Sheik's Rescue

by Ryshia Kennie

  “Tara?” she asked, referring to his sister.

  “Maybe. Someday,” he said with a smile.

  “Never,” Talib said.

  She turned to look at Stanley. “Have you managed to contact your uncle yet?”

  “He’s not answering,” he said. “But he said when I spoke to him earlier that he’d be here waiting for me. He was looking forward to a visit.”

  “I don’t like it,” Zafir said. “You said there was no answer from our agent on the estate.”

  Talib nodded. “I’ll try again.”

  “Uncle could be in trouble, is that what you’re saying?” Stanley asked.

  “No,” Zafir said.

  “What don’t you like?” he persisted. “What does it mean?”

  “It means you should stay in the helicopter while I get your uncle and fly you both out,” Talib said. “Jade and Zafir are well equipped to deal with any trouble.”

  “You mean my cousin? Is that the trouble?”

  “No,” Talib said patiently. “I mean exactly what I said. Any trouble.”

  “My cousin Fayad,” Stanley muttered. “I haven’t seen him since I was a boy. I remember he was distant even then. I thought he was living the good life in Paris. That he was like all my relatives, most of them, anyway—rich.”

  “He kept up a good illusion,” Jade said.

  They arrived in Rabat at three in the afternoon and landed in a small field a mile behind the stone mansion Stanley had told them about during the flight. It had all gone exactly as planned. Except that not only was their agent not responding, but a third call to the mansion went unanswered. The estate seemed deserted. The land seemed to breathe silence.

  It was clear even from this distance that something was wrong.

  “Get Stanley out of here,” Zafir said to his brother. “I don’t like any of this.”

  Talib nodded. It was the first rule of Nassar Security to protect those you could as quickly as possible. Otherwise the damage could amp up, fast.

  “My uncle?”

  “Will leave with Zafir and me, Stanley,” Jade said. She only hoped that was the truth.

  “Promise me,” he said as Talib took his arm, keeping him at the helicopter. He protested again, weakly this time, for it was clear even to him that Talib was not beyond using more force than he already was.

  * * *

  “SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT,” Jade said. The helicopter had taken off with Stanley and Talib over fifteen minutes ago. Now she was crouched fifty feet from the main house near an outbuilding. Ahead of them was the remains of the stone cottage, and between that and the mansion stretched silence.

  Seconds turned into minutes. The estate seemed to be empty, and that was warning enough that there was trouble. Unidentified trouble, the worst kind.

  “Get down!” Jade barked at Zafir, getting lower and moving in his direction even as she scanned the area and motioned with a flick of her right wrist.

  A shot rang out from somewhere near their right and closer to the mansion.

  “Split up,” Zafir said as he waved her farther away. Later, he’d regret that command. He’d regret it for the rest of his life. For now, he was concentrating on keeping them alive.

  Another shot kicked dirt up a few feet from where he was sheltered behind the tires of a small tractor. He moved deeper into the yard and closer to the mansion where they suspected Stanley’s uncle was. Jade had moved ahead of him and was using a small shed for cover.

  But the closer they got to the mansion, the more broken and rusted farm implements they found. It was a strange state of affairs, but possibly spoke to Khaled el Eloua’s state of mind.

  Another shot rang out. This time it took out the side window in the small shed directly in front of Jade.

  Minutes ticked by, and the next shot told them that their sniper had somehow moved. The bullet kicked up dirt ten feet to his right. Whoever had them pinned was using the graveyard of implements as cover more efficiently than he could ever have imagined.

  “Zafir,” she hissed. With the shots now coming from another angle, she’d had a chance to look into the shed, searching for a sign of their agent or Stanley’s uncle. She moved away from the shed and back toward Zafir.

  “I’ve found Anthony,” she said, referring to their agent as she moved in beside him where he took cover behind the wheel of a tractor. “It’s not good,” she said. “He’s not moving. I couldn’t get inside, but I think he’s dead.”

  Zafir spit out an expletive.

  As he’d instructed earlier, Jade moved away, intent on covering the area from a different angle.

  He had no time to consider the ramifications of what she’d found as he saw movement near the main house. He waited. A dark head. It was not Stanley’s uncle. He fired once, twice, three times. Shots were answering his, and then it all stopped. A minute, two, he turned, checking for Jade. It was a mistake, something he wouldn’t do with another agent. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to know that she was okay.

  A bullet whistled inches from him.

  He nodded at Jade, now thirty feet away and just ahead of him, making her closer to the main house. He motioned with his right hand for her to move back, to shadow him, hopefully boxing in the man they suspected was Stan’s cousin.

  She fired before moving back. The bullet was low and did nothing but bite dirt.

  Now the shots all seemed to be coming from a small outbuilding that was close to the house. Another shot, but this time it went wild and was followed by seconds that turned into a minute of silence.

  A shot from his left, Jade’s position, and a thud ahead of him like their assailant had fallen. That was followed by silence.

  Time seemed to spread out, seconds felt like minutes, and suddenly it appeared to be over. The gunman was down.

  Jade stood up, took a step forward. There was movement ahead of him but it all happened so fast. And before he could warn her, even as he knew it was a mistake—it was too late.

  “Get down!” he shouted. But everything was happening at lightning speed. The bullet spun her around and drove her to the ground. He crawled to her despite the danger.

  “Blood,” she whispered as her hand lifted from her chest.

  His heart seemed to stop as he took her gun in his hand. Her weapon, his hand, everything was slick from her blood. With his gun in his right hand and her Colt in his left, he stood. It was a crazy thing to do but all he wanted was to begin shooting like a madman. To kill the son of a desert dog who had taken Jade down. Despite the insanity of what he did, he was lucky. For a split second he had a visual. That was all it took to take him out.

  He heard his name or maybe he dreamed it, dreamed that she was calling for him. Maybe he wished so badly to hear her voice once again that he had made fantasy a reality. He turned, crawling to her, but even as he assessed the damage, he saw the never-ending blood. And he knew that even a miracle might not be able to save her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A Nassar employee had died in the line of duty, and another lay close to death. It was a sobering fact but the facts didn’t get better.

  Jade Van Everett was fighting for her life. Zafir didn’t know what he would do if she died. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, how he had failed to protect her or how he’d fallen in love with her.

  With her down, he’d taken out Stanley’s cousin, Fayad el Eloua, in a way he would never recommend to any of his agents. He had risen to his full height, thrown convention and reason away, and fired one shot after another until his magazine and Jade’s was empty. In the end, the man had taken two fatal hits to the chest that had finally killed him.

  It was over, but in a way it could never be over. The agent who had secured the estate had only recently been hired and trained. Anthony now lay in a morgu
e, and Jade’s life hung in the balance. She was in intensive care with a bullet still lodged in her chest. It was touch and go whether she’d make it or not. The news ran through the agency with a sick kind of shock that only bad news can bring.

  Zafir was tormented with remembering. In those horrible seconds after she’d been hit, he’d leaped out of character and shot again and again, without thought, without reason. He’d been driven by anger, rage and disbelief. He’d reacted instinctively, as no Nassar agent ever should.

  Later, he’d refused to leave Jade’s side. He’d used his own shirt to make a field dressing. Stanley’s uncle had watched from a corner room in the mansion, ironically the one place his geriatric hearing couldn’t hear the phone ring. It was there that he saw the man who threatened his life lose his. He had called for the emergency response team and immediately run out to help Zafir—talking constantly, a trick he said he’d learned in the army. He’d said that it was critical she remain conscious. Zafir hadn’t remembered any of that at the time. They were memories that came back now in fits and starts as the long wait threatened his very soul, if not his sanity.

  All of that had been the beginning of the nightmare. It felt like he’d been here, in this hospital, waiting—forever. A woman in a lab coat that drifted open and revealed lush curves walked by. He noticed because it was his job to notice, but for the first time, he had no interest. Jade was all that mattered. She had to live. He would die without her.

  He didn’t remember much of what happened in those first hours that stretched to days. It seemed like he was living in a movie that had been fast-forwarded, the actors switching and changing as the hours went on. And through it all, he stood with Jade’s blood staining his shirt and the life of the woman he loved in someone else’s hands. He knew now that if she died, there was no reason for him to live. He loved her that much; he loved her that wholeheartedly, that unselfishly. How or when this had happened, he didn’t know. But when she took the bullet to the chest, he’d felt like the life had been ripped from him. He’d acted like a madman and fought back with all the firepower he had and with a deadly accuracy that had killed all that threatened them. He had taken out the one man who had done it, and then he’d taken her in his arms, trying to phone for help with one hand while trying to stop the bleeding with the other. He couldn’t do it. He remembered the phone being taken from his hands. It was all a blur. In the hospital, he refused to leave her, and Talib had stuck around to make sure that he didn’t kill himself in the process by forgetting to eat or sleep.

  Even now he couldn’t believe it. Somehow it felt like he had made this tragedy happen and as much as he knew that wasn’t true, the thought wouldn’t go away. He’d prided himself on keeping his agents safe. The fact that it had been Jade who orchestrated the assignment, the fact that every safeguard had been in place, none of it eased the responsibility that weighed heavily on him.

  “You did everything you could,” Emir said as he arrived an hour after Jade emerged from surgery. He patted him on the back.

  “An agent is dead,” he said grimly. He didn’t say anything about Jade; he couldn’t. For to admit that she was fighting for her life felt like it would make the worst happen.

  “It’s not your fault. Anthony was ordered to pull out, to wait for backup,” Emir said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and met Zafir’s look head-on. “You were in transit. There was nothing you could have done. It was Anthony who made the call, who reported Fayad’s appearance. I don’t know why he defied orders. But it definitely wasn’t your fault. You had no say in any of it.”

  Zafir could feel his twin’s pain. He knew that his heart ached at the outcome of his order. He almost wanted to say no, don’t finish. But he knew that wasn’t what needed to be done. Emir needed to say this.

  “He was supposed to take Khaled, Stanley’s uncle, and get out before any of this came down. But somehow something screwed up and he didn’t go when he should.” Emir shook his head. “This is on my shoulders.”

  “It’s on no one’s shoulders,” Zafir said. “You made the best decision you could. If you hadn’t, more people might have died. There are so many other scenarios that could fall out, you know that. You can’t predict the future. You can only do the best you can.”

  “I know,” Emir agreed. “And I’ll work through it.”

  After Emir left, Zafir was on his own again. He remembered what Emir had said. It didn’t make what happened right, but as he told Emir, he could live with it, because the reality was there was no other choice, for either of them.

  * * *

  THE FIRST VOICE Jade heard, the first face she saw, the first hand she touched, was Zafir’s. What she saw in his eyes, the connection that ran hot and electric between them, changed her in ways she’d never thought possible. Lust was one thing, but what she felt now was so much different. It was more powerful, more intangible than anything she’d felt for any other man. It went beyond lust or even love.

  “Why are you here? Why aren’t you on a case?” It was the first thing she could think to ask.

  “Because I’d rather be with you,” he replied.

  She almost smiled. The spiritual connection that ran so deep only a few seconds ago was replaced with the familiar. His voice, molten tones of bass, his simple words of concern, seductive despite their surroundings. In fact, they brought a reality that took her away from her surroundings, from the doctors, the nurses, the needles and the pain.

  They didn’t talk much that day or the next. The pain and discomfort were too great. But a week after she was fully conscious and sitting up, they talked.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Weeks,” he said loosely.

  “And you’ve been here all that time?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  She blinked and seemed not to focus on him. It was as if she were seeing something or someone else.

  “It was you?” she said. “Every time I woke up. I could sense you.”

  “You knew I was here,” he said softly.

  “I needed you here,” she replied.

  She closed her eyes and slept.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The last weeks had been tough. But Jade was finally well on the road to recovery. In fact, only two days ago she’d been discharged and by the end of the week she’d be clear to fly. But they were taking it easy, and at the end of the week Zafir took her on a shorter flight. They made the trip out to the estate near Rabat where Stanley was now living. The case they had been assigned to protect Stanley had been closed with the shoot-out that had almost killed Jade. There was no one alive who was a threat to Stanley or his uncle any longer. Now it was time to say goodbye.

  Stanley sat on the sprawling front veranda of the mansion of his uncle’s estate.

  “This is goodbye, Stan,” he said as he approached. It had been three weeks since they’d first stepped foot in Morocco, intent on closing this case. “How’s your Uncle Khaled?”

  “Doing great. I’m glad I’m here for him. That he survived my cousin’s greed.” He smiled.

  “And you survived to keep his legacy alive.”

  “I did. Thanks to you and Jade. Odd, my relatives, except for him—” he glanced over his shoulder where his uncle was walking toward one of the outbuildings, a dog following slowly behind him “—are so twisted. My brother, two cousins.” He shook his head. “Makes you think it could be genetic.”

  “You turned out fine, Stan,” Zafir assured him. “Anyway, it’s over, and we just wanted to come and say goodbye and let you know that next time you visit Wyoming it won’t be quite as hair-raising as your last visit.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “It is,” Zafir said with a smile.

  “I may take you up on that. Maybe even next year, but if I do, I’ll look you up.” He shook his head
. “In fact, I’ll hire you.”

  Zafir laughed. “The danger’s past, Stan.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he replied with a smile. “My crazed cousins might be gone, but there’s still a rancher or two that I wouldn’t turn my back on.”

  Zafir smiled. He held out his hand. “Deal. Till next summer.”

  He turned, looking to where Jade was chatting with Stanley’s uncle. The old man laughed and clapped a hand on her shoulder.

  “She’s something, isn’t she?” Stanley asked the question not like a man who had any romantic interest in a woman but more with a hint of admiration. “If I had a sister, I’d want her to be just like her.”

  “She definitely had your back this whole time,” Zafir said. “Nassar is lucky to have her.”

  “You’re lucky to have her,” Stanley said. “Don’t think I haven’t seen what’s going on between you two.” He smiled.

  “What’s going on?” Jade asked as she came up to the two men.

  “Nothing,” Zafir said, feeling heat crawl up his neck as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. He hadn’t had that feeling in a very long time. “Stan was just saying how great you are at your job.”

  “I’m going to miss you, Stanley,” Jade said. “You definitely keep things exciting.”

  “What, by offering near-death experiences?”

  Jade laughed. “I love the new Stanley.”

  “Stan,” he said. “I prefer Stan.” He stood up from where he was sitting on the steps. “Thanks, both of you.”

  He reached out and shook Zafir’s hand. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “I don’t care what he says, I’m not leaving without a hug, Stan,” she said with a smile.

  “I never thought it would end like this,” Stan said a minute later. He wiped the back of his hand across his cheek as a large shaggy black dog shoved his head against his thigh, and a small brown mixed breed barked shrilly. “I’m back, boys. It’s over.”