Jules Beaumont asked her where she’d learned to speak French and if she spoke other languages. She shouldn’t have been unsettled by his question or the piercing stare he gave her, but she was. She managed to smile and tell him she had a gift for languages and had learned at a young age. And yes, she spoke several different languages.
She moved away from them to the relative safety of the Garner sisters. Felicity and Eve were high energy and helped to keep her fears at bay while she answered the dozens of questions they always had.
It took every ounce of courage she possessed to join the two businessmen. They greeted her politely, both speaking in French. She answered them in that language and then introduced Harlow. No one ever pointed out that Harlow was the daughter of a senator, but in this case, she was tempted. She wanted the men to know Harlow was protected. They made her even more nervousthan Jules Beaumont, but she wasn’t sure why. She was fast becoming a wreck for no apparent reason.
Both men were polite, assuring her they were having a good time and learning about the things they were most interested in. She thought that was an odd way to phrase it. She noted that Beaumont joined them for lunch and the three men seemed easy in one another’s company.
There was no getting around facing Bale, with his flock of women hanging around him. Edward surprised her by asking about a couple of the birds they’d seen. He seemed genuinely interested. Bale gave a loud snort of derision, and Edward looked away. Bale made a snide comment about Shabina’s cushy job staring at birds all day. One of the women voiced a protest. Shabina flashed a cheerful smile and walked away.
Throughout the rest of the tour, each time she spoke, Bale had something derogatory to say, mostly implying that he doubted she had accurate information. A few of the others objected and asked him to stop. He glared at them, trying his best to intimidate them. She noticed Edward walked a little ahead of him, joining the three women vacationing from Washington. He didn’t once look back at Bale, or if he did, she didn’t catch him. Sean didn’t follow Bale’s lead by interrupting her or making nasty comments, but he stared at her constantly. That alone gave her the creeps.
Shabina was mentally and physically exhausted as she made her way with Harlow back to her car. “That went fairly well, considering it was such a large group.”
“What do you think Bale and his buddies were up to?” Harlow asked. “I did text Raine that they had come and also sent her pictures of everyone on the tour.”
“Bale is really beginning to worry me,” Shabina confessed. “Idon’t know what he’s up to, but if he’s involved in that murder, he very well could have been looking for another way to involve me, although I don’t see how.”
“You were brilliant the way you handled them. They were definitely confused,” Harlow said. “But I’ll admit, they made me so nervous, I couldn’t concentrate on anything you were saying. How did you manage to keep going all day? Especially with the way Sean kept staring at you. Did you notice?”
She had noticed. How could she have missed it? But Bale had been worse. It was clear he was planning something. Mostly she’d been concerned about Rhys Cormier and Ellis Boucher. She had the bad feeling their business had something to do with her. It was the way they both avoided looking at her. They knew she spoke French. They had come to her café and known she had spent a great deal of time in Saudi Arabia just by the food she had on the menu. Her name meant “eye of the storm.” She had built-in radar, and it was going off big-time. On the other hand, she had so many triggers the flashbacks were creeping far too close. Physically, she had all the symptoms. It was only the discipline she’d acquired during her time as a captive that allowed her to appear calm, even serene.
“I don’t understand Sean at all. If he really has a thing for me, why would he act so obnoxious? Does he think that’s going to win him points? If he ever once had the chance to date me, it ended the first time he threw a fit in my café insisting my food was bad.” Shabina lifted her chin. “My food isneverbad. Had he said he didn’t like what he’d ordered and asked if he could try something else, I would have gladly switched the items for him.”
Harlow leaned against her car. “You know what I think? Bale calls the shots and the others dance to his tune. I think he toldthem to start harassing you. Bale’s been the ringleader since they were kids, so they follow his lead blindly.”
“Like sheep. Great. Our Fish and Wildlife ranger is a sheep.” Shabina rubbed her temples. Her headaches were coming back in force. She used to get them all the time, but after finding her way to Knightly, the headaches had slowly begun to disappear. “Worse, Sean believes he’s a predator.”
“Well, we know he’s not,” Harlow said staunchly. “If he’s so ridiculous as to be part of a scheme to try to frame you for murder, we definitely can outsmart him, and he’ll get everything he has coming to him.”
Shabina hoped she was right. “What do you think about Jason? He’s always with them, or at least he used to be.”
Harlow sighed. “I honestly don’t know what to make of him. He went to college with them and came here and fell in love with the Sierra. My impression is he doesn’t like the things they do. If you notice, he rarely says anything when the others are harassing women. Sometimes he just walks off. More and more it seems as if he is separating himself from them.”
“Were you surprised when Bruce offered him a job at the Brewery? Because it shocked me. And I think it shocked Bale.” Shabina rubbed at her thigh. The dogs pushed closer to her, another sign that they knew she was becoming more anxious.
“I think everyone was shocked, especially Zahra. In the end, that, more than anything else, really made up her mind that she wouldn’t wait around for Bruce to man up and ask her out. If he could become close to a man who surrounded himself with the kinds of friends Jason had, the ones who taunted her and harassed her, she wasn’t going to wait. You know Zahra, she just fades away.”
“Bruce appears to be still pining.”
“That’s on him. If he’s too dense to realize what he’s done and that he’s lost his opportunity, then it’s too bad for him,” Harlow reiterated. “At least Jason isn’t hanging around Bale so much, taking his command as absolute law like Edward and Sean.”
“No, he doesn’t seem to be.”
Shabina knew Bale wasn’t giving up his anger and whatever revenge he had planned, whether it had anything to do with the murder or not. She’d felt his eyes on her several times, and when she’d looked his way, he’d been looking at her with open malice.
“Why do you suppose men despise me so much?” She intended to ask Rainier the same question the next time he turned up. “What is it about me that causes them to hate me so much that they’re willing to do such despicable things, Harlow?”
She’d asked the question of herself so many times, she didn’t even feel sorry for herself the way she had when she was a teenager. Scorpion had reminded her a hundred times a day every torture, every death was on her head. She didn’t understand why. When she asked, he beat her and told her she should know. She should be able to figure it out if she had a brain. She knew she was intelligent, but logically she couldn’t put it together. Why his cabinet despised her. Why he did. Why most of the mercenaries had. Now Bale and his friends.
“You have to know it isn’t you, Shabina,” Harlow said. “How could it be? There isn’t anything you do or say that could possibly make anyone dislike you. You’re friendly to everyone.”
That was the standard reaction. It didn’t explain anything. Her therapist had given her that same exact answer. Raine had given it to her. It was always the same, and yet, men seemed to be driven to commit heinous acts because of her. At least, they claimed it was because of her.
Her head began to feel as if it were being crushed in a vise.She had to stop thinking so much about Scorpion, or she would be too sick to drive home.
“Last night I had such fun with all of you, and I felt that I could get through the next few days, that maybe all of us together could figure out what was really happening. That we could make sense of it. But just a few hours in the company of Bale and the men from Paris and the one from Belgium, and I’m a mess all over again. I’m so paranoid I suspect everyone.”
Her dogs pressed close to her in an effort to comfort her. Harlow touched her shoulder gently. “Honey, today would have been difficult for anyone. It was pure torture with Bale and his crew coming, and you handled it like a pro. On top of that with the murderer doing some sort of ritual sacrifice that involved items from the Middle East, naturally you would be upset. I’m upset and very leery. I certainly don’t want you to come alone out in the forest the way you always do.”
