The Protector (23 page)

He sent her an incredulous look shook his head in disgust. “This isn’t working,” he declared.
 

“Yes, it is! I’m sorry. I’ll pay closer attention.”

The look in his eyes as he suddenly started to stalk her had her backing up hastily.

But it was too late. Moving with inhuman speed, he grabbed her, spun her, and locked an arm around her neck. “Let’s try it this way,” he said in her ear.

Eryn
struggled ineffectually. He wasn’t thinking of kissing her again, that was certain. The pressure in her head started to build.
  

“That won’t get you anywhere,” he said with no emotion. “Think,
Eryn
. What do you do?”

She wheezed in a breath. “I don’t know!” She hoped he’d let her go, but no such luck. Stars floated across her eyes.
  

“You change the dynamics.”

“How?”
She would pay attention now.

“Shrug your shoulders and jab your chin into my arm.”

She did so and was rewarded with a sweet breath of oxygen. It gave her a burst of clarity, helping her to recall the sweep she’d drawn a blank on earlier. Aha! That would do the trick.
  

Bending abruptly at the waist,
Eryn
swung her right leg around Ike’s, hooking his ankle with her foot. Then she twisted in the same direction, wrenched the opposite way, and wrested free.

“Yes,
Eryn
!”
Ike’s eyes blazed with approval as she staggered away from him.

Only, it wasn’t enough to just to breathe again. Adrenaline urged her to retaliate. She leveled him with a roundhouse kick that packed all the power she could put into it.

“Now tell me I kick like a girl!” she demanded. The resulting thud had him stumbling sideways, clasping his ribs.
Eryn
felt slightly sick. Ike’s growing smile sent her deeper into confusion.

She wheeled away and staggered toward the porch, where she threw herself down on the middle step and willed the pressure building in her eyes to subside.

In her peripheral vision she saw Ike venture closer. He had wiped the smile off his face but was still clutching the ribs she’d kicked.

Eryn
flushed. “Sorry if I hurt you,” she mumbled.

“Don’t apologize,” he shot back. “I deserved it.”

She flicked him a reproachful look. “You are not supposed to hurt me.”
 

He stiffened. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” But her feelings were.
 

Ike sighed. “Look, there’s no nice way to teach someone how to fight for their life. I can’t sugar-coat it for you,
Eryn
. Your father has enemies who want you dead.”

Her skin seemed to shrink at the blunt reminder.

He lowered himself onto the step beside her. For a long time, they sat in silence, at a stalemate. “I will protect you for as long as you need me,” he finally swore on a low, fervent note. “But I can’t be with you forever.”

Turning her head,
Eryn
searched his shadowed gaze and wondered at her sudden sense of loss.
 

“Even if the terrorists are caught, the world is full of predators. I want you to be strong,
Eryn
. It…it bothers me to think of how helpless you are,” he added through his teeth.
  

She felt her jaw unhinge. Did Ike Calhoun just confess to his feelings? Maybe there was hope for him yet in the communication department.
 

Suddenly she wasn’t mad at him, anymore. Instead, she was terrified of the grim picture he’d just painted. Ike was right. She was pathetically helpless. Without him around to protect her, she was a walking target for her father’s enemies.
 
Dear Lord.

Hearing Ike’s muttered curse, she realized her eyes were welling with tears.

He grimaced and started reaching for her.
  

“Don’t.” She put out a hand, denying herself the comfort she craved more than anything. She wasn’t here to be comforted. She was here to learn from Ike, to pick up anything and everything she could, to fight for her future. That was why her father had picked him, of all people, to be her protector.

She pushed to her feet. “Teach me something else,” she demanded, gesturing for him to rise.
 

Ike searched her face with uncertainty. “I think you broke my ribs,” he stalled.
 

“You’re full of it.” It would take more than a kick from a girl to slow him down. “Come on, Ike. It’s like you said: people want me dead. Let’s not make it easy for them. Are you going to teach me or not?”

The crooked smile that stripped years off his craggy face made her heart flutter.

“Now you sound like your father,” he remarked, rolling to his feet.
   

Hmmm.
She would rather Ike saw her as a woman than a former-Marine mentor, but there would be time for that later. Right now she was going to try to learn everything he could teach her.
 

**

Mustafa slipped into the side entrance of his father’s two-story colonial with an uneasy knot in the pit of his stomach. The kitchen was deserted. The house, which was always stirring with tenants coming and going, seemed vaguely threatening. Given the events over on Brandywine Street, it wasn’t any wonder Mustafa felt perturbed.

Advised by agents about the mix-up with the pizza boy, he had immediately called Vengeance to warn him that the address he’d provided was, in fact, a trap. Allah willing, the extremists would still consider him an ally. Trust was a fragile thing among murderers and thieves.

As he climbed the rear stairwell to his room, he called to his father, surprised when no one answered. Even the two tenants renting rooms appeared to be out. The silence made his footfalls sound louder, made his scalp tighten.
  

Unlocking his bedroom door, he pushed it cautiously open. It groaned inward into a darkened room.

Hadn’t he parted the drapes that morning?

He flicked the light switch, but the lamp across the room did not come on. With a steadying breath, Mustafa plunged into the darkness. The door slammed abruptly shut behind him. He whirled to see the shadow of a stranger locking the door.

A flashlight flared, catching his startled face in its glare. “Who are you?” he demanded, flinching from the bright invasion, his heart racing.
 

“You know who I am,” said a gentle voice, in strange-sounding English.
 

He recognized the voice as belonging to the Afghani teacher who’d addressed the Brotherhood several months ago, at Imam Nasser’s invitation. “What do you want?”
 

“Your traitorous head on a stake,”
came
the ominous reply.
 

Mustafa, whose heart stopped on a down-stroke, rushed to appease him. “You don’t understand. I only share what my sister can glean from her husband. I have nothing to hide.” Slipping his hand into his pocket, he blindly punched in the password to unlock his Blackberry, then speed-dialed the number the FBI had given him in case of emergencies.

The light wavered as the stranger stepped nearer, causing Mustafa to snatch his hand from his pocket. It would take the agents several minutes to arrive. In the meantime, if he could get to his pistol…

He headed for the bedside table where he kept it.

“You work for the FBI,” the man accused, pursuing him.
 

“No.” Mustafa denied it, bumping into a bookcase in the dark and becoming disoriented. Had his room been rearranged? “My sister’s husband is a clerk on the counterterrorist squad,” he insisted.

His words prompted a disbelieving laugh. “You are an abomination to Islam. I have read your notes with the transcriptions of the online chat.”

Mustafa bumped into the couch where his bed was supposed to be.
Allah
have
mercy.
Where was his pistol?

“Looking for this?” Something metallic glinted in the Teacher’s hand.

Mustafa bolted in a sudden panic toward the door, only to crash into a table and spill onto the Kurdish carpet with a yelp of fear.

The stranger straddled him to keep him pinned. He seized Mustafa’s thick hair and yanked his head back. The sound of a switchblade ringing free froze Mustafa’s blood, as did the feel of its razor edge against his Adam’s apple.

“Tell me where to find the Commander’s daughter,” the Teacher demanded.

Mustafa considered fabricating an answer. Would it save his life?
Probably not.
“I really don’t know,” he admitted, his heart sinking. At least he would die defending true Islam.

In the next instant Mustafa felt a sharp intrusion, heard the cartilage in his throat split. He screamed, only to feel a geyser of blood spray his chin, its coppery odor overpowering. Light shimmered briefly in the darkness.
And then...nothing.

Farshad
wiped his blade clean on the back of the dead man’s shoulders and stood up. Over the burble of blood seeping from his victim
came
the sound of tires squealing on pavement.

Snapping the switch blade shut, he crossed to the window in time to see a dark-colored Buick jerk to a stop in Mustafa’s driveway. It expelled two men, who raced toward separate entrances.
   

Surprised,
Farshad
glanced back at the dead man. Had he summoned help, somehow? He could hear the new arrivals throwing their shoulders against locked doors downstairs. It wouldn’t take them long to gain entry.
 

Quelling his panic,
Farshad
wrenched open the window, stuck one leg outside, then the other, and sat for a moment on the sill, looking down. It was a straight drop to the hedge.

Behind and below came the sound of doors crashing open, feet thundering up the stairs.

Praying his middle-aged body would survive the fall,
Farshad
jumped.

He hit a mature holly bush, feet first, palms down. It slowed his descent, even as dozens of stiff, thorny leaves pierced his clothing and broke his skin. Over his grunt of pain, he heard a shout of alarm above him.

Wrenching free,
Farshad
staggered across the dimly lit lawn into the shadows. As he glanced back, the drapes at Mustafa’s window parted, and a man stuck his head through the opening.

Farshad
fled into the night.

Had he been reckless in confronting the informant? Perhaps he should have sent Shahbaz to do the deed. But Shahbaz was neither stealthy nor bright enough to have wheedled his way inside. He could not have silenced an old man and a tenant with lethal efficiency, nor discovered Mustafa’s transcriptions of the extremists’ rhetoric in the online chat.
 

Only he,
Farshad
, could have accomplished such feats, proof that Allah protected him, still.

As for the whereabouts of the Commander’s daughter, Allah would have to reveal that secret as well, and soon, for the FBI was casting their nets everywhere trying to identify him.
      

In the meantime, he would leave Shahbaz a letter, warning him that the FBI special agents were bound to pick him up for questioning. He was to tell them nothing about the way they communicated.