eyes charted the muscles in his forearms, the length of his fingers, the spread of his hand. Strong and gentle. “What made you decide to do this, start a charity? Was it just that experience you had helping Victor? Was it your mom?”

He stiffened, started to get up. She put a hand on his thigh. It was muscle and tension. He looked at her. Spent a long moment staring into her eyes.

He ran a thumb along her brows, across the edge of her eyes. He whispered, “Your eyes…endless.”

He dropped his hand. “Partly that. But my mom getting early-onset Alzheimer’s made me realize I wanted to create more good memories. I saw what the bad memories did to her. The terror of an abusive relationship she escaped too late, one that is now part of her waking nightmare. But it was also…my own nightmare.”

“The one from the plane?”

He nodded. She waited, didn’t want to ask him to share. He had to know she’d listen if he wanted to tell her.

“You have your own shit, Justice. You don’t need to carry mine around too.”

What? That’s why he hadn’t told her? “So what? I burdened you when I told you about Hope.”

He startled, as if he hadn’t thought of it that way before. Men. Sometimes they got such a bad deal. Don’t share. Be tough. Sheesh. He took another moment and then said, “I was on a mission in Syria.”

“Not Iraq?”

“We went all over the Middle East. This was the end of my tour. Before things in Syria imploded. We were training the FSA.”

“FSA? Free Syrian Army? The good guys, r

ight?”

“They weren’t the good guys, but a whole lot better than the Syrian president, Assad. Trainees usually met us in Qatar, but we’d been sent into Syria. We were close by when Assad dropped a barrel bomb filled with chemicals on the local girls’ school.”

He scratched hard behind his ear, as if digging out a memory. “Someone had a hose out trying to wash the girls. The kids were screaming. Frantic. A young girl came running at me. I mean directly at me. She’d been stripped of skin and clothes. I didn’t even think. I just picked her up. Her skin sloughed off in my hands.”

Justice’s stomach turned over. “Oh God.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know what to do. Nearly vomited. One of my team had called for an extraction earlier. He alerted me to the helo. I started to walk toward the LZ. Thought I could get her to safety. I was so tense with anger I could feel it harden my veins. The kid was shaking like a leaf in my arms. But she reached up to me. The bones…the little bones in her hand visible.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Before she died, she said, ‘Poppa, don’t be angry. There is more.’”

More. More than violence. More than pain. He was looking for the pot at the end of the rainbow. Maybe not something clean, but a way to feel something other than anger. And didn’t he deserve that? Didn’t he deserve the other side of the coin? He’d fought enough.

Something in Justice’s chest, a kind of hopeful ache, moved forward as if seeking him.

“What did it mean when she said that? The more part?”