Dangerously Hot (A Hostile Operations Team Novel)(#4) (24 page)

No one looked at her with an iota of doubt. If they felt it, they didn’t let it show, and for that she was grateful. She’d spent weeks training with them and now, today, this was it. And they believed she could do it. She nodded. “Thanks.”
 

She followed Kev and Flash through the door and out into the courtyard where the van from the night before waited. The driver rumbled through the city streets until they reached their destination. He let them out two streets over, and they walked the rest of the way. It seemed safe enough, though Kev and Flash were wound tight as they walked. The school was in an exclusive area surrounded by shops and cafes that weren’t quite as busy as they might have been before the bombings rocked the city. Still, there were people out and about, and the school itself was heavily secured.

Kev and Flash went inside with her because they’d secured an interview with the headmaster. Something about life in Baq under the new king. Lucky couldn’t imagine anyone mistaking these two tall, broad, warrior-like men for journalists, but people often believed what they were presented.
 

The headmaster met them and ushered them into his office. After a bit of talk, Lucky was shown to the classroom by another teacher. It was a small room, bright and cheery with student drawings of flowers on the wall, and she felt a pang for the woman who’d been shifted out of her job to make an opening. Lucky picked up the papers that were labeled with different parts of a house in English and Arabic and clutched them to her as she wondered what the previous teacher must be thinking today.
 

Hopefully, this assignment wouldn’t last too long and everything would go back to normal.

But how normal would it be once they’d taken some little girl’s father away? It was hard to imagine anyone as cold and cruel as Al Ahmad with a child, and yet it wouldn’t be the first time a stone-cold killer had a family.

But she couldn’t think about that, could she?

Lucky sat and sifted through the materials on her desk, organizing them for the day. And then the students arrived and her heart kicked even as butterflies swirled around inside her belly. This was it, the beginning of her task. The reason they were here. She had to find his daughter.
 

But that wasn’t going to be easy. She studied the students in each class carefully, wondering which of them might be the one she sought. She tried to pick out his features, but how impossible was that when she didn’t really know them well enough to do so?

She pored over the girls’ names on the roster, hoping something might trigger a memory. Nothing did.

Four hours later, time was up and she was no closer to discovering who Al Ahmad’s daughter was than she had been that morning. Disappointment tasted bitter and hard, like an unripened cherry.

Kev was waiting at the entrance when she walked out, and happiness filled her at the sight of him there. She tamped it down as she went up to him. He didn’t say anything, just put his arm around her and ushered her down the street. She couldn’t help but focus on the easy pressure of his arm on her shoulders, or how her heart fluttered at his nearness.

Was he still angry? Was this all for show?
 

She told herself she was supposed to be thinking about Al Ahmad and his daughter, but all she could think about was how good it felt to be wedged against Kev’s body, walking down the street like a normal couple.

“How’d it go?” Kev finally asked.

“It’s an impossible task.” She sounded frustrated, but she couldn’t hide it. “Nothing about those children seems familiar. There are forty of them, Kev.
Forty
. Unless the man himself shows up for a recital one day, I don’t see how this is going to work.”

“Maybe he will. In fact, I’m pretty certain of it.”

She ground to a halt on the street, and he had to push her out of the way before someone plowed into her. Her back was against a building as she faced him. He was big and dark and lethal. And handsome. God, she could never forget handsome. The sun beat down on him and his eyes pierced hers, and all she could think about was lying beneath him with nothing between them but skin and sweat.

“That’s an insane idea,” she sputtered, dragging herself back to the conversation. “He’d never do it. Why would you think he would?”

He shrugged. “Maybe he won’t. But there’s an event coming up that the king is supposed to attend. The headmaster says all the parents are invited. Do you really think our guy will refuse an invitation that involves the king? Wouldn’t it be suspicious if he’s the only parent who doesn’t go?”

She gaped at him, her brain whirling. “He can’t possibly run his network while living a normal life, can he? Can he really go to school events and be so…
normal
?”

Even as she said it, she knew it had to be true. It was the secret of his success, the reason why he’d gone undetected for so long. Al Ahmad was only a code name. Behind that name was a man who
must
be connected in order to achieve the things he’d achieved. He’d escaped death and gone underground. He’d only been discovered when his lieutenant had outed him—and that had taken nearly two years to do. Jassar ibn Rashad had been afraid—and then he suddenly hadn’t. Though perhaps he should have been, considering he hadn’t been heard from again. They could all guess what the outcome of that betrayal had been.

Or maybe he’d just been stupid instead of brave. Whatever the case, he’d let the truth slip, and now almost every government in the world had an interest in finding Al Ahmad and putting a stop to his machinations. But Al Ahmad had to know that, so would he really go to public events where he might be identified?

Kev seemed to know what she was thinking. “If he thought we knew about his daughter, she wouldn’t be in the school anymore. There’ve been no new enrollments or withdrawals in a year. She’s there, which means he will most likely be there. It’s something we have to consider.”

She couldn’t breathe for a moment. She thought back over all those faces, which had ranged in age from six to sixteen, and wished she could pick out his features in his child’s.
 

“If he’s living a normal life, and his child goes to that school, then he’s wealthy and connected. So he might not be in town for this. That’s certainly a legitimate excuse if he has a business, right? He could be anywhere for all we know.”

Kev arched an eyebrow. “He could be. But what if he’s not? What if he
wants
to go to this event? It’s the king, Lucky. The fricking King of Qu’rim.”

Her blood ran cold as she considered the implications. The King of Qu’rim and Al Ahmad in the same room. For all they knew, it had happened before. If he was a businessman of some description, it probably had. But now that the violence was escalating, could he be planning something against the king?
 

“When is it?” Her throat was tight.

Kev grinned. “Three days from now.”

***

Abdul Halim was growing impatient. When he gave an order, he expected results. His contact at the hotel said there was some confusion about recent guests. Several had checked out after the bombings, and several new people had checked in. The hotel was swarming with media, and while there weren’t a lot of women, there were a few. His contact wasn’t quite certain how many because the bombing had upset the city and some of the staff were refusing to get on buses or take taxis to come to work.

Abdul Halim’s phone rang and he snatched it up. Farouk was on the other end. “We have a report of some Americans leaving the hotel last night, but they didn’t go to the airport.”

“And where did they go?”

“We don’t know. Two of our men were following them, but the Americans slipped past the perimeter and we were unable to pick up their trail again.”

Abdul Halim’s gut churned. “Incompetence, Farouk. I will not tolerate it. There is too much at stake.”

“What does it matter?” Farouk blew out a breath. “We will have the king himself in just a few days, so why worry about disappearing Americans? When the king is ours, we will control Qu’rim. We’ll shut the borders and hunt down all the foreigners.”

Abdul Halim ground his teeth. “Because it is an anomaly. And because I saw the woman on camera.”

“You saw a woman who
might
be Lucky Reid. And what can she do, brother? Even if she’s here with an army of Americans, they do not know where to find us. With the city in chaos, they’ll have their hands full.”

Abdul Halim stared at the golden domes of the palace in the distance. They were so close to achieving their goals now. The king’s appearance at the school was a last-minute addition to his schedule, and it had the Freedom Force scrambling. They would not miss this opportunity, though capturing the king had never been on their agenda before now.

But the fighting in the desert was taking too long even though the forces guarding the mine were stretched thin. Yet they had not given up. With the king under the Freedom Force’s control, the king’s military would have to stand down. Taking the mine would be so simple.

And after they had the mine, their men at the Ministry of Science would open the doors and give them access to the enrichment program and the secret warheads the government had been building. Oh, yes, he knew about those, even if the IAEA did not.

Abdul Halim rubbed his temples. It was a delicate operation. He had access to the king in his real life, but forcing a kidnapping that way would reveal his identity. At an event where he was also scheduled to appear? Where he could orchestrate everything and yet not implicate himself in any way?

It was too good to pass up.

“Nothing can interfere with our plans, Farouk. This is the culmination of all we have worked for.”

He punched the button to end the call and stood there for several more minutes, anger churning in his gut. A high-pitched giggle came from the direction of the apartment entrance, and he knew that his wife had picked up Lana from school. He walked out of his office and into the hallway.

Lana came running. “Guess what, Daddy!”

“What?” he asked, picking her up.

“I got perfect marks in math. And then Aija pulled my hair and Jada threw up her lunch. And we got a new English teacher. She’s American.”

Abdul Halim stilled. A new teacher? Now? Ordinarily he would not think twice about such a thing. But this was an unexpected change, and unwelcome.
 

“What happened to the old teacher?”

“Mrs. MacDonald said she got sick, and she might be gone a while.”

A sick teacher was nothing to be suspicious about, and yet a change right before the king’s visit did not sit quite right in Abdul Halim’s mind. He hadn’t gotten as far in life as he had by not being cautious. It might be nothing, but what if it was?

“Ah, I see. And do you like this Mrs. MacDonald?”

“I guess so. She’s not as old as Mrs. Fortson. And she’s pretty.”

Abdul Halim set Lana down, though she pouted when he did so. “Go and play with your dolls. Daddy has phone calls to make.”

She skipped off a second later, and he turned and went back to his office. He was simply too close to achieving everything he’d dreamed to allow anything to interfere.
 

He would learn who this Mrs. MacDonald was before they commenced with their plans. God help her if she wasn’t what she claimed to be…

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“The King of Qu’rim. Jesus.” Matt raked a hand through his hair.
 

Kev frowned. “We don’t know that’s Al Ahmad’s plan, but it’s a small event and the security detail will be small as well. If the Freedom Force wants to make a grab for the king, that would be the place to do it.”

“They might be planning to assassinate him. We should consider that possibility.” It was Hawk who’d spoken. Thinking like a sniper, naturally.

Kev shook his head. “I’m not disagreeing that we should consider it, but we also need to consider what grabbing him would mean for them. They’d have the fucking King of Qu’rim under their control. And even if they planned to kill him in the end, they’d surely milk the power that controlling him would give them first.”

Matt chewed his lip. “It could be either one. If they kill him, they plunge Qu’rim into chaos. And that would certainly help their cause. But the king’s brother would take the reins of government, so they wouldn’t be without a king for long.”

“Unless the brother is the one feeding information to the Freedom Force.”

They all looked at each other. Anything was possible and they didn’t trust anyone outside this room. There’d been fears of a leak in the king’s inner circle, which was why they’d been very careful about the information they’d fed to the Qu’rimis. But they had no proof. No one did.

Billy Blake tapped on his computer like a madman. “I’ve got the schematics for the building. We can plan for an assault.”

“Either way, we have to go in,” Kev said. Several of the guys nodded.

Matt had that look that said he was concentrating. “I need to inform Mendez. But the NSA hasn’t reported a damn thing about an attempt on the king.”

“You said they’d broken one channel,” Kev replied. “Maybe he hasn’t let the plan filter down to the rank and file yet. That’s obviously not his main channel if there’s no word.”