Son of the Sheik Read online

  A man with a hotel employee jacket rushed forward with a fire extinguisher. He blasted the flames that were eating up the wall. Another employee attacked the flames that were threatening one suitcase with a dripping wet towel. But his attempts only caused the fire to move from one area to another. Clothes were strewn around the luggage rack. It was obviously an explosive device of some type, at least that’s what her suspicious and slightly hyperactive mind thought. It was a strange thought, considering the panic that was filling her every second that went by. Instead, she saw trivial details like that. Details that meant nothing when the entire hotel could go up in flames at any moment and her son was nowhere in sight.

  “Everett!” she screamed.

  To her right she distinctly heard a woman’s unpleasant voice tell her to shut up. She swung around. She was facing the opposite way that the crowd was moving. She’d been oblivious to the danger to herself, or the obstruction she was to others. It was like she faced the enemy alone, as the crowd seemed to act like one beast racing for the main exit.

  She looked down, as if expecting to see Everett right there, right at her side where he should be. Instead, she bumped elbows with a matronly woman, who pushed past her, causing her to stumble. A man shoved by on her other side and as he did, he tripped and caught himself as he grabbed her arm, before he righted himself and disappeared into the smoke.

  “Have you seen a little...”

  She was shoved from the side as more people emerged from the stairwell and headed for the exit. Water began to spray from the overhead sprinklers.

  “Ma’am,” a man said. Her burning eyes could barely make out the uniform, but it was a hotel employee, and all she could think was that finally there was help.

  “My son...” she began. “I’ve lost my baby!” The words came out in a panicked shriek. She’d lost control. She was beyond words. She had to get it together. She had to find him.

  “You’re going to have to leave,” he said as he pushed her forward toward the exit.

  “No!”

  His grip on her elbow tightened. Now he was pulling her toward the exit.

  “No!” This time it was more forceful and she considered that she might have to do something violent if he didn’t let go, like kick him in the shins. Something. “I’ve lost...”

  “Ma’am.” He kept walking, dragging her along. “This is an urgent situation. You need to leave now. The emergency crews will handle it. You’re making it difficult for the others, blocking the exit.”

  “What? My—”

  “Out!” he said shortly, obviously losing patience with her.

  She was ready to smack him if that was what it took. Instead they were pushed from behind and his grip loosened. She pulled free of him, backed up and dodged her way through the stampede.

  “Everett!” she shrieked.

  “Get moving!” someone else snarled as they shoved past her.

  She gagged on smoke. She imagined her baby struggling to breathe. She imagined him trampled as people pushed their way out of the hotel.

  She tried to call his name again but her throat was dry and tight. She coughed. He could be crushed. He was so small, too small. How had she lost him? She was a horrible mother and, despite everything that had happened, she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

  Someone rammed her shoulder. She was knocked off balance. She staggered, fighting to prevent herself from falling. Yet even as her hand hit the carpet, she was still frantically scanning the area. In fact here, low to the ground, she could see better, for the smoke was less dense and she was at his height, the height of a two-year-old. She was also in danger of being trampled, as she was sure he was. She swallowed against the panic and smoke that was locking her throat. Her voice was all she had—he had to hear her. For there was danger everywhere and he was alone.

  Sirens were wailing in the distance, the haunting call both frightening and hopeful. Would they get here in time? They had to. She had to find him. She would find him. There was no other outcome, not one that she could survive.

  “Everett,” she croaked as she stood up and elbowed her way against the crowd.

  Where could he be? Had someone taken him? It was another thought to cloud her mind with fear. It was a thought that taunted the mind of every parent. A fear fed by the media and that one never outgrew—the boogeyman in the closet.

  But this time the boogeyman had gotten out! He had her son and her heart constricted at the thought. She bumped into a woman and pushed away from her without a second look. That wasn’t her. She wasn’t a rude, self-serving woman who shoved people to the side without an apology. It didn’t matter. She was now. She’d be anything she needed to be if only she could find her little boy. She was bent low to the ground, not crawling, still standing and buffeted on either side by the relentless crush of panic rushing to escape.

  “Crazy,” someone muttered.

  “Get out of my way,” someone else said as a knee caught her shoulder and threatened to knock her off balance.

  She stood up, saw another hotel employee and tried to make her way to him. “Help me,” she said.

  “Ma’am. You’ve got to leave.”

  “My son...”

  She was thrown off balance as a tall, heavyset man, leading with his belly, knocked her aside as he headed for the exit.

  It was impossible. She couldn’t give up. She had to find him. Tears began to blur her vision and her head pounded from the smoke. What must he be feeling? She squinted in the murky lobby that oddly seemed clearer than it had only a minute ago.

  She would die if she lost him. Her throat closed and smoke threatened to choke her, but she forged ahead.

  Yet no matter how hard she fought against the tide of panicked hotel guests, her son was nowhere in sight. Her baby had disappeared!

  “Everett!” Her son’s name came out in a choked mockery of a shout. This wasn’t happening! She hadn’t come all the way to Morocco to lose him now, or for that matter, to lose him ever. She was here to make him safe, keep him safe. She’d given up a job, security, and now he was gone. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This trip, the uncomfortable flight, all of it was supposed to result in her keeping him away from the danger that threatened him in the States. And now he was missing!

  It was unbelievable. She took a deep breath and screamed his name. Smoke billowed around her and a man looked at her curiously.

  “Can I help?”

  “I’ve lost my son.” She gasped for air. Tried to think straight, tried to remain calm, but it was impossible. “He’s two. Please.” She bit back tears. “Help me.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sure he’s been found and taken outside. Go outside and wait.”

  “Wait?” It was the second time she’d heard it and this time she could take no more. Her voice was not the voice she told Everett to use on a regular basis, it was not her indoor voice. “My son is missing!” Her fists clenched, driving her recently home-manicured nails into the palms of her hands. A sharp pain ran up her arms. The pain grounded her, temporarily dispelled the blinding panic.

  Her hands shook and her head pounded. She wouldn’t give up. Coming to Marrakech had been a decision made in desperation. For it was here in the land of the sheiks, where she searched for the lifeline that would protect her heart. One man, who she held responsible for almost destroying her life, was now the only man who could save her son.

  But now it didn’t matter if she found Sheik Talib Al-Nassar. Only one thing mattered—finding Everett. He was her heart and without her son, there was nothing.

  Chapter Two

  Even for a car fanatic, one who had experienced the ultimate of vehicles, the BMW Z4 was a dream to drive. The car’s custom paint job hinted at shades of an early morning sky. Its pearl-blue base and finishing coats were multi-layered and hand applied
. The result gleamed in the sunlight. The butter-soft, smoke-gray leather steering wheel was almost erotic beneath his palm. While he’d owned and driven many luxury sports cars, this one was sweeter than any vehicle he’d had before. Just a slight touch of his hand on the wheel had the car responding. Even within the confines of the city, the vehicle was amazing. The engine purred like a satiated mountain cat. He could hardly wait to get it onto the open road and test its limits.

  Talib Al-Nassar had the seat back as far as it would go, his left leg was stretched out and the warm fall air whispered across his cheek like a lover’s caress. Poor analogy, he thought, reminded of his last lover. The BMW definitely scored higher points than she had. Ironically, she’d been rather like the rest, holding his attention for not much longer than it had taken to bed her. He supposed he deserved the playboy label his older brothers had given him. But the truth was that the women in his life wanted no more from the relationship than he was able to give them. It was only his brother Faisal who seemed to truly get it, but then Faisal, like him, was living what they called “the life.” There was no woman to hold him to account, no children, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. At twenty-nine, he just couldn’t imagine being responsible for another human. It was unthinkable. And a woman... The thought dropped as he took a corner with ease and couldn’t wait to get the speed up and test what this baby was capable of. He couldn’t imagine a woman, no matter how beautiful or how arousing, ever matching the thrill that this BMW would give him. Only an hour ago he’d picked up the new car. He’d been looking forward to this for days. In fact, he had a road trip planned into the Atlas Mountains. He would visit an old friend and test the car’s slick handling on the tight curves and bends of the mountain roads. But today he needed to stop by the hotel his friend Ian had just purchased. Ian had called wanting advice on getting the security in his hotel beefed up after a recent breach. It was only a favor between friends. It wasn’t the usual kind of situation he dealt with as one of the executives of Nassar Security. The business was headed by his brother Emir and co-run by he and his brothers. It provided security and protection through branches in both Jackson, Wyoming, and here in Marrakech.

  He doubted that this consultation would take any time at all as he was already familiar with the hotel’s security. In fact, he anticipated that he might be able to convince Ian to go for a short test drive prior to tomorrow’s excursion.

  As the vehicle easily took the corner, its engine purring, he frowned.

  “Bugger.” He’d picked up the phrase on a recent trip to Australia and it had since become part of his vocabulary. His hands tightened on the wheel, the thrill of the car and the promise of speed and luxury it promised forgotten. Instead he was shocked first by the smell of smoke and then, as he turned another corner, by clouds of smoke filling the air.

  “What’s going on?” he muttered. For it looked like the hotel might be on fire, yet he couldn’t see flames. What was clear was that smoke was billowing out of the door as fast as people were emerging. The fire alarm was shrilling down the street, cutting through the sounds of shouts and screams. In the distance, the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles could be heard. He frowned as he gripped the wheel and assessed what he could of the situation from where he was. His phone was in his pocket but he hadn’t received a call from Ian. That was understandable; whatever was going on, Ian would have his hands full.

  Talib turned the vehicle smoothly into a parking space at the end of the block, leaving room for the emergency vehicles. He grabbed a bag from behind the seat that contained a few items that he’d often found indispensable. He pulled out one item that he hadn’t thought he would need on a day where the upper-most thing on his mind was the joy of a new vehicle. The explosive detection device was more than likely overkill, but one never knew.

  Talib leaped out. A few men in hotel uniforms were directing the crowd, keeping them on the sidewalk, out of the way of the imminent approach of emergency crews. Up ahead he saw one hotel employee moving among the crowd, laying a hand here, offering a word there. Another was passing out water bottles. He looked over and saw an older woman leaning against a vehicle as another staff member held her shoulder, obviously trying to calm her. Ian’s staff were well trained. His friend had followed the advice that Talib had given all those months ago, when Ian had first mentioned that he was planning to get into the hotel business.

  Things were chaotic but seemed under control. No one seemed to be in imminent danger—at least here, outside the hotel. It had taken him seconds to make that assessment as he strode the short distance to the hotel entrance. Now within yards of the front door, he was faced with a milling crowd that was not quite as organized or controlled as those he had just passed. He guessed that they’d just emerged from the building and were still shocked, unsure of what they’d escaped from, or what they had yet to face.

  “Get away from the entrance!” he commanded, pointing to a green space just across the street. Half a dozen people followed his instruction, the rest continued to mill where they were.

  He directed more stragglers across the street. In one case, he took a woman’s elbow and escorted her to the curb, where she finally managed to cross the street under her own steam. He’d had a lot of experience with this as he and his brothers had built Nassar Security into the powerhouse company that it was. He’d learned over the years that people often responded like herded animals in an emergency. They lost their individual ability to think.

  His phone beeped.

  “Yeah,” he answered, knowing it was Ian. They spoke for less than a minute. In that time, Ian told him what he knew, that they believed there’d been an explosion and that it might be linked to a suspicious-looking man seen in the early morning hours by the hotel parking lot. That information had been revealed on the security footage Ian had just remotely accessed.

  “When this is over...”

  “We’ll get you beefed up,” Talib assured him. “I’m going in now.”

  His friend had confirmed that the explosion had been confined to one area of the lobby. Ian had been at an outside meeting, but was now en route. From what Ian had said, he estimated that his own arrival was five minutes after the explosion and now, from the sounds of the rapidly approaching sirens, minutes before emergency crews.

  Talib considered the information he’d just received. Combined with what he knew of the security and the time line, he believed that there was only one perp responsible for planting the device. It wasn’t easy to plant an explosive device undetected in a public area of a hotel. The time that had passed since the explosion backed up his preliminary theory that there was only one explosive device.

  Explosives were used for any number of reasons. This one appeared to be small but he would see for himself in a minute. If that was the case, there was a good chance that this bomb had been set to make a statement, or had been used to create a distraction. Since the damage had been contained and been in an area that saw low traffic, he was led to believe that whoever had done this wasn’t going for a high kill rate. It could be a grudge against the owner. The explosion hadn’t been far-reaching enough to provide much of a killing field. Unless there was another explosive, or this one had been a screwup...

  He strode through the hotel doors, which someone had had the foresight to prop open. Inside, the emergency procedures weren’t quite so efficient, as he had to weave through a lobby still crowded with stragglers.

  Traces of smoke swirled through the lobby, but he was immediately able to see where the explosion had been. Embers still burned in two ruined suitcases. Clothing was scattered everywhere. The metal suitcase trolley lay where it had tipped over. To his left, a woman, wearing only a bathrobe and flip-flops, tripped and stumbled. He was there in a flash. His reflexes were quick. They’d been honed by physical fitness and a regular baseball scrimmage with friends that occurred at least twice monthly. He had her elbow, and po
wered her toward the door, where he released her ten feet from the exit.

  “Thank you.” Her lips trembled but there was a stoic gleam in her eye. “I’m all right now.”

  He nodded but watched as she hurried past a hotel employee who was directing the remaining guests. He remained standing there, watching until she was safely out of the building.

  He turned and scanned the lobby and saw a woman moving away from the crush and out of sight. She was wearing a maid’s uniform. The dull beige material was designed to fade into the background, to provide service while flitting on the periphery. It was the perfect ensemble for what was intended, but now it seemed that blending in was giving her an advantage. The thought was one he tagged and filed away for later consideration; there were other things to concern himself with now. He was more interested in the explosion site and how someone had slipped in and out and planted the explosive unnoticed, than in the maid’s uniform. He knew, from looking at the hotel plans, that a corridor led from the back of the lobby to conference rooms and a back exit. He was surprised that no one else seemed to be using that exit.

  He activated the portable explosive detection device. As he moved slowly along the perimeter of the lobby with the device, he was cognizant of the rapidly thinning crowd. He was also aware that no one was acting suspiciously, but rather that there was still a great deal of confusion. People were almost spinning in circles as smoke continued to obscure the exit and the remaining staff seemed to have evacuated. So much for security measures, he thought, realizing that not everything he’d advised had been implemented. His attention returned to the device. The lobby wasn’t officially clear of explosives yet, but he was reasonably sure that there wasn’t another planted.

  He moved away from the luggage and farther into the lobby. As he did, he looked down and saw a child’s soother on the floor. That was odd. There weren’t any children in sight. He didn’t expect there to be. Even in chaos it seemed people managed to instinctively grab their children. He wasn’t sure why, but he picked up the soother and put it in his pocket.