The Protector (32 page)

 
“You were just on the news, my friend,” Chris explained, making
Eryn’s
stomach drop. “Rumor has it the FBI is searching for a former Navy SEAL who supposedly abducted the ISAF Commander’s daughter. Sounds like hogwash to me.”

“Shit,” Ike breathed, rubbing his neck.

“Ike didn’t kidnap me,”
Eryn
protested.

“Of course not.”
Chris put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “The rumors are ridiculous. If he’s doing anything, he’s protecting you. Am I right?”

“That’s exactly what he’s doing.”

“Look, the less you know, the better,” Ike cut in, sounding tired. “You think you could spare us a bed for a few hours then loan me a car once the sun sets?”
 

“You already know the answer,” their host assured him. “Take your muddy clothes off here. I’ll have them washed.” He ran a look over
Eryn’s
figure. “I’ll be right back with clothes for both of you.”
 

Eryn
murmured her appreciation. Shocked by the reports that Ike was wanted for kidnapping, she studied his inscrutable expression as he released the buttons on his filthy jacket. She could tell by the mask on his face that he was deeply discouraged. “I should turn myself in,” she offered quietly.
 

His green gaze jumped up and skewered her. In the next instant, he stepped closer, caught her face lightly between his hands and said, “If you do that, then every risk I’ve taken—that we’ve taken,” he amended, “—was for nothing.”

Memories of their week together replayed in her mind’s eye. She thought of Ike whisking her from the safe house.
Warming water for her bath.
Training Winston.
Teaching her to shoot, to defend herself.
“It hasn’t been for nothing,” she argued. “You’ve made me stronger, Ike. You’ve showed me how to fight back, not be a victim.”

“You’re
not
going to turn yourself in,” he insisted, his lips firming. “We’ve come this far. We’re almost in the clear.”
 

“Okay,” she soothed, sensing his distress. “I just hate the thought of you being vilified. You’re not a kidnapper, Ike, you’re a hero.”
  

Her assertion made him step back abruptly, as if she’d slapped him. He bent over and wordlessly untied his muddy boots.

**

With one eye on the blue Buick parked across the street,
Farshad
slipped into the noisy auto shop to look for Shahbaz. If he could have things his way, he would never be meeting Vengeance face-to-face, but circumstances had changed suddenly and dramatically.
Farshad
desperately needed a car, one that didn’t stand out like his cousin’s black taxi, and a scapegoat. Shahbaz could provide him with both.

“Excuse me,” he said, intercepting an employee in grease-stained coveralls.
Farshad
himself was as immaculately dressed as always, wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. “I am looking for Shahbaz Wahidi.”
  

“Right there,” said the mechanic, pointing to a youth who was leaning over the engine of a large, rust-colored American car.

Farshad
sidled up next to him. “
As-salaam
alaikum
,
” he murmured, and the youth pulled his head out from under the hood.
 
So, it’s this boy, he thought, dismayed by the stumped look in the boy’s eyes.

“It’s you!” he exclaimed suddenly, his puzzlement clearing. “Allah’s blessing
be
upon you,” he added, demonstrating to
Farshad
that he didn’t speak Arabic well enough to answer him properly.

Farshad
frowned. Had all Muslim American youth cut ties with tradition? He stepped closer, only to be assaulted by odors of oil and gasoline rising off the boy’s work clothes. “Allah has revealed the woman’s whereabouts,” he disclosed on a whisper. He was mollified to see Shahbaz’s slow, gap-toothed smile. Perhaps what he lacked in culture, he made up for in enthusiasm.

“Where is she?” inquired the youth, wiping his hands hastily with a rag.
 

Farshad
flicked a glance toward a television, just visible from where they stood, in the waiting area. “On the news,” he said, withholding details for now. “We must leave right away.”

“Now?”
Shahbaz looked nonplussed.

“While the agents across the street are eating,”
Farshad
explained. “Come, you have better things to do than to change the oil in this car.”

“Alternator belt,” the boy corrected him. “I already fixed it.”

“Is the car reliable?”
 

“It runs.”

“Then we’ll take it,”
Farshad
said, daring him with a look to defy his authority.
  

Shahbaz hesitated only briefly. “Very well, Teacher.”

At least he seemed to understand that defending Islam took precedence over keeping his job. As Shahbaz shut the hood with a
clang,
Farshad
rounded the vehicle to slip into the passenger seat, his briefcase on his lap. Shahbaz took the wheel. Backing them cautiously from the auto shop, he circled the parking lot before heading to the street.
Farshad
kept a wary eye on the Buick, but the agents did not remark their leaving.
 
No one would report the car stolen for a while.

Within minutes, they were clipping along Connecticut in the direction of the Beltway.
Farshad
held his hand out. “Give me your cell phone,” he demanded

Shahbaz pulled it from his breast pocket and slowly surrendered it.
Farshad
lowered the window and tossed it onto the street, where it shattered into pieces. “Now you can’t be followed,” he explained, ignoring the boy’s dismay.

“Where are we going?” Shahbaz asked.
  

“Patience,”
Farshad
advised him, none too lightly, as he opened his briefcase. “This will explain everything.” Inside his briefcase was his laptop. He opened it and powered it on. With the wireless card from Verizon, he could get Internet anywhere within a fifteen mile radius of a cell tower.

Accessing the website for MSNBC news, he clicked on the video for the day’s top story and cranked up the volume so Shahbaz could hear.

“The manhunt continues in Rockingham County, Virginia for
Eryn
McClellan, daughter of General McClellan, leader of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The twenty-six-year-old teacher from Washington, D.C. has twice been targeted by Muslim extremists protesting her father’s actions in Afghanistan. Miss McClellan disappeared from a bombed FBI safe house a week ago and is believed to be in the company of former Navy SEAL Officer, Isaac Calhoun. It remains unclear whether Calhoun, who once served under her father, is protecting Miss McClellan or whether he has abducted her. The FBI and state officials refuse to comment. We will keep viewers advised as soon as we have an update.”

Farshad
shut the laptop, sending Shahbaz a satisfied smile. “
Alhumdulillah,
” he murmured.

“So,” Shahbaz said, clearly still processing what he’d overheard. “She is in Rockingham County. Where is that?”

“Not far,”
Farshad
replied. “Go south on the Beltway up ahead.”

**

Eryn
exchanged her borrowed clothing for one of the fluffy white robes hanging on the back of the guest bathroom’s door.

A couple of hours had elapsed since her and Ike’s arrival. Showered and dressed in borrowed clothing, they had joined their hosts in the sunny, gourmet kitchen to enjoy a luncheon of club sandwiches and pickles. Over glasses of the vineyard’s award-winning Fiore, they had touched on several interesting topics, while never once mentioning
Eryn’s
circumstance. By late afternoon, the morning’s harrowing events had faded from her mind.
 

Relaxed by the delicious wine and lulled by the luxurious accommodations,
Eryn
had ceased to fret about the FBI pursuing her and Ike. When Chris suggested they indulge in an afternoon nap,
Eryn’s
first thought was would she get to make love to Ike again? She’d overheard Ike thank their host as he took a set of car keys from him. He’d mumbled that they would leave around midnight when, hopefully, the roadblocks would be gone. .
  

Leaving at midnight meant she and Ike would have seven hours of interrupted time together. Wasting not another minute of it,
Eryn
eased from the guest bathroom while still tying the robe’s belt around her waist.
 

At her entrance, Ike, who sat waiting in the bed, shut off the television abruptly, cutting short the news program he was watching. With the drapes already pulled across the tall, narrow windows, shadows filled the vast space, inviting restful sleep. But the word “manhunt” hung in the air, stealing a portion of
Eryn’s
anticipation as she crossed to the far side of the bed.

“Are you sure we won’t be found here?” she asked, apprehension nipping at her heels.
   

“Not here,” he said with confidence. The massive headboard framed his torso as he sat watching her impassively. To her dismay, he wore an expression as withdrawn and aloof as the day he’d brought her to his cabin.

Oh, no you don’t.
With a surge of defiance, she unbelted her robe and let it fall from her shoulders, leaving her standing in the nude. His gaze slid helplessly over naked offering and his features tightened.
 
But he said and did nothing to encourage her.

Slipping between the lavender-scented sheets,
Eryn
scooted across the wide mattress, groaning aloud at its comfort. “This feels like heaven,” she professed, edging closer. “Every muscle in my body aches.”
 

“Rest,” he suggested, making her wonder if that was all he had in mind.
 

In desperation, she reached out to touch him and encountered nothing but naked, male flesh. If he wanted just to rest, he would have come to bed wearing Chris’s clothing, she thought, encouraged. Snuggling against his stiffly held body, she refused to be deterred by his lack of affection. After all, he was bound to have a lot on his mind right now.

Laying her head on his chest, she discerned the swift, sure thud of his heart beneath her ear. He wasn’t as aloof as he seemed. Moreover, as she gazed downward, there was no mistaking the tent in the sheet for anything but a full-blown erection. Obviously, Ike wasn’t so overwrought that he didn’t still desire her.
 

“I’m exhausted,” she admitted, tipping her head back, “but I don’t know if I can sleep right away. You?” she asked, softly kissing his jaw.

“Probably not,” he admitted, gruffly.

It was all the prompting she needed to strain upward and touch her lips to his. He closed his
eyes,
passively letting her kiss him, until she slipped her tongue into his mouth, offering him a foreshadowing of what was to come. His restraint snapped so abruptly that she had to smile. At last, he was kissing her back with the focused passion she’d come to expect from him.

Throwing a knee over his leg,
Eryn
took charge. She straddled his hips, pulling away just long enough to coil her damp hair into a knot. Ike’s gaze fell raptly to her swaying breasts. There was a tremor in his touch as he cupped her fullness.

Determined to repay the pleasure he’d given her at the cabin, she settled over him, kissing his lips, cheek, ear, and neck. Nibbling the length of sinew that ran into the muscles of his shoulder, she trailed her mouth lower, over the expanse of his chest where she encountered a number of scars that made her heart ache. She traced them one by one, with the tip of her tongue. Ike didn’t think of himself as heroic, but the scars were evidence enough. He was her hero, and she would reward him for his commitment.