by Holly Rayner
“Your Highness, we need to evacuate immediately. This is not a drill. Insurgents are making their move right now. Let’s go!”
Darian stood, his shoulders tense, his face cold as he made short work of dressing in front of the entire team. Luckily, Rachelle had asked for a pair of pajamas to borrow, and she was dressed in one of Darian’s shirts and pajama bottoms as she rose from the bed, unsure of what she should do.
One of the guards approached her.
“Miss, come with us now.”
He placed a firm hand on her arm, the group leaving with Darian surrounded as Rachelle was brought separately from behind. In a moment of clarity, she snatched her purse on the way out the door. They wound their way through the palace until they reached a back garage, where two cars were waiting. Rachelle’s guard pressed her in the opposite direction of Darian.
“In here, please. We’ll do our best to get you safely home.”
“I…I’m not wearing any shoes,” she said.
She felt stupid. It was the only thing she could think to say as her romance was torn apart and Phoebe’s worried gaze haunted her inner mind. Was she wrong to ignore her assistant’s warning? Would she pay for that mistake with her life?
She turned to look at Darian, who was already being pressed into another car.
“Darian!” she cried, and he turned to look at her.
His eyes were charcoal black in the darkness of the garage. He frowned, his expression like stone.
“It’s for the best that you put me out of your mind, Rachelle. Goodbye.”
With that, he was pressed into the other car, which instantly took off. Rachelle watched in disbelief as her own guard gently pressed her into the back seat of her car and slid in next to her. Their own driver sped in another direction.
“Why aren’t we going the same way?” Rachelle asked.
The guard kept his eyes forward, looking around for any sign of immediate danger beyond the vehicle.
“The royal family will be moved to safety. Since we don’t know you or anything about you, those whereabouts are to remain strictly hidden.”
“I’m in marketing,” Rachelle drawled, annoyed. How could they think she was come kind of rebel spy?
“No offense, miss, but that means nothing. Now, I’m going to take you to the American embassy, where you should be able to secure a flight back to the States. There isn’t a moment left to lose. For all we know, they could be grounding all the flights in a few hours.”
Rachelle swallowed, her throat dry. The last image of Darian’s hard stare was freezing her heart, even as she feared for her own life. How could he have ignored the warnings? What if they cost him his life, too?
Unable to think of Darian dying, Rachelle instead reached into her purse, checking the contents. She had always carried her passport and wallet with her, much to her relief. It would appear that the contents of her hotel room would be lost to her forever. She supposed it was better to lose a few items of clothing than her life.
Even the beautiful dress and jewelry that Darian had bought her.
They drove up to the high gates of the American embassy. When a guard approached them, Rachelle’s escort spoke.
“We have one of your citizens in need of sanctuary while we attend to military action against our country. Will you take her?”
Rachelle glanced at the man beside her in disbelief. Hadn’t he just said they would take care of her? She had assumed that meant they knew she would be coming. Now, she was like a lost puppy being left on someone’s doorstep. The guard looked at Rachelle.
“Do you have your passport, miss?”
Rachelle nodded, a wave of relief rushing through her. She reached into her purse and handed it to the guard, who took a thorough look at it before nodding.
“Please come in. We can help you.”
He opened the back door for Rachelle to get out. She was acutely aware of her bare feet as they touched the dirt ground. When she closed the door behind her, the two guards saluted each other.
“Thank you for bringing her to safety,” the American guard said.
Darian’s guard nodded, directing the driver to make haste as they headed back toward an unknown destination, leaving Rachelle effectively in the dust. She turned and looked up at the guard, who was doing his best not to stare at her unconventional outfit.
“We can get you a change of clothes inside. There are a few other Americans waiting to depart. We will have a convoy heading toward Zaradi’s neighbor, Nurabi. It’s a peaceful micronation, and we have a base there. If you just head inside, I’ll radio that you’re coming.”
“Thank you,” Rachelle whispered.
She walked as if in a daze toward the embassy entrance. By the time she got there, the door was already being opened for her, and a woman in jeans and a T-shirt wrapped an arm around her back as she welcomed her inside.
“My goodness, you came here in your pajamas! Let’s get you something to wear that includes shoes. Once you’re dressed, we’ll deploy the convoy. This way, ma’am.”
Rachelle was led to a small antechamber, where various articles of clothing were arranged in shelves, based on size. Rachelle quickly picked out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before finding a comfortable pair of shoes and changing in a nearby bathroom. When she was dressed, she stared at the pile of clothing on the floor.
Regardless of how Darian had behaved as they parted, he had managed to capture her heart. How could she leave the one article she had left of him behind? Draping the clothing over her purse, she carried everything with her as she headed back into the main lobby, where several other Americans were waiting, their faces wracked with fear.
“I can assure you that the U.S. government has negotiated your safe removal from this hostile situation. The rebel army has no interest in angering us,” the woman announced, her voice loud and clear in the vast chamber. “If you could all follow me, it would be wise for us to evacuate sooner, rather than later.”
The group followed the woman outside, where a large green military truck was waiting. The back was open, and the inside was lined with bench-like seats along either side. The group piled in, each person taking a seat before the door was closed, and they traveled in the windowless, dimly lit truck to another country, hoping that they wouldn’t hear any more explosions along the way.
Chapter Nine
A man in rumpled clothing sat next to Rachelle, and he turned to look at her.
“Reporter. You?”
Rachelle was hardly in the mood to talk, but she glanced up at the man for a moment before setting her gaze ahead.
“International networking conference; I’m in advertising.”
The man nodded.
“I heard about that. I was reporting live on the possible threats to Zaradi when bullets started flying past my head. I’m lucky to have escaped with my life. Others weren’t.”
He looked so haunted that Rachelle nearly reached out to squeeze his hand. She thought better of it. The man was a journalist, after all. He knew the risks of his job. They spent the rest of the ride in heavy silence, everyone’s ears pricked up for the slightest sound of combat. When the truck slowed to a stop, everyone held their breath.
The truck moved once again shortly after. Rachelle assumed they had reached the border and were safely out of Zaradi. Not long after, the truck stopped once again, and they heard the driver’s door close before the back of the truck was opened.
“Welcome to our military base, stationed out of Nurabi. Your flight is waiting to take you home.”
Blinking against the light of the morning sun, Rachelle and the others stepped out into a wide, open airbase. There were several planes lined up, and they approached a woman holding a clipboard, who appeared to be guiding them in the appropriate direction.
When Rachelle arrived, the woman glanced up.
“Destination?”
“Chicago,” Rachelle said.
The woman nodded.
“You’ll want to bo
ard that plane right over there—A386.”
“Thank you,” Rachelle replied, feeling numb.
Just twelve hours before, she had been living a fairytale dream come true. Now she was walking in borrowed shoes, with nothing but her purse, toward a plane on a military base, evacuating a war zone. Her thoughts drifted to Darian. Was he all right? Did he make it out? Would she ever know?
As she reached the plane, she took each step one at a time, reaching the top and meeting a flight attendant.
“Please feel free to sit wherever you’d like, ma’am. Should be a pretty empty flight.”
The man smiled at her, aiming for comfort, but Rachelle could only attempt a pitiful smile in return before picking a seat in the middle of the plane and staring out the window. A few of the others from her truck arrived, picking their own seats to allow everyone plenty of room. Not long after, the attendant announced that they had everyone and would be departing momentarily.
Rachelle stared balefully out the window as the plane’s cabin doors were closed, sealing them in. They taxied to the end of the runway before taking off, the vast desert spreading out below. Rachelle cast her gaze out east, where Zaradi would be, relative to where they were. Tiny plumes of smoke could be seen dotting the landscape, and a deep, needling worry pinched through her gut.
Please let him be okay.
Rachelle pulled Darian’s clean, white pajama shirt from her purse and breathed in the scent of him. She closed her eyes, rehashing the events of the morning over and over again.
Why would he tell her it was best if she never thought of him again? He had to have felt their connection, too. He simply had to. Rachelle had never put her heart on the line for anyone, but with Darian, it had been so natural.
She couldn’t help but fall in love with him.
Now he was gone, and she had no idea if or when she would ever see him again. As tears began rolling down her cheeks, somewhere during the twenty-hour flight, she realized that it was very unlikely that she would ever see Sheikh Darian Al-Adain again. Rachelle pressed her head against the window, doing her best to get some sleep and turn off her thoughts.
It was one of the longest flights of her life.
When they landed in Chicago, Rachelle’s phone began beeping like crazy. She watched as text after text came in from Phoebe, her parents, some old friends she hadn’t really spoken to in a while, and other folks from work, who were frantically trying to see if she was okay.
Unfortunately, they would have to wait for their answer. The plane taxied into O’Hare Airport, docking in an area Rachelle had never been before. When the cabin was opened, they were met with a soldier who escorted them to a private customs area. There, an older man in a highly decorated military uniform met them, asking them to take a seat.
“You’ve been through a lot. I understand that. If there is anything that any of you can tell us about that coup, however, the United States government would be very grateful for your information.”
Each of them went through, talking about how they had generally heard of the disquiet going on and had been warned to evacuate, but hadn’t taken the warning seriously. The military man frowned deeply.
“Perhaps you’ve learned a valuable lesson, then. Fortunately for you all, you get to return with your lives. Thank you for your reports. Please feel free to go update your friends and family.”
They thanked the man before heading out into the airport. Rachelle felt exhausted and dirty, and as she hailed a cab back to her apartment, she took the time in the back seat to text everyone back and let them know that she was back in Chicago and would be in touch with them soon enough.
Phoebe was the first to call her back.
Rachelle hesitated before answering the phone, but she knew Phoebe would persist if she let it ring. Tapping the accept button, she placed the phone against her ear.
“Hi, Phoebe.”
Phoebe cried into the receiver.
“I thought you were dead!” she sobbed. “We were so scared for you! All we could do was watch these terrible images on the news… Tell me you’re okay!”
“I’m okay. I answered the phone, didn’t I?”
“Why didn’t you sooner?”
Rachelle took a breath, reminding herself that she had been the cause of a great deal of worry and stress for her friends and family, and would need to calm them down accordingly.
“I had my phone turned off last night, and then we were emergency evacuated first thing this morning, so there wasn’t any time to check.”
“Are you all right? What happened?”
Rachelle continued to focus on her breath. She wasn’t really ready to relive everything that had happened to her in the past twenty-four hours, but if anyone deserved an explanation, it was Phoebe. Rachelle had ignored her well-timed advice, and she now had to pay the price of nearly losing her life for it. She left out the romantic bits, only saying that she had had dinner with the Sheikh, and decided to stay over.
She described the evacuation, breezing over the part where the man she had fallen for had told her to forget him for the rest of their lives.
She choked back a sob, then.
“You poor thing. I shouldn’t be making you relive this. Go home and get cleaned up, get some rest. No one expects you in at work for a few days, at least. I’ll let everyone know what happened so you won’t have to.”
“Okay,” Rachelle breathed.
She ended the call then as the cab approached her apartment building. She ignored the sympathetic look from her driver as she gave him a tip and stepped into her building, heading up in the elevator to her floor. The building was encased in silence, everyone already at work, the world turning on and on even as her own had come to a shrieking halt.
When she opened the door, her apartment looked exactly as it always had. As if her whole life hadn’t completely changed. She stared around her for a moment, her knees nearly buckling. Forcing herself to reach her bed, she clutched Darian’s shirt to her chest and closed her eyes tight.
And cried.
Chapter Ten
“Can you take one last look at the presentation before we head in this afternoon?”
Phoebe nodded, taking the flash drive Rachelle held out to her as she headed out of the office and back to her own desk. Rachelle stared at her computer screen for a moment, going over numbers and her pitch speech. A huge client would be joining them that afternoon, and Rachelle had spent the two months she’d been back from Zaradi focusing on that—to keep her mind off of other things.
Or, rather, other people.
Her finger hovered over the browser as she considered another search. When she’d recovered from the trauma of her departure from Zaradi, she had looked to see what had become of the royal family there. She found one major news story covering their departure, though all it said was that they were unaccounted for, leaving the mystery quite alive.
When Rachelle went to check again, the story couldn’t be found. It had been wiped entirely from the internet, and there was nothing else covering their possible whereabouts. Instead, the press had moved on to other things as the conflict raged on, uncertainty plaguing the region.
Rachelle thought about all the peaceful, friendly people she had passed on the streets of Tara. She sent out a silent prayer of hope to all of them, hoping that the casualties wouldn’t be as bad as they were saying. For the millionth time, she wondered if Darian was alive or dead. She had been so confused by the way he parted with her, had thought of a ton of reasons why he might have acted the way he did. None of it puzzled out in her mind or her heart, leaving her restless and discontented most of the time.
Her colleagues had chocked it up to PTSD, and had given her a wide berth whenever she was seen scowling, thinking about what had happened and what might have been. Of course, there was never any point in dwelling on the past, and Rachelle had tried her best to move forward. The pace of business didn’t slow just because her world was flipped upside down.
As
she continued to stare at her screen, lost in her thoughts, Phoebe buzzed in on the intercom.
“Looks great, boss. You’re going to knock ‘em flat!”
“Well, let’s not hope for that. Let’s hope we help them soar. Positive affirmations, Phoebe, remember?”
“Right. You’re going to help them fly!” Phoebe said, ever obedient.
Rachelle grinned. Phoebe had been a rock since she’d returned, and she was grateful for all the support she’d received as she recovered from a terrifying situation.
“All right, let’s get the conference room set up with the usual fare and goodies. Do you need me to order anything?”
“Nope. I’ve got this, boss. You just work on the presentation and leave the rest to me.”
“Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?” Rachelle asked, and she meant it.
Phoebe laughed.
“Every day. Now, get ready to wow them. I’ll meet you in the conference room in a few hours.”
“Yep,” Rachelle said.
She sat back in her chair, looking out at the skyscrapers of the windy city. A thought struck her in that moment, and she checked the time again. She would have plenty of time to get there and then make it back. Donning a light jacket, she headed out of her office and down the elevator, her purse on her shoulder and her expression determined.
When Rachelle stepped out onto the street, she turned, heading in the direction of Navy Pier. As she walked, she noticed the quick way others passed her by. Since returning from Zaradi, she had slowed her own pace a bit, Darian’s words with her as she carried on with her life. He was always with her, it seemed. The night they had spent together haunted her dreams, whether night or day, and she was often caught staring off into space, needing to be brought back to the present.
It was entirely unlike her.
Ignoring the stream of worried glances from her colleagues, she had carried on. Her work hadn’t suffered for it. While she worked on their next big client, she’d managed to land three smaller ones in the meantime, securing her role as one of their best workers. She had also reached out to several of the people she had networked with at the conference, and they were about to land another key partnership in the Middle East.