Zara

by Jade Kerrion

  “The police hushed it up?”

  “Lack of evidence. No eyewitnesses came forward, although she insisted many others had witnessed it. She seemed to be on the road to recovery, but her apparent progress came to a screeching halt when Chuck returned on leave. It was his first visit home after joining the SEALs. According to him, he was showing his family pictures of his SEAL buddies when she turned pale and left the room. That night, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  Zara frowned. “You’re suggesting that she recognized her rapist…and that he was a SEAL?”

  “I suspect Chuck also arrived at that conclusion. He reached back out to his CIA contact after his sister’s suicide, but apparently failed to make the meeting.”

  “So he decided to take matters into his own hands.”

  “Or perhaps the meeting took place but the records were deleted.”

  “In the same way all mentions of Yasmin were deleted? What makes you think the meeting took place at all?”

  “How else could Chuck have found the money to hire American mercenaries?”

  “So he kidnapped my friends and was behind the attack on my Baalbek home.”

  Xin nodded. “He’s an angry man out for revenge on the SEALs, but he’s not a monster. I suspect the attack on your home was an attempt to retrieve the girls to escort them safely back to Beirut.”

  “Why the hell would he do that? The girls were safe with me.”

  Xin sighed. “Has it ever occurred to you, Zara, that some of the things you do make you look guilty? Chuck doesn’t trust his SEAL team. Why would he trust you? You killed embassy Marines, kidnapped the ambassador’s daughter, and then delivered her into a Nakob trap where she’s brutally killed in front of her family.”

  Zara’s eyes narrowed. “I underestimated Yasmin’s reach.”

  “That’s beside the point. Immediately after that, you killed the American mercenaries waiting at your home…the men Chuck hired to find you.”

  “Chuck took my friends.”

  “Any smart man evacuates civilians out of harm’s way before trying to talk to you. Back at your house, you shot first, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. I always shoot first.”

  “You didn’t even try to ask questions.” Xin shook her head. “That’s exactly the sort of behavior I mean. It’s never obvious which side you’re working for.”

  “So Chuck thought I was working with Nakob?”

  “I don’t know what he’s thinking, but based on what he’s seeing, what is he supposed to believe? You’ve got terrorists camping out at your Baalbek house.”

  “Hezbollah was protecting my home, protecting the girls.”

  “Zara, only you can tell the difference between Nakob and Hezbollah. You’re able to get different responses out of people who, on the surface, are indistinguishable from each other. To everyone else, they’re lumped into this big category called ‘Middle Eastern terrorists.’”

  Zara scowled. “Chuck isn’t the good guy here.”

  “He’s not—he killed his team, and he needs to answer for it—but he’s not entirely at fault for including you in his sights. You—and by extension, your friends—are guilty by association.”

  Zara shook her head. “I thought that Nakob and the American mercenaries were working together.”

  Xin smiled. “You’ve always had that paranoid streak. No, they’re not working together, at least not in the way you imagined, although they are both part of someone’s grand plan.”

  “So who’s behind all this?”

  “My best guess is Patrick Seneca.”

  Zara’s jaw dropped. “The U.S. secretary of state? Why?”

  “I have my own suspicions, but it’s a question best reserved for him.”

  “If you’re guessing, then you have no evidence.”

  Xin shook her head. “None at all, which is why this crisis has been especially frustrating. I’m dealing with symptoms, not the source. He would have had two perfect sparks to ignite a war—a pseudo-religious terrorist group targeting innocent Western schoolgirls and an elite Special Forces group murdered in the rescue attempt—both guaranteed to send Americans into righteous fury. Thanks to you, the former is no longer an issue. Lila’s dead, but the press can spin that story easily enough, and the other girls are safe, if not wholly unharmed. The murdered SEAL team, however, is still a possibility—if not for two loose ends.”

  “Chuck and Klah.”

  “That’s right.” Xin nodded. “I suspect Patrick wants those loose ends tied up soon. A local agent, one who has been known to work on his behalf, has been making discreet inquiries to track you down.”

  “It couldn’t have been too discreet if you heard about it.”

  Xin smiled. “I hear everything. I made sure the agent learned about your usual hangouts in Beirut. In fact, I stopped just short of actually setting up an appointment. It wouldn’t do to make it too easy. I suspect he’s got a deal for you.”

  “You’re hoping he’ll tie Patrick Seneca to this.”

  “I’m not that hopeful. Patrick will be hard to pin down, but if Patrick is indeed behind Chuck’s funding, he’ll know where Chuck is hiding. Find Chuck, and you’ll find your friends.”

  On the return chartered flight from Dubai to Lebanon, Zara mentally replayed her conversation with Xin. She lingered over every nuance, questioned Xin’s choice of words, and wondered whether the lilts in Xin’s tone meant more than the words suggested. With Xin, it was nearly impossible to tell where the truth ended and the lies began.

  At least she and Xin were talking again. They had not for six months since Zara had struck a deal with Alex Saunders, director-general of the Mutant Affairs Council to guarantee Galahad’s freedom at the cost of Danyael’s.

  After rescuing Lucien, after killing ten men to save her life, Danyael had done what she had asked of him that night on the yacht. He had used his empathic powers to take the confusion—she had refused to call it love, even though that was what it had been—away. The choice had seemed obvious; why would she want Danyael, the emotionally damaged, physically crippled alpha empath, when Galahad, the genetically engineered perfect human being, wanted her?

  Danyael, his eyes seared with regret, had done what she had asked of him, and then turned and walked out of her life. Stripped of his allies, he had fled, hunted by the Mutant Affairs Council for his role in killing the men who had attacked her.

  And that was when Zara had struck a devil’s bargain—Danyael for Galahad.

  She and Galahad had tracked Danyael to a state park in West Virginia. On a bridge over a river swollen with the runoff of melted snow, Danyael had confronted Galahad. Danyael’s mutant friends—alpha telekinetics and alpha telepaths—had chosen to stand with him, and Galahad was completely outclassed. With an indifferent sweep of his hand, a telekinetic flung Galahad into the raging water.

  “No!” Zara raced down the hill even though she knew she could not reach Galahad in time to save him. She was close enough, however, to meet Danyael’s eyes where he stood on the bridge, surrounded by people who protected him. Indecision flickered in those dark depths before solidifying into bittersweet acceptance and quiet regret.

  And love. She would have sworn she caught a glimpse of it in his eyes.

  But how could it be? He knew of the deal she had struck with Alex. She had chosen to sacrifice his freedom for Galahad’s, yet he turned his back on his friends and leaped into the water to save his enemy.

  Shock and disbelief froze her. For me. The stunned thought flashed through her mind. He’s doing it for me.

  Injured and exhausted, Danyael fought the icy chill and the swell of the river to save Galahad’s life. Yet when the Mutant Affairs Council came for Danyael, he chose not to save himself. He could have blasted out his empathic powers and driven everyone to suicide, except that “everyone” included her.

  Alex had once told her, “Danyael will not consciously or willingly harm you. That’s why you’re the on
ly one who can bring him in. No one else has any emotional claim on him.”

  He had been right about Danyael.

  She was Danyael’s only vulnerability.

  Their eyes had met for one last time when the Council enforcers locked the electric collar around Danyael’s neck. He slumped on the ground, soaked, his chest heaving from his struggle to pull Galahad from the water. Surely, he would have known that the electricity would stun him. He looked up slowly, and when their eyes met, the corner of his mouth tugged up in a half-smile.

  Had Danyael wanted her last memory of him to be beautiful?

  He had tried, and he had failed.

  Her last memory was of his strangled cry as electricity flooded his body, the sound cut off even before it could be fully vocalized. Her last memory was of his limp body loaded into a stretcher and carried away to be locked up, drugged, and tortured at ADX Florence.

  If he had known what he would endure in prison, would he have defended himself from the Council enforcers even if it meant killing her?

  Zara was not certain she knew the answer. There was no love strong enough, selfless enough to compel a man to suffer the hell of ADX Florence on behalf of another. Not even Danyael was that strong.

  I know you would have chosen differently if you’d known what your sacrifice meant.

  And if I could relive that moment, I would have chosen differently too.

  Zara inhaled deeply; the breath she released shuddered with aching loss. She closed her eyes and allowed the low purr of the airplane engine to blanket her in white noise.

  The suspicious edge of Klah’s voice, however, shredded her cocoon of perfect isolation. “I don’t believe we made that trip to Dubai for nothing.”

  “Not nothing,” she clarified without opening her eyes. She held on to the memory of Danyael’s final smile. The peace and acceptance in the faint curve of his lips steadied her in a way she could not explain. Danyael, as he had once been, was a man she had reluctantly admired, and she was finally okay with admitting it.

  She tapped her fingernails in an irregular rhythm on the leather armrest. “Tell me, Klah, are there limits to what you would do for your SEAL brothers?”

  “No.” His answer was immediate.

  “So, if your team recovered several pounds of uncut diamonds and Grass decided to keep half of the haul as insurance, you wouldn’t say a thing?”

  Klah responded with silence.

  Zara cracked her eyelids open and studied the flush on his cheeks, scarcely visible under the darkness of his skin. His eyes stared fixedly at the back of the leather seat in front of him.

  “What about a situation where Grass might have made a less-than-perfect call while on a mission, and a rookie SEAL made an error, compounding the mistake, resulting in his death?”

  Klah hesitated even longer before he finally spoke. “Jason…it was Jason’s fault.”

  “Chuck…Annie didn’t think so, did he?”

  Klah’s gaze darted to her. “They were friends. Of course Annie was cut up when Jason died. We all were.”

  “But there was a difference of opinion on who was responsible?”

  “The team leader is always responsible for the team,” Klah said, his voice devoid of emotion. “But in the heat of battle, people make mistakes.”

  Zara’s eyes narrowed. “Are you talking about Grass or Jason?”

  Klah gritted his teeth and looked away.

  “And could there have been a situation two years ago where a SEAL might have raped a girl at a bar? The girl filed charges, but they didn’t stick because the team kept silent. Without witnesses, the police dropped the case.”

  Klah’s head snapped up. His eyes were briefly unfocused before they locked on Zara’s face. “Perry…”

  “So it did happen.”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it. Grass was there. Pick and God, too.” He frowned. “What does it have to with Annie? He only joined the team last year.”

  “What was the girl’s name?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, if it was Chuck’s sister.” Zara had stopped thinking of Sergeant Charles O’Malley as Annie. Annie was his SEAL call name—a name he no longer deserved after murdering his teammates.

  Klah’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  “Chuck’s sister committed suicide three months ago when Chuck was home on leave, showing off photographs of his SEAL team buddies.”

  Klah dragged his hand over his face. “Oh, God. No.” His eyes peeked over the top of his hand. They were stricken. “Is it true?”

  “We won’t know without a name and a DNA test, but too many facts line up.”

  His chest sagged on a silent sigh. “No wonder. It makes sense…too late, but it makes sense.”

  “What does?”

  “Chuck’s anger after his sister’s funeral. I didn’t think anything of it. People deal with loss differently. If I’d known—if Grass had known—”

  “You would have stepped in and stopped it because the brotherhood protects its own and she was a SEAL’s sister?” Zara snarled. “Why wasn’t it enough for her to be a woman?”

  Klah slammed his fist on the armrest. “I wasn’t there; I don’t know what really went down that night. Women throw themselves at us when they find out we’re SEALs. Perry is a good man; if he had really thought she said no, he would have stopped.”

  “So that’s what it comes down to? He said, she said?”

  “Two people reading different things into the situation. An honest misunderstanding,” Klah snapped. “Tell me that has never happened to you.”

  Danyael. Without effort, she summoned the memory of the disbelief and denial stamped in his dark eyes when she accused him of raping her. It had been easier to blame him than admit that she had wanted him.

  An honest misunderstanding. Hell, that was such a ridiculously sterile label for rape.

  Except when it wasn’t rape. Danyael had not raped her.

  The question though was what had Perry done? The only two people who might have known what had happened that night were both dead—Chuck’s sister by her own hand, and Perry killed by Chuck. In the end, perhaps it didn’t even matter who was right or wrong. The perceived crime against one woman had escalated into mass murder and an international military crisis—one that Xin was now counting on Zara to defuse.

  A grim smile twisted Zara’s lips. Heck, she had thought that her talents only extended to launching crises. Almost everything that had gone wrong in Danyael’s life had stemmed from an honest, or in her case, deliberate misunderstanding. If she hadn’t accused him of rape, if she hadn’t allowed the self-inflicted lie to cement her early hatred of him, if she hadn’t acted on her hate and betrayed him to his enemies—

  If, if, if…

  Zara squeezed her eyes shut but nothing dampened the deep ache in her chest. She would have given anything to take back every single one of those “ifs.” If she hadn’t royally screwed up, could she have found love and happiness with Danyael?

  24

  The sunlight pouring through the leaves cast a dappled pattern on the concrete pathways encircling the René Moawad Garden in Beirut. Five laps into her running route, Zara paused to catch her breath beneath the shade of a large cypress tree. The rhythmic beat of her rapid jog must have lulled her baby to sleep; the flutters were few and far between, although enough to remind Zara of the baby’s presence. The contractions, thankfully, had slowed, negating the immediate need of a doctor. Athletic tape tightly wound around the bandages that crisscrossed her midsection, and a steady dose of pregnancy-safe painkillers kept her mobile.

  Of course, if Danyael had been around, he would have restored her to perfect health. His immediate instinct, whenever she was hurt, was to take her pain away. It didn’t seem to matter that her injuries drove him, retching blood, to his knees. He did not seem to care that he could not keep down any food and scarcely any water. He did not ask for help or for pity. All he needed was
a dark, quiet room to rest until he regained his strength, or at least his composure.

  It was so little to ask really. All he wanted was to be left alone when he was most vulnerable.

  And of course she had not been able to leave him alone. Chalk it up to her streak of pure obstinacy. Walls and closed doors contained Danyael’s empathic power when his formidable psychic shields collapsed beneath the weight of extreme exhaustion. Zara alone had dared to open the door separating the world from Danyael. Her first encounter with Danyael’s raw emotions had lasted less than a second. She had worked her way up to hours of unshielded contact with him, one hard-won second at a time.

  She never told him. He never knew.

  Fully cognizant of his private, lonely emotional hell, she would ask him the following day, “How are you doing?”

  Danyael’s standard answer, as much for himself as for her, was a faint smile and, “I’ll be all right.” Far more amazing, she knew he meant it; he believed it if only because hope was often all he had going for him. He would reach for the carton of orange juice in the refrigerator. The volume of water he mixed into his juice was a function of how much nausea he was fighting. He never told her; she figured it out.

  She had never seen him drink orange juice without diluting it.

  Physically, Danyael had never been well, yet emotionally and mentally, he was the strongest person she had known. Until ADX. Until imprisonment, drugs, and torture shattered him.

  There was nothing left of him to save.

  Zara drew a deep, shuddering breath. Love, for her, had arrived too late.

  The bustle of motion drew her attention back to her surroundings. An elderly man gestured at a scuffed-up chessboard on a rickety table. “Would you care for a game of chess?” he asked in Lebanese.

  She glanced at the old man. “Certainly.” She sat across from him and waited for him to make the first move.

  For several minutes, the only movement was of chess pieces across the board.

  The man finally broached the topic. “I have a deal you might be interested in.”