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Tongues of panic licked fiercer. She couldn’t, wouldn’t let him leave. Not without talking to him, trying to explain why she’d tried to ambush him. Because this might be her one and only shot at approaching him, and it was blowing up in front of her eyes.
* * *
The restaurant door swung shut behind him. Tariq sucked the icy winter air deep into his lungs, trying to calm himself. Rain was turning to snow, fat flakes separating from diaphanous mist, wafting to the ground and winking out on the slick cobblestones at his feet. He strode up the street to his waiting limousine, focusing fiercely on controlling his limp, his visible weaknesses.
He should never have started coming into the village, or dining at the restaurant. Why he’d done it he wasn’t sure. Maybe there was a distant need still buried somewhere deep inside him, a need for human connection.
But he had not anticipated the fierce lust that had gut-punched him at the sight of that woman in the restaurant. Tariq’s hands fisted. Seeing her in that figure-hugging, black jersey dress, knee-high boots, long legs, her mass of dark curls giving her that just-risen-from-bed allure...it reminded him he was not a cold, numb ghost of a man at all. Rather, he was a disfigured, damaged, sorry echo of what he’d once been, with all the old needs still pumping hot and hungry in his blood.
His mind went to her face, so pale against the black liner she’d applied around her huge crocus-colored eyes. Eyes like an oasis. Something he wanted to drown himself in. And not once had her steady gaze left his.
She’d been sitting too close to his alcove in a restaurant that was basically empty. And he’d not failed to notice the distinctive label on the bottle of wine near her fine-boned hand, either. Chateau Luneau cabernet franc—the same wine he ordered every Tuesday night. The wine that came from the Loire Valley estate that had been in Julie’s family for centuries.
His pulse quickened as he neared his vehicle. The startling fist of arousal that had slammed into him at the sight of her disturbed Tariq, as did the accompanying rush of adrenaline. He did not want to feel. Anything.
A cold anger calcified around his heart as he reached his limo, his guard stepping forward to open the door.
She’d positioned herself to ambush him. And Tariq knew why, at least on the surface. His men had done their digging.
She was Estelle Dubois’s new housekeeper and dog sitter. She was also an author. Her name was Amelie Chenard. She came from the States, spoke good French, and had told Estelle Dubois that her great-grandmother’s family hailed from this region. She was supposedly writing a gothic novel set on Ile-en-Mer, featuring the abbey and its ghost. And she wanted a tour of his estate.
She also did not have a work visa, had little money. Gossip around town had it that Madame Dubois was paying her under the table, which was not unusual for Madame, apparently. The old woman marched to her own drum, and always had.
On the surface Amelie Chenard’s story seemed feasible, thought Tariq as he got in the limo, but he trusted nothing. And no one.
The limousine had been Omair’s idea. Hide in plain sight, his brother had said. Make the image fit. He could hear Omair’s words now.
The more important and mysterious you seem, the more these islanders will respect your privacy and keep their distance. The less likely they’ll be to discuss you with outsiders.
Omair had been right about the islanders. Amelie Chenard was another story.
Suspicion snaked deeper into him.
Know your enemy. Keep him close.
Those had always been his father’s words.
Tariq inhaled deeply as he leaned back into the limo seat. Again his brother Omair’s words sifted to mind.
Tell me at once if anything unusual happens...our family, our country, our kingdom is at stake.
This was not just about him. Tariq’s secret was also his family’s secret. If Amelie Chenard was after something more than the abbey ghost... Bitterness filled his mouth and he cursed. He needed to face her, deal with, then dispose of her if necessary.
As his bodyguard climbed into the car he said, “Go tell that woman to be at the abbey tomorrow, 5:00 p.m. sharp. I’ll see her then.”
His man looked at him, a brief hesitation crossing his face.
“Now!” Tariq snapped.
If she gave him cause to suspect her motivation further, he’d ask Omair and his military intelligence team to investigate her. She’d be sorry she ever came prying.
* * *
Bella pushed through the restaurant’s heavy wood door and rushed out into the frigid night. Frantically scanning the street, she saw his vehicle parked a short way up the hill, exhaust smoke beginning to puff white into the cold air, one of the doors still open. She began to run toward the car, aiming to apologize, explain, anything that might stop him from leaving, stop him from shutting her out permanently. She’d come so far for this story already, she would not let it die here in this cold cobblestone street.
But as she ran, a man suddenly appeared out from the shadow at her side, his huge form blocking the pale light from the streetlamp.
Bella froze, her mind hurtling back to the attack in D.C. She spun around to flee. But the man lurched forward and grabbed her arm in a viselike grip. She bit back the scream rising in her chest as the lamplight caught the man’s face and she registered the raw-boned, dark features of the second bodyguard.
Air whooshed out of her.
“What in hell do you think you’re doing!” she hissed, jerking her arm free, heart thumping loudly against her rib cage.
“Monsieur Du Val wanted me to inform you that if you wish to see him he will be available at the abbey tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.” The man spoke French with the rolling r’s of Arabic and his right hand hovered close to his hip where Bella had seen a gun the other day.
Her gaze flashed to the waiting limousine. “He said what?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right.
“Report to the security gate at five, ring the bell, and someone will bring you in.”
Before she could open her mouth again, the man turned and strode up to the waiting limo.
Incredulous, Bella stood rooted to the spot, watching him climb in. She heard the door slam. The vehicle pulled out into the narrow street. Brake lights flared bright at the top of the hill. The limo rounded the corner, then disappeared.
Silence pressed down.
Snowflakes wafted thicker around her and Bella began to shiver. The fog was coming up from the harbor dense and damp. She made her way back to the restaurant, feeling like an Alice who’d slipped into some strange alternate reality, because nothing felt real. But at least now she had her invite, if she could call it that.
* * *
Tariq leaned back in the dark interior of his vehicle as they headed up toward the deserted windswept side of the island. Snow was coming down very heavily at the higher elevation, blowing vertically. The wipers struggled to clear arcs across the windshield.
“What did she say?” he said quietly to his bodyguard in Arabic. “Is she coming?”
“I believe so.”
Tariq closed his eyes, his tension increasing as they neared the spiked iron gates of the monastery.
This was his lair, his private home. He’d been forced to invite her inside, simply to ensure she was not a threat. Or was that all? Was there perhaps, buried deep down inside, a darker, more carnal part of himself that actually wanted to see her again, speak to her, maybe even touch her, satisfy a curiosity that went beyond the cerebral, or practical?
The irony twisted through him, along with a stab of trepidation.
Tariq had always been a physical man. A love and appreciation of women had always burned fierce and pure in his gut. But unlike his younger brother, he’d always been a one-woman man.
And for the last five years of his life, that one woman had been Julie. And her memory was still sharp.
An interest in someone else was not a transition Tariq was ready, or willing, to make.
Not only that...it could be dangerous.
Chapter 3
It was late, a blanket of snow hushing the night world outside, but inside her small room Bella was still buzzing from her experience at the restaurant as she opened her Skype contact list, clicked on Hurley’s icon, hit Video Call.
Hurley answered on the second ring, his affable features looming live onto her screen, his reddish-brown dreads framing his freckled face, the fishbowl effect of the webcam making him look even rounder than usual.
“Bella,” he said. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past forty-eight hours. I have—”
“It’s him, Hurley,” she said quietly. “The man living in the abbey is Prince Tariq Al Arif. The palace lied about his death. MagMo failed to assassinate him.” She spoke in a whisper, a sense of urgency, secrecy taking hold of her.
“Are you certain? Are you ready to run something on the site?”
“I need proof before I break anything. If I send you some of the high-resolution images of his face, you think you and Scoob could try for a biometrics match?”
“Without a doubt. Scoob’s facial-recognition software is top-of-the-line security stuff, Bella. If it’s him, we’ll get a match. But—”
“Hang on.” Bella quickly began loading the digital images into a file. She hit Send, then glanced up registering for the first time a strange sheen of perspiration on Hurley’s face.
“Hurley? Is everything okay?”
“Your Watchdog page got another anonymous IM, Bella. Same sender.”
“What did it say?”
He rubbed his brow, inhaling deeply. “It was a digital image from an old newspaper. I’m sending it to you now.”
Bella clicked on the icon, accepting the file. It opened onto her laptop—an image of two men in black-tie attire, champagne glasses in hand. One of the men was Sam Etherington, taken when he was a lot younger. He had his arm around the shoulders of a dark-haired, stocky guy with receding hairline and a small goatee.”
“Who’s the guy with Etherington?” Bella said, peering closer.
“Benjamin Raber. The photo ran on the social page of a Chicago newspaper fifteen years ago.”
She glanced up, met Hurley’s eyes. “Raber? As in Johnson’s boss? The head of Strategic Alliances, the alleged front for STRIKE?”
“Same guy.”
“Did the tipster say anything about this photo?”
He swallowed, and worry wormed deeper into Bella.
“Hurley, what’s going on?”
“All the message said was ‘Blackmail is a powerful tool and Johnson was an instrument.’”
“What does that mean?” Bella asked, looking more closely at the two men in the photo, arm in arm. Friends. Celebrating. “That Etherington was blackmailing Raber? Forcing him to use STRIKE—and Johnson—to carry out assassinations?”
“Maybe it’s vice versa—Raber blackmailing Etherington.”
“Holy Christ,” she whispered. “Hurley, we have got to find whoever sent these tips. We need more information, we need proof. We—”
“Scoob already found her, Bella.”
“Her?” Bella whispered.
“She’s dead.”
Bella’s world spun. “What do you mean...dead?”
“This IM with the photo attached appeared on your Watchdog profile just over forty-eight hours ago. Scoob’s software trap caught it instantly, and his program started tracking back to her IP address even as she tried to burrow out ahead of the trap. But we got an ID.” He swallowed. “Her name was Althea Winston. She was Travis Johnson’s widow.”
Bella put her hand over her mouth.
“Althea was a computer expert, Bella. Her husband could have told her things no one else would have known. Her tipping us off could have been about revenge for her husband’s death, her way of seeking justice for him. But she must’ve been scared they’d come after her. And now, forty-eight hours after she sent that last IM, she’s dead.”
Bella’s heart began to thud against her rib cage. “How did she die?”
“It was all over the news this morning. Althea and her five-year-old daughter were killed in a freak car accident on the way to the kid’s school. Road was icy. They were sideswiped by a gray Dodge Ram 4500, no plates. Impact forced them through the bridge barrier and they went over, through ice, into the river. The truck fled the scene.”
Just like the “accident” that had sent Senator Sam Etherington’s ex-wife and twins over a bridge.
Looking ill, Hurley said, “Scoob figures someone started monitoring Althea’s electronic movements after you posted that photo linking Tariq Al Arif to Alexis Etherington. It must have sent up red flags, and they had to have fingered Johnson’s widow as a possible leak. Then when she contacted your page again with this, they had her red-handed.”
Bella sat back, horrified. She’d found an old newspaper photograph of the senator’s missing ex-wife, Dr. Alexis Etherington, with Dr. Tariq Al Arif at a medical convention in Chicago years ago. She’d posted it online with a story she’d written after Tariq’s family had announced his “death.” In the caption, she’d suggested there might be old links between the Etheringtons and the Al Arifs. Bella had hoped this hoped this might solicit information, and it had. Now this.
“Jesus, Hurley,” Bella whispered. “We killed her. My investigation. This is my fault.”
“Bella, even if her death is linked to this, it’s not your fault—Althea had to have known she was taking a risk by tipping you off in the first place. She had to have known they meant serious business after her husband was killed.”
“Who the hell is they, Hurley! STRIKE? Strategic Alliances? Raber? Sam Etherington’s people? Why on earth would Etherington want to kill an Al Arif prince, anyway? He’s the one promising an oil deal with their kingdom should he get into office. And how does MagMo fit in to all this?”
“We need to figure all that out before they find you.” Hurley’s features were tight. “This is why I’ve been trying to get a hold of you—since Scoob’s trap chased back to Althea Winston’s IP addy, someone’s been trying to use the same digital trail as a route back into our systems.”
Nausea washed through Bella’s stomach. “Did they get in?”
“Not yet. We’ve increased security parameters. But they’re circling like sharks, and they’re going to keep trying to find a way to penetrate our system.” Hurley paused, wiping the gleam from the top of his lip. “It’s best you contact us only when really necessary, Bella. You’ve still got that prepaid cell?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to get one, too. And I’m using a laptop that’s not connected to our servers to be safe. We’ll run these photos you’ve just sent through the biometrics software, then I’m going to shred them, so keep copies on your end. I’m not going to store anything this side, in case these people get in.”
The gravity of Hurley’s words, the news of Althea Winston’s death, settled like ice in Bella’s chest. Finding that tipster had been Bella’s hope of finding proof, someone who might eventually go on record. Now she was dead. Like her husband. Silenced.
“We’re up against a wall now, Hurley,” she said quietly. “We have nothing concrete to link Etherington to the attempts on the lives of the Al Arifs. Or to these recent deaths. Or my attack.”
“You still have the fact that Tariq is alive, if these photos are a match. That’s a big story in itself. We run that, and we could get more tips. Plus Scoob is still trying to clean up that audio we recorded of Senator Etherington and his aide, Isaiah Gold, near the fountain last summer. That new parabolic mike design picked up everything, the trouble is filtering out the noise of the water.”
“The odds of something coming from that audio are practically nonexistent, even if Scoob does manage to clean it up. They could’ve been discussing baseball for all we know.”
“There’s a reason Sam and Isaiah routinely leave the office and cross the lawn to talk by a noisy fountain. We think it’s to discuss things they don’t want on tape. We took photos of them doing it—if we find something on that audio—”
“It’s a long shot, Hurley. You guys have made a hobby of eavesdropping on politicians with your gimmicks for years, and what have you got so far?”
His mouth flattened, and she instantly felt sorry.
“I’m sorry. It’s just...I’m rattled about Althea’s death.”
“We all are. Go get the sheik, Bella. Get him to talk. Somehow this all ties back to Sam.”
She signed off, shut her laptop and sat staring into space awhile. Outside the snow continued to fall. She’d survived her attack. Althea Winston had not been so lucky. Had it been the same people?
Bella’s assailants had spoken Arabic and she figured they might be part of MagMo. Two of them also had Arabic daggers. But this wouldn’t fit Sam Etherington’s people.
Bella reached into her pocket and took out a small, gold medallion. She’d ripped it from the neck of one of her assailants as she’d tried to fight him off.
The medallion depicted a sun superimposed by a hooked dagger, and it lay warm in her hand, the gold gleaming dully in the light from her lamp. She hadn’t shown it to the police—the cops had been no help when her apartment had been ransacked, and by that point, Bella trusted no one.
It was also when she’d fled the country.
Slipping the medallion onto a chain around her neck, she turned up the oil heater and climbed under the duvet on her small cot. She lay there, feeling alone, vulnerable. Scared. This story was potentially so big it overwhelmed her.
She muttered a curse. She was a journalist. This was everything she’d wanted, surely—an earth-shattering scoop? And when something truly scared you, it generally meant you were heading in the right direction. Wasn’t that the mantra of self-help gurus?
This was going to be her ticket back into the mainstream, her revenge against the Daily for dumping her. She wanted to shove this story in Derek’s face, show him she was worth something. She wanted the whole world to see Bella DiCaprio was not some little orphan cast-off. She was someone to be reckoned with.
A familiar, stubborn anger filled Bella, and determination steeled her. She was not averse to risk. She was going to get this. The trick would be in finding a way to get the sheik to talk to her, to find out how much he knew, and how this might all be connected.
And tomorrow was her chance, when she went to see him in the abbey.
* * *
The following afternoon found Bella pushing her bike through several inches of snow for the last mile to the monastery. The wind off the Atlantic was biting, the sky low and somber. Hurley’s words threaded through her mind.
We need to figure out who they are before they find you...
She rounded a hill of rock and the stone walls of the abbey suddenly loomed in the distance, black and menacing under skiffs of white. It would be full dark within the hour, she thought. A bite of raw fear twisted into her sense of foreboding.
What if her assailants back in D.C. were linked to Tariq’s people—would his family kill to keep his secret? Would they come after her if they knew she was here, on the island, now?
As she reached the iron gates, her fingers felt numb on the handlebars despite the gloves she wore. And another, more sinister thought niggled into her mind—what if Tariq’s reason for suddenly summoning her to his monastery was to silence her?
Her attackers in D.C. had spoken Arabic. And they had carried traditional-looking curved daggers. Sam’s people would not have done so, surely?
She paused and looked up at the row of hostile iron spikes, thinking of the gold medallion in her pocket—the image of a sun, superimposed with a hooked Arabic dagger. The wind was picking up and it had started snowing again, tiny ice crystals pricking into her face. Bella reached up and pressed the intercom in the stone pillar on the right side of the gate. A bell clanged somewhere inside the monastery, resonant, distant, an ancient sound that seemed at odds with the modern security. Her gaze was pulled up to the high-tech motion-sensor cameras watching her. Anxiety wrapped around Bella.
She told herself to relax. It was unlikely Tariq knew who she was at this point. But her alias was superficial—it wouldn’t hold up to any real background investigation. She needed to get to the heart of the reason she was here sooner rather than later.
Bella waited almost a full minute. Snow came down faster now, angled by the wind.
She rang again, and at the sound of the clanging something moved under the blanket in her bike basket. With a sharp start Bella realized she’d almost forgotten the Papillon pup Madame had insisted she take with her if she wanted time off this evening.
“Kiki needs attention and exercise, Amelie,” Madame Dubois had said. “This is why I hired you. If you want to go to the abbey, you will need to take Kiki.”
The Papillon was not the only thing Bella had been obliged to trek up the hill this evening—in the carrier on the back of her bike was a hamper, which Madame had shoved into her hands as she left.
“What’s this?” Bella had asked.
“The way to a man’s heart, Amelie—” Madame said, nodding to the hamper “—is always through his stomach. Take the basket.”
“I’m not looking for a way into anyone’s heart,” Bella had responded irritably. At the same time she reminded herself to play along. If Estelle Dubois believed in her eccentric old mind that Bella was romantically interested in the mysterious stranger from the abbey, it could make coming up here a lot easier.
Bella lifted the edge of the blanket. Kiki poked her nose out into the cold, giving a little body wiggle and whimper. “Hang on,” she whispered to the pup. “You can run around when we get inside.”
As she spoke the iron gates suddenly began to creak open, no one in sight. A frisson of nerves chased over her skin.
She began to wheel her bike through the gates and up to the great stone entrance, her tires making narrow tracks behind her in the slush.
Stone columns flanked a double door of heavy wood that was carved with warring demons and angels and arched to a point. The handles were iron rings.
As Bella approached, the door opened a crack and a slice of pale yellow light spliced the gloom. A butler with dark complexion and hooded eyes appeared, unsmiling.
“I’m Amelie Chenard,” she said, unnerved by the inhospitable set of the man’s features. “Monsieur Du Val is expecting me.”
He gave a barely perceptible tip of his head and stepped back, making room for her to enter. Bella rested her bike against the wall and removed Kiki from the basket. She asked the butler to bring in the hamper from the back of the bike.
With a deadpan expression, he removed the basket and Bella followed him into a massive hall. The ceilings were vaulted, high. A massive iron chandelier hung from a chain above a thick wood table in the center of the hall. Fat candles burned in sconces along the walls. The air inside was cold and had a strange weight to it. Clearly, central heating had not been part of the refurbishment.
“Monsieur is waiting in the library,” the butler said, setting her hamper on the table. “If I can take your coat?” He held out a dark-skinned hand.
“Could you hold this for me?” She offered Kiki to him.
The butler’s eyes flashed up, meeting hers properly for the first time.
“The dog?”
“Please, so I can take off my coat.”
Uneasy, the man took the ball of wriggling fur, holding Kiki at arm’s length as she tried to lick his face. Bella shrugged out of her slicker and removed her hat, holding them out to the butler. He called out for assistance.
Another male servant came hurrying into the hallway, looking surprised as the butler handed him the dog and muttered in French for him to watch it while Mademoiselle Chenard visited with the Monsieur. Bella took note of their accents as they conversed. Both rolled their r’s low in their throats in the way of Arabic.