Guilty Pleasure

Guilty Pleasures

“Traitorous fucking bastard!”

Marty Mathews stared at her boss, division chief Vince Deerfield, with a hidden sense of surprise as he threw the thick file on Khalid el

Hamid-Mustafa across the desk.

The dull, yellow folder hit, slid, then fell from the desk to scatter loose sheets of information and pictures at her feet.

Khalid el Hamid- Mustafa. The bastard son of a Saudi sheikh suspected of terrorism. His father, Azir Mustafa, was a religious hardliner, a man who ruled one of the more barren sections of Saudi

Arabia, on the Iraq border. He had tarred his sons with his own brush and in doing so had subjected Khalid to years of suspicion by the United States.

It was the reason Marty had been tailing Khalid for the past two years. As an FBI agent, one on the low end of the totem pole as far as her boss was concerned, Marty had been stuck playing babysitter

and peeping Thomasina to one of the most sexually active men she had ever laid her eyes on.

A dark, brooding, dangerous man. There was no doubt in her mind that Khalid Mustafa would be a very dangerous man to cross. If she had doubted it, then the information her godfather had given

her over the past years would have confirmed it.

There was a reason why she had never reported any of the more suspicious activities Khalid had engaged in. Quite simply, it was because

he engaged in them at the orders of her godfather, the director of the FBI.

“No comment?” Vince snarled, his heavy brows lowered, his hazel green eyes spitting fire and brimstone back at her.

“I’m the agent who’s followed him for the past two years,” she replied politely. “As my reports state, there’s no evidence to support the suspicion that Mr. Mustafa has any ties to a terrorist community.”

Vince threw himself back in his chair and glared at her now. That

glare was nerve- racking. It boded ill to any agent on the receiving end of it. Unfortunately, she was the agent in question.

“Two years,” he snapped. “I gave you two years, Agent Mathews, to find just a shred of evidence to support the suspicions we have against him. Two years. I could have convicted a five- year- old with that amount of time on my hands.”

No doubt he could have but, on the other hand, he wouldn’t have had a godfather who was director of the entire FBI going over his reports, editing them and deleting minor points that could have supported that suspicion because Khalid was currently his favorite mole.

“A five- year- old wouldn’t have the decadent lifestyle Mustafa has.” She rolled her eyes at the thought of it. “I rather doubt the man has the time to consort with terrorists. He’s too busy playing with his little friends.”

That was more truth than fiction, actually, no matter how much her godfather liked to smile and deny it.

Copyright © 2010 by Lora Leigh