Sheik Defense

by Ryshia Kennie

  He guesstimated that he’d swum for well over an hour before collapsing on this stretch of sand and passing out exhausted for the rest of the night. The only thing motivating him to stay alive was the fact that there was too much at stake for him to die. He was one transaction away from being a rich man and that idiot Dan Adams had almost ruined it all, him and his damn daughter. The meddlesome little witch.

  He’d needed Dan. His reputation in their partnership was gold. The land didn’t exist, at least not land owned by him, but by the time the damn foreigners found out about it, it would be too late. Except Dan wanted to pull out of the partnership.

  He’d shown up on the yacht to give Dan one more chance. Ava Adams was never supposed to have been on board. Dan had told him he was going on a yachting vacation and he hadn’t mentioned his daughter. Instead he’d mentioned the fact that his daughter had accepted a position—her first job. Supposedly it started in some forsaken Wyoming town in the next week or two. He’d forgotten the details. It had only amazed him at the time. Amazed him that anyone would want to live in that backwater. But she’d gone to school there and had been forever infatuated with Wyoming. All that aside, he’d never expected to see her. He’d never thought that she’d fly down to join her father. Dan had never mentioned the possibility.

  His hand slid to his waist. Empty. He’d been armed at the beginning of this. Dan had hit him and for a minute his world had grayed and then, when he’d come to, he’d shot him and seen Dan fall overboard.

  Now, Ava Adams, if she survived, at best she knew he’d killed her father, at worst she knew it all. He had no idea what her father had told her. What he did know was that he needed to close his last deal before the truth came out. But his Canadian buyer was already showing suspicion and reluctant to pay the balance of what he owed for that tract of land he was so hot to have. Time was of the essence, for he’d heard both impatience and a hint of disbelief in their last phone call. It was as if the buyer had lost confidence in the deal, in Ben’s ability to facilitate the transfer. It was as if he sensed the truth. That couldn’t happen, for the truth would destroy everything. Even without Dan’s reputation backing him, he planned to close this deal. There was too much money at stake. One word from Dan’s daughter and it would be over before he had a chance to leave. He needed that last payout and he needed it desperately. He couldn’t chance the possibility that Ava Adams would reveal what she knew.

  She needed to be dealt with immediately. But the grim reaper wouldn’t deal out death by sleight of hand. If she wasn’t dead yet, in order for her to die, he needed a gun.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday, June 11—12:01 p.m.

  The flight to Mercy Hospital in Miami seemed to take forever. During the time in the air, Ava Adams had gotten worse. Her breathing was shallow. She hadn’t regained consciousness since Faisal had stripped most of her wet clothes from her and wrapped her in thermal blankets. She wasn’t shivering anymore but she wasn’t moving either.

  Now, seeing her like this, flirting with death the way she was, was killing him. It was like reliving another dark time when the life of someone he’d loved had been in jeopardy. Then, there had been nothing he could do. Here, there was still hope. He thought of that time. It had been a tragedy. His sister kidnapped. It had ended well. His sister was safe and completing her studies in the United States. Tara had intentions of joining Nassar Security in a full-time position when she graduated with her master’s. He wasn’t sure if he or any of his brothers were ready for that. He smiled at the thought, and his smile dropped as he looked at Ava. He pulled the blanket up, tucking it beneath her shoulders.

  “How much longer, Jer?” he asked, although he already had the answer to that question. They were just words to fill the space, to make everything seem more normal.

  “We’re ten minutes out. How is she?”

  “Unconscious,” he said curtly. Nothing could make this normal and there was nothing more to say. Only Ava’s thin breaths and her fragile pulse assured him that she was alive, that she was fighting to stay alive.

  He had done all he could. The rest was up to Jer to get them onto the hospital helipad and Ava into medical experts’ hands without delay.

  “I’ve got this beauty flying her heart out,” Jer assured him as if he’d read his mind. “We’re only a few miles out now. She hanging in?”

  “She’s stable. Her breathing has leveled out. Pulse stable but a little faster than I’d like.” He didn’t like the way things were. For the truth was she hadn’t regained consciousness in over ten minutes. Ahead, he could see the horizon open up on Miami. The city skyline appeared on the horizon and soon seemed to rise out of the ocean. Seagulls skimmed between sky and ocean. The slim stretch of sand became a dividing line between the endless stretch of ocean and the steel-and-glass high-rises that pierced the sky. The high-rises gleamed in the sun, which had broken through half an hour ago. The expanse of steel and glass set as a backdrop to the timeless ocean was postcard material. But now he could only allow for seconds of appreciation. They would be landing soon. It was noon and it seemed like they’d been at sea for days rather than hours. But the thought that medical help was now within sight had him breathing a sigh of relief. Ava had been unconscious for almost the entire trip. Faisal couldn’t have imagined this day during the fun party days they’d shared. When they’d danced on the edges of a friendship that might have been more. In a way they’d been a platonic couple with the suggestion of more, and yet, they’d never crossed that line. It was strange, because the spark had been there. But he’d had another girlfriend at the time and even though that girl hadn’t been the love of his life, it wasn’t in him to cheat on one woman for another. Things might have been different otherwise. Why he thought of all that now, he didn’t know.

  He’d finally broken it off with his girlfriend at the time but Ava was too immersed in her studies to see the truth of what he felt. And he’d never asked her out or admitted that he felt so much more. He knew now that saying nothing was a youthful mistake. But time and life had intervened. He was reminded of it all now and faced with how much he still cared.

  He looked out the window and below the city seemed to have taken over the landscape. One minute they were on the edge of the city and the next they were targeting a landing strip on the back edge of the hospital. A stretcher and an emergency team were already waiting.

  The landing was smooth. The hospital staff were as efficient as the last time they had done this over a year ago; only this time, the roof helipad was closed for repairs and they were forced to divert to the original pad at ground level located just outside the emergency entrance.

  On the ground there was a bit of chaos as reporters and camera operators pushed forward. They’d arrived as the stretcher was coming off the helicopter and the camera operators were in their faces almost immediately. They seemed to know who Ava was and more importantly who her father was. As Faisal forcibly pushed back against the onslaught, cameras flashed.

  “Do you know where Dan Adams is?” a reporter asked, pushing the mic in his face.

  Faisal ignored him, trying to shield the stretcher and Ava with his body.

  “Is his daughter, Ava, the only survivor? What happened to Dan Adams? Has he been found?”

  The questions were rapid-fire and Faisal had to push forward, demanding that they move back and give the stretcher room. It was the first sign of how much local fame Dan’s philanthropy with local boys’ and girls’ clubs and other charities had given him. Dan had started an organization that reached out to troubled children, and it had branches across Florida and the Caribbean, where he lived for most of the year. His celebrity status put a different spin on this investigation too. Dan by himself was highly regarded, but with the power of his philanthropy, he was a force that couldn’t go unacknowledged. They weren’t points Faisal had time to consider; instead he was hauling an in
-your-face cameraman back by the collar.

  “Move back, please. Miss Adams is unable to answer your questions right now.”

  “Dan Adams?” The questions continued back-to-back. “Is there any hope?”

  “The search is continuing,” Faisal said.

  Frustrating minutes passed before the media finally moved back. They hadn’t gotten the information they came for but it was clear that it was the best they were going to get.

  As the media moved away and the medical professionals took charge of the stretcher, there was nothing more for Faisal to do. He stood there, his hands shoved in his back pockets as he remembered Dan Adams’s words in what might have been their last phone conversation. “I need your help, Faisal. I may have a case for you. The likes of which, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen.”

  He wished he’d questioned him more, but at the time he’d thought it better to meet face-to-face. He’d looked forward to hearing what their old friend had been up to since they’d last been in touch and he’d even imagined how that meeting would go.

  He moved through the bustling medics and to the stretcher that Ava had been transferred to. Her pallid complexion looked almost waxen like a model in a museum. Yet somewhere behind that beautiful still face lay answers. Whether what she might know included the answers they needed to find her father remained to be seen.

  What had happened on that yacht off the coast of the Bahamas? From the little Ava had said, it had been deadly. The danger lay in whether or not the events that had caused Ava to end up looking death in the eye in a rubber raft would follow her. He could only hope that the danger had died on that yacht. But assumptions were never safe and too often proved to be wrong. He couldn’t live his life on assumptions; if he did he would have been dead long ago. Her father was still out there and he needed to be found, for him—for Ava. His knuckle skimmed her soft cheek, remembering better times, and his right hand went to the butt of his gun. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  Chapter Seven

  Ava entered the hospital on a stretcher led by a physician and with an assortment of other medical personnel flanking her. Faisal felt a sense of relief and panic all at the same time. They were feelings that he’d had from the beginning of this mysterious rescue. He should be relieved that she was in professional hands yet he also felt a profound sense of loss that she was out of his. He strode down the gleaming corridor. He made his way past bustling nurses and doctors and other medical personnel moving quickly through the corridors. He wondered what had brought Ava and her father to this. What had they been doing on that yacht? And where was Dan Adams?

  He knew none of it boded well. The United States Coast Guard were coordinating efforts alongside the Bahama Search and Rescue. So far, Ava was the only survivor. There was no sign of the boat or Dan Adams.

  He strode through the hospital’s doors as he followed the stretcher that carried Ava as if somehow keeping her in his sights would keep her safe.

  “Mr. Al-Nassar,” a nurse called. “A minute, please.”

  At first, he didn’t slow his stride. He wasn’t used to being called by such a formal name. The only thing more formal would have been if they’d used his real title of Sheik. Again, something he never used. It was a title that was more accurate than mister, for, like his father before him and his grandfather before that, he was born a Sheik. But none of that was him. He was just Faisal Al-Nassar to everyone he knew and everyone he dealt with. No one in the Wyoming office called him by any title. They called him by his first name. Here, it was obviously different.

  “Yes,” he said, turning around despite his thoughts on the formality of the address, the hesitation being so slight as to be unnoticeable.

  “There’s some paperwork that needs to be completed.”

  “I’m not her next of kin,” he said shortly.

  The stretcher carrying Ava had now disappeared behind the sterile-looking stainless-steel doors ahead of him.

  “You’re the best we have at the moment,” the nurse replied. “If we’re lucky she may come to long enough to sign consent herself. But in the meantime, if you could just give us what you know.”

  He took the clipboard and the pen she offered and filled out the forms as best he could. There were large gaps in the information he provided. He knew nothing of her medical history or, barring Dan Adams, who her next of kin might be. He couldn’t tell them if she were allergic to peanuts or anchovies or neither. He knew her stepfather, Dan, because he was a friend of the family. He knew that her birth father had died when she was a toddler. When her mother had married Dan, he had acquired a ten-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, Ava’s mother had succumbed to a debilitating disease and died a decade ago. Dan and Ava were close. As close as any family he’d seen, even without the blood tie. Dan had taken parenting seriously and Ava was his daughter in the full meaning of that word. He handed the clipboard back to the nurse. Most of what he knew would be of no use to the medical team working on Ava.

  He went to security next, explained the situation and ensured that she had a private room with a guard on the floor. Next, he went up to the floor and spoke to the nurses’ station, ensuring that media were not allowed near her. He wasn’t sure the latter was enough. He knew how tenacious media could be, especially when they sensed there was a story.

  “Of course,” the charge nurse replied. “She’s not the first. We’ve had other local celebrities.”

  He wasn’t sure how Ava would feel about being called a local celebrity. There was a bit of a mix-up in that, for it wasn’t she who was the celebrity but her father. For Ava, he knew the media’s interest would be bothersome. She’d always been very private. To him, that explained why she’d taken a position as a psychologist with a public school in Wyoming. The pace was quieter but more important, it was far away from her father’s success and the notoriety that came with it. She was low-key. He’d always loved that about her.

  Five minutes later he was exiting the hospital. She was in professional hands. Hands that had assured him that she would be well taken care of. In fact, they’d made it clear that there would be no visitors until she was stable. He’d gone over the contact information with a hospital administrator who had assured him that he would be notified as soon as there was a change. He gave the information, knowing that it was unnecessary. Barring the worst-case scenario, he’d be in touch long before any of them needed to reach him. In the meantime, her father, Dan Adams, his mentor, was still missing.

  But his mind was stuck on other words. Worst-case scenario. There would be no worst-case scenario. He would not allow that to happen. Despite the fact that they’d fished Ava out of the Atlantic on a mission that could have easily failed. Despite the fact that the odds were still stacked against them, he was determined that those odds could be beaten. They would find out what happened. Otherwise he would have failed because now it was her father and an entire yacht that were missing.

  Outside, with the Florida sun beating down on him, Faisal looked at the phone in his hand. The one that had been found with Ava. It was white, a basic, no-frills model, reminding him that Ava had learned her low-key approach to life from her father. She’d always been too busy getting good grades to put much thought into lip gloss or fashion. She’d been, at least then, a basics-only kind of girl. But despite that, there’d always been a sexy kind of appeal about her. Another year of maturity under her belt and he could have fallen for her. And yet that wasn’t quite true—he’d wanted her even then, but the timing had been off. They were unproductive thoughts that weren’t relevant to the situation. All of that was a long time ago and none of it mattered any longer.

  He turned the phone over, but it provided no answers. He moved off the sidewalk, out of the way of a man in olive-toned hospital scrubs, moving briskly toward the parking lot.

  “Barb,” he said into his own phone a minute later. A light breeze w
rapped around him and gently rustled the leaves of a nearby tree. He’d just phoned Barb Almay who headed Nassar’s research team. She was located in their Marrakech office where she provided research for both Nassar offices. He explained the situation to her and then asked, “Can you run a check on this number’s call activity?”

  “Of course,” Barb replied. She was their head researcher and a technical whiz almost on par with Craig. Their team was good but as far as researching went, Barb was the best—hands down. Barb was originally from Boston and had been on vacation in Morocco over a decade ago when she’d met a Moroccan man and fallen in love. The story had a fairy-tale ending—they’d married and she’d stayed in Morocco. Now she called Morocco home and it was there where she had been discovered by his brother Emir, and hired as part of the Nassar team.

  He slipped the phone into his pocket and moved from beneath the shelter of the palm fronds. Overhead it was a clear sky and a seagull dipped and soared as if there was nothing wrong in the world. It sent a chill through him as he thought of the woman he’d left behind, unconscious, to the care of experts. He thought of the man still lost somewhere on the Atlantic and it was all incomprehensible.

  His phone buzzed. It was Mitch Brandt, a man he’d gotten to know in his initial search-and-rescue training when he’d been fresh out of university and still debating whether a career with the Coast Guard might be an option. In the end he’d finished the initial training only out of interest, when the chance to head a new branch of Nassar had been presented to him. Mitch had completed the training and eventually gone to work with the US Coast Guard. Mitch had promised to keep him as up-to-date on the search as he could. They were conducting the search from where the yacht had last been seen off the coast of Paradise Island and beyond into the Atlantic Ocean. Yet the oddity they had found, Mitch said, hadn’t been on water but on land.