by Mina Khan
Did she want him to stay? Yes. Ever since Rukh had come into her life, Sarah hadn’t had nightmares, hadn’t walked around afraid. Being in his presence allowed her respite from worries of real and otherworldly monsters, brought her innermost desires alive, made her feel like a woman. He filled her with a warm, deep conviction that she’d be safe and cherished. As long as he stayed with her.
Chapter Six
Rukh woke the next morning to the warm sun bathing his naked skin and to the sight of Sarah’s smile. She lay next to him in the hotel bed, propped up on an elbow, watching him. At his smile, she leaned forward and shyly placed a kiss on the tip of his nose.
“You are so beautiful in the morning light,” he said.
In response, she bent down and kissed him again. They explored each other with slow, gentle hands, touching every square inch of skin. All the while, staring into each other’s eyes. Their limbs twined together, skin against skin. He climbed on top. This time, they took it slow and languid. A naked waltz.
Afterwards, they lay in each other’s arms. “So what now?” he asked.
Sarah shrugged. “What do you want?”
Rukh looked at her a long while. “I want to make to love to you again, and again and again,” he said. “I want to get to know you better, taste the Caribbean in you.”
She gave a happy laugh. “I think we can grant your wish.”
The happiness in her voice, in her face, shook him, left him feeling lost and guilty. “I want to do all that, but I can’t,” he said.
“Why?” Her voice cracked. She sat up and grabbed a pillow, hugged it close to her chest. “Oh my God, you’re married.”
“What? No!” His arms tightened around her. “I…we have to talk.”
She blinked at him. “You have a boyfriend.”
“You want me to prove my manhood to you all over again?” He growled, pushing closer.
“Could be fun,” she giggled. “But you wanted to talk.”
Talk. Right. Trying to fish for information wasn’t working. Time to go for the direct approach. Rukh kissed her long and sweet, fearing that it might be the last kiss they shared. Then he sat back and let out a sigh. “Sarah, I am an assassin,” he said.
She threw him a puzzled look. “You mean assistant?” she said. “You told me yesterday.”
He shook his head, making his hair fly about his bare shoulders. “No, I mean assassin, as in a professional killer.”
At first, Sarah didn’t believe him. She laughed. “Are you, like, trying to scare me away?” she asked. “I mean if you are trying to get rid of me all you have to say is you aren’t interested.”
Rukh expelled an exasperated sigh and let go of her. He rose out of the bed and went to his laptop set on the desk. His back to Sarah, Rukh’s fingers ran through the procedures automatically—starting it up, opening his email, finding the relevant file. A series of clicks filled the silent room.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Sarah getting dressed. Would she lash out at him? Would she finally believe only to be repulsed by the fact that he was a professional killer? Would she fight or run? Something told him, she’d fight.
When he had her picture on-screen and the file open, Rukh called Sarah over. Once she saw her face staring back at her, Sarah didn’t argue but sat and read the screen. He sat on the bed and watched her, dread curdled in his stomach.
After a while, a time that seemed unbearably long, she turned wide, incredulous eyes to him. Eyes shining with unshed tears. “You were serious….”
He nodded.
“I am your target,” she said.
He nodded again.
“You work for the government.” She scrunched her face in confusion. “Homeland Security? The CIA?”
“Actually, I said that just to stop the questions,” he said. “I freelance.”
She shot out of her chair and skittered away from him. “Damn!”
They stared at each other for a long while. He sat between her and the door.
A series of emotions played across Sarah’s face before her expression finally registered, hurt.
“So our meeting, our date, our making love…all of that was a sham?” she asked. “All of it was a setup to the kill?”
“The first time I saw you, yes.” He sighed, realizing she had no clue about the newsroom. No point confusing matters trying to explain that now. “Every time afterwards, it’s because I wanted to help. I wanted to keep you safe.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “Safe? Aren’t you the guy hired to kill me?”
Honesty was overrated. He told her the truth, gave her a chance, and now honesty was biting his ass.
“If I wanted you dead do you think I’d tell you, show you, all this?” he asked, his voice carefully controlled. “Why didn’t I kill you in your sleep?”
She responded with an angry shrug. “Maybe you’re sick,” she said. “Maybe you like to toy with people before you kill them.”
He flinched away from her. Silence lay between them like an invisible dying elephant. When she spoke again her voice was a broken half whisper. “I am such a fool,” she said. “Here you were playacting and I was falling in love.”
Love. Rukh’s fists clenched at his side. “I wasn’t playacting.”
She got right into his face. “How could you still go out with me, flirt and laugh with me, dance, make love with me, knowing about this death sentence?” Her voice broke, as she turned away. “How the hell could you do all that?”
Her turning away snapped his control, lit the fuse to his fears. He reared out of his chair and spun her around. “What the hell was I supposed to do? Say hi, someone’s trying to kill you, and oh, would you like to first have dinner with me?”
Fear that she was about to walk out the door and out of his life slammed into him, set his heart thundering. He couldn’t let that happen. Rukh pulled in deep breaths, forced himself to calm.
“I wanted us to have a chance and so I decided to be honest because I thought you deserved at least that.”
She stumbled toward the door and he turned away to face the picture hanging over the headboard. He couldn’t watch her walk out. Might as well play the sympathy card. Anything to keep her from leaving. “I shared a secret that could get me imprisoned, no, killed. Texas has a death penalty.”
The sound of the door opening and closing, soft snicks, echoed in his head loud and long. Guess it didn’t work. Rukh squared his shoulders, stiffened his spine, to keep himself from crumbling. He stood for a long time staring at the picture. He remembered it was something pretty and soothing, but at that moment it was nothing but a blur of different colors. Pain crushed his every pore. So this is what being in love felt like. Heaven and hell.
Rukh didn’t know how much time—seconds or hours—had passed, he didn’t know if she’d left or not, he didn’t even know who he was anymore.
Footsteps approached him. Rukh didn’t turn or move, just stood there and waited for whatever was coming.
“Why? Why did you tell me?” Sarah asked.
“Because you made me feel things I’ve never felt,” he said, hanging his head in shame.
“I need to know,” she said. “There are so many jobs out there. Why kill?”
“I sort of grew up in it, and was good at it,” he said.
“The deaths never bothered you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be very good at my job if it did.”
She folded her arms under her breasts. “I ask you an important question, and you quote me Casino Royale?”
He was messing this up. Bad. “I’m sorry, but believe me I just want to keep you safe.”
“I felt ambushed and it hurt,” she said, her eyes shimmering with tears. After a long while, she shook her head. “But I believe you.”
He gathered her in his arms then and kissed the top of her head.
They decided to work together. Time was running out, since his client expected Sarah to be dead by Thursday. Tomorrow.
“Bu
t who’d hate me enough to want me dead?” Sarah said. “I really can’t think of anyone.”
“It may not be about hate at all, but desperation.” Rukh got up and stretched. “I seriously think all this has something to do with your work. So what do you have going on at the paper?”
Her gaze slipped. “Um, not much I can talk about…yet,” she said.
Rukh sat down opposite her and fixed her with a stern look. “This is not the time for ethical debates.”
Sarah gnawed her lower lip, almost driving him insane. “It’s not that, it’s just that the story hasn’t been published yet and journalists don’t talk about unpublished work.” She shoved her fingers through her hair, making the curls stretch and bounce back.
“Jasmine!” Rukh growled out curses underneath his breath. “Someone is trying to kill you.”
Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. “I know.” She closed her eyes and faced all her fears and worries. Then she looked at him. “I’m writing about the governor.”
Apparently, the governor of Texas—happily married to a pretty, blonde wife—was having an affair…with a man. Not only that, the lover had been appointed to head the Texas Department of Transportation. Interestingly, many of the contracts were being awarded to friends of this lover, and his friends and family were buying up land wherever major roadways were being developed.
While many dummy corporations and layers of bureaucratic paperwork covered up any direct connections, Sarah had spent months researching and talking to sources. She now had phone records, business records, cell phone photographs, marriage records, property records and bank balances proving the story and proving that a lot of the money generated by this corruption was finding its way into the governor’s war chest for the upcoming presidential race.
Rukh let out a whistle. “That’s a hell of a story.”
“Yeah, I worked hard to bring it all together,” Sarah said. “I just have to tie up a few odds and ends. It’s going to be published this Sunday.”
It was just Wednesday.
“No one knows about the story, so we are going to make a big splash with it,” she continued. “We’ll be the ones breaking it.” A proud smile appeared and disappeared from her face when she caught his expression.
Oh, someone knew about it all right, Rukh thought. Someone who figured with Sarah dead, the story was dead too. Of course, if the story was almost complete, the editor could still run it. He would, if he were the editor. “Have you turned it in to your editor yet?”
She shook her head. “I’m paranoid. I like to tweak the story until the very last second of deadline. Make sure it’s perfect.”
Seemed like his client also knew the woman. Hence the Thursday deadline. “So where is this story?”
“On a zip drive, in my purse…” Her face lost all color, as she turned to stare at her bag tossed on the floor near the door. “That’s what those guys were after…” She turned terror-wide eyes on to him. “You said the first time you saw me was a setup.”
Oh shit. “That wasn’t the first time I saw you,” he said. Nausea churned in his gut. Now didn’t seem the right time to spring the Djinn explanation on her. Her nerves seemed brittle and fragile as spun glass. Shit. Shit. Shit. “The first time I saw you, I was hidden. In fact, I’d planned to stay hidden, but those two hoodlums showed up and things changed.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
“Good.” The knot in his stomach unraveled. Rukh focused on business. “So if you’re writing about the governor, then we can suppose he’s the client.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “It could be his lover, his wife, or even his mother.”
“Whatever.” Rukh rolled his eyes. “The stories are about him, so I take out the governor and your problem is solved.”
A jolt of nervous exhilaration shrieked through her. To have so much power at her fingertips, to have this man willing to protect her and kill for her…left Sarah feeling drunk. For a moment, she could imagine what Helen of Troy might have felt. Then reality crashed down on her head, sobered her in an instant. Death. They were speaking of death.
Sarah shook her head. “No.” She convinced him they could nail the client without resorting to murder.
Rukh resisted for a while. Death was final and foolproof. It could be trusted…he’d been killing long enough to know that deep in his bones.
“I really appreciate you trusting me and telling me,” Sarah said. “It gives me a chance to stay alive, but I can’t agree to another’s death.”
“But they want you dead,” he argued.
“Yes, but I am not them.”
He turned away from her, muttering about naïve and idealistic fools.
Sarah turned him back towards her.
“You satisfied desires I didn’t even know I had. It wasn’t just sex, it was a connection—an electric, intrinsic connection that’s not easily found,” she said. “But I have to confess, I can’t be with a killer. Do something else, anything else, that doesn’t involve murder or torture and is preferably legal.”
Good to her last breath. He shook his head, laughing. “Let’s see if we can save your life first.”
They suspected the client to be the governor or his lover, but they needed to prove it. The email address was one of those free email accounts; further digging only yielded a bogus identity behind it.
So Rukh called his bank and had them return the recent payment. Next he sent an email to the client: “Problem with fulfilling your order due to nonpayment of balance. Please advise.”
Sarah hoped their ploy would draw the contact out and they could get a picture of him.
Within a few minutes, he had a reply. “Balance transferred at 0900 Tuesday of this week as per your specifications. Please explain.”
He sent a terse response: “Payment isn’t in our account and we regret to inform you that we are unable to fulfill your order under the circumstances.”
Sarah went through some yoga moves as Rukh paced; both kept glancing over at the laptop as if it was a ticking time bomb.
After the longest fifteen minutes, the email alert chimed again. The missive read: “Time 2 short. Let’s arrange for f-2-f handover.”
Rukh looked at her. “He wants a face-to-face.”
“Has he ever met you?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I never meet anyone in person.”
Rukh typed: “Fine. Where and when?”
Sarah grabbed his hand before he could send. “Are you sure? This could be dangerous. You don’t have to do this.”
Guilt gnawed at him, he still hadn’t found the time to tell her he wasn’t wholly human. What was dangerous for her, wasn’t necessarily for him. Fine, timing had nothing to do with it. He was a coward, afraid of losing her. Rukh shook her hand free and clicked the send button. “I want to.”
The drop-off was arranged for 4:00 p.m. at the outdoor café of the Whole Foods Market on 6th Street. He said he’d be the blond with the loud Hawaiian shirt and straw hat. The password: Aloha.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Sarah said. “For one thing, you’re definitely not blond.”
“I will be by the time I show up at Whole Foods,” he replied.
Sarah called her friend, Bob—a photographer at the paper—and left a message. Then she called her contact at the district attorney’s office.
“Hey Tim, I’ve a tip for you for a change.” She cleared her throat. “Involving political corruption, love triangle, and murder for hire.”
She listened for a bit. “I can’t tell you more, but if things turn out the way I think they will, you’ll have definite proof.”
Sarah raked her fingers through her hair. “We’ve worked long enough together, you have to trust me on this.” She blew out a breath. “I have a source who can nail the governor’s ass, but this person will need some favors.”
Her gaze strayed to him. The worry and warmth in her eyes sent a shiver up his spine. No one but h
is da had ever given a rat’s ass about him. Guilt festered like a wound. He needed to come clean about his Djinn part. Tell her everything.
“He’ll need immunity and witness protection.” She sighed. “I guess I can call your boss and try to deal with him.”
His email pinged. Rukh tuned out the phone call and clicked on the reply. His contact wanted more, he didn’t want to risk speaking to the wrong person. Yeah, unknowns could come back to bite.
Rukh took a deep breath, released it, then typed. “Ask me the time and get back a global answer.” Cryptic as hell, but he couldn’t come up with anything else to reassure the guy at such short notice.
Once that was taken care of, he shut the computer down and turned toward Sarah. She stood by the window, in profile, chewing on her thumb.
He went to her, encircled her in his arms from behind, placed a soft kiss at the warm nape of her neck. Below them, Lady Bird Lake glittered blue-green in the sunlight.
“How did you become an assassin?”
He told her about his dad. Daniel O’Shay had been a decent dad. He’d also been a two-bit crook and did petty jobs—from lookout to getaway car driver and delivery guy—for bigger, badder crooks. Rukh had accompanied him on jobs, helped out. His djinn talents to shadow, stalk and travel through the ethereal plane had helped him rise through the ranks. The world of humans, at least the more criminal part of it, had welcomed him with open arms no questions asked.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“He drank himself to death,” Rukh said.
“I’m sorry.” She turned in his arms and kissed him. “I can tell you miss him.”
He cradled her in his arms, enjoying the sharing, the acceptance, the trust…. He took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For trying to get me a deal with the district attorney’s office.”
“Now that I’ve seen what you can do in bed, I want to keep you here,” she said, smiling. Then her eyes darkened. “And I want to keep you safe. Like you said, Texas has a death penalty.”