He had made peace with the fact that he would never know what to expect next from Talia Jasmine Burke.
But this was beyond unexpected. And he wasn't ready for it.
He stared into her eyes. They were flaying him with rage. But now anxiety muddied their luminous depths. It fit what he knew of her, that his first sighting of the debilitating emotion there wouldn't be on her own account, but on a loved one's.
Her brother.
So that was it. Why she was here.
He knew she'd been determined not to tell him, hated that she had, was madder than ever, at herself. But it was out.
At least, the first clue was. He realized she was talking about the same T. J. Burke he'd investigated. There couldn't be another one who happened to be in jail, too.
That still didn't tell him why she'd implicated his family in her brother's imprisonment. And it was clear he had another fight on his hands until she gave him anything more.
After a long moment of refusing to give an inch, her whole body started shaking from escalating tension, her eyes growing brighter as pain welled in them. His insides itched with the need to defuse her agitation. But he was the enemy to her now. She wouldn't let him console her while she considered him-however indirectly-the cause of her brother's suffering.
Struggling not to override her resistance and to hell with the consequences, maybe even letting her vent her surplus of anguish by lashing out at him, he let out a ragged exhalation. "You've come this far. Tell me the rest."
She glared defiance at him then echoed his exhalation. "Why? So you can tell me I got it all wrong again? You've said that a few times already. I'll cut and paste on my own."
"Oqssem b'Ellahi, I swear to God, Talia, if you don't start talking, I'll kiss you again."
Outrage flared in her eyes. And, he was certain, unwilling remembrance and involuntary temptation, too. That only seemed to pour fuel on her indignation. He would have been thrilled that her attraction was so fierce it defied even her hostility. If the grimness of the situation wasn't mounting by the second. Then she thrilled him anyway.
She hissed, "My earlier 'feminine' threat of chomping a part of you off stands. It'll just be your lips instead of your hand."
He inclined his head at her, suppressing the smile spreading inside him. He couldn't exhibit any levity. She'd only put the worst possible interpretation to it. "Why bother when you'd only end up fixing it? Talk, Talia. If I'm to be punished for it, at least face me with the details of my charge."
Her scowl darkened. "I again remind you I'm not the police. I don't owe you a reading of the charges against you. I'm the family of the victim, and you're the family of the criminals."
"So what did my family of criminals do?" he prodded. "Don't leave me in suspense any longer."
She huffed some curses about his being a persistent pain in the posterior under her breath, then finally said, "My brother-my twin-" she paused to skewer him with a glare of pure loathing "-was working in Azmahar two years ago. He's an IT whiz, and international companies have been stealing him from each other since he turned eighteen. He met a woman and they fell in love. He asked her to marry him and she agreed. But her family didn't."
So a woman was involved. Figured. Not that he'd expected it.
"The woman's name is Ghada Aal Maleki." She watched him as she pronounced the foreign-to-her name in perfect precision, her eyes probing, shrewd. Then she smirked. "Do turn down the volume of the bells ringing in your head. Very jarring now that the desert seems to have turned in for the night."
He contemplated the implications of the new information even as his lips twitched at her latest bit of lambasting. "Excuse the racket. Bells did go off quite loudly. The woman in question belongs to the royal family of Azmahar. I know she's long been betrothed. But what caused the jangling is to whom. Mohab Aal Shalaan, my second cousin and one of the three men on my retrieval team tonight."
Her mouth dropped open. Then she threw her hands in the air, looked around as if seeking support from an invisible audience as she protested the unfairness of this last revelation. "Oh, great. Just super dandy. So now I'm supposed to owe him my life, too?"
He shook his head, adamant. "You don't owe anyone anything. We were doing our duty. As for Mohab and Ghada's betrothal, it was family-arranged, but I have a feeling both have been working together to sabotage their families' intentions. She first insisted on obtaining her bachelor's degree, then she wanted to finish her postgraduate studies and he gladly agreed, granting her year after year of postponement. I think both want to escape marriage altogether and are using each other as an alibi for as long as they can put off their families. As of hours ago, there's been no sign of a wedding date being set."
She digested this then raised her chin, trying to seem uninterested. "Well, maybe your second cousin doesn't want to marry Ghada, but your family wants him to, at any cost. Must have some huge vested interest in the marriage so they'll do anything to see it comes to pass. When Ghada told them she was breaking it off with your cousin and marrying my brother, they drove him away from Azmahar. But when Ghada said she'd join him in the States, they decided to get rid of him altogether.
"They fabricated a detailed hacking-and-embezzlement history implicating him in major cyber raids. They somehow got the States to arraign him and put him on trial. He was found guilty in less than two months and sentenced to five years. After the first couple of weeks there, they even arranged for him to be attacked. When he defended himself, he became ineligible for good behavior. So now he'll serve the full sentence without possibility of parole. In a maximum-security prison."
Silence detonated after the last tear-clogged syllable tumbled from her lips. Only the harsh unevenness of her breathing broke the expanding stillness as her eyes brimmed then overflowed with resurrected anguish, outrage and futility.
And she was waiting for him to make a comment. He had none.
She on the other hand, had plenty more. "T.J.-yeah, that's his name, too, Todd Jonas-looks like me, Prince Harres. I'm tall for a woman, but imagine a five-foot-eight man who doesn't have much on me in breadth and who's got my coloring and the eternally boyish version of my features. Do you have any idea what prison is like for him? I die each day thinking what his life is like on the inside. He's got four years and seven months more to serve. All thanks to your family."
He could only stare at her. He knew in gruesome detail what she was talking about. A prison full of the lowlifes he'd just described, preying on the weakest of the herd. With her brother as an easy, eye-catching target.
She went on, a fusion of terrible emotions vibrating in her voice. "But no thanks to all of you, he's safe. For now. I … buy his safety. I probably won't be able to afford it for long, as the premium keeps going up. In the past three months it has already tripled."
This time when she fell silent, he knew she'd said all she was going to say.
It was endless minutes before he could bring himself to talk. "Nothing I say could express my regret at your brother's situation. If it's true any member of my family was responsible-"
"If?" Her sharp interjection cut him off. "Oh, it is true, Prince Harres. And I've been given the chance to prove it. And to do something about it."
He couldn't help coming closer with the urgency her fiery conviction sparked in him. "What exactly? And given? By whom?"
She looked at him as if he'd told her to jump out of a plane without a parachute and he'd catch her. "As if I'd tell you."
"It's vital that you tell me, Talia," he persisted. "If I know all the details, I can help. I will."
"Sure you will. You'll help prove your own family guilty of fraud, send those involved to jail instead of my brother."
"I can't say what will happen, since I don't know the specifics, but if there's anything I can do to help your brother, I will do it."
She smirked at him. "That's more like it. Be inconclusive, make insubstantial promises. Until the silly goose gives you what you bothered to come after her for."
He leveled his gaze on her, tried to convey all the sincerity he harbored in this specific situation and the rules he lived by. "I again say I don't know the specifics. But I will. And when I do, I will act. And I can and do promise you this. I deal with my family members the same way I do strangers when it comes to guilt. If they're guilty, they will pay the price."