The Sheikh smiled and shook his head. “Not really. And your point is?”
Kathryn waved away his question. “How did your men find the bomb? They check the undercarriages of all your cars every day?”
“Of course not. But they do check every vehicle before it is driven. It is protocol.”
“So that bomb could have been placed there weeks before you found it. Perhaps months.”
“Perhaps,” said the Sheikh. “I still do not see your point.”
Kathryn continued to ignore him as her mind raced. “Was there another attempt?”
The Sheikh sighed. “Ya Allah. Now I am the one being interrogated. Yes, there was. A few years before we found the bomb, I was poisoned while on a trip to Europe.”
“Not very good poison, was it?” Kathryn said, raising an eyebrow. “You seem fine to me.”
The Sheikh laughed and ran his fingers through his thick black hair. “All right, Ms. Professional Assassin. Are we getting to your point?”
“My point is that the previous assassination attempts were personal, small scale, well-targeted, and careful. The poison could have killed only you. The bomb could have killed only you and perhaps one other person. There’s also a chance that the attempts were a message—that you can be gotten to.” Kathryn shook her head. “But this? Men in black swarming through a crowded brothel with automatic weapons? It doesn’t fit the pattern.”
Sheikh Hyder narrowed his eyes and turned away from her, glancing out the window. “Unless the pattern is of escalation, with the attempts becoming bolder and more reckless. You do not know my sister, Kathryn.” He sighed. “Even I do not know her anymore. It has been so long.”
Kathryn took a breath and turned the other way, glancing out the other window. No, she didn’t know Nisha Gorka. She’d seen her at that party—tall, slender, dark-haired and beautiful. High cheekbones and sand-colored eyes. Kathryn had wondered about her ethnicity, and now that she thought about it, perhaps there was a resemblance. But nothing in Yuri Gorka’s file had mentioned that Nisha was connected to Middle Eastern royalty. Had Mel hidden that from her?
Stop, Kathryn told herself. Don’t let the paranoia drive you insane. Sometimes the world of politics and espionage gets very small. People are connected in strange ways, and sometimes coincidence can seem like conspiracy. Remember your rules: Breathe. Listen. Observe and process. Trust no one but yourself.
No one but yourself.
She looked over towards the Sheikh, taking in the sight of his cut features, his chiseled jawline, his manicured stubble, those deep green eyes that were scanning the horizon as if he was watching for something. Quickly she looked away when the images of what they’d just shared came rushing back through the whir of the chopper’s blades: The way he’d kissed her. The way he’d touched her. The way he’d entered her. The way he’d made her come.
Then that strange peace washed over her once again. But this time it wasn’t a sense of resignation. It was feeling of excitement. Joy. Optimism. Butterflies.
Because she remembered her final rule. Her unbreakable rule: Finish the job. Always finish the job. And what was the job here?
Marry this man.
Now a sickness rose up in her, and she almost choked when she realized that it was those butterflies. It was a feeling she almost didn’t recognize, it had been so long. It felt like middle school, the feeling of a girl liking a boy so much she doesn’t know how to handle it.
Perhaps this isn’t a nightmare but a dream, she told herself. Not another tragedy but a fairytale. A story that for once doesn’t end in death but in life. New life. A new life for her. A new life for him. A new life . . . within her?
And again that choking feeling came back, and Kathryn almost burst into tears when she realized what she was thinking. A child? She’d never even considered the possibility. How could a woman like her, a cold-blooded killer, ever deserve to have a child? She’d shut down that part of her for so long she’d forgotten it existed. But it did. And it was waking up. Waking up because of him.
“Hyder,” she said softly, her voice trembling as she looked at him. She wasn’t sure what to say, wasn’t sure if she should say anything. They’d been together a few hours, and already they knew so much about each other. So many secrets. “Hyder, listen. I—”
“Hahum qad ja’uu!,” the Sheikh shouted suddenly, leaning forward and grabbing his pilot’s arm. “Alan hu alwaqt.”
The pilot glanced to the left, and then Kathryn saw them: Two fighter planes, mere dots in the distance but coming in fast. Coming in hot.
“What the hell?” she muttered, squinting as they got closer. “Are those . . . F-16s?”
The Sheikh nodded. “American planes. There is a US Airforce Base in Qatar, on the border of Saudi Arabia, not so far from here.”
Kathryn blinked as the distant whine of the F-16 engines turned into a roar that seemed to shake the heavy chopper. The planes screamed past the helicopter, one on each side in perfect symmetry, flying past and starting to turn in the distance.
“Alan hu alwaqt!” shouted the pilot, turning and looking at the Sheikh, his eyes wide. “Afealha alan.”
Kathryn frowned when she saw the emotion in their pilot’s eyes, and she blinked and glanced at the Sheikh. “What did he say?”
“He says these planes are not here to negotiate. They are not here to ask us to land or to turn around. They are here to shoot us down,” the Sheikh said to her. Then to the pilot he spoke in Arabic, which brought another loud response from the pilot, who was vigorously shaking his head and pointing.
Kathryn glanced to where the pilot pointed, and she saw two parachutes strapped to the metal wall of the chopper. She frowned and looked at the pilot, who was staring at her and nodding fiercely.
“Yes, yes!” he shouted. “You must go. Sheikh and you. Take. Now. Go. I stay.”
“Lays baed!” the Sheikh barked out, his face red and peaked. “It is a mistake. Get me on a radio channel with the American pilots.”
The pilot tapped his headphones and gestured to the Sheikh, blabbering on in Arabic as the F-16s made their turns in the distance and pointed their noses back at the defenseless chopper perched against a backdrop of blue sky.
“He says the American pilots are radio-silent. And they are not pulling up alongside either, which they would do if they wanted to escort us out of this airspace or force us to land.” The Sheikh glanced at the little black dots in the distance. They’d circled again. They weren’t going to fly back past them. “Strap on that parachute, Kathryn. Do it now.”
Kathryn didn’t hesitate. She reached for the packs, tossing one to the Sheikh and quickly securing hers as she fought to keep the panic at bay. An overt assassination attempt by men speaking Russian, and now two American fighter planes about to shoot them down? What in God’s name was happening? Was there anyone not trying to kill them? What next? Canadian ninjas?
She tried to smile, a trick she’d learned to clam herself down when the anxiety of a situation threatened to break her. She’d never broken before, and she wasn’t going to now. She looked at the Sheikh and then at the pilot. There was no third parachute.
“Please,” he said in broken English, looking at her. “You understand. Three die or one dies. No other chance. You understand. I cannot land fast enough. They shoot us down before we land.”
Kathryn swallowed hard and nodded. Was it that obvious she was capable of such a cold calculation? She looked into the pilot’s eyes, tears clouding her vision as she nodded. Then she glanced at the Sheikh and took a breath.
The Sheikh said nothing. Then he leaned forward and kissed the pilot once on each cheek, kicked open the door, and pulled Kathryn out, the two of them tumbling into nothingness just as the scream of an incoming missile pierced the air above them.
13
They landed in golden sand, Kathryn and the Sheikh dropp
ing not far from each other. Immediately Kathryn snapped off the chute-straps and frantically pulled the billowing fabric in towards her, looking up into the skies as she did it. Had the F-16s seen them jump? Were they circling in for the kill? Would they be gunned down in the desert sand? Blown to bits beneath the pale blue skies of Arabia?
In the distance she saw the Sheikh gathering his chute and scanning the skies as well, and she almost smiled when she saw how alert and focused he was. He thought the same way she did. Always ready. Always watching.
For a moment a sensation of safety washed over her, a feeling of warmth and security. She’d always worked alone, but now she felt like she was a part of a team. Like she had a partner. Someone she could . . . trust?
She pushed away the thought even as it completed itself. She couldn’t trust anyone right now, least of all a man she barely knew. Focus, she told herself. Think.
“Over here!” came his shout from the distance, and she looked to see the Sheikh waving both arms. He stood on top of a sand dune, his tall frame making him look like a statue mounted on a hill.
“Um, yeah, I see you,” Kathryn said, almost laughing when she realized the skies were clear and the danger seemed to have passed. “There’s nothing else around. Yes, I see you. You can stop waving both arms like a weirdo.”
She looked down at herself. They’d managed to grab their clothes before running to the chopper, which meant she was in red harem pants and a black tank top. She squinted up towards the sun and then down at her creamy white skin. She was gonna burn in like ten minutes if she didn’t figure something out. One glance at the white synthetic fabric of the parachute and she knew what needed to happen.
By the time the Sheikh walked over to her, Kathryn had already ripped the chute along one of the seams and begun to fashion herself a robe that would cover her from head to toe. Then she looked at her toes. Shit, she was barefoot. She’d have to bag her feet.
“Want me to make you some shoes as well while I’m at it?” she asked casually when the Sheikh walked up in his thousand-dollar fitted black trousers, Egyptian cotton half-sleeve shirt, and no shoes. “White nylon bag-shaped slip-ons are in vogue this time of year, I believe.”
“Yes, please,” said the Sheikh, raising his eyebrows and then breaking into a smile as he glanced at her toes and then shook his head. “Though we will not be walking far.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and waved it at her. “I shall call a taxi.”
He started to dial, but Kathryn snatched the phone from his hand and turned it off. “They found you in a brothel in Habeetha, and then in the goddamn skies. Turning on your phone and GPS might be a tad reckless, don’t you think?”
The Sheikh calmly took his phone back from Kathryn, raising an eyebrow and turning it back on. “Firstly, they found us, not just me. Remember, we still don’t know who the target was in those two attacks.”
“We don’t even know who the attackers were, now that you mention it,” Kathryn snapped. She was hot and uncomfortable. Already she could feel her arms tingle from sunburn. This goddamn robe better work, or else she’d turn into a lobster by sundown. “But it’s a good bet that turning on your phone pretty much gave away our location.”
The Sheikh put the phone to his ear, his expression calm, like he really was calling a taxi. Of course, there was nothing but rolling sand dunes in every direction, and Kathryn might have appreciated the beauty if not for the rising panic that came from the realization that every direction looked the same, and it was no wonder people got turned around and lost in the desert.
“So then you do have some idea who tried to kill us,” Hyder said as he waited for whoever was on the other end to pick up.
“I just told you I didn’t,” snapped Kathryn. “Russians dressed like Islamic militia. American F-16s shooting down a helicopter without warning over international airspace. It doesn’t add up. Just doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, you appear to believe that our enemies, whoever they are, can track my cell phone. That is not technology available to everyone.”
“Actually, it is. And yet you insist on checking your goddamn voicemail, pretty much sending out a beacon telling everyone that we’re alive and defenseless in the middle of the goddamn desert!” Kathryn shouted. She shook her head and took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to lose it, but it was so hot. Soooo hot!
She stayed quiet and kept working at putting together their makeshift robes and shoes. She didn’t have much to work with—just the fabric and synthetic rope—but it was enough. It was only when she tied her new bag-shoes around her ankles and rose to her feet that she noticed the Sheikh speaking on the phone softly but authoritatively in Arabic.
“Two hours,” he said, turning off the phone and smiling. He looked her up and down. “Very nice. Where are my shoes?”
“You can stay barefoot, I decided. Burn your royal piggies for all I care,” Kathryn said, folding her arms over her parachute-fabric tunic and adjusting her head-covering so she could see.
“Just as well. Our taxi will be here in two hours,” the Sheikh grunted, looking her up and down again. “And you look ridiculous, by the way.”
Kathryn didn’t answer. She stood there in her bag and took deep breaths of the hot, dry air. Two hours for a taxi? What, another helicopter? How long would that stay in the air?
The Sheikh was scanning the skies once again when she glanced over at him. His jaw was tight, his expression grave. Was he looking for signs of more fighter planes? No, they’d hear the jets before they saw them, so it wasn’t that. Then she saw the emotion in the man’s eyes, and she blinked and took a breath.
“I’m sorry about your pilot,” she said softly, stepping forward and touching his arm. She could feel the tension in his body, the emotion surging through his frame. “If we get the chance, I’d like to meet his family and tell them how brave he was, how he saved our lives by diverting the attention of those F-16s. I’d like to tell them myself. Was he married? Did he have children?”
The Sheikh turned to her, and he looked almost puzzled, like he wasn’t sure if she was being genuine or not. Then he blinked and shook his head. “I appreciate the sentiment. But the man had no family. The men in my closest service do not take wives. Many of them are orphans too.”
Kathryn cocked her head and squinted up at the Sheikh. He smiled and shrugged. “I find that the fewer people a man has to care about, the more trustworthy he becomes. It is much harder to blackmail or threaten a man who has no leverage points, no weaknesses, no one that can be taken hostage.”
Kathryn snorted and shook her head. She understood exactly what he was saying, and that saddened her. She also knew that after this brief moment of mourning and gratitude, the Sheikh would put this out of his mind. This was the world she lived in as well: One of the reasons the CIA had picked her was precisely because she didn’t have anyone in her life she gave a damn about. No one that could be used as leverage. No choke points. No weaknesses.
No love.
“Who did you call?” she said, trying to change the topic as she felt emotion swell in her breast. She wasn’t sure if she was upset about the brave pilot who’d sacrificed himself for his king, or if she was shaken by the commonalities between the Sheikh and herself. Clearly they had things in common, things from the past. There were so many questions she needed to ask—so many that it seemed almost hopeless to even begin. What was his connection to Benson and Mel? Why was his half-sister living under an assumed name as the wife of a Russian politician? Why did he seem completely nonchalant about using his phone when he was paranoid enough to only employ men who didn’t have any loyalties other than to their king and Sheikh?
“All my phones have a scrambler algorithm built into their signal,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “I have a lot of different phones, and I cycle through them, destroying them after a few uses. Even if some agency is tracking this phone, the scramble
r algorithm would make it look like the signal was coming from some random part of the world, anywhere from Iceland to South Africa. Impossible to track.”
“Wow. Now that is some high-level paranoia. You really know how to turn a girl on, don’t ya?” Kathryn said. She couldn’t help but smile.
“Ah, now there is that Alabama accent!” the Sheikh said, grinning wide. “I love the speech of the American south. Birmingham, is it? The land of iron mines and the Vulcan.”
“You know about the Vulcan of Alabama?” Kathryn said, laughing as she thought of the landmark statue of the god Vulcan, perched on a hill, watching over the city of Birmingham, Alabama.
“I am the Vulcan of Alabama!” proclaimed the Sheikh, taking a knee and striking a heroic pose in the sand, raising one arm in a classic Greek-god stance and jutting his jaw out as Kathryn laughed and clapped her hands.
“Very nice. And if you don’t cover up, you’re going to be as red as the Vulcan too,” Kathryn said, holding up the parachute-robe she’d made for him.
“This is my damned desert. I cannot burn,” the Sheikh said obstinately, ripping off his shirt and stretching his muscular arms and chest, turning toward the sun and looking right at it with eyes closed.
Kathryn gasped silently when she saw the beautiful bronze of his smooth skin, the way the thick slabs of muscle on his chest connected with the cut ridges of his abdomen, veins crisscrossing his lean lower stomach, disappearing into his low-hanging silk trousers. For a moment he did look like a god of old, standing there in that heroic pose, challenging the sun itself.
“Suit yourself,” she said finally, dropping the long rectangle of white fabric she’d torn from the chute. “But last time I checked, brown skin burns just as well as white skin.”
The Sheikh sighed and nodded, frowning as he wrapped the synthetic white fabric around his body, covering his head and tying the ends neatly so they stayed put. “At least I know how to wear it. Your look like you are going to an American Halloween party dressed like the ghost of Christmas future.”
Assassin for the Sheikh_A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel Page 7
