Free Out of Sight by Cherry Adair

validation. Damn it. She really shouldn't. He was nothing to her. Nothing more than her boss on this op. Nothing more than her hero. Nothing more than a man she'd looked up to, sight unseen, for the last eighteen months of her life.
    He looked at her over his shoulder. "I was outside the whole time you were in there, Cooper," he said quietly, as if he'd read her mind. "I wouldn't have let it get that far."
    AJ felt a huge wash of gratitude. "I wasn't worried."
    He faced front again. "Right."
    Feel the warmth, AJ thought, glaring at his back. Talk about unbending. He must've been raised by wolves.
    "Okay, maybe a little worried," she admitted. "But you must have been worried when you were in prison, too, right?"
    "Can't remember."
    "Would you mind me asking how you landed there?" A mistake you made, right?
    "Yes."
    AJ waited a beat. Honest to God, the man took the word "uncommunicative" to a whole new level. "Don't hold back, Kane. Feel free to tell me how you really feel, in as many words as you need."
    "Fine. You want to know? Trust was misplaced. Someone didn't obey orders," he said after a few minutes of heavy silence. "The result was that five good men were tortured to death right outside my window. After a while I started praying that my turn would come soon. Is that enough info for you, Cooper? Or would you like the gory details?"
    AJ pressed her fist to her stomach. She'd read the bare bones of the report. Over and over and over again. She didn't need the details. The images of what she thought might have happened were etched in her brain. It had probably been considerably worse than anything she could've come up with.
    Kane Wright had never, as far as she knew, made any mistakes or missteps in his eight-year career, so whoever had screwed up had died. Did he feel responsible somehow?
    "Sorry for dredging that up. That was a shitty thing to do. Just because I'm feeling sorry for myself doesn't mean I have the right to stir up your old memories."
    "Doesn't matter anymore."
    Yes it did, she wanted to argue, but talking to the back of his head was getting her nowhere fast. "I'm sorry I asked."
    "So am I, Cooper. So am I."
    They rode the rest of the way up to the eleventh floor in silence, and when the door opened he was the first one out. AJ caught up with him, and walked beside him when he turned left down the hall. With her Sig Sauer in her hand, her gaze shifted constantly as she kept a sharp eye on their surroundings. Raazaq's men could be anywhere.
    If she went to Fayoum alone and then screwed up this opportunity again, she could wave her T-FLAC career good-bye. Of that she was a dead certain. Of course, if she screwed up while she was on her own, it was pretty much a certainty she'd be dead. So worries about her career were pretty much moot.
    If she got on the plane and went home with her tail between her legs, they might send her out on another op again sometime. In fifty years or so. Maybe. Or, more likely, they'd insist she take the damn desk job they'd offered her in the first place. Even more likely, they'd boot her ass out of the organization so fast, she'd get whiplash.
    She'd go to Fayoum.
    And this time she wouldn't miss Raazaq.
    It wasn't an option.
    Decision made. Debate over.
    Strangely enough, now that she'd made up her mind, fatigue dropped from her shoulders like an old jacket she'd shrugged out of. There was bounce in her step, and a tiny burst of energy dazzling through her bloodstream. This wasn't over.
    She wouldn't be going home in disgrace. She'd show Kane. She'd show them all!
    The endless corridors smelled of urine, cumin, and poverty. Babies cried behind closed doors, and large, black cockroaches crawled the walls and crunched underfoot on the filthy, cracked linoleum. Nothing like the posh Hotel Ra.
    One more turn in the labyrinth of filth and they came to a blue-painted door. El 101. It looked like the Hounds of the Baskervilles had clawed at the chipped and faded paintwork to get in. "Got