Avery had dropped her attitude since their little bonding episode at the house, and while it wasn’t as pleasant as shopping with her best girlfriend, Jess almost enjoyed learning the simple method of wearing the white hijab Avery selected to cover her hair, and the long-sleeved black abaya over whatever she wanted to wear beneath it. It was lighter-weight than she’d expected, and not nearly as full as she feared, going a long way toward imparting that elegant look she was supposed to achieve.
She stood on tiptoe to see as much as she could in the plane’s tiny bathroom mirror. “I thought it was going to be more loose and shapeless,” she said.
Avery tilted her head from her position at the open lavatory door, studying Jess from the back. “Most of them are. But you are high class and confident, and your husband is proud of his beautiful wife. This cut is high fashion. Speaking of which, where are your rings?”
She pulled them out and slipped the diamond-encrusted bands onto her finger. Between the clothing and the rings she felt disguised, as if she’d become an entirely different person.
She looked at Avery’s military-style khakis and shirt. Even with her fake tan and newly darkened hair, she didn’t look Middle Eastern. “What about you?”
“I’ll be in an abaya and hijab at first, too, covering my short hair and making me just your anonymous companion. First thing is to scout the city and see if our assumptions about an island in the Nile might be true. Then Kyle, Mitch, and I will scout out the street scene and try to locate Wally’s usual contacts to see if we can figure out where he went and who he met with. You and Tyler will work on figuring out what his story represents.”
The familiar panic hit her again. “But I don’t know any more than you do.”
Avery squeezed her hand. “You think you don’t. But we’re hoping when you get there, something you see or hear will click in your head. Something we probably wouldn’t understand, or else Wally would have just told us instead of involving you. Keep that in mind, Jess, it’s something you know about that we don’t.”
It wasn’t reassuring. They’d had to instruct her about everything. She knew nothing.
Brian’s voice came over the intercom, announcing that they were making their approach to Cairo. Jess returned to her seat, passing Donovan who had his head next to Kyle’s and Mitch’s as they bent over a map. He glanced up, then abandoned any pretense of interest in the map. The others followed his gaze.
She turned a circle, hands at her side, giving them all a good view. “So what do you think?”
“Perfect,” Kyle pronounced.
“Absolutely,” Mitch agreed, as the two of them turned back to the map.
Donovan still watched wordlessly, making her a bit nervous. “How do I look?”
“Exactly as Ahmed Hassan’s wife should look to the rest of the world,” he told her, his expression and voice serious. “Untouchable.”
It should have been reassuring. She sat down and fastened her seat belt, her budding sense of adventure crushed beneath an overwhelming feeling of disappointment.
Untouchable. It wasn’t how she wanted Tyler Donovan to see her.
Chapter Nine
Donovan was silently thankful for the black abaya. It didn’t make Jess any less feminine or desirable—his hands had already noted the curves of her body and his mouth remembered the taste of her kiss, and he wanted more of both—but he was familiar enough with the Islamic world that the all-encompassing garment worked as it should, marking her as a woman he was not permitted to be familiar with. No matter how much he wanted to reignite that flame he’d accidentally kindled at the house in Chicago, he had to keep his hands to himself. She was off-limits, another man’s wife as long as they were in public. He ground his teeth in annoyance at their cover story.
The bribe he passed to a particular customs official was probably unnecessary as far as their papers went. Jess’s passport was a perfect fake, and the rest of the team was legitimate. But the slip of paper bearing the number of a private bank account ensured that none of the customs officials got too thorough when checking the plane’s cargo hold, where they might find the hidden compartment packed with guns and ammunition. It was the only reason they stopped in Cairo first instead of going directly to Luxor, where Omega did not have a customs official on their payroll.
Jess looked a bit nervous, but played her part well and without calling attention to herself. That was all they needed. That, and whatever memory Wally had counted on Jess recalling that would reveal the meaning of his allegorical story.
The flight to Luxor was little more than a hop to the south, upriver along the Nile. Jess kept the abaya on, which somehow increased his frustration.
He wanted to touch her. It must be the abaya, the symbol that said she was untouchable, that made him yearn for even the smallest contact. To run his hands beneath her voluminous sleeves, caressing the silky skin of her arm. Was it bare up to her shoulder? He caught glimpses of her wrist and could only guess at what she wore. Falling a pace behind her in the Luxor airport as they walked to their hired van, he fastened his gaze on the sway of her hips and the slightest hint of her body’s shape beneath the ankle-length robe. The faint outline of her thigh against the fabric was enough to remind him of how her long legs looked when molded by tight jeans. Which reminded him that he’d come damn close to taking them off. Taking everything off.
Damn, he was becoming too obsessed. And what was she wearing under that thing, anyway?
He sat next to her in the van but she didn’t look at him. She sat forward, her face nearly pressed to the tinted glass as they drove through Luxor, staring at the mix of cars, motor scooters, horse and donkey carts, and foot traffic. Blaring horns and yells from street vendors were only partially muted, the business of daily life in Luxor a noisy affair even in their insulated bubble. He remembered his first visits to bustling Middle Eastern cities, and the sensory assault of sounds, sights, and smells, all of them so foreign. He’d been amazed and curious, and wondered if Wally’s daughter would have the same reaction.
“What do you think of Luxor?” he asked.
She turned enormous eyes on him, apparently struggling for words. “It’s so, so, different.”
She looked pale even in contrast to the white hijab, and his stomach sank. She was terrified.
Next to him, Kyle raised his eyebrows, no doubt with the same worry that he felt: how in the world would their scared little rabbit ever figure out the clue hidden in Wally’s story?
She was trying to be brave. He knew it because she didn’t complain or question, even though her hands bunched and twisted the fine fabric of her abaya until the area over her lap was wrinkled. As the streets narrowed and the crumbling buildings of Luxor crowded in, her shoulders tensed and her arms were clamped rigidly against her sides. When they pulled up in front of a bright blue door, she eyed it, then stiffened and swallowed hard, as if it might be a portal to the underworld. Avery helped her out, the only one allowed physical contact with her while maintaining their cover.
He stood close by, alert and protective, his bodyguard role the only real part of their cover story. If they did have a mole on their team, and if Jess came close to figuring out Wally’s information, her life was in peril. Until then, he figured they were safe. No informant would give himself—or herself—away unless he absolutely had to.
Jess blinked at the blue door, then at the doorway a few yards up the street where three men sat on the low stoop, sharing a hookah pipe and watching them, openly curious. She stepped back abruptly as a brown mutt ran past, followed by a laughing boy of about eight. The dog and boy both disappeared into the stall of a rug vendor a few doors down, followed by a woman’s loud voice scolding them in Arabic. Jess looked frozen in place, and he wondered how long it would take her to thaw.
“The key,” their driver said, handing it to him.
Donovan took it, offering money in return, then adding a tip. Not enough to make them stand out, just enough to make them seem prospero
us and aware of the cultural norms—exactly what their cover story demanded.
As the cab left, a man’s voice suddenly sang out in a low musical note overhead, the sound gradually swelling until it filled the air with the slightly hoarse, mechanical quality of a recording. Jess raised her head as if searching for the source. The call trilled up and down in the Muslim noon adhan, weaving through the constant background of honking, braying, and the revving of motorbikes. “The Islamic call to prayer,” he explained. “Rather than have a singer in every mosque, they broadcast it over the city.”
“Every day?”
“Five times a day. You’ll tune it out after a while.”
She looked doubtful.
Kyle and Mitch hefted their bags and Donovan unlocked the door. From behind an interior door on the left, cooking smells wafted into the warm afternoon air, scented with a strange spice Donovan couldn’t name but associated with lamb. Ahead, a stairway yawned cool and dark. “Welcome home,” he told Jess. “All the way up, third floor.”
She bit her lower lip and walked in.
…
Jess took a deep breath and felt her tension ease, probably because the big living room looked more familiar than everything outside. Two couches and several chairs formed a seating group with tables and lamps, with a flat-screen TV in one corner. The sole window wasn’t large, but the low level of sunlight made the room seem cooler. Overhead, the large paddles of a ceiling fan turned lazily, circulating air. Jess wasted no time in yanking the hijab from her head and stripping off the encompassing abaya. Freedom. Tossing them onto a chair, she spun, holding her arms out like a five-year-old on a playground. It was liberating, almost like nudity, to feel air against the skin of her arms and on her legs below her knee-length skirt. Suddenly aware of an audience, she paused. In that first moment she caught Donovan’s eye, startled by a flash of something that looked like raw hunger. The next second Mitch gave a whoop, threw down the bags he carried, and grabbed her up in an exuberant dance, swinging her in two full circles before letting her feet touch the floor.
“I never miss a chance to dance with a pretty lady,” he told her.
She laughed, a brief moment of relief that stopped abruptly when her gaze strayed to Donovan again. The stare he aimed at Mitch looked cold and menacing, but it bounced off the younger man without dimming his enthusiasm.
“You snooze, you lose, buddy,” Mitch told him as he shouldered a duffel bag.
Donovan’s jaw worked but he ignored the verbal jab and raised his voice to get everyone’s attention. “There are two bedrooms. Girls and boys. Get settled and be ready to go in ten minutes.”
She almost protested that they’d just got there, then closed her mouth. They’d come on a vital mission, with no time allowed for jet lag and travel fatigue. If the others could suck it up and get to work, so could she. Instead, she said, “I need more than ten minutes to unpack three bags.”
“Jess, ‘get settled’ means claim your bed and use the bathroom if you have to. Avery just beat you to the bedroom, so you might want to get moving. There’s only one bathroom.”
His cool statement almost made her question the heat she’d noticed in his gaze a moment before. Almost being the operative word. Because it might have been quick, but she knew what she’d seen. It was the same blaze of desire that had touched his eyes when he’d kissed her back in Chicago and come close to doing so much more.
It was a distraction from her anxiety and she managed a game smile as she grabbed a suitcase. “See you in ten.”
…
The bedrooms and bathroom were tiny and utilitarian, but she supposed that didn’t matter. She doubted she’d be spending much time using them.
She gathered her hijab and abaya when she returned to the living room, afraid she’d need them soon. Avery had never removed hers. Kyle and Mitch wore the same casual slacks and shirts they’d traveled in, but Donovan had donned a long white robe, thin enough to reveal that he wore a white cotton shirt and pants beneath it, the same loose clothing she’d seen men wearing on the streets of Luxor.
“You look like a native in that thobe,” Avery said, grinning. “Got a kufi to go with it?”
In answer, Donovan slapped on a close-fitting white hat with a flat top. With his tanned complexion he looked very much like a native. He sat on the arm of a chair, as if there was no point in getting comfortable for two minutes.
“We start with Hakim,” he said. For her benefit he added, “That was Wally’s main contact, and the only person we can be sure he saw. You and I will go see him and, hopefully, get some clues as to where else Wally went and who he talked to.” To the others he said, “Wally was clear that we’re looking for a place in the middle of a river. Kyle and Avery, you’ll check out that large island and any smaller ones on the Nile. Mitch, contact the project director where the two missing students were working and find out everything you can about where they were working and where they were last seen. That should give us several leads. Everyone has their satellite phones?” He waited for nods from each of them. “Standard procedure on staying in touch, and we meet back here tonight. Any questions?”
A few hundred if she thought about it, but she pressed her lips together and said nothing. Neither did anyone else, all three of them obviously confident about their roles. She wished she was, too.
She followed Donovan outside. It was impossible to stick to the narrow bit of pavement between the buildings and the street, as every few yards something forced her onto the street—an overflowing merchant’s stall, a group of men talking, a donkey tied to a doorway, munching from a basket of green leaves. At least the streets were clean and free of litter, an amazing fact seeing that so much of life seemed to be conducted there.
And the sounds. She would swear that everyone in Luxor spoke in a raised voice, whether it was the woman above her yelling to a group of children in the street, or one man calling a greeting to another. She flinched once, convinced the raised arm and loud string of Arabic from a turbaned man they passed was profane and threatening. But he was answered by a laugh from a man across the street, who yelled back an animated, high-decibel answer, obviously a friendly exchange. It felt like a party where everyone had had a little too much to drink and voices and gestures had become too enthusiastic. Except these people were probably all Muslims and never drank alcohol; they were simply louder and more outgoing than the average American.
She wanted to cling to Donovan’s side, but had to settle for walking calmly next to him. Fortunately, his role as her escort and protector kept him as close as decently possible.
Many eyes followed them, curious about the strangers, and several people exchanged greetings with Donovan, who seemed to know a few standard phrases in Arabic, but no one addressed her.
Shuffling close enough to brush against him, she murmured, “Here’s a thought. Why would my wealthy husband have me stay among the common rabble when he could afford a nice, quiet suite of rooms in a prestigious hotel?”
Donovan chuckled. “Because the prestigious hotels are full of tourists and a party of Muslims would stand out like five Arab sheiks at a Donovan family reunion in Iowa. The idea is to blend in, to get the information we need to find the hostages. It’s a pretty good bet they aren’t being held at the Winter Palace hotel. But nice try.” He took a closer look at her. “Are you afraid of something?”
“Yes, actually. Strange situations make me nervous.”
“Why?”
“Comes from being raised by a paranoid agoraphobic,” she said simply. “Mom got worse after my dad left.”
As sparse on details as she’d been, her answer appeared to trouble him. Maybe it was something he wished he’d known earlier and planned around. He probably would be right to worry about that. She’d have to try harder to act normal—whatever that meant.
Reaching a main cross street, they approached a line of horse-drawn carriages along the side of the road that Donovan called caleches. Some haggling ensued between Donova
n and three drivers, who she assumed were all vying for their business. Eventually, he motioned her to the center buggy and offered a hand, bowing deferentially as he was forced to help her climb in. She settled onto the black leather seat and they pulled into traffic at a slow clip-clop.
“I’ve asked him to take us around this neighborhood before we reach Hakim’s. You should get a feel for the area and the culture as much as possible. It might help you figure out how Wally’s story relates to Luxor.”
“My father knew this particular area?”
“Intimately. He usually spent a few weeks every summer at Hakim’s home, as an honored guest.”
She’d known he traveled to research ancient cultures, but had never thought about the modern cultures he lived in while doing it. Her father had been fluent in Arabic and would have been comfortable talking with people on the street. In fact, he might have chatted with the very food vendors and shopkeepers they were passing now. These strange, loud men, so foreign to her, might have known her father better than she had.
But then, who hadn’t?
He’d had so much to offer her, and she’d lost her chance. For the first time, she felt a void inside and the sharp pain of despair. It no longer mattered whose fault it was—his, hers, or her mother’s—she simply wanted to know more about him. She sat back, listening and watching, drinking in the everyday life of Luxor as they wound slowly through the side streets. The horse was oblivious to passing motor scooters and cars and the calls of street vendors, but Jess wasn’t. She took in everything with wide eyes—the dull beige uniformity of the buildings broken by brightly painted shutters and doors, the occasional palm or fig tree, the abundance of produce laid out on mats, and the ever-present lines of laundry hanging from balconies and short overhead lines. Among it all, men and women strolled, shopped, and laughed, most dressed in loose-fitting native attire, but some in Western shirts and pants. Animals she’d previously only seen on farms—goats, cows, donkeys—appeared at home on the crowded streets. Luxor was a bright, noisy kaleidoscope of life, and she stared at every amazing facet.
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