Trust Me, page 35
“Mason will be pissed if I don’t.”
The second man stepped up and demanded she remove the heavy coat. Once it was on the floor, she rested her hands on her hairclip while he waved a metal detector wand up and down her body. It emitted an electronic buzz at the boot, and he demanded she remove it.
She sat on a fake rock to undo the Velcro straps. When he discovered all the tools and blades hidden in the boot, he demanded she remove the ankle stabilizer too.
After he stripped her of her weapons and gadgets, he forced her to walk barefoot into the next room, an unfinished space where she came face-to-face with both Gardners and a clean-shaven Makram Rafiq.
Chapter Sixty-Five
“Where is Kira?” Diana demanded.
She had to play this game carefully. More than anything, she needed to buy time. She couldn’t give Rafiq even a hint of what he wanted until she had eyes on Kira, safe and sound. And she knew exactly what he wanted, so she could draw out the confrontation. She’d figured it out last night as she watched happy customers leave with bulging bags from Historie.
The perfect gift.
But Rafiq was after the gift that kept on giving. The ultimate score.
And he’d never trust the Gardners with that information. They’d cut him out faster than they’d betrayed Diana and Kira. That was why Rafiq had demanded to follow Diana to the US. He knew she’d become a fugitive before she ever returned to Jordan, and he needed to get the information from her firsthand.
“How did she get here?” Dennis asked, glaring at one of the henchmen. “You said she was in the hospital and the whore would grab her.”
Before the man could answer, she said, “I caught a ride with Mason. I want to talk to Kira.”
“Who’s Kira?” Mason asked.
“I know you’re slow, Mason, but you’re overplaying it.”
Mason took a step toward her. “Cunt. I’ll—”
“I also know what Rafiq wants from me. No Kira. No coordinates.”
Rafiq cocked his head. “In Jordan, you never let on that you recognized me.” His voice was curious. Even respectful.
“I’m not a fool.” She smiled and nodded toward Mason. “Not like present company.”
Rafiq laughed. “No. That you aren’t. You know what I want?”
“Yes. Fahd told me.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “And of course, that is what I wanted from the start. Someone my old friend Fahd would trust.”
That gave her a jolt. “You knew Fahd?”
He held her gaze, his eyes probing. “Of course. I knew them all.”
Her eyes stung with tears as she connected the dots. “You knew…his friend. The one who went missing years ago.”
Rafiq dipped his head. Yes. He knew him. And Fahd’s friend’s fate, which everyone had guessed at, was also clear. Yet another man who’d died to protect the secret Diana now carried.
It wasn’t dying for an object. It was dying for a cause.
“You killed him.”
A slight shrug. “He could have saved himself. Just like Fahd. I trust you won’t be so foolish.”
She’d be defiant, but Kira was still missing. “Bring Kira to me, and I’ll tell you what you want.”
His smile deepened. In addition to his scars, he had dimples. Friendly dimples. “I have a present for you first.”
A tingling started in the back of Diana’s neck. Never trust a terrorist bearing gifts.
Rafiq clapped his hands. “Bring him.”
Him?
The two henchmen left the room, going in the opposite direction from where she’d entered. A moment later, they returned, dragging Jamal between them.
The fifteen-year-old glared at her as he entered the room, his hands and feet shackled together with chains that formed an X.
Her eyes burned as she looked at him. He was a child. A victim of Rafiq. A monster made, not born.
He’d tried to rape her. He’d held her prisoner for six weeks. And yesterday, he’d tried to blow her up with a pipe bomb.
She felt sorry for him and hated him at the same time.
And then there was his brother. There weren’t really words to describe how she felt about Bassam, who had at times protected her. But he was never her friend. She knew he would strike like a snake if needed.
Still, in the end, she’d been the viper.
She looked at Jamal, who hated her with all his being. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want Bassam to die.”
No. She’d wanted Jamal to die. He was the one who’d hurt her. Scared her.
Tears spilled down her cheeks as Jamal looked at her with dead eyes.
She didn’t regret what she’d done in order to survive.
She’d betrayed Fahd.
Looted a site.
Killed Bassam.
For a cause. The same cause so many others had died for. And if she could just buy more time, they might finally have a victory. Were the drones in this room? Recording everything? Freya had promised the FBI would swoop in the moment they got video of Rafiq.
They were on standby in Newport News. How long would it take for them to get here?
Could they stop what was about to happen to Jamal?
“He tried to kill you,” Mason said, incredulous that she would cry at seeing Jamal in chains.
She looked at the younger Gardner, a man whose wealth came from buying artifacts from terrorists. His money paid for attacks on schools that led to the impressment of boys like Jamal into Rafiq’s army. “You and your father sent me to Jordan to be abducted and killed.”
“I sent you to Jordan to work and study,” the elder Gardner said.
“Bullshit. You sent me hoping Fahd would share the secret with me.” She waved to the mockup of the slot canyon behind her. “Your canyon replica is the same fucking canyon they took me to the first day I was abducted. The one they wanted me to dig to find artifacts for your Signature Line. You already had the interactive museum in the works.” She swiped at the unwelcome tears. She didn’t want them to see her pain, but she couldn’t pull herself up.
She and Jamal and Bassam and Kira weren’t people to these monsters. They were tools to be used and abused and discarded. One wanted power and destruction, the other two just wanted money.
Money.
Money.
It was galling to see how deeply they’d betray their country for wealth they couldn’t possibly spend in this lifetime. Not on things they would actually use.
A home. A car. A decent set of kitchen knives. These were necessities and luxuries, and both men had more than they’d ever need. But still, they had to have more. As if owning all the best kitchen knives in the world could fill the hole where their soul should be.
“We’ll give you Kira if you kill Jamal.” The offer came from Mason, of course. He was the most soulless of them all. A man who’d never known want or strife. So he sought blood sport.
“Fuck you. I won’t stoop to your level.”
Rafiq gave Mason a nasty smile. “Yes, child boss man. It’s time you got blood on your hands. Instead of paying others to do your dirty work, you kill him.”
Mason’s face changed as he took in Rafiq’s words. First, he was shocked. Then he was…gleeful.
He was going to do it.
He was excited by the prospect.
There was no way Diana would walk out of here alive, but that was especially true if she witnessed the heir apparent murdering Jamal in cold blood.
Rafiq pulled a knife from the sheath at his waist and offered it to Mason.
“No.” Diana’s voice was firm even as she sobbed. “Don’t do this, Mason. There’s no going back.”
“He tried to kill you,” Rafiq said.
She shrugged. “He failed.”
“He knew I wanted you alive. He betrayed me.”
She would tell him to do the deed himself, then, but knew better than to bait a man who lacked humanity. This wasn’t a game. Jamal was a person.
As was she.
And Kira.
And still, she watched as Mason Gardner stepped forward with Rafiq’s knife in his hand. The boy had been beaten. His face was battered and swollen.
His head lolled to the side, and she watched in horror as Mason grabbed him by the hair and raised his head. With a quick slash of the knife, Jamal’s neck opened up, and blood spurted on Mason’s face.
Jamal’s angry gaze fixed on Diana as life faded from his eyes.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chris and Rand were fully decked out in their combat gear as they moved in on the construction site, Freya whispering instructions in their ears.
“Diana said the layout of the museum is the same as the slot canyon in Jordan. The first rescue attempt.”
Chris closed his eyes and remembered the intersecting canyons. He knew the fastest route to the center.
Rand made quick work of the chain-link fence, and they were through in the blink of an eye. They darted from tree to tree, their camouflage gear blending perfectly with the deciduous forest that surrounded the property.
The construction site was littered with temporary structures. Odds were, Kira had been stashed in one of the trailer offices. Chris left Rand to search for Kira, and headed for the museum, where Diana was deep in conversation with the Four of Diamonds.
Diana couldn’t hold back her anguish and tears. No one mattered to these men. Not the boy who’d been forced into this world with violence and abuse.
She dropped to her knees and touched Jamal’s face. She didn’t like him. Hell, she’d loathed him from the moment he’d tried to rape her. But she would never forget that he was once a child with a brother and sister. A boy who deserved so much better than the world had given him.
Mason pulled her back from the body, and the henchmen dragged Jamal’s corpse out of the room, taking him back to wherever he’d been held before she arrived. She hoped to hell Kira wasn’t in the same place.
Her tears vanished as she remembered her goal.
Buy time.
“Where is Kira?” she demanded again.
Mason gave her a nasty smile and raised the bloody knife. He pulled her back to his chest and placed the blade at her throat. “Maybe we should go see her.”
Makram Rafiq was no longer the scariest person in the room. Now that he’d scored his first kill, Mason Gardner had a taste for blood.
The world was upside down. Chris stood in a fake slot canyon, not on an official op, staring at the unequivocal face of the fourth most wanted man by the FBI, while retail heir Mason Gardner held a knife to Diana’s throat.
And Chris had no shot on Mason.
He was back in the real canyon, with Bassam holding the knife.
Could Diana talk her way out of this one?
“Kill me, and Rafiq won’t get his coordinates.”
And there was his answer.
Yes. Yes, she could.
Unlike before, when Kramer had been in the tunnel behind him, Chris was on his own. But this time, there was no escape for the men, and no one knew that everything that happened here was being filmed.
“Where is the site, Dr. Edwards?” Rafiq’s voice was low and soft. Cajoling.
She fixed him with a glare. “Call off the dog.”
Chris smiled. This time, she wasn’t negotiating the knife wielder’s release. But then Bassam deserved more respect than Mason Gardner.
After a long pause, Rafiq said, “Drop the knife.”
“We can’t trust her.” Mason’s voice was petulant.
“She has more loyalty and cunning than you. If you kill her, I will kill you.”
Mason flushed. “We’ve done what you asked. Even brought you here. At great risk to ourselves.”
“You did it for money.”
“That’s why everyone does anything.”
“Not me. Not Dr. Edwards.”
It was weird to hear a terrorist speak about Diana with more respect than the retail heir did. Another upside-down element.
“So what do you do it for?” Mason asked.
“Me? I am a servant of God. She is a fool who believes understanding history will change men like you. She and I, we’re both zealots for our beliefs. The difference between us is I don’t give a damn about the history she’s peddling except for how I can use artifacts to advance my cause.”
As Rafiq talked, Mason slowly relaxed. The knife was no longer tight against Diana’s throat.
Chris still wanted to kill the little prick.
The bloodlust was new. He’d killed before, but he’d never seen himself as a killer.
Hypocrisy, probably, but a SEAL had to find a way to cope.
Rafiq shoved Mason aside. “Tell me, Diana. Give me the coordinates.”
“No Kira, no coordinates.”
“You know why I want them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have them?”
“Yes. Fahd trusted me.”
Rafiq grabbed Diana’s face, pinching her chin between his thumb and index finger. “Give me the coordinates, Diana, and this will go so much easier for you.”
She jerked back, out of his grip. “You don’t get it. I chose abduction for a shot at bringing you down. I betrayed everything I believe in because I want to see you captured and killed. And yes, I know where the site is. And I know why you want it. I know that archaeologists all over Syria banded together to protect their country’s history and every portable artifact that would’ve been sold to support your terrorist acts was hidden there. And I will die before I give you even a single digit of the coordinates. Because we are nothing alike.
“I was entrusted when you weren’t. Because Fahd knew what you are. The archaeologists in your country saw you for the traitor you are, and they hid it from you in a place where you will never, ever find it.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Diana knew she’d taunted Rafiq too much, but she didn’t care. All she felt was a kind of hate that wasn’t measurable or even fathomable.
She pulled the clip from her hair, her movement deliberately casual as she extracted the glass shard from its hiding place. She tossed her head, shaking out her hair as she palmed the weapon.
She wanted to strike out, but it was three against one, and Kira was nowhere to be found. So she waited.
Help would come.
“Very clever of you. You figured it out.”
She nodded. “Fahd didn’t tell me everything. I didn’t know the site was the repository for artifacts. I only figured that out last night, when I started to wonder why you were so desperate to get me alive. The photos I took in Jordan are meaningless without the actual artifacts surfacing on the market. And it’s my word against the world if I reveal that I authenticated the artifacts the Gardners just bought from Gillibrand when I was first abducted.”
“They’re all dead now, Diana. The archaeologists in the pact. Fahd was the last one. He only told you.”
She smiled. “And I will take the secret to the grave, just like the rest of them.”
Rafiq advanced on her. “You will tell me.”
The rage that had been building from the moment she watched the video of Fahd’s murder enveloped her. She lunged for Rafiq, but Mason, that little asshole, grabbed her, preventing her from taking down the Four of Diamonds. She twisted and lashed out, and the glass blade opened his cheek. His temple. His chin.
She was going for his eye next when Dennis grabbed her arm.
She kneed Mason in the balls, then turned the blade on Dennis Gardner.
One stroke and he was blinded by a shard from a fake artifact she’d bought from one of his stores. Best forty dollars she’d ever spent.
The man screamed and covered his eye, while Mason writhed on the floor.
She heard a scuffle behind her, and turned, ready to fight Rafiq. Relief jolted through her when she saw him, his face smashed against the floor, and Chris’s knee pressed to his back.
Rafiq was nothing but a man. A weak man. And now he was being handcuffed.
Arrested.
No longer a danger to everything that mattered.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The FBI had been scrambling to get into position from the moment Raptor tipped them on the location. Once Rafiq had been identified, they had the go-ahead to storm the museum, and they had been moving in from three directions when Rafiq’s advance on Diana triggered the final confrontation.
The two henchmen had been in the process of wrapping Jamal’s body in a plastic sheet when they were arrested.
Diana had been told that Rand found Kira unconscious in one of the incomplete storage rooms. She’d been taken to a hospital.
Both Gardners were also headed to a hospital, but both would be under guard and once stitched, headed to a federal lockup pending charges. Given their wealth, they were a huge flight risk. It was hard to imagine a judge granting bail, especially not after seeing the video of Mason killing Jamal.
Now Diana had her walking boot back on and was being questioned as she leaned against the toes of the Sphinx, while Chris was walking the agents through the slot canyon, explaining it was a replica of the one in Jordan where she’d first been held.
The agents questioning him waved Diana and her interviewer over, and she crossed the room to join the tour.
Chris moved to stand next to her, taking her hand in his. She leaned her head on his shoulder.
They hadn’t had a moment alone yet. She was desperate to hold him and to be held, but first they had to make certain the Gardeners wouldn’t be able to buy their way out of this.
“I never had a chance to explore the canyon beyond crawling through a tunnel,” she said in response to an agent’s question. “But I studied the maps when I was in the hospital in Germany, so I knew the general layout, and that area”—she pointed toward a small open section—“is where the Bedouin tents were. It’s just a much smaller scale than the real thing.”
