Page 5 of Midnight Shadows


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“Moon dancer,” he replied.

Midnight lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything for a moment. They continued weighing each other. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he concerned that she might attack him? She dismissed the thought immediately. His eyes held mirth, not fear or wariness. If anything, she should be the one worrying abouthimattacking. And worry about enjoying it too much if he did.

“Why didn’t you tell the police what they wanted to hear?” she asked.

“Truth is important,” he replied, sounding surprised that he had to state the obvious. “Especially when it is not convenient. The policeman wanted to know who attacked Senator Quest, implying he was the victim. You did not attack him, you defended the girl,” he said with an elegant shrug of his shoulders. His gaze brushed against hers. “She deserves justice.”

Midnight laughed with surprise, the sound barely escaping her scarf. “What are the rules of the desert?” she asked.

He opened his mouth to reply when a shout from the house drew his attention. Midnight felt a pang of regret as she silently moved back into the shadows. Mr. Benning was walking across the yard. Her encounter with Junayd had come to an end.

She backed far enough away that neither man would be able to see her and crouched by a large boxwood. Her heartbeat increased when Junayd turned in a slow circle, searching for her. For a second, she wondered if he could see her when his gaze seemed to pause near where she was crouching before he lifted his eyes to the tall oak.

The whisper of a curse, spoken in Arabic, hung in the air before he turned to face Albert Benning. Midnight waited until the two men disappeared back into the house before she moved. Impatience was a mistake that could have deadly consequences.

Rising to her feet, she retraced her earlier steps to a maintenance gate hidden by overgrown ivy and slipped through the curtain of vines into the shadows of the night.

* * *

Junayd slid into the limousine, retrieved his cell phone, and placed a call. He waited impatiently for the call to be answered. When his brother grumbled a rude greeting, Junayd grimaced. He had obviously caught Jameel at a bad time.

“I need your help,” he responded before adding, “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What’s wrong? Are you in danger? Should I contact Qadir and Tarek?”

Junayd huffed a laugh. “No. I need you to do your magic on a security tape and identify a woman for me,” he said.

Silence descended on the other end. A long, drawn-out silence that began to grate on his nerves. After a minute, he heard a long, hissing breath.

“Are you saying you woke me up in the middle of the night to find a woman for you?” Jameel clarified.

“Not just a woman, a mysterious woman who broke the arm of a potential vice-presidential candidate of the United States,” he replied with a grin.

He heard his brother murmur to someone and realized that his brother had not been sleeping despite the fact that it was the middle of the night. A muted curse followed by the phone clattering to the floor forced Junayd to hold the receiver away from his ear. He was thankful he had not initiated avideocall with his twin.

“Okay, can you repeat that?” Jameel requested in a slightly breathless voice.

“It can wait until morning, I guess,” he grudgingly replied.

“For the love of—! You have my attention now; will you please tell me what you have gotten yourself into? You do know you are supposed to be the sane one out of the four of us,” Jameel added.

Junayd chuckled. “The woman I met tonight… Jameel, she was incredible. I think she is myAlmukhtar.”

The sound of the phone dropping again made him laugh. He felt alive, invigorated, and, for the first time in years, challenged. His brother’s colorful curses filled his ear.

“Have you been drinking? Hit over the head? What have you done with my brother?” Jameel hoarsely demanded.

“Breathe, Jameel,” he laughed.

“I have you on video now. I’m looking in your ear,” his brother stated.

Junayd pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at his disheveled brother’s face. “I met her, and… I haven’teverfelt this kind of energy before. She was….” He tilted the phone away from his face as he tried to compose his expression.

“Okay, back up to the beginning. Where did you meet her? What is her name? Do you have a photo of her? Wait, if she is mysterious, does this mean you don’t know her name? Why is she on a security video and what the hell do you mean she broke the arm of a potential VP of the US?” Jameel demanded, running his hand through his already unkempt hair.

“No, I don’t have her name. I don’t have a photo of her, all I saw was her eyes—and her hair, and her body—and her voice was….” He cleared his throat. “Oliver Quest was attacking a teen girl at an event I was attending and this woman appeared out of the shadows and beat him senseless,” he said.

Jameel absorbed that for a moment, tilting his head. “So, you know absolutely nothing about this woman? You don’t know her name, where she lives, where she came from. If I’m understanding you correctly, you don’t know what she even looks like but you think she is yourAlmukhtar,” Jameel said, sitting back in his computer chair.

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