Then Sparks realized where she was going with this. “So you think that your father shot Jabar on purpose?” He was already pulling out of his parking space and pointing the swift little car back toward Baltimore, and Jaipriya’s house.
“I don’t see how there could be another answer.”
THE RIDE BACK to Baltimore was interminable. Jaipriya could only stare out the window into the deepening dark and wonder if she was going to be able to unravel everything in time.
Sparks spent the whole drive on the phone with his team. He was trying to keep tabs on the status of Yates, who was also attempting to push through to his contact at the IRS. Apparently Yates’s father worked for the State Department. It gave him a leg up when it came to pulling strings and pushing for favors.
Jai’s mind was spinning around and around. She kept coming up with theories and then discarding them. Why. Why. Why. What was the connection she was missing? Was there a motivation she hadn’t thought of yet?
It was an eternity before Sparks pulled into her driveway. Jaipriya was so simultaneously overwrought and focused that she didn’t even take time to notice if the house looked “normal” or not. The front windows were brightly lit like usual. There were no guards, but there never were unless the Armeen al Sauds were visiting.
She barely took the time to wait for the vehicle to come to a complete stop before she bolted out the door. Sparks was still on the phone. She could hear him calling out behind her, but she didn’t wait. There was no time. She could feel it.
Her keys were out before she even made it to the front door. Air was whooshing in and out of her lungs like a bellows, and she was near panic. She fumbled to get the key in the lock and then scrambled to hit the correct numbers on the security alarm keypad just inside the door.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
There was nobody on the first floor. It was eerie. Usually she could hear her mother and her aunt yakking like old hens in her mother’s parlor. Or perhaps someone would have left the television on to a Bollywood show and the upbeat music would be pounding through the downstairs rooms. Now there was nothing. The lights were off in the hallway, and the parlor was dark. The only lights had been in the foyer where she entered the house.
She swallowed back her apprehension. This was no time to be timid. She needed to be bold and decisive. So she bounded toward the stairs and tamped down the sense of impending horror. Her father was dead. Perhaps that was why she felt so much unease. Was she waiting to see if his body was still lying in the office? Would she have to step around his corpse in order to search his computer for his records?
The office was dark. She swallowed back her fear and reached inside to search the right hand wall for the light switch. The switch went up, and the room was flooded with light. It was empty. Her breath exhaled in one long rush as she felt so much tension leave her limbs. Her father’s body was gone. She wouldn’t have to endure that horror.
“ARE YOU TELLING me you think that Hasim is involved in some terrorist plot planning an attack on American soil?”
“I don’t know what I’m telling you!” Sparks yelled at Romero. “But I need to get off the damn phone. Jaipriya just bolted. She’s inside that house alone, and there’s no telling who else might have business in there.”
“That woman is a menace,” Romero said darkly. “She never stays where she’s put, and she always wants to be in the middle of everything.”
“Isn’t that pretty much what you used to say about Cassidy?” Sparks pointed out.
Romero sighed. “Yeah, but that I can forgive. Jaipriya isn’t my problem. She’s yours.”
“Then go do what I told you: get Yates to light a fire under his father’s ass, and let’s end this before some other disaster happens.”
“Fine.” Romero’s tone was clipped. “Then you watch your back, since we aren’t there to do it for you.”
Sparks hung up his cell phone and shoved it into a cubby in the dash. Then he got out of the car and began jogging up to the house. He had only made it a few yards before he heard the unmistakable click of a bullet being chambered.
He stopped moving and raised his hands. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m here at the invitation of the family.”
“Jaipriya is not family anymore.” The smooth, slightly accented voice was unfamiliar. “She betrayed our family and sided with strangers. With you, I think.”
Sparks shifted his body sideways, trying to prepare for anything. The voice had moved in the darkness. The speaker was gradually making his way around to put himself between Sparks and the front door of the house.
“I feel it would behoove me to shoot you dead right here.” The words were delivered with no more emotion than if he had been contemplating his coffee order. “Yet I think your death might have more impact on my niece if it happens right before her eyes.”
Niece. Sparks could not be sure whether the speaker had wanted to give away his identity or not, but he had. The strange thing was that in all of their research on the Bhatia family, her maternal uncle had not been a person of interest at all. He was a mediocre accountant at a local Baltimore firm. He was the younger son, and he was not extraordinary in any way. There had been nothing in his lifestyle or his manner to suggest that he might be involved with the Armeen al Sauds.
Sparks was beginning to think that Jaipriya’s uncle was just better at hiding his motives, actions, and true nature than they had ever given him credit for. “What do you have to do with this situation?” Sparks began slowly. “I’m not the one who killed your brother.”
There was a sharp laugh, and suddenly Hiran Bhatia stepped out of the shadows. “If you truly believe I am worried about some petty vendetta regarding my brother’s demise, you have less time to live than I first thought. I never took you for a stupid man, Desmond Sparks. Do not waste my time by acting like one now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jaipriya rifled through her father’s desk. She had already tried the secret drawer without success. She wasn’t looking for actual ledgers. She was looking for a flash drive or something equally tiny. Her father often kept his client files on tiny thumb drives.
She stood behind his desk and gazed at the office that had not changed since she was a young girl. There were photographs of her and Papa at a family celebration, and a photograph of her and her mother both wearing their saris. An old cigar box caught her eye. She’d forgotten about that thing.
Walking out from behind the desk, she approached the built-in shelves on the right side of the room. Her father had some of his favorite books there. They were mostly first editions, and a gold leaf version of the Koran and another of the Bhagavad Gita. Sitting in the middle of the center shelf was an engraved cigar box that had once belonged to her paternal great-grandfather. It held special meaning to her father and her uncle.
Holding her breath in anticipation, Jai carefully opened the lid. She stood on tiptoe to see what was inside. “Oh, thank God!” she whispered as she reached in for the tiny thumb drive.
She spun about and ran to her father’s computer. Quickly inserting the drive, she sat down and drummed her fingers on the desktop. There was no time for this! She didn’t know why she felt as though there was such a pressing time issue, but something was making her feel almost desperate to find out the truth. It was like a little problem she could not work out in her mind, and it was driving her crazy.
The computer made a startup noise as it loaded the information from the thumb drive. She took hold of the mouse and started clicking on files. It did not take her long to find what she was looking for. There were the Armeen al Sauds’ offshore accounts. There were records of the dummy corporations, the list of investors—which they already had—and finally a list of deposits.
“What the hell?” she muttered.
Her father had scanned in a bank statement with his own chicken scratch on it. He had made annotations on the deposits that seemed to suggest that there was a lot of money missing. He had scrawled a few n
otes in the corner of the page. She titled her head sideways trying to read her father’s loopy handwriting. Then she realized what she was looking at.
“Shit!”
“Yes, that was pretty much my sentiment when your father came to me with his suspicions.”
THE ONLY THING keeping Sparks from ripping Hiran Bhatia’s head off was the gun pressed to his temple. The man was an ass. His offhand comment had startled Jaipriya so badly that she leaped off the chair and nearly sent it over backwards. Sparks could see her trembling as she looked at her uncle in what was obviously confusion.
“You!” Jaipriya said, pointing at her uncle. “Papa suspected you. He left a note right here.”
“So he did.” Hiran shrugged. “Nobody will ever see the note. Nobody will ever see your father’s files. And nobody will ever know what is truly going on until Hasim ibn Armeen al Saud is ready to expose himself to the world.”
“That’s disgusting,” Jaipriya snorted. “Tell him to keep his pants on.”
Sparks actually chortled a little laugh at Jaipriya’s completely inappropriate joke. What was she doing? Then he saw Hiran’s expression and realized that Jai might know her uncle a little better than the man realized.
“You know what I mean,” Hiran snapped. “You and your young hooligans are always twisting words into something from the gutter. I told your father he should have removed you from American cultural influences when you were still a small child.”
“And he didn’t listen.” Jai shrugged. “Papa never cared much for your opinion. You were nothing but a lower version of himself. Yet you were always trying to be more. I suppose this just proves that Papa was the best man after all.”
Hiran removed the fun from Sparks’s head and pointed it wildly at Jaipriya. “Because he scrawled some suspicions on a page and got himself killed?”
“He might be dead, but he had you figured out. And his death was a fluke—an accident. He was killed by Hasim in apparent retaliation for Jabar’s death. That was all complete bullshit if you ask me. And I was there, you know.”
“Nobody is asking you,” Hiran said through gritted teeth. Then the man drew himself up and shook his head. “Enough. This is ridiculous. You will hand over that thumb drive immediately, or I will put a bullet in this man’s brain.”
“How do you know I haven’t already emailed it to ten people?” Jaipriya said nastily. Her expression was all derisive anger. “In fact, the information contained on that thing is enough to put you away for a very long time. The government tends to frown upon those who intend to defraud the system.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because your mother will be destitute!” Hiran shouted triumphantly. “You would never take such a risk.”
Her catlike smile made Sparks so damn proud he thought he might bust. “How do you know I haven’t emailed the whole world that information? You should probably come over here and check.”
Hiran muttered something highly uncomplimentary and stomped over to the desk. He left Sparks completely unguarded and placed himself between Jaipriya and the computer. It was the only opportunity they were going to get.
JAI WAS SWEATING profusely, her palms sticky as she tried to wait for the perfect moment. Her biggest fear was that she wouldn’t be able to hit him hard enough to take him down. Hiran was probably twice her size. He would be no match for Sparks, but Sparks’s hands were literally tied with a zip tie.
Hiran was muttering to himself as he pounded away on Papa’s keyboard. Finally he opened her email and took a look at the sent emails. “I see nothing!”
“Are you sure?” She was inching just a little farther away. “I usually send emails from my other outbox, you know?”
“You’re the worst sort of liar.”
He railed at her for several seconds more, and Jai didn’t argue. Instead she fumbled behind her for something heavy enough to knock him out. Her hands finally touched on a brass duck that her father had picked up an antique shop somewhere while on a shopping outing with her mother.
She wrapped her fingers around the duck’s narrow neck and ground her teeth as she used it like a club. The whole thing seemed to take forever, but in seconds she felt the heavy brass shape connect with her uncle’s skull. The reverberation whipped through her hands. Pain shot up her arm, and the duck dropped from her lifeless fingers just as her uncle grabbed his head and seemed to crumple toward the floor.
Hiran still held the gun. He swung it wildly through the air as he reeled drunkenly with his body propped on one knee. Jai realized what was coming just as he squeezed the trigger. She dove sideways as a shot ripped through the office. The bullet pinged off the bookshelves before burying itself in the couch. The next shot went out the window, shattering it and raining glass down on the carpet. The last shot seemed to go straight through the room, but she didn’t see where it went.
“You bitch!” Hiran panted. He was shaking his head as though he were desperately fighting to stay conscious.
This was no time to lose her nerve. Jai scrambled to roll toward the duck once again. She fumbled it into her hands and got to her knees. She raised the thing as far above her head as she could and then brought it down with a resounding thud. It bounced off her uncle’s head a second time, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.
Jaipriya collapsed to the floor. She lay on her back, panting and trying to catch her breath. It was over. It had to be over. Now she had her answers. Sort of. Her uncle had been the man working with Hasim. The two of them had colluded against her papa, and probably against Jabar as well. It didn’t exonerate her father, but it made her feel better that whatever Hasim was planning hadn’t been part of her father’s plans too.
“Sparks?” She turned her head to search for him. That was when she realized that he was lying on the ground and wasn’t moving.
SPARKS FLOATED IN space, and for the moment he was happy to be there. His side still ached from where he’d been shot before. His feet were killing him from having his toenails ripped out. His shoulders were less than functional, and now he was pretty certain he had been shot once again. Sometimes life could really take a crap on your day.
He thought of life in general and life as a SEAL in particular. It had always been the life he had wanted. His missions had always been straightforward. He had a CO he could respect and a performance record that was the envy of many naval officers. So why was he feeling so restless lately?
Jaipriya.
She’d changed things for him. He hadn’t even realized that it was happening. He reached through the haze in his mind and tried to move his hand. He wanted to find her. She’d been so brave with her uncle. She’d bashed the man over the head with a freaking duck. A duck! No woman would ever be so brave and so selfless as far as he was concerned. She’d put herself right in harm’s way at every turn in the last seventy-two hours. It was like she had no fear.
“Sparks?”
Her voice seemed to come to him from the end of a tunnel. He reached out again and realized that his hand wasn’t really moving. How did he know that? It was insane. Could he move at all? He experimented a little bit and found that he couldn’t even feel what his fingers were touching.
“Sparks? Please. Just stay still. They’re going to put you in the ambulance.”
Ambulance? Who had called the EMTs? He struggled to open his eyes, and couldn’t.
Then he felt Jaipriya’s tiny fingers inside his hand. He relaxed. It was going to be all right. She would make it all right. He was sure of it. So he waited. Oddly enough, he couldn’t feel any jostling. Surely they couldn’t use some kind of hovercraft to get him into the ambulance. There was always a bump and grind when it came to that. So why didn’t he feel any of it?
“Sparks!”
Jaipriya’s voice was getting farther and farther away. He turned, and realized there was a very bright light coming right at him. Or rather he was sort of drifting toward the light. It was odd. There
was an optical illusion or something because he swore he could see people waving at him. There were arms and hands and smiles. Yes. He could see smiles as he got closer.
Man, it was like a party in here! Wherever “here” was.
“Clear!”
A jolt shook him hard. The light flickered. The people were gone.
“Clear!”
Another jolt. Then he was rushing. Rushing. Rushing. Rushing. And wham! It was like being smashed back through a tiny opening into a cave full of darkness and pain.
“Oh, Sparks, oh God. Thank God!”
Jaipriya was sobbing. Why was she crying?
“You’re alive, Sparks. You have to stay that way.”
Alive? Had he been any other way?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jaipriya sat frozen beside Spark’s bedside. She had not left in the sixty hours since he had come out of surgery. There was a part of her that was afraid she would never be able to let him out of her sight again. She would never stop touching him. She would never want him to stop touching her.
Reaching out, she took his hand in hers and laced their fingers together. His eyelids quivered as his eyes moved rapidly beneath the delicate skin. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his skin. The scent of him was so blessedly familiar. It soothed her.
The doctor moved into the room with a clipboard in hand. The Asian man had tired eyes. He had been on duty for God knew how long, and yet he continued to faithfully check on Sparks. “Still not awake?”
“No.” She offered a wan smile to Dr. Pan. “But he seems more restful now.”
“He was dead for two minutes,” Dr. Pan reminded her. “We induced a coma for the first forty-eight hours after surgery just to help him heal. Now we wait.”
Jai glanced at Sparks. “He’s strong. He’ll come through.”
“The chances are good,” the doctor agreed.
Bones and Marina filed in after Dr. Pan left. Marina sat down beside Jai and gently touched her shoulder. “We can sit with him while you go get some food or take a rest. The nurses said there is a bed at the end of the hall you may use.”
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