Secret Agent Sheikh

Ed Langdon, her longtime friend as well as her handler, ran a hand across tired-looking eyes. The poor guy hadn’t had any more sleep than she had last night.

“But we don’t have a choice.” He sighed and stared into his coffee. “You have to at least go through the motions of this sting with Kadir or else Wainwright may bust us both out of the Task Force.”

“Oh, Ed. No. Whatever I screwed up had nothing to do with you.”

He dug his fingers through his thinning hair and then went back to drinking coffee with both hands wrapped around the mug. “You’re my responsibility. When an assignment goes bad, it’s my fault.”

Ed was the closest thing to a father figure she’d had since her own father died on a CIA covert mission nearly ten years ago. At that time she had recently graduated college and was interviewing with the Agency for her first job. Her father had wanted her to go to law school. He’d wanted something safer and saner for his daughter than he’d had for himself.

But she’d always seen her father as the sun, the moon and the brightest star in the sky. Everything revolved around him and had since her mother died when she was a girl. What her father did for a living was exciting. Stimulating. The very idea of undercover work had thrilled her down to her bones.

Her mother had been the steady one in the family. The rock. She’d had a nice, normal job as an accountant. And what did that get her? She’d been kidnapped from her nice safe office, robbed and murdered.

No thanks. Jass would take her chances with undercover work.

“I don’t like the whole idea of this Kadir character forcing himself on you while you try to make an ill-conceived plan work. He’s charismatic when he wants to be.”

Jass bristled. “Geez, Ed. You know me better than that. No one takes advantage of Jasmine O’Reilly.”

Ed gave her a lopsided smile. “I know, honey. Sometimes I think you take yourself far too seriously. How long has it been since you’ve even had a date?”

“Uh, a while. I’ve been working. It’s hard to go out when you’re playing the part of a dangerous Indonesian spy or in disguise as the girlfriend of an IRA terrorist.” She shrugged. “But I don’t feel deprived. I like undercover work. A lot.”

Ed grinned. “Yep. Too damned independent and serious for your own good. You can’t go through your whole life like that, you know.”

After her father had died, Ed had gone to bat for her at the Agency. He’d been her father’s partner and longtime friend and said he wanted to help her however he could. And when Ed was promoted to being SAC and a handler, he’d made sure she was under his wing and came along, too. He’d always been every bit as concerned about her as a person as he was with her as a covert officer under his control.

Jass fiddled with her paper napkin. “I have lots of time for a life later. I’m only twenty-nine. You know how important it is to me to be the best at what I do.”

Ed sat silent for a few moments. Finally he said, “Look, you have to take this assignment. But you don’t have to fall for whatever Kadir is selling. I believe he has his own agenda and will try to gain your trust so he can somehow get his hands on the prize.” He looked at her intently. “Don’t let him. As usual, I’ll be standing by to remind you to keep your head in the game. Listen to me.”

“Don’t I always?” she murmured, smiling at Ed.

He blew out a breath and chuckled. “Okay, little girl. Good enough for now. Let’s see about getting you prepped for whatever surprises come your way.”

Tarik had to force his gaping mouth shut when Jass climbed into the back of their limo with him. Man, did she look hot. Not that she didn’t always look terrific, with her sexy auburn hair, exotic hazel-green eyes and a body to drool over.

But this sophisticated persona of the deadly Celile Kocak sent electric shivers straight to his groin. Maybe their mission wouldn’t be hard to take after all.

The CIA handler, Ed, slammed the limo’s back door after her and slid into the front seat next to the driver. “You all set, Kadir?”

Tarik wasn’t paying much attention to Ed. He had better things to look at. Dressed in one of those French-designed suits and Italian leather four-inch heels, Jass never turned her head his way. She kept staring out the window as the limo began to roll away from the hotel.

Tarik absently adjusted his gold-braided head scarf and spoke to Ed without turning. “Becoming a rich Middle Eastern sheik is one disguise that shouldn’t be too much of a problem for me, Langdon.”

He kept his eyes trained on Jass. “You look amazing. Run into any trouble with the background intel?”

She turned her head only slightly and a strand of that long, luxurious mane slid over one dark-brown contact, obscuring it from his view. “I know how to do my job.”

If it wasn’t a balmy, late winter day in Monte Carlo, Tarik would’ve expected an ice storm. Much more of that kind of cold shoulder and this assignment might be the death of him yet.

“Well, I wish one of you could speak Portuguese,” Langdon added from the front seat. “A dozen languages between you and yet not the one that might save your ass in Brazil.”

“Spanish is close enough,” Tarik said without as much as a smirk on his face. “We can fake it.”

Jass shot him another icy, half-hidden glare and inched closer to her door. “You can bet the Cariocas will notice we don’t speak their language.”

“We’re going in as tourists,” he argued. “Arms buyers. Not Rio natives. We’ll get along.”

Tarik heaved a heavy sigh and leaned back in his seat. Yes indeed, this was going to be one long, miserable assignment. And if they couldn’t find some middle ground, they’d both be lucky to come away from it alive.

A few hours later, flying high above the Atlantic, Tarik loosened the seat belt in his first-class seat and checked on Jass. He thought she might be trying to sleep, but she was wide awake and working on her laptop. She had the privacy screen set on the laptop so no one could read over her shoulder and she looked for all the world like any wealthy international businesswoman.

They needed to begin bonding. He’d let her put an aisle between them for the flight. But the minute they left the relatively secluded confines of this first-class cabin and moved into the duel worlds of espionage and glitz in Rio, they would have to begin the lovey-dovey act. The snow princess would have to thaw or the entire mission would be compromised.

He cleared his throat, moved into the empty seat beside her and pitched his voice low enough to be heard only by her. “I understand you keep an apartment in D.C. How long has it been since you’ve been home?”

She flipped down the laptop’s lid and turned her head, pushing back the thick veil of hair covering the side of her face. “You’ve been reading my file? Maybe it would be better if you stuck to studying the files concerning Celile and Zohdi.”

“We only have a few hours to work on becoming an intimate couple.” How could she rile him this quickly? “I thought it would be smart for us to get to know each other a little better on a personal level first.”

Jass frowned and drew a weary breath. “Fine. D.C. is not my home. I was raised in Chicago by my mother’s family—which of course you know if you’ve read my file. But the apartment in D.C. is a few blocks from where my father used to keep his base while working for the Agency. As a kid I visited him between assignments and I know a little about the neighborhood. Still, it isn’t what I would call a real home.

“When you come right down to it,” she added quietly. “I don’t guess I have what most people would call a home. Never felt the need for one.”

Ah, but the wistful tone in her voice said that last statement was a lie. Tarik filed the interesting bit of information away for a later time when he’d gotten to know her better.

“But that’s something we have in common,” he murmured. “See? We haven’t been talking for more than a few moments and already we’ve found a subject to agree on. None of the extended Kadir family have formal roots either. Not for a thousand years. We’re …”

“Nomads,” she supplied. “Originally Bedouins. Yes, I read your file, too.”

He felt ridiculously pleased that she’d cared enough to read his file. Not that he should have doubted it. Whatever else Ms. Jasmine O’Reilly turned out to be underneath her many personas, she was a serious and dedicated CIA operative. She would never go on a mission unprepared, even one that had been as spur of the moment as this one.

The flight attendant brought them both glasses of white wine. Jass took a sip before thanking the fellow and sending him away.

“Why did you resign your commission?” she asked as she studied Tarik over the rim of her glass. “The files weren’t clear on that point.”

Ah yes, the billion-dollar question. He knew the men in his old Special Forces unit and many of his former comrades in the joint Task Force were asking themselves the same thing. Well, he wanted to become closer to Jass for this mission. Might as well tell her all of it.

“I doubt my file has a notation in it explaining the five-hundred-year-old family feud between the Kadir family and the Taj Zabbar tribes of Zabbarán. It’s something my brothers and I barely understand ourselves.”

Jass set down her wine but kept her eyes trained on his face. “I discovered a little about the feud by doing a Google search. Originally, the Kadirs were caravan traders on the Spice Route. And around five hundred years ago the caravan was decimated by the fierce Taj Zabbar tribes. Right so far?”

He nodded, fascinated by her low, hypnotic voice.

“Yes, well. Apparently the Kadirs turned around and destroyed as many of the Taj Zabbar as they could in retaliation.”

“Hold on. Our side of the story is a lot different. The Kadirs had no choice. We had to neutralize the threat in order to survive. The Taj wouldn’t stop. They kept on coming. They …”