Then the screen changed back to el Saud again. Apparently the other man wasn’t important. Nor was Omar himself. It was Mohammed el Saud’s face Andy wanted them to remember.
“There could be a couple of different explanations for el Saud’s absence,” Andy said. “He might be laid up in bed with the flu, or an injury. We don’t have any intel on anything of that sort, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. We’ll keep digging. Or Omar might have had him killed, for reasons known only to Omar. He’s said to be hot-tempered, and more so since his son died. If el Saud did something to upset Omar, Omar wouldn’t have thought twice about taking him out in a fit of rage.”
JB had met some people like that. If so, Omar was likely regretting it now. SSG trained bodyguards weren’t easy to find.
“The most likely explanation,” Andy continued, “is that Omar sent him here, for the purpose of killing Tansy Leighton. The anniversary of Kareem’s death is coming up in a few days, and Omar Khan el Balushi is someone who might feel that Walter Leighton is responsible for Kareem’s death.”
He glanced at the screen. “I want you all to familiarize yourself with that face. And everywhere you go, look for it. The FBI and Homeland Security are checking passenger manifests for airline travel into the US over the past week, but so far, we don’t know when and how el Saud made it into the country, if he’s here. All airports and border controls are on the lookout for him, so if he’s on his way, he’ll be stopped. But if he’s already here, it’s up to us to stop him.”
He paused for a moment to let that thought sink in before moving another image onto the wall screen. “Here’s our other suspect.” An all-American face, open and smiling.
“The man you’re looking at,” Andy said, “was named James Cooper Junior. He was a business man with a startup company, a social media concept he thought would rival Facebook and Twitter. And three years ago, he committed suicide when that company failed. His father, James Cooper Senior—” the screen changed, “blames Walter Leighton.”
“Why?” Conrad wanted to know. For once, JB was in full accord. He wanted to know why, too.
“James Cooper Senior,” who was up on the screen as a drawn man in his early sixties, “was an acquaintance of Walter Leighton’s. They went to school together. When the startup first fell on hard times about four years ago, Cooper Senior pulled some strings and got his son an appointment so Junior could talk to Mr. Leighton about backing the company. Shortly after Mr. Leighton declined, the startup went under and Junior blew his brains out. Cooper Senior feels that if Walter Leighton had given Cooper Junior money, the company wouldn’t have folded and Junior wouldn’t be dead.”
That would seem like a logical progression in the mind of a grieving father. It was hard to blame Walter Leighton for not investing money in a company he saw failing, though.
“Do you have anything to add to that assessment, Mr. Leighton?” Andy added politely.
JB turned on his chair to look at Walter Leighton, seated beside Tansy at the back of the room. Everyone else did the same.
Walter shook his head. He looked pale. “Carry on.”
Andy drew the attention back to himself by doing just that. “James Cooper Senior lives in Texas, but no one there knows where he is. The last time anyone can remember seeing him, was ten days ago. He’s estranged from his wife and his other children, and if he had plans to go anywhere, he didn’t mention them to anyone. That doesn’t mean he might not be in Mexico right now, swilling Tequila with his arm around some Mexican senorita. It could be a totally legitimate absence. Or something might have happened to him, like a hiking accident or a mugging. But for our purposes, the bottom line is that we don’t know where he is. And that means he might have driven cross-country and is lying in wait right now, waiting to take out Tansy Leighton in retaliation for his son’s suicide.”
The image on the wall switched to one of a red double-cab truck. “This is the kind of vehicle Mr. Cooper drives.” Andy flashed the license plate number on the screen. “Make note of that, but don’t get hung up on it. It’s easy to switch one plate for another.”
JB nodded. As the team’s mechanic and vehicle specialist, he knew all about that. A minute with a screwdriver in a dark motel parking lot, and you were incognito.
“Any red trucks, we want to hear about,” Andy told the room. “Extra points for Texas plates, but we want to hear about it even if there’s a local plate. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t have waited until he came here to swap plates with someone.”
No reason at all. Also no reason for him to bother switching plates at all, since there was no law against driving from Dallas to Philadelphia, and Cooper didn’t need a different license plate to do that.
“Compared to el Saud and his military training,” Andy said, “Cooper may not seem like much of a threat. One older man, grieving his son’s death. But he owns several guns and goes hunting regularly. He’s killed before. He may not have killed a human, that we know of, but given the right impetus, prey is prey. Don’t underestimate him.”
He clicked the button one final time, and the face of Mohammed el Saud joined James Cooper Senior on the screen.
“These are our suspects. Commit their faces to memory. Keep an eye out for them. But don’t focus so hard on them that you miss anything else that may come your way. While these are the most likely suspects we’ve come up with, there could be other possibilities.”
He glanced around the room. “Questions?”
Conrad shot a hand up.
Of course.
Andy nodded to him, and Conrad asked, “If we see one of these guys, what do we do?”
“Consider them armed and very dangerous,” Andy said, “and proceed accordingly. Don’t let them know that you’ve spotted them. And let the rest of us know ASAP so we can take them down.”
Conrad looked obstinate. “If we wait, they may get away. Why can’t we just take them down when we see them?”
“No offense,” Andy said, while JB and a few of the other SEALs refrained from rolling their eyes so hard they saw the backs of their skulls, “but unless you’ve had special forces training, Mohammed el Saud is beyond your ability to take down. That Q-tip thing? He can do that, too. And if he’s here to commit murder, he’s not going to have a problem adding yours to Ms. Leighton’s.”
Conrad opened his mouth—probably to argue further—but Mick spoke over him. “Any other questions? Thank you, Chief Lee.”
He dismissed Andy, who headed back to his seat. Mick took his place. “Don’t try to be heroes,” he told his security crew. “None of you signed on for fighting terrorists and crazed rednecks. That’s what the SEALs are here for. Let them handle it. I’ve lost men in the line of duty before. I’ve gone to my share of funerals. I don’t want anyone dying this time. Unless it’s the bad guys.” He looked around the room. “Is that understood?”
There were a lot of nods. Conrad, JB noticed, did not nod, but still looked obstinate. If Conrad didn’t change his attitude, he’d talk to Mick—or have Max talk to Mick—about giving Conrad some sort of duty away from either gate or the estate perimeter until this was over. While he’d enjoy seeing Max or Andy—or even Mick—pushing Conrad’s teeth down his throat, he didn’t want the other man dead, no matter how annoying he was.
Although if a few of those perfect teeth broke, not to mention that perfect nose, and it made that perfect face a little less perfect, JB wouldn’t necessarily mind.
“Dismissed,” Mick said, and the room relaxed. Mick headed for Max, who was sitting on the front row with Andy. Conrad walked out with two of his coworkers, all dressed in the same uniform of black cargo pants, white shirt, and windbreaker. His glance at Tansy was quick, and JB didn’t think she noticed, but he did.
He made his way toward her, just as her father excused himself to join the knot of VIPs at the front of the room. Walter Leighton gave JB a nod on his way past. “She’s all yours, son.”
JB arched his brows. Not the
form of address he was used to, and not the sentiment he’d expected, either.
Tansy was smiling at him, so he smiled back, even as he wished Conrad’s perfect teeth were his own. “You all right?”
“I wasn’t the one who fell off my horse,” Tansy said.
“Like I told you, I do better with camels.” He watched her smile again, before he added, “I meant, how do you feel about this?” The briefing. The images on the screen. The information they’d just heard.
“It’s scary,” Tansy admitted. “When my dad and Mick showed me the note, I didn’t want to believe it was real, you know? It’s taken a long time for me to feel safe and sort of normal again. And now it’s starting all over. I had a nightmare last night. For the first time in a month, at least.”
JB nodded.
“And the whole idea is kind of crazy, isn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t my dad’s fault that Kareem died. Kareem was working with the hijackers. He thought it was a good idea to seduce me and take me to the Mediterranean so he could have his friends kidnap me and ask for ransom. I won’t say that he deserved to die...”
No. JB could still hear that distressed sound she’d made when she saw the body.
“But I’m not sorry he’s dead. He stopped his friends from beating me or raping me, but who knows how long that would have lasted? If they realized the money wasn’t coming, who knows what they would have done?”
JB had a pretty good idea, and figured Tansy did, too. It wasn’t a coincidence that the SEALs had hurried to the Med with very little notice and not much time to prepare. They’d been trying to get to Tansy before any of those things could happen.
She was looking at the screen, where the faces of the two suspects were still side by side. “That’s sobering, though. The thought that one of those two men could be out there, close by, just waiting for a chance to kill me. And not even because of anything I did. Just because I’m me. Because I’m my father’s daughter.”
She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold.
“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” JB promised her. “That’s why I’m here. To make sure they can’t get to you.”
He nudged her out the door. Outside in the hallway, he added, “I’m actually glad you’re scared. It’ll make my job easier. I won’t have to fight with you to take precautions.”
Tansy shook her head. “I don’t want to die. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
Nice idea. A real pity some of the things he could imagine her doing didn’t fall within his job description.
He shook the thoughts off. Not appropriate. At all. Especially under the circumstances. “First of all, you don’t go anywhere without me. Even if it’s just around the estate. No trips down to the greenhouse or the croquet lawn by yourself.”
Tansy nodded. “I won’t go anywhere by myself. There are guards in the booth and by the back gate now, though. Won’t they stop anyone from coming in?”
The SEAL team? No problem. Conrad? Maybe not so much.
“They’ll do everything they can,” he answered Tansy’s question. “And I’m not so much worried about James Cooper. He’s not someone for an up close and personal kill. He’d take you out from a mile away with a hunting rifle.”
It might have been James Cooper who fired the shot that spooked Nellie this morning. Although they’d probably never know. And even if it had been, the bullet had come nowhere close to Tansy. Which should have made him feel better, since it told him something about Cooper’s ability, or lack thereof, to hit what he aimed at.
Unless he hadn’t aimed at Tansy. Maybe it had been just a warning shot. JB had no idea why Cooper would announce his presence in such a way, but maybe he liked the idea of making them worry about where the next shot would come from. A little payback for the times when Cooper had worried about his son and the latter’s business.
“We’ll take precautions for that kind of scenario whenever we go out somewhere,” he told her. “We’ll plan the route in advance and have people check any vantage points along the way that would be good for a sniper. But I’m not worried that James Cooper will find a way onto the estate. He doesn’t have the skills for that.”
Tansy nodded.
“el Saud is another story. And he’s been trained in quick and quiet eliminations.”
Tansy wrinkled her nose. “Eliminations?”
“In a combat situation,” JB told her, “you either eliminate the other guy before he can get to you, or you’re dead.”
“Sure, but... eliminations?”
“Feel free to call them whatever you want. You can call them kills, if you want. I’ll stick with eliminations.” Since there was no point in thinking about them as people, either. If he stopped to think about the people he’d had to kill in the line of duty, and thought of them as people instead of eliminations, he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
They walked side by side down the hallway. Somewhere in the distance, JB could hear Mimi yipping faintly. With all the new people who had arrived this afternoon for the briefing, Max had asked Walter Leighton to confine the dog until the meeting was over. Apparently Mimi didn’t like to be confined.
“Where did you put her?” John wanted to know.
“In my bedroom,” Tansy said. “I’ll show you.”
She headed toward the stairs. JB hesitated. He was already struggling with being attracted to her. Going into her bedroom with her couldn’t be a good idea.
On the other hand, it was his job to keep her safe while she was sleeping. And he couldn’t do that unless he knew where she was. So he didn’t have much of a choice here, if he wanted to do his job.
He picked up his pace and followed Tansy toward the stairs.
6
Tansy’s room was on the second floor, overlooking the formal gardens. She’d always liked her view, and it seemed as if John approved of it, too. He braced his hands on the windowsill and looked out, nodding. “Good.”
“I’ve always enjoyed it,” Tansy said, watching the muscles in his arms bulge. She had picked up Mimi when they walked into the room, and was cuddling the small dog. Ostensibly because Mimi had been upset about the confinement and needed comforting, but in reality because she needed something to keep her hands occupied so she didn’t fall into temptation and throw herself at John.
She hadn’t expected this wave of emotion to hit her as soon as they walked into her bedroom and she looked from him to the bed and back.
For the past year, she hadn’t really thought much about sex. At first, the idea of getting involved with anyone again had been scary. Kareem had totally fooled her into believing he cared for her. She didn’t want it to happen again. And while she’d always had to worry about guys wanting to be with her because of her father’s money, now she also had to worry about the ones who wanted to be with her because of the notoriety. Because she was ‘that girl who got hijacked by terrorists.’
As a result, she hadn’t been with anyone since Kareem. Hadn’t really wanted to be, because of the problems. But now her libido had picked a hell of a time to wake up.
Especially since John was sure to turn her down. For any number of very logical and understandable reasons.
His job was to protect her. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. He wasn’t interested in her personally. He’d never be interested in someone like her. He probably thought she was frivolous and stupid, with her small, fluffy dog and her self-indulgent Maserati and her frothy pink room.
Never mind the fact that she’d decorated this room when she was fifteen. She was a different person now.
But John might not realize that. He might even think she deserved what happened to her last year. He’d saved her, sure. And he’d been nice to her. But he probably thought she deserved it, for being stupid enough to get involved with Kareem in the first place.
John turned away from the window. “It’s good that it’s not on the front of the house. We’d have to find somewhere else for you to sleep, if someone could just drive b
y on the road outside and shoot out your windows.”
Tansy stared at him. It was such a normal thing to say.
Or not exactly normal. This situation was anything but normal. But while she’d been worrying that he was blaming her for last year, and by extension, for what was going on now, he’d just been looking at the view and trying to determine how safe she was in her bedroom.
“That’s a good thing,” John assured her.
Tansy nodded. “I’m sorry. It’s just... this is a lot to deal with.” And now she had this inconvenient attraction to him on top of everything else. While he was probably just here because he’d been told to be, and couldn’t wait to get back home.
She ducked her face into Mimi’s soft fur so she wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. So she didn’t have to see him standing there, tall and solid, just a few short feet away.
“Is she all right?” John sounded worried. And Tansy couldn’t let him worry about Mimi, too, when there was no reason to.
“She’s fine. She just likes to be where the action is.”
“Don’t we all?” John prowled past her with a quick scratch under the chin for Mimi. “Bathroom?”
He indicated the door on the other wall.
Tansy nodded, and turned to watch him open the door and disappear into the large attached bath. It wasn’t pink, thank God. Just gray and white. With a big soaker tub surrounded by candles, a tub she liked to fill up with bubbles and smelly stuff.
God, she really was frivolous, wasn’t she?
She should probably just take showers from now on. Quick ones, to save water.
The bathroom had a nice shower, too. Big enough for two.
She spent a second—just a second, no more—imagining John in that shower, with hot water pounding down, plastering his hair to his head, soaking that tan T-shirt and making it cling to his chest...
The Socialite and the SEAL Page 6