The whisper of a curse, spoken in Arabic, hung in the air before he turned to face Albert Benning. Midnight waited until the two men disappeared back into the house before she moved. Impatience was a mistake that could have deadly consequences.
Rising to her feet, she retraced her earlier steps to a maintenance gate hidden by overgrown ivy and slipped through the curtain of vines into the shadows of the night.
Junayd slid into the limousine, retrieved his cell phone, and placed a call. He waited impatiently for the call to be answered. When his brother grumbled a rude greeting, Junayd grimaced. He had obviously caught Jameel at a bad time.
“I need your help,” he responded before adding, “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“What’s wrong? Are you in danger? Should I contact Qadir and Tarek?”
Junayd huffed a laugh. “No. I need you to do your magic on a security tape and identify a woman for me,” he said.
Silence descended on the other end. A long, drawn-out silence that began to grate on his nerves. After a minute, he heard a long, hissing breath.
“Are you saying you woke me up in the middle of the night to find a woman for you?” Jameel clarified.
“Not just a woman, a mysterious woman who broke the arm of a potential vice-presidential candidate of the United States,” he replied with a grin.
He heard his brother murmur to someone and realized that his brother had not been sleeping despite the fact that it was the middle of the night. A muted curse followed by the phone clattering to the floor forced Junayd to hold the receiver away from his ear. He was thankful he had not initiated a video call with his twin.
“Okay, can you repeat that?” Jameel requested in a slightly breathless voice.
“It can wait until morning, I guess,” he grudgingly replied.
“For the love of—! You have my attention now; will you please tell me what you have gotten yourself into? You do know you are supposed to be the sane one out of the four of us,” Jameel added.
Junayd chuckled. “The woman I met tonight… Jameel, she was incredible. I think she is my Almukhtar.”
The sound of the phone dropping again made him laugh. He felt alive, invigorated, and, for the first time in years, challenged. His brother’s colorful curses filled his ear.
“Have you been drinking? Hit over the head? What have you done with my brother?” Jameel hoarsely demanded.
“Breathe, Jameel,” he laughed.
“I have you on video now. I’m looking in your ear,” his brother stated.
Junayd pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at his disheveled brother’s face. “I met her, and… I haven’t ever felt this kind of energy before. She was….” He tilted the phone away from his face as he tried to compose his expression.
“Okay, back up to the beginning. Where did you meet her? What is her name? Do you have a photo of her? Wait, if she is mysterious, does this mean you don’t know her name? Why is she on a security video and what the hell do you mean she broke the arm of a potential VP of the US?” Jameel demanded, running his hand through his already unkempt hair.
“No, I don’t have her name. I don’t have a photo of her, all I saw was her eyes—and her hair, and her body—and her voice was….” He cleared his throat. “Oliver Quest was attacking a teen girl at an event I was attending and this woman appeared out of the shadows and beat him senseless,” he said.
Jameel absorbed that for a moment, tilting his head. “So, you know absolutely nothing about this woman? You don’t know her name, where she lives, where she came from. If I’m understanding you correctly, you don’t know what she even looks like but you think she is your Almukhtar,” Jameel said, sitting back in his computer chair.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Where is the video?” Jameel asked with a tired sigh.
“I’ll upload it as soon as I get back to the apartment.”
“I’ll wait. I was finished anyway,” he muttered.
“I’m sorry, Jameel. I just need to find her,” he said.
“Send me the video and I’ll see what I can find,” Jameel promised.
“Thank you.”
Jameel shrugged. “You didn’t interrupt much,” he admitted.
Junayd signed off and relaxed in his seat. He fingered the flash drive Albert had given him. Worry gnawed at his stomach at the sudden idea that he might never see the woman again. He cursed the fact that Albert had interrupted them before he had a chance to find out the woman’s name—or see her face.
He closed his eyes, remembering the sensual feel of his moon dancer’s hand along his lower back. The limousine slowed to a stop outside of his apartment building. Yahya and Ziya scanned the sidewalk before opening the door of the limo and then the doors of the luxurious lobby.
The ride up to the penthouse apartment his family used when they were in New York seemed to take an unusually long time. He tapped the disk against his leg with impatience. Seconds later, he entered the apartment. He didn’t stop to shrug out of his coat.
Ten frustrating minutes later, he sat back in disbelief as he watched the video time-stamp play in a loop. Someone had erased her from the footage.
There was video showing Quest dragging the girl and striking her. Then, the video skipped to Quest lying on the ground and the arrival of his bodyguards, followed by the emergency medical staff and police. There was no video of him standing there with the woman.
It should have been visible on one of the dozen cameras, but the time stamp jumped from one number to another. Any part with the woman was gone.
Three
“You’re driving the poor guy crazy, Mid,” Junebug Rain commented as she swiveled back and forth in her computer chair.
“You’re going to get sick if you keep doing that,” Midnight absently responded.
Bugs laughed and completed another dizzying spin before she popped out of the chair. Midnight shook her head at her little sister’s antics. At twenty-three, she was barely a year older than Bugs, and yet she felt ancient compared to her hyper sister.
They were as different as night and day. Where Midnight had raven hair and a slender, tomboy build, Bugs was a miniature Venus with her voluptuous figure. Her strawberry blonde locks and light blue eyes came from their mother whereas Midnight had taken after her father—or so she assumed.
The sisters didn’t really know if they were biologically related. Their mother said she found them under a moonlit sky in Central Park, and she’d sworn they were left there by the fairies. Rainbow Rain had walked her own path until the day she died two years ago.
“Are you ignoring me?” Bugs asked, coming closer and bringing the blueprint of the bridge and all the local building code papers with her.
Midnight didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself. She was still lost in thought about the previous night. It had been a profitable outing. She had located three runaways—two of which had posted rewards for their recovery. The fact that she had also met a man who intrigued her had nothing to do with her being distracted.
“Mid, talk to me.”
Midnight swallowed and looked up from where she was making breakfast for the two of them. The meal was simple, a cheese omelet with fresh veggies and toast. Midnight pushed the thought of the handsome royal doctor to the dark recesses of her mind. She had a lot to do before she caught a few hours of sleep.