“My safety is exactly why I’m here,” Salman said. “The madman threatened to kill me.”
It was in the dispatch the ambassador had received from Monaco. Saudi intelligence had an agent aboard the prince’s yacht. “That’s fantastic, Your Excellency. But why would he make such a threat against you?”
“As I said, he’s mad, and I’ll take this to the president—”
“No,” Nuaimi said, flatly. He’d been warned that the prince might want to do exactly that, and it wasn’t to be allowed under any circumstances. But since Salman was such a powerful man, one that even Crown Prince Abdullah did not want to cross, the job of stopping the man fell on Nuaimi’s shoulders. If Salman retaliated, the only man to be damaged would be the deputy ambassador, which was a perfectly acceptable loss under the circumstances.
“What did you say to me?” Salman demanded, his voice scarcely above a whisper.
“You will not attempt to contact anyone within the U.S. government at this time, not without the express approval of this embassy,” Nuaimi said. He was thinking about his wives and children, whom he’d sent back to Riyadh yesterday. He was glad they were gone. “I will need your word of honor on the issue, or else, regrettably, I will have to place you under arrest until your return to Riyadh can be arranged.”
“You don’t have the authority.”
“In this, I assure you that I do, Your Excellency,” Nuaimi said. For an instant he thought Salman was actually going to lay hands on him, do him physical harm. But then it passed. “Do I have your word, sir?”
Salman continued to glare at Nuaimi for a long second or two, then turned on his heel and left the office.
Nuaimi considered calling security to prevent the prince from leaving the embassy, but decided against it. Dealing with the royal family was always fraught with danger, for the simple reason, in his estimation, that most of them were insane or on the edge of insanity.
Kathleen sat on the edge of a narrow cot in a small windowless room, feeling despondent that she had been so stupid. Because of her insistence on playing amateur sleuth, people were going to get hurt. She’d not only put herself in danger, but she’d endangered the lives of her daughter and her husband. Elizabeth had been allowed to go unharmed. By now she would have told her father what had happened, and Kirk would be going into action.
A hood had been placed ever Kathleen’s head as soon as they’d turned the corner on Thirty-second Street, so she had no idea where they had taken her. Nor was there any clue in the room as to her whereabouts, which could only ever have but one use — as a jail cell. There was a toilet without seat or lid, and a small, stainless steel sink with only a coldwater tap. There were no mirrors, no covering on the bare concrete floor, and only a single dim light in a ceiling recess, protected by steel mesh.
Besides her stupidity, the other thing that bothered her the more she thought about it was the stains on the concrete floor. They looked like rust, but she suspected they might be blood.
For the first time since Alaska, she was truly and deeply frightened.
Two days, her captors had told her, and then she would be released provided her husband cooperated and stayed out of it.
But if Khalil was here and had engineered her kidnapping, she did not think she would get out of this one unscathed no matter what Kirk did or didn’t do.
Someone was at the door, turning the lock. The tiny viewing window was blocked so Kathleen could not see who was coming, but she knew who it was, and she shuddered in anticipation.
The door opened and a tall man came in; he was wearing an expensive, dove-gray business suit, a white silk shirt and tie, and a bland expression, one almost of indifference, on his long handsome face. He looked at Kathleen for a few seconds, as if he were studying some interesting specimen in a test tube, then gently closed the door.
Kathleen’s throat constricted, and she was sick to her stomach. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t be sure. She wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing her terror. “I thought that I detected your unpleasant odor. You couldn’t beat my husband, so now you’ve come to take your revenge on me.” She laughed. “Is that it?”
Khalil smiled faintly. He took off his suit coat and hung it on the doorknob. “Why yes,” he said, his voice gentle, as if he were talking to an animal or a small child and didn’t want to spook it.
Kathleen’s heart skipped a beat. She recognized the voice from Alaska.
Khalil loosened his tie, then rolled up his shirtsleeves.
Kathleen realized with an intensely sick feeling that the man was insane, and that he meant to hurt her. “I don’t care as much for my own safety right now, as I do for the baby that I’m carrying,” she said.
He shrugged indifferently and started for her.
Kathleen leaped up from the cot, doubled up her fist, and smashed it into his face with every ounce of her strength. His head rocked back, but then he punched her in her stomach just below her rib cage, sending her sprawling backward on the cot, her head smashing into the concrete wall.
She saw spots in front of her eyes, and bile burned at the back of her throat, making her gag.
Khalil was right there, over her. He grabbed her by the front of her blouse, dragging her to her feet and ripping the thin material to shreds. Holding her arm with his left hand, he backhanded her in the face with his other. Her nose gushed blood, but the cobwebs suddenly lifted from her brain.
“Bastard,” she cried, as she drove her knee into his groin.
He grunted in pain, but continued to hold her with one hand while slapping her with the other.
She tried to knee him again, but he deflected her blow with his leg. He looked into her eyes, still with a frighteningly bland expression on his face, doubled up his fist, and struck her very hard in her left breast.
The pain was instant and incredible. Her knees buckled, and the room went hot and dim.
Khalil struck her again in her breast, then in her stomach, and he slammed his knee into her groin.
She could not fight back, nor could she feel more than a dull pain throughout her entire body. But she felt a wetness in her panties, and she despaired that she would lose Elizabeth’s baby.
There had been so much suffering in their family. So much loss. Not this, she cried inside. Please, God, not this.
The last thing she was aware of was Kahlil’s fist connecting with her face.
FIFTY-SIX
McGarvey stood beside the front bedroom window looking down at the cul-de-sac as Liz, driving her mother’s Mercedes, pulled into the driveway; Otto, in his battered Mercedes diesel sedan, was right behind her.
McGarvey had trotted over from the fifteenth fairway and entered the house through the pool-deck door to make sure that neither the Bureau nor anyone else had shown up to look for him. Sooner or later they would be coming in response to Kathleen’s kidnapping. But he figured there was still time for him to make his preparations.
He was not angry. He was beyond that. At this point he was in his hunt-find-kill mode, and no power on earth could stop him from doing what he was going to do to find his wife and damage her captors.
Khalil had been at Yarnell’s old house, possibly hoping that McGarvey would make the connection and come looking for him. Instead it had been Kathleen, and the Saudi terrorist had taken her.
She was the bait that would draw McGarvey into a trap. What Kahlil could not guess was just how eager McGarvey was to comply.