Between HeVan and Hell (7 page)

“You said it, sister. I'm absolutely
picking up those gel inserts they make for high heels,” agreed
Grace, and she settled into her own chair to relax. When they moved
over to the manicure stations, they gossiped a little more because
those chairs made you sit up straight.

They were both sitting in the
reception area in their foam flip-flops when her phone rang.
“Hello?”

“Grace,
Kasharra,
I’ve arrived in town. I
had a couple of stops to make. Where are you?” asked
Jalen.

“Jalen, I’m so happy to hear from you.
I’m at the mall. They’re making me all pretty for you.”

“Don’t go home. We’ll pick you up
there. Just let us know which mall and the entrance where to pick
you up,” he said.

She gave him the information, and he
spoke again. “Traffic is heavy, so we’ll be there in about an hour.
Actually, don’t wait outside for us. I don’t want you to have to
stand around waiting. Jett will drop me off, and I’ll come in and
get you from the Food Court, okay?”

“Alright. See you then. If I’m not at
the Food Court, don’t come looking. Wait for me. My spa treatment
may take longer than I expect. I want to be beautiful for you. I
hope you like the outfit I picked out. You said you wanted to go
out on the town tonight, right?”

“Absolutely. I want to show off my
beautiful woman. And you are beautiful, you know. You don’t need a
spa treatment for that.”

“Flatterer. Look, they’re waving at me
for my next spa service. See you in an hour or so,” she said, and
hung up the phone. She turned to her friend who was reading a
gossip magazine.

“He’s coming in an hour. Now that I’m
fully relaxed from all the pampering, I’ve got to go get my
Brazilian next,” she said with a grimace, “see you later tonight.
Mr. Kadyrov asked me to bring Jalen by the club.”

“Okay, good luck with the wax job, and
with the proposal,” she answered with a giggle, as Grace walked
away with the technician. She continued to read her magazine,
allowing her nail polish to become perfectly dry. She left just as
she saw Grace emerging from the treatment room.

Ouch, she must really love
this guy, she thought. Good, then Anton will forget about her and
I’ll have him to myself.

Grace was really nervous, and not just
because she knew she was under surveillance. Tonight she was
meeting two of the three men that she’d been dreaming about. And
after what happened to Addie—well, she was nervous about
it.

She was sitting in the Food Court
sipping a diet soda through a straw when awareness spread
throughout her body. She looked up and saw him. He was one of the
tallest men she’d ever seen. Her cop training took over.

Seven foot one or two, two
twenty to two forty, black or dark brown over blue, she
thought.

She admired his lean body as he cut
through the crowd with long strides instead of plowing through like
a tank.

He looked just like in the dream, from
his wavy, dark hair, slight widow’s peak and light eyes, to the
three day-old stubble on his face. She couldn’t help the grin
forming on her face. And she liked the way his eyes lit up when he
spotted her. Like her, he was wearing jeans. He had a loose cotton
shirt on over his jeans that matched his dark hair.

Sexy, sexy
man
, she thought.

He walked right up to her, totally
oblivious to the stares of the people around them.

“Hello, Grace. I missed you,” he said
instantly going down on one knee.

There were exclamations of the diners
around him and the gasp from Grace herself. Jalen went on as if he
hadn’t heard them.

“Grace, when I went out of town I told
you I had an important question to ask you.” He took a deep breath,
“Grace, will you marry me?”

She sat there for a moment, stunned.
Then she pulled herself together and gave him a shove in the chest,
which did no good because he was planted solidly in front of
her.

“Jalen, you’re supposed to wait until
we’re having our romantic dinner and I’m all dressed up and looking
gorgeous,” she wailed, not quite following. This wasn’t in the
script.

“I just couldn’t wait another moment
to find out if you were going to be mine for the rest of my life,”
he said.

“Give him a break, lady,” said a guy
from a nearby table, whose wife just slapped his arm and said he
was as romantic as a potato.

“I really missed you, Grace,” said
Jalen.

“I missed you, too, Jalen and yes,
I’ll marry you,” she said, running her hands up his
chest.

He took advantage to swoop down for a
quick kiss as the crowd around them started to clap and
cheer.

“That should tide me over for a little
bit. I’ve wanted a taste of you all day. Are these your bags? Come
on, honey, let’s get going.”

He gathered up her bags in one large
hand and put the other around her waist and off they went, her
watchers following behind.

“Hey, where’s my ring?” she was heard
to say as they walked away.

A few minutes later they were climbing
into the back seat of a brand-new Escalade. “What do you think,
Grace; I just picked it up today,” he asked as he got in beside
her.

“It’s really nice, hon…”

That’s all Anton’s watchers could hear
before the door closed and they drove away. Grace’s friend stepped
out from the store she’d ducked into and walked up to him. He
immediately called Anton, so they could give their reports. Anton
wasn’t going to be happy at all about the marriage proposal, or the
size of the boyfriend. He moved like he could take care of
himself.

In the car, Grace was looking at both
Jalen and Jett. They were about the same height, although Jett
might be a fraction of an inch taller and broader of shoulder.
Also, where Jalen had light blue eyes, Jett had dark-brown eyes,
almost as dark as hers and short lighter brown hair. They both had
lean angled jaws and squared-off chins. Straight aquiline noses
with deep-set eyes and very kissable lips completed her inspection.
“I’ve been dreaming of you both for days and your other brother,
too. What’s going on, why is this happening?”

“We are a perfect match.
Your soul calls to ours,
Kasharra
,” said Jalen.

“What does that
mean—
Kasharra
?”
asked Grace.

“It means you bring joy to
us. You cause us joy by being around you. And it’s true, you know.
We’ve waited almost five hundred years to meet the one female in
the entire universe that is our
Join
. We’d almost given up hope,”
said Jett from the front seat.

They were stopped at a red light, so
he turned around and gave her a smile and a wink. She didn’t even
realize she was settled in Jalen’s arms as if she belonged there,
and she did.

She also belongs in my
arms. It was going to be difficult when they were in public
together,
Jett thought to himself.
I’ll be glad when this undercover assignment is
over
.

“You sure learned English fast. I was
surprised when you told me to meet you in the Food Court,” said
Grace.

“That was Becky,” answered Jalen. “She
suggested it and told me where it was. She also gave us all the
particulars of the case and said she was passing off a flash drive
to you.” When he saw Grace nod her head, he went on.

“Well, Jett is going to download the
contents of the file onto a nano-patch for us so we can absorb the
information directly into our brains. We have one stop to make, and
then we’re headed to your condo on the lake that Becky says is in
our name temporarily. She couldn’t find another location so we’ll
have to be careful and try not to let you be seen by the other
residents who might make a comment. The security staff has been
temporarily switched out, too. We’re getting you out of that
apartment; it’s not safe.”

Grace completely forgot that she
couldn’t wait to get out of that dump. “Wait just a minute here,
this is my assignment. You two are just window dressing. Don’t even
think that you’re going to start taking over and giving the orders
around here.”

“I meant no offense. Did you wish to
return there?” Jalen asked.

“No, and don’t start trying to placate
me, either. It’s important to me that we nail these guys. They need
to go down. They’re into everything from money laundering to human
trafficking. This assignment is covering the money-laundering part
of their business. We haven’t been able to get anyone into their
organization to get more. Nearly all their people come from the
same neighborhood in Groznyy, which most people think is in Russia
but is actually in Chechnya. My Captain says they’re the Russian
Mafia, and that’s partly right. However, as Chechens, they’re Sunni
Muslims and have stronger links to the Arab countries than they do
to the Russian Orthodox. So I’m concerned they may be connected to
terrorist groups as well.

“That’s just my personal theory. I
don’t believe that all Muslims are terrorists. In fact, I think
Muslims are the same as everyone else, people living their lives
and worshiping God in their own way.

“Like any religion, there can be
zealots. And like any group of people, there are those that use
others to get what they want. This group is evil. They were pushed
out of Chechnya, and now they’re here and have become our problem,”
she said.

“We have been studying your world’s
laws and politics. Do you have permission from your judges to tape
their conversations and phone calls and things?” asked Jett from
the front seat.

“Yes, only we haven’t been successful
with electronic surveillance. First, we haven’t been able to get in
to place a listening device. And second, they sweep for bugs twice
a day and anything we’d finally be able to put in place would be
found,” answered Grace.

“Jett is our technology expert. Did
Addie tell you about our nano-patches? Well, we have some that will
relay information over short distances, about one of your
miles.”

“Oh, wow!” said Grace. “If we could
get those on any of Kadyrov’s people, within a month we’d have
enough to put them away for the rest of their lives. But how can we
use that technology without running into problems? As soon as they
know about it, all the police agencies will want it.”

“We can say that it’s Jett’s personal
invention, which it is. And that we’re using this as a test case.
It’s not ready for the open market yet. And just in case you might
worry about followers listening in on our conversation in the car,
Jett has built-in a protection against that, as well. A simple
jamming device he placed on the dashboard.”

“Okay, that might work.”

She finally noticed where they
were.

“Hey, this isn’t the way to the condo.
Where are we going?”

“I told you we had a stop
to make. We’re getting you an engagement ring. And Arjun asked that
we pick out rings for Addie and her
Joins
. He would very much like to
surprise our new Nam-Nin with a traditional Earth
wedding.”

“And what exactly is
a
Nam-Nin
?” asked
Grace.

“The Nam-Nin is the Supreme
Ruler Queen of HeVan.
Beleti
Aditya is our new ruler. She will be returning to
HeVan with her
Ankida,
her male
Joins
when the gate is finished.”

“I remember now. She said
she was the new Queen. I thought she was joking.
Ankida
is like a group
name for husbands, right? What does
Beleti
mean?”

“Beleti
means female head of the house or lineage, or it can be a
title, like in your country, England. It means Lady, she is Lady
Addie.”

“Wow, what does that make
me?”

“Since you are the elder
sister, you are also
Beleti
. You are
Beleti
Grace. But we are trying to
use only English words now that we’ve come down to the planet so we
will call you both ‘Lady.’ Now, will you go to the Diamond District
with us to find rings? We have also brought some loose stones in
case you’d rather have a ring made. We know you need a ring for
your assignment.”

Great. Addie’s guys want
to buy her a ring and marry her in the church, and she was getting
a fake assignment ring.

For once, Grace was struck speechless.
So she just went along with Jalen and Jett into the Diamond
District. She’d completely forgotten that they might have
followers. Jalen and Jett, however, did not.

They were able to get a parking space
in the Diamond District. They went to one of the larger stores
first and walked up to the counter.

Jalen spoke to the woman behind the
counter.

“Good afternoon, Madam. We would like
to look at your engagement rings, please,” said Jalen.