Flashpoint by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online

time—liked the man he saw in his bathroom mirror each morning.
    Decker’s watchful quiet, on the other hand, seemed to hold an undercurrent of danger. He was like a gunslinger from one of those old Westerns Jimmy had watched as a kid. Quiet and even polite, but with something in the way he sat or stood that let the world know this was not a man to mess with.
    And if he
was
messed with, look out.
    And yet, at the same time, Deck could, with very little effort, make himself completely invisible.
    That was something Jimmy particularly admired, since invisibility in a crowd wasn’t high on his personal list of easy tricks.
    He suspected it wasn’t on Paoletti’s either. But right now the man was silent, just letting Decker take a longer look at the photographs he’d given them.
    Deck knew Paoletti from his years with the SEAL teams. In the rental car on the way to this meeting, when Jimmy had been speculating on the nature of this assignment, Deck had turned to him and said, “I’d sign on just to shine Commander Paoletti’s shoes.”
    It was one hell of an endorsement.
    “Where did these pictures come from?” Decker asked Paoletti now. “Who’s the photographer?”
    “The client sent them to me,” he replied. “I can’t be more specific than that.”
    “Understood.” Deck finally put the photos down on the table. “They’re looking for Sayid’s laptop.”
    It wasn’t a question, but Paoletti nodded. He glanced at Jimmy, checking to see if he was up to speed.
    He was, indeed. Al-Qaeda leader Ma’awiya Talal Sayid carried a laptop that was believed to contain a gushing fountain of information—maybe enough to clue in the West to the next terrorist target. Of course the key word there was
believed
.
    “Does your client—let’s call them the Agency for short—have any proof that this mystical laptop isn’t just a rumor?” Jimmy asked. “Or that it contains more than the latest versions of Pac-Man and Solitaire?”
    “Nope,” Paoletti told him, with a coolness in his eyes that let Jimmy know his easygoing friendliness was for Decker and Decker alone. Paoletti still hadn’t decided whether he and Nash would be buddies. Which was different from most people’s prejudgment. Most people filed Jimmy in their troublemakers folder before even meeting him.
    “And let’s not call the client anything but the client,” Paoletti added. “They like it better that way.”
    “Especially since you haven’t got your Cone of Silence up and working,” Jimmy said with a deliberate glance around the room, letting Paoletti know that he, too, hadn’t yet decided if he was going to climb in bed with the former SEAL. So to speak.
    Paoletti laughed, getting both the
Get Smart
reference and Jimmy’s unspoken message, which was another point in his favor. “Yeah, well, we moved into this office two months ago and I haven’t had time to hire a receptionist, let alone set up some kind of shielded room.” He included Deck in the conversation. “I’m turning work away, Chief—I can’t keep up with the demand. Lot of people traveling overseas want an armed escort these days. Even domestically, there’s a huge call for additional security, evacuation plans, that type of assignment. And those are just the corporate clients. But this job . . . this one’s important. The client can’t send in their own, um, employees—the U.S.–K-stani relationship has deteriorated beyond repair and if those
employees
were discovered, there could be real trouble. I don’t think that’s news to either of you.”
    It wasn’t. It had been more than three years since Jimmy had gone into K-stan with Decker on an Agency assignment. “And yet someone eliminated Sayid,” he commented.
    “No. Mother Nature eliminated Sayid. His death was from internal damage, believed to be caused by a collapsing building,” Paoletti informed them. “He apparently crawled free and found his way to a hospital before he died. We have no idea where he