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Best case scenario—she and Tariq would manage to evade the bandits and survive. Yet they would still be stuck in the middle of the desert. Sara clung to the satellite phone, their only hope at this stage. The men were laughing as they strode back where they’d come from.
One of the trucks was rolling out of their headquarters. A couple of men jumped on, while others went inside. A few seconds later, two reappeared, dragging a man to the back of the truck. He was dressed like the others, but his wide shoulders seemed familiar. Tariq? Her heartbeat raced. She couldn’t make out the man’s bloody face. He seemed deathly still.
Fear and shock clutched her heart, and pain sliced into her chest. She waited for an eternity, her mind in turmoil, before the other truck appeared, as well. Then the bandits drove away. She waited some more, hoping Tariq would emerge from one of the buildings. When it became clear that he wouldn’t, she went back to the hole.
They had taken her gun. She stared at the bare sand at least nine feet below her. No other way down but to jump.
If she broke a leg, she was as good as dead.
Not that she would survive all that long up here in the beating sun, without water. She stuck the phone in the back of her waistband and leaned forward to make sure she wouldn’t fall on it. She would still be better off with a working phone and a broken leg than the other way around. She took a deep breath and jumped, yelping in pain when she landed hard on her feet and fell over, the shock reverberating up her shinbones.
She stood gingerly, testing her ankles. No major damage. She said a brief prayer of thanks as she limped to the door. The trucks were dark points in the distance.
She stared at the charred remains of the Hummer for a brief second, registering anew that she was trapped here. Then she flexed her ankles and started out in search of Tariq, scared of what she would find. The tension in her spine tightened with each empty building she walked through.
No sign of him anywhere.
Except for the bloodstain on the floor of the main building the bandits had slept in. They’d taken him. The realization was too scary to accept, but she couldn’t deny it. She was his only hope. She needed to get with the program and make a plan. Where would they take him? She wouldn’t allow herself to think that he might not be alive.
“Don’t let him be hurt,” she whispered into the empty air, fighting the desperation that threatened to engulf her. She was alone, without a car or a weapon. But she refused to think that all was lost. She had the phone.
Her fingers closed around it and she pulled it from her waistband, just as a dark shape appeared in the doorway.
Looked like she wasn’t alone, after all. The hyena was here.
“Go away,” she yelled, and glanced around desperately. She had nothing to defend herself with, so she grabbed a fistful of sand and threw that at the slobbering beast. That didn’t seem to faze it. She drew a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Animals could smell fear. She raised herself to her full height, hoping to look more formidable. Easy. She could handle this. She had to, because she wasn’t going to let Tariq die.
The repulsive scavenger meandered in, keeping its beady eyes on her, giving a bark. The sound reverberated across the room and bounced off the walls, sounding like deranged human laughter.
She stepped back, her heel striking something: the tire iron, half buried in the sand. Sara said a prayer of thanks as she used it to fend off the intruder.
Chapter Seven
The shah gripped his cell phone so hard the plastic squeaked in protest.
“You’re sure it’s him?”
“It is Sheik Abdullah. He said so himself.”
The man had as many lives as a cat. The attack on the convoy had not been meant for him, hadn’t been planned at all. The oilmen had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One of the men had recognized him after the fight, had thought him dead, but was too stupid to make sure. Had the sheik died, it would have been a bonus. But he seemed to have survived, after all, to interfere once again.
Was it a sign? Maybe Sheik Abdullah could be used for something. He was the king’s cousin. No love lost there, but honor would demand that the monarch ransom him. For money or other advantages. It bore thinking about. And then there was the treasure.
The ex-king, Majid, Tariq’s half brother, had amassed incredible wealth, not all of which had been found after his death. Speculation ran wild about where all the gold must be. Who would know better than Tariq, who had succeeded Majid as sheik of their tribe?
“Bring him to me,” he said into the phone, before he flipped the lid closed. He didn’t expect the shipment for another three days. They weren’t far away, but there were no roads where they traveled, which slowed things considerably.
Sheik Abdullah. The shah grinned. Plenty of time to send for Abbas, who was an expert at getting men to talk. If Tariq knew anything about the gold, they would get it out of him. If it turned out he didn’t, they could still ransom him to his cousin, the king.
SHE WAS INSANE. She belonged in a zoo along with the camel and the hyena. Preferably in a separate cage.
Sara held on for dear life as the camel she’d somehow managed to mount swayed under her, progressing forward with undulating movements. Why anyone would ever ride one of these beasts escaped her. They were slow, stinky and uncomfortable in the extreme. And this one had spit on her! Had had to show his disapproval before they’d been able to come to terms.
Every inch of her skin was covered to keep the murderous rays of the sun at bay. Luckily, one of the saddlebags had been full of brand-new kaffiyehs, the traditional headdresses men wore. Maybe the animal’s owner had been on his way to market.
She followed the tire tracks in the sand instead of taking the shortest way out of the desert. She couldn’t leave Tariq.
He had saved her life. She wasn’t the type who could turn her back on him now and live with that decision. The bandits had an hour’s head start. She would follow and see where they took him. Once she had a location, she would call Karim again. He was searching the desert for them already, thanks to the satellite phone. She had called the last number dialed, as soon as she had managed to outwit the hyena.
Beharrain wasn’t a huge country. The desert wasn’t as endless as it seemed. Help would come; she had to believe that. And she would do whatever it took to survive until then. She glanced at the water jugs, at the blanket, the saddlebag where she’d stuffed the food Tariq had brought from the vending machines. Good thing that had been buried under sand, or the bandits would have taken everything.
She looked back and sighed. The hyena was following close behind. Probably waiting for her to fall out of the saddle. A distinct possibility.
“Go away!”
She had hoped to leave the beast in the proverbial dust, but the camel was so slow it would have lost in a race with a snail. Race. Didn’t she read something in her guide book about camel races? Come to think of it, she was sure she’d seen camels on the National Geographic channel that moved faster than this one. So it could go faster. But how to make it?
She kicked the animal in the side gently. “Go!”
It ignored her.
She jiggled her body up and down in the saddle. “Go! Go! Go!”
The animal picked up speed. Marginally.
“Faster!” She slapped its side.
And to her surprise, the camel actually broke into a run. Time to hang on. If she thought her perch in the saddle had been precarious when the animal was walking, this was a hundred times worse. She needed all her skill and concentration to stay in place. She didn’t dare turn and check on the hyena.
“Faster!” she yelled each time the camel thought about slowing, and the animal listened, responding to the tone of her voice.
She might have a chance to catch up with the bandits yet, depending on the camel’s stamina. The trucks had been driving slowly when they’d left, probably due to the uneven terrain. The sandstorm had left drifting dunes behind.
An hour of galloping brought them to a rocky area, one that sloped upward, with mountains in the distance. Sara was fine while there was sand mixed in with the rocks, but once the rocks won out, she could no longer see any tracks.
The camel was slowing now, too, since the ground was harder to run on. It was probably tiring. She untied a new bottle—she had drained one already—and took a long drink, then glanced back. The hyena was a dot in the distance. But it still followed.
“Let’s go.” She urged the camel forward, scanning the mountainous region ahead. Then she noted movement on a ridge far ahead, and made out the silhouette of two trucks against the sky.
Maybe she could catch up a little before they completely disappeared. The camel could go through narrow passages that trucks couldn’t. She gripped the reins with one hand, the saddle with the other, dark spots dancing before her eyes all of a sudden. She blinked them away.
The heat was strong enough now to kill. And there was little shade among the rocks, not even higher up the mountain. The sun was almost directly overhead.
She had two choices. To sit out the noon heat, hiding in the shade of the camel, letting that damn hyena catch up with her, and risk forever losing Tariq. Or to keep going, risking sunstroke and becoming hyena lunch, anyway.
“WHERE IS THE GOLD?” The man sitting by Tariq’s prone body asked the question for the hundredth time, hissing the words through his yellow teeth.
Tariq closed his bloodshot eyes. Maybe he’d already died and was in hell. It seemed unlikely that pain such as this would exist anyplace but there. He turned his face from the blistering heat and blinding light of the flames next to them. Better. That spoke against hell. He didn’t think a place like that would afford any relief.
The man kicked him. “Wake up and talk.”
He opened his eyes and glared into his torturer’s face, until the bastard turned toward the fire to pull out a stick that glowed red at the end. He lowered the hot tip to Tariq’s exposed thigh, and there was nothing Tariq could do. He was bound tight, the man’s foot holding his ankle to the ground. His pant leg had been ripped away a long time ago. Red welts lined his skin where he had been repeatedly burned.
“Where is the gold?”
Tariq turned his head toward the cave’s opening, not wanting to see his flesh seared yet again. He clenched his teeth and stared out into the night. A sole sentry sat by the cave mouth, while sleeping smugglers lay scattered across the floor. They had gotten bored with his torture over an hour ago, and gone to sleep, save the man who held the stick and seemed to have inexhaustible energy for causing him pain.
Fire branded his skin, but Tariq swallowed his groan, fought against the agony. He wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction of crying out loud. “There is no money.” He said the words through gritted teeth, sweating profusely.
His torturer simply laughed and thrust the stick back into the fire.
Tariq kept his gaze on the small patch of sky and stars, trying to focus on them and on Sara’s beautiful face alternately as the sickly smell of his own burned flesh filled the air.
Where was she now? There had been that explosion. And then the smugglers had taken him away, without him seeing Sara again. Had they killed her? Fear of that had tortured him during the long trek, and was more painful than the burns on his thigh.
What had become of Karim? Had he, too, been lost to a trap? Those thoughts bound Tariq more tightly than his ropes. He should have somehow defended Sara and warned his brother.
He watched as the guard at the mouth of the cave raised his head and peered into the darkness. Had he seen or heard something? Was Karim coming? Had he found them somehow? Tariq had been listening for the sound of a chopper, but hadn’t heard it. Then again, torture did have a way of occupying a man’s full attention.
The guard stood and walked away from the opening of the cave.
A shadow appeared a few seconds later and slid inside. Not the guard, and not Karim, either, but someone much more slightly built. He recognized the shape and swore silently in helpless desperation, even though knowing she was alive filled him with relief. She shouldn’t be here.
He watched as Sara moved around, staying away from the area lit by the fire. He knew the exact moment she spotted him, knew when she decided to come out into the light to get to him.
His torturer was pulling the stick from the fire and giving him a demented grin, his focus fixed on his task.
Tariq could do nothing to stop Sara without bringing attention to her. Then she lifted something that in a split second he recognized as the tire iron. If they survived all this, he was going to frame it and hang it in the palace.
She brought the tire iron down hard on the back of the man’s head, and he folded without a sound. Sara immediately dropped to the sand next to Tariq and covered herself with a blanket, in case anyone woke up and looked around.
“Sara,” he said in a barely audible whisper, just to reaffirm that she really was alive and with him.
After a few moments, when no one raised the alarm, she reached out slowly, touched his face and left her hand there for a second. An amazing woman. He could only stare at her and drink in the sight. She was here, she was safe and she was about to save him.
She was already pulling water from somewhere and pouring it over his burns to cool them. She was an angel. His angel, he thought, with an urgent, possessive sense that took him by surprise.
He wished his hands were free so he could draw her into his arms. He inhaled a slow breath and held her troubled gaze in the light of the fire. “You shouldn’t have come.”
She was the one shaking her head now, even as she ran her fingers over the rope that bound him. “Karim is on his way.”
Relief eased Tariq’s tense muscles as she worked quickly, her movements impossibly quiet. He admired her temerity, her honor, that she would risk her life to save him instead of seeking to take the shortest route to safety.
“Thank you.” Loyalty was not something he had experienced a lot of in his life, especially not over the last couple of years. Hers touched him deeply.
“Quick.” He shifted as Sara worked the ropes with nimble fingers. The tension in his chest eased with every millimeter the rope loosened. “You have the phone?”
She nodded.
Allah be blessed. They might make it out of here yet. He lay still, not wanting to make her job any more difficult.
She made no noise. He couldn’t fathom how anyone could have heard her. But as he turned his head, he could see a dark shadow rise behind her, and before he could warn her, the butt of a rifle smashed hard against the back of her head. All he could do was roll forward, so that when she fell, it was on him instead of the rock floor of the cave.
SHE WAS BOUND hand and foot when she awoke. Bound to another person. To Tariq, she realized with considerable relief when she turned her head, the events of the previous night coming back to her. Sun poured in the cave’s opening, and the men around them were going about their business. Nobody paid any attention to the prisoners.
She’d been captured. She had failed. Frustration and disappointment rose like bile in the back of her throat as she recalled her easy defeat hours before. She’d gotten knocked out briefly, and after she’d come to, she’d been too upset that they had caught her. It had taken her forever to calm down enough to fall asleep. She was tired still.
“Are you okay?” Tariq asked her, his voice low and gentle. His gaze burned into hers.
His strength and warmth comforted her. She nodded and wiggled her limbs to get some circulation back into places where the ropes cut off the flow of blood. Although she had managed to grab a few hours of sleep, she still felt exhausted and sore all over. “Where are we going?”
They hadn’t been allowed to talk earlier, had earned some pretty hard kicks for every whispered word. But currently, nobody seemed to be paying attention to her.
“En route to some bandit camp.”
“Still in Beharrain?” She remembered reading that the border between Beharrain and Yemen was fairly flexible in this corner of the desert, moving as the individual tribes moved with their animals from watering hole to watering hole.
He nodded.
She thought of the satellite phone, then remembered that the bandits had taken it after they’d knocked her out, along with the tire iron she’d been growing attached to. “What happened back at the oasis?”
“I slashed three tires before they discovered me. They had spares. And you?”
“Hid upstairs, caught the camel, then followed as fast as I could.”
“You should have saved yourself.”
“Right. I’m sure that’s exactly what you would have done.” She flashed him a skeptical look.
His split lips stretched into a pained smile. “Definitely a lioness.” His gaze darkened and held her spellbound. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you,” he said.
She grew embarrassed at the open admiration in his voice, not sure she really deserved it, and looked away. The uneven stone floor of the cave dug into her back, but she didn’t dare sit up for fear of drawing attention to herself, to Tariq. They were lucky that for the moment they were forgotten. The bandits around them were finishing breakfast, some carrying their sleeping gear out of the cave, probably loading it back onto the truck.
“I think we’ll be moving on.” She scanned them one by one, mainly young men in their twenties. She could see only two or three who seemed older than that. They were all armed, an AK-47 hanging from each man’s shoulder.
One of them yelled something in Arabic as he strode their way.
“What does he want?”
“They are ready to load us onto one of the trucks.” Tariq sat up and helped her do the same. “Can you stand?”
She wobbled, but gave it her best shot. As soon as the bandit reached them, she understood why Tariq wanted to do as much as they could on their own. The man was rough, gripping her much harder than was necessary, his stubby fingers digging into her flesh as he yanked her around.
Tariq said something to him in Arabic, a brief sentence in a deep, harsh voice.
The man’s eyes narrowed as he leveled his gun at Tariq and shoved them forward. But he let go of her arm.
