Secret Agent Sheikh. Linda Conrad

the older one asked the Russian with a sneer.

      “A prize for the losers tonight, Elder bin Khali.” Karolek Petrov beamed as though he had a secret he couldn’t wait to tell. “These are no ordinary women. Each represents a dozen young virgins who will give a man the night of his life before they gladly lay down their lives and die for him. They are worth a king’s ransom … and are my gift for participating this evening.”

      Jass was glad the two actresses she’d rounded up looked young and didn’t speak English. She tried to move farther away from the man Petrov had addressed as Elder.

      But before she could take a second step, the younger Middle Eastern man grabbed her by the wrist. “This one is no virgin. If I am not mistaken, she is no lady of the evening either.” He swung her around to face the other men. “Look at the intelligence in these eyes. She sees too much.”

      Jass didn’t have a moment to react before the man brought a dagger to her throat. “I will let her fulfill her contract and die for my pleasure right now.”

      Oh, brother. There went all her best-laid plans.

      She gritted her teeth to notify her backup with three clicks that she was in trouble. Then she overpowered her surprised assailant by using a nifty thumb hold she’d perfected years ago. The knife went flying and he went to his knees with a yell and a thud.

      Chaos erupted in the room. Shouts in several languages bounced off the walls. Guns were pulled from under jackets. The door banged open and a shot rang out. And somewhere in the back of her mind she thought she heard the balcony’s glass doors sliding open.

      But she was too busy to notice. She appropriated a gun from one of the hulking bodyguards with a smooth move he never saw coming and then headed through the crowd toward the Nigerian, who had been standing closest to the balcony. She caught a glimpse of him before he ducked out through the open balcony doors.

       Oh, no you don’t. We’re twelve stories up. You’re mine, you bastard.

      Tarik was inside the room and fighting to reach Jass O’Reilly before he could think twice about it. His mind had blanked when the head of Taj Zabbar secret police had put that dagger to her throat. Tarik had been intrigued with her from afar for years and the idea of his fantasy woman going down in a slash of bloodshed had moved him to action.

      But by the time he overpowered the Russian and put him out of commission, she was nowhere to be found. Had she ducked out the front? Impossible. That exit was now clogged with men in various stages of being apprehended.

      He twisted around and as his eyes darted across the room, he realized two unsettling things. The suitcase was missing from the table and the two Taj Zabbar reps were gone.

      Worse, with another sweeping glance, he noted both the Nigerian and Jass had also disappeared. But they could not possibly have gotten past him. They’d both been too close to the balcony when the sting went bad.

      He would have to consider the Taj Zabbar later. Right now he needed to back up his former comrade in covert operations.

      When he barged through to the balcony, Tarik was hit with another shock. Jass and the Nigerian were leaning over the balcony wall, wrestling over a Ruger .357 Magnum. The Nigerian had a good fifty pounds and six inches on her.

      Tarik’s weapon was useless under the circumstances. He couldn’t get off a clean shot. He held his breath and moved in closer, waiting for a moment to let the Nigerian learn of his presence—the hard way.

      But the longer their struggle went on, the more he could see Jass weakening. The Nigerian had her bent over backward with her upper body hanging out over nothing but night air.

      Tarik couldn’t wait. He had to make a move now.

      Grabbing the assailant by the shoulder, he tried to turn the Nigerian around to face him. But right at that moment Jass made her move, too.

      She hooked her leg around the Nigerian’s knees and used all her power trying to bring him down. But Tarik’s shove had overbalanced the assailant and all three of them slid closer to the balcony wall.

      Horrified, he watched as both Jass and the Nigerian slipped over backward and disappeared completely into the black night. With a roar, he dove over the wall, landing tenuously on the ledge beyond.

      “Help me, you idiot.” The small voice coming from below him finally cleared away the hazy panic in his head as Tarik spotted her fingers gripping the edge.

      “Jass.” He flattened himself on the ledge and made a grab for her arms.

      When he felt the warm skin of her wrists and fastened his hands around them, he began to murmur quiet encouragement. “I’ve got you. Take it easy.”

      She groaned. “Stop talking and pull me up.”

      Earlier the breeze off the ocean had been benign and gentle. Now it felt like a full-force gale. He latched one arm around the balcony wall and hoped to hell he could drag her up one-handed. It would do no good for both of them to take a header into oblivion.

      Whenever he’d thought of Jass in the past, he’d never thought of her as particularly thin or small. But with a spurt of much needed adrenaline, he raised her up over the edge without a lot of effort.

      Son of a gun. They were still alive.

      Dragging her closer to his chest, he waited until his breathing slowed and he could actually feel his extremities again. That was as close to death as he ever wanted to go.

      Jass pushed at his chest. “How about we move to a solid surface?” She came to her knees and reached for the balcony wall. “I suppose you expect a thank-you for saving my life.”

      Suddenly irritated, he pulled them both over the wall to the balcony floor. “I would rather get an explanation as to why you felt it necessary to bust in on my sting.”

      She stood in bare feet with her wig askew and dusted off her hands. “Not your sting, pal. Mine. I’ve been chasing that Nigerian for months and now you’ve ruined our chances of ever questioning him. You owe me.”

       Damn.

      “My mistake,” he muttered as he turned toward the suite doors.

      He left her standing there trying to figure out what he’d meant. If he’d known how ungrateful she would be, he might’ve left her swinging in midair.

      Now he had the sinking feeling he was going to live to regret tonight’s entire heroic episode.

Chapter 2

      She was completely screwed.

      Jass ran her hands through the auburn mop on her head that laughably passed for her real hair and squared her shoulders to face the music. Ed Langdon, her CIA handler, and General Gus Wainwright, the head of their interagency Task Force, came through the conference room door. Tarik Kadir was right on their heels.

      She jumped up and stood as still as if she were at attention. It was barely twelve hours since the Nigerian had gone to his heavenly paradise and Jass hadn’t had much sleep. For most of the night she’d been too busy trying to interrogate the men who’d been captured in the hotel room and, when that became futile, working desperately to salvage something from the fiasco of last night. She had come up empty-handed on all counts.

      For the last hour she’d been sitting quietly in the American consulate’s office waiting for her scheduled meeting with Ed. Jass had been going over all her moves from last evening’s sting, still trying to piece together how things had gone wrong. When she’d originally designed the plan for last night, she was positive nothing could prevent it from becoming one of her biggest career highlights. Capturing a man that the Agency had been seeking for the last three years had seemed the perfect path to advancement.

      The fact that General Wainwright was here in