Zara

by Jade Kerrion

  Klah’s voice drew her back to the present. “There isn’t anyone like that out there willing to put up with Danyael’s emotional baggage, and he knows it. He’s not looking.”

  “That’s a lie. He made me fall in love with him.”

  “No, he didn’t. Maybe he fell in love with you. Maybe his control over his emotions wasn’t as precise as it usually is. Maybe they leaked past his psychic shields and influenced you, but I know Danyael. He would never have done so deliberately—”

  Danyael had said the same thing.

  “—not when he knows he has nothing to offer you.”

  Doesn’t he?

  Klah’s shoulders fell with a sigh. “That’s why your baby matters. She may be Danyael’s only chance of experiencing love without the accompanying fear of being hurt.”

  It’s not his baby. Zara opened her mouth to object, but Klah cut her off. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Danyael’s in prison for life. He’ll never know either way. It’s just—” He shook his head. “His potential was amazing. Perhaps what he ended up with wasn’t much, but considering everything that happened to derail him—he did his best. In the end, it’s all we can do.”

  She snorted. “It’s not good enough.”

  “Not for you.” Klah sighed again. “I know it’s too late for this, but if he ever makes it out of prison, stay away from him.”

  “Why?”

  “If he can’t have love, then at least he deserves peace.” His smile turned wry. “And you’re not it.”

  “Of course not,” she murmured. Everyone knew, for a fact, that she and Danyael had no future together—including she and Danyael. That was it—a simple case; no debate from anyone, not even Danyael.

  No debate, but for the quiet ache in her heart every time she thought of him.

  Her eyes narrowed as the group of men stopped several hundred feet away.

  “They’re just watching,” Klah murmured.

  Zara nodded. “Not a good sign.” She glanced over her shoulder. The first three buses were full; the fourth halfway there. “Let’s go.” As agreed, Zara and Nazrol boarded the first bus and Klah climbed onto the fourth.

  She claimed the vacant seat behind the driver and glanced through the rearview mirror to confirm the fourth bus was ready to depart. She nodded to the driver and he pulled away. No one spoke. The schoolgirls sat tense and upright in the aisle seats. The Hezbollah warriors looked out the window, their gazes carefully averted from the women beside them.

  The group of observers burst into a run. Damn it. She glanced at Nazrol, who sat on the other side of the aisle. “When do our security escorts show up?”

  “About a mile outside the village,” Nazrol said.

  “Are they any good?”

  “I trained them myself.” He smirked. “Those men—do you think they are Americans?”

  “They’re probably American mercenaries under the command of a SEAL.”

  “I don’t understand…American mercenaries attacking American Special Forces. This is not normal.”

  “No. The U.S. military usually has its act together far better than that. It worries me.”

  “That there’s a traitor?”

  “The traitor’s a given. The why…I don’t get.” She shook her head. “Perhaps it’s just a private grudge gone awry, but if it was just a grudge against the SEAL team, it should have ended with the death of the SEALs. The attack on my house, the attempt to seize the girls while they’re under the protection of Hezbollah tells me it’s far more. This region has been at peace for a few years now. The only reason to start this big of an uproar would be to reignite the war in the Middle East. Someone is trying to get innocent girls killed. Someone is trying to get Americans killed, and they’re determined to pin the blame on us.”

  “Us?” Nazrol smiled. “It’s good to hear you say that.”

  “That I am one of you?” Zara’s smile matched his. “At least half of me is.”

  “And the other half is American?”

  “I wish I knew. Identity is more than a passport.” Or in her case, more than a dozen passports, most of them in fake names. She glanced out the window as several motorbikes, each carrying two people, revved into view to flank the buses.

  Nazrol nodded. “And here they are, our security escorts. If it is Allah’s will, we will have a safe trip into Beirut.”

  “Tell your men to keep an eye out for vehicles tailing us.”

  “You think there will be trouble.”

  “I try to anticipate it. I’m rarely disappointed.”

  Nazrol reached for his cell phone and conveyed the instructions down the chain of command.

  Zara leaned back in her seat and tried to relax. The irregular tightening sensation in her lower abdomen refused to stop. What’s going on in there? She stroked her stomach and was rewarded with a flutter as her daughter squirmed. What do I do with you?

  If only you were Danyael’s…

  Exhaustion tugged at her, but the uncertainty and stress of the situation kept her alert as the Beirut skyline came into view. More than two thirds of the way into their journey, they were still more than a half hour from the Venezuelan embassy. Excitement, however, made the girls sit up straighter. A low babble of conversation broke out.

  Zara allowed herself a deep breath. Her ribs reminded her she wasn’t ready for it.

  Nazrol’s phone buzzed. Zara studied his face as he spoke tersely to the person on the other end. “We think we have a tail. Two police cars.”

  Zara glanced out the window.

  “They’re signaling. They want us to pull over. What should we do, Zara? This bus is not built for a high-speed chase.”

  Her jaw tensed. She could risk one bus, or all four. “Pull over. Tell the other buses to go on. Do not react unless I do.”

  Nazrol nodded and spoke into his phone. The other buses drove past as their bus pulled into a parking lot. The two motorcycles escorting the bus casually turned the corner to circle the lot. Zara kept her scarf pulled low over her forehead so that she looked out from under its fringe as two policemen stomped onto the bus.

  She restrained the incredulous snort. If they were policemen, she was a nun. Buttons strained to contain their muscular chests. Their skin tone was the right shade of Middle Eastern brown, but they could as easily have been tanned Latinos or Native Americans.

  “Where are you going?” one of them asked the bus driver.

  Zara stiffened. His Arabic accent, roughened by lower-class breeding, was authentic. If he wasn’t an American mercenary, was he from Nakob?

  His tone indifferent, the bus driver answered, “We’re going to Martyrs’ Square.”

  The policeman snickered as his gaze drifted over the passengers. “And these people?”

  “Tourists, from Riyadh.”

  “Passports?”

  “At the hotel. You know the hotels hold them during their stay.”

  The policeman grunted and turned to walk down the aisle. The other blocked the doorway. His hand lingered at his waist, inches from his weapon. Six other policemen stood outside the bus, their eyes fixed on the passengers through the windows. Four of the six casually toted rifles instead of handguns.

  Damn it. The likelihood of someone getting hurt by stray gunfire was unacceptably high.

  Zara caught Nazrol’s gaze. She flicked her gaze to the left, indicating the policeman standing by the door.

  Nazrol’s acknowledgement was a lowering of his eyelashes. His gaze darted to the right, to the policeman standing midway down the aisle.

  Patience. Not yet.

  “What is this?” the policeman snapped. He flipped the edge of scarf back from a girl’s face, to reveal fair Caucasian skin and terrified blue eyes. “Did you think you could sneak into the city?” He flung the words out like a challenge. At his gesture, the policemen standing guard outside the bus moved in on the vehicle. “Did you think you could so easily escape Allah’s justice? You’re bound for Martyrs’ Square?
It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.” His high-pitched giggle teetered on the edge of sanity before slowly toppling over.

  Zara flicked her gaze to the entrance to the parking lot as the motorcycles completed circling the lot. They swung off the road as the passengers reached into their robes to pull out sawed-off shotguns and aimed them at the backs of the policemen.

  Now!

  Zara yanked a gun from her robe and squeezed the trigger.

  The policeman blocking the door flew backward, blood leaking from the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Gunfire erupted outside the bus as the motorcycle riders opened fire on the policemen cowering behind their cars.

  “Go!” Zara shouted.

  The bus driver slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and the forward momentum sent Nazrol and the policeman he had been tussling with to the floor. Schoolgirls shrieked as the gun the policeman was holding waved dangerously in the air.

  Seconds later, the explosive sound of a bullet going off shook the bus.

  The driver slumped over the steering wheel, blood blooming over his shirt, as the bus swerved into the median, tumbling schoolgirls and Hezbollah warriors out of their seats. Teeth gritted, Zara lunged into the driver’s seat, grabbed the steering wheel, and swung the bus back into its lane. Cars honked; drivers cursed and shook their fists at the bus.

  The screams of the women shot up several decibels.

  “Bomb!” Nazrol shouted over their panicked cries. “He’s wearing a bomb!”

  20

  Zara threw a glance over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of the policeman, pinned down by two Hezbollah warriors. His jacket had been pulled apart to reveal a tangle of wires over a suicide vest. “Take the detonator from him,” she snapped.

  “I did. Too late.” Nazrol’s voice was edged with fear. “It’s on a timer. He’s already activated it. Two minutes.”

  Zara cursed.

  “Left! Left,” one of the Hezbollah men shouted. “Shortcut. Embassy!”

  Zara spun the steering wheel, sending the bus into a sharp left turn. Tires screeched as cars braked to avoid a collision with the bus. Drivers honked their displeasure.

  “You!” she ordered the man who had shouted directions. “Come, take over.”

  He scrambled out of his seat. The bus swerved as he and Zara exchanged places, but within moments, his hand was steady on the wheel. “Martyrs’ Square?”

  With its hundreds of milling tourists? Hell, no. “There’s an alley next to the embassy. Take the side streets. Hurry.” A window shattered. She flinched and ducked beneath the fragments of glass as a police car pulled up alongside the bus. A man leaned out, spraying bullets with his assault rifle.

  Glass exploded into shards. Screams pierced the air.

  “Stop them!” she ordered, although the Hezbollah warriors were already pulling rifles from beneath the seats and handguns from their robes. They leaned out of the bus windows to fire on the police car.

  Zara tuned out the screeching of brakes and the sound of metal scraping against metal as she knelt beside the suicide bomber. She stared at his vest—probably C4 and steel balls or other shrapnel. A digital timer ticked through its red LCD countdown.

  “How far?” she shouted over her shoulder.

  “Almost there!” the bus driver shouted back.

  “Three blocks,” Nazrol said.

  Too damn close. “Everyone to the front of the bus,” Zara ordered. “Get ready to run. Take this bastard to the back. And someone stop that damned cop car!”

  Nazrol pulled out his handgun and went to the window. His bullet pierced glass, spraying blood across the windshield. The driver slumped forward as the police car revved, swerving out of its lane and into the path of a large truck. The truck slammed on both the horn and the brakes, and its alarmed driver scrambled out of the vehicle moments before the police car crashed into it.

  Seconds later, a fireball consumed the police car, blasting heat and shrapnel like a supernova. The flames were too excessive for an exploding gas tank; the policemen must have been wearing suicide vests too. C4 was a nasty piece of work.

  And it stared her in the face.

  The policeman laughed, spittle forming in the blood that stained his mouth. “Surprise, surprise, bitch. Did you think you could take the girls back after their fathers’ weapons slaughtered Abdul Kanaan? Those infidels will get what’s coming to them—their little princesses, back in pieces.”

  The bus screeched to a stop. “Go, go!” the bus driver yelled. The girls scrambled from the bus and ran down the narrow street toward Martyrs’ Square. Hezbollah warriors, weapons waving indiscreetly, ran after them, triggering a general stampede. “That way! That way!” The men tugged the girls away from the square and toward the walled compound of the Venezuelan embassy.

  “Come on!” Nazrol yanked Zara’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  The timer went from double digits to single digits.

  She took the gun from his hand and fired a single shot into the policeman’s head, killing him.

  Seven. Six.

  She and Nazrol scrambled down from the bus and raced away from the vehicle. The sound of the explosion jolted her moments before Nazrol tackled her to the ground, shielding her from the worst of the heat and the blast. The flames were still roaring through the shell of the bus when they both slowly pushed up.

  Nazrol wriggled his shoulders, as if to test if he were still in one piece, and then looked at Zara. “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “The baby okay?”

  Zara glared at him.

  Nazrol shrugged. He glanced at the cluster of girls standing within the walled compound of the Venezuelan embassy. The Hezbollah warriors had slunk away and disappeared into the crowd. “I’ll help you to the embassy, and then I should leave before the real policemen arrive.”

  Zara nodded again, almost too exhausted to speak. She pressed her hand against her lower abdomen. Are you all right?

  Nothing stirred within her.

  She inhaled deeply. The breath she released shuddered with disbelief. The sudden clouding of her mind could not possibly have been shock. The sharp ache in her chest could not possibly have been loss. She had not wanted the child. It should have meant nothing to lose it.

  When had she lost control of that situation?

  When I met Danyael. The words blended sarcasm and truth to the point where she no longer knew where one ended and the other began. Even so, her mental voice sounded far less bitter and cynical than usual.

  For years, she had dismissed love as a liability and a waste of time. It had taken an alpha empath to change her mind and her heart. When had her frustration with Danyael turned into acceptance? How had it happened so gradually without her noticing the turning point?

  Nazrol glanced at her. “Zara, are you all right?”

  “I am now,” she murmured. The breath she inhaled was acrid with smoke, but it was the scent of a fresh start. Nazrol’s strong arm was steady around her waist, and she leaned against him as he escorted her to the gate of the embassy where a young woman in a business suit awaited her.

  The woman’s smile was cool, but her gaze was warm and affectionate. “Hell of an entrance as usual, Zara,” she said in Spanish.

  “The other buses?”

  “Three buses dropped off the girls about five minutes earlier. One man got off too. He says he’s an American soldier. There he is now.”

  Nazrol and Klah exchanged a nod, and Nazrol stepped away the moment Klah came close enough to support Zara. “All the girls arrived,” he confirmed. “The staff’s keeping them comfortable while they contact their parents.”

  Zara squeezed her eyes shut briefly. The small step forward in the resolution of her heart’s conflict over Danyael had cleared her mind. “I underestimated Yasmin.”

  21

  Stupid,” Zara breathed. She winced as the nurse dabbed an antiseptic swab at the deep cut on her brow. She looked up at Klah, who leaned against the doorway. “I sh
ould have trusted my instincts. I should have taken the time to interrogate her fully.”

  “Hold still,” the nurse said. With gloved hands, she gently parted the wound. “You’re going to need stitches.

  “Fine. Make it quick.”

  “Miss, you won’t be going anywhere for a while. Those ribs—”

  “Just give me an ice pack and painkillers. I have to get back to Beqaa Valley.”

  Klah stared at her. “What more do you expect Yasmin to tell you? You already know Nakob’s involved.”

  “Does the name Abdul Kanaan ring any bells?”

  “He’s a terrorist leader, believed to have ties to ISIS and Hezbollah. He was killed in a NATO raid of his compound about a year ago.”

  “Roughly coinciding with the rise of Nakob…”

  “What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “The suicide bomber in the bus said that the kidnapping of the girls was revenge for Kanaan’s death.”

  “You’re saying that Nakob was formed to avenge Kanaan?”

  Zara did not answer the question directly. “What did Yasmin say when we interrogated her?”

  Klah’s head jerked up sharply, but his eyes stared at the wall on the far side of the room. “Father,” he murmured. “She said we killed her father.” He blinked and refocused on Zara. “Kanaan? But he didn’t have any children.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No children? In a religion that revers warriors of God and encourages polygamy? I don’t care what the official reports said. Surely you realize that the odds of Kanaan having no children are less than zero.”

  “Fine.” Klah pushed away from the wall to pace the room. “So why did our press make such a big deal of the report that he didn’t?”