“What is all of this about? Who is behind this?” she demanded. “Are you really working for Hammersmith?”
“No questions.” There was a briefcase on the seat next to him, and he grabbed a pad of paper from it, and a pen, and handed them to her.
“Now you’re going to write Kenneth a note, which we will have delivered to him. I will dictate it to you. Write exactly what I tell you to.”
He dictated a note to Kenneth in which she told him that she and Alfonse were lovers and she’d been playing him for a fool. She wrote down that she’d gotten all the information that she needed from Kenneth, and mocked him for ever thinking that she could care for someone as stupid and shallow as him. He told her to conclude it “This is payback for Sophronia,” and then sign her name.
She kept her face expressionless as she wrote the letter, stuffing her rage deep down inside.
Kenneth. Would she ever see him again? The thought of being torn away from him made her physically ill, but she had no choice. They had her mother. As soon as she was reunited with her mother, she’d find a way to make this bastard pay for this. She didn’t care what it cost her.
She handed him the note, picturing Kenneth’s reaction when he saw it and struggling not to vomit. Alfonse read what she’d written, and then nodded.
“So, you know that I was at Kenneth’s villa helping him do research. You must have an inside man there,” she said, and the thought of somebody on the inside, betraying Kenneth, made her claws shoot from her fingertips.
“I said no questions, you stuck up shifter bitch,” he snarled, and she felt a sudden prick in her leg, and realized he’d jabbed her with a needle.
Suddenly she was terribly, terribly sleepy and dizzy. Her mother’s face, brave and frightened, swam before her before her, and then Kenneth’s face floated by, and then a dark cloud enveloped her and she was gone.
Chapter Eleven
“The breeze is kind of nice,” Pixie observed, sipping her coffee and admiring the view of the alley at the back of The Date Tree café. “The café’s got an open air feel to it.”
“That’s what I love about you, Pixie. Your ridiculous and misplaced optimism. The way you can look at giant gaping mortar holes as a positive.” Bobbi drank sweet, hot coffee and dipped into her goat stew with a piece of flatbread.
“Ha! You admit that you love me!”
“When I’m not fighting the temptation to kill you. It’s about 80-20.”
“Eighty percent of the time, you love me,” Pixie said smugly.
“Nope.” Bobbi shook her head and took another swig of coffee. “Hey. Is that Karesh heading our way?”
“It sure is,” Pixie said. “I wonder if that means his family is ready to cooperate.”
“I doubt it.” Bobbi frowned. “He came here by himself. His father was clearly the one in charge; if they were ready to work with us, they’d have come here with him.”
Karesh glanced around the shop as if making sure nobody noticed him, before sitting at the table with them.
“Sure, pull up a chair,” Pixie said.
“I just did.” He looked puzzled.
Pixie and Bobbi exchanged a glance. “I don’t think sarcarsm translates well across cultures,” Bobbi said. She turned to Karesh. “So, you’re here without your father’s knowledge or consent. If you have the information that we need, my boss’s offer still holds – even if the rest of your family won’t come with you. You do know that staying here is suicide, right?”
Karesh sighed. He nodded at Mamoud, who had bustled up to their table at the sight of a new customer. “I’ll have coffee,” he said. He waited until Mamoud walked away before he said “It’s not that simple. We have responsibilities that we cannot abandon.”
“What kind of responsibilities?” Bobbi asked.
“Our family was assigned to be the guardians of those statues as soon as they were created. Or rather you could say, we were cursed to be their guardians. We have been guarding those statues for thousands of years.”
“Huh. You don’t look that old,” Pixie said, squinting at him critically. “I mean, I’d guess maybe 900 years, tops. Not a day over a thousand. Botox, much?”
He didn’t crack a smile. “It was a task handed down from generation to generation. We guard the statues with our lives, because of the great doom that would be visited on humanity if they fell in the wrong hands.”
“Like whose hands?”
“Like anybody foolish enough to try to meddle with powers they don’t understand,” Karesh said sharply. “There should not even be anybody left alive today who knows what these statues can do, aside from my family, but clearly, if somebody stole those statues from your boss, then somebody knows their power.”
Mamoud set down a small pot of coffee in front of Karesh, along with a cup and saucer. Karesh poured milk from the pitcher into the cup, and they waited for Mamoud to walk away before they started speaking again.
“You are the guardians of the statues,” Bobbi said thoughtfully. “So…you do have some of the statues?”
Karesh appeared to consider the question for a minute, then finally he answered, hesitantly. “I am going to have to trust you, because I have nowhere else to turn. My father’s actions are putting this family in danger. In fact…” And then he shook his head, scowling.
“What, for heaven’s sake?” Bobbi demanded, exasperated.
“I fear that the statues have corrupted him. They are pure evil. Spending time in their presence is dangerous. He is acting strangely these days. He is insisting that we all stay here, refusing to leave our home, while war threatens to destroy us. If we all stay here and die, then there will be nobody left to guard the statues.”
“If you were guarding those statues so well, why did Kenneth’s grandfather get ahold of some of them?” Bobbi persisted.
Karesh sighed. “He did not buy the statues that we guard. There were two groups of statues. Many thousands of years ago, after the statues were created, they were entrusted to two different families. Time went on. There were wars, there were natural disasters, kingdoms rose and fell, and eventually, our family lost touch with the other guardians. We believe that they were all wiped out during a plague. Our family had no idea where the other statues were until we heard of them being put up for sale. When we heard the description of them, we knew what they were, and we went to buy the statues. We were too late; when we arrived, the statues had been sold to your boss’s grandfather, but when we tried to buy them from him, he denied that they even existed.”
“What is this power that these statues possess?” Bobbi asked. “What happens if they fall in the wrong hands?”
He grimaced. “I’m not ready to reveal that. Such knowledge is dangerous.”
Of course, Bobbi thought irritably. Why should he make this easy on her? “So why are you even here, if you can’t give me any useful information?”
“To see what kind of help your boss might be willing to offer me, if I can’t convince my father to reveal what you need to know. Perhaps by the end of this week my father will agree to transport the statues back to America and we could guard over them there. If not…would your boss consider taking the statues by force, if I were to tell him where they are? Does he have the resources to do that?”
At Bobbi’s shocked expression, he added “It may be the only way to fulfill my family’s sacred mission. You’ve seen what my father is turning into…he tried to drug you both. And I don’t care what he told you, if he had succeeded, you never would have seen the light of day again. Tell that to your boss.”
He stood up, tossing a twenty Rili bill on the table, and left.
“That was Rili unexpected,” Pixie said. “Jeez. Do you think we’re going to figure out what the heck is going on before the plane comes to get us?”
“We’ve only got a few days left. Speaking of which…are you ready?”
Pixie’s face lit up in an evil grin. “I’m ready.”
Bobbi tossed another twenty Ri
li bill on the table, and the two of them headed outside, where Mayameen was waiting for them in her taxi.
* * *
Jax woke with a start. He’d been sleeping badly the last couple of days – ever since the prince had shown up on their door step. The prince was prone to jumping on them in the middle of the night, both in cheetah form and in human form. He’d cuff them on the head, he’d bite their arms, he’d pull the covers off them and demand that they play cards with him or read him a story, and if they said no, he’d threaten to scream for help.
Jax’s nerves were frayed to their breaking point. He’d radioed Tyler pleading for help, begging for an extraction, but Tyler had remained firm. The war was heating up. It was too dangerous for them to travel with a child. The best way to safely remove the prince from the area was to wait for the plane to land on the national holiday; otherwise, wherever they went, they risked driving through a war zone and getting caught in the crossfire.
So Jax and Heath had tried their best to take turns sleeping, but even then, whichever one of them was sleeping, the prince would launch himself at like a missile.
Prince Reginald, apparently, needed very little sleep.
Jax glanced over at Heath’s bed. Heath was flat on his back, snoring.
There was a pounding on the door, and at the same moment, Jax’s senses blazed to life.
It was Bobbi. He could scent her, and he always sensed when she was near. His fated mate, the woman who drove him absolutely crazy, the woman he’d die for.
He leaped to his feet and ran to the door.
Bobbi stood in the hallway. She wore a blousy ankle length white cotton dress, a headscarf, and a malicious smile.
“Having fun?” she asked.
“No,” he said fervently. “But I’m very glad to see you.”
It was true. His body pulsed and throbbed with pleasure whenever she was near to him. He wanted nothing more than to strip her clothes off and throw her down on the nearest piece of furniture. Or hell, who even needed furniture? There were always walls. And floors. And countertops.
“Have we learned an important lesson?” she continued, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Yes. I’ll be much sneakier next time I – hey!” she threw a punch at his shoulder, which he quickly blocked, but at the same time she lashed out at him with her foot and caught him in the shin.
“Oww,” he grumbled. “That little bastard’s already kicked me there like sixty times. If he was my kid, I’d have put him over my knee so fast-“
“But he’s not your kid. He’s a prince, and the child of very important clients. Where is the little darling, by the way? I’ve come to relieve you of babysitting duties. You’ve suffered enough.”
“Oh, thank God,” Jax said fervently.
He turned around and yelled “Reginald! Someone’s here to see you!”
Silence.
Sudden ice cold fear washed over him.
He realized that when he’d sat up in bed, he hadn’t seen Reginald anywhere in the room. The bathroom? He must be in the bathroom.
“Wait here,” he choked out, and slammed the door shut.
“What’s going on?” he heard Bobbi calling outside. She began pounding on the door. “Hey! Open up!”
Jax rushed in to the bathroom. The door gaped open. So did the window that led to an alley outside. Jax knew he hadn’t left the window open.
“Heath, wake up! Bobbi’s here and the prince is missing!” Jax growled in a low, urgent tone, and Heath bolted upright, eyes flying open.
“What the hell? No! She’ll kill us!” Heath leaped from the bed.
Jax fell to his knees and looked under the bed.
Nothing.
He rushed over to the room’s one closet, and yanked it open.
Empty.
Heath had already rushed in to the bathroom, and rushed back out again.
“You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him!” Heath growled, eyes wide with panic.
“No, you were! It was your turn!” Jax snapped. This could not be happening. This was a nightmare. He and Heath were so dead. First Bobbi would kill him, then Kenneth would kill him and fire him, not necessarily in that order, then if there was anything left of him the prince’s parents were going to go medieval on his ass…
The doorknob rattled and the door swung open, and Bobbi marched in. i Clearly she’d been taking lock-picking lessons from Pixie. “What is going on? Why did you shut the door?” Bobbi glanced around the room.
“Uhhh….” Words failed him.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
“Uhhhh…”Jax mumbled. “Don’t kill me. We’ll find him. I can shift to wolf form and then I’ll be able to pick up his trail…” he hoped, anyway.
“He’s MISSING?” Bobbi’s eyes were as huge as dinner plates. “An eight year old boy is missing in a city where mortars are raining from the sky and battles are breaking out on every street corner? He’s missing?”
She clutched at her chest. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Bobbi, please. We’ll find him. I swear to God, we will find him. We won’t rest until he find him.” Heath was clearly in full panic mode.
“I’m sorry!” Jax cried frantically. He’d never seen Bobbi this upset. “We’ll find him! I’m sorry!”
Bobbi burst into tears, burying her face in her hands. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…” she sobbed. Jax rushed over and tried to throw his arms around her, and she shoved him violently away.
“Get away from me! You’ve killed him! He’s dead, I know it!” she wailed.
“Hey.” Heath’s voice cracked across the room, and suddenly he didn’t sound panicked. He sounded pissed. “What the hell are you pulling?’
To Jax’s astonishment, Bobbi looked up again. This time she wasn’t crying.
“Too much?” she smirked, and wiped at her cheeks with her arm, blotting her tears.
“What the…” Jax turned from Heath to her and back again, bewilderment mingling with fury.
“Come on, Jax. I know my sister.” Heath glared at her. “And you know my sister. Think. Is this how Bobbi reacts to a crisis? Crying and wailing like a helpless little debutante? Bullshit. She’d already be long gone, tearing down the streets looking for him, sniffing out his trail, and expecting us to do the same.”
Pixie strolled through the door, with a grinning Reginald trailing behind her.
“Ha!” he shouted triumphantly. “You are very stupid. It was too easy to trick you.” He and Pixie exchanged triumphant high fives.
“Assignment complete,” Bobbi informed him. “Mission accomplished.” Reggie beamed with pride, dancing with glee where he stood.
Fury swelled inside Jax and his vision went red with rage. He took a deep breath, ready to let out a mighty howl of anger, but Pixie snorted in contempt and flopped down on the bed.
“After what you pulled, you’re about to act all pissy with us? Don’t even,” Pixie drawled.
“Exactly,” Bobbi said. “Do not EVER try to trick me like that again, or next time the consequences will be much, much worse. You want to be my partner? Accept me as your equal. I’m every bit as capable as you are in these situations. I worked for the National Enforcer’s Council for five years, you’ve seen me in action.”
“Yeah, dumbshit,” Pixie added, un-helpfully.
Jax clenched his fists and had to draw in and let out several long, slow breaths before he was able to control himself. He was furious at them, but he reluctantly had to admit that he would have been equally as angry with Bobbi if she’d tried to leave him behind and gone on a dangerous mission by herself.
And he also knew he had no choice. He had to take Bobbi as she was, if he wanted to be with her.
Since he couldn’t imagine life without her, that meant he had to take her as she was.
“I assume that the Prince’s parents still have no idea that he’s here?” Jax asked Bobbi.
“Yes. I checked with Tyler. So far, mum’s the word.”
“
Good, because heads are going to roll if they find out,” Jax grumbled.
Reggie gasped in horror. Suddenly, his eyes filled with tears.
“That was a figure of speech,” Jax said quickly.
“No it isn’t!” Reggie wailed. “You’re right. If they find out that I’m here, they will execute everyone who was watching me. They will execute my nanny. I only have her for a little while more, anyway, and now they’re going to kill her. They will. This is all my fault. I must go back!”
“They’re not going to execute her,” Bobbi said quickly. “They’ll never find out.”
Reggie was near hysteria now. “I want to go home! I want to go home!”
“Damn it, Reggie! Get ahold of yourself!” Bobbi snapped. “You should have thought about this before you climbed into that suitcase! We are in a war zone. There is no safe way for us to get out of here until the plane comes. It’s like a shooting gallery out there. Our taxi caught a couple of hundred bullets the other day when we were out for a casual drive.”
“What?” Jax yelled. He swung towards Bobbi. “Is that true?”
“I don’t care!” Reggie wailed. “I must go home! I must save my nanny! This is all my fault!”
“The plane isn’t coming for several more days,” Bobbi said. “There’s nothing we can do to get out of here faster.”
“I will pay for a new plane!”
“To get to the plane, we would have to drive through bandit territory. You would be kidnapped, and either killed and held for ransom. If that happens, your nanny and security team most certainly would be executed. The only safe thing to do is stay here and wait until the plane comes.”
Reggie curled up in a ball and cried so hard his whole body shook. Pixie sat down cross-legged on the floor next to him. “You want me to show you how to pick a lock?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, thank you,” he sniffled into his knees.
“Why do you only have your nanny for a little while more?” Bobbi asked.
“My mother has a rule. Each nanny has to leave after one year,” he mumbled at the floor.
“That’s a stupid rule,” Pixie said.
“I wish this one could stay with me,” he said miserably. “But it’s mother’s rule. There’s nothing to be done.”
His Purrfect Mate Page 12