Sheik's Rescue

by Ryshia Kennie

  She nodded.

  “No one died?” He put the coffee down unstirred.

  “Your uncle’s fine,” she repeated.

  Relief seemed to push Stanley back against the couch. He eased his death grip on his coffee cup, but he still looked at her with worry.

  “You’re close to your Uncle Khaled?”

  He nodded and took a sip of coffee.

  “Why don’t we know about him?” she asked softly. “Why wasn’t your relationship in the file?”

  “There was no need...” His frown deepened.

  “You lived with him for a few years after your father died.”

  “So?”

  “Why didn’t you at least tell us?”

  “It had no relevance and it was a long time ago. I mean, he’s my uncle and we’re in contact, but when I lived with him I wasn’t twenty yet.”

  She walked a short distance away before turning to face him. It was a tactic that she’d used before when a client had been unwilling to reveal information. Not asking the most relevant questions first to put them slightly off guard.

  “He’s your father’s brother?” She’d posed the question that way because she wanted as much as possible for the information to come from Stanley. Maybe then he’d learn to trust her just a bit more.

  “Yes.” He folded his arms. “Where are you going with this?”

  “The authorities are fairly certain that the explosion wasn’t an accident.”

  Stanley sank into the couch as if he wanted to disappear. Then he straightened up and leaned forward. The eyes that met hers would have been steely determination in another man, but somehow it was hard to attribute that trait to Stanley. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “A gardening assistant was killed,” Jade said. “That’s not public news.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that the authorities are still investigating.” Darn, she thought, she shouldn’t have said as much as she had. Stanley didn’t need to know that the outcome from the explosion had been kept under wraps.

  Silence sifted through the room. Stanley seemed immersed in his own thoughts. Minutes passed. Finally, he leaned forward and looked at her with new determination on his face. “I’ve got to go back. Make sure my uncle is taken care of. He’s not young. He...” He stopped, his lips were pressed tightly together, and his face was flushed.

  There was no doubt in his voice, no compromise, and Jade felt her stomach sink. She’d never met this side of Stanley, and she only hoped that it was controllable. The last thing they needed to do now was to go back to Morocco, to the heart of danger. It was why she’d held back on the questions and on what she told him for as long as she had.

  “Aren’t there other relatives your uncle is close to?” Jade asked. “One of your cousins, perhaps. They could check on him.”

  He skated right over that suggestion, his breathing coming fast, almost panicked. “My uncle. He needs my help. I should never have left. Not only that, but the rescue...” His voice trailed off.

  “Rescue?”

  “I work with a local dog rescue. I organized more than one fund-raiser for them,” he said. “I had three fosters before I left. They’ve been adopted since,” he said with quiet pride. “The rescue pays me a small salary. I bring in for them twice that through promotions. That’s the deal. I wish it could be more. That I could take less from them, but until now I had no other income.”

  “What do you mean until now?”

  “Nothing. I...I had life insurance from my parents but there was no adjustment for inflation.” He shrugged rather pathetically. “In today’s world, it’s not enough to live on.”

  She didn’t push the point. She was too surprised at this side of him, a charitable Stanley, passionate, if his voice was any indication, about a cause.

  She changed the subject. It was something to remember for the future, but nothing she needed now. They had more important, immediate considerations. “Do you know any reason someone would have wanted to kill...”

  “Was it the old stone cottage on the southeast corner?” Stanley interrupted in a slightly shaky voice.

  “It was. What do you know about it, Stanley?”

  “My uncle loved to read there in the afternoon.”

  “So there was a good chance he should have been there that afternoon?” A thought came to her. “What about you, Stanley? Have you ever been in that cottage?”

  “A few times.”

  The way he said it, the way his eyes didn’t meet hers, if she were to guess, she would say he was underplaying his answer.

  “Were they trying to kill my uncle?”

  “I don’t know, Stanley. Do you know anything about his finances?”

  “What are you implying?” Stanley asked, with outrage tingeing his words and a flush to his pale face. “Are you saying that I helped him for his money?” He took an outraged breath. “That wasn’t the case. I wasn’t there for his money.” He repeated. “I wasn’t.”

  It was becoming clear that whatever allowance his uncle had made for his death, Stanley knew nothing about it.

  “Money changes a lot of things, Stanley.” She wasn’t quite ready to give up.

  “I’m not his beneficiary. He would have told me if I were. Uncle is too organized and efficient to keep anything like that secret, so don’t even imply it.”

  “I didn’t imply anything.”

  “You had that look, Jade,” he said. “We might not have known each other long, but sometimes what you think reads on your face.”

  She took a mental step back. She hadn’t expected that, because she’d made a conscious effort to appear as bland-faced as possible.

  He shook his head. “But you’re right.”

  “About what, Stanley?”

  “Money—not the will. Seriously, I don’t know anything about one. I do know he’d talked about leaving his money to charity.” He shook his head and his lips were pressed together even tighter than they had been before, as if something else was bothering him. “But we did have an agreement. It was between the two of us. Uncle needs help.” His voice was muted as if they were not alone in the room. “A trust—a living wage that would begin when I return. In exchange for taking care of him. He had it drawn up just before I left.”

  “You should have told us that, Stanley—about the trust. It makes it fairly difficult to protect you when we don’t have all the facts.”

  “It wasn’t relevant.” Color flared in his cheeks; contrary to what she knew of him, his passiveness, his fists knotted as if he wanted to hit something or someone. “I need to go back.” He stood up, striding across the short space to the window over the sink. There was purpose and, for the first time, arrogance to his walk. He stood there for a moment before turning to face her. “There’s no choice. I can’t stay here.” His right fist remained clenched. “Book me a flight, immediately.”

  “Stanley...”

  “If you don’t—” he cut her off “—then I will.”

  “No,” Jade said, standing up.

  “This isn’t working.”

  “We’ll make it work, Stanley. But it takes some give on both sides.” She moved over to where he was sitting. “It would be a mistake to go now.”

  “A mistake?” He looked at her with troubled eyes.

  “Wait. Give it some time.”

  “Time?”

  “We need to talk about this. Come up with a plan,” she said in a gentler tone. She put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him. She knew that she had to change her approach, curb her impatience and her need to ask him the questions that were nagging at her. Instead she swallowed all that back. As she and Zafir had agreed, pushing him too soon could have exactly the opposite effect. He would only become more determined to do what they didn’t want h
im to do right now—return home.

  “Are you even sure my uncle is under protection?”

  “Yes. It was verified by our Marrakech office. He’s in good hands, Stanley.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she replied. “I’m also sure that there’s nothing you could do besides endanger yourself if you left right now. Don’t forget that you’re still a target. Someone has shot at you here. Tried to kill you. Do you want to lead that danger to your uncle?”

  His cheeks paled, and she was glad that he’d sat down.

  “Without knowing who they are or who else is involved, we would be flying into the unknown and potentially place you in even greater danger than you were in Jackson. And,” she drew out the last bit, hoping to give it emphasis, “you could endanger your uncle.”

  “Uncle isn’t as strong as he used to be. This kind of stress...” He broke off, his voice shaky, his face red. “I know what you said, the danger...all of that. I get it.”

  He stood up and then sat back down as if his legs wouldn’t hold him.

  “But the truth is that I can’t stay here for the amount of time I planned. I can hold off a day, even two, but eventually I’m going home.” He gazed at her with a dark look in his eyes. “With or without you. I’ve got responsibilities.” He shook his head. “It was wrong of me to leave. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have known.”

  She thought of what she knew, of his cousin. Of the law of averages that said the probability of both Stanley and his cousin being here at the same time for different purposes unrelated to each other was highly improbable. It wasn’t even a coincidence.

  “Let us get you to a safe place, identify who is after you. Contain that threat. Then we’ll escort you home.”

  He didn’t disagree.

  “That’s a promise.”

  She knew what a weight it could be to worry about an elder. She had seen her mother care for her failing grandmother when she’d been a preteen. With only one parent, she worried about that sometimes. Worried about her mother’s old age. For now, that concern was eased by the fact that her mother was a vibrant middle-aged woman living her own life, and should it come to that, she had siblings to fill in any gaps.

  The thoughts changed her perception of his situation. She looked at Stanley with new respect.

  “I feel better knowing that,” Stanley said. His eyes met hers, and she could see the worry in them. “I know that he’s under protection, but I want to be there for him.”

  “He has protection 24/7, and if necessary he’ll be removed to a safe house.” She put a hand on Stanley’s shoulder. “He’ll be fine. Now all you need to do is stay with us and keep safe so that eventually you can be there for your uncle. Promise me.”

  They talked for another ten minutes, and it was only after that that she was able to nudge a reluctant agreement out of him.

  She hoped that the handshake held meaning for Stanley, that he was a man of his word. For right now it was only the strength of a handshake that was holding him to a rather shaky promise.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Zafir got out of the Pathfinder and walked up the road past the no-trespassing sign. The air was crisp, the wind had wound down, and everything appeared still. Yet he knew that he was being watched. He could sense it in a way that could not be disputed. It just was.

  “Hello,” he shouted. “Anyone here?” His words echoed across the snow-covered silence.

  He walked another ten feet. “Nassar Security,” he shouted as if the owner of this isolated piece of land would know who or what that meant. But at least they might know that he was no threat, willing to cooperate.

  Nothing.

  He walked, pacing himself. He looked from right to left as he checked for danger. It had felt silly to shout who he was when it was clear that no one was here. But his gut told him that wasn’t true. Someone was here.

  Everything was still. As before, the prairie grass was covered with a layer of snow, brown stalks peeking through and awaiting the greening brush of spring. Somewhere in the midst of all this he knew the owner patrolled. It was just a matter of where. Would he have a sixth sense and know someone had breached his land? Would he be on a distant acre unaware? He kept walking.

  “I have a few questions.” His words echoed and fell unanswered. He felt rather silly, but he wasn’t deterred. “Hello!” Something seemed to move to his right. He wasn’t sure if it was real or his imagination. Again, he identified himself with the hope that the words of warning would be enough and the bulletproof vest adequate backup. There was no shelter nearby, only a boulder more than fifteen yards away and halfway up the slope. Too far to get to in an ambush.

  The roar of an engine had him swinging around. A snowmobile was almost on top of him. It was so close that he could only assume that the rancher had been lurking behind a stand of brush not far off the road. It was close enough that he would have heard every word.

  “You’ve got some nerve!” the rancher yelled as he swerved in an arc, his rifle slung across his back, the machine spraying snow around him.

  That was a relief, Zafir thought as he noted the position of the rifle. This time, for whatever reason, the rancher wasn’t feeling threatened. Maybe his shouted introduction had had the hoped-for result, or maybe walking on the road instead of across his land had done it, or maybe it was a combination of both.

  The man turned off the engine and got off the snowmobile. He spat, pulled his rifle off his back and strode toward him. The rifle, which replaced yesterday’s shotgun, remained pointing harmlessly away from him.

  The man wasn’t very intimidating up close. He was small and wiry, his skin was wizened and browned by the sun, his hair was thinning, and only the edges held any remains of his former color, brown. He waved his rifle, using it more as a pointer than a weapon. “Didn’t I tell you not to come back yesterday? Don’t you know any English?”

  “I’m with Nassar Security,” he repeated, ignoring the questions and the intended slur. “The man you were threatening yesterday was my client.”

  “So?”

  “A Moroccan royal,” he said, as if that mattered, but sometimes more information soothed turbulent water.

  “Bloody foreigner,” the rancher snarled. “Send them back. Send them all back.” He squinted at Zafir as if he’d just realized that he, too, might be foreign.

  “Look,” Zafir said through gritted teeth. It was an effort to not grab the sun-wizened sack of offal by the collar of his weather-faded jacket and haul him off the ground and give him a good fright. Instead he said with chill frosting his words, “I see you checked out the van. Find anything of interest?”

  “Like what?” the rancher spat with an attempt at disdain, but despite the rifle, he’d taken a step back from Zafir.

  “Any activity?”

  “Another one like you.” The rancher jabbed a thumb at Zafir, but he kept the rifle pointed at the ground. This time, though, his finger was on the trigger. It seemed an odd compromise.

  “Like me? You mean Moroccan?”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He spat again.

  “When?”

  “Why would I tell you?” The rancher glared at him.

  “Because I’ll rid you of your problem once and for all,” Zafir said in a low, confident voice. “He won’t be showing up here again. Neither will I.”

  The rancher looked at him and seemed to consider whether there was any truth to that before he nodded.

  “This morning. He was up to no good. In fact, he was gone as soon as he saw me.”

  “No good. What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” The rancher spat. It seemed that he couldn’t say more than a sentence or two before clearing his throat. “He left his trash.” He pulled out a pack of matches and tossed them at Zafir. �
��Here. I have no use for them.”

  Zafir caught the pack one-handed and turned it over. The cover was embossed with the name of a well-known hotel in Rabat, Morocco. “Thanks for your time,” he said with all the poise acquired through family pedigree and an Ivy League education.

  “Don’t forget you’re still trespassing. I’ll be watching.” The rancher got on his snowmobile. He glared at Zafir and revved the engine. A minute later he shot across the road, heading toward the hills without a backward glance.

  Zafir turned around with a thoughtful expression as he looked at the matches in his palm. “A Moroccan.” He thought over that possibility, which now looked like it might be a probability. There were other Moroccans in Wyoming, like himself, he thought wryly, and two who had arrived recently. They knew where one was and it appeared that the other may have followed them here. It would be interesting to hear what Jade thought of it all and even more interesting to hear what she might have learned from Stan.

  It was looking more and more likely that Stan had been followed by Mohammed Jadid from Rabat, Morocco, and then his cousin had attempted to kill him on foreign soil. He didn’t believe in coincidence. It was unlikely that the explosion on Stan’s uncle’s estate and the attack on him here were unrelated. With the pieces of the case increasing, it looked more and more likely that they’d soon solve the puzzle. They had to, because without knowing the overall picture, they were shooting in the dark when it came to protecting their client. The drive back to Casper held an urgency that he hadn’t felt since the case had been upgraded to code red.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jade was restless. She longed for action.

  Behind her, Stanley sat at the table, a photography magazine in his hand.

  “What do we do now?” he asked. He looked up at her as if he didn’t have an opinion at all. “I mean where do we go from here?” He turned a page of his magazine.

  “We can’t stay here,” she said. “You know that.”

  “I do,” he replied. “I don’t care what I promised. I can’t stop thinking about going home.” He turned another page of his magazine without looking at her.