Burned (Vanessa Pierson series Book 2) by Valerie Plame, Sarah Lovett Read Free Book Online Page A

a woman. She wore a yellow hazmat suit but no protective hood, and her thick, dark braid fell halfway down her back. Vanessa caught her profile—the strong features, dark brows, and honey-brown skin of a Middle Eastern woman. For most of a minute the two spoke, the conversation notably animated, almost heated, and, once, the woman looked toward Vanessa, then back to Fournier.
    Vanessa watched the little vignette play out, pegging the woman for French intelligence. Body language told her she was Fournier’s subordinate, but not by much.
    The woman was shaking her head adamantly when Fournier turned his back on her. He covered the distance to Vanessa quickly.
    “Let’s finish up here,” he said, with his already familiar low growl. But it was more of a snarl after his encounter with the woman. “Step by step, what happened when you saw the man you believed was your asset?”
    In a flat voice, the only way to stave off the flood of emotions, she relayed the scene as accurately as she could from the moment she noticed the suicide bomber—including the signals that misled her and allowed her to move toward him. She wiped several stray raindrops from her face. “He was the right age, he had the right clothes, the hair, even Farid’s hat—he was his double, sent to convince me . . .”
    Because, of course, once Farid was a prisoner of True Jihad they would have extracted the information they needed before they murdered him.
    She swallowed past the ache in her throat. “When he was halfway to me he slowed . . . then he stopped.”
    “You were here?” Fournier said, indicating the spot where she stood. “And he was over there—so that puts about twenty-five meters between you.”
    Vanessa nodded. “That sounds right.”
    “And you still believed he was your asset?”
    “No. I realized something was off when he looked at me.”
    “Wait. He actually recognized you? You’re positive?”
    “Yes.” She nodded, understanding that meant the bomber had picked her out in the middle of a crowd.
    Fournier inhaled and his dark, thick eyebrows knitted tightly. “And?”
    “I saw that it wasn’t Farid,” she said simply. “Then Hays spotted the backpack.” She felt herself hollowing out. “That’s when the bomb went off.”
    “This is most important,” Fournier said, stepping closer. “Did you see his hand on the detonator?”
    Vanessa blinked, summoning images again. She shook her head. “His right hand was in his pocket.”
    “So you didn’t see him actually detonate the bomb?”
    “No.” She slowly took another breath. “But this is my intuition—he knew he was carrying a bomb and he set it off. One of the last things that crossed my mind before everything blew to hell was:
Is he praying?
”
    Vanessa sensed someone behind her at the same time Fournier shifted his gaze. She turned to find herself facing the same Middle Eastern woman who Fournier had argued with earlier.
    The woman was scowling, speaking sharply to Vanessa in Arabic.
    The only words she caught were “dirty bomb.” Vanessa shook her head, fighting exhaustion.
“Français, s’il vous plaît, je ne parle pas arabe.”
    But the woman was already hissing at her in posh English: “You Americans with your fucking hubris, you bring your stupidly run CIA operations to our country and you manage to kill and maim innocent victims, and you expect us to clean up after you.”
    Vanessa stared openmouthed as the woman turned her back, snapped something in Arabic to Fournier, and then stalked away.
    What the hell was that?
    Before she got a word out, Fournier, staring after the woman, shook his head. “Go back to the safe house—you’re done here.”
    Thanks for stating the obvious, Fournier.

12
     
    Not far from the perimeter barriers that kept onlookers from entering the courtyard and the blast area, a man in a plain gray raincoat and an olive-green porkpie hat stood in the midst of a small congregation of the curious.
    After at least