Sheik Defense

by Ryshia Kennie

  She sighed and turned away from the mirror. Despite everything that had happened and maybe because of it, she was forever indebted to Faisal. It was partially because of his generosity that she had enough money for a bus ticket to Texas. But Faisal was always very liberal with money, generous with his friends and those he cared about. She remembered that from her college days. Then, he’d paid for everyone’s meal on more than one occasion. And, when he’d thrown a party, he’d paid for all the food and alcohol, even though he didn’t drink. He’d always been about what everyone else wanted, what made them happy and so he gladly shared his resources with others. To say he had deep pockets was an understatement. His first gesture when they spoke had been to make sure that she’d had enough money for snacks or books or whatever she might need, including a meal in the hospital cafeteria if it came to that. It was one hundred and fifty dollars. While he’d never know where her thoughts had gone when she’d seen the money, she remembered the guilt of taking it. She also remembered the desperation that didn’t allow her to quibble over his offer. Normally, she’d never have agreed but there was nothing normal about this situation. She was in deep trouble. She would never have turned to Faisal without her father’s suggestion, but she believed in her dad. When, in the heat of panic and trauma, her father had steered her toward Faisal, she’d never questioned it. Then it had been different, a desperate situation. But now, she could only think that Faisal was the boy she had gone to school with. There was no way she would involve him in the unidentified trouble she found herself in. It was bad enough that she might be in danger. She wouldn’t have him in danger too. He’d rescued her and that alone was enough.

  Despite what Faisal had given her, her funds were low. She could get to where she needed to go in Texas but she was going to be eating little once she was there. She’d needed more money. What she’d done to get it wasn’t her. She grimaced at the thought of what she’d done, stealing money from someone’s purse—she fully intended to pay the woman back with interest.

  Theft. Her stomach clenched at the thought. But there was no going back. A change in shifts with the hallway temporarily clear had given her the opportunity to escape. She’d planned all of it. Evening was a slack time. Even her security took a break. With patients settled, medical staff tended to take their breaks, as well, and the hallways emptied.

  From here on in she was in survival mode. She had to conserve what she had for the bus ticket out of here. She was ready to hit the road. She had a place in her memory but no purpose. She only knew that there were answers there and that she needed the memories to save her father or at the least salvage his reputation. A sob rose and stuck in the back of her throat. This was all so difficult. She wished she hadn’t had to run from Faisal. He’d been so good and yet his presence had also brought back so many other memories. And her presence only put him in danger. She couldn’t think of any of this right now. Instead, she focused on collecting her meager supplies. She bought water and energy bars. But as she went to the counter to pay, her vision blurred. She had to lean on the counter to get her equilibrium. But despite her efforts, the items still dropped from her hand onto the counter more forcibly than she might normally have intended.

  “You alright, honey?” the clerk asked in a drawl that reminded her of where she needed to be and that time was slipping away. The clerk’s hands were on her full hips and her face was heavily wrinkled and, despite what appeared to be too many years worshipping the sun, seemed to emanate motherly concern.

  “Fine,” she muttered. But she looked away as the world spun. She clung to the counter and took a deep breath. The world righted again.

  “You’re sure? I have daughters your age. I’d hate to think that if they were in trouble, someone wouldn’t help them.”

  She couldn’t take this much sympathy. She was either going to cry or pass out. She could do neither. This was all on her. There was no one to lean on, including this kind stranger. Instead, she took a deep breath and was finally able to meet the eyes that looked at her with so much concern that she almost wilted and burst into tears. She couldn’t do that. She pushed back from the counter. She had to stand on her own two feet if she wanted to fix what was endangering her family. If she could only remember more.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated like a skipping vinyl record. “Really. Thank you.”

  The clerk looked at her for a second longer as if assuring herself of the truth of that and nodded as she rang in her items.

  Ava took a five from her pocket. The money felt treacherous and wrong in her hand. A minute later, she left the store with the few things she’d bought in a plastic bag over her arm.

  Her thoughts went to Faisal. He wanted to help. She wanted to trust him but she didn’t want to hurt him. Somehow she knew that what she faced was better handled alone—without risking anyone else being hurt, like her father.

  Would he try to follow her? Knowing him, remembering what she knew of him—she knew he would. At least he would try. That was why it was important he didn’t find out where she was going. She had no connection to Texas, there was no reason to believe she’d go there. It would be over before anyone could find her. There was something else that nagged at her. Her memory stalled. It needed to come back faster and there was nothing she could do to change that. She remembered her studies on amnesia. She’d never thought to apply that small part of one semester to real life, especially to herself.

  She remembered that Faisal had mentioned something about her father on his last visit, but her memory had still been incomplete. Now, her returning memories only made the danger that much more palpable. Ben Whyte. The thought of him and what he’d done made fear run through her body so strongly that she wanted to throw up.

  She needed to think yet somehow her most powerful resource was silent—all cylinders not a go. It was the worst time to be intellectually limping. She was running out of time to come up with a plan. Worst of all she needed to remember what it was that threatened her very life and what drove her to a little Texan town seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

  She moved around the drugstore and to the parking lot. Two bins sat side by side. Could she be lucky enough that at least one of them was a used-clothing bin? There was no one near the bins and the lot on that side wasn’t well lit. It was perfect cover. With a bit of luck no one would see her. She hurried over.

  “It is,” she murmured seeing the charity name on the bin. She raised the lid. The bin was full, another bonus. She could reach quite a bit of the clothing, at least what was on top. If it weren’t this full, she would have been out of luck. Instead, she yanked out an oversize beige sweater. She dug as far as she could reach and pulled out a beige canvas bag. Beige seemed to be her color tonight. She dug some more and found a pair of jeans, much too large. She tossed them back and dug, finding a T-shirt. She looked down at her scrubs. They were brown. She had a matched set. There was no one around. In front of her were office buildings. It was after work hours and other than cleaners, they were quiet. She imagined that unless the odd cleaner looked out at just the wrong moment, it didn’t matter if she changed here, no one would see her. Behind her was the drugstore, the side that faced her was windowless. She moved between the two bins and tore off the top that matched the scrub pants and replaced it with the T-shirt and then the sweater. She put her water and granola bars in the bag and put it over her shoulder. She tossed the shirt she’d been wearing into the bin. She didn’t look great but she blended in with the general population a lot better.

  She hurried back around the corner of the drugstore and across the street to the bus station. There, diesel fumes tainted the air and luggage littered the sidewalk. The fumes from the buses waiting beneath the lights that lit the area like daylight threatened to choke her. Half a dozen buses idled on the tarmac and only ten feet from her a wiry, gray-haired man was loading luggage into a bus’s underbelly. Someone jostled her and she shifted away.
The area was quickly becoming crowded with people as departure and arrival times intersected. Her heart pounded and she fought to look normal, like a young woman heading cross-country in a pair of scrub pants and a sweater. She looked down-and-out for sure but she was also boarding a bus in an area of Miami that couldn’t be called well-off. A bus pulled in, next to one that was pulling out.

  There was so much she didn’t know. If she’d had access to a computer she would have checked her father’s email. She knew it was a critical piece but instinct told her that her answers lay in a Texas town of negligible size and it was imperative she waste no time getting there.

  She took a breath, fighting for normalcy. Yet nothing was normal. She was running on instinct. Still choking in a gray fog of memory loss, she was following her gut and it was screaming run.

  She went inside to purchase her ticket.

  Outside again, Ava coughed from the fumes and her eyes teared. She fumbled in the pocket of her scrubs for one of a handful of tissues she’d stuffed there before leaving the hospital. She knew, despite her change of clothes, that she looked a wreck. She’d tried hard to blend in but she’d been to hell and back, and she was still wobbly on her feet. To her right a black woman with gray hair stopped short, looking at her with what seemed like concern. Then she scowled. Ava turned away, her heart skipping a beat. She didn’t need attention, sympathetic or otherwise. She moved a few feet away, putting distance and more people between her and the curiosity of the stranger.

  She pushed deeper into the crowd. She was thankful the woman whose eye she had caught only minutes ago had disappeared into the queue for a bus marked Chicago.

  A middle-aged woman in jeans and a blouse, who also had sunglasses perched on her head as if she were making a fashion statement, glowered at her. Ava drew herself up taller. She shifted tactics. The way to fit in was to believe you belonged here, that everything was right and that was the aura she’d exude. She’d read that somewhere. This was something that she could never imagine happening to her. And yet it was. She was fleeing from a trouble she couldn’t remember. She only knew that she needed to get out of this city. It wasn’t safe and it wasn’t the place where she would find the answers she needed, answers that would save her father.

  In the meantime, she had to look like everything about her and her situation was normal. It was the appearance she had to portray even though she ran a risk of standing out even in her toned-down outfit.

  Loud voices had her turning her attention to her right where a couple was arguing. She turned away. The crowd continued to jostle this way and that. It was her best defence, remaining out of sight hidden amid numerous people.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, near the back of the bus and seated alone, at least for now, Ava took a deep breath. She went over the most recent events. It was a joy to savor the memories she did have. She couldn’t believe her luck. But she’d whisked through purchasing a bus ticket and boarding the bus without a second look. Whether it was the late hour or whether identification wasn’t needed, she didn’t dwell on her good luck.

  The memories were coming back and she wished for the first time that they weren’t. They were hard and fast and intense, and they were worse than she could ever have imagined.

  She was a witness to attempted murder. Her hands shook at that thought, not so much at the knowledge, she’d always remembered that, it was the details that were slowly coming back. The sounds of the scuffle, the gun blast were clear in her mind. She’d already been in the raft but too far away. The waves had taken her twice the distance away. Finally, the vast ocean and the darkness had blanketed the distance between them and she’d been alone.

  They’d been attacked that night on the yacht. Their attacker had never meant for her to get away. Her father’s desperation in those last moments had made that obvious. Now, her father might be dead and that was something that she couldn’t change. She needed to focus on what she could change, saving his reputation before the man who may have killed him stole that too.

  * * *

  FAISAL LOOKED AT his watch. It was just prior to midnight. The helicopter’s spotlight showed nothing but the swell of waves. There was nothing to indicate that the yacht or any of its occupants had ever been here. He finger-combed his hair. His head ached from lack of sleep. He hated the thought of leaving Ava alone but he’d been assured that she would sleep through the night. That reassurance had galvanized him to go out on one more search. He’d hoped that, of all the searchers out here, he would be the one to find Dan Adams. It was ridiculous thinking. He’d had more than his share of luck when they’d found Ava. An hour later, he and the pilot agreed to call it a night.

  Other volunteers took over where they had left off, combing the ocean for what was really a tiny piece of flotsam in a vast ocean. It was five in the morning before he was back in his suite, which seemed empty and hollow. He lay down to grab a few hours’ sleep before going up to the hospital to see Ava. She’d been scheduled for an X-ray first thing that morning, so there was no need to go in until that was complete. He managed three hours before his phone rang. He looked at the number and knew that everything was about to change.

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday, June 13—6:30 a.m.

  Ben Whyte couldn’t believe how easy it had been. He’d slipped in the crew entrance of a cruise ship heading from the Bahamas back to Florida. While at sea, a news report had confirmed that Ava Adams had been found floating in a life raft in the Gulf Stream somewhere off the coast of Miami. He didn’t get the specific details because they didn’t matter. He was almost giddy with relief. He controlled himself long enough to hear the rest, which only confirmed what he knew. She was thought to have been a passenger on the yacht owned by Dan Adams. The report also provided the information that Ava was at Mercy Hospital in Miami. It was all he needed.

  He’d known it was a crazy idea to kill her here. He knew that he should wait for a better time. But desperation had driven him when he’d slipped by hospital security and gone up to Ava Adams’s floor. Luck was on his side when the staff at the nurses’ station were distracted by a doctor’s arrival. He was able to slip by the station unnoticed. Within a minute he had made his way down the hallway.

  When he’d entered Ava’s private room, she was sleeping. Her face was turned away from him and her long dark hair covered what he might have otherwise seen of her face. He’d stood staring at her for a minute.

  He took a deep calming breath and slipped the pillow out from beneath her head. She shifted in her sleep. Then he settled the pillow over her head, shifting the pillow to her face and pressing down as she woke up and began to scream. The sound was muffled by the pillow. Her struggles quickly waned and he easily held her down. Eight minutes later he was able to open the door and calmly walk away.

  Dead, just like her father. He smiled.

  As he walked down the hall, heading back to the elevators, he could hear the murmur of voices from the nurses’ station. He paused and then kept walking. He had nothing to fear. He was a visitor like any other. But his heart pounded despite his mind’s reassurances and he slowed his pace while he was within earshot but out of sight of the nurses’ station. He was curious as to what they were saying.

  “Stole fifty dollars from me.” There was an edge to the speaker’s oddly soothing husky voice. It was a sexy, morning-after voice and reminded him how long he’d been without. “I can’t believe it. I wouldn’t have thought it was her but she left a note.” The woman laughed. “Promised to pay me back. Signed it Ava Adams.”

  “And took off just like that?” the other laughed. “I kind of like it. An escapee.”

  More muted giggles.

  “They didn’t waste any time filling her room.”

  “No. We’re maxed out on patients this week. Had one in the hallway. An unacceptable situation.”

  Damn it, he th
ought. Was it possible? Had he killed the wrong woman? A shiver streaked through him. He’d killed only twice in his life before this. But both times had been justified. Now he wasn’t so sure. Had he officially become a cold-blooded murderer, killing someone for no reason? A shudder ran through him. He’d become just like his brutal father, who had let his emotions, especially anger, rule his actions. He’d disappeared from his life, sentenced to jail, after killing a man in a barroom brawl. Ben had been six and glad to see him go. His father was the reason that he’d changed his name from Tominski to Whyte as soon as he reached the age of majority.

  He wouldn’t think of that—instead he had to focus on the now. He had to force himself to breathe, to calm down and to take a closer look at his surroundings, to act normal.

  “I wonder if they’ll find her?” the other nurse mused.

  “I doubt if they’ll look but I’d sure like my fifty dollars back.”

  “I can’t believe that Ava Adams just slipped out of here—past us.”

  He walked faster, keeping his eyes ahead and only stopping at the elevator. He stood there like any other visitor, waiting for the elevator to arrive at his floor. Except he hadn’t pushed the button.

  “The authorities weren’t called,” the woman with the husky voice said.

  “Fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”

  Neither of the nurses were looking his way.

  He turned and headed to the stairwell without another thought to the woman he’d just killed. Ava was still alive and he needed to find her. He pushed open the door to the stairwell and felt the rush of cool air like a calming balm. Behind him, at the far end of the hallway where he’d so recently come from, he could hear hurrying footsteps and agitated voices.