But then in his senior year in high school Bianca came onto the scene and things had changed. He’d been able to wean himself off of Kelsey because this lovely little beauty took his heart.
They’d had advanced Physics and Linguistics classes together and he’d gotten to know her, first pretending he’d wished to study together, but soon realizing how much he enjoyed being around her. She calmed him. For some reason when he was near her, he felt more at peace and not like this frenetic, angry mood he seemed to be in all the time. His mind was constantly moving, and he always had this frantic desire to do something, to have a goal. The need to win and be perfect had been an innate part of his personality ever since he was a child, but Bianca had tempered it. His anger had disappeared.
He’d courted her with flowers, wrote her little poems and did anything that would make her smile. They dated for three months and he’d actually considered changing colleges to be with her, but then her father had taken her out of school and they simply disappeared. He’d been crushed when her own premonitions seemed to come true. He knew in his heart something bad had happened to her.
Ari closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat back. He’d spent nearly a quarter million dollars of his own money and manpower trying to find her, but she was nowhere to be found. It burned him that he couldn’t locate her, and now this situation with Kelsey just added to his stress.
He kicked himself for his stupidity. He was brilliant and nothing got past him, so how in the hell did he let Ustha get so far into his head? He should have known better. Ustha knew her way in and knew he hated Desmond so much because it formed a constant current of emotion in the back of his mind. God, how he regretted hiring him last year to help Kelsey take down Raul Salazar, the drug dealer who had murdered her parents. He’d basically handed his sister to Desmond on a silver platter. He set him up to get close to her. What had he been thinking letting a virtual stranger do the job with her at Garters? Letting her writhe up and down on him in a sex club without her underwear on? Was he crazy? He should have just done the job himself and sucked it up, letting Kelsey pretend with him instead to get to Raul. And it would have been fun. Well, it would have been difficult, but fun.
He grunted. No, who was he kidding? That scenario never would have worked. It would have been too pleasurable and in his heart he knew it. That’s why he’d hired Desmond in the first place, because in the back of his mind, Ari wasn’t sure he’d have been able to control himself. One wrong move with Kelsey, one inappropriate touch or feel that she took the wrong way, and it could have ruined everything between them and broken that tightly controlled emotional wall he’d built up. It was one thing to spar with her in a Tae Kwon Do match, but an entirely different thing to change the terms of their physical relationship.
It’s not your fault. You didn’t know Kelsey would fall for Desmond like that. She’d never lost control before. It was true. He’d never thought his sister would do anything to compromise her previously prudish principles. For God’s sake, she’d still been a virgin at the age of twenty-two. She always had boyfriends, but nothing had ever happened with any of them. There was that pretty boy stoner Logan Webber, the first guy she dated, but he wanted nothing more than to get in her pants. She flatly refused, and eventually he dumped her. Then Harry Scarsdale came onto the scene and she dated him her junior year. Ari didn’t feel anything about him at all, maybe because the guy had been a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair after a mountain climbing fall. Ari had felt certain Harry could do nothing more than make out with his sister. He didn’t like it one bit, but he could handle it.
Her last boyfriend had been a tough one, though, because Ari had begrudgingly liked him. Thomas McKenna, a twenty-year old artist whom she met while walking on a beach when she was just eighteen. He’d been drawing intricate designs in the sand, and she’d spent the entire afternoon watching him until the surf came in and washed his creation away. She had dated him for an entire year, but he’d never been well from the moment they met. Poor guy had a brain tumor and died in his sleep just a few days after Kelsey and he had celebrated their first anniversary together. Kelsey had been crushed and hardly dated anyone after that--until she met Desmond. A few dates here and there, but they’d never amounted to anything.
And now Ari was stuck with Desmond because his sister was in love with him. But the guy wasn’t even around any longer and no one had any idea how to even find him. How do you find someone who literally disappears into thin air through a portal to another world? You just don’t. This isn’t the movies. You can’t just tap your heels three times and they show up, that’s for sure. Well, unless you’re my sister who has access to other worlds with a wiggle of her hand. But even her ridiculous talents only went so far.
Of course, Kelsey hadn’t divulged any of this to him because she hadn’t spoken to him since that moment in his office when she decided to take out all her anger on his face. He’d had to glean the information from Julia, who had a leaky faucet for a mouth. After a nice dinner, some compliments on how pretty she looked, and two bottles of wine, she told him everything he wanted to know. Sometimes she came in handy. She was an amazing researcher and also a lawyer who had gotten him out of a bunch of problems, but most times Julia was a goddammed pain in the ass.
Ari thought he’d actually be ecstatic now that Desmond was gone and he’d have Kelsey all to himself again. But, of course, she found out what happened and wouldn’t forgive his innocent mistake. And now instead of hanging out with him again, she was ignoring him. Not to mention he now had to contend with Josh who was trying to weasel his way into her good graces and into her bed by being the innocent, helpful friend. Kelsey had no inkling of his alternative motives. The guy was just as bad a manwhore as Ari, but he hid it better with his innocent All-American good looks and patient demeanor. Fact was, the guy was a lethal powerhouse, an Adonis the girls flocked to and his previous job had him traveling the world so he literally had a girl in every port. Even Josh was surprised there weren’t a bunch of his kids running around by now.
So even though Josh, his best friend and partner working with him on the Middle East jobs, knew better, he was wheedling in seamlessly to take Ari’s rightful place. Josh lent his sister an ear, became her confidant, and her constant companion, while Ari could do nothing but sit on the sidelines and seethe. Thank God Dennis was gay and Seung had a serious girlfriend, or he’d have to worry about both of them around his sister, too.
But then two days ago things had changed. He’d finished the most recent job and had been celebrating in Tel Aviv when he got the text from Josh about a final shipment of goods. After it arrived they’d have enough supplies to create their own arsenal to do whatever they wanted. Then, they could begin the next, and final, phase of the project. The one he most relished. The testing phase was nearly over and soon they could implement the final blow to the crisis. It would take years for the full effect to be realized, but by the end of his lifetime, the entire conflict would be over and the Middle East would finally be able to move on to some semblance of peace. He was pretty sure that what he was about to do would change the face of religion, of terrorism, and of the entire dysfunctionality in that quadrant of the world, forever.
So, on a break, he’d casually mentioned to Josh the documents he’d found about the Voynich Manuscript and had asked Josh to hold onto them so that when he returned home he’d be able to give them to Kelsey himself. He thought if she saw what he’d done, then she might begin to forgive him. She had no idea that between his missions, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time trying to help her find Desmond. It was the least he could do after betraying her and trying to get her boyfriend killed. Ari was banking on the documents to prove to her how sorry he was and to get him back into her good graces.
Of course, he left out anything about Sitaula. He had no intention of her ever going near that man and giving him the opportunity to take away the second most precious thing in his life. Ari's research over the p
ast seven years showed Sitaula, and his missing wife, to be as dirty as they came. They made his own activities pale in comparison.
But his plan was all shot to hell now. Damned if Josh didn’t take his finds, claim them as his own, and give them to Kelsey himself. All of it, including the information about Sitaula. Ari had had no choice but to return home. He’d confronted Josh at the downtown warehouse and they’d nearly come to blows.
“I told you to leave her alone. She’s off limits to you.”
Josh’s eyes had flashed in anger and then held that familiar steely gaze Ari had only seen when Josh was infuriated. “She’s off limits to who, Ari? You know who she’s off limits to? YOU, that’s who. There’s no way you are ever, in a million years, going to bed that girl, so just shut the hell up and let her decide who she wants to be with.”
Ari balled his fists. “I told you those documents were for me to give to her. You overstepped your bounds.”
Josh had actually laughed at him. “God, you’re ridiculous. Do you hear yourself? It's a set of papers for Christ’s sake. Do you have to get credit for everything? She’s been working herself to the bone for the past two months trying to learn anything new to find her boyfriend, so I simply helped her. Just let it go. You got exactly what you wanted. Desmond is gone and out of the picture and the Middle East is in turmoil. So, I gave her the documents you collected. Big deal. If I remember correctly, you told me yourself that if we got rid of Desmond, she’s all mine and you’ll walk us down the aisle yourself. Well, guess what? That time has come and I’m not going to waste it.”
And it was true, he’d said those very words to Josh. And Desmond was gone and Ari was happy about it, but something still felt wrong. Suddenly Rajiv Sitaula was involved and Ari felt that all of it was somehow connected. Maybe it was all too raw for him because of Bianca. It wasn’t like him to be so emotional about a girl, especially after seven years. But even more disturbing was to not be able to settle what had actually happened to her. This plagued his mind day and night.
Ari rested his head on the seat pillow and tried to wrap his brain around the concept of Desmond also being from another plane of existence. The damned guy also had to have that in common with Kelsey, too, didn’t he? What were the chances of that? So Ari had no choice. He left Dubai, confronted Josh, went right to Kelsey’s apartment and found she’d already left.
He thought mildly about his tantrum in his office with Dennis and Julia. Looking back, he realized he may have overreacted. Oh hell, he knew he had. He’d seen the scared look in Dennis’s eyes. But what was he supposed to do? So, he had a temper, big deal. You couldn’t accomplish the things he wanted to accomplish in this world by being a scared, lily white, gentle flower. So he yelled and broke a few things on occasion. Let them deal with it. Julia would forgive him. He’d buy her a brand new laptop, send her on a luxurious spa vacation when he returned to New York City, and all would be well. As for Dennis, he’d buy a bottle of expensive champagne for him and his boyfriend and send them away for a weekend at a quaint bed and breakfast in Fire Island. Everything fixed.
Now, Kelsey was another story. She might not be ready to forgive him, but he wasn’t going to let her walk right into the lion’s den. Rajiv Sitaula was dangerous. So dangerous that Bianca had foretold her own disappearance. They’d been sitting by his parent’s pool, and he’d held her hand and listened to her seemingly irrational fears. How she believed her father had something to do with her mother’s disappearance, how she would catch him staring at her weirdly. How she felt that if she ever disappeared, Ari had to promise to look into her dad.
He’d hugged her and told her that she was going to be fine. But then two weeks later, she was gone.
Ari tracked Rajiv’s activities for the next seven years, using first the financial documents he’d had Kelsey steal from the school files, and then funding his searches with the money he made with his company. Those files had given him access to Rajiv’s payment accounts for school and he’d been able to start there and trace his activities around the globe. And what he learned was startling. The guy was dirty, and so was his wife. In fact, their entire immediate family appeared suspect. They both worked for the Korgin Stanley Group and were in so deep that it took all of Ari’s resources to find out how many accounts they used for their wealth. Wealth acquired on the backs of poor people who had no voice.
Sitaula’s wife, Anjali, had been with the company for three years before Sitaula had joined. In fact, her father had been one of the founding members of the corporation, and after she and Sitaula met at Harvard Business School, he’d come on board and joined the family business.
But something wasn’t right with them. It had not been a happy marriage. In fact, Ari uncovered three incident reports in which the police had been brought to their house in Greenwich, Connecticut. Each of the reports had been quietly dismissed, but he’d found them and located one of the cops who had written them up. It turned out it wasn’t Sitaula who had been violent, but his wife. Bianca had always mentioned how loving and kind she’d been, but Ari wondered. You never knew what went on in the deep dark depths of someone’s mind. Women could be just as lethal as men, as he well knew.
So when Sitaula suddenly quit his company and he and Bianca disappeared, Ari searched for them. People didn’t just take their teenagers out of school months before graduation and go on the run unless there was a very good reason. Ari located all the places where Sitaula had set foot throughout Canada and the Pacific Northwest, but the man never settled anywhere for long. And Bianca never materialized anywhere except when her passport was given to first enter Canada. That was the last notation of her anywhere. Ari personally visited many of the locations Sitaula had stopped, and no one in any of them recalled him ever having a daughter. She had simply vanished. Just like his wife. Did he kill Bianca as soon as they entered Canada? Did he dispose of her on some ancient trail, her body decomposing in a ravine in the wilderness?
She didn’t deserve that. Ari was as certain as Bianca had been that her father was behind her disappearance. Two people in one family didn’t just vanish into the blue. Not likely, and especially not when Bianca apparently had foretold her own disappearance.
On paper the guy was a saint. A devout Buddhist, a land conservationist, and on the board of multiple charities, but Ari knew better. It didn’t matter how much money he donated or how many volunteer organizations he worked for. Wolves always hid among the sheep-- some just hid better than others. But what Ari still didn’t have was Sitaula's motive, because he seemed to have loved and adored Bianca. The reason still eluded him. It couldn’t just be that Sitaula was sick of his day job. When Anjali disappeared, Rajiv had been promoted to Partner, putting him so deep in the company there would have been no easy way of getting out. He was rich beyond belief. Why did he leave?
The things the Korgin Stanley Group engaged in were the stuff of nightmares and Hollywood biopics. Their misdeeds made his toes curl, even knowing this type of corporate crime occurred all the time and was always hidden from the populace. The group invested in power plants that poisoned small town water supplies by dumping, but they hid it by paying off the affected families to shut them up. Not that money could cure you of cancer or bring back the little boy they’d poisoned to death. The group was intertwined with companies responsible for wiping out entire villages so they could drill oil. No matter where Ari looked, everything Sitaula’s company touched had been embroiled in disasters. There were incidents of oil spills, dock collapses, and train derailments all throughout Canada and the Pacific Northwest. But one day, Sitaula left it all behind. What changed? The man was hiding something, of that Ari was sure, and he was certain if Kelsey confronted him directly, she would get hurt. Sitaula was hidden from society right now and he might not be so happy to have someone force him out of hiding. Ari had to get to her first and warn her before it was too late.
I’m worried about her. Ari was startled he finally admitted it. He loved his sister and he didn�
��t want her hurt. But he knew how much he obsessed about her, so instead, over the years he’d dated a slew of other women to sate his desires. All trying to keep his mind off of Kelsey. Oh, if Bianca were just still here, I could devote my life to her and forget about Kelsey. He was so torn about his emotions for her, and at times, he felt like his very psyche was being ripped in two trying to manage his feelings.
Kelsey. He had to stop worrying about her. She was the most capable woman he knew. Brilliant, fearless, lethal and frankly, certifiably otherworldly. If the Earth housed a real superhero, then it was his sister. But she was still human. At least in this lifetime, she was. He’d seen her bleed. In fact, he’d caused it himself a few times. And the best part for a fighter? She wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, which made her exceedingly dangerous.
He recalled a summer as a teen when he and Kelsey spent weeks in a military survivalist training program so off the grid every kid’s parent had to sign a release to let them participate. It was so grueling that going in they knew the majority of them wouldn’t even make it to the end. He couldn’t believe Kelsey had gotten their parents to actually agree to let them go. But Kelsey was determined, and had used her charms to sway them like she normally did. She had a goal in this lifetime to find and kill Raul Salazar, and she knew she needed to get the best training out there to accomplish her goal. He’d never seen someone so driven and dedicated and when Kelsey put her mind to something, she usually succeeded.
The Call of Mount Sumeru Page 4
