“Suliman?” Magic said. “She doesn’t. Well, she did, but not anymore. They’re all dead.”
“Maybe…nephews and nieces …?” Shane flipped back through the pictures.
“No, they were all killed,” Magic said. “Her entire family was blown to hell. That’s what makes her so fucking ruthless. She’s got no one, Commander. She’s no fear and all anger.”
Shane turned off the imager and pulled it from his face. “Don’t call me that.”
“You know you’re so there, Laughlin,” Magic said. “After this op …? Admiral Crotchkiss is gonna greet the plane himself and plant a great big wet one on you. And then he’s going to give you his niece’s hand in marriage—oh, wait. What a coincidence! He’s already done that.”
Magic was convinced that Shane’s engagement to Ashley Hotchkiss was the equivalent of an arranged marriage between members of the corporate aristocracy and a young, swiftly rising officer in the U.S. Navy. It was, he insisted, part of an insidious plan to keep the future leaders of the U.S. military securely under corporate control.
But Magic didn’t know Ashley as well as Shane did. The idea was ridiculous—that she would marry Shane merely because her father’s brother requested it …?
Vibrantly beautiful Ashley, with her gorgeous blue eyes, her classically lovely face, her willowy dancer’s body, her sharp intellect, and keen sense of humor…She could have had any man—anyman—she’d wanted, including a whole pack of powerful officers much higher up the chain of command. But she’d fallen in love with Shane. He’d made damn well sure of it.
“Your bullshit is getting old.” Shane now handed his friend the viewer. “Do something useful with your giant brain for a change and look at these images—particularly the ones toward the end. That little boy looks too much like Suliman to not be her kid.”
And that meant their job here just got even harder. Because if this boy was Suliman’s, Shane couldn’t just call in a strike on the home where she was sleeping tonight, because doing so would kill the child, too.
Meanwhile, Magic was flipping through the images. “Dude, what …? Wait…No, no, no, this isn’t her.”
Well, Shanecouldcall it in, but he wouldn’t, and…
“I’m sorry, what?” he asked sharply.
“Jesus, you can be a load,” Magic muttered. “We’re alone out here, Ricky can’t hear us and yet youreallyneed to hear me call yousirjust because I dissed your fancy-assed girlfriend?”
“Fancy-assed fiancée,” Shane corrected him. “And no, dickweed. I was asking because I thought I heard you say—”
“That this isn’t Rebekah Suliman? It’s not. I don’t know who the fuck this is, but it’s not her.”
“But the face recognition software—”
“Is wrong,” Magic finished for him again, still flipping through the images. “I’m gonna reset and run it again and…No, it still IDs whoever this is as Suliman, but I’m telling you, bro, it’snother.” He shut off the viewer and handed it back to Shane. “Your royal majestic lordship sir, maybe you don’t remember this, because your soon-to-be uncle-in-law snapped his fingers and got you leave for some party—”
“Ashley’s sister’s wedding.”
“Whatever,” Magic said.
“It was a big deal,” Shane protested.
“I’m sure it was. But while you were doing the electric slide with old Aunt Edwina, I was loaned out to Team Six. I didn’t mention it before now, because it was one of those sneaky, covert, not-to-be-mentioned things. But long very-top-secret story short, I’ve seen Suliman through a rifle scope.”
“I had no idea,” Shane said. He wasn’t sure what was more surprising—the fact that Magic had gone out with Team Six or the fact that the loquacious SEAL hadn’t told Shane about it before now. “How long were you …?”
“It was one very shitty week,” Magic said. “I was back on base before you were. Suliman slipped through our fingers, which was doubly disappointing. But I can tell you with absolute authority that this”—he tapped the imager—“is not her. Beeyotch is missing an eye. And I don’t care what kind of reconstructive surgery is being done these days in Paris, but even if, by some miracle, she went there and had her face rebuilt, it’sstillnot her. Unless they replacedbotheyes with brown ones, made her ten years younger, a half a foot taller, and gave her a new set of teeth, too.”
Shane looked at this man whom he’d trusted, time and again, not just with his life but also the lives of their teammates.
“I suppose the teeth falls underpossible,” Magic went on as he scratched his head. “But if they’re going to give her new ones, why make ’em crappy and crooked? And combined with the rest of that shit …?” He shook his head. “Nope.” He popped his P—a habit he’d picked up from years of working with Shane. “Not her.”
Shane shifted painfully, trying to reach for the bag that held Slinger’s equipment. “Let’s run the image through a non-gov-issue face-rec program.”
“Good idea, and I got it,” Magic said, pulling the pack closer. He dug through the nest of wires, looking for the cord that would connect the viewer to Slinger’s doctored mini-tab.
But it was then that Shane’s radio headset clicked on, and Scotty Linden’s rich baritone came over a scrambled channel. He was one of the two SEALs assigned to follow Slinger. “LT, Linden here. Over.”
“Gotcha, Scott,” Shane said, motioning for Magic to click on his radio headset, too, before he hooked the two pieces of equipment together. “What have you got? Over.”
