Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(20)

The feathered creature in my heart went belly-up, feet in the air.

“Then last month he returned. I told him my decision. He explained that the boy was in grave danger and needed protection, and he could not think of a safer place than with me. Not at the mosque, but in my personal home. Once again, he asked if I would be willing to help.”

“And?”

“That is why we are here.”

A little heartbeat fluttered beneath the feathers. But hope is a dangerous thing, easily crushed. Trying to make it last, I asked, “Why you, Zarif?”

He spread his hands. “He suggested I might be related to the boy. My family, like this boy’s great-grandparents, came from Shiraz, near the city of Parsa—better known to the world as Persepolis, ancient capital of the Persian empire. So . . . perhaps.” He shrugged. “This man also asked because he knows my home once belonged to a drug trafficker. It is remote and easy to guard. And this little town where I live, it is not too small, not too big. Like Goldilocks. It is not hard to hide one small boy here, with all of my security detail on hand. Especially when that boy can blend with the locals.”

My head buzzed with questions. Like how the head of security for a small mosque in a small town could afford the former home of a drug lord. And a security detail. And how his possession of such a place could be kept secret.

But all that could wait. I looked at Zarif with eyes naked with need. My voice came out a whisper. “He’s here.”

“The hadith says that whosoever alleviates the need of another shall have his own needs lightened by Allah. Last month, this man brought Malik to me and placed him in my protection.”

I stood so suddenly that I knocked the table. The uncapped bottle of water tilted over and rolled onto the thick carpet. I stared blindly as water glugged onto the floor.

Zarif reached around me and picked up the bottle.

I was shaking. “Show me.”

Zarif rose smoothly to his feet. “Come.”



He led the way through the vast house—down innumerable hallways and past innumerable chambers—until he reached the back of the house and we entered a large room with a wall of glass on the far side overlooking a pool and garden. Outside, brilliant light from a western sun spilled across the tops of trees and slanted into the grounds, illuminating a riot of shrubs and flowers and making the water of the pool glow an incandescent blue. I followed Zarif across the room. He slid back a glass door, then gestured for me to go outside.

I stared out into the half-groomed, half-wild place. Some part of me was thinking that if Zarif intended to shoot me, the garden would be the perfect place to do so. I could return as next year’s daisies, or whatever grew here.

He rested a hand on my arm. “I know you have many questions for him. But remember, he has been through a lot and is still very troubled. He gets angry. He is often fearful. His nightmares are terrible.”

I nodded, still staring into the garden, waiting for Malik to appear. Zarif stepped in front of me and took my shoulders.

“You are here not for yourself but for him,” he said. “It’s important that he knows you didn’t intend to abandon him. But your presence here could also open old wounds, raise bad memories. Tread lightly, and ask only what you must.”

“I can’t make life safe for him if I don’t understand what happened.”

“It is for that reason that you’re here. He deserves a chance at a normal life, and you seem to be a critical part of that hope.” He loosed my shoulders. “But your presence is also a danger to the privacy I’ve worked so hard to establish. Which is critical in an entirely different way. One hour. After that, two of my men will drive you to the airport. There is nothing more for you in Mexico City. If you are afraid to go home, then go somewhere else. And if you are captured, try to kill yourself before they can torture my name out of you. Those are my conditions.”

Panic rose in my throat. “It’s not enough time.”

“I applaud your goals. But I won’t sacrifice Malik for a quest that might turn out to be as futile as the hunt for El Dorado. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay here with my family until everyone who means him ill has grown old and died.” The expression in his mild gray eyes turned flinty. “Will you comply?”

I nodded stiffly.

“He’s waiting with his tutor just down that path. I sent him a photo of you, as a final verification that you are what you claim. He knows you’re coming.”

He stepped aside, and I walked through the open doorway. The warm air draped itself like a shawl around my shoulders. I didn’t look back when the door slid closed behind me.

Humid air descended like a benediction after the stench of the city, filled with the not unpleasant tang of chlorine from the pool and the earthy scents of flowers and trees and rich soil. Minus the chlorine, this must have been how Eden smelled, before the fall. On the far side of the pool, a brick-paved path as wide as two people led into a dense forest. Pink bougainvillea hung nodding from shrubs taller than my head while, high above, the fronds of palms stirred in a light breeze that didn’t reach the garden.

I reached for Clyde, needing him beside me. But he was almost two thousand miles away.

I shook out my hair and rewound it at the nape of my neck, smoothed my wrinkled clothes, then skirted the shimmering pool and started down the path. As soon as I stepped beneath the trees, the temperature dropped as the still-fierce sun became a golden haze glinting through an emerald screen. Two minutes of brisk walking brought me to an open space. I stopped at the edge.