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

He found another ounce of spit and used it.

A strangled groan ripped free as the pipe crashed into his collar bone. Unlike his lung, this dent wasn't popping back out. He dropped his chin to his chest, sucking in stale air and his own bloody spittle as he fought the plea clawing up his throat.

He was dimly aware of the scrape of metal on metal in the blistering existence that followed.

Perhaps the bastard was right and there was a God, because somehow, he found the strength to open his left eye. Just a crack. The haji on his far left was bending over a heavy-duty, deep-cycle battery, attaching a pair of jumper cables. The ends had been stripped down to bare, taunting wire. The man crammed his fists into rubber gloves, then retrieved the cables and snapped the raw ends together.

Twelve chilling volts sparked and spitted to life. More than enough to stop a human heart. They wouldn't even have to douse him in seawater for max effect.

He was drenched in blood and sweat.

"Last chance, kafir."

"Go to hell."

The wires closed in. A split second later, his entire body convulsed—broken bones and all—as white-hot lightning ripped through his groin. And then his body went slack, twisting in the nonexistent wind…until the wires returned.

Again and again.

Somehow, the words he'd been holding back left the fog of his splintered brain and invaded his tongue. He was pleading with them now. Shamelessly.

Another jolt, and the truth tumbled free.

That's when he knew it was over.

He never saw the haji move, only smelled the blessed absence of that putrid breath beneath the stench of his own burning flesh.

Then he heard the words. "كيلل هيم."

Kill him.

He shut up. It was done. The most important mission of his life—and he'd failed.

Chapter 1

Her reprieve came early. Two days, six hours and fourteen minutes—and not a second too soon.

Air ripped through Mira's lungs as she vaulted down from her aerobic climber to follow the shrill of her cellphone out of the bedroom of her Washington, DC, sublet. The phone rang again as she raced past the galley kitchen and into an equally cramped living room. Adrenaline surged, supplanting desperately courted, exercise-induced endorphins as she reached the coffee table and caught sight of her caller ID.

Ramsey. A case.

For a split second, guilt battled with her own selfish need.

Need won.

Mira dragged in a steadying breath as she grabbed the phone. "Who died?"

"And hello to you, too, Special Agent Ellis. If I'm not mistaken, it's almost midnight there. Odd time to work out…especially since you're supposed to be on vacation."

Vacation her ass. Try fourteen days of forced leave. And the man who'd ordered it was on the other end of her line.

"Blame the neighbor's cat. He's still spending his nights trying to seduce the stone planter outside my window."

"This the cat that got run over last month?"

Crap.

Silence more pregnant than the five remaining felines infesting the alley filled the line.

"Still having trouble nodding off, eh?"

"Nope."

Nodding off wasn't the issue. It was the inevitable waking shortly thereafter that was slowly driving her insane—despite the mandatory shrink sessions this man had also ordered her to attend.

Mira stared at the bottle of scotch that'd taken up residence on the closest end table following her first session. At least the glass beside it was empty—and clean.

Now.

"You want to talk about it?"

She flushed, and not because of the offer. It was his tone. The raw compassion infusing the line didn't belong to William H. Ramsey, Special Agent in Charge of the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service's Washington Field Office—it came from Bill, the closest thing to a father she'd ever truly known.

Somehow, that made it worse.

Mira turned her back on the half-empty bottle and checked the clock above the fireplace. Ramsey and her instincts were right. It was almost midnight. Worse, though she'd been working out for nearly an hour, she wasn't breathing hard anymore. Amazing what a fresh case of PTSD could do for the body.

At least on the outside.

Mira concentrated on the disembodied voice of a stewardess running through preflight checks as it spilled out of the phone and into her right ear. It beat listening to the piercing wail that'd been haunting her days and nights for almost two weeks.

"Hon—"

"You want to tell me why you're calling from a runway, or am I supposed to guess?"

The silence returned—even with the droning stewardess—and this time it was terse. Bill had left. Special Agent in Charge Ramsey had taken his place and he was not happy that she'd cut him off.

Mira clamped down on her phone, waiting for the reprimand she deserved.

Ramsey sighed instead. "There's been a murder. Captain Teresa Corrigan. She was a Navy JAG. Worked out of the Pentagon, espionage cases mostly."

Mira sifted through her memory. "Never heard of her."

Not surprising. She snagged a rumpled, but clean hand towel from the laundry basket she'd left beside the couch the night before. She'd been investigating the scourge of the Fleet for six years now, but that didn't mean she'd met every lawyer in the Judge Advocate General's office, especially those working espionage. Even before Ramsey had taken over the DC field office, she'd tended to work violent crimes and for good reason. She appeared to have a knack for solving them.

Mira mopped the perspiration from her face and hooked the towel over her shoulder. "What do we have?"

"Not much. It's not even our case. Yet. The captain's body was found earlier this evening—in her bed. Her townhouse is a couple blocks northeast of Dupont Circle. As you can imagine, there are…issues."

She'd just bet there were. And every one involved jurisdiction.

Dupont Circle was located within spitting distance of the White House and a good three miles from the Washington Navy Yard, the closest naval facility. Not only did jurisdiction for the captain's murder not automatically fall within NCIS' purview, it fell squarely within the DC Metropolitan Police Department's. Nor was MPD's current chief known for passing off cases,