Felicity flashed her a grin. “I’ll admit I’m a little in love with my laptop. And prideful. At least until I saw Raine’s. I’ve never seen anyone with that powerful of a laptop.” She glanced over to Raine’s table and waved. “I tried to hack her.”
Shabina was shocked. The other women gasped aloud.
Eve laughed. “She really did. She thinks she’s the best at what she does.”
“You’re lucky you still have your laptop. Most of the time when someone tries to hack Raine, they get viruses that destroy their hard drive beyond repair,” Shabina said.
Felicity nodded, her smile fading. “I knew I was hitting military safeguards and triggering alarms. I could see there was no way in. I immediately contacted her and told her what I’d tried to do. She was very gracious about it.”
“No one from the military visited you?” Theresa asked.
“I’m sure Raine explained things to whoever would have arrested me. I told her to feel free to hack my computer if she could. I gave her my permission to take a look at it so she could see I wasn’t after military secrets. I doubt she did, because she seemed to believe me and I didn’t see any evidence of her taking over my laptop. I’ve never seen anyone better than she is, although she told me there is always someone better. She’s so intelligent, she must be off the charts.”
Theresa and Val both looked across the room at Raine. “She is so quiet,” Val said. “I don’t always notice her. Your other friends seem to be always laughing and talking to everyone, but she keeps to herself, stays more in the background.”
Shabina smiled at Raine. “That’s her way. She doesn’t brag to anyone about how intelligent she is. She even stays quiet in a debate, unless you’re disrespectful to someone, and then she has no problem setting things straight. Crossing Raine’s sense of justice is a huge mistake.”
Feeling eyes on her, she glanced up to see the four students from the university sitting across from the women. The two men from Algeria kept looking toward Raine as if seeing her for the first time. Shabina immediately felt protective. She knew Raine was quite capable of protecting herself, but she had been horribly injured, the bones in her leg shattered when she’d been shot. The bullet meant for Vienna had hit her instead. Vienna and Shabina had kept pressure on the wound to allow a helicopter to land and transport Raine to a waiting surgical team. Still, it had been touch-and-go whether they could save her leg.
The students had heard most of the conversation between the women. If Emar Salhi and Jamal Talbi wanted to blame anyonefor their current problems, they would believe it was Raine who was having their student visas pulled. She didn’t want attention on Raine.
“The other thing is this: Raine is totally protected at all times by a couple of different branches of the government. She’s considered valuable. Someone shot her; that’s why she limps and walks with the cane or crutches right now. The shooter was hunted relentlessly. He is no longer alive, and everyone involved in the plot is gone as well. It isn’t a good thing to try to attack her. Felicity, it was a good thing you owned up to what you were doing immediately.”
Shabina made the statement more for the benefit of the students than the women. She didn’t feel Raine was threatened in any way by the women. If anything, they admired her. She wasn’t so certain the conversation had that same effect on the male students.
“Enjoy your lunch,” she told the women and turned toward the students, greeting them in Arabic. The moment she stepped close to the table, Larado and Zero, two of the security team, stood and walked through the café quite casually. Zero stopped, appearing to look at the view through the window while Larado took up a position close to her, draping himself coolly against the wall. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
Jules Beaumont and Deniz Kaplan both shook their heads and thanked her for the wonderful meal.
Emar held up a hand. “Jamal and I would like to speak with you. And perhaps with your friend.” He gestured toward Raine.
Shabina shook her head, trying to look regretful. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing to say.”
“It is of the utmost importance,” Jamal said. “We wouldn’t intrude otherwise.”
“I won’t be available until after six, and I won’t be alone. My friends will be with me. Whatever you have to say to me will have to be said in front of them.”
Emar and Jamal exchanged a long look, and then Emar nodded. “Where?”
“I think you’re familiar with the address to my home. Don’t try to enter the grounds without permission. The dogs will attack, or a member of the security team is likely to shoot you. You’ll have to stop at the gate and wait for an escort inside the grounds.” She figured if they were desperate enough to see her under those circumstances, she might as well ask the questions she wanted answers to.
Both men nodded and murmured their appreciation.
“I intend to ask you questions. Don’t bother coming if you aren’t prepared to answer me honestly.”
There was a brief flurry of activity at the table nearest to where Zero stood. Zero was tall with dark skin and tight curls on his head. He wore his hair longer so that it fell around his forehead and ears, giving him an unruly appearance. He had wide shoulders and a lithe body, all muscle. He had inserted his body between the men at the table and Shabina. To her horror, she realized that Sean wasn’t with them, but the two men who had been seated while she was talking with Theresa, Val, Felicity and Eve were the two interning with Sean.
She hadn’t banned them from the café, so technically, they could come back and clearly had. She pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips and forced herself to breathe. She didn’t want the students from Algeria, the ones reporting to her father, to see her go to pieces again. Rainier wasn’t close and she couldn’t reach out to him while he was in the field. She didn’t want to call attentionto the fact that he wasn’t around. She hadn’t seen Boucher and Cormier around, but if they were still searching for information, she didn’t want it known that Rainier was out of the country while Scorpion’s cabinet members were assassinated. That would put him under suspicion for sure.
“We’re just asking to talk to her.” Oliver Smythe’s voice was belligerent, sounding oddly like Sean.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said to the university students. As she started toward the table, Vaughn moved to intercept, but Larado got there first.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Larado demanded, inserting his body between hers and the two men.
Zero pointed to the chairs. “Sit, gentlemen. I won’t tell you twice. If you insist on causing a scene in this café again, you will be physically removed.”
“I’m going to tell Mr. Smythe and Mr. Vanderpool exactly what Zero just told them,” Shabina informed Larado. “I own this café, and my customers aren’t here for the drama.”
