Page 7 of The Geek and the Sheikh

The frantic pounding of his fingers on the keyboard drowned the tick of the world clocks. He locked into the GPS system on Junayd's security forces. He knew that either Yahya Walid or Issa Zayn would have been assigned to follow Midnight. Their vehicle would have a GPS tracking system on it.

"Bingo!"

Yahya had been at a location near the Brooklyn Bridge early this morning. Jameel brought up a new screen, searching for any ride-share pickups in the area during the timeframe Bugs slipped out. There were four.

Ten minutes later, he was cussing under his breath. None of the four were a young woman. He accessed the city's CCTV traffic system. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the dark SUV pull up down the street from where Yahya was monitoring Midnight's position.

His relief turned to frustration when the vehicle suddenly disappeared. He moved the timeframe back and forth. One second it was there, the next it was gone. No one entered the vehicle in the seconds between the frames.

He slammed his hand down on the desk next to him before sitting back in his seat. She had deleted the video… just as she had deleted the information of her pickup. For someone who wasn't used to being out in the world on her own, Bugs knew how to cover her tracks!

He scanned through the different videos. It took a while, but he finally located the route the ride-share took. It stopped at the JFK airport in New York.

The airport had numerous cameras located both inside and outside the terminals. He located a camera near one of the main doors, and glimpsed the SUV pulling away. A split second later, the grainy image of a blonde woman briefly appeared.

"Got you!" he breathed with growing excitement.

He froze the image before he clipped it and dragged it into an image enhancement program that he was developing using AI facial recognition. He sat back and waited impatiently for the image to clear up.

When the program finished, Jameel lifted a hand to his chest and rubbed the spot over his frantically beating heart. He finally had a face to go withhismystery woman—and she was breathtakingly beautiful.

* * *

"Do you really understand all of that?"

"Yes."

"What are you doing?"

"Mm?" Junebug blinked at the annoying man sitting next to her. She had answered him without looking up, but now she recognized him by the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing.

That was suspicious. The man who had spoken to her on the way to the gate just happened to be her seatmate on the plane? His threat level seemed like a four, now.

"I'm hacking into the accounting department of the World Bank and transferring funds from a mafia organization in the US to the World Animal Wildlife fund," she replied with a direct, assessing look at him.

If he was someone who had been sent to find her, there was no need to pretend that she wasn't who she was. He was here; she was found.

"You're....What?"

His face was the definition of flabbergasted. He gave a small laugh that he aborted halfway through when he registered that she wasn't joking.

"If you don't leave me alone, you'll find out," she warned.

"Oh."

For a moment, he was completely nonplussed. Then he rallied.

"I'm Craig, by the way. Are you always so… blunt?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

There was a moment of silence. He seemed to be waiting for her to elaborate. She didn't.

"You are…. That's okay. I'm good with bluntness," Craig replied with a charming grin.

Junebug glanced at him suspiciously, finished what she was doing, and in seconds, she had Craig's boarding pass open. It was weird hacking someone who was sitting right next to her, watching her do it, but it was necessary. She needed to know what to do, and for that she needed information.

Five minutes and several ignored attempts at small talk later, she had his life history, including his financial records. She tsked.

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