Desire In The Desert: Sheikh's Rule
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“There were two,” he murmured. “I thought the second was destroyed in the accident. In fact, until now, I’d forgotten about it.” He looked away. When he turned back to face her, he was more determined than ever to make the men who had taken Tara pay. “The woman you spoke to...”
She nodded. “Had what I think is the second bracelet. When I noticed the similarity, I asked her where she got it. She said their visitor had dropped it, and by the time she found it, he was gone. I’m almost positive it’s a match.” She stopped, concern on her face.
Emir’s right hand was clenched in a fist. “Ed’s face on the left side was burned pretty badly. He said he struggled to open Mother’s door—to get her out.”
“My informant was pretty sure it was a burn scar. She said she’d seen plenty in the village from the cooking pots and such.”
“The woman heard him talking to himself as he was preparing to leave. She said that she would always remember the words, for they were spoken with hatred. She said he was muttering that he would make the sheikka pay.”
“Make her pay? What had Tara done to him?”
“Was it Tara he was referring to?”
Shock rolled through him at what she might be implying. It made no sense. “Who else would he mean?”
She shrugged. “You said he tried to get your mother free from the vehicle. Why not your father? Why didn’t he mention him? Attempt to save him?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. I...”
“Kate...” He could hear his heart beat in anticipation of what she might say next. He wanted to put his hand over her mouth and not allow her to say the words he sensed would change everything he thought he knew.
“Did Ed act strangely around your mother? I mean, before the accident?”
“I...no, he was close to my father. My mother and he were formal with each other any time I saw them. An employee and a friend, he never crossed that line...”
“Never?”
“No.” He shook his head. “But I remember Mother saying she didn’t like him. She asked Father to fire him. That was just before the accident. Damn. She said he was taking liberties and by that I thought she meant treating Father as a friend...”
“When instead could it have been that Ed was making advances on her? Could he have been in love, lust, whatever, with your mother—and she knew or possibly only suspected?”
Kate’s blue eyes were troubled and yet full of passion. He couldn’t help but touch her cheek and press his lips to hers, in a desperate attempt to alleviate some of his pain. She sank into his kiss, her tongue meeting his, her breast soft, her nipple hard against his palm. He wanted her as much as he wanted all the pain of this new discovery to go away.
He let her go.
She gave him a slow seductive smile and then swung right back into business. “I don’t think we can afford to discount this. If we know who Tara’s kidnappers are, what motivates them, going in...”
“We have a better chance against them,” he finished. “If this is true, what has he been doing all these years? He hasn’t been in our employ since the accident.” Emir frowned. “We paid him out a compensation package.” His fist clenched. “How could he have hidden it...?” But he knew how criminals such as this might act. He just couldn’t imagine that someone he had known and trusted...
“Biding his time,” Kate replied. “And, I suspect, slowly losing his mind.”
Emir raked his fingers through his hair. “Then you’re saying that Tara’s dealing with a madman?”
“Possibly,” she said quietly.
And both of them knew they’d just hit worst-case scenario.
* * *
DESPITE THE FACT that it was still daylight, Tara was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. But she was too afraid to sleep. It was the only reason she could think that he had been able to come up to her, to surprise her without her realizing he was there.
His thick, dark hair was curly and too long, but it framed a face that might have been handsome, had he not been either so thin or so twisted. The intent in his eyes took away from any potential beauty in his face. His mouth curved in a self-satisfied smile that sent a chill down her spine and had her shifting away from him.
“It’s been a long time,” he said softly.
Tara blinked, as if that would clear her vision, as if that might change the reality of the man before her. “Why? Why have you done this?”
“Why? You dare to ask that as if you didn’t know—you, with your life of privilege. I will be glad to end it when it comes to that.”
“But what about the money?”
“What about the money, my foolish little princess, looking down at all of us, thumbing your nose at...”
“You taught me the rules of American football. You—” She broke off, unable to say any more. When he was so near, she tensed to the point she forgot to breath. She took a breath. He seemed to realize in this moment that she was not her mother. It was as though his reality shifted from one moment to the next.
“You were easier to deceive than your brothers, but you all came around.”
She stared into a face that was barely familiar, into eyes that were filled with hate, and at a man that it was now clear she had never known. She willed herself to not shrink back, to not show weakness, for in her gut she knew he wanted that as much as he wanted the money.
He reached for her as she twisted away, but it was impossible to escape. The rope that held her only allowed her to move so far.
His knuckle ran down the side of her face. “You never wanted me, did you, despite everything? It was always him.” He looked at her as he dropped back on his heels and stood. “I can keep you forever. He will never find you and I will bleed him dry.” He ran a thumb along the ridge of her collarbone. His touch was chilling despite the fact that two layers of cotton fabric lay between him and her.
“My brothers...”
He looked at her with angry, confused eyes.
“You call your sons, brothers?”
Tara’s sleep-deprived brain didn’t have an immediate comeback. She fought not to shrink back as the horror returned and her brain made sense of what he had said. Again, he thought that she was her mother. He’d slipped back into his mad delusion where she became her mother. A chill ran down her spine and she forced herself to look at him.
“He’ll never agree,” she said, not giving names, meaning her brothers and especially Emir, and leaving it open to his interpretation.
“Then you, my dear, must die. Not now,” he said as she looked at him with all the panic she was feeling. “I, of course, will shed tears. But there’s really no other way.”
She shivered as the chill of the day and the thought of the inevitable night combined with thoughts of her potential destiny, and all of it settled harsh and heavy in her heart.
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday, September 15, 3:00 p.m.
The village of El Dewar was long gone. The clouds had moved in and the sky was ominous-looking, and the wind was again picking up.
Twenty minutes later they’d stopped for a quick break and were just about to head back to the Jeep when a billowing cloud of sand to the northwest caught Emir’s attention. The buzz of an approaching engine followed and he met Kate’s quizzical look.
“More than likely, a dirt bike, from the sounds of it,” he said.
But it was the unmistakable sound of a gunshot and a thud of a bullet hitting metal that had them diving to the sand.
“Whoever it is, they’re targeting the Jeep,” Kate said in an undertone as if silence mattered.
There was nothing to say. Emir knew stopping had been a mistake. The dunes had provided camouflage and there’d been no one else around, or so he’d thought. But in trying to provide privacy for Kate he’d inadvertently made them vulnerable. There was nothing to do now but deal with the consequences.
They needed to somehow get back to the Jeep. Right now, it was too far away to be of any help. They’d have to use the small dune beside them for cover. Emir motioned with one arm but Kate was already moving that way, her gun in her hand, keeping as far down as possible as she moved. They didn’t return fire, for they didn’t want to alert their attacker to where they were. So far whoever it was had only fired at the Jeep. There was still a chance that whoever was shooting hadn’t spotted them yet, hadn’t realized they’d left their vehicle.
Emir moved forward, head down, trying to keep himself between the shooter and Kate, but she refused to be anything but an equal participant. Exactly as he’d expect from any of his agents, but as much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, Kate was different.
Another shot, this time to their left and over their heads. It was clear now that the shooter knew they weren’t at the Jeep. Suddenly there was silence. Emir frowned. With both hands on the Glock, he shifted to his left, motioning Kate to follow.
They were now maybe twenty feet from the Jeep.
A bullet hit the dune just behind them and kicked up a small cloud of sand. Kate motioned with her hand that she was going to move right and along the dune.
Emir nodded as he covered her progress. But suddenly they weren’t alone. The roar of the bike engine bore down on them as it flew over one dune, coming closer, only sixty feet away. He fired at it, kicking up sand and causing the biker to swerve right and away from them. Emir fired again and this time the driver lost control. The bike toppled, skidding on its side as the driver landed on his feet, his rifle in the sand behind him. They needed to get to the Jeep and they had a minute or less to do it before he was back on his bike.
Kate fired once, twice, but the angle was wrong—a dune protected him.
“Run!” Emir commanded unnecessarily as they both ran, keeping low and moving fast. They launched themselves into the Jeep.
“Go!” Kate yelled. It was another unnecessary command for he had the accelerator to the floor. The Jeep sped forward, pelting sand behind them as they flew over a dune, swerving back and forth to avoid any shots from the biker.
Kate turned and fired multiple times.
“We want him alive, if possible,” Emir shouted over the roar of the engine and knew that the odds were slight that that was going to happen, especially if they both wanted to come out of this alive.
She nodded and, oddly, despite the intensity of the situation, despite the fact that their attention was fixed on their attacker, she turned and smiled at him.
Damn, he thought. She was enjoying this.
The biker was catching up. The bike swerved around them, dodging Kate’s shots, and a bullet cracked the back side window. Plumes of sand kicked up from the bike and masked their attacker’s identity.
Another dirt bike roared over a dune just behind them. Now there was one bike in front and one behind. They had a fifty-foot gap between them and their assailants on either side.
Kate dropped the empty magazine, reloaded her Colt M-1911 and took aim at the second biker. She fired and a quick glance in the rearview mirror said she hadn’t been lucky. The bike was still hot on their tail. The driver’s face was hidden behind a red cloth that covered his face and protected him from the sand that billowed up around him.
“He’s not wearing a helmet,” Kate muttered. She took aim and fired once, then twice. “We’ll be able to take him out that much easier.”
Emir had one hand on the wheel, while with the other he held his Glock. It was almost impossible to steer and aim, but he took a shot at the first biker—at least he could keep him off balance, having to react, giving Kate a chance to line up a better shot.
The second biker was swerving now, seeming to lose control. They were still bracketed between two attackers.
“Hang on!” Emir shouted as he veered right and the Jeep sailed across the desert sand, the wind seeming to howl around them. But neither bike was stopping. Instead both bikes changed direction, one heading in a diagonal path straight at them and the other tailing them but quickly coming up on the other side.
The first biker was again ahead of them. But as he lifted his rifle to fire—the bike skidded sideways and the rider was thrown. He was up on his feet as Kate took aim and fired again. Emir fired a second shot. Sand kicked up around the biker and then he was at the bike. He lifted the rifle, aiming at them as Kate fired, and the rifle snapped out of his hands, slewing along the sand.
“He’s unarmed!” she shouted.
Emir swung in the direction of the unarmed biker, the Jeep’s engine roaring, sand kicking up behind them. It was a race as to who would get to the gun first, but just as suddenly as Emir swerved, the man pulled a revolver from his belt. Kate was hanging out of the window now and all Emir wanted to do was to pull her in to safety. Instead he had to trust her.
A shot screamed off the side of the Jeep and another echoed off the hood.
“Got him!” she shouted.
The words had barely left her mouth before the remaining dirt biker came ripping over the dune, full throttle, as if he’d been waiting for this moment.
Emir swerved the Jeep, gunning the engine as much as he dared, angling, making them less of a target while Kate kept their remaining attacker busy having to swerve right and then left as he dodged her shots.
No matter her difficulty in the Berber village, here, Kate was good. It was a rogue thought and one he couldn’t entertain as he veered again, shadowing the maneuvers of the biker, making them a more difficult target.
He could see Kate, both hands on her handgun, her eyes narrowed. She pulled the trigger. The bike skidded, throwing the rider as the bike rolled down a small sand dune.
“He’s not moving,” Emir said, looking in the rearview mirror at the fallen biker.
He looked at Kate. Her face was flushed and there was a troubled look to her eyes as she glanced at him, and he realized the earlier smile had been all about the joy of the chase. The kill was another matter. He gripped the wheel as he turned in the direction of the first downed biker.
As they approached, and the Jeep slowed, Kate was out, crouching, her handgun raised and ready to fire. The biker lay sprawled thirty feet ahead.
Emir threw the Jeep into Park and followed Kate, his gun in both hands. But the biker still wasn’t moving.
Kate looked back, nodded when she saw Emir in position just behind her and shifted to her left, carefully moving forward until she reached the body. She pushed the biker’s shoulder with her foot—nothing. She squatted and turned the body over. It was a man, thin, with a scruff of dark beard, maybe thirty years old. “He was at El Dewar. I remember him standing between the houses. It was just a moment and then he vanished.”
Emir could see the man’s rifle was thrown five feet away and that his body lay in an awkward position. It was clear without bending to check that his neck had been broken.
“There’re no more answers here,” Kate said grimly. She strode over to the bike that lay eight feet away from the corpse. A worn leather bag hung over the seat. She opened it, her expression grim, and pulled out a water bottle and a cell phone. “A disposable phone,” she said, turning it on. “Nothing.”
Emir came up beside her. “What are you saying? That he’s not one of the kidnappers?”
“I don’t think so, but he’s obviously not innocent. He knows something and it seems like he was trying to prevent us from going any farther.”
“We’re not finished here yet,” Emir said grimly. “Let’s go back. Maybe there’re answers there.” He shrugged in the direction of the other downed biker.
Five minutes later they were at the body of the second biker. Like the first, he was dead. But, unlike the first, they didn’t recognize him at all and he carried nothing but his pistol, a water jug and an extra magazine for his weapon.
Kate stood and took a step back.
The wind was quickly picking up and already it was whipping at their clothes and driving sand into their faces. Emir slipped his sunglasses on and she did the same.
“We’re going to have to leave him here,” he said with a final look at the body. “I’ll alert Zaf when the satellite connects again.” The satellite had been down since they’d begun this leg of their journey.
His heart was pounding. No matter how many times he was in a gun battle, he never liked them because the outcome always meant someone was going to die. Yet, when he looked over at Kate, he saw the flush on her cheeks and a slight curve to her lips, as if she was about to smile.
As the wind whipped a strand of hair across her face and she turned to look at him with eyes that sang with excitement, he realized that, no matter how much he disliked killing, there was one thing he’d never admitted. That it was eclipsed by the heady power of the afterglow, of being the one still alive. They might have killed two men but the alternative was that they would have been killed themselves. The silent communication between them had reminded him of that and he knew in that moment he couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
They drove in silence for a while. Their only goal was to get as close to the oasis undetected as they could before night came or the storm hit—whichever came first.
The ringing of the satellite phone made Kate jump. “We’re back in business,” she said with relief in her voice.
Emir picked up the phone before the second ring ended. “What do you have?”
“Ed hasn’t been working security like he led us to believe. In fact, I’m not sure what he’s been doing. I’m doing more digging. Two things. First, I think Tara’s kidnappers are on to us,” Zafir said. “They haven’t followed up with any additional demands. I’m getting worried and I think it was a mistake to go after them.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Emir said and frustration wove through the words.
“Okay, look, keep your eyes open. You’ve got bigger trouble coming. There’s a sandstorm forecasted. You need to take shelter. Weather reports look like you might have another clear hour, maybe less.”
“Less. It’s starting up already.” Emir’s tone gritted. He told Zafir what had happened and about the bodies they’d left behind.
“Give me your coordinates,” Zafir growled. “I don’t like any of this”
A minute later Emir turned to Kate. “We’re going to have to camp for the night.” It was something they’d both known for a while now. “If we didn’t suspect we were heading into a storm, Zaf’s confirmed it.”
The earlier excitement was gone. Kate’s full lips were tight with tension. She gripped the dash, staring out over the desert with a grim look as if he’d sentenced her to life instead of one night.
And he knew her worry, knew it tenfold, for it meant his sister must spend one more night alone with her kidnappers.
His jaw tightened as he navigated a rut. The Jeep bounced and the tires spun as they hit hard, flat sand. As they came out of the dip, the wind began to whip around them. They had no choice. They didn’t stand a chance in unfamiliar terrain in a sandstorm.
Emir shifted the Jeep down a gear and veered left, taking the dune that loomed ahead at an angle, as it was steeper than any of the others they had yet to encounter. Straight-on and he could visualize the rollover that would follow. They were close to the oasis. According to Kate’s last coordinates, less than ten miles away.
“We need shelter!” Kate yelled five minutes later over the roar of the wind. “We can’t go any farther.” Sand pelted the vehicle and it was getting more and more difficult to see. But, according to the map, there were sandstone cliffs on the other side of this ridge. Before they’d been attacked, they’d been taking it slow, scouting the area—noting the weaknesses, the strengths, buying time. Now they were about to be swallowed in the storm if they didn’t get to shelter quickly. Just as that thought ran through his mind, the first shot rang out.
“What the—?” Kate bit off the rest of her comment as she swung around in the direction of the shot, her gun in her hand and crouching in her seat, taking what cover she could.
Emir swerved right then left, taking them dangerously close to a rollover. He looked over at Kate who was on her knees as she put herself in a position to defend them both. He couldn’t have asked for a better person to ride shotgun.
“Go left,” Kate shouted over the din of the Jeep’s engine and the wind. “I think they’re using that break to the right between the dunes.” She glanced left. “This storm is going to be our cover pretty soon.”
He couldn’t agree with that assessment more, but all he could do now was get them as far away as possible.
She was firing blindly through the partially opened window, but there was only a distant shot returned and that indicated that the shooter might be on foot.
“So much for sneaking in,” Emir said, his hands clenching the wheel as he realized what this could mean.
“We’ll work around it, Emir.” She looked at him with lips tight. She was perched on the seat as if poised to launch. They were over a mile from the first shot and, through the waves of sand and gusts of wind, he could see the rise of a hill to their right. The storm had intensified and was now driving sand so thick that there was no going much farther. They were as far away as the storm would allow.
They were so close to Tara and yet so far.
Chapter Seventeen
“There.” Kate pointed as a bank of low-rise cliffs appeared to their right.
“It should work,” he agreed as he fought to keep the Jeep moving in the right direction. The sand was beginning to act like water as it moved with the wind that churned it.
The visibility had rapidly decreased. Some storms could come out of nowhere, swallowing you in a sea of sand, while others were slower moving and, often, longer lasting. This one wasn’t hitting them out of nowhere but it was rapidly getting worse.
Within minutes he had the Jeep angled in the direction the wind was coming from, using it to act as a barrier.
“We’ll set up the tent beside the Jeep,” he said. “We could stay in the Jeep if I thought this thing was going to blow over quickly, but all signs look like it might run through the night.” A gust of wind hammered him from behind, pushing him forward. He looked at Kate, who was struggling to double her ponytail to keep it from whipping against her face. The scarf she’d been using had blown away minutes ago.
They wrestled with the tent to get the anchor lines secured.
Finally, inside the tent, Kate shivered, clutching her arms. “It’s getting cold.”
It was late afternoon but the temperature had plummeted and inside the tent it was only slightly less chilly than outside.
He tossed her a blanket. “Thanks,” she said as she wrapped it around her shoulders. “One night, not too bad,” she said. “Maybe the kidnappers will get in touch with Zafir by then. I don’t know why they’re waiting.”
“Any number of reasons, but thinking of any of them isn’t going to help us.”
“Maybe,” she said with doubt in her voice. “I don’t think that last attack was planned. I mean, they shot at us twice and the second was so distant. I think whoever it was, unlike the bikers, they were shooting blind.”
“As in we could have been anyone and not someone necessarily after them.”
“Exactly.”
“I suppose we’ll soon find out once the storm is over.” He knelt by the small, portable heater. “We’ll get this going and it should warm up fast.” He glanced at her with a smile. “Just like home.”
“Home with dehydrated stew for supper,” she said with a smile more poignant than humorous.
“Not even that,” he said. “We have no stove. Unless you want it cold, but I’m not sure how that will work with cold water...”
“Stop,” she said with a laugh.
The storm had intensified too fast and they had taken what they could from the Jeep. He’d managed to grab a bag with food supplies and she’d gotten blankets, but after that the storm had taken charge. The camp stove among a few other things had been left behind.