Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

CASABLANCA, MOROCCO, PRESENT TIME

A m I dead? Pain seared Maggie’s side as she tried to draw a breath. Lying flat on her back in a narrow, bricked alley just a few steps from her apartment in Casablanca, she assessed her injuries, took stock of her situation, and groaned.

The bit of violet sky peeking between overhanging roofs informed her it was nightfall. Raising her arm to check the time, Maggie launched a cloud of flies that had been crawling on her. Her watch glowed 8:37 P.M., which meant she’d been lying here for at least an hour. Summer was the peak tourist season in Casablanca. People must have skirted the comatose and bleeding woman, ignoring her plight. Even now, she could hear somebody edging around her?—a woman with a baby. Maggie murmured reassurances, and the young mother scuttled past.

The jig was up. Her cover was blown. As Jake would have said in the Irish Gaelic of his paternal grandfather, “Nách mór an diabhal thú,” which loosely translated meant, Well, aren’t you the devil?

The gut-lurching realization that her true identity was known had hit her on her walk home from work. She was approaching the gate that led to the courtyard of her building when Kamal’s bodyguard materialized in front of her?—no sign of Kamal anywhere. One look at the dark intent in Farid’s dark eyes, and she’d realized both he and Kamal knew exactly who she was. She’d been handily played, all the while thinking herself in control of the game.

But that was hours ago.

By some incredible stroke of luck, she still wore her watch, not yet stolen by one of Casablanca’s many thieves and pickpockets. The watch contained a GPS chip, broadcasting her location. So long as she could get to her apartment to place the necessary call, an extraction team would be deployed to recover her. But what if Kamal and his bodyguard suspected as much and followed her? The whole extraction team could be targeted.

Maggie held her breath and listened. Her neighbor’s dog wasn’t barking, which it did whenever strangers were in the building. So maybe the coast was clear.

Summoning her strength, she rolled from her back to her front. A moan escaped her clenched teeth. Oh, man . Kamal’s bodyguard had broken at least one of her ribs. Pushing to her hands and knees, she waited for the tsunami of agony to subside.

The CIA had assigned her here only nine months earlier. Her objective was simple: verify the rumors that switchblade drones, earmarked for the Russian Wagner Group, were passing through a waterfront warehouse in Casablanca, a circumstance with frightening implications.

Magdalena Montoya Ellis had been a shoo-in for the CIA. Not only was she fluent in Spanish and French, but her father was a public corruption section chief for the FBI. The Ellises were patriots. Morocco was her third assignment, following Bogotá and Caracas. Here, she portrayed herself as a French fashionista, selling clothing at a boutique not far from the warehouse in question. Befriending the foreman, Kamal, had been laughably easy.

With very little coaxing, Kamal had taken her out to dinner and for leisurely evening strolls along the waterfront. He hadn’t pressured her for intimacies, thank God. In fact, he’d spilled everything there was to know about the shipments bound for Russia?—their point of origin and how they would get there.

Now, it was plainly apparent Kamal had been testing her. No doubt he had fed her a string of lies, and a mole in the CIA had reported them all back to him, proving Maggie was a spook, as he obviously suspected.

I’m sorry, Kamal. Despite his radical political convictions, she had genuinely liked the man, though he didn’t hold a candle to her college sweetheart. And Kamal must have liked her, too, because his bodyguard, Farid, whose fists were the size of hams, could have easily killed her. Instead, he’d roughed her up and walked away. At least, she hoped he had.

I have to get out of here.

With the help of the rough earthen wall next to her, Maggie managed to get vertical. Blood slid from her split lip to her chin before dripping onto her Christian Dior blouse.

Gritting her teeth, she shuffled toward her apartment building, a two-story structure of dried clay, entirely whitewashed. Through her one good eye, she plumbed the shadows, terrified Farid would return to finish the job.

The neighbor’s dog began to bark as she reached the building. She stilled, looked, and listened.

Was the dog just barking at her…or was Farid nearby, watching her every move?

The courtyard, with its burbling central fountain and decorative blue tiles, stood quiet. Everyone was having dinner, as evidenced by the aroma of roasting lamb and mint tea.

One ragged step at a time, Maggie dragged herself up the stairs to her second-story flat. The fine hairs at her nape prickled as she spotted her door ajar. Someone had come this way before her, if they weren’t still here. Too bad her Ruger was tucked in the drawer by her bed?—at least it used to be.

Approaching her door, she listened again. The dog stopped barking, a reassuring sign. What a relief Miles, her half-brother, and his bride, McKenzie, who’d lived with Maggie for several months, had just returned to the States.

Porcelain shards crackled under Maggie’s pumps as she waded inside. So much for her collection of ornamental plates, torn off the wall, shattered and scattered like confetti. They were supposed to be souvenirs from her Moroccan tour.

She would be lucky to have herself as a souvenir at this point.

Eyeing her semi-dark living room, Maggie absorbed the scene of cushions and pillows strewn across the Persian rug for which she had haggled fiercely at the outset of her tour. She hoped to see it again one day?—only possible if it wasn’t stolen by the time the CIA packed up her stuff and sent it stateside.

She headed for her kitchen, where every dish had been pulled from the cupboards and smashed. Glass and ceramic crunched and squealed beneath her soles as she limped toward the sink. God forbid they’d found her Agency phone, hidden in the false bottom of a Lysol spray bottle.

With a groan, she retrieved it from under the sink, removed the false bottom, and breathed a sigh of relief as the phone fell into her hands. Buíochas le Dia, Thanks be to God , as Jake used to say.

Following a wary glance behind her, she entered the passcode, then the letters E-X-I-T on the alphanumeric keypad. That would bring an extraction team to the escape-and-evasion point within one hour. Maggie swallowed hard and ended the call.

If she could make it there in time, she’d be whisked away. Not exactly a triumphant withdrawal, as had been the case in Venezuela two years earlier, when she’d been rescued with a thumb drive full of priceless intel?—not to mention the most astonishing thing of all: Jake Carrigan, her first and only love, had been the SEAL in charge of the extraction team.

What an exhilarating moment that had been! He’d tucked her under his protective wing and delivered her to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf, only to vanish on her as suddenly as he’d vanished from Paris.

Maggie had made inquiries later, discovering that not only was Jake a Navy SEAL, but he’d been trained by the CIA’s Special Operations Group to protect case officers like herself?—which was crazy because the time she’d checked on him before that, he’d been working for the Peace Corps. Never in a million years would she have pictured Jake as a Navy SEAL, let alone a SOG.

Limping toward her bedroom, Maggie paused at the sight of her mattress flipped onto its side. The drawer of her bedside table stood open, so the Ruger was gone. Turning away, she skirted the colorful pillows in her wrecked living room to get to her balcony.

How am I going to make it to the exfil site?

With pure Ellis determination, that was how. At her balcony door, she took one last look at the apartment she’d called home. It had never occurred to her that she would be leaving with her tail tucked between her legs.

At least I’m alive .

She stepped outside, pulling the door shut. Her escape-and-evasion plan involved going over the railing, dropping to the flat rooftop of the adjacent building, and crossing that to a fire-escape ladder that would put her on a different alley, one that zigzagged toward the coast. Easy peasy. In a nondescript mosque about a klick away, an asset would be waiting for her. Supposedly, there was a tunnel under the city that led from the mosque to the ocean, where the extraction team would pick her up.

If she made it that far.

Pausing for strength, Maggie inhaled the warm Moroccan air, forever infused with the sweet and savory scents of couscous, ras el hanout , and fresh-baked khubz bread. Her thoughts flitted to the local baker, an informant who was always glad to share the local chatter, like whose son fancied whose daughter. I’ll miss this place. Probably because the French-influenced culture here reminded her of Paris and the joyous months with Jake.

A glance at her watch prompted Maggie to get moving. Only how was she supposed to climb when she could barely even stand?

Lifting her gaze to the stars obscured by a desert haze, the words Jake had shared with her more than once came to mind. “One day, Lena, you’re going to figure out that you can’t save the world by yourself. If you ever need help, just reach up. God’s right there, waiting for you.”

He’d never understood her need to defend democracy. Growing up in Venezuela, she’d seen firsthand what the fall of democracy looked like. Even so, Jake’s faith had always inspired her. She gripped the railing on her balcony and swayed. “So…I think I might need help right now.”

Getting no response and with no other choice, Maggie lifted a long leg over the railing, sat a moment, then heaved her other leg over. As she slipped off the rail to stand on the outer ledge, she pivoted to face her building. Remarkably, only mild discomfort accompanied her movements.

Next, she moved her hands from the railing to the vertical balusters, then lowered one foot to the bakery’s flat roof. Her ribs barely protested. Huh. Maybe I should pray more often.

Encouraged, Maggie crossed the roof to the fire escape on the other side. The last time she’d looked at the rickety ladder, some of the rungs were starting to rust through.

While climbing down the ladder backward, she anticipated the pain to return with a vengeance, but it didn’t. Her adrenaline must be kicking in. She dropped down into a quiet alley and then made her way downhill toward the mosque.

The unlit street kept Maggie wary. She’d never ventured out at night without a djellaba , the hooded robe most local women wore, and for good reason.

Furtive footfalls had her spinning around just as an old man walked up on her. He gasped in alarm at her disfigured face and gave her a wide berth.

She had to look frightful with one eye swollen shut and her lip oozing blood. Thank goodness the odds of Jake rescuing her a second time were slim to none. She wouldn’t want him to see her like this.

The last time Jake had rescued her, she’d been confident and still in one piece, not at all like now.

Maggie checked her watch. Only thirty minutes remaining, and she was just now reaching the mosque.

Arriving at a door thickly layered in gold paint, she used a buzzer to announce herself. Her lower lip throbbed as she waited. At last, the door popped open, and a dark-skinned imam dressed in blinding white robes swept her inside.

“I’ve been expecting you.” His English was perfect. “Can you walk?”

She clutched her side as she swayed on her feet. “Sure.”

“Good. The team is nearly here. We have to move quickly.”

He pulled her into a dim antechamber, through a side door, and down a hall to an alcove. A push against the back wall sent it rumbling inward, revealing the tunnel into which he ushered her, leaving it open and clicking on a penlight. A curve in the tunnel beckoned them down an angled floor of hard-packed dirt, which took them beneath the ancient city toward the pier where the team would be waiting.

They seemed to walk forever, though Maggie knew it wasn’t even one klick to the extraction point. Her pain was returning with a vengeance, shortening her steps.

“Just a little farther.”

The man’s encouragement kept her going.

Moisture now hung in the air, tinged with the smell of sea salt. When they came upon a door that marked the tunnel’s end, she swallowed a sob of relief.

It opened suddenly, and the silhouette ducking under the low lintel was identical to the one that had come bursting into the office in Venezuela. “Jake!”

“Lena!”

When he tacked on a phrase in Gaelic, she knew she wasn’t just imagining him. On a moan, she stumbled into him, letting him support her. What were the odds he would be sent to save her twice?

“What hurts?” He held her firmly but gently.

“Everything.”

He spoke over his shoulder. “Decker, pass me an auto-injector of morphine.”

Maggie dropped her head against his dense chest. She could hear his heart thumping with sure, steady strokes that proved he was really with her.

A jab in her arm sent morphine swirling into her bloodstream, smoothing the razor’s edge of agony, turning the world fuzzy. She’d made it to the exfil site. Jake would take it from here.

As he scooped her off her feet, carrying her like a baby, an explosion of semiautomatic gunfire filled the tunnel.

Jake moved so fast that she didn’t know what was happening; she only knew that someone had fired at them from farther up the tunnel. Farid. She’d led him straight to the extraction site!

“Relax!” Jake bounded with her up a run of steps. “We got this.”

By the time they reached the top of the stairs, the burst of gunfire was over. Jake bore her through an open door, out onto a long, dark pier where starlight winked through the haze overhead, and a warm, wet breeze blew over them.

He stepped down into a rigid-inflatable craft that rocked against the pier, then sat with her across his lap. The boat pitched as several more SOGs jumped in. The stealth motor thrummed to life, scarcely audible over the slapping water. Cooler air streamed over her as they pulled away.

Up and over waves they went, kicking up sea spray that swirled around them and dampened every inch of her. The glow of the Casablanca cityscape faded, leaving nothing but a star-studded sky above and waves below that subsided into swells.

Jake asked his men to report in. One of them indicated he’d been nicked by a bullet, but nothing too serious. Another stated that the target was dead.

Jake scowled down at her. “Did you know you were followed?”

She had trouble getting her tongue to cooperate. “Possibly.”

“Who did this to you?”

There was no mistaking his fury, but she wasn’t authorized to tell him. “My fault. I was played.”

He adjusted his hold, cradling her like he never meant to let her go. The thighs she sat across were as dense as tree trunks. The gangly young man she’d loved in Paris had morphed into something more.

She had so many questions to ask him. But she was too drugged to speak.

Their motor cut off abruptly, and a hulking shape emerged from the dark, scarcely visible against the night sky. They coasted silently into an enclosure?—the port of a Navy vessel, given the smell of motor oil and steel and the sound of sloshing water. With a low hum, the jaws of the port closed behind them, and the lights blinked on.

Half a dozen sailors stood around what resembled an indoor swimming pool. They helped to moor and stabilize their craft.

Jake managed to clamber off the RIB without handing her off to anyone. Maggie’s head lolled on his shoulder. Her wet clothing made her shiver. Even so, the urge to fall asleep was overwhelming. Stay awake! But the morphine he’d given her was most likely dosed for a man twice her size.

His boots rang along a metal corridor before he ducked into a room that smelled of antiseptic. When he laid her gently on a gurney, she clung to the sleeve of his night ops uniform.

“S’ay wi’ me.”

Her request made him hold her gaze. He didn’t wear glasses anymore. The Navy must have corrected his vision.

“You need a doctor, Lena. And I can’t stay.”

His terse reply betrayed a certain level of frustration. Was he mad at her? Sensing him about to leave, some desperate emotion pushed tears into her eyes. “Don’t go.”

With a firming of his lips that was all too familiar, he peeled her left hand from his sleeve, regarded her bare fourth finger for a split second, and then brushed his lips across her knuckles.

The sweet gesture made her heart clutch. Oh, Jake, I miss you!

“Be well.” He released her, then swiveled on his soles, ducked out the door, and disappeared.

Again? Her heart unraveled like a spool of thread. Why did Jake blow in and out of her life like this without any explanation? It was crazy.