Out of Control (23 page)

I looked up at the king and slowly, carefully explained what I had in mind for Tim.

Dead silence. I kept my eyes on his, waiting. Finally, his expression softened a tiny
bit and he actually seemed a little surprised. “For a woman, you’ve a devious mind.”

At least fifteen great comebacks popped into my head, but I managed to restrain myself.
I’m many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. “Suppose this is how my husband claims
his revenge?”

“Mr. Fresh will suffer, but it’s not enough. Not after what he did at Ras Tanura,
and today, here at Yanbu. He and Hakeem deserve the severest punishment.”

“Respectfully, Your Highness, he murdered one of our pilots and tried to murder my
husband. He grossly abused his position within Homeland Security, and when my plans
for him are done, he’ll be brought up on charges of fraud. He’ll be executed in due
time. At a minimum, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. Trust me, he’s not
going to escape punishment. In fact, if we do it my way, he’ll suffer much longer.”

The corners of his mouth curved ever so slightly. “You are very much a woman, desirous
of extending a man’s misery as long as possible.”

Yes, it was an insult, but I took it on the chin. “I’m as entitled to vengeance as
my husband, and yes, I want to prolong his punishment.”

Instantly, he lost his small smile. “For what do you require vengeance?”

Robichaud stepped over to me and grasped my arm, squeezing it firmly. “My wife’s afraid
of heights, but to save my life, and her own, she was forced to jump from an airplane
into the Empty Quarter. You’ve been told what she endured in the desert. Naturally,
she feels a great deal of anger toward Mr. Fresh.”

Evidently, I wasn’t supposed to mention that the son of a bitch tried to rape me—twice.

Abdullah met Nick’s eyes. “If your wife’s plan fails, if the United States court system
fails, do I have your word you’ll make amends to Saudi Arabia on my behalf?”

“My word of honor,” Robichaud agreed, shaking the king’s hand.

He nodded and looked at me once again. “I hope you’ll return to Saudi Arabia one day
before I am dust and be my guest, along with your husband.”

The likelihood was between slim and none, but all the same, I made my mother proud
and said, “Thank you, Your Highness, it would be a pleasure.”

He turned aside and spoke to Kaliq briefly before he left the port office.

When we were sure he was out of earshot, we all congratulated one another with shouts
of joy and much back slapping. I saw a genuine smile on Kaliq’s face and he looked
like a different man as we left the office and headed for the parking area. Nick and
I said goodbye to everyone but Zafer, who was to take us to Jiddah. Ara hugged me
and said, “I know your time here hasn’t been pleasant, but please, come back someday,
and stay with me.”

“I’d like that,” I said, and this time I meant it.

Then we were gone, headed for Jiddah, and finally, home.

And a wedding.

…

Our plans for Tim Fresh weren’t nearly as complicated as they’d been for Hakeem. Sweet
had been in Saudi Arabia for the past three days, having left New Orleans as soon
as he got word that the company plane was parked in a hangar outside of Jiddah and
all of his employees were missing.

He was immensely relieved when Robichaud called him from the airport in Najran, and
he readily agreed to what we planned for Tim. But he’d had no luck finding Ted and
Hank, or rather, their bodies. That bugged the hell out of him, out of all of us,
but he finally had to give up and make plans to leave. He’d brought two extra pilots
with him, but they’d left not long after arriving, taking the abandoned jet back to
New Orleans.

That left Sweet with the other corporate jet which, like all of company planes, had
the logo on the tail. To fake out Tim, he’d had it covered with a Texas flag, and
introduced himself as a rich Texan with business contacts in Saudi. He’d told Tim,
aka “Richard Mullins,” he’d fly him home because he was headed that way anyway, and
after everything Mullins had been through—floating around on a raft for days—he deserved
a little pampering, didn’t he?

Tim bought it and boarded the plane without a peep of argument. Or hint of suspicion.

Idiot.

When Robichaud and I got to the Jiddah airport, we said goodbye to Zafer, then rode
out to the plane on a baggage tram to make sure Tim didn’t see us. We boarded through
the rear hatch into the cargo hold, and after taking off in the usual hard jumpseats,
we made ourselves comfortable on the fat pillows Sweet had left for us. We had food
and beer and a deck of cards.

We ate and drank and played cards and kissed and talked and generally celebrated—quietly—our
success in taking down Hakeem, saving the port at Yanbu, and our future as Mr. and
Mrs. Robichaud.

When the plane landed at Lajes to refuel, Sweet came back to see us. “We’re going
to stay on the ground a while, to make the timing right for Fresh to call his broker.
You two get some sleep and I’ll come back as soon as he makes his call.”

We said we would, but we were too pumped to go to sleep right then. We managed to
find a way to kill the time. A few hours later, we finally settled down on the giant
pillows, snuggled beneath a blanket and passed out in happy exhaustion.

When we awoke, we were tighter than two coats of paint and Sweet was there, nudging
us, his face creased in a frown. I sat up quickly, fearing something had gone wrong.
“What is it?” I asked nervously.

“I’d like to know what you two have been up to.”

Relieved the plan hadn’t gone awry, I didn’t give a lot of thought to my answer. “Robichaud
says he loves me and asked me to marry him. I said yes.”

Nick cleared his throat to speak, but Sweet held up his hand before he could, and
said in an uncompromising voice, “Don’t like any hanky-panky, understand? All these
years, me and Trick worried about you working with the men. Figured they’d never get
any work done with you around, always asking for dates and the like. But it’s not
like that, see? And it needs to stay that way.”

“You’ll have my resignation as soon as we get home,” Nick said.

Sweet stared him down, his brow crinkled in a scowl. “Dammit, Robichaud, whydya wanna
go and ruin our girl? Next thing you know, she’ll be having babies and leaving. Maybe
you didn’t notice, but she’s one of our best hands, and damned if you can just come
in and take advantage of her.”

“He’s going to marry me,” I pointed out.

“And get you pregnant, right off the bat. Can’t be totin’ babies around well fires,
sister. You know that.”

“There’s this thing called birth control. How about I promise not to have any babies
for at least three years?”

“Make it four.”

“Deal.”

He nodded and reached out to shake Nick’s hand. “Congratulations, I’ll be at the wedding,
and if you resign, it’ll piss me off a lot.”

“Thanks,” Nick said with his cocky grin.

Sweet snatched me close and gave me a big bear hug and said, “Trick’s gonna have a
fit like an old woman. But I reckon it’s time you found a man, and hell if Robichaud
won’t work just fine.” He set me away from him and stared at me as if he was surprised.
“Dorie’s right. You
are
a pretty girl.”

“You never noticed before?” Nick asked.

“Well, hell, she’s always just been little sister.”

“Thanks, Sweet,” I said. “I love you, too.”

He patted me and said, “You’ll love me more when I tell you how well it’s going up
there.”

“What’s Fresh doing?”

“We watched the news,” he said with a wide smile, “and he asked if he could use the
phone. He called his broker and told him to sell the oil first thing in the morning.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s one in the morning in New Orleans. Don’t know where
his broker is, but it’s a good bet he was sound asleep.”

“So the footage looked real?”

Sweet nodded with a grin. “That Conaway is gonna make one helluva TV reporter. If
I didn’t know it was her, I’d never have had an inkling. Wore a dark wig and fixed
her eyes, or something. Had an accent like you wouldn’t believe. With Ras Tanura in
the background, she talked like it was the port at Yanbu burning after gettin’ blown
sky high. Even had an interview with some friend of hers in a suit, who said oil would
probably open at two hundred bucks a barrel in the morning. She doctored that video
so it looked just like it was an Al Jazeera piece playing on CNN, like they do, yaknow.”

I almost rubbed my hands together with glee. “The futures he bought are exercisable
at one hundred ten dollars a barrel, and the trading will probably open at ninety.
He’ll lose twenty dollars for every future he bought, which comes to a total loss
of ten million dollars.” I glanced at Robichaud. “What’d he make when Ras Tanura blew?”

“Eight million, and he used over seven of that to pay for the Alaskan production.
He’ll still be short at least two million, even after he sells the leases to cover
his losses.”

“Which he’ll be doing from prison,” Sweet said. He looked at Nick. “You made a phone
call yet?”

He nodded. “The feds will be at the airport to pick him up as soon as we arrive.”
Nick got to his feet and said, “Let’s go tell Tim just how secure his homeland is
now.”

Tim didn’t take it well when Nick and I came into the cabin. He knew right away that
he’d been had, and tried to get to the phone again, but had some difficulty when Robichaud
plowed his fist into his face. He never did get to the phone to call his broker and
cancel the sell order. Instead, he spent some time in the cargo hold with Nick, who
got his vengeance, and mine, several times over.

Nick didn’t kill the shark because he couldn’t, but he sure hurt him bad, and that
was good enough for me.

…

A week later, we were married in Las Vegas at a little chapel on the strip. Elvis
sang, and my mother cried, whether from sentimentality or horror over the total tackiness
of the wedding, I couldn’t be sure.

I didn’t care. It was perfect for me and Robichaud.

He gave me his grandmother’s beautiful diamond ring, and I gave him a bolo tie mounted
with a shark’s tooth. He didn’t quite get it, but that’s okay. It made me smile big,
so he liked it.

We had dinner at a posh hotel restaurant, which included shrimp, and each of my sisters
made a toast. Well, except for Courtney. She didn’t make it to the wedding because
she was grieving over losing Cole. I didn’t tell her what a scumbag he was, because
what was the point?

My father offered Nick and me jobs at Drake Oil and Gas, which we declined, but reserved
the option for later, after we started a family. For the foreseeable future, we both
decided we had a few more well fires to kill.

Cash and Harley, Sweet and Trick all came to the wedding, then left right after dinner,
headed for the poker tables. Tissa and Wynne went with them, which blew my mind and
had Mama wringing her hands. Dad told her to get over herself, then invited Nick’s
parents to their suite for a nightcap. They all tripped off together, looking to be
of a mind about their black sheep kids.

Conaway went mushy on me and cried all over my dress, which had it goin’ on, I must
say. Miss Alabama could suck lemons. Conaway said, “If you don’t come see me in New
York, I’ll air that video I got of you in your underwear and boots.”

“I can’t come and see you in New York. You don’t live there.”

“But I will, as soon as my professor gives me my A. Sweet set it up and I interviewed
with Sam Hunnicut at CNN two days ago. He looked at my documentary and hired me on
the spot.”

Nick and I congratulated her and I promised I’d come to see her. “In the meantime,
I’ll look for you on the news.”

Her pretty blue eyes were shining. “I can’t believe you’d rather marry Robichaud than
hang with your best friend, but whatever.”

“Well, he does have that sex thing going for him, and you’re real cute, but you just
don’t do it for me, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, dude, I know.” She looked over my shoulder, smiled and waved.

I turned my head and saw Elvis heading for us. “Good Lord, you can’t be serious.”

“His name’s Brian, and he does the Elvis gig to support himself while he’s pursuing
his real career.”

“What’s his real career?” Robichaud asked. “Card sharp?”

Conaway said a bit dreamily, “He makes documentaries. Right now, he’s working on one
about gambling.”

Brian came up to us and smiled crookedly—just like Elvis. We were introduced, then
Conaway hugged each of us again before they took off through the casino.

Robichaud gave me a smoldering look. “Alone at last, sugar. I can finally get you
naked and make love to you.”

“Under a palm tree?”

“A promise is a promise.” We went upstairs to a suite where, sure enough, there was
a private patio with a small pool and an extra wide chaise lounge beneath a potted
palm tree.

Perfect.

Acknowledgements

A significant amount of research for this book was done online, but nothing compares
to the long conversations with Erich Hardaway about life in Saudi Arabia. Thanks,
Erich, for your insights. Thanks, Mike, for the Boots & Coots and Red Adair history
lessons, and for the down-and-dirty oil well blowout stories. Thanks to Tashya Wilson
for being my first. Much appreciation for my editor, Nina Bruhns, and all the amazing
people behind the scenes at Entangled Publishing.

About the Author

Stephanie Feagan is a multi-published RITA winning author who also writes YA paranormal
romance as Trinity Faegen. A practicing CPA who loves travel, books, and smart guys,
Stephanie lives in the oilfields of west Texas with her husband and a mean cat. Please
visit her website at
www.stephaniefeagan.com
or drop an email to Stephanie@step
haniefeagan.com.