Sheikh's Rescue

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She did a final sweep of the area. The street was silent. It had been like that for the last few minutes. She needed to make sure Stanley was safe. She stepped back into the apartment. She had to secure both him and the apartment before she went out and scouted a wider area. It was clear they needed to move him and for that they had to find a safe place. That wasn’t her job. Her job was to protect him in whatever safe house was decided.

But when she stepped past the patio doors, the silence was heavy. She took a deep breath, trying to control her over-stressed breathing. The apartment was ominously silent except for the clock measuring off time; the steady beat made her want to yank it from the wall and chuck it over the balcony.

“Stanley!” Her gun was in both hands, aimed—ready. She took one step, moving left, her arms moving with her body, keeping the gun in front, ready. There was nothing to be ready for. The apartment was empty, and all that she could think was that it wasn’t possible. She’d protected him, held off the sniper and made him safe, and now Stanley should be here waiting for her. As she moved through the small apartment she became more tense. It was clear that Stanley was gone, even his luggage was missing.

Outside a car door slammed.

She ran to the balcony, gripping the cold cement as she looked over the railing. The street was dreary, falling snow the only movement. She went to the other side, to the edge of the balcony that hugged the perimeter of the building. There, she could see into the parking lot and also see that the stall that her rental van had occupied was empty.

“Unbelievable,” she said through clenched teeth. “Un-frickin-believable,” she muttered. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. Until now, she could never have imagined it happening. So far she’d had a stellar, if short, career with Nassar—until now.

What had gone wrong?

How had this happened?

She’d handled the attack on the balcony smoothly only to lose the client. This didn’t sit well with her, and it wasn’t going to sit well with the agency. But it wasn’t the agency she was thinking of, but rather the sinfully good-looking Zafir. She gritted her teeth. Instead of impressing him, which would up her chances of success and status with the company, she looked like amateur hour.

“Damn, Stanley,” she gritted. “You’re not making it easy to like you.”

Chapter Five (#ua6831476-c5d9-5e6c-b292-b8caaa24cfc6)

Jade headed out the door without a backwards glance. The apartment door banged behind her. She never checked if it was locked or not. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be back.

Irrelevant.

They needed to get moving. She had to brief Zafir. They needed to get wheels on the road and find Stanley.

As she stepped back into the parking lot ten minutes later, Zafir pulled up in an arctic-blue Pathfinder. Top of the line. She wouldn’t have expected less. The metallic paint gleamed in the dull light. She’d had to wait for him, but she hadn’t wasted any of that time. She’d gathered what evidence she could in the ten minutes it took Zafir to get here.

What she knew was that Stanley had been in a hurry. The evidence of that was a cover for one of his precious camera lenses, lying where the van had been parked. He was frightened, panicked even, but considering what had happened, she couldn’t fault him. She ran the lens cover between her fingers.

Zafir stepped out.

“Stanley’s gone,” Jade said grimly.

He closed the driver’s door. His gaze never left her face, and his eyes told her what he didn’t. That he was waiting for her to fill him in.

“He took off while I was securing the balcony. No more than fifteen minutes ago.” There was no sugarcoating the information. There was just getting it out and getting moving. “Took everything but his camera lens with him.” She held it up with a look of irony. “He’ll miss that.” She stuffed it into her pocket.

“I don’t believe this,” Zafir said. A dark brow arched and his chiseled lips were flat, disapproving, as if this had all been her fault. “Foul play?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

Silence beat between them, and with it, so many implications. Had she watched him closer, would this still have happened? Had she kept the keys for the van out of his reach, had she...

She met Zafir’s troubled gaze. “There was no sign of scuffle. In fact, only one set of footsteps in the snow, and those are disappearing fast.” She wiped snowflakes from her brow with the back of an ungloved hand. “Tire tracks indicate he was heading west. They disappeared within fifty feet of his first turn.”

Jade glanced to the street as if the van would miraculously appear. But there was nothing, no worn white van. If they didn’t find him quickly, it would be too late. She knew that as surely as she knew that she’d had cereal for breakfast. Her stomach grumbled.

Her body was obviously not on the same page as her head. Now—there was no time for food. They had to get moving.

“I was on the balcony. He was in the apartment, or so I thought. He took the van while I was securing the area.” She brushed a strand of hair off her face.

“He couldn’t have gone far. There wasn’t enough time,” Zafir said. There was no inflection in his voice. There was no judgment, either. Somehow that made it all worse.

“You’re right, and there’s a chance he might return on his own. He’s more than likely only frightened and has taken off to get away. Maybe he’s thinking of taking some photographs. An hour or two in the countryside to calm his nerves.” She shook her head. “Not going to happen,” she said.

“It already has,” he said, his lips compressed.

Now she could see the disapproval in his eyes.

She ignored that. It was true. Stanley had disappeared on her watch. But it was also true that she’d get him back, and then they’d move on to the next step, securing Stanley in another location. “Look, he’s familiar with me. I can take your Pathfinder and retrieve him. You stay here in case he returns.”

“No.”

“No?”

“We’ll go after him. Together.”

“We?” Dread dropped into the pit of her stomach. That hadn’t been what she planned even when she’d reported the code red. Somehow, she’d thought that she’d continue on in the case. Alone. That she’d keep Zafir informed as it progressed. That he’d assign another agent as backup.

“There’s no one else available,” he said as if reading her mind. There was a hard inflection in his voice that clearly told her this was nonnegotiable.

She took a breath. She was on edge, and it wasn’t the situation. Zafir on paper was intimidating enough but in reality, even more so. She’d admired him for too long. Now she was scared that he was the one man who had the ability to pull her off her game. She took a deep breath. There were more important things to think of than her admiration for one of her employers.

She had to remember who he really was. He was a man like any other despite his legendary status with Nassar. She struggled with that, with staying focused on the job and not on him. But to her he was like no ordinary man. The cases he’d closed amazed her. She’d been in awe of what he had done, what he had faced and how he’d succeeded. She had to bring her adoration down to earth. Working with him had to be like working with any other man. She had no idea how to make that happen.

She took a breath and felt his dark eyes on her; the passion and intelligence in them was hot and commanding. She turned away. This was no time for such thoughts, and yet she had to allow them before she could discard them.

She had to remember that he was a womanizer, if office rumors were to be believed. For even now, he was looking at her with more heat than one would look at someone who was only a business partner. Worse, she wasn’t immune.

Darn him, she thought.

* * *

“WHAT’S YOUR TAKE on Stanley?” His eyes drilled into hers and he knew that he probably seemed focused on her response like it was all that he had on his mind. He knew that it was all he should have on his mind. He needed to get his head in the game, for he found everything about Jade to be distracting. Her photograph, as he’d thought earlier, on first meeting her, hadn’t done her justice. A photograph couldn’t reveal biting intelligence or a body that was meant for...

Outrageous, his internal monitor roared at him. She was a gorgeous woman but more important, she was a business associate. The reminder wasn’t much help.

His eyes went to her face. That was a safe place to remain except for the fact that her eyes—her eyes were hypnotic, and her lips... She was muddying the waters of his normally clear mind worse than a sandstorm in the Sahara.

“He didn’t seem to know how to act with a woman. I mean, he acted rather like a starstruck teenage boy rather than the middle-aged man he is. It was rather strange. Manageable, but strange.” She looked at him and then followed everything she had said with a contradiction. “At least it was manageable, until now. I can’t believe he’s gone. I would never have expected that of him. He didn’t appear to have that much initiative.”

“He’s frightened. Fear causes unexpected reactions.” He felt nothing but empathy for the missing Stanley. He was probably intimidated by Jade’s presence and likely knocked off his feet by her beauty. He bet that their client had been a mess before one shot had been fired.

He looked at Jade. Questions hung between them as well as the recently obtained intel that he needed to share. The rest of what happened, the explosion in Rabat, had the potential to impact this case. But it was information that would have to wait. First they needed to find Stanley. Then he’d tell Jade, and they could make some sense of it. He hadn’t begun to analyze it himself. At this point, he had no idea if it impacted Stanley’s presence here in the States or their ability to keep him safe.

“I should have remembered that. Fear,” she repeated softly. “If I had, I might have prevented him from running,” she said. “I should have checked on him before...”

“You didn’t have time,” he interrupted. “You were handling a potential assassin, which, by the way, was exceptional work.”

“He got away.”

“He didn’t kill Stanley,” he said. “That was your doing.” He paused and scanned the street, which was empty, deserted as if the storm had confined everyone to their homes. “Was there a reason for anyone to try to take you out?” He was pretty sure of the answer to that even as he asked it, but he needed her to verify it.

“None,” she said. “The shots stopped soon after I got Stanley out of sight.”

“The threat was assessed wrong from the beginning,” he said with a scowl, hating to admit any of that. He was on his phone punching numbers even as he talked. But that was how he ran things. His siblings joked about his ability to take multitasking to the next level.

“I’ve already called the rental agency,” she said. “I mean, if that’s what you’re doing.” Aggravation was thick in her voice. “They’re activating the location device on the vehicle so that I’ll have access.”

Another sign that none of the glowing praise of her abilities had been wrong. The client had slipped away, but he was sure from the evidence presented, and what he knew of Jade, that it was through no fault of hers. His gut told him that nothing short of tying him down could have prevented it. But instead of telling her that, he scowled at her. Then he asked in a voice that would have suited any interrogation room, “You’re sure he’s planning to leave town?”

She nodded. “He’s seriously into photography. As we knew from the file. But what we didn’t know is how passionate he is. I don’t think anything would stop him from taking the landscape pictures he came for. He’s already made that clear. Add to the fact that he had a frightening experience, and that experience was in the city.” She paused. “I suppose terrifying for someone unused to guns. He’s comfortable in the countryside. He spends a lot of time there in Morocco.”

She frowned.

“What is it?”

“You know, on the way here he asked me where the nearest international airport was. I told him that Casper was the largest and closest airport but you required a transfer for anything international. I didn’t even get a chance to explain how limited the flight choice was. The whole topic was dropped because of the elk on the road. I managed to miss it and then we moved on to other topics.”

“You think that’s where he might be headed, Casper?” he said.

“No, at least not to hop a flight.” She shook her head. “Despite the fact that someone tried to kill him, I don’t think it was enough to have him heading home, at least not yet. For all his gaucheness, he has a stubbornness about him. Plus, he loves the States. He told me that this was the trip of a lifetime for him. I don’t think he’s apt to give up so soon. No, I think it’s the opposite. Because of the extreme nature of the experience, he now thinks it’s over. He thinks that he’s safe. They tried and failed.” She looked at him, her eyes seeming to graze his face with the passion of her commitment to this case. “Is that crazy?”

“Nothing at this point is crazy,” he replied. “We’ve got to hit all angles, as you know.”

“He mentioned Casper on more than one occasion as a drive he might like to take while he’s here. There’s some great photography between here and there.”

“You don’t...”

“I think—” she cut him off “—that he’s taking that drive just a little earlier than planned.” She shook her head. “I hope he’s licensed and doesn’t hurt himself in these conditions.”

“We’ll find him before that happens,” Zafir said with gravel in his voice.

“I hope so,” she said as she glanced at her phone messages. Her brow furrowed as her right hand ran through her hair. “The rental agency is having trouble with the app,” she said. She put the phone down. “It could be anywhere from a few minutes to an hour before they get it working.” She frowned. “At least that’s what the tech guesstimated in his message. In the meantime, they’ve pinpointed his last location, so that’s hopeful.”

There was something in the way that she looked at him that held some sort of warning. Yet his attention was fixated on her lips.