Seized by the Sheik

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “You don’t think a man’s murder is important enough to be investigated by the sheriff?”

  He gave a shrug. “If it is murder.”

  “What about Fahad Bahir’s death isn’t murder?”

  Again he shook his head.

  She swore sometimes talking to Russ was like talking to a teenager again, even though he was in his early twenties. Maybe she should change the subject. She’d been so buoyed by the acceptance of her dad and Brent that she’d expected it from Russ. If he needed a little more time, she’d give it to him. Now that Brent was being more reasonable, Russ would eventually follow in his oldest brother’s footsteps. He always did.

  Besides, she had other things to talk to him about.

  She paused, trying to carefully choose her words. “I hear you’ve been seeing a woman from town.”

  Russ kept shoveling. “I see lots of women from town, sis.”

  “This one is named Tanya. Tanya Driscoll.”

  “So? What of it?”

  “Has she said anything to you about the royals staying at the Wind River Ranch and Resort? Asked any questions?”

  “I don’t know.” He stopped his work and shot her a bored look. “Everyone is talking about your royals staying at the Wind River Ranch and Resort. Maybe she said something, too. I don’t remember.”

  She wasn’t sure how to break this to him. Probably better to just spit it out. “I’m afraid…” She bit her lip. No. There had to be a better way to broach the subject of Tanya’s real motives.

  “You’re afraid of what?”

  She took a deep breath and pushed forward. “I’m afraid she’s been using you.”

  Russ stabbed the plastic prongs into a pile. Leaning on the handle once more, he peered at her as if she were speaking another language. “You think Tanya’s using me?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. A chuckle sounded from deep in his throat. “Callie, you’re not my mother.”

  “I’m not trying to be.”

  “Yes, you are. Knock it off.”

  “I love you, Russ. I want you to be careful.” God, she sounded like her dad and Brent when they’d warned her about Efraim. “And there’s more. I think—”

  “Callie, stop it. Of course she’s using me. And I’m using her. I’m not looking to find my soul mate or get married. I’m not looking for scintillating conversations. I just want to have a good time.”

  “But that’s not what she wants.”

  “What are you talking about?” He shook his head and held up his hand. “Callie, just go back to your sheik and leave me alone. Really.”

  “This is serious, Russ.”

  “Oh, serious like you and the sheik? Talk about someone who needs a warning. I hope you don’t think you’re his only one, Callie. I hear men like him have whole harems of wives. I’m sure he’ll make you feel really special.”

  Callie sucked in a breath of calm. This was going all wrong. She had to explain the situation to Russ. She had to make him understand. “Tanya isn’t using you for a good time. She’s using you to get to me.”

  He scoffed at her and pulled the manure fork free. Turning his back on her, he returned to picking the stall, stabbing the bedding with a little too much force and flinging the waste into the wheelbarrow. “You know everything isn’t always about you or Brent or Saint Joey.”

  Oh, God, now he was turning this into a younger brother’s rant against his older siblings. “Russ, I’m serious. We have reason to believe Tanya is working with the Russian mob.”

  He stopped shoveling in midscoop. “What?”

  “She’s Russian mob,” Callie repeated. She hated throwing it at him like that. But maybe now he’d finally listen, finally let her explain.

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No joke. Sheik Efraim and the other royals staying at the Wind River Ranch, they are here for an important meeting. A meeting it’s my job to facilitate.”

  “Yeah, ‘facilitate.’” He rolled his eyes. “So that’s what you were doing last night with the sheik, eh? Facilitating.”

  “Enough, Russ.” She felt her cheeks starting to heat, but she willed the flush away. She wasn’t going to let her kid brother embarrass her. She didn’t feel ashamed of her bond with Efraim. She wasn’t going to take that crap from him. “I’m not joking. This is an important deal. It’s very delicate, and it’s supposed to be secret.”

  “And that’s why everyone in the county knows about it. Scratch that. After the explosion and corruption scandal, everyone in the country has probably heard about it by now.”

  She sure hoped not, but she couldn’t deny that things had gone just about as wrong as they possibly could. “They don’t know what the coalition is about. They don’t understand what a beneficial deal this could be for everyone involved.”

  Again with the eye roll.

  Sometimes she swore Russ was the baby of the family and not Timmy. God knew, her youngest brother was always thinking of others. Even when he was the one who was hurt, he was trying to take care of her. He was a caring kid. It was Russ who acted like a teenager, from his hormone-based lust for anything with breasts to his immature attitude and temper.

  She took another deep breath. By the end of this conversation, she’d probably be hyperventilating just from her efforts to hold on to her cool. “On the other hand, there’s also opposition. Someone or many someones are doing everything they can to prevent the Coalition of Island Nations from agreeing to a compact. We believe one of those parties is the Russian mob.”

  “And that’s Tanya.” He shook his head. “She’s a waitress, Callie. She likes to hang out and hear bands. She’s not some kind of spy.”

  “Open your eyes, Russ. She arrived in Dumont right about the time I was brought into this deal. She happens to latch on to you as well as two different men who work security for Efraim. And last night, we heard her speaking Russian to someone in the kitchen and then two men were waiting for us in the parking lot when we left. They chased us, Russ. We’re lucky we got away.”

  He stared at the dirty pine shavings on the stall’s floor, a muscle working along his jaw.

  Callie waited a long time for him to speak, the minutes ticking by like hours, marked only by the buzz of flies, the whistle of the wind outside and the deep tones of Dale Watson emanating from the barn radio. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t know if he was struggling to process all she’d told him or just clamming up, but her patience was gone. “What are you thinking?”

  “That she couldn’t be a Russian.”

  “After all you just heard?”

  “Being able to speak Russian doesn’t mean anything. You speak Russian.”

  It was true. So did Efraim. “I speak a lot of languages. Russian is only one. And I’m not actually fluent.”

  “So maybe that’s the case with her, too. Only she’s better at it than you are.”

  “You’re not facing the facts, Russ.”

  His shoulders slumped. For a guy who was reluctant to ever admit he was wrong, it was as good as a white flag.

  Callie felt bad for her brother. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Stay away from her. Don’t trust her.”

  “You told Dad all this?”

  She’d spoken to their father last night after George and Mercy had fished them from the creek. “I warned him to watch out for people coming to the ranch. But I didn’t put the rest together until morning.” Actually Efraim had figured out that Tanya must have been trying to get to her through Russ. But she didn’t think pointing out who the realization had come from would help Russ accept it.

  “I was wondering why he insisted we carry guns with us while we were doing chores this morning.”

  “That’s Dad.”

  “Yeah.” He threw the fork in the wheelbarrow and trucked the whole thing to the next stall.

  Callie watched her little brother move. He was so stra
pping and headstrong that it was easy to forget he was only a few years older than Timmy. But where Timmy and she had a bond, Russ always seemed to resent her a little. As if he remembered their mother a bit better than Timmy did and resented Callie for not being her.

  Callie pulled in a deep breath of pine shavings and the light ammonia smell of used stalls. When she was a kid, she’d worked side by side with Brent and Joe every day. Sometimes they’d talk, sometimes they’d swap nothing but silence, but they’d built a bond by just sharing the same space and the same workload. It had helped them get through the inevitable frictions that came with such different personalities living under one roof.

  She stepped away from the stall aisle and ducked into a small room where they kept horse feed and other gear. There had to be another manure fork in here somewhere. She’d help Russ for a while, just work next to him. Maybe it wouldn’t make things better, but it sure couldn’t hurt.

  Sunlight streamed through the window, lighting dust motes swirling in the air. She stepped toward the shovel rack behind the feed.

  And stopped dead.

  Leaning against the wall behind the oat bin she could see the barrel of a rifle. A shiver of recognition froze her blood.

  Heart thumping so hard that she felt like she’d break a rib, she pushed behind the oat bin and picked it up. The stock was dust-covered, but the brass plaque still gleamed in the rays streaming in through the window. Wind River County Champion Marksman, Junior Women’s Division.

  Callie’s hands began to shake. She carried the rifle out into the aisle and held it up for Russ to see. “Why is this here?”

  Russ shrugged. “Where else would it be?”

  If he was acting, he was doing a pretty good job. “I lost it yesterday. Out on the BLM. Whoever shot Fahad Bahir took it from Efraim.”

  Russ looked up from the manure cart. He studied her, then the rifle, his brows dipped low. “I found it out there. This morning.”

  “And you hid it behind the oat bins?”

  He glanced around. “No, I was feeding the horses. I set it there. Must have forgotten it.”

  “You fed the horses after you rode out on the BLM?” Callie shook her head. Russ wasn’t making any sense, and she was afraid to think too much about why.

  He shook his head. “I thought you’d be happy to have it back.”

  “Did you really find it, Russ?” Callie’s insides were now shaking so badly that she could hardly stand. Her knees felt uncertain, as if they could collapse at any moment.

  “Yeah. Of course. Where else do you think it came from?” His lips flattened into a bloodless line. “You think…you think it was me who shot that guy, don’t you?”

  She didn’t. Did she? “No, I don’t think you’re a murderer, Russ. Not on your own. But this isn’t adding up. I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”

  He narrowed his eyes on her. A flush worked its way up his neck and colored his cheeks. “You come in here warning me that Tanya’s using me, like I’m some idiot, and now you think she talked me into killing a man or something? You think I’m led around that easily?”

  “No.” And she didn’t. He couldn’t. “But I need to know the truth.”

  He waved his arm as if clearing the air of her words. “I told you. I found it. I thought you might want it, so I brought it back. Is that a crime?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why all these questions?”

  She narrowed her eyes on him. She didn’t know what was going on in her brother’s head, but she knew one thing. Russ wasn’t telling the truth.

  A horrible sinking feeling settled in her stomach. “Whoever shot Fahad committed murder, Russ.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “The sheriff, he’s investigating.”

  “So? What does that have to do with me?”

  “Whoever did this…whoever shot Fahad…he needs to turn himself in.”

  “You do think I did it, don’t you? Let me guess, I did it because I’m so in love with a girl I just met in a bar? And I’m such an idiot that she talked me into working for the Russian mob?”

  The whole thing did sound far-fetched, ridiculous. But if it wasn’t true, at least Callie had learned something that was. Her brother knew something he wasn’t telling her. And she had a horrible feeling that it had something to do with Fahad’s death. “I have to go.”

  “Running back to your sheik?”

  “Tell Timmy I’ll be back to check on him, okay? And please think about what I said.”

  “Callie, you think you know everything, but you don’t. You don’t know anything at all.”

  She hoped he was right. But she had the feeling she’d discovered far too much.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jake Wolf was about as forthcoming as Efraim had feared. Either the man hadn’t found anything of value in his search of Fahad’s room, or he wasn’t about to tell. Efraim guessed it might be a little of both. “Fahad was my blood. I was responsible for him being out in the badlands. I need to know who killed him. Surely you can understand that, Sheriff.”

  “I understand.” Jake Wolf paced toward the door. “And I’m working on finding those answers for you.”

  “I don’t want you to find them for me. I want to help. I want justice.”

  Hand on knob, Wolf turned to face him. “Justice is my job, Sheik. It is the job of a district attorney and a defense attorney, a jury and a judge. It does not belong to the individual. I will give you answers when I know more.”

  Too bad Efraim didn’t plan on waiting around for the sheriff to feel like giving him answers. He wanted answers now. He’d answered a slew of questions from the sheriff, now he had some of his own. “Have you searched Rattlesnake Badlands?”

  “A team has been out there since early this morning.”

  “A team? What does that mean?”

  “Experts, sir.”

  “Let me guess, their job is justice.”

  Wolf gave him an emotionless stare. “I must go.”

  Efraim held up a hand. He shouldn’t have been flip. Not when he had more questions to ask. “One more thing, Sheriff. Please.”

  Wolf nodded.

  “Were there any witnesses to the explosion?”

  “None who have come forward, no.”

  “None who have come forward,” Efraim repeated. “But that doesn’t mean that there are no witnesses out there.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” The sheriff watched him. His eyes showed nothing, but Efraim could imagine he was trying to figure out why he’d ask such a question and if Efraim knew something he didn’t.

  Ever since Efraim had seen the message on Cloud Nine, he’d debated about showing it to the sheriff. He still hadn’t decided what he should do.

  “I really must be going,” the sheriff finally said. The sunlight streaming in the windows caught his belt buckle. It looked much like Efraim’s dagger buckle, the small dagger now lost, the buckle itself blank and worthless. But instead of housing a weapon, the sheriff’s depicted a howling wolf.

  Another reminder of how Efraim had hoped Wolf would be a kindred spirit. Another reminder of how that hope had never borne fruit.

  At least the sheriff had returned his pistol to him. Its weight around his waist felt reassuring, and he needed all of that feeling he could get right now. And judging from what the sheriff had told him, the FBI seemed to be willing to leave him alone. For now.

  He moved to the door and opened it for the lawman. “I will be waiting for those answers, once you find them.”

  The sheriff stepped out into the hall and was gone, leaving Efraim to stew in his own thoughts. Only a day had passed since Fahad had been shot, but it felt like a week. It felt like a lifetime. When Callie had been with him this morning, she’d soothed his frustrations. Now that he was alone, he felt as if he was jumping out of his skin. He couldn’t wait until she returned. He needed to tell her about the witness in the message. He needed her to help him figure
out what it meant.

  He needed her.

  There was a time when that realization would have disturbed him. Now it made him smile. He didn’t know if he was quite ready to tell Callie he was falling in love with her. They had known each other such a short time. But he felt certain it was true. He was falling in love with Callie McGuire. And he couldn’t wait for her to walk back through his door. He couldn’t wait to tell her his thoughts and take her back into his bed. He couldn’t wait to show her how much he cared.

  When he finally heard her knock on the door and open it, he didn’t have a chance to do any of those things.

  She looked up at him, her body shaking, her eyes red from tears. She set her truck keys on the bookshelf and stood with her hands hanging useless at her sides, as if she had no idea what to do next.

  He folded her in his arms. “What’s wrong?”

  She pressed her cheek to his chest. For a long while, she didn’t answer. She just clung to him as if she’d never get the chance to hold him again.

  Finally she drew a shuddering breath and looked up at him. “It’s Russ. I think he might be hiding something.”

  Russ. The second-to-youngest brother. The one dating Tanya. “Something? Like what?”

  She shook her head. “We need to call the sheriff, turn everything we know over to him.”

  The sheriff. Efraim had had enough of the sheriff and the way the man allowed information to flow only one way. “You need to tell me what happened, Callie.”

  Tears swamped her eyes. “My dad. He’s out stringing fence. I need to talk to him first.”

  “Callie.”

  “Please, Efraim. I can’t.”

  “You can’t be honest with me?” A tremble centered in his chest.

  “I just have to…I have to find out more.”

  “I asked you if you trusted your family. You said yes.”

  “I do trust them.”

  “But you learned something. Something that alarms you. What did you find out, Callie? Tell me, now.”

  “It’s not like that.” She shook her head and pulled away from him. “There has to be a reason. Something we don’t know.”

  Cool air settled around him where her warmth used to be. “Did one of your brothers shoot Fahad?”