Desire In The Desert. Ryshia Kennie
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interrupting his thoughts as he found she was apt to do. This time it had been a good thing.
Kate pressed her forefinger to her lips. “To take someone that quickly and easily, I believe there are only two scenarios that might work.”
“She knew her captor,” he said grimly.
“Exactly. Or she was tricked. A stray animal, a child needing help—another woman.”
“I don’t think anyone we knew would have done this,” he said.
“You mean you don’t want to believe that someone you know would do this.”
She’d called him out again. He met her eyes, saw rock-solid determination, and knew she had his back.
“No matter, Emir. We have to consider all possibilities.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. She was everything Adam had said she would be, except she wasn’t a man. He was beginning to wonder if that mattered.
“I still think she knew them, was at least familiar with them,” Kate persisted in a voice meant to get a man’s attention and a mind that challenged him to keep up.
He pushed the distracting thoughts back and focused on what she had said. It was interesting she’d said “they” instead of “he.” It was another possibility for which he had no answers. He turned to the window, squinting as the setting sun shone across the square, bounced off a distant, copper-topped bell tower and created a glare that was almost impossible to see against. Dusk was fast approaching and soon the call to prayer would taunt them, remind them of passing time. Normally patience was what he was good at, yet patience was what he found impossible to implement in the one case that mattered more than any other.
“Her guards were easily disposed of,” Emir said.
“She might not have seen the violence. They might have been attacked without her even knowing. Then the perpetrator comes up to her, lures her, and she’s not suspicious because she knows who it is.”
The fact that Tara might have known the perpetrator, that someone he had given his trust to, could have betrayed him in the worst way possible almost took him out at the knees, even though the possibility was something Kate had alluded to earlier and one he’d considered himself. Now, for the first time, he was able to entertain an idea that had the potential to make this case, if that were possible, even more gut-wrenching.
“Emir?”
Kate’s voice was calm yet husky in a completely feminine way. She’d taken him out, literally flipping him onto his back, but it was her voice he knew could be his undoing. Now it was all he needed to bring him from his thoughts and into her presence.
“When was the last time you spoke to Tara?”
“Yesterday afternoon. It was a quick call. She told me that she planned to meet some friends—she mentioned the local nightclub. That was it.” He shook his head, his eyes not meeting hers. He didn’t need that distraction, that allure—he needed to focus and she was making it difficult. “All I told her to do was have fun. Instead, I should have...”
“Should have what, Emir?” Kate interrupted. “You’re not psychic. You did what you could—better than most. She’s a grown woman. She made her own decision and, unfortunately, the consequences were nothing anyone could anticipate. The only thing we can do now is get her home safe.”
She was right. He needed to quit thinking in the past unless it was something that would help. Although Kate hadn’t said any of that, he could read it in her tight stance, the accusing spark in her eye and the set of her chin. She wasn’t putting up with any emotional swaying on his part. She was making him toe the line—and it was exactly what he needed. Ironically, he was the most unemotional of his brothers, the least likely to act on emotion despite the circumstances.
But the thoughts wouldn’t be stilled as he contemplated the horrible thought that Tara knew her attacker. That the perpetrator who had planned this crime knew his sister. That he had her trust. It seemed more and more likely that that was the only thing that made sense.
Four questions—who, why, what and where—and no one had the answers.
He glanced at his watch. If his calculations were right, Tara had been gone for over fourteen hours.
They’d hypothesized enough. Time was running out.
* * *
AT THE SOUND of his voice, Tara cringed and pulled her knees up to her chest, as if making herself smaller would make her invisible. She pushed her back against the sand-crusted cliff.
“I should have never listened to him. Cousin or not, he’s an idiot,” the man said, continuing his one-person tirade.
She made herself look at him, at the horrid scar that brutalized one side of his face, at the dark hair slicked with gray—at the person who threatened her very life. She needed to find out everything she could to help her brothers get her out. She’d known since the beginning that this man was in charge. What was frightening was that he was no stranger to her. But he wasn’t the man she remembered, either.
She watched as he wiped the back of his hand across his stubbled chin as another man, slimmer and taller, walked past. He muttered something and the man she had come to loathe, and who led them all, cuffed him across the back of the head.
“Stop that,” he snarled. He spoke in his native Berber and it was unclear to Tara, and she suspected to the man he had just accosted, what it was he should stop.
Silence settled for a few seconds in the small oasis that had become her nightmare. She looked around, conscious that he was sensitive even to her silent scrutiny. She was doing as little as possible to draw attention to herself. The thought of her brothers is what kept her strong and would get her through this. But the leader’s next words frightened her like no others could.
“I’ll bring the bloody house of Al-Nassar to its knees.” He chuckled, the sound as dry as the endless sand that swept around them, flirting with the boundaries of the only greenery for miles. “Soon I will be a rich man.”
He turned so that he partially faced her as he coughed and scowled.
“What are you staring at?” he snarled.
“Nothing,” she said with oomph in her voice. For the one thing she’d learned since her kidnapping was that the man she would now think of only as he, detested weakness.
She stared at him before he finally turned his back to her.
The word he snarled as he stormed away was as evil as all the others he’d cursed at her. She knew the anger wasn’t directed at her but at the house of Al-Nassar and everything he thought it stood for. He’d made that clear in the first miserable hours when they’d taken her and all the hours since.
Tara breathed a sigh of relief and prayed, for she didn’t know how much longer she could keep the evil at bay.
Monday, September 14, 7:00 p.m.
They had agreed that there was nothing they could do until daylight. The Sahara wasn’t welcoming during the day, never mind at night. There was no need to push the limits, especially as there had been no further communication from the kidnappers.
That worried Emir.
“The airport attack had to be tied to the kidnappers. But why?” Kate asked. “Something doesn’t fit.”
He paced and tried to ignore the pulsing headache. He’d already popped a couple of aspirin and an hour ago he’d admitted to himself that there was no hope for it, the headache was there until Tara was brought home unscathed.
“We should have gotten a final demand by now. None of this makes sense,” he said, knowing it could make perfect sense. But maybe it all