Backblast by Candace Irving (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

much like her dwindling hopes that she could pull this thing off. "So, no pressure then."

"You can do this, Rae."

She was grateful for his vote of confidence. Because at the moment, her own nerve was lodging an insistent, belligerent veto.

She corralled her doubts as best she could as she finished packing up the contents of her crime kit. She added in the items she'd taken into evidence, including the smooth envelope and its classified contents, then automatically secured the kit's barrel lock on a new number. Finished, she nodded toward the stainless-steel case, knowing John wouldn't let her carry it anyway. Not with the tremors beginning to work their way up her arm.

"That's ready to go. My laptop's still in the outer office."

John hefted the case and motioned her toward the door. "How do you plan on working this?"

The same way she always did. It was the only way she knew how. "Corporal Vetter?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I need access to a wireless printer and photographic paper, ASAP. I also want copies of all security footage that pertains to this office from this past week forwarded to my CID email." She definitely needed to know what Crier had been doing—and who he'd been doing it with. She motioned for John to pass her crime kit off to the corporal. "Have that case secured in the RSO's safe, and do not let it leave your side until it goes in. Finally, seal up this office and post a guard outside. Unless the chancery's on fire, the guard does not leave his post until I've had a chance to deal with the body."

God willing, her conditional wouldn't come to pass.

"Yes, ma'am. Corporal Swan will take you to the printer."

She and John followed a tall, black, sinewy Marine out of the secretary's office.

Twenty minutes later, freshly printed materials tucked beneath her non-trembling arm, John was escorting her down the corridor and into the conference room where Ambassador Linnet stood in the far-right corner, just beyond the end of the walnut table that dominated the space. Linnet was nodding her sleek, blond bob as she spoke quietly with a petite woman of roughly sixty years. Since Linnet's companion was the only female Pakistani in the room, she was most likely Mrs. Chaudhry. And there was the evidence in the woman's face. The slightly reddened and puffy eyes. While Sitara Chaudhry had surely rivaled Inaya Sadat's beauty in her younger years, the plain burgundy of her silken shalwar kameez and dupatta suggested that the older woman preferred the more subdued end of the rainbow.

Either that, or Sitara had chosen the muted colors in honor of her daughter's passing.

Regan recognized the stocky white-haired and bearded, western-suited Pakistani male nearest the women from the news the year before: Chief Justice Chaudhry.

As for the taller, fiftyish, traditionally dressed Pakistani male engaged in a low, but politely heated conversation with Warren Jeffers in the opposite far corner, it appeared the country's prime minister had made an appearance as well.

Lovely. This was going to be hard enough without either of those blowhards chiming in.

Except, the look Jeffers shot her as he glanced up from his conversation with Prime Minister Bukhari hearkened more to his attitude toward the spook than it had during either of her previous conversations with the DCM.

Had she managed to knock the disdain and vitriol from the man when she'd shoved his bulk to the floor outside Crier's office following that gunshot?

If so, she could only hope she'd earned Jeffers' coming support, or at the very least, his silence. Though, in light of her previous intel on the man, she doubted it.

Jeffers headed toward her, his peppery curls and suit even more wilted and rumpled than they'd been at their last meeting. "Agent Chase, please, let me assist you with that."

She shook her head as he reached for the thick folder she'd just created. "Thank you, but I've got it."

Those overly generous lips flattened.

Scott and Aamer Sadat had been spot on, then.

Further proof arrived with the saccharine smile that resumed oozing as Jeffers turned toward the ambassador and her guests. The look he'd shot Regan upon her entrance had simply been a reflection of his need to keep up diplomatic appearances.

Good to know.

As John stopped at the head of the table to deposit her laptop beside the leading chair, she bypassed Jeffers and continued on toward the ambassador and the Chaudhrys. Though she hadn't yet met the former, she nodded as though she had.

The ambassador picked up on the cue and nodded back.

The thirty second crash course in Pakistan manners that John had given her in mind, she stopped in front of the chief justice and his wife and bowed her head to both. "Chief Justice Chaudhry, Begum Chaudhry, As-Salaam-u-Alaikum."

As she straightened, the errant strand of hair from Crier's office slipped free again. Her fingers shook as she smoothed it beneath the dupatta.

Given who she'd been about to meet and why, she'd decided against removing the head covering during John's customs lecture.

It was a good call.

Both Chaudhrys seemed pleasantly taken aback by the swath of black. Especially since it was clear she hadn't donned it simply to impress them, but had been wearing it a while. She'd caught her reflection in the sliver of glass embedded in the conference room door just before John had opened it.

Unlike the grieving mother's veil, the silk dupatta John had purchased at Al Dhafra was clearly crushed and limp from the day's use.

Even the prime minister appeared pleased with the tip toward traditional, female Muslim modesty as Bukhari approached to let her know that his president was dealing with another crisis and would be arriving as soon as he was able.

Regan repeated the formal greeting to Bukhari that she'd offered the Chaudhrys and waited as Jeffers stepped up to encourage everyone to take their seats.

Though both the American and Pakistani contingents claimed chairs along the opposite side of the walnut table from her, she focused her attention solely on the grieving mother at the