“This isn’t the normal way of things, Stan, but property is a big deal in Wyoming. You can’t just step onto someone’s land,” Zafir said calmly and without slowing his stride. But Stanley was testing his patience in a way no other client ever had. He had to remember, Stanley was Moroccan. He’d never been to the States before. According to the file, he’d never been anywhere. He was in a culture that was unfamiliar to him. “He has rights as a landowner. You’ve got to remember that while you’re here. Especially if you plan to take pictures in the countryside.”
“He could have asked me to leave,” Stanley said. “That would have been the civil thing to do. There was no reason to try to kill me.”
“He could have killed you, Stan. He didn’t.”
“He has a point, Zafir,” Jade said. “I have to say that threatening to shoot him was a little over the top.”
“A little?” Stanley asked, his voice an octave higher than normal. He opened the back door of the Pathfinder. “It was craziness. This wouldn’t have happened at home. This...”
“You’re wrong there, Stan,” Zafir said, thinking of the many cases he’d handled at home, in Morocco. He looked at Jade, and she smiled as if she was completely aware of where his thoughts had gone.
“Don’t bolt like that again, Stan. We can’t protect you if we don’t know where you are.”
“You don’t know the country...” Jade began.
“You’re not kidding,” Stanley muttered. “This would never happen in Morocco,” he repeated, obviously set in what he believed no matter what Zafir said to the contrary.
“Never.” Jade smiled as she looked at Zafir, because they both knew it could happen anywhere and had. She might not have worked a case in Morocco, but she’d certainly read the files. “I believe this is yours.” She tossed the lens cap to Stanley who caught it with one hand and put it in his pocket without a word of thanks.
“Another thing, Stan,” Zafir said. “You can only take pictures of land where you have permission or on land that’s not privately owned.”
“You’re kidding me,” Stanley muttered.
Zafir was turning onto the highway before anyone spoke again.
“Is there something you’re not telling us, Stanley?” Jade asked. “The rancher’s aggression is extreme, depending how you view such things, but explainable. But what happened earlier, the shooting at the apartment, that’s not. Is there a reason that someone would want to shoot you?”
“No,” he said almost too sharply, too abruptly. “I don’t want to think about that.”
“That won’t make it go away,” Jade said.
“Why do you think I left? I couldn’t deal. No one has ever shot at me. And now it’s happened twice. This is craziness. You should report that man. The rancher, I mean. I bet we could look up...”
“You were at fault, Stan,” Zafir interrupted him.
“From what you’ve said, Stanley, this incident aside, whoever was shooting at you in Jackson has no motive that we know of. Is that what you’re saying?”
Zafir hoped the tact Jade was taking, of feigning ignorance of the inheritance, might lead Stan to reveal anything he knew.
“I’m not important enough for someone to want to kill.” Stanley’s voice began to shake.
“What do you have that someone else wants?”
“Nothing!”
Zafir looked in the rearview mirror and saw that Stanley was looking out the window; his lips were tight and one hand clutched the door handle as if he were prepared to flee. Again.
“It’s all been crazy,” he muttered. But his left hand was clenched in a fist and he was chewing his bottom lip.
Zafir was certain that he knew something about the earlier attack. Maybe he knew who or why—possibly both. Somehow they were going to have to get him to trust them enough to tell them. It was only then that they’d be able to protect him.
“I thought this was the countryside. You know, untouched—safe, full of friendly farmer types.” Stanley scowled. “Bucolic, like Heidi land.”
“Heidi land,” Zafir mouthed the words, an amused smile on his face.
“It was misrepresented. Nothing like the brochure said it was,” Stanley said.
“You can’t just appear on someone’s land and expect to be welcomed,” Jade said.
“So I’m learning,” Stanley said rather sardonically and nodded. “The locals aren’t friendly at all.” He paused for breath, looking out the window with a grim expression. “He would have killed me.”
Zafir met Jade’s look. They both knew that Stanley was overwhelmed by the back-to-back experiences with firearms. It was a logical assumption. What layman wouldn’t be if faced with the same situation?
For a minute there was silence.
“Insanity,” Stanley muttered. He was stuck in a track he just couldn’t seem to clear.
“You might be right, Stan, but right doesn’t make you safe. We do. So in the future, I don’t care what you think,” Zafir said. “As long as we’re protecting you, when we give an order we need you to follow it. No more taking off.”
“Orders?”
Zafir glanced in the rearview mirror. The tone of their client’s voice had changed. His eyes had narrowed and his nostrils flared. He’d just acquired major attitude. In fact, Stanley was now sitting up straight and there was a look about him that was very clearly royal. The look in his eyes was unleashed outrage, like they were minions who had failed him. “There weren’t any orders, and even if there were, I’m...”
“Suggestions, Stanley,” Jade said, cutting him off.
Zafir’s mouth quirked as he glanced at Jade. She smiled. It seemed their client with the wallflower personality actually had some backbone. Of course, that backbone had almost gotten him killed.
“I hired you, not the other way around,” he muttered before slumping back in his seat. “And you people are crazy. I’m not sure I want to listen to any of you.”
“I assume you mean the man shooting at you, not us,” Zafir said. “You were trespassing. Trespassing is an offense, it means you were on property...”
“I know what it means,” he interrupted with an edge to his voice. “I have an excellent command of the English language.”
“And yet you failed to read the no trespassing sign?” Jade asked.
“No, I saw it and the no hunting sign,” Stanley added. “But I thought as long as I wasn’t hunting, it was okay.” He took a breath. “Besides, I was clearly unarmed, yet he shot at me anyway. I’m not sure what he thought. He couldn’t miss the camera. It was really unforgivable,” he said with a hard edge to his voice. He seemed to be determined to ignore everything they had said including what Jade had just told him about taking photos. “He wanted to kill me for stepping on his scrub excuse for a field.” His voice rose two octaves, as if that would put emphasis on the outrage he felt.
“It doesn’t matter what you think of his property, Stanley.” Frustration was clear in Jade’s voice.
“So, here’s the deal. We’re here to protect you. We already know from the attack in Jackson that there’s a very real possibility that someone wants you dead,” Zafir said. “The best way to ensure that happens is to leave our protection. The best way not to...”
“I’ve got it,” Stanley interrupted. “You’re right.” He ran a hand through his thinning dark curly hair. “But I’m not going back to Jackson.” He dropped his hand. “I don’t think it’s safe. I’d like to go to Casper. I’ve read good things about it, and there are some good photography spots.”
“Agreed,” Zafir said.
Stanley had fallen into a plan that was already in the works. Their relocation specialist, Leslie, was at this moment getting that option together. It was the best-case scenario all around. But what Stanley didn’t know was that it was also temporary.
“Caspar, Wyoming, it is,” Zafir said with a look at Jade. “Do you know what I’m thinking, Stan?” He didn’t wait for the man to reply. “I think that there’s a little more to this than a photographic vacation.”
Jade glanced at him. The real reason that their company was hired had been kept secret from them when Nassar has been contracted. That secret had propelled a gunman to go after Stanley this morning. Stanley wasn’t the easy, risk-free tourist he’d been portrayed as—not even close.
“Everything you can tell us will help us do our job.” Jade turned to look at him. “Stanley?” she asked softly, ready to use her wiles if that’s what it took.
“You have everything you need to know,” he said as he looked out the window. His lips were taut and his expression troubled. It was obvious that he had no more to say.
Jade frowned. Obviously her wiles had an expiration date. She looked at Zafir, and when he glanced at her, his dark eyes were filled with amusement. But it was the twitch of his lips and the dimple that she hadn’t seen before that almost had her laughing. His humor was contagious. She smiled. If the situation wasn’t so troubling she might have outright laughed.
Silence filled the vehicle as the miles disappeared behind them.
A hawk swooped low, its shadow dipping over the highway, paralleling their progress before it swept up and away.
They were alone with one indignant client and more questions than answers.
Chapter Ten
Stanley fell asleep fifteen minutes into the drive to Casper.
“This hasn’t ended. Whoever was after him in Jackson is still on the loose, still after him,” Jade said quietly despite the fact that Stanley was out cold.
“At least we were able to get a safe house in Casper arranged. With any luck we can get a quiet night, some rest, and get a plan together before any more trouble hits. In the meantime, we’re going to have to lay down the law with Stan,” Zafir said.
“Who would try to shoot him?” she mused. “Is it all about this inheritance or is there something else?”
Zafir didn’t reply. He was concentrating on the road, which was still treacherous.
“You should have let me drive,” Jade said with a smile. “I have more experience with winter driving.” His driving had been fine, but she’d felt like something needed to be said, something mundane to take their minds out of high gear.
“Are you telling me that I’m driving too slow? First it’s too fast, then...” He chuckled. “I think you like to be in control. You don’t like being in the passenger seat.” He glanced over at her with a half smile. He looked at the speedometer. “All right, you have a point. Once the heat was off and we had Stanley, I slowed down a bit.”
“A bit,” she said with a laugh.
“Unlike a certain motorcycle rider...” He let the rest trail.
“Look, I’m not usually that risky of a driver.” She wasn’t sure why she was explaining it to him, but he made her want to justify herself, or maybe the truth was, to prove herself. “It wasn’t a normal occurrence—the motorcycle, I mean. I was desperate. Running out of time and...”
“A cab wasn’t a consideration,” he interrupted with a smile.
“Never,” she said with a laugh. “Too far for one.”
They smiled at each other. It was a relief to switch the conversation to a lighter topic. It gave them a chance to recharge and open their minds to other possibilities and angles of the case. Angles that they might not have considered in the heat of the back-to-back crises they’d just experienced.
Time passed. It was getting dark. The temperature began to drop as the sun began to slip below the horizon. The highway was rapidly becoming even more slick than it had been before. Now it was a sheet of ice, making driving, even on the interstate, treacherous. With the small city of Casper visible in the distance, Stanley stirred and stretched.
“Casper,” Stanley said as he came fully awake and saw the highway sign. “Will it be safe?”
“We’ll make it safe,” Jade assured him. “I think we’ve had more than enough excitement for one day.”
* * *
THEY STOOD OUTSIDE the west unit of a small duplex near the outskirts of Casper. The other unit was empty. The duplex was monitored by a camera that had been placed there during another assignment and kept the perimeter of the building secure.
“We’re set up and the area is clear,” Jade said to Zafir an hour later. Leslie had let them know that the office was swamped, and although a more permanent place would be found, for now, they weren’t at the top of the list. That was one thing that Jade loved about Nassar—none of the brothers who headed the branches of the agency pulled rank unless absolutely necessary. Every employee’s area of expertise was respected.
“This case started out as one thing and morphed into another. Everything so far has been out of the norm. I feel like I might have missed something,” Jade said with a frown. She folded her arms beneath her breasts, holding back a shiver. The sun had set, and with the wind and the snow cover there was a winter chill to the air despite the fact that it was late April.
“The area’s clear. You determined that five minutes before you did the second check.” He looked at her, a frown on his face. “Don’t question yourself.”
She smiled, but the gesture seemed forced; her lips felt stiff.
“You’ve got it covered,” he said with a note of finality.
He was right. The street and the surrounding area were as benign and quiet as it appeared the previous times that she had checked. Other than a sparrow flitting from one bare branch to another, there was nothing except a few parked cars and a shroud of snow.
They’d stopped for takeout on their way into the city. Now it was only a matter of making a plan and getting some rest.
They went up four wooden steps that led to the front door. In the entranceway, there were two doors, an exterior screen and an interior security door with a dead bolt.
“While you were checking the outside perimeter, I hooked Stan up with an online game. Keeps his mind off doing anything stupid like running again, at least in the short term,” Zafir said as he closed the doors behind them.
“I think his ‘adventure’ cured him of that. At least for now.”
They entered a small hallway that led to a minuscule storage area to the left and ran eight feet beyond that to open into a one-bedroom suite.
“Brilliant,” she said as she glanced over at the couch where Stanley was completely focused on a game.
“Space Odds?” she asked, guessing that it would be the game Zafir had mentioned earlier that he had been playing online with Faisal a few days ago. She glanced back at Zafir and then wished she hadn’t. His eyes were too hot, dark and intense, and inescapable. She looked away, her gaze shifting around the room. She would have looked at anything but him to regain her equilibrium.
“Intriguing name for a game. I’ll have to give it a go one day.” She couldn’t think of another thing to say. She knew it was a game of many levels that involved taking over interplanetary colonies. She knew, too, that Zafir wasn’t much of a gamer. That was Faisal’s department. She guessed from that and what had already been said that it was an easy way for the brothers to stay in contact even when separated by cases and continents.
She drifted into the small kitchen that was open to the living area and separated only by a miniscule counter. She was at a loss as to what to do. Earlier, it had been different. There had been danger. Danger had allowed her to go into action with a natural surety and no thought to anything but protecting the client. Now she was facing what she considered a legend in the agency. With nothing to distract her, there was nothing to buffer his proximity. There wasn’t an unsub threatening them or even a client needing attention. They were trapped in a shoe box of an apartment, and she was more aware of him than
she wanted or needed to be. She couldn’t explain the why of it, but he’d always intrigued her in a way his twin, Emir, never had.
She’d admired his skill and had studied him since she’d first signed on with Nassar. She’d followed each of his cases, going through the details to hone her own skills. She’d learned from one of the best, and in the process, she had to admit, she’d become infatuated with the idea of him. But Zafir in a cold two-dimensional file was not the three-dimensional man filling this small space. In person, he was so much more.
“Hey Stanley, made the high score yet?” she asked with absolutely no clue what the high score might be. She’d never played an online game in her life and wasn’t sure how Zafir had immediately realized that Stanley had. It definitely wasn’t in the file, but there appeared to be a few things that weren’t in the file.
“Exceeded it,” he said with a quiet smile.
“That’s great,” she said with little enthusiasm as she glanced around the kitchen area and saw a coffeemaker along with coffee on the counter, a toaster and a microwave. She opened the fridge. Someone had made sure that there was milk, bread, a small jar of jam, and eggs. She closed the door.
An hour passed and Stanley had put the game aside.
He stood up, yawning.
“You can have the bedroom, Stanley,” she said. “You must be exhausted.”
He smiled at her with a look of irony. “Considering everything,” he said. “I am and I’ll take it.” He glanced at the Murphy bed that hadn’t been opened. “The two of you will have to fight for that,” he said now looking at the Murphy bed with disdain before he went into the bedroom and closed the door.
“We need a plan,” Jade said to Zafir. “Stanley seems to think he’ll be safe here for the next ten days while he takes pictures in and around the city.” She shrugged, knowing that they were on the same page with this, seeing the truth in his eyes, knowing his words before he spoke. “I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t a good idea. In fact, I didn’t say anything. So he thinks that’s what’s going to happen. But staying in Casper...”
Sheik's Rescue Page 8