Surgeon Sheik's Rescue
Loreth Anne White
Off the cliffs of Brittany, danger awaits. To Bella DiCaprio, the windswept island offers hope. The story that cost her a prestigious reporting job has brought her here, where a mysterious recluse holds the key to a horrific bombing….For Sheik Tariq Al Arif, the grief is still fresh. That tragedy took not only his career as a lifesaving surgeon but also his fiancée. Only here, walking the windswept cliffs by the haunted abbey, does he begin to feel alive again. And when the American beauty shows up on the storm-ravaged island off the coast of France, he knows their passion is dangerous.To desire is to dare: can either take the risk to love again?
How far would he go to keep a secret?
Off the cliffs of Brittany, danger awaits. To Bella DiCaprio, the windswept island offers hope. The story that cost her a prestigious reporting job has brought her here, where a mysterious recluse holds the key to a horrific bombing....
For Sheik Tariq Al Arif, the grief is still fresh. That tragedy took not only his career as a lifesaving surgeon but also his fiancée. Only here, walking the windswept cliffs by the haunted abbey, does he begin to feel alive again. And when the American beauty shows up on the storm-ravaged island off the coast of France, he knows their passion is dangerous.
To desire is to dare: can either take the risk to love again?
“How...how long have you been standing there?”
He came into the kitchen, a strange intensity on his face. Bella swallowed. The music segued to some slow, melancholic tune...will you still love me tomorrow....
“Long enough,” he said, his voice thick.
Her cheeks heated. She wanted to smile, say something casual, easy, but the look on his features stopped her.
“Long enough for what?” she whispered, thinking of his men in her room, going through her computer. The photo in her bag. Did he know? His gaze held hers. He came closer—very close. Bella reached behind her, bracing herself against the counter where she knew there was a knife. Even so, a dark carnal ribbon of desire unfurled inside her.
Dear Reader,
There’s a reason fairy tales have been retold, rewritten and loved throughout the centuries—it’s because they deal with basic ethical questions that affect all of us. And they do it by delightfully juxtaposing opposites like good versus evil, strange versus ordinary, appearance versus reality.
One of my favorite fairy tales as a child was Beauty and the Beast, the story of a handsome prince who is locked by a spell into the body of an ugly beast, and Beauty, who sees beneath the beast’s exterior and falls in love.
I wanted to play with this trope—this deception of appearances—in the third installment of my Sahara Kings series. In this story, Sheik Tariq Al Arif has been badly damaged both physically and emotionally by his family’s arch nemesis. He now hides in a dark, cold stone monastery on the cliffs of a remote windswept island. All the world believes he is dead. But not Bella DiCaprio. She believes there is more to the mysterious, scarred stranger who hides behind walls, and she’s intent on exposing him. But Bella plays a game of deception herself. Will the truth destroy the love that grows between them, or will it be deadly?
I hope you enjoy Bella and Tariq’s journey to their own happy ever after.
Loreth Anne White
Surgeon Sheikh’s Rescue
Loreth Anne White
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LORETH ANNE WHITE
was born and raised in southern Africa, but now lives in Whistler, a ski resort in the moody British Columbia Coast Mountain range. It’s a place of vast wilderness, larger-than-life characters, epic adventure and romance—the perfect place to escape reality. It’s no wonder she was inspired to abandon a sixteen-year career as a journalist to escape into a world of romance fiction filled with dangerous men and adventurous women.
When she’s not writing you will find her long-distance running, biking or skiing on the trails and generally trying to avoid the bears—albeit not very successfully. She calls this work, because it’s when the best ideas come.
For a peek into her world visit her website, www.lorethannewhite.com (http://www.lorethannewhite.com). She’d love to hear from you.
For Patsy Adkins, and all readers like her—
you make it worthwhile. Thank you.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u1fafafc4-30ab-5d61-92f2-3ceba190863d)
Chapter 2 (#u7b32912a-7c05-5bde-bde2-2f38e7e6f041)
Chapter 3 (#udc83d601-dc21-5147-962b-f8f7bc522164)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1
The late February mist rolled in thick, tattered swaths off the Atlantic as Bella DiCaprio rode her bike along the exposed cliff tops of Ile-en-Mer, one of the tiny, storm-ravaged islands off the French coast of Brittany. Water poured from the brim of a red rain hat pulled low over her brow, snaking down the matching slicker Madame Dubois had loaned her for the duration of her employment as housekeeper. The old-fashioned bicycle was on loan, too, tires slipping in black mud as she negotiated a narrow trail through the heath.
Bella had been on the island two weeks now. She was using the name Amelie Chenard and she’d taken a job in the home of Estelle Dubois, a wealthy and eccentric widow who’d once worked in theater and been married to a Parisian banker.
The fact Bella was not in possession of a work visa did not faze the colorful Madame in the slightest—she was happy to pay in cash, under the table. More than a housekeeper, Estelle Dubois seemed to want someone to amuse her two pampered Papillons, particularly the youngest, a seven-month-old pup named Kiki. Part of Bella’s job was to walk Kiki once a day, and play with her. The male dog was old and arthritic and preferred to spend his days sleeping in his basket by the fire.
The arrangement suited her fine. Now that she’d settled into a routine, Bella had plenty of free time for her real mission—to investigate the mysterious stranger who lived in an imposing stone abbey that loomed over cliffs on the bleak windward side of the island, accepting the brunt of the Atlantic storms.
Island lore claimed the foreboding structure—built in the high medieval period and renovated over the centuries—was haunted by the ghost of an abbess who’d been killed during a Breton revolt in the twelfth century. The abbess’s headless body was said to have been walled behind rock in the dungeons, her head staked outside on the monastery gates as a warning to others who might shelter rebels.
Some said in a certain slant of moonlight the abbess’s ghost could be seen floating through the arches. Others claimed they heard her screams when winter storms blew and fog swirled thick over the surrounding heath.
Whatever anyone wanted to make of it, the legend gave Bella an excuse to poke around. And, if she was right about who was living in that monastery now, she’d nail a journalistic scoop that would salvage her career, rock U.S. politics and put her name squarely back on the political news map.
If the story didn’t kill her first.
Already, she’d been attacked by three men back home in Washington, D.C. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of two cooks from a nearby Chinese restaurant, she was certain she’d be dead. She’d also been followed, her apartment ransacked and her hard drive hacked. Fearing for her life, Bella had fled the States and come in secret to this island. Fear was one of the reasons she was hiding under an assumed identity now, as she continued to track down her story.
Bella had gone looking for the Mont Noir Abbey during her first days on the island when the weather had been slightly more gracious. She’d found the black stone structure to be a startling mix of architectural periods, but predominantly gothic with spires and turrets reaching into the mist. Parts of it were still in ruin. The monastery had been constructed right at the cliff edge overlooking the Atlantic, a sharp plunge down to where waves pounded rocks far below. The extensive grounds were enclosed by an eight-foot-high stone wall topped with iron spikes. A sign in French warned trespassers to steer clear of the wrought-iron gates.
Bella had rung the bell at the gate, but no one answered.
Poking her telephoto lens through the bars she’d managed to capture some haunting architectural shots of the spires, arched windows, massive flying buttresses, gargoyles, but she’d suddenly noticed the security cameras atop the stone pillars flanking the gates tracking her motion. Then she’d detected more cameras positioned at discreet intervals between the spikes and creepers along the perimeter wall, and a frisson of unease ran through her.
Glancing slowly up, she caught sight of a dark figure in one of the mullioned windows in the upper floor window, watching her. But a shroud of mist sifted in from the sea, cloaking the abbey, and Bella had quickly returned to Madame’s to serve the afternoon coffee.
Then just yesterday, while Bella had been in the village boulangerie buying fresh pain au chocolat for Madame, through the misted windowpanes of the little bakery she’d glimpsed a tall, dark figure moving down the cobbled sidewalk, his profile hidden by the hood of his black cape. Despite a limp, his stride was swift. Two dark-complexioned men in suits flanked him closely. Wind gusted, revealing a holster under the jacket of the man closest to the window.
Bella’s pulse quickened and she spun round, trying to catch a glimpse of the hooded man’s face. In the process she fumbled and dropped the small change being handed to her by the boulangerie owner who’d smiled at Bella’s sudden distraction.
“He’s the stranger from the other side of the island,” the owner said as she helped Bella gather her coins.
“Do you know where he comes from?” she said, pocketing the change and picking up her basket of chocolate croissants.
The owner gave a Gallic shrug, pouting her lips. “Who knows?” She leaned forward, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “And we don’t ask. Important people—rich, famous people—come to our island every summer. They come because we don’t bother them. We don’t try to guess who they are and we don’t talk to paparazzi. But their estates lie on the southeast side of Ile-en-Mer where the climate is more temperate. Who would live on the west cliffs, and in winter? In a place that is haunted?” She gave a huff. “It’s beyond me.”
Bella thanked the owner and dashed out into the chill air. But the caped stranger was gone, the cobblestone streets eerily deserted.
* * *
“He goes by the name of Tahar Du Val,” Madame told her in French that afternoon as Bella served the croissants and coffee, a fire crackling in the hearth, the little dogs curled in a fur ball in front of the flames. “You are very interested in this occupant of Abbaye Mont Noir, non—this dark man with his one eye and secrets?” Madame accepted the cup and saucer from Bella as she spoke, arthritis making her movements awkward.
“I’d love to visit his abbey, ask him about the ghost—research for my novel,” she lied. “The more I know about him, the easier it’ll be to approach him.”
Madame took a sip of her coffee, her watery blue gaze fixed on Bella over the rim of her cup. And Bella reminded herself to be cautious—there was a sharp and analytical mind behind that papery skin, the powdery rouge, the red lipstick. Estelle Dubois could read people better than most.
“He moved into the abbey last August,” Madame said, her features going slack and thoughtful as she dipped her croissant into the milky coffee. “He arrived with another man—”
Bella glanced up sharply. “What man?”
“I think he might have been Monsieur Du Val’s brother,” she said, delivering the soppy croissant to her mouth. “He was younger, a little broader in the shoulder, slightly shorter. And according to the villagers who saw his face—he and the monsieur have similar features.”
Bella’s pulse quickened, but she kept her expression neutral as she crouched down, opened the fire grate and poked at the logs. “Did he stay long?”
“Long enough to organize the employees at the abbey and see to the shipping-in of furniture,” Madame said around her croissant. “And he handled the grocery shopping in the first weeks, before a chef came and took over.”
“Did this man give a name?” Bella asked.
“Non. He barely spoke beyond what was necessary to do his business in the village.”
Dryness tightened Bella’s throat. Calmly, quietly, she reached for Madame’s empty plate.
“Then one day, a private ferry came over from the mainland with gymnasium equipment,” she said. “A woman came with it.”
Bella stilled. “A dark-haired woman, exotic-looking?”
Madame’s penciled brow rose quizzically. “No, the woman was fair. I think she had something to do with the gymnasium equipment, perhaps a personal trainer. But she left very abruptly, the next day—she was angry when she boarded the ferry.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Jean-Claude, the ferryman who lives in the hut at the end of the pier. The younger man departed the island late September. He returned a few times until the end of November, but we haven’t seen him since. And when all the summer visitors were gone and the winter storms started rolling in, that’s when Monsieur Du Val started walking alone along the headland. Every day at precisely four-thirty. Always he wears his cape with the hood, and his black eye patch. His limp, it has been improving. After Christmas he began dining late every Tuesday night at Le Grotte below the hotel. He sits alone in a stone alcove in front of a window that overlooks the harbor. The maître d’ draws the curtain across the alcove for privacy, and Monsieur Du Val’s men sit close by at another table, watching the door. He orders a la carte and always a bottle of cabernet franc from the Chateau Luneau estate in the Loire Valley.”
Bella knew the winery—it all fit.
It had to be him.
She stole a quick glance at the ornate Louis XVI clock on the mantel above the fire. Almost 3:30 p.m. “You’re certain Monsieur Tahar walks along the cliffs at the same every day?” she said.
“Oui. Pierre, the sheep farmer on the other side, goes to bring in his flock before dark. He sees the Monsieur in the distance, always at the same time.”
“You talk to this farmer?”
“Everyone on this island talks, Amelie.” She held up a gnarled finger in warning. “But always, the talk stays here, on the island. It has been this way for centuries.”
The whole island felt liked it was locked in medieval time, thought Bella as her attention went back to the Louis XVI clock. Madame’s eyes followed Bella’s gaze and a smile curved along her mouth, red lipstick feathering deep into wrinkled creases.
“Go, Amelie,” she said with a dismissive wave of her veined hand. “Go see him for yourself. All this talk has exhausted me. But feed the dogs first, and don’t forget to lock the house when you go. Put the key under the mat so you don’t wake me when you return.”
* * *
Leaving Estelle Dubois nodding in front of the fire with her half-finished cup of milky coffee, Bella ran through drizzle to her separate maid’s quarters across a small courtyard strung with a washing line and trellised with grapevines thick as her arm at the bases. Moss-covered clay pots fringed the whitewashed walls, the vegetation inside them brown and tangled by winter frost.
She shrugged into a warm sweater and jacket, then on second thought shucked the jacket in favor of the red rain slicker and matching hat. Even though weather on this leeward side of the island might be mild, rainstorms could be lashing the windward coast—she’d learned this fast enough. Over her thick socks she pulled on gum boots. Bella glanced in the mirror and gave a wry smile. She looked more like a mariner in a fish commercial than a seasoned political reporter. She grabbed the bike, wheeled it through the courtyard, and began to pedal up the twisting dirt road that led to the cliffs on the far side of the little island, camera bag slung across her chest, the cold air sinking deep into her lungs.
* * *
An hour later Bella stood atop the cliffs holding her bike and breathing hard as curtains of mist swirled and rain drove in squalls. Waves boomed unseen on rocks far below the sheer cliff drop. Light began to fade, and she felt a sharp drop in temperature. She began to shiver as dampness crawled into her bones.
Then suddenly, at four-thirty, just as Madame had said, a hooded, black figure in a swirling cloak materialized from the mist, walking along the headland, fading in and out of the shifting brume like a specter.
Bella laid her bike down on the heath, removed her camera from the bag.
Zooming in with her telephoto lens she watched him stop right at the cliff edge, his back to her. He pulled back his hood, revealing thick, shoulder-length hair, black as a raven’s feathers. Face naked to the driving rain, he stared out to sea as if a sentinel watching for a lost ship, his cloak flapping at his calves.
Far below him waves crashed as the Atlantic heaved itself against the rock face, hurling icy spray up into the mist.
Something strange unfurled inside Bella.
He looked so alone, as if daring the elements to hurt him in some kind of bid for absolution. Yet in his shoulders there remained a subtle set of defiance.
Bella clicked off a few shots, zoomed in closer. Her lens was powerful, state-of-the-art. Her two-timing ex-boyfriend, Derek, had helped her choose the camera a mere two weeks before the newspaper budget cuts that saw Bella being laid off. The announcement she was being axed from the political news desk while the paper held on to the unionized deadwood had come as a gut-punching shock to Bella. One minute she was a respected, up-and-coming reporter covering the run-up to the presidential primaries and the bombing of the Al Arif royal jet at JFK. Then in the blink of an eye she was cast out on the street, unemployed, wondering how in hell she was going to make her next rent payment without cutting into her minimal severance payout.
Bella’s job, her success, defined her. And her sudden unemployment cut to the heart of her insecurities and self-esteem that came with having been abandoned as a baby. It was something she’d never been able to shake.
Oh, she’d hunted for new work, but the tide had turned on print media. Papers were hurting. And there was a glut of journalists, just like her, pounding on doors.
In desperation Bella had resorted to writing a blog for a website called Watchdog—theoretically an internet news portal, but one that had been scathingly referred to as “that conspiracy theorist site.” And because the blog gig was unpaid, she’d been forced to take housekeeping jobs to support her political writing “hobby.” It was about as low as a political sciences and journalism graduate could go.
Derek, of course, had kept his photography job at the Washington Daily, courtesy of the boss’s daughter. He’d informed Bella of his infidelity the same day as her layoff. Bella didn’t know which had hit her harder.
She’d show them, she thought as she watched her target through her lens, fingers going numb from cold, her teeth starting to chatter. This man was going to be her route back.
But she had to be careful. She still didn’t know who had tried to kill her back home, or why. Or how this man from the abbey—the subject of her investigation—might be linked to Senator Sam Etherington, the man likely to be voted next U.S. president come the November election.
Bella willed him to turn around now, show his face. Instead, he began to move farther along the cliff, making his way toward a narrow, black headland that jutted out into the sea. Bella left her bicycle lying in the heather and followed him on foot, at a distance. The mist grew thicker, the light dimmer, the air even cooler.
Right at the very tip of the headland, he stopped again. A ship’s horn boomed out at sea and through the mist came the faint, periodic pulse of a lighthouse unable to penetrate the thickening darkness and fog.
She snapped a few more frames, then stilled as he moved even closer to the edge. He stood there, as if daring gravity to take him over, suck him down into the crashing sea. She was reminded suddenly of a similar cliff, Beachy Head in England, where the suicide rate was surpassed only by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and where the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team conducted regular patrols in an attempt to spot—and stop—potential jumpers. This was a similar cliff. No patrols. Just her observing him in the darkening gloom. A chill chased over Bella’s skin. She lowered her camera, half poised to run, stop him, help him. But he remained still as a statue, coat billowing out behind him, his hair now slick with rain.
Slowly she raised her camera back to her eye, the shutter click, click, clicking as she struggled to tamp down a mounting rush of apprehension. Bella readjusted her telephoto lens, zooming in as close as she could go. But as she was about to press the button, he turned suddenly to face her.
She sucked in her breath.
For a nanosecond she was unable to move, think.
He stared at her with his good eye, black as coal. An eye patch covered his left eye and the left side of his face was marred by a violent scar that hooked from temple to jaw, drawing the left side of his mouth down into a permanent, sinister scowl. But the hawkish, arresting features, the aquiline nose, the arched brows—they were burned into her memory after staring at so many photos of him before the explosion.
It was him.
Sheik Tariq Al Arif, the famed neurosurgeon, next in line to the throne of Al Na’Jar—supposedly dead from injuries sustained by a terrorist bomb blast at JFK Airport in New York last June—was alive. And she’d found him. Living in a cold, haunted abbey in France.
Emotion flooded her chest as she clicked off a rapid succession of shots of his face. She had her story. It was right here. At least part of it. This was the beginning, the tip of the iceberg that could sink Sam Etherington’s bid for the White House—if she could just understand the rest.
He glared at her as she shot off her frames, utterly still, his face wet with rain, everything in his posture warning her not to dare take a step toward him. And suddenly, as her pulse calmed a little, Bella saw not only hostility in his features, but pain.
Slowly she lowered her camera, ashamed of her own hunger to expose him.
Fog thickened around him, turning him to a shadowy phantom and she realized with a start it would be fully dark any minute. She needed to find the path through the heather, back to her bike, make her way back down the cliff before nightfall. But she hesitated—what about him?
Did he walk back to that monastery, alone, in pitch blackness, so close to the treacherous cliff edge? Worry sparked through her.
Then, almost imperceptibly, he seemed to move toward her. At first Bella thought it was a trick of the mist, then a spark of fear shot through her—how far would he actually go to keep his secret?
How far would his powerful family go?
The memory of her attack curled through her mind, and fear fisted in her chest.
She was all alone here. If her body was found smashed and broken in waves below the cliff, it would be deemed an accident, blamed on the weather, a foolish young American caught by fog and nightfall too close to the edge.
Bella started backing away, then she turned and hurried along the path to where her bicycle lay on its side in the heather.
Picking up her bike, the chrome wet and icy in her hands, she glanced back over her shoulder, but he was gone—a ghost dissolved into mist.
* * *
Tariq stormed into the hall of his abbey, wind swirling in behind him as the great wooden doors swung shut. Fat white candles flickered in sconces along the stone wall and a dark, hot energy rolled through him.
“That woman from the village—” he barked loudly to his men in Arabic “—the one poking around the gates, taking photos of the abbey. I want to know who she is, where she comes from, what she wants with me, and then I want her gone!”
He shrugged out of his drenched cape, slung it over a high-backed chair and strode through the dark halls to his library where a fire crackled in the stone hearth, shutting the door behind him.
His library was the one room in this stone monstrosity that he preferred to inhabit. A smaller office with his desk and papers lay off it. The rest of abbey remained unlit and cold, some of it still partially in ruin, wind whistling through cracks and moaning up in the turrets like the ghost of the abbess herself. Haunted suited him fine—he was a mere ghost of himself anyway, a broken shadow, not living, not dead.
Irritably, Tariq plucked a leather-bound copy of a book by Algerian-French writer and absurdist philosopher Albert Camus from the shelves. He settled into his chair by the fire, flipped it open.
But he couldn’t concentrate.
He put on Mischa Maisky’s rendition of the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1. It always soothed him. It reminded him of Julie. Of life, of power, of beautiful times.
He leaned his head back in his chair, arms flopping loosely over the armrests. The first notes of the cello washed over him. And as the music rose in crescendo, Tariq closed his eye, imagining his own fingers moving on the strings, the Pernambuco bow in his hand, the solid shape of the finely carved instrument between his knees. Whenever he’d played this piece, his whole world seemed to drop away, leaving only the moment as the harmony filled him, breathed into him, became part of him. He let his chest rise and fall to the rhythm....
But then he saw her eyes, bright like spring crocuses, staring at him through the misted boulangerie window, her dark curls tousled about her pale, heart-shaped face like some untamed thing. Tariq cursed, shutting out the image. Another flowed into his mind as the music rose—the sight of her on the heath, like a mythical Red Riding Hood, drifting in and out of curtains of fog as she followed him with her camera. He tried to block her out again.
She was too bright.
It was like shutting your eyes after staring at a lamp—the afterimage burned on your retinas.
Tariq lurched to his feet, strode to where his cello rested in a stand against the wall. With the fingertips of his right hand he caressed the sleek curves of finely grained Balkan maple, a wood of resilience and excellent tone. A cold heaviness pressed into his heart. Never again would he play this exquisitely crafted instrument. Never again would he operate. His left hand was his dominant one, and it was his left side that had been forever crippled in the series of blasts that had killed his fiancée. It had been an attack on his country, on him.
He should have been the one to die. Not her.
This war was against his family, not Julie. Falling in love with her, bringing her into the Al Arif enclave, had made her a target. And he, a doctor—a surgeon—had been unable to save her at the critical moment.
Julie’s death was his fault.
The Moor, the as yet faceless archenemy of the Al Arif dynasty, had stolen everything that mattered to Tariq, everything that had defined him, everything that made life worth living, leaving him nothing but a coarse lump of a man, an empty, cold shell who’d failed the only woman he’d ever loved. Self-hatred fisted in Tariq’s chest. His gaze was slowly, inexorably, pulled toward the floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror on the wall.
He was sickened by what he saw in that mirror. Sickened by what he’d become, inside and out. Crippled, broken. Bitter. Twisted.
That prying young woman in the red coat had pierced through the numb rhythm of his life on the island. She’d reawakened his pain. She’d gone and reminded him a world lurked out there beyond these cold stone walls—a world inhabited by a dangerous enemy who could still hurt his family and the people of his desert kingdom.
She’d made him look into that mirror—and he hated her for it.
With his right hand, Tariq snatched a bronze paperweight off the side table and hurled it across the room with all his might. It crashed into the mirror, shattering glass outward in a starburst. Shards tinkled softly to the Persian rug along with the dull thud of the paperweight.
Anger coiled in his stomach as Tariq stared at the broken glass, shimmering with light from the flames. All he had left was his privacy, the numbness of grief.
Whatever she wanted, he was not going to allow her to take that from him. Tariq was going to get his men to find out who she was, what she wanted, then he’d take action to ensure she stayed the hell away from him and his abbey.
Chapter 2
Bella yanked off her muddy gum boots, flicked on the lamp, closed the drapes. She shrugged out of her wet coat and hat, shook out her hair and pulled on her favorite thick, soft sweater.
Turning up the oil heater, she powered her laptop, connected her camera and began to download the photos she’d taken. Edgy with adrenaline, she paced her small room as she waited for the high-resolution images to load. The wind grew stronger outside, rattling at her windows, seeking its way in through ancient cracks. Rain began to tick against the panes.
Bella drew her sweater closer, rubbing her arms as she willed the heater to warm faster. Before her termination with the Washington Daily, the two key stories she’d been following were Senator Sam Etherington’s bid for his party nomination for president, and the terrorist bombing of the Al Arif royal jet at JFK.
Etherington had since won his party’s endorsement and was now considered to be a shoo-in for president, unless he badly misstepped between now and November. The Al Arif bombing story Bella had scored by default.
She’d been with her then-boyfriend, Derek, on a separate assignment at JFK when the blast occurred. They’d seized the moment, covering the event from an eyewitness perspective, and the Daily had let Bella run with the story as it continued to unfold over the following days, weeks, months.
She’d done good work—demonstrating a talent not only for political reporting but showing her capability as a passionate features writer, digging deep into the characters and issues behind the tragedy.
Derek in turn had shot what was now an iconic image of the injured and bloodied Dr. Tariq Al Arif racing from the burning jet with his fiancée, Julie Belard, hanging limp in his arms.
Seconds after Derek had taken that famous photo, the prince had dropped to his knees and tried to resuscitate Julie, but a second blast caused by escaping jet fuel had sent chunks of shrapnel flying into the back of his head and left side of his body, severely wounding and concussing him. In the ambulance the sheik lapsed into coma. Days later he was flown home by his family where he was cared for in a private clinic. Seven weeks after the bombing, the palace press office put out a terse statement announcing Dr. Al Arif’s death.
There were still no arrests, and there’d been no public memorial service—only a small private affair in Al Na’Jar attended by Tariq’s immediate family. None of Julie Belard’s family attended, which Bella had found strange.
The story seemed to end there, as had her job with the Daily.
But Bella had trouble letting go of both her job and the prince.
During the months of covering his story, she’d become obsessed with Tariq—the aggressively good-looking surgeon prince with a brilliant mind was also an accomplished cellist and fierce polo player. Horsemanship, she’d learned, was a talent Tariq had acquired as a young boy in his desert kingdom under the tutelage of his father. Music was a gift he’d inherited from his mother’s side. But he’d also been a healer at heart, and this passion had led him into neurosurgery, and to the United States.
Bella had come to see Tariq as a man with one foot in an ancient and exotic past, the other firmly planted in a new world, and when she’d heard of his “death,” something inside her had grieved.
Many a lonely night she’d spent staring at the photo of Tariq fleeing that jet, thinking of the anguish in his features, the desperate passion with which he’d tried to revive his fiancée. She realized, on some level, she’d fallen in love with the idea of the prince. This was why she was so unwilling to let go of him, or his story. It also felt unfinished.
And so it had started.
Desperate for a way to keep her hand in the political news scene, to finish what she’d started, Bella had taken a hotel housekeeping job and gone over to the “dark side” to join Watchdog. The site was run by Hurley Barnes, an old friend of Bella’s from her college days, along with his techie girlfriend, Agnes, and their ex-CIA hacker buddy, Scoob.
It was ironically fitting, she supposed, for Bella DiCaprio, an orphan—a reject who’d been abandoned as a two-day-old baby in a bassinet at a Chicago hospital facility for unwed mothers—to go live along the cyber fringes of society, writing with a bunch of wack-job-genius nerds, always struggling to be accepted by the mainstream but never quite managing to hang in, or pull it off.
Still, it grated—it went against everything she’d fought for her whole life—to be accepted. And her goal remained to get back, get even, prove that Bella DiCaprio was not done.
Not without a fight.
Bella’s first order of blogging business for Watchdog had been to phone Julie Belard’s father—Pierre Belard—France’s ex-ambassador to the U.S. She’d wanted to interview him about the death of his daughter and her fiancé. The ambassador had explained that Tariq’s funeral had been kept small for security reasons, and the Belards had understood the Al Arifs’ need for privacy at this time. This was why they’d not attended.
When she asked the ambassador more about Julie as a person, he told Bella his daughter used to love to holiday with the extended Belard family on Ile-en-Mer off the Brittany coast, and as a child she’d been fascinated by stories of the ghost in the abbey on the far side of the island. He’d also said that for the past three years Julie had returned to Ile-en-Mer with Tariq to attend the opera festival held each summer on the island, and that the couple had gotten engaged there.
Bella had done more digging and discovered that a large financial donation had been made to the Ile-en-Mer opera fund in Julie’s memory. After deeper cyber investigation with the help of her techie friend Scoob, Bella learned the donation had been made by a shell company owned by the Al Arif Corporation—the same company that had quietly purchased the Abbaye Mont Noir itself two years ago. Bella found it strange the donation had been made only in Julie’s name.
Then, when she’d called an island travel agent inquiring about the Abbaye Mont Noir and its ghost, the agent told her the new owner himself had recently moved in, and the abbey grounds had been closed off to the public. On probing further, Bella was told the owner was a mysterious and reclusive foreigner who’d been badly scarred down his left side. She’d become convinced it was Tariq living in that abbey, that the palace had lied about his death.
Her laptop beeped suddenly, jolting her back to the present—her download was complete.
Reseating herself at her computer, she hurriedly scanned the thumbnails for the shot where “Tahar” had turned his face to her. She clicked on it.
His mist-framed features mushroomed onto her screen, and Bella’s heart started to pound. The intensity in his damaged features—the anguish, the pain, the rage—she’d captured it all in this haunting, ghostly image. And with his hood back off his head, his hair wet, she’d caught him somehow naked, stripped in the face of the elements. As raw and vulnerable as he once was powerful.
A strange energy curled through Bella.
She touched the screen with her fingertips, traced the lines of his face.
Why are you hiding?
What would it mean to you to be exposed?
She knew what it would mean to her.
It would be her way back into a real job, especially if she found out how this story linked to an anonymous tip she’d received alleging that Senator Sam Etherington had been behind an attempt to assassinate Tariq’s youngest brother, Omair, in Algiers last summer.
The tip had been sent to Bella’s Watchdog account after the Maghreb Moors—or MagMo—a terrorist group led by a mysterious man known only as The Moor, claimed responsibility for assassinating Tariq with the jet bomb.
Bella had run this news coupled with a hard-hitting blog post taking Senator Etherington to task on his national security stance, and asking how he could promise an electorate oil from a Al Na’Jar when the kingdom itself was under threat of a MagMo-fueled coup.
An anonymous instant message had popped up on her screen less than an hour after she hit Publish. It read:
You want to know the connection between Etherington and the Al Arifs? Etherington was behind a U.S. black ops unit attempt to assassinate Tariq’s brother Omair in Algiers last summer. The unit is called STRIKE. Strategic Alliances, a D.C. consulting company, is the front for STRIKE. Just ask Travis Johnson who ordered him to have Omair killed...Oh, wait, you can’t ask Johnson—coz he’s dead himself!!!
The IM had exploded into an emoticon bomb puffing smoke. Another laughing face emoticon rolled next to the bomb.
Watchdog had tried to trace the IM, but whoever sent it was good, too good. Scoob laid a digital trap in the hopes of snaring the sender if another tip came in.
Meanwhile, Bella had tried to find out more about Strategic Alliances. All she’d learned was that the company consulted for the government, that the CEO was a man named Benjamin Raber, and that Travis Johnson, an employee under Raber, had been shot dead execution-style in an underground parking garage a month ago—no arrests, no leads. Nothing.
Scoob had helped her scour cyberspace for other links between the Al Arif family and Etherington, coming up only with a newspaper photo of Sam Etherington’s missing ex-wife, Dr. Alexis Etherington. She’d been seen with Dr. Tariq Al Arif at a medical convention in Chicago more than ten years ago. The coincidence was strange.
No one ever found out what had happened to Alexis, an ophthalmic surgeon who, oddly, had been a specialist in the same genetic illness that had rendered Tariq’s oldest brother, King Zakir, blind during the first year of his reign.
Blood humming, Bella had instantly called the palace press office in an attempt to locate Sheik Omair Al Arif, but the palace shut her down the minute they found she no longer worked for the Daily. It just fired her anger and lust to get this story. Bella continued searching for any online mention of Sheik Omair Al Arif, but he’d not made any public appearance for well over a year. He seemed to have simply vanished off the face of the earth.
Until, possibly, now.
Madame’s words crawled through her mind.
I think the man might have been Monsieur Du Val’s younger brother...according to the villagers who saw his face—he and the Monsieur have similar features...
Bella opened an older file on her laptop and pulled up Derek’s iconic image of Tariq racing from the plane. In the photo the left side of his face was gashed open, awash with blood that filled his eye socket and blackened his torn, white shirt. His features were twisted with indescribable anguish.
She juxtaposed this image with the one she’d just taken on the cliff.
And there was no doubt in her mind.
It was him.
Tahar Du Val was Tariq Al Arif, next in line of succession to the Al Arif throne of Al Na’Jar.
The weight of her discovery suddenly felt heavy, a little frightening. Would exposing him bring danger to his door, or to hers? How did all this connect to Sam Etherington?
And who had tried to kill her?
Outside the wind began to moan through the eaves, the wash line clinking against a pole in the courtyard.
Bella scrubbed her fingers through her curls, Madame Dubois’s words sifting into her mind.
He started dining late every Tuesday night, at Le Grotte...always, he orders a bottle of cabernet franc from the Chateau Luneau estate in the Loire Valley...
Chateau Luneau was the winery owned by the Belard family.
She shut down her computer thinking she wasn’t ready to post anything on her blog. Not yet. She wanted—needed—proof. And she wanted the whole story.
Tomorrow was Tuesday. Bella would be at Le Grotte tomorrow night, waiting for Tariq.
And come hell or high water, she was going to find a way to talk to him.
* * *
It was 10:45 p.m. when Bella entered the small restaurant above the ancient harbor. On further investigation, she’d been told that Tahar came to dine at Le Grotte at 11:00 p.m. each Tuesday, when the establishment was quietest.
The restaurant was constructed of stone, like most buildings in the medieval village. Leading off the tiny entranceway Bella could see an intimate dining area with white linen tablecloths and candles flickering in jars. A hostess stepped forward to take Bella’s coat.
Shrugging out of her red slicker and hat, Bella tousled her fingers through her damp hair while making small talk about the weather. But inside she was wire-tense. It could be make or break tonight—move in on Tariq too fast, and she could lose all opportunity to talk to him.
The hostess showed Bella into the dining area. Her attention was immediately snagged by a small, stone-walled alcove with red curtain tied to the side. A table in the alcove was set for one, with a lone high-back chair facing the arched window that looked out over the harbor. But there was little to see outside tonight—fog pressed thick against the glass, moving, shifting, like a sentient thing seeking its way in.
He sits alone in a stone alcove in front of a window that overlooks the harbor. The maître d’ draws the curtain across the alcove for privacy...
Anxiety fisted in her stomach, and a strange chill washed over her skin. Bella rubbed her arms as a maître d’ with a startling waxed mustache scurried toward Bella. He reminded her of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, which eased some of the tension. He thrust his hand out toward a table near the dimly lit bar, but Bella asked instead for the table nearest the alcove.
The maître d’ frowned.
“The light is better here,” Bella explained. “I’ve brought reading material and want to make notes.” She paused. “And the place seems pretty empty tonight.”
Grudgingly the maître d’ pulled out the chair for her near the alcove. He set a wine list on the table, but his attention kept flicking back and forth between her and the door. Trepidation rose once again in Bella. She followed his glance to the door. It was almost 11:00 p.m.
Without looking at the wine list, Bella asked for a bottle of Chateau Luneau cabernet franc and a glass of water. Her intent was to have the bottle on her table and the label visible when Tariq arrived. She hoped to strike up a conversation about the winery, which could possibly lead to mention of the Belard family.
At the very least, she wanted to walk away tonight with an invitation to tour his abbey. She’d figure out how to play the rest as she went.
The wine might be a risky move, but Bella reminded herself that if she genuinely was Amelie Chenard, doing research for a gothic novel set in an old abbey on this island, trying to use the wine as a conversation opener with the abbey owner should not be suspicious in the slightest. After all, her employer had told her it was Tahar’s favored choice. And Amelie had made no secret out of the fact she was seeking an invite to the abbey.
Nose clearly out of joint, the mustachioed maître d’ bustled off to fetch the wine.
Bella turned her attention to the only other patrons in the establishment—a couple, maybe in their forties, were speaking intimately over a table in the far corner of the room. A bottle of champagne sweated in a silver bucket at their side and they were holding hands over the table. Celebrating, thought Bella. A wedding anniversary perhaps. Derek came suddenly to mind and a pang of remorse twisted through her. She really had thought he was different from the others. Was she that bad a judge of character when it came to men? Every relationship she’d ever entered had been very physical, had peaked fast, then crashed and burned. Sometimes she wondered if she was sabotaging her own efforts to be happy, as if choosing the wrong men was a way of avoiding commitment.
She needed to go slow next time, if there ever were a next time. After all, this story had already killed people and put her life at risk. But that also told her it was worth pursuing—and Bella never gave up without a fight.
The maître d’ returned with the bottle and made a great show of holding the label out for her approval—Poirot was clearly going to be sommelier, maître d’ and server rolled in one tonight.
Bella smiled, nodded, and he poured for her to taste.
She sipped, and liked it a lot. While Poirot filled her glass she opened the menu, paling suddenly at the prices. The wine alone was going to kill her budget. Bella ordered the house salad, the cheapest item.
The maître d’ sniffed at her choice. As he scuttled off, she removed her notebook and pen, along with a travel magazine, which she set upon the table at her side. A photo of an old castle graced the cover, and the magazine’s top feature was an article on haunted properties down the coast of France. If the wine didn’t spark conversation, the magazine might provide an opportunity to lead into a discussion about Abbaye Mont Noir and its ghost.
Angling her chair slightly for a clear view of both the entrance and the alcove where she expected Tariq to sit, Bella reached for her wineglass. But as she was about to take a sip, the restaurant door swung open, letting in a blast of blustery air that made the candles on the tables flicker wildly.
She froze, attention riveted on the door.
A giant of a man with Mediterranean complexion, hooked nose, dark eyes, expensive suit, entered the hallway. He paused, scanning the dining area. His eyes settled instantly on Bella.
Holding her gaze, he stepped sideways. Tariq entered beside him. He pushed back the hood of his cape, exposing his oil-black hair, the eye patch, the violence down the left side of his face. His bodyguard bent down, whispered something. Tariq’s gaze shot to Bella.
His shoulders stiffened.
Bella felt her cheeks heat as she met the sheik’s piercing gaze. The power of his stare was disconcerting. So was the way his scar pulled the side of his mouth into an inflexible sneer. She wondered in that moment why he hadn’t opted for plastic surgery. Perhaps he didn’t care.
It wasn’t that his injuries made him unattractive—there was something darkly mesmerizing about him. And his air of command, of presence, was instantly tangible, powerful. But the piratical eye patch, the angry scars, the downturned eye and mouth—it made him look dangerous, formidable. Almost a little otherworldly. Something dark and hot pumped into her blood.
Bella tried to swallow against the growing dryness in her mouth, her pulse now fluttering like a moth caught in a jar. She tried to offer a smile, but was unable to command her mouth to do so. Slowly, she lowered her glass, setting it on the table. Her hand was shaking slightly.
The energy in the room shifted. The couple in the far corner felt it, glancing sharply up from their candlelight tête-à-tête, and the maître d’ rushed forward.
A second bodyguard entered behind Tariq. But as the hostess reached forward to take Tariq’s cloak, he raised his palm, halting her.
“Good evening, Monsieur Du Val,” the mustachioed maître d’ intoned loudly as he approached Tariq. “Can we show you to your table?” He held his arm out in the direction of the waiting alcove.
Tariq said something quietly to the maître d’, his eyes still fixed on Bella as he spoke. He then turned toward the door and drew the hood back up over his head.
Panic rose in her chest. He was leaving because of her! He’d taken one look at her sitting too close to his private table and he’d drawn his line in the sand.
The maître d’ shot her an angry scowl as Tariq’s bodyguard reopened the door and ushered the sheik out.
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.
“Her name is Kiki,” she called out after the man as he turned to leave with the dog. He shot a dark glance over his shoulder. Bella smiled inwardly and said a silent thank-you to Madame Dubois as she followed the butler down a wide and dimly lit stone corridor. The dog was easing her tension.
The air in this part of the abbey smelled slightly musty, like an old church. The butler stopped to open a thick wooden door, showing Bella into a library.
She entered cautiously. The room was massive but warm, with lots of rich wood paneling. Bookshelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling. A cello stood at one end of the room, the smooth wood gleaming from the light of a fire that crackled softly in a big stone hearth. Persian rugs in rich reds and rust browns covered the floors. At the far end of the room another door opened into what looked like a study—Bella could see a desk of polished black wood. On it rested a stubby phone—satellite phone, she guessed—along with a pile of papers.
“Mademoiselle Chenard,” the butler announced before sliding quietly away and closing the door.
Tariq stood up from the chair he’d been seated in next to the fire. The size of the wingback had hidden him from view. He turned slowly to face her.
Bella’s heart stilled as last summer’s headlines flooded through her mind.
Heir to Al Na’Jar Throne Dead. Renowned Surgeon Prince Dies. Prince Assassinated. Palace Mourns...
And here he was.
Already she could see the new headlines.
Sheik Al Arif Found Alive. Palace Lied. MagMo failed to Assassinate Heir. Al Na’Jar Prince Found Recovering in France.
She could also imagine the photographs she’d taken of him on the cliff splashed over news pages, and a disturbing little thought entered her mind. Why break this story on the Watchdog site—why not take it straight to one of the major media outlets? It would be her byline, her photo credits. Then she thought of Hurley, Scoob, Agnes, all the investigative legwork they’d done to help her get to this point. Guilt wormed into her.
“Come in,” he said, his voice rich, resonant. Deep.
Bella swallowed and took a few steps forward, tension tightening in her stomach.
He stepped around the chair, facing her square. He wore black pants—expensively cut, perfectly pressed. His white shirt was open at the neck showing a silk cravat. His hair was a glossy raven in the firelight. The eye patch lent him an air of mystery. In spite of his scars his presence shimmered with intensity, authority, wealth and something charismatically—and darkly—seductive.
Bella’s gaze settled on his mouth, the way his lip turned down on the left. An earlier photograph of him shifted to mind—Tariq smiling as he accepted a polo trophy, his teeth stark white against dusky skin. The photographer had captured a fire that had burned bright in his black eyes that day. Bella wondered if he could still smile, or if that ability, too, had been stolen from him by MagMo terrorists.
She came a little closer, holding out her hand. “I’m Amelie—”
“Amelie Chenard,” he said, lifting his chin slightly and clasping his own hands behind his back. He made no move toward her. She dropped her hand back to her side, feeling awkward, and wondered if he was hiding his maimed hand this way. What did it take for a man once so devastatingly good-looking, so talented a neurosurgeon, to deal with this change in his body, his life?
“You work for Estelle Dubois,” he said. “You’re here to do research for a novel.” He paused, watching her intently. “Or so I am told.”
“Yes,” she said simply, waiting to see where he was going to take this.
“This would be your debut novel.” It wasn’t a question.
She smiled, warmly. Or so she hoped. “So, you’ve looked me up?”
He said nothing.
Apprehension rose in her.
Before she’d left the States, Hurley and Scoob had managed to create a basic internet presence for “Amelie Chenard,” but it was superficial. Anyone digging deeper would soon see that. Bella had been lucky to secure her job with Estelle Dubois only two days after her arrival on Ile-en-Mer, and she’d managed to do it without applying for permits of any sort. She also hadn’t used her passport or any ID since arriving in France via the Chunnel, and so far she hadn’t touched the credit cards hidden in her room alongside her passport and driver’s license.
“Yes, it will be my first, at least under my own name, should it be published.” She tried to hold her smile. “If you did look up my website you’ll have seen that I’ve worked as a ghost writer to date, but contracts have bound me to confidentiality as to whom I’ve written for.”
His gaze bored into her, hot, intense. She tried not to blink, to look away. But her skin heated.
Still, he remained silent, waiting.
She cleared her throat. “I grew tired of being in the shadows all the time,” she said. “I want to step out, do something for myself, make my own name. Hence the new website, and now, my own book.” Bella hoped this would explain the apparent lack of internet litter around her alias. “It’s why I came to France, to this island. For the research. And I thought it might be good to stay awhile, absorb the local culture, the rhythms of the people.”
His butler appeared like a ghost, startling Bella—she hadn’t even heard the door open. He set Madame’s hamper on a table near the fire, then left. The sheik didn’t even glance at his servant, or the hamper.
Silently Bella thanked Madame again—clearly she was going to need a diversion, something to break the fortress of ice this man had built around himself. She glanced at the hamper, wondering what was inside.
“Your French is good,” he said abruptly.
“Thank you. I minored in French and philosophy.”
“Where?”
Perspiration suddenly prickled over her body. “Seattle,” she lied. It was the first place that came to mind that was not Chicago or D.C., and she’d visited the university there so she knew something about it.
“What was your major?”
“Literature,” she lied again, then forced a light laugh. “You’re making me feel as though I pushed my bike all the way up here simply to be interrogated.”
His features remained implacable. “You’ve been following me, Amelie. I want to know why.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious,” she said quietly, her smile dying on her lips. “I was hoping for a tour of the abbey, and I wanted to ask you about the ghost, the history of the place.” Silence hung between them. The fire crackled and popped, giving a slight hiss.
“Is Seattle your home, Amelie?”
She swallowed the panic ballooning in her throat. “Yes.”
“You were born there?”
“Portland, Oregon.” She cursed herself even as the words came out of her mouth. She was just digging a deeper hole for herself. She had to open up real channels of communication before he dug further into her background and discovered she was a fake.
“And you decided to come live in France while you researched this idea for a novel?”
“You manage to make that sound condescending.”
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t sound it.
“It was more than just the research,” she said, cutting closer to the truth now. “I had some personal issues, a recent breakup with a man I thought I loved, and I needed to get away for a while.”
Damn, why was she even going there? She spoke too much when she was nervous.
Something crossed his features, then was gone—she’d gotten through to him, briefly.
“I don’t appreciate being followed, Amelie,” he said finally, more gently.
“I really did try a more conventional approach—I rang the bell at the gate twice, but there was no answer. I asked around the village if anyone had a phone number for the abbey. Then Madame Dubois said you liked to walk along the cliffs in the afternoon, so I followed you on the heath.” She paused. “I confess, after seeing you standing at the edge of the cliffs, I became curious beyond the book research. I wanted to meet you.”
“To see firsthand the beast who lives in a haunted stone monastery on the cliffs—to see his scars? Is that why you took photographs of me, inspiration for your gothic novel?”
The bitterness—the rawness in his voice—was a shock, a punch to her gut. “That’s not—”
“Not what the villagers think of me—the scarred monster in the haunted abbey?”
Bella inhaled deeply. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.” She pointed her arm in the direction of the village. “Those locals have nothing but respect for you and your privacy. They treat you like a revered guest on this island—”
“Because I have money.”
She dropped her hand, stared.
“Think about it, Amelie. The trappings of wealth are all I have left. They buy me a measure of dignity. They allow me privacy.”
She heard the subtext—he could no longer work as a surgeon, no longer play his cello, win his polo matches...he’d lost the love of his life, the desire to help run his country. He needed to be alone.
“And so you hide,” she said quietly, “behind your wealth, in a remote abbey because you don’t want people to see your face, because you think you’re somehow damaged?”
He studied her, his presence seeming to glower with a dark, angry, yet magnetic power.
“How did it happen, Tahar?”
Something tore sharp and fast across the one side of his face, a ghost of an emotion, there, then gone, as if she might have imagined it. The other side of his face remained immobile, stiff. It was as if his psyche was split in two—a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde.
Her heart hammered. Perhaps she’d stepped over the line. But Bella told herself it was a normal question from someone who had nothing to hide. And he was the one who’d broached the subject by referring to himself as a “scarred beast of a man.”
But his gaze, his energy, was so intense, crackling, dark, she felt her cheeks go hot and she looked away. “I’m sorry. That was forward. I don’t need to know. I only wanted to—”
“It was a car accident,” he said abruptly. “I was in a coma for a while afterward.”
Surprise rippled through her. She opened her mouth but words eluded her. In her mind she could see Derek’s photo, Tariq fleeing the burning jet, such fierceness, such pain in his eyes as he tried to save his fiancée. Guilt sliced through her and she cursed the hungry newshound inside her own body.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I...there are no easy words for something like this. And I suspect you don’t want platitudes, anyway.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” He strode over to the hamper on the table, opened the lid of the wicker hamper as he spoke. “What did you bring?”
“Actually it’s from Madame Dubois. I have no idea what’s in there.”
He pulled out a bottle of Chateau Luneau cabernet franc and his gaze ticked to hers. “She knows what I like,” he said very quietly. “And so do you—this is what you were drinking in the restaurant.”
Tension shimmered. A piece of wet wood hissed in the fire, and Bella could hear wind moaning up in the turrets somewhere. She thought she could also hear the distant crash of waves at the foot of the cliffs upon which they were perched, the rhythmic thrust of the Atlantic—a pulse as old as time. She shook herself.
“Madame Dubois told me about the wine,” she said quietly. “She also told me you dined at Le Grotte every Tuesday night. I went there to meet you. I had hoped to strike up conversation through the wine, and then ask for a tour of the abbey.” She forced a laugh, but it felt hollow. “The wine just about broke my budget.”
A twitch of amusement ran along the right side of his mouth. Or had she imagined it? Whatever it was, something seemed to shift in the color of the evening.
From the hamper he removed a round of cheese and a box of crackers. He set them on the table. Reaching in again, he pulled out two wineglasses and a corkscrew. He held the glasses up, crooked his brow.
Ridiculously, Bella felt her cheeks flush again. She told herself it was the warmth of the fire finally getting through after her cold ride. Yet there was something so damn sensual about this dark, damaged man, something so barely restrained it overwhelmed her, and more. It set her nerves tingling for the feel of his touch against her skin.
“Madame insisted I bring the hamper,” she said, her voice thickening. “Estelle Dubois maintains the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. She seems to think every single woman must be in search of a male.” Even as the words came out her mouth she wished she could take them back. Bella was suddenly floundering, in part, she realized, because she’d been attracted to Tariq—both physically and mentally—long before this moment.
To find him alive, to actually be in his powerful presence, was rattling her. Because Tariq Al Arif in the flesh more than exceeded Bella’s expectations. Everything about him exuded the aura of a Saharan prince from an exotic country steeped in ancient, desert tradition, and standing so near him, she didn’t feel quite real. Again she felt like an Alice that had slipped through some kind of fairy-tale looking glass. Bella in the castle with the scarred “beast” of a prince.
“And you’re not?”
She coughed, eyes watering. “Not what?”
“Looking for a man.”
The heat in her cheeks deepened and she felt irritated by her body’s betrayal. “Like I said, I had a bad breakup with my ex. I came to get away from all that, quite frankly.”
“So it was serious, this relationship of yours?”
“I thought it was.”
Tariq angled his head slightly, reading her. Then he set the wineglasses on the table, picked up the bottle of wine and the corkscrew.
Turning his back to her he struggled to uncork the bottle.
Bella went quickly up to him. “Here, let me.” She reached out, taking the bottle and opener from him. Her hand brushed against his skin as she did, and heat shocked through her. Bella froze, met his eye.
Anger crackled from him in waves. She understood. He’d been a top neurosurgeon and now he couldn’t even open a bottle of wine without fumbling.
“I can see you’re left-handed,” she said softly, averting her eyes from his crippled fingers, focusing instead on twisting the corkscrew, heat still rippling through her. “It must be difficult—” she popped the cork “—adjusting to the use of a nondominant hand.”
A muscle began to work at his jaw.
She poured the wine, handed him a glass, careful not to connect with his skin again.
“Will you ever fully regain use of your left hand?” she said quietly.
Will you ever operate again, play the cello, ride a horse...
He stared at her, intense, silent. Bella began to feel self-conscious.
“I apologize—I’m stepping out of my bounds tonight. What I really—”
“I might regain all the refinement of a wooden club,” he said, taking a deep swallow of his wine. She watched his Adam’s apple move under dusky skin. “If I do the physiotherapy.”
Madame’s words sifted into Bella’s mind.
A private ferry came over from the mainland with gymnasium equipment. A woman came with it... I think she had something to do with the gymnasium equipment, perhaps a personal trainer. But she left very abruptly, the next day...
He’d fired his physiotherapist.
“You’re not doing the exercises?”
He turned and strode to the fire, stared into the flames, glass in hand, firelight dancing in the burgundy liquid.
“To put it simply,” he said, still facing the fire, his voice low and deep in his throat. “The brain-to-limb connection is one of the hardest to regain. Sometimes, I’ll be holding an object in my left hand, then I get distracted, and the thing just drops from my fingers because the neurological connection is missing.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/loreth-white-anne/surgeon-sheik-s-rescue/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.