Zara

by Jade Kerrion

“And that’s the real question, isn’t it? American intelligence must have known about his children—including Yasmin—but someone wiped it out of official records, giving Yasmin breathing room to cultivate a band of fanatics to avenge her father while biding her time teaching art and drama at the international school in Beirut.”

  “And the only reason to do that is to renew the conflict in the Middle East,” Klah said grimly. “They would have known Yasmin was a ticking time bomb. They gave her enough rope to hang herself and start a war.”

  “Exactly. Who would want a war and have the capacity to manipulate American intelligence agencies?”

  Klah snorted. “You want that list alphabetically or in order of threat level? It could be any number of people from defense contractors to politicians.”

  “We’ll start with Yasmin. It’s probably someone she knows.”

  “That would be ballsy—not just manipulating behind the scenes but stepping out to lead the witness.”

  Zara shrugged. “I know any number of ballsy CIA agents who would be more than happy to play the game that way, just to stay in shape.”

  “The CIA?” Klah sounded more thoughtful than surprised.

  “It does have their mark, doesn’t it? We have to get back.” She looked up at the security camera tucked at the corner of the ceiling. “Celine, I know you’re listening. Can you come in so we can have a face-to-face conversation?”

  Several minutes later, the young woman in the pinstriped business suit arrived at the room. She dismissed the nurse with a smile before closing the door behind the departing woman. “You are so troublesome, Zara,” she murmured, but she wore a faint smile. With quick, nervous gestures, she smoothed back a stray lock of hair that had escaped her neat bun.

  “How are the girls?”

  “Settled and calm now that most of them have spoken to their parents. We have full security supervising the handovers.”

  “The press was invited, too, I suspect.”

  “A limited number, but all highly reputable. It’s a great moment for Venezuela on the world stage, apparently doing what many of the Western powers couldn’t do. Thank you for allowing us to steal the spotlight.”

  “You’re most welcome to it.” Zara waved the attention away.

  “And thank you for not letting that bus explode on embassy grounds or in the middle of Martyrs’ Square. You’re not as reckless as I feared you might be.”

  “We all grow up at some point.”

  “You said something about returning to Beqaa Valley. Do you need transport? A car?”

  “Yes, with no guarantees I’ll be able to return it intact.”

  Celine laughed. “There are never any guarantees with you, Zara.” She dangled a key chain from her fingertip. “The car is waiting out front.”

  “No tails, Celine.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Celine folded her hands in front of her stomach.

  Zara tilted her head and waited.

  “What?” Celina asked, her placid tone ruffled by a hint of defensiveness.

  “Plausible deniability,” Zara said. “You’d want to be able to distance yourself from the trouble I’m about to create.”

  “About to create? What have you been doing all this while?” Klah murmured.

  “Be nice,” Zara said.

  “Oh, fine,” Celine huffed. She picked up the phone. “Zara won’t need the security escorts.” She hung up, and her formal demeanor gave way to a frown. “I worry about you. I can’t help it. You’re going back out there with only one backup?”

  “I’ll call another, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Yes, if it’ll increase your chances of making it to our ten-year reunion at Princeton.” She glanced at Klah. “You will take care of her, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  Klah waited until Celine left the room. “Who’s the other you’re calling?”

  Zara reached for her phone and pressed a number. She smiled at the familiar voice. “Nazrol, are you nearby?”

  Nazrol had insisted on driving, and Zara took the opportunity to rest. She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. If only she had more to go on—Yasmin’s background, emotional and physical triggers, friends and lovers who could be used against her. Klah had insisted that Yasmin was just a girl. If he was right, then the question came down to, how do you break a girl?

  Zara knew what had broken her. Not attempted rape, but her mother’s murder. She grimaced at the ache in her chest. No, not her mother’s murder, but her mother’s sacrifice. How could she even aspire to such greatness when there was nothing in her strong enough, powerful enough to compel it?

  She wasn’t good enough to be a mother. Zara laid her hand over her abdomen. She did not even know if she was carrying a live baby or a dead one.

  “Zara.” Klah’s hand rested on her shoulder. “We’re almost there. How do you want to handle this?”

  “Alone.”

  He sighed. “Shooting Yasmin won’t get you answers.”

  “Won’t it?”

  “Zara…”

  “You sound like Danyael when you say my name.”

  “I’m sure you frustrated him as much as you frustrate me.”

  She shifted her gaze away from the view outside the window. “Is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Because I despised Danyael for what he didn’t make of his life. For all the excuses people kept making for him—that his childhood was crap and therefore he’s entitled to be a screw-up for the rest of his life—”

  “Whoa, that’s not what I said. I don’t think anyone’s cutting Danyael that much slack. And he’s not a screw-up. He graduated from a top college and a top medical school. He’s a doctor. If he chooses to work at a charity clinic instead of raking in the big bucks at a private institute, that’s not screwing up. You’re a materialistic, murderous bitch, but it doesn’t make him—a doctor, an empathic healer—a screw-up.”

  Zara tilted her head to stare at Klah. “Honesty from you. How refreshing.”

  He scowled. “I’m tired of you knocking him down just because you don’t agree with his views. He’s a humanitarian. It doesn’t make him weak. He alleviates others’ pain because it helps him deal with his own. You block out the screaming in your heart by killing. He blocks it out by healing. It’s his choice. And for God’s sake, he’s in prison. For life. Nothing he does can ever affect you ever again, so why do you care about the choices he made when he was free? It doesn’t matter anymore. Let it go. Stop letting it consume you.” Klah shook his head. “There’s no reason to go on hating him. He loves you; that’s his choice. You hate him; that’s yours. There’s no need for anyone to rationalize emotions. They’re not rational anyway.”

  “I didn’t want to love him.” And I didn’t get what I wanted.

  Klah sighed. “At this point, it doesn’t matter what you do. He’s at ADX Florence. He’s probably drugged and not in control of his mind or his emotions. He’s not who he was. He wouldn’t recognize you. He doesn’t love you. It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  She refused to accept it. “You said that if the child was Danyael’s, he’d want it.”

  “Of course he would, but what does it matter? He’ll never see the child. Don’t waste your energy hating him. If he could sense it, he doesn’t deserve it, and if he can’t sense it, then you’re wasting your time and energy on an emotion that benefits no one. Not even yourself.”

  “I don’t hate him,” she murmured. The sudden lightening of the weight in her chest confirmed the words she now realized she had known for a long time but never dared speak aloud.

  “What?” Klah stared at her.

  “I don’t hate him. I’m trying to understand why I love him.” She glanced out the window to avoid Klah’s incredulous stare. “I know that emotions can be temporarily swayed, but if the empath isn’t physically present to sustain them, the mind dispels the false emotion
. If that’s the case, then anything I’ve felt for Danyael should have vanished by now.”

  “But it hasn’t.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. He’s everything I thought I despised.”

  “Everything?” Klah frowned. “It’s why you’ve been asking me about him and about empathic powers.”

  “I need to understand why I feel this way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if the feeling’s real, perhaps I shouldn’t talk myself into letting it go. There’s little enough that’s real and good in my life that I can’t afford to lose it when I find it.”

  Klah blinked. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “It would depend, wouldn’t it, on what he feels? If you’re right, and he feels nothing, knows nothing, then perhaps we’re back where we started and it doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “You know, on most days, I’m not sure I understand myself either.” She drew a deep breath. “When I get back to the U.S., if he’s still alive, something’s going to change.” But what? Her eyes narrowed as her home came into view. Yasmin, first. Danyael, later. “What were Grass’s and Annie’s real names?”

  “Travis Bowden and Chuck…Charles O’Malley. He was a sergeant. Do you want me to come with you?” Klah asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Promise not to kill her?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “A fair one, given your tendency to be trigger happy.”

  Zara shrugged. “If she’s the key to this snafu, I can resist the urge to kill her while waiting for answers.”

  “And after?” Klah grabbed Zara’s arm as she stepped out of the car. “Remember, she’s hardly more than a girl.”

  “Who could grow up to be like me. How many mes can the world afford?”

  Klah smiled faintly. “I’m not sure we can even afford the one we have, but life is as much about redemption as it is about vengeance.”

  “Only if you’re Danyael.” She shrugged off his hand and strode into the house.

  He called out after her, his voice pitched low. “Tell me who you love, and I will tell you who you are.”

  Her breath caught in her chest. She stopped short and glanced over her shoulder. “What did you say?”

  “Tell me who you love, and I will tell you who you are,” Klah repeated. “It takes an incredible amount of courage and strength to love Danyael.” A faint smile touched his lips. “You’re a great deal more than the person you’ve made yourself out to be.” The smile turned into a smirk. “And I’m not sure you like that.”

  “Of course not. Love creates vulnerabilities.”

  “Especially if the one you love is incredibly vulnerable. Danyael is an alpha empath. He’s rare and desired; he’s a target. But Danyael is also incredibly strong—mentally, emotionally, even physically. He has endured and survived experiences that would have destroyed anyone else. You’ve chosen well, Zara. You couldn’t have chosen better.”

  “Did I have a choice?” she asked quietly.

  “Does it matter whether you did?”

  She thought about it. “Yes, it does. I don’t like being manipulated.”

  She inclined her head at the Hezbollah warriors who guarded her house and walked up the stairs to the room where Yasmin was imprisoned. Without knocking on the door, she entered the room.

  The young woman huddled against the wall looked up, her glare filled with hate.

  Zara did not sit. “So tell me, did Lieutenant Travis Bowden and Sergeant Charles O’Malley talk you into doing their dirty work, or was it the other way around?”

  The blank surprise in Yasmin’s eyes screamed the truth. Yasmin wasn’t responsible for the SEAL massacre; Zara would have to figure out the apparent coincidence another way. “And what is your connection with Alhassan?” Zara asked.

  The corner of Yasmin’s mouth tugged into a sneer. The toss of her head was dismissive.

  Zara filed Yasmin’s reaction. The Iranian businessman was clearly not an ally of Nakob, and he was Zara’s next best lead.

  In ten seconds, Yasmin had exhausted her entire potential as an informant, but Zara did not leave. Instead, she leaned against the wall. “Nakob intercepted the buses on the way back to Beirut. There were several explosions—” She did not miss the way Yasmin’s eyes lit with anticipation. “—but the only people who died were from Nakob. All the girls have been reunited with their parents. You’ve lost.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I wonder if your father would have been pleased or disappointed at the way you turned out.”

  Fury flashed through Yasmin’s eyes. She shoved away from the wall. “How dare you—?” Her ruined leg crumpled beneath her, and she collapsed to the floor with a whimper.

  Zara’s low chuckle was humorless. “Your father was on track to unite most of the region’s terrorist groups. If he had succeeded, he might have gone down as one of the greatest leaders in history, his political and religious beliefs notwithstanding. My father—” Zara shrugged. “—is a classics professor at a university. When he’s not teaching class, he’s about as inspirational as wallpaper. And look at us.” She paused for a beat to allow the differences in their position to sink in; the daughter of a university professor had trumped the daughter of a terrorist. “I know my father is disappointed with the way I turned out. Would yours have been with you?”

  Yasmin bared her teeth. Her snarl, to Zara, sounded like the cry of a trapped and injured animal.

  Zara slid down against the length of the wall to sit across from Yasmin. “He wanted something different for you, didn’t he? That’s why he kept your existence a secret.”

  Yasmin stared at Zara, who waited, unafraid of silence.

  The younger woman lowered her gaze. “I wanted to stay with him, but he sent me to live with my mother. She flittered from one man to another, each one as shallow and insignificant as she, while my father thanklessly fought Allah’s battle.” Yasmin’s trembling voice steadied. “As soon as I could, I returned to him, but he still refused to keep me beside him. He wanted me safe, as if safety was the highest virtue for any woman to aspire to.” She scoffed. “To please him I took a job at the international school in Beirut, but visited him often in secret.” Her voice cracked slightly. “I was with him when the soldiers attacked the camp. They killed all the men. They left me alive because I was a woman. I was not a threat.” Her mouth twisted into a ghastly grin, made macabre by tears glittering in her eyes. “I held my father; he died in my arms.”

  “And to avenge him, you started Nakob.”

  Yasmin scoffed. “You know nothing of my father and nothing of me.”

  “I know enough. You want his approval, even though you can no longer have it in this life.” Zara shrugged. “I feel the same way about my parents. My mother died protecting me from men who prey on women as if it is their right and privilege. My father turned his back on the land of his birth to keep me safe from those men—the same kind of men you have brought together and turned loose on innocent girls.”

  Yasmin’s nostrils flared with her dismissive snort. “Their fathers could not protect them, any more than mine could protect me.”

  “Protection demands a piece of the protector’s soul. Most parents would have willingly paid that price.” My mother, my father, and Danyael paid that price for me. “Sometimes, strangers pay that price.” She pushed to her feet and pulled out her handgun.

  Yasmin’s eyes widened as she stared down the barrel. The arrogant visage of a terrorist leader caved into a terrified young woman. She was a woman in transition, and Zara had no intention of waiting for her to complete her metamorphosis.

  Something fluttered in Zara’s abdomen as a fetus squirmed her way into a comfortable position. The heavy weight against Zara’s chest lightened, and she drew a deep breath to fill her lungs. My mother protected me. I will do the same. I will not allow any daughter of mine to grow up in a world where you’ve
set the rules.

  Yasmin and Zara’s eyes met for the last time. Zara murmured, “Be at peace.” Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  22

  Eight hours later, a black limousine cruised along the long driveway to the Burj Al Arab. In the distance, the distinctive sailboat shape of the most luxurious hotel in the world rose twenty-seven floors over the crystal-blue waters of the gulf. The city of Dubai, no less impressive, lay in the background.

  Klah, wearing a chauffer’s uniform, scowled at Zara’s reflection through the rearview mirror. “I still can’t believe you thought it was the only way.”

  Zara’s gaze flicked sideways to warn Nazrol to stay out of the conversation before meeting Klah’s gaze in the mirror. “Yasmin’s not only dead, but buried. Why are we still having this conversation?”

  “How could you decide—?”

  “She founded Nakob and masterminded the kidnapping of the girls. Her men, inspired by her leadership, managed to kill Lila and tried to hijack and explode the bus. If I didn’t kill her then, I would have had to come back in a few years to kill her anyway. At the very least, I’ve saved myself a round-trip plane ticket. Are you objecting to my decision or to the fact that I didn’t consult you before deciding?”

  A dull flush tinged Klah’s cheeks. “Nazrol, what do you think?”

  The younger man shrugged. “Zara has done us all a favor. Nakob has been a blight on the region.”

  “Yasmin’s death won’t stop the fighting.”

  “In these parts, nothing stops the fighting.” Nazrol sounded matter-of-fact. “But her death will set off a power struggle. By Allah’s grace and with perhaps a little help, the casualties will be the right ones, and the moderates will leave Nakob to join Hezbollah. If the commandant manages this crisis correctly, within a year, Nakob will be a byline in history as opposed to a thorn in all our sides.”

  “So you’re fine with Zara shooting a woman in cold blood?”

  Nazrol spread his hands. “I do not presume to tell Zara what to do. She wouldn’t listen anyway.” He leaned forward to pat Klah’s shoulder in a gesture of companionship. “My advice for you, my friend, is to roll with it, as they say in America.”