Controlling Interest (27 page)

But Natalie pounced. “That would be fabulous! Thank you so much!”

“My pleasure.” Hewitt led the way out of the dining room and down a passageway to the left. They wound up in a small, comfortable lounge with a bar set up on the far side. It was deserted. The steward seated Matt and Natalie at a high, round table and hovered with a hand significantly extended. Matt sighed and filled it with a five. Hewitt smiled. “The waitress will be right with you.

Oksana!” He turned, snapping his fingers. “Where are you?”

A small, pale-faced young woman with a blonde ponytail, wearing a short black skirt and a white polo, hurried through a doorway behind the bar. “I am here.”

“Come serve these people.” Hewitt gestured peremptorily. “They're waiting to talk to Yasmine.”

The girl's eyes widened. “Yasmine! Why?”

“She's a runaway,” Hewitt said flatly. He turned to Matt. “Ok-sana and Yasmine are sharing a cabin.”

“Is that right?” Natalie smiled at the girl. “Do you know where she is?”

“I'm not sure . . .” Oksana glanced at her boss.

He scowled. “If you know where she is, you'd better — ” He stopped when the radio crackled.

A deep drawling voice boomed, “When's the delivery truck supposed to get here, Hewitt? I can't make sweet potato casserole without sweet potatoes.”

Hewitt held the radio to his mouth. “Keep your shirt on. I'll check on it.” He grimaced at Matt. “You folks'll have to excuse me. Oksana will fix you up with a drink and tell you more about Yasmine. Talk slow — she's Russian.” He backed toward the doorway. “But you gotta be off the boat by noon.” He hurried out of the lounge, muttering into the radio.

Oksana sent a scared look from Matt to Natalie. “Why do you want to talk to Yasmine? She is good girl.”

“I'm sure she is,” said Natalie. “But we're kind of in a pickle. We've missed Yasmine a couple of times already, and we've
got
to talk to her today before the boat leaves. Did you know her family is looking for her?”

“I do not know ‘pickle.' ” Oksana's eyes shuttered. “Why her family is looking for her?”

“Never mind the pickle.” Natalie elbowed Matt, and he covered his grin. “She was supposed to get married. Do you know why she left Memphis without telling her family where she was going?”

“I sorry. My English is bad.” Oksana clutched her order pad so tightly, her fingernails were white.

Matt had a feeling the Russian girl understood far more than she let on. “Yasmine's family has lots of money. They'll pay for information to get her back.”

Oksana frowned. “I no sell my friends.”

“I don't blame you.” Natalie gave Matt a scorching look. “Ignore that bobo.” She patted one of Oksana's thin hands. “Do you know anything about Yasmine's faith in God? Do you think that's why she's running from her fiancé?”

Oksana looked confused. “You mean Jesus? Yasmine tell me about how I can know him.” A smile lit her face, making her quite beautiful. “So I do. I know him now.”

Matt and Natalie exchanged glances. He let out a whistle. Their Pakistani former-Muslim was now making converts.

“That's great, Oksana,” he said. “We're Christians too. So would you mind telling us where Yasmine went this morning? Or maybe when she'll be back?”

Oksana turned a pair of clear green eyes on him. “She is still on boat.”

Natalie slid off her bar stool. “Oh my gosh! Why didn't you say so. Where is she?”

“She is counting cans in food pantry.”

Matt exchanged glances with Natalie. She looked as confused as he was. “Hewitt said she's off duty. Something about going to buy a pair of shoes.”

Oksana waved a hand. “That — that bobo. He does not know anything.”

This time Matt did grin. “Can you go get her for us? We'd really like to talk to her.”

“I take you to her. Come.” Oksana whirled and was halfway across the room before Matt could get off his stool.

“I guess we're going to the pantry,” said Natalie.

He and Natalie trailed the Russian girl through the doorway from which she'd entered the lounge and saw her clattering down a set of narrow metal stairs. Following, they found themselves in a compact galley. Oksana was peering at them from the other side of an open doorway on the opposite side of the room.

“Here is pantry. Come.” She ducked out of sight.

Matt shrugged and followed, Natalie at his heels. Alice and the rabbit hole came to mind, but they had little choice. The pantry was basically a large walk-in closet lined with shelves, with several six-foot freestanding bins blocking the view of the back wall. Ok-sana was nowhere in sight.

“Oksana?” Matt peered around the closest metal bin. “Yasmine?”

Oksana's voice came from the left, behind a shelf. “She is at the back of the room. She has a sneeze and cannot hear good.”

“She has a sneeze?” Natalie laughed. “Oh. A cold. Poor kid.” She wandered toward the end of the row of shelves. “Yasmine!” she yelled. “Where are you?”

Matt followed.

And then he heard the door slam behind him. And the click of a lock.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Y
asmine! There you are! I was beginning to think you were not coming back.”

Yasmine, trudging down the levee in her beautiful new sneakers, looked up to find her roommate pelting toward her as if pursued by killer bees. Oksana kept jabbering in nearly incoherent Russian.

It had been a long walk to the closest strip mall and back, and Yasmine's feet were sore in spite of the new shoes. She had passed the time mentally replaying the book she'd borrowed last night from the ship's library — lost in a long-ago, faraway world where rich, handsome Rhett Butler wooed spoiled Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara and refused to let her run all over him. Yasmine would never talk to a man the way Scarlett did.

On the other hand, she had lately behaved with quite a bit of impropriety and scandal of her own . . .

“Of course I'm here.” She looked at Oksana in surprise as her roommate snatched her hands. “For goodness' sake. What is wrong?”

“You can't get back on the boat! The man and woman looking for you — I have locked them in the pantry.”

Yasmine's knees buckled. “A man and woman? Looking for me? Oksana, what have you done?”

Oksana shook her head, clearly at sea.

Oh, goodness. In her agitation, Yasmine had answered in Urdu rather than Russian. Switching languages, she squeezed Oksana's hands. “I am sorry. Who is looking for me? And why on earth did you lock them in the pantry?”

“They asked questions about you. They said you ran away, and they offered me money to tell where you are.” Oksana's wide eyes filled with tears. “I didn't give you away, but I lied. I said you were counting cans and locked them in. This is a bad thing, but I didn't know what else to do!”

Yasmine felt the blood drain from her face. Her family must be spending a great deal of money to find her. Poor dear Ammi would be frantic.

“It is okay.” She tried a smile, though it wobbled at the corners.
Think, Yasmine. What to do?

She couldn't go back to the boat now. She would have to find another way to get to Zach. Her idea of American geography was admittedly vague, but she knew that she must go south, then east. Zach's base was in a place called Pins-Up-Cola, somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans was also on the Gulf of Mexico, presumably near her destination. But if she couldn't go down-river on the
Delta Queen
, she would look for another mode of transportation.

“Oksana, I do not know how to thank you for warning me. I must go now.” Yasmine flung her arms around the Russian girl. “I will pray for you every day, and you must do the same for me.”

“Oh! Oh! Why is this happening?” Oksana returned the hug. “I never had a friend like you.”

“We are more than friends. We are sisters in Christ.” Oksana's tears made Yasmine's eyes water as well. “And we will see one another again.” Yasmine gave a shaky laugh. “Give me a few minutes to get away, then you must let my pursuers out of the closet!”

Oksana stepped away from Yasmine, wiping her eyes. “God be with you, my friend.”

“And you.”

Yasmine backed away, turned, and ran up the concrete slope. She passed a row of behemoth-sized buses the Americans called “arvees” parked at the top of the levee.

“Jewel!” came a man's crisp baritone. “Bring me that road atlas in the console, would you, hon? I need to figure out the best way to get to the Confederate Memorial Park.”

“Now, Curtis, you know you promised me a cruise.” The sweet but firm female voice drifted from the other side of the arvee. “I'm not spending the next two days driving around, gawking at statues of dead Yankees.”

“I'm just saying. We can spend the rest of the day here and take the cruise tomorrow.”

Yasmine peered from behind an arvee a few rows down. A tiny gray-haired woman in white calf-length pants stepped around the side of the vehicle and approached her husband. He lay halfway under the arvee, apparently working on something.

Jewel dropped a spiral-bound book on his chest. “You said we could do the dinner cruise.”

And that was when Yasmine spotted Jarrar Haq's henchman crossing the gangplank onto the
Delta Queen
. He had followed her all the way from Memphis!

Unreasonable terror clawed its way up her back. Darting from behind her hiding place, she ducked between the rows of arvees until she reached the woman named Jewel's petite figure.

“Please, ma'am,” she said, panting in fear. “I am in danger. May I hide in your arvee?”

Hoarse from nearly an hour of shouting, Natalie leaned on the end of a shelf. “I am not believing we fell for this.”

“That door must be solid steel.” Matt sat on the floor in front of the door, clutching his shoulder.

“I told you it was silly to try to shove it open. Who do you think you are, Rambo?”

“Well, excuse me for trying to get us out of here.” Wincing, Matt rolled his neck. “Who would've thought that little Russian girl would have the guts to do something like this?”

“She knows where Yasmine is. I bet she went to warn her not to come back.”

“This is insane. All we have to do to get our money is pin her down and talk to her for a few minutes. Then we could go back to her dad and say, ‘Your daughter's a grownup and she doesn't want to get married. Find another way to seal your business alliances.' But no. I'm stuck in a pantry with — ” He stopped and looked at her guiltily.

“With what? Go ahead and say it, Matt.” Natalie folded her arms. “How is this my fault?”

“I didn't say it was your fault.”

“No, but you're thinking it loud and clear.” She looked at her watch. “How long do you think it'll be before somebody comes looking for us?”

“Eventually the kitchen crew will let us out. Until then, nobody knows we're here, except Oksana.” His voice was tense. After a moment's silence, he let out a breath. “I'm sorry, Natalie. I know this isn't your fault. I'm frustrated with myself.”

“It's okay. I am too.” She wandered around. The shelves were very close together, the aisles only a couple of feet wide. Good thing she didn't have claustrophobia on top of the water issue.

Matt cut a glance at Natalie. “Sit down, kid, you're making me noivous.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Serves you right.” But she hauled a ten-pound sack of dried beans onto the floor and perched on it. “The real deal,” she said, stretching out her legs and wincing at the pain in her knees.

Matt noticed. “How're your Band-Aids holding up?”

“I'm okay.” She didn't want him feeling sorry for her. She'd been enough of a whiny-baby crossing the gangplank.

“Let me know if — ”

“I'm fine, Matt. Thanks.”

They sat quietly for a while. Natalie felt her head begin to bob. It had been a long day. All the adrenaline of the day seemed to have seeped out her toes.

“Natalie.”

She jerked her head off her chest. “Huh?”

“You're going to get a crick in your neck. Come on over here by me.”

His voice was soft, cajoling, and she was so sleepy. “Okay, but you'll have to move over.”

“Get the light, will you?” Matt moved to lean against the door, bracing the elbow of his injured arm in the opposite hand.

Natalie hit the light switch, then wedged herself between Matt and the closest shelf. She leaned her head against the wall. She was almost asleep when Matt shifted to put his arm around her, muttering something that sounded like, “I give up.” He pulled her against him, tucking her under his arm.

Too tired to protest, she leaned into him, closing her eyes. “You smell good.”

He laughed softly. “Thanks, kiddo. Go back to sleep.”