On the Line (Special Ops) (3 page)

“So go knock on his door.”

“No. Not even. I only know where he’s at and what he does because I met somebody who knew him. We started talking and he told me about this guy who rescued him from some place in Egypt about five years ago. I did some serious searching and I found out a little about the company. If he wanted me to know about him then he would have called me and told me. I’m still in the same house I bought after our divorce. My phone number is still the same. I haven’t gone anywhere. Clearly he’s over me. He was probably over me a long time before we ended.” She shrugged. “But if I were in trouble he is the only man I would trust to save me. He saved me once and I know he would do it again…or at least I think he would. He was so honorable, and definitely driven. I can’t imagine that his honesty and code of honor would allow him to do anything else; he would definitely help even if he doesn’t like me anymore.” Ariana could see the look of compassion, empathy and pain etched on the young woman’s face as she spoke with her.

“Anyway, you did not come in here for my drama and heartache. You came in here so I could make you feel better about the show. So, here’s my advice. Suck it up, my Hawaiian goddess belly dancer. You don’t carry the stage name of Isis so you can cower at the hands of men.”

Zahara laughed hard. “I’m sucking it up,” she nodded. “Thanks. I really did need that. Now, may I see that picture you were looking at more than you were looking at the papers on your desk?”

Ariana laughed. She hadn’t stopped wearing that locket around her neck. She took it off for shows, but she always put it back on after the show was over. Sometimes she would even find a spot within her costume where she could secure it without worrying about losing it during a performance. Preston had given her that locket and somehow wearing the gold heart with key pendent seemed like she was keeping him close to her heart. The photos inside the locket included one of him in his Air Force dress uniform on one side and one of their engagement photos on the other side. Well, it wasn’t an official engagement photo. It was just something she had taken with her old 35mm film camera and had her father develop for her. He had made one for their wall; it was a lovely black and white photograph that used to hang in their living room when she lived with Preston. It hung next to the wedding photo her father had taken. He was a photographer—a hobbyist he would say but he was a genius in her book. He did their photos in both black and white film and color and they were amazing—and free, which helped them with their budget. Not that she needed much help on that part seeing as though she had already made quite a bit of money on her dancing appearances. Preston had apparently asked her father to make one of him in his dress uniform for the locket he gave her on their wedding night. That was his wedding gift to her and just like the ring he had given her, she had never been able to pull it off.

The ring was a simple sterling Celtic love knot ring with her March aquamarine birthstone in the center. He had a little money, but not much and she didn’t need any insanely expensive wedding ring so she didn’t offer to give him the money to buy her one. She loved the ring he gave her because it was simple and precious, and because he had actually had to have it made for her and modified to fit the stone in the center just as he wanted it to be. She had moved the ring over to her other hand, but even that had taken a good five years after the divorce to do.

She waved Zahara over and opened the locket as she came to stand in front of her desk. She leaned forward and showed her the picture inside.

“He’s so handsome.”

“Yes he is,” she giggled like a school girl. “I haven’t seen any updated photos of him, but I can’t imagine he looks worse. He probably just looks better. That man is definitely a fine wine,” she winked. “He gets better with age I’m sure.”

Zahara placed her hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. “He might have grown up some. You should send him a message like a little note card to his office. Do you know where it is?”

“I know where it is, but I’m not even going there.”

“Stubborn.”

“What about you, missy? I don’t see you running to get the man you were in love with.”

Zahara held up her hands in surrender. “Still in love with by the way,” she said as she went back to sit on the fainting couch. “That ship has sailed.”

“Mine too,” Ariana said.

“And we missed it,” Zahara said solemnly.

Ariana sighed. “Okay, let’s stop with the pity party already and talk costumes.”

“What’s wrong with my costume?”

“Nothing at all. I just think we should add this,” she pulled a box out of her drawer. Zahara got up and came to the desk and opened it.

“Ariana! These are your tribal arm cuffs. You wore these when you won your last Miss Belly Dance Universe show.”

She smiled. “I sure did. They brought me good luck and I think the black with crystal stones will accent your Paradise Sunset colored costume. The cuff goes around your arm as high as possible. You should feel it in your armpit when your arm is down against your side,” she told her. “The black with the stone inlay wraps around your arm like a snake almost all the way down and then this section here will go over your wrists and your middle finger fits through the loop. Use it today while you practice to get used to it.” The costume Zahara had chosen was sexy and pure cabaret style costuming. The orange and red hues blended together to make it look as if the sun was cascading across her body as it started its descent in the evening sky.

“I am going to look so sexy in this.”

“See, positive attitude on your looks for a change. I’m so proud of you little butterfly,” she patted her arm.

“Hey, I thought I was a goddess.” She laughed.

“You are on the dance floor and to men. But to me you’re like a little butterfly. If I had gotten pregnant and had a child at nineteen you could be my daughter.”

“Oh please. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

“I knew I liked you for some reason,” Ariana teased. She had been told she looked younger than her years, but at forty-six years old she knew very well that Zahara could have been the age of her own daughter if her life had gone differently and she had become a mother at a young age. She didn’t have any children, and honestly she didn’t want any. She never had wanted any which is one of the things she and Preston had in common. They liked sending children home at the end of a few hours, not keeping them forever. Maybe it was best they hadn’t had any children since the marriage didn’t last.

Ariana took one last look inside the locket that she just couldn’t seem to let go of and then she closed it. She had work to do and there was only so much memory lane she could afford to drive down before the memory of what they used to have destroyed the good day she was determined to have. She loved Preston and probably always would, but that ship had long ago sailed and they weren’t on it—at least not with each other.

Chapter Three

“Y
ou’re sure of
the location?” Preston had his contact checking for him. He trusted the guy on the other end of the line and if he said Jules was being held south of the Temple at Karnak then she was being held south of there. Now that he had an approximate location, far enough from the ruins not to attract any tourists, but close enough for Preston to use it as his cover, he was going in. He hated working in Egypt. The region was beautiful, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was how hostile it was becoming and the fact that he hadn’t had the best experiences whenever he landed there. He always got the package brought home safely, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a world of trouble while trying to get the package out.

Maybe what he hated most was that he couldn’t have the plane on standby in a field somewhere; it just wouldn’t work. He had to go in commercially and then signal the guys to get them to fire up the plane, fly in under the radar and meet him at a mostly vacant location to pick him up. Then they had to get out without alerting anybody to their presence.

“It had to be Egypt,” he mumbled as he thought about what he was going to have to go through to get where he needed to go. Not only would he have to struggle to get in and out, but he was going to have to pay his contact for weapons that he wouldn’t be able to get onto a commercial flight. “Dandy,” he mumbled as he opened his desk drawer and took one last look at Ariana’s photo. She was so beautiful, then and now. He had kept up with her. He had seen her pictures in People magazine and local newspapers and he had cut them out and added them to his collection at home. He had watched her interviews. He had even sat through the movies she danced in when he really hadn’t wanted to see the movies at all. He still loved her. When he made it back from this mission maybe he should arrange an accidental encounter.

He shook his head and laughed at his own thoughts. Maybe he should leave her alone. Clearly she was happy as she was, but something wouldn’t allow him to let her go. One last moment of contact was all he needed. If she turned him away without even a word then he would know where he stood and he would force his heart to let her go forever.

He wished he didn’t have to leave today. He had planned on standing in the back of the crowd at the show she was putting on in Austin. Now he had to get his limited supplies and get on a flight to Egypt to rescue the package. It was only Tuesday, maybe he would be back in time for the show Friday and he would still be able to covertly watch. He had done that a few times before; he had started doing that several shows ago. She always opened the show with a dance, and closed the show the same way. Smart woman, he thought. Anybody there to see the champion dancer would have to stay through the entire show to see her final dance. She charged for tickets upfront so people could either buy them from her ahead of time or at the door once they got there. The ticket price at the door went up about fifteen dollars, but he didn’t care, he would have paid it anyway. The problem was that there wasn’t usually any seats left after the first half hour of entry so there were no tickets to buy.

Natalia had been his saving grace because she had purchased the tickets for two of the shows under her email address and name. When she received the tickets she passed them on to him. He had been reluctant to let her do it. She was his employee, but he knew he couldn’t do it under his own name otherwise the woman would know he was kind of stalking her. He couldn’t ask the guys to do it because they would know he was still in love with his ex-wife and he didn’t want them to know that. Natalia had caught him looking at a flier one day and she offered to buy a ticket for him. “Nobody has to know,” she had said. He took her up on the offer because the first show he tried to go to had been sold out by the time he got to the door. He paid the doorman heavily just to let him stand in back for the first dance only. He didn’t want to make the same mistake again so he let Natalia help him out.

It’s amazing that it had taken a nudge from Alex to get them to even ask Natalia to join them for one of their night outs. She had helped them all above and beyond her duties in one fashion or another. Relationship advice for Jet, life advice for Alex, and assisted stalking for him. He laughed. He really was stalking the woman’s movements—maybe not in the creepy stalker kind of way, but keeping track of her whereabouts and hiding in the back of her shows was definitely the makings of a stalker.

“Hey,” Natalia stepped into his office. “I have that thing we talked about. If you make it back in time I’ll have it in my desk drawer. It’s a back of the room seat as requested.”

“Thanks, Natalia. I couldn’t stalk my ex-wife without you,” he chuckled and she laughed.

“I’m a sucker for love. I just wish you would do something more than watch from afar already. Clearly she still loves you.”

“She left me.”

“As I recall you told me you told her that your career was the most important thing to you.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

She shook her head. “If you haven’t figured it out yet then maybe you should wait a little while longer before making official contact. At any rate, be careful out there. And if you’re not back I’m using the ticket that you technically paid for.”

“Micah won’t be happy you’re ditching him on a Friday night.” He knew even if he were back by Friday he would have to find a suitable excuse for ditching the guys too. Of course he would have a more difficult time because when they were all in town nobody missed a Friday night—none of the guys at least. Natalia and Akira came about once a month otherwise they were busying doing their own thing which left the guys free to just hang out and unwind with each other. They needed that time. Their missions were difficult physically and sometimes emotionally so a break-night was always a good thing.

“He’ll be out with the guys and while I know I’m invited now, I’d rather go watch the show.” She winked at him and shimmied her shoulders. “I’m thinking of taking classes with your ex. I’ve been watching her videos on-line. She’s good. And I’d like to learn something to do one night for Micah. Hey, if I take lessons with her maybe you can drop me off if I happen to accidently have car trouble.” She winked at him as she left his office.

He laughed and shook his head. “Accidently have car trouble,” yeah right. Although that might just be the cover he could use to see Ariana up close and personal once again. Of course according to Natalia he should figure out why saying his career was the most important thing to him was such a bad thing. It was very important to him and Ariana knew that when they got married. He couldn’t figure out what was such a divorce inducing big deal about his career in the Air Force being important to him. “Women,” he mumbled. They were soft, beautiful, delicate yet strong, but they were also crazy. There was no way any man stood a chance figuring them out. He would say that was reason enough to run from all of them, but he didn’t want to. This was one woman he wanted to get back in his life. He had waited too long, procrastinating, being stubborn, refusing to talk to her to ask why she left him the way she had. At first he was angry, then he was sad, then he was just trying to get her out of his mind. After he talked with Victoria and realized that Ariana was the only woman on his mind when he should have been focusing on the job and the client he knew he wouldn’t be able to move forward until he got answers to his questions. If he was lucky he would get her back in his life. If he failed, then at least he would know why she left him the way she did.

Ariana moved around the ballroom of the Four Seasons. The reason she had picked this location had started to elude her until she took another look at the lake view. The beauty of nature combined with the beauty of the human body in motion would be amazing. She loved picking the right location to fit the theme of the show, each show having a different theme sometimes meant she had to step outside the comfort zone and spend a little more to bring it to life. The cost was expensive, but she hadn’t lost money on the event. They were sold out actually. There wouldn’t be any door tickets left to purchase. She smiled just thinking about the show she had put together. This would be special for the dancers, beginner or experienced, student or troop dance routines, she knew they would all enjoy it. When they were done dancing, they had a very good meal waiting for them too. She, however, would have to spend the night meeting and greeting people, keeping dancers’ nerves in check, making sure the show went off without too many hitches—and whatever hitches were to arise she had to make sure she fixed them. She had a backstage assistant, but for the most part the work was on her shoulders. “As it should be,” she whispered. This was her baby and she should be the one to make sure things went according to plan. She had been in the dance world long enough to have experienced major dance competitions and shows. She had learned how to organize and manage these events from watching the people around her who were doing just that. While the dancers were getting hair and makeup together she had already gotten herself together and spent the pre-show time studying the behind the scenes activities. She had been putting these shows on for years herself, but with each one she was still just a little nervous. For some reason this one had her more jittery than the others.

She chalked her jittery nerves up to the location. She was a pro at this, there was no way in the world her stomach should have this many butterflies fluttering around. She wasn’t nervous about her opening and closing routine at all; she figured nervousness for that would come right before the first dance, as it always did. She just felt nervous about this show; as if something was going to go wrong and she wouldn’t be able to fix it.

She shrugged off her worries and kept making sure her vision for the room would work. The manager had been gracious enough to allow her to come in the past few days just to look around, take more pictures and mentally play around with the setup. She already had the setup in mind but she wanted another look. They would be able to get in early Friday morning to setup all the fabrics they would need for decoration, make sure the hotel staff had the tables in the right order so that she could place the table numbers, and get the room ready for the show that would be that night.

“Ceridwen?” She heard the highly accented male voice call behind her. She had chosen that name, far different than what most dancers were choosing at the time, because it was the name of a Welsh goddess. Being part Welsh she wanted to incorporate that into her dance world. From the first moment she started being in shows she had chosen the name of the goddess. She had learned that modern Wiccans—not that she was into that kind of stuff—thought of Ceridwen as the Celtic goddess of rebirth, transformation and inspiration. Everything she had read painted the goddess in a light that she found favorable, including Medieval Welsh poetry referring to her as possessing the cauldron of poetic inspiration. What was dance if not poetry in motion? She was a romantic from birth she would assume because she believed everything she thought of the name even when her instructor at the time tried to get her to take a more traditional belly dance name. She did not want traditional, she wanted Ceridwen. She was barely six at the time. Her mother had called her stubborn, but then she had said that fire inside her was good, that it would take her places she only dreamed of going and to never let anybody extinguish it.

She turned to find a man with dark features—hair, eyes, and a richly almost Middle Eastern skin tone kissed by the sun and smooth.

“Yes. May I help you?” People who called her by her stage name typically knew her as a dancer only. She would guess he wanted an autograph or something. She had a lot of work to get done, but one autograph wouldn’t throw her off schedule too much.

“I saw you dance in Morocco on your last Universe win.”

That was so many years ago, but she understood why people still associated her with it. She was the reigning champion in the competition for so many years—more than any other dancer, and to just drop out of it probably still seemed crazy to everybody on the outside. Her life had changed so much in such a short time after that competition that all of her subsequent choices made sense to her with the exception of one choice that is. Sending Preston divorce papers is the one do-over she wished she could have. Although she wasn’t sure why she felt that way given the fact that the man hadn’t decided to fight for her or for their marriage. He had meant every word he said when he relegated her and their relationship to second place in his life—maybe it was deeper than that because his not even attempting to fight for their marriage told her that it had no place in his life; maybe that hurt her more than coming in second to his career.