Romero gave a hard nod. “We’ll sit here and wait until prince number two returns from his potty break.”
“Exactly. Then you close in, and we’ll say a few words and leave.” Bones glared at Sparks. “Keep your fucking head on. Got it?”
Sparks didn’t have to be told twice. He pressed his lips together and nodded.
IT HAD ONLY taken Jaipriya about five minutes of listening to the cadence of Hasim and Jabar’s conversation to be able to understand roughly eighty percent of what they were saying. Some of their slang and euphemisms were difficult to decipher. Especially when they started talking shit to each other about things they claimed to have done. In short, they were horrendous pigs no matter what language they were conversing in.
“I’m going to take a piss,” Jabar told his brother.
Jai froze. He had to pass right by her to go to the bathroom. This was exactly what Kelly the hostess had warned her about! She couldn’t panic, but her heart was thudding so hard against her ribs that she was afraid it would pound its way out of her chest. She scooted as low as she could, but it wouldn’t be enough.
She could hear Jabar getting up. The booth squeaked, and the cushion made a noise that his brother commented on. They made a fart joke in Arabic, and then Jabar stood abruptly. Instinct took over, and Jai shot downwards to the floor.
It was disgusting underneath the table, but she was alive, and that was pretty much what mattered. There were peanut hulls, old napkins, discarded straw, and even some change. She wasn’t desperate enough to pick that up and put it in her pocket, so she sat still and waited until she saw Jabar’s legs go by in front of her table.
Her heart began to slow down. She figured she would wait a bit until Jabar came back. There was no reason to poke her head up there until she was sure that Hasim was occupied once again with bragging to his brother about all of the Americans they had fleeced into investing their business profits into nothing more than a shell company that was really just a front for the human trafficking.
Jai was only just trying to catalog and comprehend all that she had heard when there was a heavy tread of boots in front of Hasim’s table coming from the wrong direction. What was going on?
“Hello, Hasim.” The voice was low and very familiar. “Long time no see.”
“Why, Sergeant Marlon Jackson.” Hasim’s voice dripped condescension and sarcasm in equal measure. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Bones!
“Oh, you know,” Bones said in a lazy voice. “I’ve been seeing an awful lot of interesting information come across the wire about you. So the whole group of us has been getting together and just exchanging stories, you know?”
“Is that right.” There was a cold edge to Hasim’s voice.
Jaipriya squirmed. She had to force herself to remain still. Every instinct in her body was demanding that she get out of there right now. She was in danger! Bones was playing with fire, and they were all going to get burned.
Wait. If Bones was here, where was Sparks? Jai fought the urge to pop out from beneath the table like a jack in the box. That wouldn’t do either of them any good. She had to stay calm. Surely Bones wouldn’t be here if they didn’t have a plan of some kind.
“So I hear you’re dealing in stolen women,” Bones said in a purely conversational tone of voice. “You know, Trapp was pretty pissed off when you took his sister. That was bold, even for you.”
“Oh, you know I like bold,” Hasim blustered. Was that caution beneath his bravado? How odd. “You and your SEAL team have been poking your noses in places where they are likely to get bitten off, you know.”
“Perhaps,” Bones agreed. “But since we’ve already taken down that Hansen Pharmaceutical operation in Baltimore, the authorities are really having a tough time looking the other way.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hasim sounded blasé, but it was very forced.
“So you didn’t realize that those women you took who didn’t make the cut were disposed of in the incinerator at the packaging warehouse in Baltimore?” Bones sounded so casual that it gave Jai the chills. Was he serious? Then he went on, and she had to press both hands to her mouth to keep from screaming. “Because piecing together cremated skeletons is quite the forensic free for all up there in Baltimore.”
The booth squeaked and swished as Hasim shifted in his seat. He was obviously uncomfortable with this topic. “Your culture is obsessed with death and crime.”
“And yours just doesn’t give a shit as long as it isn’t someone important to you.” Bones paused a moment before going on. “I wonder what would happen if that younger brother of yours went missing. He’s pretty. I bet he would fetch a good price on the open market.”
Jai had been so intent on Bones’s flagrant challenge to Hasim that she had totally missed Jabar’s approach to the table. The angry prince stood just in front of Jai’s hiding place, his legs braced apart and his body language screaming aggression.
“What is the meaning of this?” Jabar demanded. “Why is this bastard bothering us?”
Hasim spoke to his brother in rapid Arabic. “They are threatening Asif. It’s time to retrieve the Bhatia bride and make our exits.”
“The plane cannot fly for two more days,” Jabar argued. “It will take that long to load the cargo.”
“Why hello, boys.” It was Romero’s voice, but Jai could see Sparks’s legs standing so close she could have reached out to touch him. “Imagine finding you here. What a coincidence.”
“We are leaving.” Hasim got out of the booth and shoved his way past the SEALs, with Jabar hot on his heels.
Jai forced herself to remain beneath the table until she saw the two princes walk through the bar and out the front entrance. Then she waited another ten seconds just to be sure.
“Jaipriya, sweetheart,” Sparks said coaxingly. “You can come out now.”
She scrambled out from beneath the table and threw herself in his arms. “We have to track them. We have to find out what they meant by ‘cargo’.”
“Whoa, that was what they said?” Bones shook his head. “You better tell us everything. Apparently my Arabic isn’t quite what it used to be.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jai felt almost a sense of panic as she and the SEALs exited the bar onto the street. Cargo. Jabar had said cargo. That had to mean more women. Maybe. But could they afford to take that sort of chance? What if they were planning to take their “merchandise” overseas until all of the investigating cooled off in the States? It wouldn’t be the first time that something of that nature had happened. It was so simple when there was diplomatic immunity and unlimited funds.
Bones was apparently still trying to figure out why he hadn’t interpreted Hasim and Jabar’s conversation the same way that Jaipriya had. “You’re sure that’s what they said?”
“Positive.”
“Cargo,” Bones confirmed yet again. “Not business or something else of that nature?”
“Nope. Cargo.” Could she possibly be clearer? The man was really starting to irritate her.
“What could that mean?” Romero muttered.
They were nearly all the way back to Yates’s apartment door before Sparks said anything at all. “That’s not all they said,” he told her quietly. “Tell them the rest.”
Jai hadn’t expected Sparks’s Arabic to be better than his friend’s. She looked down, feeling almost embarrassed. “They also said that it was time to fetch the Bhatia bride and go home. They’re concerned because you threatened Asif.”
“Why didn’t we consider that as a push point earlier?” Romero mused.
Bones snorted. “Their brother? Because we don’t make war on innocent children.”
Romero punched in a code and opened the door to Yates’s apartment. Inside, there were four faces all looking expectantly in their direction. Jai wished she had someplace private to go. She needed some time to think. If Hasim and Jabar were going to “retrieve” her, they were going to
find out that she was no longer at her father’s house. That could mean Pita and Maa might be in danger. She couldn’t let the Armeen al Saud men hurt her family. Not even her father, who was up to his eyeballs in this situation. Pita was a good man. She knew it. He had just made some bad choices.
“What are you thinking?” Sparks murmured. He gently put his arms around her and drew her close to his body.
The heat of him was wonderful. She snuggled closer. She was going to miss this man once everything was all over. It was so tempting to think about more. Not just dating or sleeping together, but actually trying to build a life together. She had always known she would marry. That knowledge was part of every good girl’s upbringing. But she had never entertained the notion of being married to a guy like Sparks, who was actually fun to talk to and to hang out with, and who respected her opinions and really listened.
SPARKS COULD NOT have said how he knew, but he could feel Jaipriya withdrawing from him. It was as if a distance had begun to grow between them. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly when it had started. But he was beginning to wonder if she was putting up defensive walls because of how his team had treated her. He couldn’t blame her for that. They’d been harsh at best and downright aggressive at worst.
For now though, he needed to figure out what the next steps were so that he could take Jaipriya back to his place. They both needed rest and quiet, and they weren’t going to get it here.
“So.” Sparks clapped his hands together. “What next?”
Tasha and Cassidy were the first ones to speak. Tasha glanced at her cohort and then smiled. “Well, if what Bones told Yates is true and they’re waiting for cargo to be loaded, then we need to go scout that plane.”
“They’d probably use a smaller air freight runway somewhere instead of risking a major airport.” Cassidy moved toward a map hung on the wall. She twirled a lock of hair around her finger and gazed silently at the maze of streets in and around the DC area. “What about here?” She pointed to a smaller airstrip on the outskirts of the suburban sprawl. “What’s here?”
“That’s a private airstrip.”
“We need to track them,” Sparks told them firmly. “It’s simple. Yates. You can track their cell phones, right?”
“I’ve got them, yeah.” Yates spun around to face his computer and banged out a few things on the keyboard. “They’re cellphones, so I can only triangulate towers to find a pretty narrow area.”
“So then look at the activity and see if there’s an area where they seem to return to.” Sparks did not add the duh that he was feeling. He was tired, and it was making him crabby. He was also worried. There was something he was missing, and he hated feeling like the one thing he wasn’t seeing was going to bite him in the ass.
Yates’s features arranged themselves into an expression of deep thought. Sometimes Sparks wondered if the guy wasn’t going to make his brain explode trying to see all the angles at once. Then Yates finally dove back into his computer screen. Perhaps five minutes later he started laughing.
“What?” Cassidy and Tasha demanded in unison.
Yates sat back and flexed his fingers to make his knuckles pop. “Good call on that air strip. The two of them have pretty much been in the vicinity of that place off and on for the last forty-eight hours.”
“They have to go back to Baltimore though,” Sparks mused. “They have to talk to Bhatia at least one more time before they go back to the UAE.”
“Why?” This was from Marina. Her expression was troubled.
Sparks looked grim. “Because they have every intention of taking Jaipriya with them.”
JAIPRIYA HAD NO idea what she had been expecting of Sparks’s personal quarters. The apartment that she had been thinking of as “his place” had been comfortably shabby. Now, as she walked into a modern bachelor pad with exposed brick walls, black leather furniture, and a huge flat screen television hanging on the wall, it drove home the fact that she didn’t really know him at all.
“Come in and make yourself at home,” he urged as he closed the door behind them. “This place is safe. The security here is pretty good, and I have a few fail-safes in place myself in case of unwanted visitors.”
Jai wasn’t really sure she expected anyone to become an “unwanted visitor”. Somehow that idea hadn’t even crossed her mind. When she was with Sparks she was safe. Yet now that she walked slowly through his personal space she wondered if that was necessarily true.
“What do you think?”
She turned to find him staring at her. It was odd, but she got the feeling that her opinion of his space was very important to him. Why? What did it matter? It did appeal, in an odd sort of way. It was nothing like any home she had lived in, or any home that anyone she personally knew lived in. Instead it was modern and airy, with vaulted ceilings and a very loft-like vibe.
“I didn’t realize you were the trendy type,” she murmured. “It’s nice.”
“You thought what?” he probed. “That I would have a shack or an underground basement like Yates?”
“No.” Jai frowned and peered at the spotless kitchen, the industrial-grade range, and the huge oven. “Although I never figured you for the domestic sort.”
“I like to eat.” He shrugged almost defensively. “Since it’s just me, if I want to eat I have to make it myself.”
“You could order out.” She was already walking toward the huge windows that overlooked the Potomac. There was a workbench over on this side of the apartment. Tiny bits of wire, plastic-looking material, and other odds and ends were scattered over the surface. “Are you doing crafts over here?” she asked, attempting to lighten the mood.
“Bombs, actually.” He approached slowly, reaching out and picking up a piece of wire. “See? Cut the red wire.” He picked up a pair of pliers and snipped the tiny, red-coated wire.
Jai took a hasty step back. “There are explosives on this table?” She looked harder, trying to figure out what could be dangerous about something that looked so innocuous.
“Nothing here is going to explode,” he assured her. “Right now it’s all in pieces. I don’t keep viable or even complete bombs here in my home. This is more for reconstructing or deconstructing. You know, getting ideas and figuring out how to defuse things.”
“So you’re the explosives guy for your SEAL team?” She swallowed back a sudden case of nervousness.
“We can all blow things up or defuse things we don’t want to blow up. But I guess you could say that I do have a special affinity for explosives.”
SPARKS COULD SENSE how uneasy Jaipriya was, but he couldn’t decide what the source of her discomfort was. He wanted her to be comfortable here in his space. He wanted her to feel welcome. But it seemed like everything he did to make that happen backfired. Finally he went into the kitchen and pulled out pots and pans.
Filling a pot with water, he set it on the stove to boil. Then he selected ingredients from his refrigerator and started slicing vegetables for pasta and vegetables with chicken. It was plain, sensible, and easy. Plus it had the added bonus of giving him something to do.
A few minutes later he caught a glimpse of Jaipriya from the corner of his eye. She was drifting toward the counter as though she wanted to watch. Finally she climbed up onto a barstool and put her elbows on the counter. She watched him with avid interest in her dark eyes.
“You make all of that look so effortless,” she finally commented.
He glanced up, smiled, and went right back to work without speaking.
She bit her full lower lip. It was distracting, but he did his best to keep his body’s instant reaction on hold. Then she chuckled. “I feel like I should be helping you. Or maybe that we should switch positions.”
Now he had to speak, but only to keep her talking. “Why is that?”
“I have never seen my father cook. I’m not even sure that he can.” She cocked her head as though she were really giving it some thought. She had started to relax. It was odd that the topi
c was her parents. “I wasn’t raised to let a man cook for me. My mother insisted that I learn full Indian dinner by the time I was twelve. She was determined that her daughter would not be an embarrassment to the family on the marriage mart.”
“Sounds like a horse fair or something.” Sparks hated to think of this gentle woman on display like an animal for someone to stare at and judge. “I cannot imagine you would ever be an embarrassment to anyone. You’re smart, well-spoken, educated, and very clever when you speak. Plus, you’re beautiful.”
“Well, thank you.” She put her palms against her cheeks. “You’re embarrassing me. Please stop with the compliments. They’re unnecessary.”
“You’re also really good in bed,” Sparks added with a wink. “But I don’t think I’ll be advertising that, because I don’t care to have anyone but me know that about you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sparks’s blunt words were the oddest sort of compliment that Jai had ever received. She didn’t know how to respond, so in the end she said nothing. Good in bed? It was difficult to say whether or not that was even something she wanted to be true. She wasn’t so naive that she didn’t know that people frequently graded each other on their sexual performance. Yet how was it possible to be “good” or “bad” when it was all subjective? If she was good with one man, did it follow that she would be good with another one?
“What are you thinking?” Sparks’s voice was whisper-soft.
She watched him dump a pot full of cooked pasta into a colander to drain the water out. He looked so bizarrely at home in the kitchen. It was surreal to be sitting here, discussing sex with a man cooking her dinner.
“I’m thinking that life sometimes does not turn out at all like one might expect.” She decided to be utterly transparent. “I’m thinking that I don’t even know what it means to be “good in bed”. I’m thinking that I’ve never known a man to cook. And I’m also wondering what it is you want from me.”
“I don’t think I want anything from you.”
“That’s not true.” She pressed her palms to her flaming cheeks. She was so off balance and uncomfortable right now! “Everyone wants something. You’re a man who is cooking me dinner. You’ve brought me to your personal apartment. You obviously have some kind of agenda that I’m not aware of.”
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