Sheikh Surrender

by Jacqueline Diamond

Also, a part of her couldn’t help hoping Zahad might find some piece of overlooked evidence. Much as she respected the local police, they were understaffed and possibly over-matched. Even after weeks of investigating, they still couldn’t zero in on her cyber-stalker. What were the odds of their solving this murder quickly?

  “I’ll need to see some ID,” she said.

  From a pocket, he withdrew a gray-green passport stamped Republic of Alqedar. Inside, she found writing in both Arabic and English, along with a photo showing a younger Zahad.

  In a flowing white robe and a checked headdress banded with dark cord, he projected an air of authority and, from the forward thrust of his jaw, impatience. “You don’t like having your picture taken,” she remarked.

  “I loathe it.”

  The passport contained visa stamps from numerous countries, including more than one from the United States. “You’ve been to America before.”

  “I occasionally travel in the service of my country.” He accepted the document back without further comment.

  She could hardly refuse to let him help now that he’d cooperated with her request. “All right. But you can’t stay.”

  “I only wish to take a look around.”

  “Do you really think you can find anything the police missed?” Jenny asked as she led him to the front. Although the back door was closer, it would make her uncomfortable to take him inside through her living quarters.

  “I underwent special training in England. My goal was to become a security expert, not an investigator, but to be thorough I took several forensics courses.”

  When she reached the front, Jenny tried not to shudder at the bloodstains fading to brown on the concrete steps. “Watch out for glass. I doubt the police caught all the slivers.”

  “Ah, yes. The champagne bottle. Imported from France, no doubt, although the report did not specify the label.”

  “Your brother had expensive tastes?” She fitted her key into the new lock.

  “Indeed.” Zahad stepped forward quickly and covered her hand with his. His calluses brushed her skin, making her feel oddly protected. “Allow me.”

  “Okay.” She retrieved her hand from beneath his. Jenny’s gratitude at his apparent willingness to put himself in danger warred with a hard-won resistance to letting a man—any man—look after her.

  “Stand aside, please,” said the sheikh.

  She moved away and braced herself as he opened the door. There was a pause, and then she heard the beeped warning that gave her one minute to disable the alarm.

  As soon as Zahad cleared the doorway, Jenny input the code. She felt his eyes following her movements and reminded herself to change the code as soon as he left.

  Indoors, a faint chemical scent lingered in the cool air. She hadn’t been inside since Monday, when she’d arrived home to find police cars outside along with a fire truck and paramedic unit. She’d glimpsed a covered body on the sidewalk and smelled champagne and musky, unpleasant odors she hoped never to smell again.

  Now Jenny took one look around her living room and wished she could twitch her nose and make the mess go away. Detective Finley had assured her the police were taking care not to damage things, but she’d be lucky if she could move back from the cabin she’d borrowed by the weekend.

  All the furnishings had been pulled away from their usual resting places and the colored glassware in the china cabinet was disarrayed. Books sprawled across low shelves and some had tumbled onto the floor.

  On the walls, painted china plates and framed reproductions of Saturday Evening Post covers hung askew. Dirt and black powder streaked the carpet and there were ashes around the fireplace. Some of the powder had drifted onto the skirted covers with which she’d updated the old sofa.

  Seeing her home torn apart this way made Jenny feel personally violated. Until this point, she’d simply been terrified by the possibility that someone was trying to kill her. Now she felt angry, too.

  “What on earth did they do in here?” She reached to right a vase that lay on its side atop the coffee table. “What’s all that black stuff?”

  “Fingerprint powder.” Zahad’s hand closed over her wrist before she could pick up the vase. “Do not touch anything.”

  “Why not? They’re done here.” She didn’t think she could bear to leave this mess for one more second.

  “I am not done,” he said.

  Jenny wanted to grab some rags and start righting this affront to her home. “The police have obviously gone over this house with a fine-tooth comb and maybe a sledgehammer for good measure.”

  “Yes, but they do not know my brother and I do.”

  “Your brother got shot on the porch.”

  “That’s the way it looks, but looks can deceive.”

  Could the murder victim actually have come into the living room? Could other terrible things have happened in her home? If so, Jenny didn’t want to know about them.

  Zahad stared at a heavy chair upended directly ahead of them. “Would that be the one to which the gun was attached?”

  “I guess so.” Jenny didn’t know how it had been done. She’d only heard that the killer had used wire from the toolshed to connect the trigger to the door.

  Zahad indicated a couple of small holes in the wall. “That must be where he inserted the eye hooks.”

  “Maybe.” She was reluctant to admit she hadn’t known the killer had run the wire through eye hooks. The holes leered at her, yet another reminder of the violation that had occurred here.

  “The gun belonged to you?” Despite his offhand tone, she knew this was no minor matter.

  “I inherited it from my great-aunt, along with the house,” Jenny said. “I fired it a few times at a target under Dolly’s supervision. She’s a retired policewoman who lives next door.”

  “She is the one who found my brother’s body?”

  “Right.” That fact had been in the police report, of course.

  “You kept the gun loaded?” Zahad asked.

  “No. Unloaded and high up in a cabinet,” Jenny replied. “The bullets were in a separate drawer.” For good measure, she added, “This is an isolated place. My great-aunt once shot a rabid raccoon in the backyard.”

  “Surely you considered a gun good insurance against these unwanted suitors,” the sheikh said. “Did you not even consider the possibility of rigging it as a form of self-defense in case one of them broke in?”

  The suggestion that she’d set up the gun was ludicrous. “First of all, if I had, I’d have been more likely to shoot myself than anyone else because I’m about as mechanically gifted as a bunny rabbit. Second, if Dolly had checked the door to see if it was locked, she might have been the one who got killed. And third—wait a minute, I’m sure I’ve got a third point—”

  “Perhaps you knew it was illegal to create such a deadly trap,” Zahad offered.

  “Well, I might have guessed that, if I’d thought of doing something like that, but I didn’t,” Jenny said. “Oh, I know. The guys showing up at my door weren’t the real threat. Why would I want to kill someone who got suckered into coming here? It doesn’t solve anything.”

  The sheikh lifted a hand to stop the flow of words. “You have persuaded me. Since I assume the police kept the gun as evidence, have you bought a replacement? It might not be a bad idea, if you are being targeted by a murderer.”

  One thing Jenny knew: She wasn’t going to allow anyone to force her into taking steps that felt wrong. In retrospect, she should never have kept a gun, even unloaded, in a house with a child.

  “No, and I don’t plan to,” she said. “I’ve never liked guns. My father was a military man, and he wanted my brother, Jeff, and me to learn how to shoot. I refused.” She didn’t add that it was one of the few times she’d defied her father.

  Zahad studied the room. “What kind of music do you listen to?”

  “Show tunes and pop,” she replied puzzled. “Linda Eder, Audra MacDonald, Tony Bennett.”

  Rele
asing her, Zahad clasped his hands behind his back, crossed to her CD rack—which sat, displaced, on the floor by the coat closet—and made a cursory examination. “Very good.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Rap CDs. If my brother visited often, he would have deposited some. I do not see any.” He straightened.

  “You mean, you thought I was having an affair with him?” Jenny retorted. “While I presumably stashed my five-year-old daughter in a closet?”

  “Many women with children have affairs. Where is your daughter now?”

  “She’s out of state with my ex-husband.” Jenny hadn’t been happy about taking Beth out of kindergarten in the middle of the school year, but Grant had claimed those were the only weeks when both he and his wife, Shelley, could get vacation.

  “It is fortunate that she was away when this happened.”

  “You’re not kidding.” Jenny was deeply grateful for this coincidence, and for the fact that she hadn’t come home early that day.

  She hated feeling glad that Fario had taken the bullet instead of her. She didn’t want anyone to die. But, oh, she was glad that she hadn’t been the one, for Beth’s sake as much as for her own.

  In her nightmares, the scenario played itself out repeatedly, with variations. Sometimes she arrived home in time to see Fario on the porch but too late to stop him. Other times she got here first, vaguely sensing danger but unable to prevent herself from reaching for the knob. Always, just as the door opened, she woke up on the verge of screaming and lay gasping for breath.

  Zahad prowled through the front room. “The report indicated my brother carried several suggestive e-mails.”

  “That was the word the police used—‘suggestive?’” She expected more direct language after reading a few brought by her previous unwanted visitors.

  “I believe the term they used was ‘explicit.’”

  “That’s more like it. I don’t understand why someone wants to lure men here, but they didn’t have any trouble doing it,” she said. “It’s amazing how gullible guys are.”

  “Your photograph obviously makes quite an impression.” With one oblique glance, the sheikh let Jenny know that her features, from her high cheekbones down to her long legs, hadn’t escaped his notice, either. To her dismay, she felt herself blush.

  Although she considered herself on the thin side, with breasts barely large enough to fill an A cup, Jenny had been aware of her effect on men since her early teen years. It was the blond hair and green eyes, she supposed.

  Usually, she wanted nothing more than to keep them at arm’s length, but it was difficult to imagine any woman not reacting to this lean, restless man. Still, she didn’t want anything from him except to be left alone.

  “The kind of impression my appearance made on these men is something I could happily live without,” she informed him.

  “Tell me about them, these men.”

  When the first cyber-suitor had arrived six weeks earlier with a photo and expected to have sex with her, Jenny told him she must be the victim of a prank. Then she had to persuade a second visitor to leave. Worried, she’d called the police.

  “They speculated that it might be a student’s revenge for being disciplined,” she explained. “They contacted an officer with a larger department who specializes in cyber-crimes.”

  He’d learned that someone was visiting various Internet chat rooms pretending to be Jenny and claiming to seek lovers. Whoever the cyber-stalker was, he’d covered his tracks by changing names and leaving false addresses. So far, four men had turned up at Jenny’s home.

  “At first, I figured someone just wanted to pester me,” she said. “Then I began to worry that he wanted to harm me. Now I’m certain of it.”

  “It sounds like the behavior of an ex-husband.” Keeping his hands at his sides, the sheikh shouldered through a swinging door into the kitchen.

  There was more mess in there, Jenny discovered unhappily, although not as bad as in the living room.

  “How do matters stand between you?”

  “Grant and I were getting along fine until his wife discovered she can’t have children,” she admitted. “He started making noises a few months ago about wanting custody of Beth.” Jenny had been stunned and furious. Every day since then, she’d expected to be served with papers.

  So far, Grant hadn’t taken any steps in this direction, although she had the impression he considered this two-week visit with Beth a trial run. Some women, she supposed, might have been tempted to coach their daughter on how to drive a stepmother crazy, but it would be cruel to treat Beth as a pawn.

  “Sending these men here might give him leverage in court,” Zahad said.

  She’d considered that possibility. “Maybe. But I don’t think he set it up. A couple of them confronted me when I was with Beth. Grant would never have endangered her that way.”

  “Does he have an alibi?”

  “For Monday? I’m sure the police have checked. Besides, he lives in St. Louis.”

  “Perhaps so, but he may have some involvement.” After removing a plastic bag from his pocket, he put it on, as if it were a mitt. The fact that he’d brought his own bag both impressed Jenny and made her uneasy.

  If this man ever put his mind to committing a crime, he would know how to avoid getting caught. She could see why some of his countrymen believed him capable of murder.

  Yet she’d allowed him to come in here alone, even after he’d admitted he was under suspicion. That said something about Zahad’s powers of persuasion. Jenny wasn’t so sure what it said about her judgment.

  He opened the refrigerator and inspected the contents. During Beth’s absence, she hadn’t done much cooking, and, of course, she hadn’t been home in days. The sparse pickings included yogurt, pickles and a salad wilting under its plastic wrap.

  “Is this necessary?” Jenny asked.

  “It helps to substantiate your story,” the sheikh replied.

  “Because there’s nothing in here your brother would eat?”

  He closed the door. “The lack of wine and caviar speaks for itself.”

  Jenny recalled reading that many Middle Easterners avoided alcohol. “Is a sheikh allowed to drink?”

  “My brother was raised in Germany, Switzerland and England.” Zahad led the way into the guest room at the back of the house. “He chose which customs he wished to obey. He would have outgrown such notions in time.” Beneath the critical tone, she detected a note of gruff fondness.

  In the room, which doubled as a home office, the sheikh started toward her desk. She tried not to focus on the clutter of papers and computer disks the police had left in view. “That’s enough searching, Mr. Adran,” Jenny said. “I’m not going to allow you to poke through my personal things.”

  He glanced at her computer, no doubt itching to check for signs that she herself was behind the lascivious e-mails. However, the police had already searched it, which he must know from reading the report.

  “Very well.” He turned toward the door that led to the hallway. “I understand the killer entered through the back. He must have come down this way.”

  “I suppose so.”

  On the office floor close to the hall sat a wastebasket containing a crumpled envelope. Zahad frowned. “They should have emptied this. Or, if that item was tossed there by the police, they contaminated the scene.”

  Jenny bent to take a closer look. “It’s from a utility bill I got on Saturday.”

  “Allow me.” The sheikh knelt beside her, so close that an edge of his leather jacket draped across Jenny’s stocking-clad knee. Warmth fleeted through her.

  Using the plastic bag, he moved the wastebasket to reveal a previously hidden scrap of paper on the dark beige carpet. “This is why the police should have emptied the wastebasket.”

  “It’s just a piece of the envelope, isn’t it?” she queried.

  “I do not think so.”

  From a pocket, the sheikh took tweezers. By this time, J
enny wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d produced a fingerprint kit and a test tube for DNA.

  Using the tweezers, Zahad held the bit of paper up to the light from a window. “Do you recognize this pattern?”

  “There’s a pattern?” At an angle, she saw that he was right. There was a watermark in the paper, part of a logo.

  Jenny recognized it, and almost wished she hadn’t.

  Chapter Two

  “It’s part of a crystal,” Jenny said. “It looks like the logo of the First National Bank of Crystal Point. That’s a town about five miles from here.”

  “Do you bank there?” Zahad kept a tight grip on the tweezers as he deposited the scrap into the bag.

  “No.” She hesitated. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Who banks there?” he pressed.

  “Lots of people. They offer free services that other banks charge for, including safe-deposit boxes.” This wasn’t a straight answer and they both knew it. Reluctantly, she finished, “One of my neighbors, Ray Rivas, started work there a couple of weeks ago.”

  Ray was no stalker and no killer, either. The affable man, who’d been glad to help Jenny with everything from plumbing problems to rototilling her garden, was married and had a four-year-old daughter. Most importantly, although he occasionally joked about her movie-star looks, she’d never felt any romantic interest or sexual pressure from him.

  “A woman can tell if a man’s trying to manipulate her,” she explained to Zahad. “Believe me, I’ve got my radar permanently on alert.”

  “The fact remains that this bit of paper came into your house, possibly stuck to someone’s pants cuff. And the police believe the killer walked down that hallway, although he apparently covered his shoes.”

  “If Ray was smart enough not to leave muddy footprints on the carpet, how likely is it he stupidly dropped something that indicates where he works?” she retorted. “Besides, he might have left it before Beth went on her trip. His daughter, Cindy, is Beth’s best friend.”

  Silently, she admitted that she didn’t want to think someone she trusted could betray her this way. Was it possible she could misjudge a friend to such an extent?