Secret Agent Sheikh

She hooked her leg around the Nigerian’s knees and used all her power trying to bring him down. But Tarik’s shove had overbalanced the assailant and all three of them slid closer to the balcony wall.

Horrified, he watched as both Jass and the Nigerian slipped over backward and disappeared completely into the black night. With a roar, he dove over the wall, landing tenuously on the ledge beyond.

“Help me, you idiot.” The small voice coming from below him finally cleared away the hazy panic in his head as Tarik spotted her fingers gripping the edge.

“Jass.” He flattened himself on the ledge and made a grab for her arms.

When he felt the warm skin of her wrists and fastened his hands around them, he began to murmur quiet encouragement. “I’ve got you. Take it easy.”

She groaned. “Stop talking and pull me up.”

Earlier the breeze off the ocean had been benign and gentle. Now it felt like a full-force gale. He latched one arm around the balcony wall and hoped to hell he could drag her up one-handed. It would do no good for both of them to take a header into oblivion.

Whenever he’d thought of Jass in the past, he’d never thought of her as particularly thin or small. But with a spurt of much needed adrenaline, he raised her up over the edge without a lot of effort.

Son of a gun. They were still alive.

Dragging her closer to his chest, he waited until his breathing slowed and he could actually feel his extremities again. That was as close to death as he ever wanted to go.

Jass pushed at his chest. “How about we move to a solid surface?” She came to her knees and reached for the balcony wall. “I suppose you expect a thank-you for saving my life.”

Suddenly irritated, he pulled them both over the wall to the balcony floor. “I would rather get an explanation as to why you felt it necessary to bust in on my sting.”

She stood in bare feet with her wig askew and dusted off her hands. “Not your sting, pal. Mine. I’ve been chasing that Nigerian for months and now you’ve ruined our chances of ever questioning him. You owe me.”

Damn.

“My mistake,” he muttered as he turned toward the suite doors.

He left her standing there trying to figure out what he’d meant. If he’d known how ungrateful she would be, he might’ve left her swinging in midair.

Now he had the sinking feeling he was going to live to regret tonight’s entire heroic episode.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_bd93119a-792e-5bce-b672-3b1cd3e84688)

She was completely screwed.

Jass ran her hands through the auburn mop on her head that laughably passed for her real hair and squared her shoulders to face the music. Ed Langdon, her CIA handler, and General Gus Wainwright, the head of their interagency Task Force, came through the conference room door. Tarik Kadir was right on their heels.

She jumped up and stood as still as if she were at attention. It was barely twelve hours since the Nigerian had gone to his heavenly paradise and Jass hadn’t had much sleep. For most of the night she’d been too busy trying to interrogate the men who’d been captured in the hotel room and, when that became futile, working desperately to salvage something from the fiasco of last night. She had come up empty-handed on all counts.

For the last hour she’d been sitting quietly in the American consulate’s office waiting for her scheduled meeting with Ed. Jass had been going over all her moves from last evening’s sting, still trying to piece together how things had gone wrong. When she’d originally designed the plan for last night, she was positive nothing could prevent it from becoming one of her biggest career highlights. Capturing a man that the Agency had been seeking for the last three years had seemed the perfect path to advancement.

The fact that General Wainwright was here in Monaco—that he’d felt it necessary to fly in from the states, did not bode well for her rising career at all. The general motioned for her to sit and she took her first breath since he’d walked through the door. Somehow she had to survive whatever came next with her job intact.

Tarik Kadir plopped down in the seat next to hers. Her senses started reeling. She could actually feel heat emanating from his body, even considering his place at the table was well over two feet away. She scooted her chair a little farther to the side, but it didn’t help.

Glancing at the ex covert agent out of the corner of her eye, she found him staring back at her. Besides being insufferable, the man was also a rude bore.

He flashed her a crooked grin from behind his benign-looking black-framed glasses. Was he in some sort of disguise this morning? She knew for a fact that the man did not need glasses for his eyesight. Last night in a tux he’d been delicious to look at. Like the billionaire playboy sheik he was rumored to be. But this morning, the hand-tailored button-down shirt and soft suede jacket made him look unpretentious and conservative.

Bull. Did he really believe anybody would miss the aura of controlled power or the watchful intelligence hiding underneath the traditional cut of his coal-colored hair or in the eyes behind those ridiculous fake glasses?

“You still waiting for a thank-you for saving my life?” she asked while trying hard to sound unaffected.

“I don’t waste much time on fantasies.” The look he gave her was so full of erotic meaning it sent her pulse racing and made her mouth go dry.

She tried to inch farther away but found herself hugging the wall as Ed and General Wainwright seated themselves across the table.

The general’s forehead furrowed as he began, “Well, Special Officer O’Reilly. It seems your crack plan for capturing the Nigerian turned into a royal cluster f …” He stopped, looked slightly flustered about almost using the crude military expression meaning disaster, and then cleared his throat. “Either of you two have anything more to say about what happened last night?”

“Everything would’ve worked out if he hadn’t stepped in.”

“If the DOD had listened to me about the Taj Zabbar building weapons of mass destruction in the first place, we could’ve worked this sting together and nothing would’ve been lost.”

They’d both spoken at the same time and their words were more or less blown away in the confusion. Exasperated, Jass folded her arms over her chest and sat back.

The general pinned her with a steely gaze. “Did it once occur to you to ask what item could’ve been big enough to induce the Nigerian to come out of the shadows and attend last night’s sale?”

“I figured it was big drug deal or maybe U.S. counterfeit currency plates, sir. Rumor has it the Nigerian has been raising funds and buying into moneymaking schemes all over Europe.” Jass was becoming more uncomfortable by the second.

The general waved his hand dismissively. “My fault. I should’ve seen this coming when I approved your plan.”

Next he turned on Tarik. “You thought you recognized Special Officer O’Reilly in her disguise. Is that right?”

Tarik nodded once.

“And yet you went out on the balcony to rescue someone you knew to be a competent officer and turned your back on the briefcase containing a nuclear device.”

Tarik’s face paled and his jaw became impossibly hard.

The general surprised him by flashing a grin. “I guess we’re all treading in deep water over this screwup. Let’s see what we can do to make it right.”

Jass didn’t like the sound of that. She had no intention of ever doing anything with the infuriating sheik Kadir.

Tarik could see the frustration building on Jass’s face. He knew what that was like. He’d been trying for months to convince the DOD, and General Wainwright in particular, that the Taj Zabbar were a serious and growing danger to the world. Up until this morning, he hadn’t succeeded.

He forced his attention back to the general. “I just finished speaking to my brother at Kadir headquarters, sir. The briefcase has disappeared—along with the Elder bin Khali Taj Zabbar. We’ll pick him up again, though it might take some time. But Darin did get a line on that other matter you asked about.” He took a breath. “Seems our technical unit has been hearing the same rumors over the social networks that your units have, and we’re fairly sure the Taj Zabbar will be involved in that upcoming auction, too.”

“Then that gives us a place to start fresh together.” The general tilted his head to address Jass. “We caught a break when another DOD split task force captured an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan last week. The Pakistanis have been interrogating the man and yesterday obtained a major piece of intel.”

Tarik watched as Jass’s expression went from resigned and frustrated to hopeful and eager. She was arresting to look at with her exotic mix of cultures. Not classically beautiful, but expressive and fascinatingly intense when she thought she wasn’t being observed. A man couldn’t avoid keeping his eyes trained on that face. At least, not this man.

“It seems our Russian from last night’s auction had another partner,” the general continued. “Someone still operating in the wind who supposedly has one more auction scheduled for next week.”

“Another briefcase bomb? Surely not. That’s—”

The general’s hand chopped the air to stop her words. “No, another bomb would’ve been impossible to sneak out of Russia, even for a genius like Karolek Petrov. But it seems there is one more item up for bid that’s worth paying a king’s ransom—at least for terrorists.”