Her mother sat back and fixed a curl that had fallen across Yara’s face. “I told Sully you’ll talk when you’re ready. He’s been bugging me every night, especially after what Jeff told us.”
Their collective gaze drifted to the ERAF CEO who was talking to Sully. Jeff arrived that morning to quickly check on her. He would be heading back to Yemen to finish the three-week mission. Yara’s parents begged her not to go back and, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t bear to put them through the worry again so soon.
“Kade … is different. But, I love him.”
“I just want what’s best for you, Azizam.” Her mom gave her a kiss on both cheeks before leaving her to attend to a guest.
Yara forced herself to mingle with their friends, answering the same questions, responding to the same statements regarding her safe return and her altruistic work. Yara knew they meant well, but she couldn’t even come close to talking about the conditions in Yemen without tearing up. And she was sure her friends weren’t prepared for her to go into an exposition of what needed to be done and what needed to be fixed. She didn’t have enough information.
She needed to go back.
In the meantime, she nodded and smiled and thanked everyone for their concern.
But as the evening wore on, her nerves wore thin, and she began to suffocate from the air, from the perfume the women wore, from the smell of candles … from the weight of her detachment.
She walked out to the balcony into the brisk, cold air of November in Ankara.
They were in the penthouse of a five-star hotel. Yara had another room on the same floor. She insisted, because she didn’t want to distress her parents with her desire to sit in front of the television and binge on instant streaming of her favorite shows.
“Need some company?”
A shawl draped around her shoulders and she glanced up to see Jeff.
Her smile was small as she thanked him for the wrap before she resumed looking out into the night. She and Jeff had already discussed business. Their team had resumed their work in the UN camp after cooling their heels in Hudaydah following the political fallout of the Nasir assassination attempts.
“It’s normal, sweetheart.”
Brows furrowing, she looked questioningly at Jeff.
“The disconnect,” he said gently. “Look at it.” He pointed to the well-heeled socialites. The uniformed wait staff. The sheer opulence of the suite. “At least Zareen had the sense not to order caviar or foie gras.”
“Sully is a fried chicken and mashed potatoes guy.” Yara had to smile. Their guests’ attire was out of sync with the homey food. “I told Mom I wanted Iranian stew and kebabs. Just plain and simple peasant food.”
“Heard a cheeseburger was the first meal you requested,” Jeff laughed.
The thought brought a smile to her face, but it quickly faded. Ever since her return from Yemen, finding happiness in little things seemed out of reach. Yara wrapped her hands around her, gripping her biceps, suddenly chilled.
She missed her grumpy bear.
She missed him so much her heart ached.
They continued to stare out into the night until a thought that had niggled in the back of her mind resurfaced. “Uncle Jeff?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you ever figured out why the paper manifest indicated nine crates?”
Jeff gave a derisive snort. “I wouldn’t worry about it. We used a feeder ship from Karachi. Probably messed up in the transfer.”
Yara bit her bottom lip as she contemplated that possibility. “So, there’s no way of verifying that mistake?”
Sighing, Jeff said, “No. These companies use many contractors. Bottom line, it’s what’s in the computers. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”
His last statement grated on her nerves more than usual but was quickly forgotten when the TV in the living room drew her attention. “Uncle Jeff … they’ve released the news.”
Yara left him at the balcony, her eyes riveted on the screen, on the face of Al-Fayed with the caption: “U.S. Navy SEALs capture most wanted Al Qaeda terrorist Jamal Al-Fayed.”
What. The. Hell.
31
Christmas in Manhattan was a sight to see, but old man winter was particularly blustery this evening. However, not even the wind chill in December could diminish the flare of Yara’s excitement.
Kade was coming home.
He might already be in New Jersey. After four weeks of separation, they were finally going to see each other. She checked her phone. No messages yet.
Holiday lights twinkled around building stoops and tall windows. Somewhere a choir was singing “Silent Night” a cappella and, when she passed the coffee shop around the corner from her street, the scent of pumpkin competed with the aroma of hot cocoa and nutmeg.
Her senses had been numb to the holiday cheer and it was only today that its spirit had invigorated and woken her up from a nightmarish existence. Yara turned up her collar and continued walking. There was a spring to her steps which had been lacking in the dark weeks of uncertainty. That morning, Kade talked to her briefly before his flight out of Berlin. He didn’t talk details. Yara wasn’t even sure if he could talk about it. Classified information and all that. She wanted to meet his plane, but he said his flight arrival time wasn’t certain.
She spotted Mr. Perry, her elderly neighbor, struggling with the door of her apartment building. Yara rushed up the steps and held it open for him.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Perry,” she greeted cheerfully.
Her old neighbor frowned as he always did, a typical curmudgeon who loved his dogs more than people. His two little dachshunds skipped ahead, and he tipped his hand to his flat cap as he passed her.
Yara chuckled. Her enthusiasm was infectious if she was able to get Mr. Perry to acknowledge her.
When she entered her apartment, packages were arranged neatly in her foyer. Since she traveled a lot, she had an arrangement with the building administrator to accept her mail and deliveries. Yara checked her phone again. There was a text from Mom asking when she was driving down to Charlottesville for Christmas which was in four days. She was going to hold off answering. Yara hated to disappoint her parents, but she and Kade had a lot of lost time to make up for.
Heading to the bedroom, she undressed and pulled on a tee and pajama bottoms before padding barefoot to the living room and flicking on the TV to watch the news. It wasn’t a headliner, but Elliot Denton, the journalist who’d investigated the atrocities in Yemen, finally published his piece on the Saudi government’s involvement with Al Qaeda in Yemen, although the monarchy was distancing itself from General Boustari who they declared was a rogue officer of Saudi Intelligence.
A cold draft caused her to shiver. Heating in old buildings was not the most efficient. Maybe some hot tea would help, so she filled her glass kettle with water and set in on the stove. She looked at her less than cheery apartment. There were no Christmas decorations. Her gut was a perpetual knot of anxiety, worrying about Kade dealing with the legal repercussions of rescuing her. All she could muster was work, eat, and sleep. The latter two were even a challenge to achieve.
Her gaze was drawn to the packages by the door. Some were wrapped in Christmas paper—green and red, some were gold, and others silver. She walked over to them and inspected their return addresses. A padded brown envelope caught her eyes. The sender was E. Denton.
She’d conversed briefly with Elliot when she returned from Ankara and apparently one of the emails Kade had her delete had something to do with his investigation into aid organizations. Elliot said she would be interested in his findings and would send them over. Curious now, she picked it up and tore the seal off. A memory stick fell out.
Apprehension snaked up her spine. Yara didn’t have a good track record with memory sticks, but she was compelled to look at it. She walked to the dining table and powered up her MacBook, sticking the flash USB into its device dongle. Her brows cinched together as images of shipping ma
nifests came on the screen. They were of ERAF aid shipments to various parts of Africa. She clicked on another and it displayed a scanned document from one of their shipping lines.
A rap on the door made her heart jump. Was it Kade? Did Mr. Perry let him in? She was at the door and peeking through the keyhole before she even debated the contrariness of her neighbor’s surliness and his habit of letting strange people into the building.
Her excitement deflated when her visitor was Jeff. Did he forget to tell her something when they were at the office that afternoon? Yara opened the door.
“Uncle Jeff, what—”
He wasn’t alone as a figure peeled itself from the wall beside her door. The man was familiar. Warren Brody. One of Kade’s men—the analyst who had disappeared from the face of the earth during the JAG investigation.
The stone-faced look on Jeff’s face, the piercing gaze of Warren, and, finally, the memory stick sent by Denton all coalesced into a single instinct.
An instinct that had her slamming the door, but Warren took advantage of her surprise and rammed his shoulder against it. His hand shot out and grabbed her throat.
Her eyes bulged and Yara’s breathing constricted as her feet shuffled backward into the apartment before releasing her with a shove.
She staggered back in disbelief.
“Now that’s gonna get you killed.” Jeff walked in casually and closed the door. “Not engaging the safety when you answer the door.”
“Uncle Jeff,” she croaked. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on?” he sneered. A mask of anger she’d never seen on Jeff overpowered the easygoing façade she was used to. “You had one job. To keep the aid donations coming. To be the pretty face of the foundation. Your job is not to collude with a journalist. Your job is not to find a solution to world hunger.”
“But isn’t that our goal?” Yara couldn’t understand what he was trying to say.
“We need to sustain a crisis. If we solve it, guess what? The aid money dries up! It’s simple math.”
“What do you want from me?” she asked, but she already knew. Warren was going through her MacBook and yanked the memory stick from the device dongle.
“The ninth crate,” she whispered. “You’re smuggling chemical weapons?”
Jeff’s face twisted comically before exploding into grating laughter. Yara looked upon the man who’d been her mentor, her second dad. Admittedly, in the six years since his divorce, he’d changed drastically, becoming more driven to make money.
“Oh … that’s just …” He wiped the tears at the corners of his eyes. “You hear that, Brody?”
Warren’s face barely cracked a smile as he concentrated on Yara’s laptop probably checking all her correspondence with Elliot.
Jeff gestured to the table. “Have a seat.”
When she refused, Warren drew out a gun and pointed it at her head. “Do as you’re told. I’d rather get this over with sooner, but the old man is feeling sentimental.”
Her phone rang. A ringtone telling her it was Kade calling. But she knew from the warning on both men’s faces that she wasn’t allowed to answer.
Her muscles locked. She was reeling at the sight of the weapon pointed at her. “You obviously wanted Elliot’s files. Everything I have from him is on that stick.”
Warren cocked the gun. Yara sat.
Jeff stopped chuckling and perched at the end of the table. “I haven’t done something as nefarious as chemical weapons. I haven’t gone down that road.”
Yara didn’t say anything.
“Aren’t you curious?”
She shook her head. “Even if you take that memory stick, Elliot has the copy.”
“He’ll find those files on his cloud erased,” Warren said. “Plus, he’ll soon have an accident. Could be blamed on the Saudis, you know.”
Her throat bobbed. “And you’re telling me this because …”
“Because it shouldn’t have come to this,” Jeff said. There was a trace of regret in his voice. “You and I, we’ve gone through tough times. I’ve been more a father to you than Sully. But you’ll always be his daughter. Sully’s the one with the fame, the faithful beautiful wife. And me? All I have is them. The affected people requiring our aid. And you want to take that away from me?”
“You’re jealous of Sully? He’s your best friend—”
“I did all the work!” Jeff roared. “When they talk about ERAF it’s always Sullivan Emerson’s philanthropic work. Not mine, but when there’s a smear to the foundation it’s that’s Jeff Kennedy’s fault, his mismanagement, Sully should fire him they say! So why shouldn’t I benefit from any of this?”
“Are you stealing donations?” Yara whispered.
“No. No,” Jeff said as if suddenly weary. “I have a mining interest along the border of Oman and Yemen.”
“Shut up!” Warren said.
Jeff glowered at the analyst. “You don’t tell me to shut up. You’ve been blackmailing me for weeks—stealing money that’s supposed to go to ERAF.”
“It’s only fair since princess here fucked up my job.” The analyst pointed an accusing finger at her.
Her brows furrowed in confusion.
The sinister cheerfulness on Warren’s face unnerved her. “Oh, he didn’t tell you, did he? SSRR is defunct. Everyone is fucked from what’s amounting to a bankruptcy and the sale of equipment certainly won’t compensate me, much less all of us. But Spear doesn’t have to worry, does he? He’s scored the jackpot with you.” There was malice etched in Warren’s eyes, a threat she couldn’t ignore.
“You’re going to kill me,” Yara stated flatly. There was only one way this could end. They couldn’t tell her all this and keep her alive.
Warren didn’t answer.
“And how will you get away with killing me?” Yara lifted her chin.
“Not your problem.” The analyst pointed the gun at her again.
“Wait!” Jeff said, panic in his voice and he exhaled an effusive breath and turned to Yara. “If you promise not to—”
“You don’t have the balls to go through with it, do you?” Warren sneered.
“You think we can simply kill her and charge her murder to Spear?” Jeff challenged.
“What are you guys talking about?” Yara’s voice rose.
The analyst remained tight-lipped, but scrolled through his phone and showed her an image of Kade coming down from the same plane they used to fly to Yemen. The image appeared to come from someone waiting in a car on the tarmac.
“Max is with him now.” Warren’s mouth curled in derision. “Spear should be feeling guilty. Max has every reason to hate him for destroying the company. All because of your cunt.”
He said the “c” word without inflection, but Yara flinched.
“One word from me and he puts a hole in between Spear’s eyes and, believe me, he can make it look like a suicide.”
“Why are you showing me this now?”
“So you’ll know it isn’t really a choice. Either both of you die or Spear gets a chance to live.”
“You’re framing him for my murder? How much of a life would that be for him?” Yara asked incredulously.
“This is becoming a really bad idea—” Jeff started, fidgeting, darting his eyes between them.
Warren raised his gun and shot Jeff in the head.
Yara froze in horror, watching the life go out of Jeff’s eyes before he dropped to the floor.
She jumped up from the chair and started hyperventilating.
“Dammit,” Warren growled. “Was supposed to kill him later. Worthless piece of shit! He’s penniless. Max and I have wrung him dry and Denton has seriously cramped his smuggling operation with his nosiness.” He raised his dark eyes at her. “All Max and I wanted was revenge on Spear. Kill the love of his life.” Warren smirked. “See him go to jail for it.” He stared at the body of the floor. “Now how to get this sorry-ass old man out of here.” He mumbled to himself, digging the grip of the gun
in his forehead. “Max won’t be pleased about it.”
Her senses were heightened from watching Jeff be killed, adrenaline pumped through her veins, her pulse thundering in her ears with the realization that Warren Brody might well be a psychopath. Her phone rang and she stared longingly at it.
A piercing wail screamed in the kitchen.
“What the fuck?”
“Let me turn off the water.” She ran to the kitchen, taking advantage of the distraction.
“Leave it!” The analyst’s voice was close behind her.
“It’ll take a second—”
“I said—”
Yara spun around and high-kicked Warren in the groin.
Emitting a strangled sound, he fell to his knees and dropped the gun. Yara dove for the weapon but he was right there. He grabbed her leg, flipping and sending her crashing on her back. The jarring impact stole her breath and paralyzing panic gripped her.
“… ing bitch!” he choked. He yanked at her legs, trying to climb on top of her, but she found the strength to kick him off and get up.
He grabbed her leg again.
Yara’s only thought was survival. Her scream echoed in the apartment as she grabbed the shrieking kettle and smashed it against her attacker.
Glass shattered, hot water splashed and Warren’s anguished howl ripped through the apartment. She broke away from him, picking up the gun and dashed to the living room, to her ringing phone.
“Kade!”
“Tink, what the …”
“Don’t trust Max!”
“What?”
“Don’t trust—”
Yara heard a sound behind her and she twisted around.
Gunfire cracked.
32
Kade stepped down from the rickety Citation aircraft. Despite the physical dents and scorched paint, the old girl had served them well. His eyes fell upon the BMW roadster on the tarmac, recognizing whose car it was and stilling himself for a confrontation that could go either way.
Would it be Max, his friend, or Max, the man who blamed him for the dissolution of SSRR?
The Princess And The Mercenary Page 25