For the first time she got a really good look at the man she’d glimpsed through the chain link fence two months ago. He was wearing black jeans, a black tee, and—
Oh. My. God. He was beautiful. With the exception of Brad Blue, the Iranian was the most strikingly handsome man she had ever seen. Totally masculine from strong nose to proud bearing . . . but beautiful. Like a fully mature version of Michelangelo’s David. For the first time Mandy understood why men fell all over themselves for a stunningly gorgeous woman. That there were certain urges it was hard to resist, no matter how irrational.
So it’s a good thing you’re so resistible, Mandy mocked herself, because Karim Shirazi most certainly isn’t.
Ignoring his prisoner, the Iranian stalked across the room, picked up a remote from the bedside table, flicked on a small television set that hung on the wall. While its picture warmed to life, Karim turned to look at her, arms across his broad chest, feet at parade rest. “Silence is an admirable quality in a woman,” he approved.
Mandy wasn’t about to admit his looks had struck her dumb. She swallowed hard, ordered her hormones to be quiet, her brain to stand at attention. “Where’s Peter?” she demanded.
“I told you. In a room with no windows and a very large bolt. He is going nowhere. Nor will you.”
The television burst into life. Karim surprised her by switching to the Weather Channel. Why on earth . . . ?
The milder temperatures Florida had been enjoying for the last few days were about to end, said the dulcet tones of the early morning forecaster. A strong cold front would move into the region by late afternoon, bringing much-needed rain. There would be thunderstorms, some possibly severe.
Karim smiled, punched the Off button. The television faded to black.
So it was going to be a dark and stormy night. So what? Mandy wondered. Why was her captor pleased by a weather report? If she asked, would he tell her? Or just deepen that superior, damn-his-gorgeous-melting-dark-eyes smile and get his kicks out of leaving her curiosity unanswered?
“What’s so important about the weather?”
Karim shifted his arms, clasped his hands behind his back. He rocked back on his heels, staring down the strong plane of his nose from a sculptured face that might have been an example of the best of ancient Persia, cradle of humanity. Mandy stifled an awestruck juvenile desire to suck in her breath. He ignored her question. Stuck on his own agenda, it was possible he hadn’t even heard her.
“I am not what you think I am,” Shirazi said quietly, looking past her shoulder toward the array of pillows on the bed. Naturally, he did not care to look at her, Mandy thought. She was a mere female. Beneath his dignity. An old, unattractive female at that.
Mandy willed her face to blank, her eyes to wide and innocent. If Karim Shirazi wanted to talk, it could only be in her best interest to listen.
“When I was a child,” he said, “I lived in Tehran and the Americans were our friends. Then . . .” He turned and looked out the north window, as if he could see his life projected on the shining glass. His face was harsh. Soulless. Or, perhaps, Mandy wondered, simply lost.
“Then—as everyone knows—my countrymen seized the American Embassy. My parents were part of the old regime, I had American friends . . . yet I was so sure the revolution was right. The Ayatollah spoke the words of Allah himself. I would defend my faith and my country with my life.
As soon as I was old enough, I joined the army, became an officer and a gentleman. So eager . . . so very young. I went off to fight our long war against Iraq. And when we drove the invaders back, they used chemical weapons. Did you know that, Miss Sheltered American? Did you know Iran was the first country to be attacked with chemical weapons since the European war you call World War One?”
Mandy shook her head, but doubted that he saw her. She was a sounding board while Karim Shirazi justified his existence. He was groping in the dark, searching for excuses. For a world that lived on greed, thought nothing of turning women into whores. Did he ever look, really look, at women at all? she wondered.
Yet as long as he was talking, nothing bad was happening. So humoring him was a wise move. To her, his country was the home of fanatical nuke-rattling hostage-takers. To Karim Shirazi, it was the home of his family, his religion, his comrades in arms.
“A bad war . . . and very long,” Karim was saying. “Men died. Then more . . . and more. I became a captain . . . a major.” Once again, he rocked back on his heels, flicked a last look at the bright sunshine outside, then returned to the blank white wall just beyond Mandy’s right ear. “I was a good officer. I understood what I was doing. And why.” Karim drew a deep breath. Almost, Mandy suspected, a sigh.
“We fought alone—even the Russians conveniently forgot the old saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Iran had no friends. Nearly two million died. It is a miracle we survived at all.
“And then came what you call the Gulf War.” Karim’s pace suddenly switched from melancholy to sarcasm. “The Americans proved more pragmatic than the Russians. There was nothing official, of course, but the climate changed.”
Mandy thought of herself, hands on a strange keyboard in a strange land, clutching a black chador in her teeth.
“My government still claimed America was the great Satan, but most of us considered Saddam Hussein the Evil One, and American soldiers were destroying the Iraqi army far better than we had ever managed to do. My beliefs, my certainties were shaken. I was still very young, yet I was an old man. I wanted only to be left in peace to understand why my world had become such a strange place.”
Shades of Vietnam, Mandy thought, and wasn’t surprised when Karim’s erect carriage seemed to sag. He took a step back, sitting down on top of his desk, one foot on the floor, his other leg bent at the knee, swinging free.
“I looked around me. I saw many good people, people who made me proud to be Persian . . . but there were other things, frightening things.”
She couldn’t be feeling sympathy. Good God, was she crazy?
Karim’s foot swung, tap-tapping against the front of the maple desk. He frowned, the foot stilled. “In a village one day I saw a crowd . . . I thought it might be an accident so I stopped, thinking I could help. But when I saw what was happening, I wanted only to go away. I had heard rumors of such things, but when I was not at the front, I lived a good life, a privileged one. It was easy to ignore what was going on outside my own small circle.”
Mandy hadn’t taken her eyes from Karim’s face. She no longer saw him as breathtakingly handsome. Or as one of the bad guys. Like herself, Karim Shirazi was part of the great army of walking wounded.
“It wasn’t an accident,” the ex-major explained. “There were two couples in the center of the crowd. They were already battered and bloody, but the stones kept coming. Do you know,” Karim mused, “that the size of the stones is decreed by law? The stones should not be too large so that the person dies on being hit by one or two of them. They should not be so small that they cannot be defined as stones.”
Mandy’s stomach clenched. Stones. Stones?
“Even as I watched, it was over. There were so many stones . . . from every direction. The couples clutched their bloody heads, trying to protect themselves. Their knees buckled . . . the stones kept coming. And coming. I turned away, pushed back through the crowd. Told myself it was none of my business, that it had nothing to do with me.
“Do you know what their crime was?” Karim asked. “Adultery. Even if it had been murder . . .” His voice trailed away.
Mandy bit her lower lip. She would not sympathize with this man. Nor comment on the barbarity of his country. Nor admit she was beginning to understand why he left.
“My country is Persia, a civilization so ancient it should rise above all other cultures. Instead, we are reduced to stoning our people to death. A man should not turn his back on the land of his birth, but I had seen enough death. Enough fanaticism. I just wanted to go somewhere where a man could live i
n peace, practice his religion in a way that did not hurt others, raise a family . . .”
“Why do you tell me this?” Mandy demanded. She had to go on the attack. Had to remember Karim Shirazi was a bad man. She refused to be his Wailing Wall.
At last he looked at her, his dark eyes nearly black with repressed rage and sorrow. Sunk into a face whose classic symmetry had become even more striking, now shadowed by pain into a chiascuro achieved only by the finest painters. “Perhaps because you are a good woman,” he offered. “It has been a long time since I have spoken with a good woman.”
“You think I’m a good woman because I am old and plain and no one wants me?”
Karim straightened his back, placed both hands, palms down, on the desk on either side of him. “It is true I said that,” he admitted slowly, “but I was trying to keep you from being so terrified you couldn’t dress yourself.”
“It was the truth.”
“I lied. You are not plain, but your beauty is of the kind appreciated only by men of good character. Or men like myself who wish we might again become what we once were.”
“Oh, very pretty,” Mandy mocked.
“Your beauty is of the soul. Purity shines from your eyes.” Karim eyed her sharply. “Pennington is your lover, is he not? Have you ever been with any other man?”
She should haul out the AirLite and shoot him. Mandy heard herself admit a very small, “No.”
Satisfied, Karim nodded, raising his dark brows to make his point.
“Nadya is a good woman,” Mandy persisted.
“Nadya Semyonova, like you, is a woman who causes a great deal of trouble.”
“She was a good woman until you made her into a . . . something else.”
Karim shrugged. “The Russian soul is not easily destroyed. If she does not cause me more trouble, she will be a good woman once again.”
Abruptly, the ex-major stood. The lines, newly etched into the planes and angles of his face, somehow made him all the more intriguing. They appealed to the mother in every woman, as well as the lover. Damn and double damn, but she was in danger of liking the miserable sinner. Wasn’t it a little early for Stockholm Syndrome?
“Perhaps I tell you all this,” Karim suggested softly but with peculiarly deadly emphasis, “because I do not want to have another death on my conscience. I wish you to understand I would take no pleasure in killing you, but I am a soldier, and I must do what needs to be done. I work for people who made it possible for me to come to this country, and I cannot leave them until I have fulfilled my obligation. And I will do that, because that is who and what I am.”
“You could be a witness against them,” Mandy urged. “You’d be protected . . . the FBI would find a spot in the Witness Protection Program . . .”
“Honor is at stake.”
“Honor,” Mandy hooted. “What’s honorable about being a pimp?” She gaped at her own audacity. She couldn’t have said that. The Iranian seemed to swell to twice his height. Onyx eyes turned to volcanic fire pits. Mandy was very glad he was no longer carrying his weapons. “I’m sorry,” she babbled. “That’s what you were trying to tell me, isn’t it? You . . . sort of run things around here, but you don’t–uh–procure the ah–customers.” It seemed a fine distinction, but evidently to Shirazi it was a vital point.
After a long moment, the ex-Major responded with a curt nod. Mandy still felt as if she were sharing the room with a half-wild beast. Shirazi was a civilized, even cultured, officer and gentleman. And yet . . . if he felt he had to, he would kill her. His point was well made. And chilling.
Time to change the subject. Mandy repeated her earlier question. “So what was important about the weather report?”
“We are not stupid. We know we are being watched. I will, of course, demand surveillance be lifted, but”—Karim shrugged—“we all know no one can be trusted. Yet in a storm surveillance is difficult, particularly in a Florida storm. Small planes and helicopters can’t fly. Lightning is non-stop, the rain like a waterfall. A storm tonight, a bad one, is just what we need.”
“How long . . .?” Mandy couldn’t go on. How long would he keep them? How long until he killed them?
“You will come with us, however far we go. If you do not give me trouble, I will let you go. You are sensible . . . for a woman. And, besides, there will be nothing you can tell the police that they do not already know.”
“And Peter?”
“I have told you. I do not like senseless murder. Do as you are told, and you will both go free.” Karim checked his watch, swung on his heel with military precision and left the room.
With a long sigh of relief, Mandy sank back on the bed, resting her forehead on a black satin pillow with huge white tassels. She only wished she believed him.
Almost ten minutes of swirling, elusive, contradictory thoughts before she recalled she was still carrying her cell phone and a gun. Should she take a chance on contacting Doug Chalmers? Or was surveillance close enough the FBI had seen them exit the van? Or at least close enough to figure out what had happened when she and Peter turned up missing?
Blast it! Peter, Peter, where are you when I need you?
While in the van, Mandy had managed to turn off her cell so no incoming call would betray her. But when she turned it back on, there might be only one chance to make a call before she was caught. Fine. She’d play it safe and wait until things got really dicey.
The FBI knew where they were. Or should soon figure it out. At the moment her cell phone and gun were about as useful as the two easily opened windows through which the sun shone so brightly, heralding the arrival of another perfect day in paradise.
Chapter Nineteen
Peter paced his windowless wooden cell. Seven strides forward, seven back, his thoughts chaotic, frustrated. Furious. How could he have let this happen? He should have sent Mandy away.
As if he could have made her go.
They should have accepted Doug’s offer of a safe house.
No argument there.
Just how dangerous was Karim Shirazi?
Oh, God, Mandy, where are you?
The door opened. A young Asian woman scurried into the room, carrying a tray of food. Behind her, filling the doorway stood a Persian prince, straight out of legend. Even with his arms behind his back at parade rest and flecks of gray visible in his black curly hair, his stance screamed arrogant s.o.b.
Well, hell. The bastard had to be Shirazi, the architect of all their misery. “Where’s my wife?” Peter demanded.
The Iranian’s heavy black eyebrows rose in Spock-like inquiry. “Wife? It would seem my information was not as accurate as I could wish. No matter, this is better. I can be even more certain you would not wish anything to happen to her.”
“Where. Is. She?”
“Not far, Mr. Pennington. A few doors only. She is quite comfortable, I assure you. I have offered her the privacy of my own room.”
Peter surged forward. The girl with the tray squeaked. The major didn’t give an inch. His lips, in fact, turned up in what was almost a smile. Reason prevailed. Peter ground to a halt eighteen inches short of his goal.
“Go ahead,” the Iranian purred. “You can spend your time with us in ropes, perhaps even chains,” he mused, “or you can remember your wife is alive, unharmed, and about to be fed breakfast. As are you. The more readily you cooperate, Mr. Pennington, the easier it will be for both of you.
“Kai!” Karim snapped without taking his eyes from Peter. A wave of his hand, and the young Thai laid her tray on the bed, then swiftly fled the room.
“Well, Mr. Pennington?” Karim demanded.
Peter reminded himself he and Mandy had a lot more years to live, a family to raise. He could not afford to forget himself again. “I can’t deny you have the upper hand,” he admitted, stepping back toward the bed, making a determined effort to look suitably intimidated.
Karim lowered himself into an old straight chair, which was the room’s only furniture other than
the bed. “Eat,” he commanded. “Then we have business.”
When Peter finished the last crumb of his second croissant, drained the last drop of coffee, Shirazi produced Peter’s cell phone. “It is time,” he said. “Your friends out there will not, of course, be surprised. Undoubtedly, they saw us arrive, have checked your house to make sure they were not mistaken, and are now sitting by their phones waiting to hear our demands. So let us make them happy.” Shirazi leaned forward, extended the phone.
“Tell them they are to be gone by dusk,” he instructed. “It is very simple. We leave without trouble, or your wife dies. They can gather an army if they wish, but at the first hint of trouble, she dies. And if our escape fails, I personally guarantee I will live long enough to take to you to hell with me.”
The Iranian’s handsome, square-cut face was as hard as a bronze mask. The dark, so civilized eyes of an Iranian officer and gentleman met Peter’s, held for five heartbeats.
If he’s bluffing, Peter thought, I never want to play poker with him.
The phone slapped down into Peter’s palm. Blankly, he stared at it . . . then punched in the numbers for Doug Chalmers.
Doug answered on the second ring.
Mandy was halfway through a croissant when she heard the tapping. The distinct sound of fingernails on glass. Nadya’s face peered in at the window on the east side of the house. In a matter of moments Mandy was helping her climb over the sill.
“Is all right,” Nadya whispered, “he not kill me.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Mandy returned, grateful that Nadya’s English had improved.
The two women sat side by side on the bed. Nadya sighed, obviously searching her scant vocabulary for the right words. “Karim is not bad man,” she said. “You must do as he says. Then he let you go.”
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