be an emergency.”
He turned on his heel and strode back to the cockpit.
Kotcheff? He must have been even more pissed off than Kendra had thought.
She lifted the phone to her ear. “You’re not going to get an apology, Kotcheff.”
“I don’t believe he expects one,” Adam Lynch said. “He’s too busy gathering the shards of his dignity around him at present. Bright red underwear, Kendra? Seriously? Now, I can wait for you to tell me how you knew the rest of it, but I really have to know about the red underwear.”
She stiffened. “I’m hanging up, Lynch.”
“I don’t think so. That copilot would only get another call from Kotcheff, and that would further indicate what a disruptive influence you can be. You might never get your visa reinstated. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just talk to me and get it over with?”
“No.” But she had to consider her options. It wasn’t smart to let stubbornness get in the way of long-term goals. “Nothing is ever simple with you, Lynch. Particularly the outrage you’ve managed to concoct this time.” She paused. “You talk, I’ll listen. Then I get to hang up and forget about you. I only have one question I want you to answer: How the hell did you have the nerve to go to these extreme lengths just to get me thrown out of Afghanistan?”
“With equally extreme trepidation. You can see how terrified I was if I had to send Jessie to keep you from blowing up the base.”
“I noticed you decided to cower at a safe distance and let her take the flak. You didn’t even tell her what happened last night. Were you afraid she’d agree that I was right and not let you get away with this?”
“There was always that possibility. Jessie is super sharp and she wants to bring down Brock Limited as much as you and I do. She might have thought that I was wrong.” He chuckled. “Ouch. That hurt. Naturally, she’d be wrong, but there’s still a sting to my ego.”
“Gigantic ego,” she amplified. He was taking this too casually. She could almost see him sitting there, those movie-star good looks, the blue eyes dancing with mischief. “But you went too far this time, Lynch.”
He was silent. “I don’t agree. I only hope I went far enough.” He paused. “And the reason I sent Jessie was that I was too busy trying to pull this situation out of the toilet to come myself. I had to work fast to get you safely out of the country.”
“Which should never have happened.”
“The hell it shouldn’t.” His voice was suddenly rough. “There was no way I was going to let you be a target for those sons of bitches. The Taliban were probably already sharpening up their scimitars by the time you left my apartment.”
“You don’t know that. I got the first clue we’d found since we arrived here in Afghanistan that Brock Limited was actually making deals with the Taliban for weapons. All you had to do was follow up on it.” She added fiercely, “And I should have gone with you. I had the right.”
“Yes, you did.” He didn’t speak for a moment. “You’ve done a great job since we got here, and under normal circumstances I’d have let you go for it.”
“Let me?”
“Wrong word. Just calm down and let me go over my side of what happened last night so that you might see why I did what I did.”
“Not likely,” she said bitterly.
He ignored the comment. “Look, from the moment we arrived in Kabul, you were on fire. You were doing everything you could to find evidence that Brock Limited had been involved in corruption since they opened their headquarters here. Not only that, but you were looking for documents that Brock’s main headquarters in the U.S. stashed away here.”
“So were we all,” she said defensively. “Why are you acting as if I was the only one?”
“Because you were the only one on fire,” he said quietly. “You couldn’t help it. That’s the way you operate. And you were smart, you were careful, but you had a skill that Jessie and I didn’t have. It was natural that you were driven to use it.” His voice hardened. “But why the hell couldn’t you wait for us before you went after them?”
“Because I wasn’t sure I was right. I thought I smelled that same damn cinnamon scent at the Brock headquarters as I did in the Tangi Valley, where the Taliban has a