Grant started to drink and stay out late. At home, he became sarcastic and cold. When she was offered a job as assistant principal at a school in Long Beach, they’d needed the extra money but her added responsibilities and prestige had galled him. After that he’d criticized her almost constantly.
One night when he was drunk, he’d struck her. Jenny took Beth and left. Grant had begged her forgiveness and she’d given him a second chance. Things were fine for a few weeks, and then he began to drink again.
They’d had one last fight. There’d been a shocking moment when he’d shoved Jenny and tripped her. Lying helpless on the floor, she’d feared for her life. As soon as she could get away, she fled with their daughter, vowing never again to let a man control or intimidate her.
Although she’d had Grant arrested, she still felt angry that she hadn’t been able to hit him back. No matter how much she told herself that it would only have made things worse, she hated feeling like a victim.
After Grant took an anger-management class, the charges against him were reduced to a misdemeanor. He hadn’t contested Jenny’s demand for custody as long as she agreed to regular visitation.
“If he does file for custody, I’ll throw it all in his face,” she said. “He’s married a much younger woman, just as he did the first time. He’s proven before that he can be violent. I won’t let him take my child.”
“Good for you.” High color flushed Zahad’s face. He looked ready to do battle for her, Jenny thought with pleasure. “A man who hurts someone under his protection is despicable.”
“If you happen to meet him tomorrow, I’d prefer you didn’t say that to his face.”
“Why not?”
“We have a daughter together.” It was a fact she’d reluctantly come to terms with. “I’m going to have to interact with him until she’s grown. It’s in her best interest for us to stay on good terms, unless he makes that impossible.”
“I will exercise restraint,” Zahad promised.
Actually, the prospect of facing Grant tomorrow was more daunting than Jenny wanted to admit. She almost wished Zahad wasn’t going into L.A.
She wouldn’t let her ex-husband pull any power plays. No matter how upset he got about the murder or the cyber-stalking, he couldn’t keep Beth until and unless he got a court order.
She wrenched her thoughts away from Grant. The sheikh was right in front of her, and they needed to deal with practicalities. “Would you like help making up the couch in the office?” Earlier, she’d set out sheets, blankets and a pillow.
“I will be fine. If I work late on the computer, I hope it will not disturb you.”
“It won’t.” Tonight, Jenny resolved, she was not going to slip into his room, no matter how frightened she became. “I just hope you learn something useful in L.A.”
“As do I.”
After donning his coat, he went out to make one last patrol of the premises. When he returned, Jenny activated the alarm and gave him the new password.
It was her first night in the house since someone had been killed here. With the sheikh at hand, that fact no longer shook her to the core. She chose not to worry about what would happen after he left.
AS REQUESTED, Amy turned up the name and address of one of Fario’s Los Angeles friends. It was a tremendous advantage to have her as an inside source at the palace in Yazir, Zahad reflected as he typed a thank-you for the information.
He no longer remembered why she used to rub him the wrong way. Because they were both bullheaded, he supposed.
After setting the information aside for later, he spent more than an hour incorporating the latest economic data from his province into its development plan. He forwarded a copy to Sharif to show to the president in support of Zahad’s leadership.
Thank goodness for his cousins, Zahad thought. Jenny had been correct when she surmised that he didn’t make friends easily. Nor did he walk smoothly along the corridors of power. He preferred an enemy he could fight in the open.
It was impossible to place himself in the shoes of a man like Grant, who had violated his wife’s safety. The images that had leaped to mind as she’d talked had filled Zahad with fury.
He had never loved a woman the way his cousin Sharif loved his wife and most likely never would. That kind of all-consuming passion made no sense to him. Even so, when the time came to take a wife and father children, Zahad knew he would give his own life for theirs if necessary. If under some unforeseeable circumstance his mate turned against him, no matter if she attacked him herself, he would do no more than was required for self-defense. Even in the face of betrayal, a man must put honor first.
After logging off the computer, Zahad opened the bed and made it up with military precision. Yet he had never felt less like a soldier. The floral scent that wafted from the sheets carried him back to this morning, when he’d awakened next to Jenny.
His body had reacted instinctively and now did so again, tightening and aching as her scent filled his mind with pleasurable images. Jenny’s delicacy stirred him, yet she was far from weak. Her beauty, all that glorious blondness and those eyes green as the depths of a hidden pool, were a bonus. What he valued most was her sharp mind and passion for life.
If she came from Alqedar, he would pursue her, but she did not. After Fario’s body was released, she would remain in America to fight her own battles against her ex-husband and perhaps another hidden enemy. Zahad would go back to Yazir, where destiny had given him the sheikhdom denied him by his father.
Of course, it might be necessary to return to America if the local police proved unable to find Fario’s killer and if Zahad himself could not do so in the time available. But he preferred not to come back. There was too much vital work to do at home.
From another part of the house, he heard a woman’s low voice singing a melody he didn’t recognize. When he caught the words teddy bears and picnic, he realized it must be a children’s song. Rustling noises indicated Jenny was changing clothes, and then he heard water running in the bathroom.
It appeared she had become so unselfconscious about sharing quarters that she didn’t hesitate to sing out loud. For however long he stayed here, he would prove worthy of that trust, Zahad vowed as he stripped off his outer clothing and laid it close at hand.
The silence of the wooded mountains amplified distant sounds. He fell into a warrior’s slumber, awakening every few hours as he registered noises without becoming fully alert. Around 1:00 a.m., the eerie cry of an animal rang out, most likely a coyote. An hour later, he heard an ice-covered tree branch crack.
At four-thirty the rumble of a car brought him halfway to wakefulness. Zahad assumed the vehicle would pass by on the highway, but it grew louder, the engine reverberating through the predawn stillness. Close by, it stopped.
Someone had arrived. Someone definitely not expected.
The sheikh dressed and went into the kitchen to fetch one of the knives he’d seen in a rack. He would have preferred a gun, but Jenny’s remained in the hands of the police.
As he moved quietly through the darkened house, he listened for any reassuring signs. Voices, for instance, carrying on a conversation. Or simply for the newcomer to walk to the front and ring the bell.
Neither of those things happened.
Instead, he heard shoes scrape on concrete as someone came around the rear of the house from the parking bay. If the new arrival was trying to be stealthy, he failed.
Zahad glided through the kitchen and eased into the doorway between his room and the rear hallway, avoiding the glow of a night-light low on the wall.
The killer had entered through the back, he remembered.
His brain leaped ahead, calculating what might happen. Should the intruder try the door, either he would find it locked and go away or he would turn a key in it.
The killer had a key. He might not know that Jenny had installed an alarm.
The rear door, like the front, set off a chirping tone that allowed the entrant sixty
seconds to input the password into a security panel. Had Jenny consulted Zahad prior to installing her system, he would have instructed her to forget convenience and allow only one delayed entry point. Sixty seconds, plus whatever further delay occurred at the monitoring company and the police station, would give an intruder plenty of time to reach her bedroom before help arrived.
Both Jenny and Sergeant Finley had grossly underestimated the danger she was in. Although the detective lived across the street, he might not be able to arrive for as long as five minutes.
Assuming, of course, the detective himself wasn’t prowling around the house.
Zahad adjusted the angle of the knife. If someone broke in, the sheikh could count on the element of surprise to buy him a few seconds against whatever weapon the intruder carried.
He tensed as a key rasped at the lock. So much for the possibility that this was a hapless Romeo summoned by the stalker. Whoever was out there had a key and didn’t know the locks had been changed.
If Zahad did nothing, the intruder might leave them in peace. But he would lose the chance to find out his identity.
Sooner or later, he would return. Better to take a chance now and catch him in the act.
Moving quietly into the hall, Zahad tensed. He must act swiftly and give as little warning as possible.
The key scratched again. The intruder either hadn’t grasped that it no longer fit or believed he could force it.
Zahad took a deep breath and flung himself forward. In a single fluid sequence, he flipped the dead bolt and yanked open the door.
And found himself staring into a gun barrel.
Chapter Eight
Zahad swung his arm hard and felt the gun fly from the man’s hand. The intruder was slightly taller and heavier set but slow to respond. Certainly not fast enough to block a kick that landed square in his groin.
With a grunt, the man doubled over on the narrow porch. The sheikh wrenched him around, clamped his arm about the man’s neck and pressed his knife to the pulsing throat.
Inside, warning chirps shrilled rhythmically. Everything had happened so fast that the alarm hadn’t even begun alerting the security company.
“Zahad?” came Jenny’s voice.
“I have him,” he replied hoarsely. “Turn on the light.”
A painful brilliance breached the hallway and lapped onto the porch. Blinking against it, Jenny came closer. She was pulling her bathrobe around her. “Who…”
The chirping grew into an ear-shattering screech. The man reacted. “What the—?” He broke off as Zahad clamped his arm tighter.
“Please turn off the alarm,” he told Jenny. From this position, all Zahad could see of his prisoner was well-trimmed blond hair and a beefy build that, for all its bulk, lacked skill at fighting. With some relief, he realized that this was not Sergeant Finley.
Jenny input the code. The deafening noise stopped.
In the silence, she took a good look at the man he held. “Grant? Good Lord!”
“This is your ex-husband?” Zahad hauled the man into the house and forced him to his knees. “His gun is on the ground. Will you retrieve it, please?”
“Sure.” Jenny grabbed a coat from a hook, slid her bare feet into a pair of canvas shoes and went out. A moment later she returned, gingerly holding a pistol. “I can’t believe he came here armed.”
“Also, he had a key. Obviously he was not expecting a new lock and an alarm. Or me.”
Zahad had loosened his grip a little. On the floor, Grant said, “I knew about you. The gun’s for protection.”
“It seems to me that I’m the one who needed protection.” Jenny handed the weapon to Zahad. He stepped back, pointed it at Grant and gestured at him to rise.
The blond man got up shakily. His face was flushed and he appeared to have difficulty swallowing. When he touched his neck, drops of blood speckled his hand. “Damn. He cut me!” As he leaned against the wall, his voice quivered with what Zahad could have sworn was indignation.
“You are fortunate to be alive. Count yourself lucky that your injury is so trifling.”
“Where’s Beth?” A dusting of freckles stood out against Jenny’s pale skin.
“In the car. Don’t worry. She’s wrapped up,” her ex-husband replied. “I know how to take care of my daughter.”
“Yes, you’re setting a great example of responsible parenthood,” Jenny retorted. “Why did you try to break into my house, and where’d you get the key?”
“I have a right to check the premises,” Grant blustered. “The detective called me yesterday with some more questions—” he coughed a few times before continuing “—and he said this assassin might be staying here.”
“He called me an assassin?” Zahad couldn’t believe Finley had been so irresponsible.
“Well, maybe he said revolutionary. Something like that. Anyway, I knew you were dangerous.”
“I am not the one who tried to break in here with a gun,” Zahad reminded him.
“It’s not loaded.” Another cough. “Anyway, you already did break in here and wiped out your brother. I wasn’t leaving my daughter until I made sure you weren’t around.”
Zahad’s civilized instincts held him in check only by a slim margin. “Jenny, please call the police before I do something I will regret.” He examined the barrel of the gun, a small .32-caliber revolver. It was indeed unloaded.
Only a fool carried a gun without bullets. An armed opponent would not have hesitated to shoot him.
To Grant, Zahad said, “Do not make any sudden moves. I can kill you without this.”
The man glanced at him warily. Reluctantly, he nodded.
“I’m going to call Parker and get Beth out of the car.” When her ex opened his mouth, Jenny said, “Shut up, Grant. Zahad’s a security expert and he’s here to guard me. If he has to break your neck, I’ll support any story he tells.”
The beefy man fell silent. Zahad wondered if it was the first time in his life a woman had put him in his place.
He no longer felt quite so angry with Grant Sanger, however. What infuriated him more was that, if the man told the truth, Parker Finley had put them all in danger by warning Jenny’s ex-husband of Zahad’s presence.
A worthy opponent looked you in the eye. Only a weasel manipulated others into doing his dirty work.
TRYING TO SET ASIDE her fury, Jenny put her exhausted daughter to bed. She wanted Beth to feel secure in her own home, and apparently she did. Worn out from being dragged across the country on a red-eye flight, the little girl fell asleep almost instantly.
Although she could hear Parker in the front room trying to sort out what had happened, Jenny lingered to gaze at this child who owned her heart. The tangle of blond hair and the air of childish innocence filled her with wonder. Jenny wished she could take Beth away from all this darkness and cruelty.
But that wasn’t right, she reminded herself. Her job was to raise her daughter in the imperfect world where someday she, too, would live as an adult.
With a sigh, Jenny pulled the covers up and went out to face the furor Grant had created.
He sat handcuffed in the living room, his face still flushed. Parker must have sent Zahad out of the room.
“Am I interrupting at a bad time?” Jenny asked.
“We’re done for the moment.” Parker clicked off his tape recorder and closed his notebook. She admired his thoroughness in using both. “I’ve got Mr. Adran’s and Mr. Sanger’s statements. I still need yours.” As he ruffled one hand through his brown hair, she noticed dark circles under his eyes.
“Would coffee help?”
“Yes, thanks.” He stifled a yawn. “I was up late with another carjacking. A tourist broke her arm trying to hang on to her purse.” From his tone, it was obvious the robbers had escaped. “We’re beefing up patrols. We’re going to make it so hot around the ski slopes that those creeps will take their business back to L.A.”
After reluctantly summoning Zahad to keep an eye on Grant,
the sergeant accompanied Jenny into the kitchen. Over coffee, he took notes while she ran over the events of the past hour.
“Did Grant say where he got the key?” she asked when she’d finished.
“Apparently you loaned him one a few years ago in case he brought Beth back early from a visit. He made a copy.”
“What an idiot. Under the circumstances, why on earth would he tip his hand and risk us finding out that he’s got it? It makes him an obvious suspect.”
“One thing that’s never in short supply on this earth is stupidity,” the detective replied.
“And the gun?” It had occurred to Jenny that, thanks to security measures, her ex-husband couldn’t have carried it on the plane. He couldn’t have bought it after his arrival, either, because California law mandated a waiting period.
“He says he kept it in a storage unit near the airport. It’s registered to him but he’s not licensed to carry it concealed. He’s lucky it was unloaded or he’d be in even more trouble.”
“A storage unit?” Jenny hadn’t heard about this before.
“He claims he makes business trips out here and doesn’t like to schlepp his clothes and computer equipment on airplanes,” Parker said. “Look, I’m sorry I mentioned Mr. Adran to him. I had no idea he’d decide to sneak in to see if the two of you were sleeping together.”
“Is that what he was doing?” Jenny’s temper flared. “And what was he going to do if he caught us?”
“He claims he just wanted to make sure the sheikh didn’t shoot him.”
“Who I sleep with is none of his business or anyone else’s.” Jenny didn’t bother to protest the false assumption. She had a right to do as she pleased. “You were out of line to tell him anything about my household situation.”
“I apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I do worry about you, Jenny.” The darkness beneath Parker’s eyes failed to soften their steeliness. “Sheikh Adran shouldn’t be staying here. You’ve got an alarm for protection.”
“If Grant had been determined to shoot me, that wouldn’t have stopped him. I feel safer with Zahad here, and it’s my decision.”
Sheikh Surrender Page 10
