Page 134 of Enemy of My Enemy

“Faisal called on the way. Says he has something for you.”

Ethan said nothing.

Adam didn’t wait for Ethan when they arrived, pulling into a gated seaside villa on the coast of the Red Sea. He ducked out of the car before the doors were all the way up, jogging around the front and heading to the house. Ethan followed.

Faisal stood in the front entrance, waiting. Gone were the long Saudi robes, the keffiyeh. He wore designer jeans and a T-shirt, and Adam was striding toward him. Faisal’s gaze wasn’t on Ethan; it was on Adam, fixed to the lieutenant’s face.

Beyond the two, another of Adam’s team hovered in the background, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He tried to place the face and then remembered: Doc, the corpsman. He’d stitched Ethan back together, and he’d been none too gentle with the needle, or with his acerbic tongue.

His gaze snapped back as Adam stopped in front of Faisal, trembling. His whole body shook, and his shoulders were stretched taut, the lines of his dark suit pulled tight. Faisal stared into Adam’s eyes, not moving.

Adam leaned forward. His forehead pressed against Faisal’s, and his eyes slipped closed.

Oh.Oh.

The pieces slid together, a puzzle falling into place in his mind.

Faisal turned to Ethan. He said nothing, not until Adam stepped sideways, still looking down, but close enough for Faisal to reach out to and wrap his hand around Adam’s waist. “Mr. Reichenbach.Al-hamdu lillah.We’re delighted you’re here.”

A soft snort from Doc.

“I…”

Adam’s gaze pierced his. Fear, so much fear, and an underlying current of desperate, frantic hope. Adam still clenched the Lamborghini keys in his hands, almost flexing the metal up and down.

Jesus, he’d been like that, once. He’d looked at the world like that while standing beside the man he loved, and he’d dared to dream.

How wrong he’d been.

Could it be different for Adam and Faisal? A Marine and a Saudi prince? If there was ever a pair more unlikely than him and Jack, this would be it.

“I guess this explains some things,” he said softly. “How long has this been going on?” Did something happen while they were searching for Madigan and using Faisal’s palace as a base? Or back in Ethiopia, when they seemed to know each other a bit more than colleagues?

Doc snorted again. “That’sa long story.”

“Off and on for three years. We kept it secret. Until last week.” Adam looked at Faisal, his lips pressed hard in a thin line. “No more hiding,” he whispered.

Faisal smiled, soft and sweet, and kissed the back of Adam’s hand.

In the back, Doc’s gaze burned into Ethan, watching him with the predatory intensity of a falcon.

He looked down as his heart bled down the inside of his ribs. Their love, seeing their hope, scraped down his spine.I had that once! I had a man who would choose our love over the world, and I was happy. I was so happy.

But no more.

Clearing his throat, Ethan hitched his duffel on his shoulder. “Lieutenant, you said Faisal had something for us?”

“Yes. This way.”

Faisal led them back to his open living room overlooking a wide deck and the Red Sea. The room was ultra modern and whitewashed, and Faisal settled in the middle of a white, wraparound leather couch. He grabbed his laptop as Adam hovered behind him, gripping the cushions on either side of his shoulders, and Doc threw himself into the white chaise. On a flat-screen mounted opposite the couch, Faisal called up a series of maps of the Arabian Peninsula, markers placed in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

“I’ve been reaching out to my sources on the ground. Village elders. Bedouin. A few smugglers. I heard the same thing over and over. People have started avoiding this area,” he said, zooming in on a section of Saudi Arabia north of Jeddah, still on the Red Sea, between Umluj and Al Wajh. “They say it’s haunted bydjinn. That anyone who goes there doesn’t return.”

Ethan peered at the map. “Are those reefs? Right off the coast?” A series of sandbars and shallow turquoise waters poked at the empty coastline, a wasteland of rocks and cliffs on Saudi’s western frontier.

“Shark-infested cays and a barrier reef at the vertical drop. Fishermen occasionally dare the waters, or go specifically to try to catch a large shark to sell. Most people avoid it.”

“What else is out there?”