Under the Sheik's Protection

by C. J. Miller

  “I want to assure people that there was no accident at the Central Virginia nuclear plant. The reactor experienced a low-level alarm following the earthquake, but the emergency systems kicked in without a problem, and at no time was the public in danger. Nuclear power continues to be one of the safest options for meeting the growing energy needs of our country.”

  One of the reporters—a short, round woman sporting large glasses and a frown—finished scribbling and opened her mouth to ask a follow-up question. Claire held up a hand before she could speak, shooting her what she hoped was an apologetic smile. “We’ll be having a press conference later today, and I’d appreciate it if you hold the rest of your questions until then.”

  The small group grumbled but began to disperse, freeing Claire to walk into the building. She waited until the elevator doors closed, then leaned back against the wall and rubbed her forehead. What a mess.

  The minor earthquake the day before yesterday had been a wake-up call. Although it was only a four on the Richter scale, the tremors were strong enough to trigger emergency shutdown procedures at the Central Virginia plant. While things had gone off without a hitch, it was only a matter of time before an accident happened. The plant was one of the older ones in the region and needed constant updating, and given budget shortfalls, money was tight. Paradoxically, Central Virginia’s stellar safety record put it at the bottom of the list for repairs—a fact that aggravated Claire to no end.

  She strolled past the reception desk with a quick smile for Eva. “I left you a gift on your desk,” the woman called out.

  “Is it coffee?” Claire asked, unable to keep the note of desperation out of her voice.

  Eva shot her a sly grin. “Maybe.”

  “Oh, you are a goddess.”

  Eva’s laugh followed her down the hall. She stepped into her office and there, on the middle of the desk, sat the distinctive black-and-white cup from her favorite coffee shop. She dropped her bag on the floor and snatched it up, holding it under her nose for a second to inhale the blissful aroma. Taking a sip, she nearly groaned aloud as the rich brew hit her tongue. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “Morning.”

  Jerry Witter stood in the doorway, his large frame leaving little room for anything else. “Hey Jerry, how’s it going?”

  He shrugged and stepped inside her office, rubbing a hand over his bushy goatee before replying. “All right, I suppose. Had to shoot me a dog last night.”

  She blinked, unsure she’d heard him correctly. “You shot a dog?” she repeated slowly, trying to understand. The lack of caffeine must be getting to her.

  “Yep. There was a dog in my garage last night.”

  “I see. Did you know this dog?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Seemed mean though. Kept jumping up on the door, barking and snarling at me. I read his owner’s number off the tag on his collar and called. They’re out of town, told me to just send him home.” He shook his head. “Can you believe that?”

  She shook her head, sinking slowly into her chair. “So what did you do?”

  “Well, I threw some hot dogs out there, but the dog kept coming back inside the garage before I could get the door shut. I can’t have a vicious dog by my house—what if he hurts one of my girls?”

  Claire nodded, not sure she wanted to hear the end of this story.

  “So I got my gun and shot him.”

  She felt her jaw drop as she stared up at him. “Jerry, why didn’t you just call animal control?”

  “What for?” He looked genuinely confused, as if the idea had never occurred to him. “I took care of it.”

  “But...” She searched for something to say, trying hard to relate to a man whose first reaction to a problem was to pick up his gun. “You can’t just kill people’s pets when they annoy you!”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  She frowned, confused. “You said you shot him.” I haven’t had enough coffee for this.

  “Yeah, but I used rubber bullets. He took off like his tail was on fire,” he said, chuckling at the memory.

  She smiled weakly. “Sounds like quite the adventure.”

  “I s’pose so. Did you have a good night?”

  She sighed, taking another sip of coffee. “Not bad. Prepping for damage control after this earthquake.”

  He snorted. “That wasn’t an earthquake. That was barely a tremor.”

  “Yes, well.” She pulled her laptop out of her bag, placing it on her desk along with a number of other papers. “The Central Virginia alarm went off, so it’s news.”

  “Yeah. Let me know if I can help with anything.”

  “Thanks—I appreciate it.” She powered on her computer, taking another sip of coffee as it booted up.

  Jerry turned to go but stopped at her door, snapping his fingers. “Almost forgot. Dr. Reed wants to bring me in on the Russian cleanup project, and he told me to get some contact information from you.”

  “No problem. Give me just a second....” She typed as she spoke, pulling up her contact list. It would be good to have another person on this project. There were so many nuclear power plants in Russia, many crumbling and unsecured, making them prime targets for terrorists looking to steal radioactive materials. The NSG had teamed up with their Russian counterparts in the hopes of reducing the threat, but it was an uphill battle, and they needed all the help they could get.

  The new-mail icon popped up at the lower right corner of her screen, signifying an unread message. She clicked out of habit, smiling when she saw the email was from Ivan Novikoff.

  “Actually, Ivan just emailed me, so I’ll forward this message to you and you’ll have his information.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.” He walked out, his movements surprisingly quiet for such a large man.

  She clicked to open the email, frowning as a picture began loading. That was strange. Ivan never sent images—he was hyperparanoid about security, not wanting to risk his messages being intercepted and used against him. Concerns regarding the safety of nuclear power already ran high, and there were many protest groups who would not hesitate to take images out of context and use them to needlessly scare people.

  She reached for her coffee as she glanced at the screen, then gasped. The cup fell from her nerveless hands, hitting the floor and splashing the burning liquid on her legs. She ignored the stinging pain as she focused on the image in front of her, trying to process what she was seeing.

  No.

  She shook her head, putting a fist to her mouth to contain the scream that clawed up her throat. No!

  Leaning over, she retched into the trash can next to her desk. Suddenly Jerry was there, his hand on her back, his voice a buzzing drone in her ears.

  “Ivan...”

  She knew when Jerry saw the image by his sharp intake of breath. He reached out a hand, slamming down the lid of her computer. “Don’t look at that,” he said, his voice gruff.

  She nodded, but it was too late. The image was burned into her brain. All she had to do was close her eyes to see Ivan, her friend and collaborator, lying in a pool of his own blood, the horrible words painted in jagged red script across his chest.

  You’re next.

  * * *

  “Again!”

  Thomas looked down into his niece’s smiling face and couldn’t help but grin in return. “Okay, but this is the last time.”

  Emily watched in wide-eyed fascination as he pulled out his badge and flashed it at her. “Freeze!” he said in his best tough-guy voice. She dissolved into a fit of giggles, nearly crumpling to the floor in hysterics. Her reaction would have worried a lesser man, Thomas mused as he bent to scoop her up. Still, as long as he didn’t have to bust a five-year-old girl anytime soon, he was probably intimidating enough to do his job.

 
“Let’s go, squirt. We’re gonna be late.”

  She let out a dramatic sigh. “Fine,” she said in the tone of a long-suffering victim.

  He set her on the floor with a pat on the shoulder. “Go kiss your mom goodbye, but be quiet so you don’t wake her.”

  Emily ran down the hall, slowing as she approached her mother’s bedroom. She carefully pushed open the door and entered on tiptoe. Thomas smiled as he watched her golden ponytail disappear into the dark room, then turned to press a kiss to his mother’s temple. “Have a good day, Ma.”

  “You, too, dear.” She patted his cheek. “Be safe today.”

  “Always.”

  Emily reappeared, closing the door with exaggerated care. “I’m ready,” she said as she approached Thomas.

  He handed her the pink-sequined backpack, let her struggle into it on her own. He’d made the mistake of trying to help her once, and the resulting fit had drawn Jenny from her bedroom. His sister-in-law worked nights at the hospital and needed her sleep, and she hadn’t been happy about being roused after only an hour of rest to calm down her hysterical daughter.

  “Bye, Nana.” She reached up to hug his mother, who bent with effort to wrap her arms around the girl. She was moving slower and slower these days, but she still insisted everything was fine. He supposed it didn’t take much effort to watch Emily at night while Jenny worked, but even so, he worried about her health.

  “Goodbye, sweet girl. Have a great day at school.”

  Emily let out another sigh. “I’ll try.” She reached up to take Thomas’s hand, leading him out of the apartment.

  “Is everything okay at school, Em?” They walked down the stairs together, hand in hand, her eyes on the floor while she carefully navigated the steps.

  “I guess.”

  “Is anyone bothering you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like your teacher?” he pressed. The FBI had courses on the best methods to use when interrogating children, but he hadn’t taken any of them since most of his investigations focused on adults. Now, faced with a recalcitrant niece, he wondered if maybe he should sign up for the next session.

  Emily shrugged as he opened the passenger door. “She’s okay.” She climbed into the car, wriggling out of her backpack and setting it on the floor before reaching for the seat belt.

  He slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. “It just seems like you don’t want to go to school.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to tell me why?”

  He pulled into traffic, giving her time to think about her response. The silence went on for so long that he was about to ask her again when she said quietly, “I miss my dad.”

  His heart clenched at the admission. He reached for her hand, gave it a squeeze. “I miss him, too, sweetie.”

  Roger, his brother, had died in a car accident six months ago, but the details of that horrible day were never far from his mind. The afternoon phone call from his mother. The frantic drive to the hospital. The stale waiting-room coffee as they huddled together, waiting to hear if the doctors had worked a miracle. Jenny’s piercing scream when the surgical team walked over, eyes downcast and shoulders hunched. And Emily’s pale, tear-streaked face after he told her the earth-shattering news.

  Roger’s death had left a gaping hole in Jenny and Emily’s lives, one that Thomas had tried to patch, albeit with limited success. While he never wanted to replace her father, he did want Emily to have a male presence in her life, a man who loved her unreservedly and without question. He had begun taking her to school in the weeks after Roger’s death, stepping into the role Roger had performed so well. At first, Emily had been reserved and tearful, but she’d gradually begun to warm up to seeing him more often, and he treasured their mornings and the routine they had built. It was a small but important step on the path of healing.

  But it was a bumpy road, as evidenced by Emily’s quivering lip. “All the other kids have dads,” she said in a wobbly voice. “I don’t understand why mine had to die.”

  “I don’t either, love. Nobody understands it.” He ached to pull her into his lap for a hug, but contented himself with holding her hand as he kept his focus on the road. From the corner of his eye, he could see her lips press together in a pale line and knew she was trying hard not to cry. My sweet, brave girl.

  She was quiet for the rest of the drive. He didn’t press her to talk—he wanted to be a safe place for her, and if he pestered her, she would withdraw from him. He pulled up to the curb in front of the school, then turned to face her.

  “Try to have a good day, Emmycakes.” It was his pet nickname for her, a play on her name and patty-cake, her favorite game as a little one. The name never failed to make her smile, and it didn’t disappoint now.

  She grinned up at him, her earlier sadness cast off like a discarded coat. “I will. You, too, Uncle Thomas.”

  He smiled at her serious tone. “I’ll do my best,” he assured her.

  She leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek, then climbed carefully out of the passenger seat. He watched while she made her way up the steps to her teacher. He gave the woman a wave as she collected Emily and guided her inside along with the other children, then merged back into traffic.

  Must be nice, he mused, thinking how quickly she had gone from tears to smiles. Would that his own grief and sadness were as easy to shake.

  Although he understood on a logical, rational level that his brother’s death hadn’t been his fault, he couldn’t dismiss the guilt that plagued him at the thought of Roger.

  I should have taken Mom....

  After a late-winter storm had pounded the city, his mother had called needing a ride to a doctor’s appointment. Buried at work, Thomas had asked Roger to cover for him. Since he was off duty at the time, Roger hadn’t hesitated to hop in the car and head over to their mom’s house. It should have been just another drive, a normal errand, nothing to write home about.

  Except for the garbage truck that hit a patch of ice and slammed into the car, crushing it and his brother in the blink of an eye.

  For the first few weeks after the accident, Thomas had woken almost nightly, soaked with sweat and with a scream trapped in his throat. The nightmares were graphic and all too real, the accident playing out in horrible slow motion while Thomas stood on the sidewalk, helpless to do anything but watch as his brother disappeared into a pile of twisted metal.

  The images had gradually faded, but the worst part was that Thomas still couldn’t think about his brother without imagining Roger’s last conscious moments as he lay trapped in the wreckage. His pain. His fear. His worry for Jenny and Emily. He hoped that one day, he would be able to remember Roger without recalling the accident, but for now, thoughts of Roger just left him feeling raw, like he’d taken a bath in acid.

  So he tried not to think about it.

  With a shake of his head, he reached for the dial, wanting some music to distract him for the rest of the drive. No sense in brooding over a past he couldn’t change. In that way lay madness.

  Before he could settle on a station, his phone rang. A quick glance at the lit display showed his boss calling, which was unusual. Agent Harper liked to keep track of the team, but he usually wasn’t overbearing about it. For him to call now, minutes before Thomas was due to show up at the office, meant something was going on.

  “Kincannon here.”

  “How close are you?”

  Thomas bit back the urge to reply Good morning to you, too. Harper’s brusque tone made it clear his sense of humor was on vacation, and since Thomas still didn’t know him all that well, he decided to play it safe. “Five minutes, give or take a few.”

  “I need to see you when you get in. Right away.”

  “No problem,” Thomas replied to the dial tone. Snapping the phone closed,
he tucked it back into his jacket pocket and pressed on the accelerator to beat a yellow light.

  It sounded like Harper had a new case for him, an idea that had his pulse quickening with anticipation. Forget music—work was the best distraction.

  * * *

  Harper’s door was partially open, so Thomas gave it a perfunctory rap with his knuckles as he walked into the office. The older man looked up from his computer and gestured for Thomas to take a seat. He did, glancing about the room as Harper finished typing.

  While Carmichael, his former boss, had been a bit of a pack rat, keeping papers and other bits of miscellany piled high on every flat surface, Harper was practically a monk by comparison. His desk was clear of everything but his computer, a cup of pens and pencils, a desk calendar and a single piece of paper. The filing cabinets were a new addition to the space, the neatly labeled drawers a testament to Harper’s organizational prowess. Thomas thought briefly of his own desk, which fell somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Even though he wasn’t terribly messy, he had the fleeting thought that Harper would not approve of his filing system. Good thing the man stayed in his office most of the time.

  “I have an assignment for you.”

  Thomas returned his focus to the man in front of him, belatedly realizing Harper had stopped typing and was staring at him.

  “What’s up?”

  The older man winced slightly at his choice of words, and Thomas bit his lip to keep from smiling. He knew his casual speech bothered the buttoned-up man, and the small, rebellious part of him liked to poke the bear. One of these days it was going to come back and bite him in the ass, but he didn’t care.

  “Dr. Claire Fleming received a death threat this morning,” Harper informed him, pushing the paper across the desk toward him.

  Thomas picked it up and glanced over the dossier. Claire Fleming. Thirty-two years old. Scientist with the Nuclear Safety Group. The grainy black-and-white photo didn’t do her any favors, but he could see she was pretty enough, with her light hair piled atop her head and slightly plump lips under a straight nose. She didn’t look like the kind of person to inspire death threats, but there were a lot of unhinged people in the world.