by Paula Graves
Tahir released her hand. If he'd noticed her reaction, he didn't show it. "Please, call me Tahir. May I call you Iris? It's a lovely name."
"Of course. And thank you." Iris smiled politely.
"Tahir is an anthropologist." Andrea interjected, obviously not happy to be left out of the conversation.
"I am writing a book connecting the mystic traditions of my people with mystic traditions around the globe. When I heard of this conference, I knew I would have to attend."
"You consider this an exploration of mystic traditions?" Iris asked, both intrigued and skeptical.
"Traditions are continually recycled." Tahir answered.
"One man's shaman is another man's medium?"
"Exactly." He motioned toward an empty table near the back of the room. "Shall we sit and discuss this further?"
Iris glanced at Andrea, whose sharp green eyes were focused on Tahir's face. Safe enough to go with him, she thought, since we obviously have a chaperone. "Certainly."
The three of them settled at the small, round table.
"Andrea tells me she is a sensitive "Tahir said, "Are you a sensitive as well?'
"I'm here in my friend Sandrine's place." Iris sidestepped the question. "Sandrine Beck, Do you know her?"
Tahir's brow accordioned with thought. "I am not familiar with the name, but there are so many people here."
"The name rings a bell with me." Andrea interjected.
"What does she look like?"
Iris pulled Sandrine's photo from her clutch purse and laid it on the table. Both Andrea and Tahir looked at it, Tahir shook his head, but Andrea nodded, "I remember her. She was one of the focus groupers."
"Focus groupers?" Iris asked.
As Andrea opened her mouth to answer, a familiar drawl interrupted. "Canapes?"
Ins looked up at Maddox who stood at her elbow with a tray "No, thank you" she murmured, her voice tighter than she intended.
His eyebrow twitched upward as he offered the tray of appetizers to Andrea and Tahir. Tahir shook his head, but Andrea took a couple of stuffed mushrooms from the tray.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Maddox asked.
"I'm dying for another appletini." Andrea said. "Tahir?"
"Alcohol is forbidden by my religion." Tahir said, his tone gentle, as if to assure Andrea he was not offended.
"I can get you a Shirley Temple."' Maddox drawled. "With a cute little cherry on top."
Tahir's gaze rose slowly to meet Maddox's. There was no humor in their ebony depths. "No, thank you."
"That'll be all, thanks" Iris glared at Maddox.
"Yes, ma'am" he murmured, moving on to the next table.
"Well, he was a bit fresh, wasn't he?" Andrea asked. "I suppose hotels can't always be picky about the help they hire "
Iris was surprised to find herself angered by Andrea's remark, given how annoyed at Maddox she'd been seconds before.
"He is not a native." Tahir murmured.
"He's been here a while " Iris said without thinking.
When both Andrea and Tahir looked at her for further explanation, she realized she'd almost given away her prior connection to Maddox.
"I noticed him talking with one of the other waiters earlier." she explained. "They spoke like old friends, so I assume he's been here a while."
Her table companions seemed satisfied with her explanation to her relief. She turned to Andrea. "You were saying something about a focus group before the waiter interrupted."
"Yes." Andrea nibbled around the edge of the stuffed mushroom. "Yesterday morning, after our first seminar session, Dr.Grinkov selected eight panelists and attendees to join him in an intensive focus group session"
"Are any of the focus group here tonight?" Iris asked,
Andrea looked around. "I don't think so. Your friend didn't tell you anything about the group?"
"I flew in yesterday afternoon. I haven't seen Sandrine at all. I'm beginning to worry about her." Iris confessed.
"Well, since I don't see any of the others, maybe they were moved to a different location for their part of the seminar."
Was the answer that simple? "Was Dr.Grinkov involved in any of today's seminars?" Iris asked.
"I didn't see him." Andrea said. "Tahir, did you?"
"I am sorry, I do not know him." Tahir touched Iris's hand, and a blast of darkness rocketed through her. She struggled to keep from jerking her hand away. Her whole body trembled with relief when he removed his hand.
She tried to read even a hint of the violent emotion she'd sensed in that brief contact, but his expression was placid. Had she mistaken someone else's feelings for Tahir's?
Maddox approached with an appletini. He set it in front of Andrea. His gaze met Iris's, concern in his blue-gray eyes, "Can I get anything for you, ma'am?"
"I'd like a glass of water." she answered, surprised to hear her voice shake.
His brow furrowed, but he headed toward the kitchen.
Tahir leaned toward her, but thankfully he didn't touch her again. "Are you unwell?"
"You do look a bit pale." Andrea agreed, her tone a little too eager. Obviously, she wouldn't mind if Iris left her alone with Tahir Mahmoud.
At this point. Iris wouldn't mind it, either. What she'd just learned from Andrea could explain Sandrine's disappearance. She needed to find someone who could confirm the theory for her.
She glanced across the room, where pretty, red-haired Sharon Phelps from Minnesota sat at the reception table, talking to the older lady who'd been her companion all night. Maybe Sharon knew something about the special focus group.
"I think I'll make this an early night." Iris said, rising from the table. "Please give the waiter my apologies."
Tahir rose with her, bowing. "Delightful meeting you, Miss Browning. I hope to see you at the conference tomorrow."
She smiled but didn't make any promises. If Andrea was right, then all her worries about Sandrine might be unfounded, and she could relax and enjoy her island vacation.
She stopped at the reception table on her way out. Sharon smiled as she approached. "You're not leaving so soon, are you?" she asked brightly.
"I've been fighting off a headache all day" Iris ribbed. "I have a quick question before I go. What do you know about a focus group formed during yesterday's session? I believe a Dr.Grinko may have selected the participants."
"Dr.Grinkov." Sharon corrected with a smile. "Boris Grinkov. Brilliant man. He did a lot of early pioneering in parapsychology in Russia before the end of the Cold War. He's a bit of a psychic himself."
"Dr.Grinkov." Iris corrected herself. "Do you know anything about that group?"
"Dr.Grinkov sometimes takes special interest in certain people and their abilities. He has some theories about synchronized paranormality that are totally fascinating." Sharon's face glowed as she spoke of Dr.Grinkov, reminding Iris of a teenager waxing rhapsodic about a hot new boy band.
"So he might have selected some members of the seminar for a special experiment?" Iris didn't know whether to be relieved or alarmed by the idea.
"I'll be happy to ask the organizers for you. Let me see what I can find out tonight and get back to you tomorrow at the conference. If I forget, look for me, yeah? I'll be around."
"Thank you." Sharon's exuberant friendliness was beginning to wear Iris out, so she took her leave and headed for the exit.
"Your water." Maddox's voice stopped her midstep.
She turned to find him holding a bottle of water, "Thanks." She lowered her voice. "I have some information"
"Me, too. I'll tell you about it later." He handed her a bottle of cold water. "Who's the sheikh?"
There was an odd tone to Maddox's voice, a guardedness that she hadn't heard from him before. She glanced back at the table, where Tahir Mahmoud was taking his leave from Andrea Barksdale. "His name is Tahir Mahmoud. He's from Kaziristan."
A sudden jolt of darkness roiled through her, making her legs grow wobbly. She reached for Maddox'
s arm to steady herself, but touching him only intensified the feeling. She pulled back, gripping the nearby door frame.
"Are you okay?" Maddox started toward her.
She put up her hand to stop him, "Just lost my balance on these darned shoes."
His gaze dropped to her low-heeled pumps. He looked back up at her, his expression guarded. "Go rest. I'll check on you when the party's over."
She should tell him not to bother. She was tired. She had a killer headache starting to form at the base of her skull. Her feet still ached from feeling the pinch of Andrea Baiksdale's spike heels, and the double shot of black emotion from both Tahir and Maddox lingered like nausea.
But when she spoke, she said. "Thanks, I'll wait up." And kicked herself for it all the way back to her room.
Maddox handed the last empty tray to Darlene in the kitchen. "The last folks are leaving. Need help cleaning up?"
She waved him away. "You know they'll kill me dead if I put a waiter on the cleanup. They don't wanna pay you the extra. Maddox."
"I'll do it under the table." he said, his sly grin rendering the offer risqué.
She grinned saucily. "Go on with your naughty self, I know better than to do the cha-cha with a fella like you."
He changed back into his street clothes in the employee bathroom and headed out the back to check on his Harley. It was still sitting, intact, in the parking lot.
But knowing he was living on borrowed time, he flagged down the night shift security guard passing by on his rounds and slipped him a twenty to watch over the bike for the next few hours.He rounded the side of the hotel, heading for the front, but stopped when he heard a familiar voice around the comer.
"It is not a good idea." Tahir Mahmoud's soft, clipped accent carried through the clear night air.
"I have no plausible reason to remain silent" The second speaker was also male, his voice pitched a few tones higher than Mahmoud's. He had a strong Russian accent. "What shall I say?"
"Nothing. I will take care of it." Tahir's voice grew softer, as if he was moving away.
Maddox turned the corner and spotted the Kaziristani and his Russian-accented companion, an older, rail-thin man in his fifties, walking up the steps to the hotel entrance. Maddox stayed in the shadows, watching them disappear inside. He released a slow, unsteady breath.
A Kaziristani. Here. What were the odds?
He made himself keep moving, slowed his racing heartbeat to match the steady cadence of his footfalls on the granite steps of the hotel entrance. Inside, a blast of cool air dried the pearls of perspiration dotting his forehead.
Several guests milled about the lobby, some checking in, others taking advantage of the hotel lounge, Tahir Malinioud and the Russian man were nowhere to be seen. Maddox's heartbeat slowed further. The blackness filling his chest and gut began to recede.
Three years ago, he reminded himself A lifetime.
It felt more like three minutes.
Iris threw the pencil on the desk and flexed her hands and wrists, gazing at the sketch of the bearded man with a critical eye. It was a good likeness, she decided, though it lacked something-the essence of who he was inside, perhaps, since she'd read almost nothing from him but emptiness during their brief encounter.
Still, anyone who had seen him would recognize him from the sketch. She'd show it around at the seminar in the morning, see if anyone knew who he was. A sudden chill washed over her sending goose bumps along her arms and legs. The cold slowly faded, replaced by a strange, jittery sensation that fluttered like a frantic moth.
A knock on her door made her jump. She padded to the door and peered through the security lens. It was Maddox.
She unlatched the security chain and opened the door. Maddox stood with one hand on the door frame, his eyes hooded by his furrowed brow. "I'm not sure I should be here."
The raw honesty in his voice was a surprise. She was used to his glib, sexy-devil side. "Are you all right?"
He straightened slowly. Within the span of a second, the Southern bad boy was back. "Just a bad mood, sugar. I get that way when a bunch of suits order me around all night. Why don't I catch you in the morning?"
She touched his arm, steeling herself against the darkness she knew lurked inside him. "Why don't you come in for a minute and let me tell you what I learned?"
She didn't let go of his arm as she led him to the chair across from her bed. The nausea in the pit of her belly roiled, but she ground her teeth and held herself together, drawing the blackness out of him and into herself He looked up at her, confusion in his expression. The sensation pouring into her changed suddenly, the dark emotions eclipsed by a flood of relief. She released his arm.
His gaze dropped. When he spoke, his voice sounded strange. Shaky. "What did you find out on your little reconnaissance mission, sugar?"
"There's a scientist who's the head of the Cassandra Society. Dr.Grinkov, He apparently pulled aside some of the conference attendees for a special focus group "
Maddox's head jerked up. "Dr.Grinkov?"
"Boris Grinkov. He's a former Soviet scientist whose field of expertise is parapsychology." She cocked her head. "Ever heard of him?"
Maddox's expression darkened. "I think I saw him."
"Dr.Grinkov?" she asked, surprised. "When? Where?"
"Just a minute ago, outside the hotel." A grim smile spread over his face. His eyes met hers, as dark as a stormy sky, "Talking to your buddy. Tahir Mahmoud."
Chapter Six
Iris frowned. "Are you sure?"
"Well, it was some older guy with a Russian accent. How many of those can there be around here?"
"Strange. Tahirsaid he didn't know Dr.Grinkov"
"People lie." Maddox countered. "Just because he bows and talks pretty doesn't mean a fellow's on the up-and-up"
She bristled, "I know that"
He dimpled, but the smile escaped his eyes. "I'm beginning to wonder if you do. I mean, here you are, all alone in your hotel room with a fellow you didn't even know before this morning. They could make you the poster child for what not to do when you're on vacation in a foreign country."
The danger she felt from Maddox had nothing to do with physical safety. "Should I call the police on you?"
His eyes darkened. "Probably."
The air around them sparked with tension. She forced her gaze away before she did something she couldn't take back, "Do you know Tahir Mahmoud?"
His long pause made her look up at him again. "No." He cleared his throat. "You said something about a focus group?"
Iris nodded. "Dr.Grinkov pulled several people into a special session yesterday. Nobody seems to know what the focus group was about, but Sandrine seems to have been one of them"
"Well, that's good news, isn't it?"
Iris bit her lip, "I want to think so. But why wouldn't she have left word for me if she was going to be out of pocket?"
"I don't know" he admitted. "But if all the others did that, too, I guess it explains all the talk about missing people huh?"
"What about you?" she asked Maddox, changing the subject. "Did you find out anything while you were playing waiter?"
"I confirmed that Celia Shore was part of this hoodoo." he answered, "I think you ought to check in on her tomorrow after all. Maybe she knows something."
"I thought you said she had amnesia."
"She remembers everything before the flight here, so surely she knows why she was coming here in the first place."
"Okay."
He fell silent a moment, his gaze warm on her cheeks. She didn't look at him, afraid of what she was beginning to feel. "What's wrong with you"?"
Her head snapped up. "Excuse me?"
His voice was disarmingly gentle. "You're obviously in pain, but you said it's not gonna kill you. What is it, then?"
She closed her eyes, "It's just…pain. Sometimes bad, most of the time bearable. It's worse when I'm under stress."
Nothing of what she'd just told him was a lie, exactly. She
didn't think he was quite ready to hear that most of the pain she felt belonged to the people around her instead of herself, "I'm actually feeling better at the moment."
It was true. That unexpected flood of relief she'd felt during the last seconds of her connection with Maddox had eased the twinges and sensations left over from the party.
"I'm glad."
He put his hand on her bare knee, his fingers warm and slightly callused. Instead of a repeat of the dark emotional pain she usually felt from him, raw, unfettered desire rocketed right to her, stealing her breath.
It wasn't coming from him, she realized. It was coming from her.
His emotions were calm by comparison. Gentleness. Concern, She felt a buzz of something else, a low-level tension that might be a faint echo of her own suddenly rampaging hormones, but his focus seemed to be more noble than carnal.
She rose to get away from him, needing the distance to calm her rattled nerves. She searched for a safe subject to get her mind off the fire licking at her belly.
"I was hoping I'd see the man I ran into at the Tropico tonight at the cocktail party. He said his friend disappeared from the conference, too."
"Maybe she was part of that focus group, as well."
She supposed it could be. His spoken concern for his friend had sounded real. But that emptiness-she couldn't shake the memory of that sensation. It was as if he had built a wall around his emotions, hid them so that she couldn't sense anything from him that he didn't want her to feel.
Could he know who she was, what she could do? But how?
"Are you sure he didn't tell you his name?" Maddox asked.
"Positive. But he mentioned his friend's name." She searched her memory, trying to recall the woman's name he'd mentioned. "Hana something-"
"There probably couldn't be that many people named Hana registered for the conference." Maddox noted, pushing to his feet. "I could check into that part of his story, at least."
"I'm not sure if they'll just give you information about hotel guests if you ask." Iris stood to walk him to the door.
"Well, I know ways of-" His words cut off mid-sentence as his gaze fell to the sketchpad on the table by the window. He picked up the pad, his brow furrowed. "Is this him?"