Читать книгу Surgeon Sheik's Rescue - Лорет Энн Уайт - Страница 10

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.