Hard Risk by Sidney Bristol
Chapter Eighteen
Miami, FL.
Robin sat on the floor in the small plane. The white man with Uncle Daar had tied her ankles to Jessica’s, making it impossible for either of them to move. Robin’s insides were numb.
Dad was dead.
She would have thought she might feel more than she did. Mostly she was in shock. Uncle Daar had doted on Dad, and now Dad was dead.
Why?
Uncle Daar hadn’t admitted to killing Mom. What if he was innocent? What if Robin had set these events in motion with misplaced fear?
“Inside,” a man snapped.
Jessica reached over and squeezed Robin’s ankle. They’d both agreed to keep quiet, though how much good that might do them was beyond Robin. If Uncle Daar wanted to shoot them, he’d do it. She knew that despite what he’d said in the motel, she was less than human to her uncle.
Saaina stumbled getting into the small, private plane.
Robin watched the woman warily. There was no way to tell what side of this she was truly on since Uncle Daar had kept her alive.
“Sit,” the white man barked at her.
Saaina glanced around nervously before scooting down the aisle. She kept peering toward the front and back of the small plane, but there wasn’t anyone else.
Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it. Instead she stepped past them into the small galley and got two bottles of water.
Robin swallowed. Her mouth was so dry it ached.
Saaina then turned and her dark eyes locked with Robin’s.
For a moment she could only stare as her sluggish brain struggled to process the emotion brimming there just under the surface. She was so accustomed to Saaina glaring at her that seeing any other expression on her face was foreign.
She knelt next to Jessica but kept her eyes on Robin. “Are you hurt badly? What can I do?”
“Oh, great, you want to help now, bitch?” Jessica snarled.
Saaina ignored her and glanced over her shoulder again. With no sign of the others, she twisted the cap off one bottle then held it out toward Robin.
“Are you thirsty?” Saaina asked.
“It’s probably poisoned,” Jessica grumbled.
This was utterly bizarre.
“What do you want?” Robin asked despite the dryness.
Saaina’s face crumpled, and she lowered to the floor, sitting cross legged. She drew in a shuddering breath. Was she about to cry?
“I failed you,” Saaina said in a small, helpless voice. “I failed you. I’m so sorry. This is my fault.”
“We don’t want your redemption tour, thanks,” Jessica snapped.
Robin shifted her feet, thereby pulling on Jessica. She glanced at Robin who shook her head.
Something was going on here. There were so many layers and Robin was lost.
“What do you mean?” she asked Saaina.
The other woman bent her head. “I didn’t know what to do for you, but I knew the last place you needed to be was around your father.”
“Wait, what?” Jessica muttered.
“You hate me,” Robin said.
Saaina shook her head. Tears clung to her dark lashes now. “No. No, I don’t hate you. I…”
Robin glanced at Jessica while Saaina struggled to breathe. She seemed to compose herself after a few moments and leveled a serious gaze at Robin.
Saaina spoke softly, but her tone was firm. “Daar genuinely likes you. There’s hope for you. Be quiet. Say as little as possible no matter what happens to us, understand me?”
“No. No, I don’t understand,” Robin said.
“Your uncle forced me to marry your father. I didn’t want to, but… I had to. I know Daar killed your mother. I don’t know how or who did it, but he made it happen. He told me he was going to do it. I was already promised to your father before your mother was killed.” Saaina leaned closer and dropped her voice. “There’s another man. He controls your uncle. This man had me do things for him, things Daar will kill me for if he ever finds out. I never wanted to hurt you. I promise. The only thing I could think of to save you was to drive you away. If you didn’t want to be around your father or me, maybe you’d be spared from all of this. Maybe you wouldn’t get involved…?”
She pressed her hands to her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks now.
Robin stared at the other woman, processing her words.
All these years, all the cruel things Saaina had said, and it was for Robin’s benefit?
She opened and closed her mouth, but didn’t know what to say.
“We’re fucked,” Jessica said.
Robin glanced at her friend.
“We saw the tip of the iceberg and thought we knew what was going on.” Jessica turned her head. “We had no idea. No fucking idea.”
“Forgive me?” Saaina asked between sobs. “Forgive me, please? I didn’t know what to do.”
Robin nodded. How could she not?
She’d always thought that the two of them should be close. That their respective positions in the family made them allies and not enemies. And this whole time, Saaina was just doing the best she could in her own way.
“What about the laptop?” Jessica asked. “What’s so important about that?”
Saaina covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to get her emotions in check. Voices drifted toward the open hatch. The plane had to be close to ready to leave.
“Charlotte’s laptop,” Saaina said in a low voice. “She was investigating Daar, that’s all I know. Cassim gave it to me, and I put it in a safety deposit box.”
“In New York City?” Jessica asked.
Robin recalled Uncle Daar saying that in the hotel.
Saaina’s face creased with worry. “But, he knows about the laptop.”
“Uncle Daar?” Robin asked.
Saaina shook her head. “The other man. The one your uncle answers to.”
Why did Robin have a bad feeling about that? Who was this man? And what did he want with her uncle?
Thursday. Miami International Airport, Miami, FL.
Harper paced the down the center of the cabin and back. His anger was boiling just under the surface.
Why were they taking these risks? Hadn’t enough people been killed, injured and hurt by this case?
“Samuel is stable,” Logan announced to the cabin.
Baruti and Harper let out a breath. They glanced at each other, both wearing grim expressions. It had been a tough call to leave Samuel in Miami under guard to keep chasing after Daar. Harper just hoped he didn’t regret following Zora’s orders. She’d promised that Samuel would be moved into protective custody as soon as possible. When the paramedics had wheeled Samuel away, Harper hadn’t been convinced the man would survive.
“We wear vests from here on out,” he announced to the cabin, screw chain of command.
Logan nodded. Then again, his Kevlar vest stood out under his T-shirt.
Baruti grimaced.
“Do you have one with you?” Harper asked.
The FBI agent shook his head. “No, it’s back with my gear.”
“Samuel could have walked away from that if he were wearing a vest.” Logan’s tone was hard, unyielding. They took a lot more risks in their line of work than most.
Harper continued to pace the small plane, ignoring the glares from the people operating the consoles of flashing lights and buttons.
This was madness.
They were tailing a plane. Who ever heard of a sky-high chase? Then again, Daar’s plane shouldn’t be aware of the stealth plane on its tail. With the cloud cover today, they should be able to fly all the way to DC undetected.
But what if things changed?
It had been chaos at the Hilton. Daar’s man had gotten away and left them to hold Samuel together until help arrived. But that didn’t mean they were without leads.
Robin was still wearing the necklace he’d given her. The necklace with a tracking device and a microphone within it.
By the time they’d left the Hilton, they’d been scrambling to catch up to Daar. Harper was glad that Logan and Baruti were there to coordinate with Zora because Harper had been almost out of his mind with worry. It only got worse after they’d found Cassim’s still warm body.
That was when the scheming and planning began.
Harper did an about-face and almost walked into Logan.
“You need to change,” he said.
Harper glanced down at his clothes. Blood streaked his jeans and shirt. It was still under his nails. Hell, he could still smell it.
He swiped his hand over his face trying to dislodge the grimace. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“Do I need to bench you?” Logan asked.
Harper’s head snapped up, and he glared at his TL. “What the fuck?”
Logan leaned against floor to ceiling cabinets. “You know, I never thought I’d see the day you got twisted up over a woman.”
“Fuck you.”
Logan snorted and smiled. He fucking smiled.
Harper balled his hands into fists.
“That’s not a bad thing, you know?” Logan’s gaze bored into Harper, seeing more than Harper was comfortable with.
He cared about Robin. He loved her. She hadn’t been what he expected. And while he didn’t like knowing most of his relationship with her was captured on surveillance, he couldn’t say that he’d do anything different. Well, they’d have had a lot more sex, but everything else he wouldn’t change.
Harper didn’t know if he was capable of truly loving someone. He’d never truly tried. What he felt was the closest he’d ever come. Robin had slipped behind his defenses and become important to him. And now she was in danger. Would he really put his pride above her safety?
“I’ll ask again, can you work this? Or should I send you—”
“Let’s get one thing clear, I’m not going anywhere.” Harper had seen how Zora worked. He knew enough of how she thought to know that Robin could be chewed up, spit out, and left for dead because of them. He wouldn’t let that happen.
Logan nodded slowly. “The girls are going to get a kick out of this.”
“Shut up,” Harper mumbled.
Shit.
Robin? With the others?
Logan snorted a laugh.
Diha would take to Robin in an instant. Why did he like the idea of that?
Harper had set out to befriend the female tech for two reasons. One, their success relied heavily on her and having a good relationship with her benefitted their work. And two, she’d been so earnest and genuine, but most of all alone. A lot like Robin. He respected both Diha and Robin for many of the same reasons, but he didn’t feel the same way about Diha as he did for Robin. Diha was like a sister he’d never wanted but loved, anyway. Robin? Robin made him feel like he was at home when he was around her. She made him want things a guy like him probably shouldn’t.
“What’s the latest?” Harper asked. “Are they telling you anything?”
The operators had banned him from speaking to them after trying to get the man listening to the bug in the necklace to feed the audio through the speakers.
“There’s some business about a laptop.” Logan shook his head. “When I ask about how the hostages are, they maintain that they are fine.”
But for how long?
Harper wasn’t sure how Zora could command them to sit back and follow the plane for the purpose of listening to the conversation in the cabin. Daar had just killed his own brother. What made them think he’d hesitate when it came to Jessica, Saaina and Robin?
Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Harper saw Zora’s name on the screen.
“Baruti?” Logan gestured the other man closer and together the three of them squeezed into the rear of the plane, as far from the others as possible. “Hey, Zora. You’re on speaker.”
Silence greeted them.
“I understand Samuel is stable?” Her voice was as controlled as always.
“Yeah,” Logan replied.
“Good. We’ll get him moved to DC as soon as we can.”
Harper shifted his weight from foot to foot, glad he didn’t need to be the one talking here.
“We will be touching down in New York ahead of you and we have people on the ground already,” she said, launching into the meat of why she’d called. “We need whatever is on that laptop.”
Harper shook his head and bit the side of his mouth to keep from talking. Of course the objective was always more important than the people.
“How do we go about finding a fifteen-year-old laptop?” Logan asked, being the voice of reason.
“From what we’ve heard, we know that Cassim’s wife, Saaina, put the laptop in a New York City bank. We’ve sent agents with warrants to all the major banks to try to find it ahead of time. If we do, we will be meeting Daar on the tarmac. If not—”
“I can’t listen to this,” Harper mumbled and pushed past Baruti.
Harper paced to the front of the plane.
Zora’s job was tough. They all knew that. In the beginning she’d had to compartmentalize things to protect people because of a mole. They still weren’t certain they could trust everyone, which was why Harper hadn’t been able to share his mission with the others. There were things Zora wasn’t telling them now, but without that context, it was hard to understand why it was acceptable to risk the lives of three women.
No, that was a lie.
Objectively, Harper wanted save Jessica and Saaina, but if he were honest with himself, the only one that mattered to him was Robin.
Thursday. New York City, NY.
Daar sat on a crate with his back to the driver’s seat in the van. It had been quite some time since he’d needed to move about and be this covert. Normally he could get by with much less fanfare, but not now. Not now that he was under the Chancellor’s microscope.
Why? What had changed? What had Maxwell been hinting at?
This was all a big misunderstanding with regrettable consequences, but in the end, Daar wanted to put everything back the way it had been.
His gaze strayed to Robin and Saaina.
Some things could not be undone.
Cassim was dead and good riddance to him. But that left Daar with a quandary.
What did he do with Robin?
He hadn’t admitted it, but she was right. He had ensured Charlotte’s death because she’d forced his hand. Just like Robin had done. He didn’t want to kill her, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t allow her friend to live knowing what she did, and when he took care of one problem, he created one with Robin. Which meant there really was no choice.
Maybe something would come to him? Maybe she’d come to her senses?
Saaina was inconsequential. When he left, he’d take her with him and deliver her back to her family. Without money or a powerful husband, she was no threat to him and she’d served her purpose very well. He could not fault her for being a pawn in a man’s game. But neither could he trust her, and by extension her brother.
It was a pity Daar would need to replace him after this.
Peter crouched next to him, holding onto the driver’s seat for balance.
“My guys have a place set up for us. It’s not much—”
“It will be fine,” Daar said. “You’ve kept this from becoming a disaster, and for that I am eternally grateful.”
Peter inclined his head. “How bad is it? Really?”
Daar stared out the back windows of the van.
It was the worst possible scenario. Him against the chancellor. It should have never have come to this. Daar hadn’t wanted things to change, but the chancellor was backed into a corner and scared of losing it all.
He was going to regret doubting Daar as much as Daar regretted being doubted.
Thursday. Unknown, New York City, NY.
Robin flexed her wrists. Her fingers still tingled, but at least they were free.
Unfortunately, the three of them were all locked in a room with no windows and the ceiling was too high up for one of them to try to go over the walls.
Jessica was on another circuit of the small room, this time running her hands along the cinderblock surface. “Where do you think we are?”
“Somewhere in New York City.”
“Saaina, any idea?” Jessica asked.
“No,” Saaina said in a small voice. She was perhaps the most terrified out of all of them. Then again, she seemed to know the most about Uncle Daar.
Right.
If Robin was going to die, and she didn’t see how she’d avoid that, she wanted to know all of it. Every gory detail.
“Saaina?”
Saaina lifted her chin, looking at Robin with large, soulful eyes.
How hard had Saaina worked at maintaining her story? She’d maintained that act for a decade and a half. That was commitment, and Robin had never known.
“I want to know about Uncle Daar. I want to know all of it. What we never talked about. The stuff you know. Please? If he’s going to kill us, I at least want to know why. What was worth protecting?”
Saaina hunched her shoulders and glanced at the door. The one white man working for Uncle Daar had specifically told them to pee now because he would not be back until morning.
“Please?” Robin crossed the room and crouched next to Saaina. “Please tell me what’s worth killing us all over?”
Jessica left her investigation of the wall to join Robin looking at Saaina.
Saaina blew out a breath and stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know. It isn’t much.”
Robin and Jessica lowered to the concrete floor as one.
“I first heard of your uncle when my family was going through a tough time. We’d fled Syria to Turkey and were struggling. My brother said he’d heard of someone he thought he could get some work from. That was Daar. My brother still works for him. He’s Daar’s right-hand man. But it has changed him. You see, Daar runs three different routes smuggling people out of Syria. It’s dangerous work.”
“He smuggles people? That’s not that bad…” Robin wasn’t sure what she’d suspected. Drugs or something.
Saaina stared at her for a moment, lips parted. “When you have to travel like that, you’re in as much danger from the people you’ve paid to help you as you are anyone else. It is common practice to set a price, then hike it right before leaving. If they think someone has more money, they’ll threaten to throw them off the boat, out of a plane, unless they pay more. He extorts people.”
Robin’s eyes widened. “That’s terrible…”
Saaina chuckled bitterly. “What’s worse is how my brother got the job. You know what he did? He went around the truck transporting us and threatened the people with a gun. He took their money then gave it to Daar’s men and told them to give him a job. That he’d make them rich.”
“Holy shit,” Jessica muttered.
Robin didn’t have words.
Saaina locked eyes with her. “That’s just the beginning. I later learned that Daar doesn’t manage that business himself. It’s a side business he considers to be charity.”
“What a sick psycho,” Jessica muttered.
Saaina leaned her head back. “Daar’s business card calls him an import and export specialist. He’s a smuggler. He will move anything for a price.”
“Anything?” Robin whispered.
“You don’t want to know,” Saaina whispered back. She cleared her throat before continuing. “Daar is loyal to those he works with. I’ve heard stories…”
She shook her head and covered her face.
“That’s terrible,” Jessica said. “So all of this is to protect a smuggling ring?”
“No,” Saaina said softly. “Daar is a piece of the puzzle. It’s who he works with. They all do something specific or have an area of expertise. Daar’s is how to transport things.”
Jessica and Robin looked at each other.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered as things began to make sense.
Daar might not be the one actively selling guns, but he made sure they got where they were going. He wouldn’t hire mercenaries, but perhaps he ensured they arrived in a timely manner. The horrific possibilities are endless.
“You don’t have to say anymore.” Robin scooted over next to Saaina and pulled the other woman into a hug. “Don’t say any more.”
Robin could imagine the rest, though she didn’t want to.
How could a person be that cruel?
She would never understand Uncle Daar. They were from different worlds.
None of this would have happened if she’d gone on with her life. She could have lived apart from all this if she’d just focused on herself. Instead, she’d gotten sucked into the past and now what happened to Mom would happen to her.
Harper had saved her from Uncle Daar once. She wished he’d burst through that door, her White Knight, but this was reality. Harper wasn’t going to be able to save her this time. He was just a man.
Robin tipped her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. If only she’d stayed curled up in bed that morning. It was a nice dream.