Out of Control (11 page)

“Should we call the FBI? The CIA?”

“We can call, but I don’t think they’ll see this as a credible threat. After all,
we’ve only got theories and assumptions. Pretty outrageous ones at that.”

I peered at him. “Are you suggesting we do something on our own?”

His hand stilled atop my head. “What would it hurt to go over there and check things
out?”

“Nothing, but how would we go about it? I understand no one can even get into the
country unless they’re sponsored by a Saudi citizen.”

His hand moved to my cheek, and downward to my neck, where he massaged gently. “Let’s
ask Sweet for his advice. He knows a lot of Sauds.”

I eyed him speculatively. “Don’t
you
know a lot of Sauds?”

“Not the kind we’d need to see. I’m thinking we can set up a meeting to discuss blowout
equipment, and finagle an introduction to Hakeem. But Sweet would have to make some
calls, and give his blessing to us going over there.”

I wondered what kind of Saudis he
did
know.

Snuggling down in the bed, I yawned hugely. “If I want it, he’ll give it to me. Sweet
loves me because I’m great at what I do.”

“Now who’s conceited?”

“Just stating the facts, sir.”

He leaned down and kissed my nose. “You are pretty great,” he sat back up, “even if
you are a girl.”

“You’re also pretty great, even if you are an arrogant, full-of-yourself male.”

His striking face broke into a wide smile. “There, you see? We like each other in
spite of our limitations.”

“Robichaud, me being a girl isn’t exactly a limitation. I doubt you’d be interested
if I wasn’t a girl.”

His smile slowly faded and he said in all seriousness, “I imagine you wouldn’t be
so interested, either, if I weren’t what I am.”

Looking into his dark, beautiful eyes, I hummed out a sigh. “God help me, but you
may be right.”

…

We left Dallas early the next morning and flew to New Orleans, letting Conaway tag
along because I knew she’d follow anyway. She left her car parked at DFW and said
she’d go back for it later.

When we landed in New Orleans, we got in Robichaud’s Explorer and headed west, straight
to where Sweet was supervising the offshore blowout. We radioed to ask him to meet
us for lunch, and over baskets of fish and shrimp and bottles of cold beer, we told
him of our suspicions, then asked if he thought it would do any good to go to Saudi
Arabia.

As he always does, Sweet thought aloud, still munching on onion rings and fried catfish.
“Whole damn world’ll go into a tailspin, something like that happens. Damn price of
oil’s off the map as it is. If the boy’s planning something, it just might be that
we can get a jump on him. Go to the authorities and let ‘em know one of their own’s
about to screw the country all to hell. Gotta be careful, though, because the kid’s
related to the king, and it just might piss ‘em off to have one of the family accused
of something like this. Course, he’s been in trouble before. You say he got kicked
out of the States?”

Conaway nodded and opened her mouth to answer, but Sweet was already off and running
again.

“Not like they don’t know he’s a troublemaker. It’ll cost us some money to get the
two of you over there, but hell, we needed to do a dog and pony with that new equipment
design anyway, so we can kill two birds with one stone. I can set it up with Al-Fulani.
Good guy. On the board at Aramco, so he’ll know the boy’s daddy. He can introduce
Robichaud.” He glanced at Nick. “You’ll have to make up some hogwash story about knowing
him from school. Don’t like little sister going, but it makes a better story, and
you may need some help. She can go as the wife, maybe get some information from the
other women. Wonder if Hakeem’s married?”

I froze with a bite of shrimp halfway to my mouth. Say, what?

Sweet finished his fish, drained his beer, then sat back and rubbed his portly belly.
“Don’t be telling Dorie about the fried stuff. Woman’s got me eating weeds and baked
salmon. Calls me every day out there and asks what I ate. She really don’t get that
we eat a lot of crap. Got no choice.”

“Maybe you should hire Conaway to cook for you,” Robichaud said. “She makes a killer
lasagna.”

He peered at her curiously. “What was it you said you do?”

“I’m a telejournalism grad student at UCLA.”

“What does a person do with a degree like that?”

“Become a television reporter.”

“Well, lemme know when you start looking for a real job. Got a friend at CNN might
be able to hook you up.”

“Thank you, sir, but I think I can—”

“Name of Sam Hunnicut. Runs something-or-other out there.”

Conaway shot me a wide-eyed glance that said,
Oh my God, this is huge.
To Sweet, she said, “I’d appreciate it.”

But I was still back at the “wife” thing. I managed to unstick my tongue and say,
“Um, sir, about that thing you—”

“Not now, sister.” Waving me off, he stood and reached into his pocket for his cell
phone. “I’m going to the truck to call the office and get some phone numbers. Make
some calls and see if we can get this set up. Eight hours ahead there, so it’s not
too late. May play hell getting you a visa on a moment’s notice, but we’ll see what
we can do. Y’all sit tight—” he glanced toward the kitchen “—and order me some of
that bread pudding. But don’t be telling Dorie, now, y’hear?”

I decided I must have heard wrong.

Sweet had been gone about five minutes when Robichaud got up and said offhandedly,
“Excuse me, ladies.”

I watched him walk toward the hallway that led to the restrooms, then wondered why
he turned and headed out the side door of the restaurant.

“So, what’s up with him, anyway?” Conaway asked, her gaze also following his exit.
“If Matthew McConaughey and Rambo had a baby, he’d be Robichaud. Except maybe not
quite so hot.” She turned back to look at me. “You’ve got it bad for the guy, don’t
you?”

“If by got it bad, you mean I enjoy his company, then yes, I suppose I do.”

She snorted a laugh. “Lay off that Southern belle crap. This is me you’re talking
to.”

I swallowed the last of my beer and set the bottle down carefully, keeping my focus
on it instead of Conaway’s curious face. “Okay, you’re right. If we didn’t work together,
I’d be all over him like syrup on pancakes.” I chewed a lip. “But it won’t end well,
and then it’ll be really hard to work with him. You saw what it’s like, the close
quarters when we’re assigned to a job, and how important it is that we all work as
a team.”

“Who says it’ll end badly? Who says it’ll end at all? He just might turn out to be
your One and Only.”

I lifted a shoulder. “It’s not a good risk. I worked my butt off to get where I’m
at, and it seems really stupid to jeopardize that just for sex, even if he is hot.”

“Oh, he’s more than just sex, Blair. I think you’re halfway in love with him, and
that’s why you’re hesitating. You got burned before, and being who you are has probably
not been great for your love life, either, so anything that smacks of more than sex
totally freaks you out.”

I shook my head while I watched the waitress deposit Sweet’s bread pudding on the
table. When she was gone, I said, “Nah. I don’t worry that I’ll make the same mistake
I made with A.J. That was seven years ago, and I was just a baby. Since then, my love
life’s been pretty tame, mostly because I’m out of town so much. I can’t even get
a dog.” I eyed her curiously. “So, what’s your excuse?”

She shrugged. “Guys just kinda piss me off. I figure one of these days I’ll meet one
who doesn’t and that’s how I’ll know he’s the One. But it’s not something I think
about, really. All I care about right now is acing my thesis and landing a plum job
with a major news program.”

“Don’t most newbie reporters have to pay dues in dinky towns before they hit the big
time?”

She gave me that classic Conaway grin, showing her perfect white teeth. “Not this
newbie.”

Her confidence was infectious. I returned her smile. “I hope you make it huge, Leslie.
I’ll be proud to say I knew you when.”

She turned serious on me all of a sudden. “It’s really not about making it big, you
know. Money isn’t the draw, because someday I’ll inherit a bundle. And being famous
isn’t important to me. There’s just something that makes me want to dig deep into
things, find out the truth, and tell people so they’re not led around like mindless
sheep.” She nodded toward the door. “Take him, for instance. Every instinct I have
says there’s some huge secret he’s hiding, and I for one am dying to know what it
is.”

“You think he’s leading people around like sheep?”

“Maybe. Us, anyway. Have you thought of that?”

I began to peel the label off the beer bottle, pulling long strips of foil away and
tossing them into my empty shrimp basket. “What are you getting at? You don’t think
he’s got anything to do with the blowouts, surely?”

“No, nothing like that. I just wonder why he’s so handy with a gun, and how he knows
about Saudi oil ports, and why he didn’t go to Venezuela after all. I know he said
it’s because you didn’t go, but he’s only been working at Lacrouix and Book for two
months, and it seems strange he’d back out of an assignment just because of a woman.
Makes him look like he’s not all that dependable, which doesn’t fit who he seems to
be.” She glanced toward the length of windows along the wall of the restaurant and
narrowed her eyes. “He’s out there talking it up with Sweet, and they both look über
serious. Wonder why Sweet mentioned getting you a visa, but nothing about one for
Robichaud?”

I didn’t look. Just kept peeling that label off the bottle. “Maybe he’s already got
one.”

“Could be. Well, here they come.”

Sweet took his chair and dug into the bread pudding. “Got it all set up, little sister.
You’ll be leaving in the morning, taking a company jet and the prototype of the new
blowout preventer. Al-Fulani invited you and Robichaud to stay with him at his home.
He thinks you’re married, so you need to find a ring, and Donna at the office is going
to make up a fake marriage certificate. The
mutawaeen
will sometimes ask for proof of marriage, although that shouldn’t be an issue because
I doubt you’ll ever be on the street. I don’t think they’ll ask about your name not
being Robichaud on your passport and visa, because the women over there keep their
maiden names. Should have the visa by first thing in the morning, sent by courier.
Soon as you get back to New Orleans, call Dorie and tell her you need her Saudi rags.
She’s got everything you’ll need to wear, and will tell you how you should go about
doing things over there.” He glanced up from the bowl. “And don’t be ratting me out
about this lunch, hear?”

“Yes, sir.” I swallowed, deciding not to make a deal out of the married thing. Probably
didn’t mean anything, anyway. No doubt we’d still have separate accommodations. Not
that I was necessarily opposed—

Focus
, Blair.

I glanced at Nick. “What about your visa?”

His dark gaze remained on my hands around the beer bottle. “It’s taken care of.”

What did that mean? I met his eyes and he smiled at me. I smiled back, even as I wondered
if I was falling for a man with a lot of secrets.

God, I hoped not. It rather stunned me how much I wanted Robichaud to be precisely
what he appeared to be.

…

On the way back to New Orleans, I called Cole Fox so I could tell him what I’d found
to implicate Dylan in the blowouts—which was exactly nothing. Conaway and Robichaud
both said I shouldn’t mention the new development or our concerns about Hakeem, but
it was a moot point because Cole didn’t answer my calls, either on his cell or at
his home. Pondering what he did for a living and why he hadn’t given me an office
number, I finally gave up trying to reach him. I opted not to leave messages. Under
the circumstances, it didn’t seem wise.

Back in New Orleans, Conaway agreed to stick around and work on finding out whether
or not Dylan or his dad had bought oil futures. Since she’d left her car in Dallas,
I offered her mine, along with a place to stay at my house, and she said that’d be
great since she was down to her last hundred bucks. Robichaud handed her a wad of
cash when he thought I wasn’t looking. Something about that really got to me.

The man was too good to be true.

You’d think feeling that would make me happy. But it didn’t.

Because you know what they say about things that are too good to be true.

Chapter Eight

Looking across the width of the private plane, which was outfitted with much more
comfortable seating than the usual claptrap aircraft we took to fires, I watched Nick
while he read the latest
Oil and Gas Journal
. Dressed in a pair of faded jeans and an equally faded T-shirt, he was slouched in
the wide leather seat, his legs spread far apart, his boots toes up.

He glanced over the top of the magazine. “This is gonna be a long flight, sugar. Maybe
you shouldn’t be staring at me like that. Otherwise, one of the pilots might catch
you in a compromising position.”

I kept staring. He went back to reading but I saw the ghost of a smile.

A while later, he threw the magazine aside and reached into the compartment nestled
in the cocktail table between our seats. He pulled out a deck of cards and started
to shuffle. “Five card stud, jokers are wild. Minimum bet’s two dollars.”

“Deal.”

I have no idea how long we played poker. At one point, Ted, the copilot, came back
and played with us, and later, Hank, the pilot, played a few hands. Altogether, I
lost eighty bucks. I decided I was all done with poker. Cash was right—I suck at it.

We each leaned our seats back and slept several hours, waking up when we landed at
Lajes air base in the Azores to refuel. Hank had meals stowed in the galley, and we
spent the time on the ground eating. Eventually, we took off again. Robichaud played
us a video about Saudi customs slanted toward business visitors, which I watched with
interest despite the fact that I wouldn’t be taking part in any business meetings.
When the narrator began discussing proper table etiquette, I glanced at Robichaud.
He was sound asleep. I wondered if he’d nodded off because it was boring, or because
he already knew all that stuff.

I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up, we were landing in Riyadh. Robichaud had changed
clothes. I was now traveling with a man who could easily pass for a born and raised
Saudi Arabian. Dressed in a long white shirt, a
thobe
, with a white
ghutra
folded on his head and held in place with the traditional, black cords of an
agal
, his dark eyes, black brows and tanned skin lent themselves to the whole picture.
I was impressed. And a little turned on. Hell, I’d seen
The Sheikh.

“What time is it?”

He looked at me and didn’t smile. “A little after seven in the morning. You’d best
get dressed. Al-Fulani will be here within an hour, along with a customs agent.”

I went to the small bathroom and did my best to clean up a bit, then stepped into
the galley area to change clothes. Off went my jeans and camisole, replaced by a conservative
black suit I’d dug out of the back of my closet. It was a Chanel style my mother had
given me when I graduated from college, with a skirt that came below my knees and
a modest black shell that went beneath the boxy jacket. Over everything, I put on
Dorie’s black silk
abaya
, then positioned a black scarf around my head. I slipped on a pair of black pumps
and I was done.

Robichaud took one look and nodded his approval before he held out his hand and gave
me a ring. He’d told me in New Orleans not to worry about it, that he’d provide a
ring. I’d expected a plain, gold band. Instead, it was a rock on a platinum band.
I blinked at the enormity of it. “Damn. Where’d you get this?”

He turned away and bent to look through his leather portfolio. “It was my grandmother’s.
I thought it was better than something simple. We wouldn’t want Al-Fulani to think
I’m a cheap fucker, now would we?”

I let that sink in for a moment. “Just curious, but why do you have your grandmother’s
wedding ring?”

He straightened and faced me again. “She left it to me. Said it brought her good luck
and a happy marriage, and she hoped it would do the same for me.”

I wasn’t about to touch that. “Weren’t your siblings mad that you got it?”

He turned back to the portfolio. “The only sibling I had was my brother, and he died.”

“I’m sorry, Nick.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, “me too.”

“What happened?”

He sat down in his seat and continued digging through the papers in the portfolio
without looking up. “He was murdered.”

I drifted down to sit beside him and waited, a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Somehow, I knew this was significant.

He didn’t say anything else.

“If you don’t want to talk about it I understand, but I’d really like to know what
happened. What was his name?”

“Alex.” Nick gave up trying to find whatever it was he wanted. Tossing the portfolio
to the cocktail table, he settled back and stared grimly across the plane. “He was
seven years older than me, but age wasn’t our only difference. Alex was like the rest
of my family—into art and antiquities and I guess what some would call the finer things
in life. He got a degree in archeology and helped to fund some expeditions.” Nick
finally looked at me, his dark eyes hard as obsidian. “He was particularly interested
in the Middle East. When I was a junior in college, he brought a group of colleagues
here, to Saudi Arabia. None of them came home.”

Shock stabbed through me. “Terrorists?”

“Arms dealers. Alex and his buddies stumbled across one of their strongholds in the
south, close to the Yemen border. I can imagine how it went down, because before Alex
was an archeologist, he was an idealist. A pacifist. He grew up with a lot of money,
in an influential family. People he knew in the United States listened to him, cared
what he thought. If he’d pleaded stupidity and played the part of a clueless Westerner
in search of relics, I think the dealers would have let him go on his way. But he
got on his damn soapbox and told them how things ought to be, fully expecting them
to fall right in line and give up their business because he said it was wrong.”

Nick sounded so bitter I could almost taste it. But I wasn’t certain who, exactly,
he was more pissed off at—his brother, or the arms dealers. I thought it strange,
this obvious ambivalence.

“It was months before we found out what happened. My father went to Washington and
called in every favor ever owed him to get information. Eventually, the State Department
uncovered the truth and told him. He tried to get Alex’s remains returned, but he’d
been buried with his friends in unmarked graves out in the middle of nowhere, and
it wasn’t possible.” Nick sighed and looked away again. “My parents never got over
it. Alex was their first child, the one most like them.”

“And you aren’t like them?”

“Not hardly. My mother used to say she must have hatched an egg from another nest.”

I winced inwardly. That was harsh. I was reminded of my own mother who’d once said
she often wondered if I was switched at birth. “So you’re a black sheep, like me.”

His lips curved into a slight smile. “Now you know why I like you so much.”

“And all this time, I thought it was about the sex.”

“Of course it’s about the sex. It’s always about the sex.” He reached for my hand
and held it, rubbing his thumb across my skin. “But it’s not
just
about the sex.”

I stared down at our intertwined hands. “You came here and hunted for the men who
killed Alex, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find them?”

“Yes.” He reached out with his other hand and touched my chin, making me raise my
face and look at him. “I expected to hate them. I thought I’d kill each one of them,
slowly and painfully, and take the certainty that justice had been done back to my
parents so they could move on and let it go.”

“But you didn’t kill them.”

Slowly, he shook his head. “Hell, I couldn’t even hate them.”

“Did they know who you were?”

“Absolutely. Alex and I were remarkably similar. They tied me up the minute I came
into their camp and kept me that way for two days, asking a thousand questions. I
told them I had come to ask about my brother, that I wanted to know what he did to
deserve death. I think they respected me for that, for not lying, and for having the
nuts to just walk into their camp bold as brass. They cut me loose, and I was with
them for almost three months. In the beginning, I constantly looked for opportunities
to kill them, learning their habits, picking up on any weaknesses. But over time I
came to know them, and in the end, I couldn’t do it.”

He let go of my hand and turned toward the window, looking out at the sunrise. “One
morning, they woke me up and said it was time for me to go. They put me in the back
of the Jeep I’d driven there, and I thought for sure they were going to take me out
in the desert, as they’d done with my brother, and kill me. I thought about my parents,
how devastated they were going to be, and what a fool I’d been to think I could exact
revenge. But instead of killing me, they drove me to Najran and dropped me at the
airport. I took a flight back to Dhahran, waiting the whole time for the other shoe
to drop. It never did.”

I looked out the plane’s window at the sun shining through a grove of date palms in
the distance. “Wow.”

“Most of their customers were Saudi men who wanted guns to protect their families.
Or so they said.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Nine years. I took a job with Aramco right out of college, strictly so I could come
to Saudi and find them.”

I looked back at him. “How did you explain to Aramco about being gone three months?”

“I told the truth.”

“And got the sack?”

“No, but I quit within a couple of years.”

“And went to work for Worldwide?” He didn’t answer. “What
did
you do after you left Aramco?”

His gaze drifted away. “I can’t really say, Blair. Someday, when it doesn’t matter,
I’ll tell you, but for now it’s not something I’m free to talk about.”

“Did you go to work for the CIA, or something like that?”

“Something like that.”

“Why can’t you talk about it? Are you still working for Something Like That?”

He grabbed the portfolio and began to dig through the papers again. I took that as
a yes.

He pulled out a business card and handed it to me. The name on the card was Dan Garza.
With a single phone number and nothing else. “That’s a Saudi number. If anything happens
to me while we’re here, call Dan and tell him. If we get separated and you can’t get
to me, or can’t find me, call Dan. He can help.”

“I suppose you’re not going to tell me who this mysterious Dan is, or why he’s so
helpful?”

“No, I’m not.

The pilot, Hank, came into the cabin looking very tired. “Wish Al-Fulani would hurry
it up. Me and Ted are ready to head for the hotel and get some shut-eye.”

As if his words had conjured him, a man appeared at the open hatch. Kaliq Al-Fulani
was imposing, with his neatly trimmed beard, long, white
thobe
, and customary red and white checked
ghutra
covering his head.

Robichaud extended his hand to him in greeting. I noticed he barely smiled, and neither
did Kaliq, although the older man stood very close as they shook hands and went through
the traditional greeting. I think Kaliq was a little surprised that Nick spoke to
him in Arabic. He grew much friendlier as they talked. Nick introduced Kaliq to Hank
and Ted, who’d come out of the cockpit about the time the Arab had arrived. Kaliq
greeted them in perfect English.

I was last. Standing several feet away, I had to resist the urge to move forward and
extend my hand. Instead, I dipped my head politely, eyes down, and murmured a quiet
hello when Robichaud nodded toward me. Kaliq spared me nothing more than a glance
before he turned to the hatch and waved the customs agent inside.

We spent the next thirty minutes allowing the agent to go through our luggage and
inspect the cargo hold at the back of the plane. When he was done, he stamped our
passports—both in Robichaud’s possession—and took his leave.

I was relieved, having heard the horrors of Saudi Arabian customs agents from some
of my coworkers. I’d never been assigned to a fire in Saudi, because no way the Arabs
would let a woman work alongside men out in the field. The closest I’d come to working
a fire in a Middle Eastern country was Iraq.

For the next half-hour I sat in the plane while Robichaud and Kaliq supervised the
unloading of the prototype. It was to be taken to an Aramco field office and inspected
by a team of engineers, who would then report their findings back to Kaliq. If they
liked it, and he agreed, he’d hopefully place an order for several of them.

I was very proud of the prototype because I’d had a hand in developing it. But instead
of participating in the dog and pony, I was stuck inside the plane, twiddling my thumbs
while I waited. Remind me again why I’d come?

Oh, right. I was supposed to hang out with Kaliq’s womenfolk and talk about girly
stuff. If they spoke any English…

It was with some trepidation that I got in the back of a black Mercedes limousine
along with Robichaud, who sat next to me, and Kaliq, who sat facing us. He never spoke
to me, nor did Nick. I was like furniture.

I spent the trip to Kaliq’s home staring out the window, taking in the sights of Riyadh
as we passed. It would have been nice to ask questions about things, but they both
made it very clear I was supposed to be seen not heard. They conversed solely in Arabic.

Eventually, the limo pulled through a massive gate set into a twelve foot wall of
white, and drove down a palm-lined drive toward an enormous house. Instead of pulling
beneath the wide portico out front, the driver turned in the opposite direction and
stopped beside a door at the side of the house. Nick glanced at me and said softly,
“This is the women’s entrance. Kaliq’s daughter, Ara, will answer your knock and show
you to our room. I’ll see you there in just a bit.”

“Where are you going?”