by Toby Tate
Mac slipped his arms around her from behind, and she basked in the warmth of his embrace, his hot breath on her neck sending shivers down her spine.
“Whatcha doin’?” he asked.
“Just watching the surf, trying to imagine what’s swimming around down there.”
“You should go diving with me sometime—you’d love it.”
She had heard that line before, but couldn’t remember exactly where.
“You’re right,” she said, slipping her hands over his. “I would love it. I’ll bet it’s beautiful.”
“There’s nothing like it.” He turned her around to face him. “And there’s nothing like you, either.”
They kissed and it sent an electric charge through her body, all the way to her toes.
He backed up and gazed at her, and she at him; his unkempt blonde mane, the sharp jawline, the piercing blue eyes. She slid her hands up his arms and felt his muscles, hard as steel cables. She knew he could break her in half if he wanted to, but of course he wouldn’t. Though she had seen him fight, she knew that when it came to women, he was just a Teddy bear. She wasn’t too proud to admit that he made her feel safe—safe from the evil that she knew existed in this world, because she had witnessed it. Seductive yet repulsive, beautiful but deadly, evil was a dichotomy, a complex algorithm of turmoil and conflicting emotions that would tear you up and spit you out like a churning cyclone.
“I don’t want this to ever end,” she said. “Can we stay here forever?”
Mac smiled. “It doesn’t have to end. Whenever you want me, all you have to do is dream.”
She thought about that for a moment. Was this a dream? It felt so real.
As they stood there, the wind began to pick up, causing the sand to ripple across the beach. They both glanced up at the sky and saw what looked like a hole ripped into the center of it and growing larger by the second. What the hell was going on?
She looked at Mac as he continued to keep his eyes trained skyward. “Oh no,” he said. “It’s too late.”
“What? What’s too late? What are you talking about?” The grip she had on his arms was tighter now, as if she were trying to hold him to the ground, to keep her grasp on the dream itself.
“They’re here,” he said, still gazing upward. “They’ve come for me.”
“Who’s come for you?”
Gabe glanced at the darkening sky and now saw a whirling mass of black cloud, miles wide, with bolts of lightning shooting through it from one side to the other. And she also thought she saw something else inside of it…a shadow, flitting around the edges, there and then gone, seen yet unseen. Something alive.
“What’s in there?”
“Something older than time itself.” Mac finally turned his eyes downward and she could see fear, not for himself, but for her. He grabbed her hands in his and slowly pushed her away. “You have to let me go.”
The noise from the storm was growing louder, as an updraft tried its best to lift them both off the sand and carry them away to God only knew where.
“I don’t want to let you go!” Gabe screamed over the noise.
“You have to! You can’t come where I’m going. Not yet.” He smiled, but his eyes were full of sadness.
What did he mean, “Not yet?”
She glanced up at the cloud to see something like a hand, as wide as a mountain, reaching down from the sky in an instant and snatching Mac away. It disappeared back into wherever it had come from and was gone as if it had never been there. The wind had stopped, the sky was clear, except for the few puffy white clouds that remained.
She was alone, and as dead inside as a thousand-year-old corpse.
* * *
“Mac,” Gabe heard herself whisper, her mind floating somewhere between dream and reality. Tears stained her pillow as they had done for the last year, at first every night, but mercifully, they came a little less frequently than before. Perhaps in time, they would stop altogether.
She glanced at the ceiling and then over at the door. At first she was confused, disoriented. Where was she? Oh yes—on the island. Not the one in the dream, not with Mac. She was on Blue Lagoon Caye, with Gordon Powers.
Blue Lagoon. Isn’t that an old movie with Brooke Shields?
She thought about swimming in the pool earlier that day. They could as easily have swum in the lagoon.
Just like in the movie.
She smiled at the thought, then closed her eyes and drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter Seven
Dubai—United Arab Emirates
The Athan, or call to prayer, echoed across the water to Cain’s house on Dubai’s Palm Island as he watched the breaking news on the Al-Arabiya news channel. According to the newscaster, who spoke in Arabic, Saudi businessman Ahmed Najjar shot his mistress in the head point-blank, then leapt out the six-story window of the Le Bristol Paris sometime the previous evening. Eyewitnesses reported seeing Najjar standing on the balcony looking down before falling over the guardrail headfirst. So far, there seems to be no motive. Najjar had just made a deal to merge his company, Najjar Ltd., with that of Loucheur Construction, calling the new company Najjar Enterprises and making Najjar CEO and owner of fifty-one percent of the company.
The love of money is the root of all evil, Najjar.
Cain sipped traditional Emirati tea as the mu'adhdhin’s call to prayer continued outside. He would have preferred alcohol, and had acquired a taste for it while traveling abroad, but it was something of a hassle to get alcohol in the UAE without a license, and he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than necessary. He had often sampled it while scouring the seedy underbelly of Dubai for local prostitutes, some of whom were as young as eleven. He preferred his women be “of age,” with plenty of experience. After all, he was still learning. He always used protection to not only prevent the possibility of disease, but also to prevent pregnancy. The last thing he wanted was to impregnate some human whore.
But he found his own sexual needs and desires as a man not as easy to tame as his teachers had led him to believe. In fact, they had lied to him about a great many things. They had paid for that mistake with their lives.
He had delivered Najjar’s signed letter to Loucheur and received the other half of his five million dollar payment. That would nicely supplement the millions he had already deposited in several untraceable offshore accounts.
Nick Clayborn, his “agent,” had left a message to call, which he did, and discovered he had several more contracts lined up. The business of assassination was booming—everybody wanted somebody dead, it seemed.
The next job was in Venezuela, a bit more high-profile than the last—the current president wanted to cut down on the competition for the coming election. This time, it needed to look like a mugging. Cain didn’t care—mugging was his specialty. As long as the client was paying cash, he would do the job. The humans wanted to kill each other off, but without getting their own hands bloody. All the better for him.
Cain glanced out the window of his expansive beach house at the blue ocean water lapping below the brick wall behind his villa, just one of the hundreds of other homes amongst the crab-like arms of the island. Most of the people that lived in the compounds were expatriates like him, except that he didn’t really have a place to call home. Dubai was as good a place as any, he supposed, at least for now. He could enjoy his anonymity living amidst a multi-racial sea of humanity, just another face in the crowd. He had yet to meet someone who spoke a language he didn’t understand. Cain didn’t quite know why, but he preferred colloquial Arabic. Maybe because it was all he had spoken for the first few months of his life.
He could probably live anywhere, and in fact had considered the Caribbean, Palm Beach, Florida, the Pacific Palisades in California, the Greek Islands—but none of them appealed to him as much as the Middle East. The Saudis, the Iranians, the Syrians: they all possessed something that he could identify with, almost like kindred spirits—they coul
d be savage, merciless killers.
But of course, they were also human, which put them in the same sub-species class with all other humans, the equivalent of insects.
And what does one do with insects? Squash them, of course.
He drained the last of his tea, then thumbed the TV remote to off and headed to the bathroom to douse himself in cologne and put in his blue contact lenses. It wouldn’t do to scare off the locals with his silver eyes.
Afterwards, he headed off in his Lamborghini to view the human wreckage that crawled the streets of Dubai and perhaps, if he was lucky, bring home a prize.
Chapter Eight
Gordon’s contact in the Middle East indicated that it would be best to meet in Saudi Arabia itself, which he definitely didn’t like. But then again, none of this was to his liking. If he had his way, he would stay right here on this island and never leave.
He glanced into the next room at Gabe—her shapely brown legs, crossed at the ankles, stuck out in front of her as she sat back in the wicker chair and thumbed through something on her iPhone. Her long auburn hair hung delicately over brown shoulders, red strands accented by the sunlight, and that tattoo of hers reminded him of the 80s movie with Kurt Russell—Big Trouble in Little China. He had never seen a tattoo like that on a CIA operative. Normally, they were expected to be unremarkable, to blend in with others around them. Gabe would probably blend in like a supermodel in a soup kitchen. Not that she was a supermodel, but she was beautiful, no doubt about that.
Obviously, the agency didn’t have any qualms about her ability to blend in—they seemed to have the utmost confidence in her. And after all, she had managed to find him. Any woman that could do that had to have something going for her in the brains department.
The only thing that bothered him was the fact that his considerable charm, which had managed to fill his empty bed more than a few times, wasn’t exactly getting her aroused. At first, he thought she might be gay, but then decided not. He could usually tell right away—being in the CIA for twenty years, he had learned how to read people pretty well.
Maybe he was just getting old. After all, he was nearly twice her age, he figured. She looked to be in her upper twenties and he had recently hit the big five-oh. But he could easily pass for a man of thirty-five and he had bedded women even younger than her.
So what gives?
The only answer was that she had a lover stashed somewhere. She wasn’t wearing a ring, although she could have forgotten it.
Suddenly, she turned and caught him staring at her. Gordon quickly looked back to his laptop screen.
“Um,” he began. “I got a message from my contact. We’re going to have to go to Saudi Arabia. It’s the only way they’ll meet with us.”
“Do you trust them?”
He glanced at her. “No. But it’s not like we have a choice here. Besides, I get the feeling these guys want to find junior as much as we do.”
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Junior?”
“Yeah, Junior. You have a better name?”
“Not really. When do we leave?”
Gordon sighed deeply and fell back in his chair. “As soon as I can bring myself to say goodbye to paradise.”
* * *
The Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport in Belize City was the largest and busiest in Belize, and consisted of one building and one runway. Over the years, the airport had been host to several military units, including anti-aircraft squadrons of the Royal Air Force, which was impressive considering how small the facility was. The check-in area was no bigger than many hotel lobbies Gabe had seen. Waiting in line, she glanced up at rows of slowly rotating fans hanging from the ceiling rafters, thinking they were probably much too high to actually cool anything on the floor. She heard someone giggling and looked down to see a boy of about five peeking from behind a man she assumed was his father. She smiled back.
When it was her turn, she handed the clerk her passport, which was for one Mary Slocum, a name she had used for traveling on several occasions. Unfortunately, Gordon was no longer with the agency and was stuck with his own name. But he didn’t seem to mind, or at least he didn’t complain about it.
They had decided that they would pose as cousins, since it was illegal for women to walk around Saudi Arabia unescorted. Gabe was reluctant to pose as man and wife—she didn’t want her partner getting any ideas in his already fertile imagination. The appropriate background documentation was set up by the agency via the Internet.
They would fly two hours to Miami, then nineteen hours to Saudi Arabia, with stops in Paris and Bahrain. That was still two less than flying to Australia, which always caused some serious jet lag.
They walked outside pulling their carry-on bags behind them.
“Didn’t forget your abaya and hijab, did you?” Gordon asked.
“No. Did you remember yours?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to help. They frown on women who aren’t covered from head to toe in public, even foreign women. And you have to have a male escort at all times. Don’t forget that.”
She glanced at him as they stopped at the bottom of the steps. “This isn’t my first time in the Middle East, you know. Give me some credit.”
“I just don’t want that beautiful face of yours getting us killed. That’s not too much to ask, is it, princess?”
He turned and walked up the steps as Gabe stared at his back. He had just managed to compliment her and degrade her in the same sentence.
Nineteen hours on a plane with this wanker? Is it really worth it?
Chapter Nine
King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Faisal Khalid al-Shamari was not happy. His government was asking him to act as an agent of Saudi Intelligence, to extract information from Gordon Powers and find Cain. But he was a scientist, not a spy. How could they expect him to do this?
Then, they gave him an ultimatum—either find Cain and bring him back, or watch as his family was killed, and then rot in prison with the agonized screams of his dying loved ones forever etched into his memory.
He could not think of a more effective, or a more horrifying, motivation.
The problem was, the Saudi government had no idea what they were up against. They had asked him to create the perfect killer, which he had done. Cain would know their every move before they even made it. He would always be ten steps ahead of them. Catching Cain was not an option.
Yet he had no choice.
Faisal thought back to the day he had first been contacted by the CIA man, told about the boy. He remembered thinking what potential there was for him to make a name for himself, to help his country become a respected force in the world, more than just a supplier of oil. Yes, even to bring glory to Allah.
But it had all gone quickly to hell and now there was nothing he could do but wait and see what help Powers would be. Luckily, Faisal had convinced the General Intelligence Presidency to at least send him some people to help him extract the information. They sent him two men dressed in suits, with eyes like desert wolves, who hadn’t said more than a handful of words in the hours since he had met them. They had gone off to look around the facility, which was fine with him. The less time he spent around those two, the better.
Faisal was not used to all this spying and subterfuge—he spent most of his time with test tubes and computer programs. It was all making him very uneasy, tying his stomach in knots. He reached across his desk and picked up a picture of his family—his beautiful wife and two children, a boy and a girl, stared back at him, beaming.
In spite of the danger to himself, he knew that he would do anything for them.
* * *
Gabe went to the restroom at Bahrain International and changed into an ankle-length skirt, long-sleeved shirt and abaya. Temperatures in Saudi Arabia could reach nearly one hundred thirty degrees in the summer, and Gabe knew it would be stifling in this get up. She was thankful that they would only be there for
a short time, otherwise she would probably be tempted to kill somebody.
Back on board the plane, Gabe saw that several other female passengers were covered from head to toe, as well. She wasn’t yet wearing her head covering, but she would put it on before leaving the plane. She glanced at Gordon as she made her way to the seat. He eyed her up and down with a smirk on his face that she wanted to slap off.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” she said as she slid into the seat next to him. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t think.”
“I was just wondering if you were naked under there.”
Gabe sighed.
Don’t say anything. It’ll just encourage him.
Instead, she changed the subject. “How well do you know this guy we’re meeting?”
“Faisal Khalid Al-Shamari, a geneticist who specializes in biotechnology. I’ve only met him once. Seems like a typical scientist—intelligent, nerdy, a tad psychotic…”
“Why do you think he wants to meet in person?”
“Probably wants to hug me for giving him a major career boost.”
“Gordon, can’t you be serious about anything?”
“One thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Root canals. Those things hurt like crazy.”
Gabe leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
There’s no sense in even trying to talk to this arsehole.
“Hey, look, I know you’re worried,” she heard him say. “But don’t be. I’ve dealt with these people before. Just follow my lead, and everything will be okay.”