Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(16)
“Shh, darlin’,” the big Texan crooned, rubbing a hand down her hair and kissing her tenderly on the forehead. “Shh, now. There’s no need to—”
“Zoelner?” Boss snagged Dagan’s attention. The man’s craggy face was pulled down into a fierce frown, causing the scar cutting up from the corner of his mouth to pucker angrily. “What the hell is going on?”
And as jovial as the party atmosphere had been just seconds ago, that’s how somber it was now. It was as if someone had flipped a switch. Flick! On to off. Go to stop. Green to red.
Hell, even Ozzie appeared pensive.
“Delilah’s uncle is missing,” he informed the group. The collective gasp was so strong, he thought it was a wonder the fire didn’t instantly flame out from lack of oxygen. “And she’s depending on us to help her find him…”
***
Cairo, Illinois
“What happened?” Qasim ibn Hasan barked into the phone, turning to watch as two of his most loyal men lifted the body of the dead American from the rotted wood floor. It’d only been a half dozen hours, but the corpse was already starting to smell, fouling the air inside the dank and musty abandoned building, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
Not that he wasn’t used to the stench of rotting flesh. He’d been fighting jihad for well over a decade. And living with the stink of the dead and dying was just part of that struggle. But, still…filthy American pigs. Filthy murderous American pigs…
“I was interrupted during my search for the woman’s address,” came the reply from Haroun, his second-in-command. And that was another thing that irked Qasim about the Americans. Why did some of them insist on using post office boxes instead of physical addresses?
Haroun’s hunt for and abduction of Delilah Fairchild would’ve been so much easier had their extensive Internet search turned up her place of residence. All Haroun would’ve had to do was break into her house or apartment while she was at work, wait for her to arrive home, and incapacitate her before delivering her straight to Qasim. As easy as one, two, three, as the Americans liked to say.
Unfortunately, counting to three had not been their destiny…
“Then you must find a way to take her away from her workplace or en route from her workplace to her home,” Qasim instructed. “Those are our only other options.”
“But they are not,” Haroun said, instantly piquing Qasim’s interest.
“No?” he asked, his lip curling with disgust as his men carted the remains of the old Marine by him. When the light from the low-burning kerosene lanterns revealed a drop of coagulating blood falling from the body to the dusty floor, barely missing the toe of his shoe, he frowned at Sami and Jabbar.
“Idiots,” he growled, jumping from the cheap plastic chair they’d managed to scrounge up from the wreckage of this sad, forsaken town, “mind where you are going with that lump of filth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sorry, sir.”
After Charles Sander died of a heart attack within hours of beginning his interrogation and torture, Qasim had wondered if perhaps he’d been sent on a fool’s mission. If perhaps Allah himself wasn’t laughing down at him for thinking he could accomplish what so many of his brethren over the years had not. But then, just as he was howling over his lost leverage—he’d intended to use Charles and Theodore against one another, torturing one to make the other talk—he’d opened Theodore Fairchild’s wallet to discover what would undoubtedly be the ultimate chink in the man’s armor. Photographic evidence of a girl—a niece Qasim had discovered after a quick Google search—whom Theodore had raised as a daughter. She was just the bargaining chip Qasim needed to make the old Marine give up the information stored inside his head. And it was at that moment that he began to think that qadar, or Fate, had once more swung in his favor…
Praise Allah! This might actually work!
“Shall we just drop the body next door?” Jabbar asked, straining under the weight of Charles Sander and looking peculiar in his Western-style clothing.
“Take him far enough away so that his stench does not reach us,” Qasim instructed his men. Then he turned back to the phone conversation. “What were you saying?” he asked Haroun, lamenting the fact that Jabbar had inadvertently smashed Theodore’s cellular phone during the struggle to apprehend the man. Because how much simpler would this whole situation have been had they been able to send Delilah Fairchild a text message from her uncle’s phone instructing her to come to Cairo. After all, that exact plan had worked so well using Sander’s phone in order to get Theodore here…
Such is life, he sighed pragmatically. Allah gives us obstacles to overcome in order to make the victory that much sweeter. And just as soon as he had his hands on Delilah Fairchild, he would be victorious. And it would be very, very sweet.
“It was the woman herself who interrupted me,” Haroun explained. Qasim’s heart beat faster as hope bloomed in his chest. Could it be so easy? “I would simply have grabbed her there, but she was not alone. Two men were there with her. I was forced to abandon the premises.” Qasim resumed his seat, his shoulders slumping in disappointment. No, of course it could not be. “I hid until they left the old Marine’s house. Then followed them to some sort of motorcycle repair shop. The place has high security, so I will wait to grab her when she exits. I do not know how long that could be.”