“Twin?”
“Yes. Identical twin. Her name was Amber. I…I watched the sea swallow them. Amber and my father.” Her eyes were bright with emotion but her voice was flat. “My dad saved me first. He went back for Amber but he…they never made it. My mother wasn’t with us that day, but it destroyed her anyway. She killed herself two years later. That’s…that’s when I had my first amnesia episode. When I was eight. After I found my mother. I lost two whole years, just blanked out, forgot who I was.”
An odd ball of pain expanded in his chest. He knew just what it was like to watch someone you loved being sucked down by the waves. “Is that why you think you connected with Kamilah like you did?”
“Even with my amnesia, a part of me deep down inside must have sensed the similarity of our pasts. I…I didn’t want to see the two of you destroyed by this, David. I…” She looked away quickly, trying to hide the glimmering tear that escaped her eye. “I think that by trying to help you and Kamilah I must have subconsciously been trying to fix my own wretched past. I…I just wanted to put it all right.”
She sniffed and angrily smudged the trail of tears shining on her cheeks, then gave a soft, derisive laugh. “I…I never cry, you know.”
He ached to hold her.
She sniffed again, rubbed her nose and took in a deep, shuddering breath. Then she pulled her shoulders back, lifted her chin. “That’s why I’m going to Al Abèche, David. I have to make it right.”
He studied her in silence, the fire crackling. In spite of what she had done, he could only admire her strength, her determination, her desire to set things right. “It will not be easy,” he said finally.
“I can handle it.”
“The Sahara respects no man…or woman,” he warned.
“I said I can handle it.”
“We will fly into Tabara, the capital. But from there we will have to travel three days and nights by camel in order not to arouse suspicion. Any air or vehicle traffic into Al Abèche will alert Falal or rebel informants.”
“I know.”
“You ever ridden a camel?”
“I can ride camels. I can speak Arabic. I’ve worked in Algiers and in Egypt—”
“Right,” he snapped. “How could I forget? You’re a trained agent.”
“Exactly,” she retorted. “That’s why you need me.”
She spun on the heels of her army boots and stomped over the sand and up to the path that led back to his castle. “I’ll be ready at dawn,” she called out of the dark.
David blew out the pent-up air in his chest and turned to stare back out over the ocean. He felt as if he’d been shoved right up to the very edge of his existence. And beyond was wilderness. Uncharted territory. Tomorrow he would be over the ocean, in that wilderness, in the blistering heat of the desert under a wild, open sky. Alone with Jayde. With no place to hide from each other. He knew they would both be stripped naked by the blistering winds and harsh environment they would have to traverse to reach his child.
Summer in the Sahara held no mercy.
Jayde packed her backpack with grim determination. It was nearly three in the morning, but sleep eluded her. She needed to keep moving. She carefully checked through the supplies Lancaster had shipped to her. Among them she had a military issue compass, knife, binoculars, night-vision gear, pencil flares, sat-phone and cash. She’d also asked for some more serious hardware, and Lancaster had obliged by sending her some small but highly effective weaponry that included thin bricks of malleable plastic explosives along with strips of chemical reactant. He’d also thrown in chemical darts that would render a victim paralytic for several hours, and a small grenade launcher that could be fitted to her rifle. The launcher could be used to deliver an array of both lethal and less-than-lethal munitions including teargas rounds, smoke, signal flares and revolutionary electromagnetic pulse grenades.
Jayde studied the e-grenades. They’d only just come through highly secretive British military trials. They were hand-held versions of the bigger electromagnetic bombs the army now had in its arsenal.
Jayde knew the big electromagnetic pulse bombs could overwhelm the electrical circuitry of an entire city with an intense electromagnetic blast. Instead of simply cutting off power, an e-bomb literally overloaded and fried everything that used electricity. A big enough e-bomb could thrust an entire city back two hundred years or cripple a military unit. These mini versions in her hand would delivery enough power to knock out the communications and security capability of the Falal fortress. Not that she’d need them. That was going to be Sauvage’s job. But she was now prepared for any eventuality. And that’s the way she liked things.
“Thank you, Lancaster,” Jayde whispered as she packed them carefully with the rest of her gear. She checked her watch. In a few hours they’d be on their way.
She prayed Tariq hadn’t harmed Kamilah yet. She wasn’t going to even entertain the negative. They were going to get her out. Safe. And to prove it, she was going to pack a bag for Kamilah. She would need some fresh clothes once they’d extracted her. And maybe something familiar and comforting from home.
Jayde made her way down the corridors to Kamilah’s room. The palace was ablaze with lights even at this hour. David had lit up his castle like a beacon. He was letting nothing rest.
Jayde opened the door to Kamilah’s room, and the instant she saw the unruffled covers on the little girl’s bed, agony clawed at her heart. Where was Kamilah sleeping tonight? How had she reacted to the monstrous change in her uncle? Was there anyone with her to comfort her when she cried?
Jayde set the small bag she’d brought from her own room onto the bed and began going through the closets and drawers sorting out some clothes for Kamilah. She folded them neatly and packed them into the bag with military precision. Some training died hard, she thought ruefully. Well, she might need that training to help get this child back.
Then she caught sight of the small teddy bear lying on Kamilah’s pillow. Jayde hesitated, picked it up and buried her nose in the soft fur. It smelled so innocent. Like sunshine. Like a kitten or puppy…like Kamilah’s hair. Emotion stabbed behind her eyes and ballooned in her throat. She swallowed it down. She tucked the teddy into the bag and began to zip it up, but something peeking out from under the white ruffles of the pillow sham caught her eye. Jayde reached for it. She pulled out a leather-bound book. The Little Mermaid.
She fingered the embossed gold lettering. This time she couldn’t swallow the emotion away. It spilled hot and furious down her cheeks, and her chest jerked with a powerful sob. “Hold strong, baby,” she whispered clutching the book to her heart. “We’re coming…we’re coming to get you. We’re not going to let you down.”
Jayde Ashton swiped away her tears. This crying business was the pits. She had a sneaking suspicion that this new part of herself wasn’t going to squeeze back into any bottle now that it was out. She turned to search for a scarf or piece of fabric in which to wrap the book…and froze.
He stood in the doorway. Watching her. A dark and silent specter, a strange and unreadable look in his dark features.
“David?”
He stared at the book in her hands, then he looked up into her eyes. He held her gaze, and a current of connection surged between them. In that instant they were bound. She knew it. He knew it. They were in this together. They were joined by a fierce drive to save this child. And the very thing that united them was what also tore them apart.
Jayde swallowed against the sheer oscillating power of it. “I…I was just gathering a few things for Kamilah.”
His eyes shifted to the small bag on the bed. Jayde saw his throat work, the muscle pulse rapidly at the base of his jaw. He nodded. Then he spun on his heels, and she heard the clack of his boots on stone as he marched down the corridor.
She let out a shaky breath. Through the window, dawn was already a peach hint on the distant horizon.
They had to get going.
Heat lay thick like treacle over t
he dusty desert capital of Tabara, and the air shimmered like a mirage above the ancient buildings. The sand was everywhere. Constantly moving, propelled by the kinetics of wind and gravity. The Sahara literally drifted along the streets, blowing into lobbies of crumbling hotels, frosting traffic lights and piling in drifts in alley corners and ancient doorways. It was so fine in texture it made table salt look coarse by comparison.
After being here only a few hours Jayde had simply given up trying to resist it. It was in her clothes, her hair, her eyelashes, under her fingernails, in her mouth. And the heat slowed her every movement, making her feel sluggish.
David had left her in a small earth-brick hut on the crumbling outskirts of the city where thin goats roamed and children played in ragged clothes. He’d gone to the bustling market in the city center to buy camels and grain.
Her job was to pack the food supplies they’d bought as soon as they’d arrived and to have the bags ready to load onto the camels.
Jayde secured the rice, tins of sardines and dates in the final bag and then she lugged everything outside to wait for David. He wanted to have their camels watered by the evening and he wanted to be gone by nightfall when the oppressive air cooled a little. They would travel through the night. The next day would be tougher because they would continue their trek through the blistering midday heat of the Saharan summer, stopping only briefly to feed and water the camels before pressing on again.
Their goal was to stay low-key and under the radar so as not to alert rebel spies. Jayde was dressed in the manner of an Azarian camel herder, with a loose-fitting muslin shirt that hung to her calves and covered her arms. Under it she wore light muslin pants. On her feet she wore battered old flip-flops and a head cloth hid her hair.
She shaded her eyes and squinted into the haze. The sun was already beginning to dip down toward the distant desert horizon but there was still no sign of David. Jayde felt her jaw beginning to tense. From this last ring of small earth houses that fringed the northern outskirts of Tabara, the Sahara stretched like an undulating ocean in tones of yellow, ochre, cream and amber as far as her eye could see. She felt as if she was standing on the very edge of civilization.
As they trekked into that sea of sand, moving north to Al Abèche, toward Libya, she and David would enter the most arid and hostile region of the Sahara, where moisture was virtually nonexistent and dunes reached four hundred feet and more in height. Al Abèche was a town that hung onto a thread of life in that desiccated wasteland, and they would travel an old Bedouin route to get there.
It was tough for Jayde to get her head around the fact that it would take three days to reach their destination while the urgency of the situation was so acute. But as Sauvage had said, Tariq’s demands had afforded them the luxury of time to get it right. “We have only one shot and we must make it a clean one,” he’d said. And traveling into Al Abèche any other way would most certainly alert any informants or rebels in the area. They had to try and blend in as best they could. It was that or stay on Shendi and wait. And neither she nor David were the waiting sort.
And while she and David traversed the desert, Sauvage would gather his team in Egypt and Gio would keep the lines of negotiation open with Tariq.
Jayde heard a sound to her right. She swung around. It was David. She sucked in a breath of relief. He was striding toward her, camel stick in hand, three camels in tow. Two were a creamy white, the other one red. He’d already saddled them. Two goatskin water bags, or guerbas, were strapped to one. The others were loaded with grain. From one dangled a blackened cooking pot and an old kettle.
“What took you so long?” she called out to him.
“Camel shortage at the market,” he called back. “They had mostly calves or untrained bulls that turn into frothing demonic man killers if the mating urge hits.” He jerked his head toward the three beasts in tow. “Found these three geldings at the butcher’s yard. I reckon they have some life in them yet.”
David grinned as he neared, his teeth a slash of stark white against his skin, which was already darkening from the fierce desert sun. It sent a crazy spurt of desire through her. She hadn’t seen him smile since they’d made love on his yacht.
He was dressed in similar garb to hers, but he had his jambiya thrust through a tie at his waist. But even in peasant dress he was regal. He looked like the sheik, the true leader that he was. And like this crumbling and once-majestic desert city of Tabara, he had one foot in an ancient world, another in a new one. If anyone was to build a bridge between the two ways of life, this was the man. Seeing him like this, she could suddenly understand him in a profound way. She could almost feel the spirit that drove him. And it only deepened what she felt for him already.
She brushed the sensation aside. She couldn’t afford to feel anything. Because once they rescued Kamilah, he and his daughter would walk away from her. It would be over. She knew that. He hated her for her betrayal. He blamed her for this tragedy. And the only reason he’d brought her with him now was for the sake of his child.
But she couldn’t take her eyes from him. She was entranced by his enigmatic presence, the way he moved in this environment with the elegance and ease of a man born to the sands of the Sahara. Right now there wasn’t a trace of Anglo-Saxon about him, apart from the unsettling blue of his eyes against his dark skin. The color was made even more striking as it picked up the indigo blue of the cotton head cloth he wore.
“What are you staring at?”
“You.”
He grunted and handed her the head rope of the red camel. “You sure you can handle these creatures?”
“I am.” She took the rope from his hand.
David watched, ready to leap to Jayde’s aid.
She allowed the beast to sniff her, then she tugged on the head rope and expertly couched the animal. He raised a brow in surprise. This woman was something else. She acted like a desert native.
His admiration flattened almost immediately. That’s exactly what she was trained to do. To insinuate herself into situations and blend in like a native. She’d been trained to deceive, and because of this very skill he was admiring now, she’d been chosen by a government agency to betray him.
He felt his jaw clench. He watched Jayde proceed to lug her big bag over to the couched animal. She hefted it up and began to meticulously secure it to the saddle horn. It looked heavy, cumbersome. “What’s in there?” David asked, watching carefully as she tied the knots, making sure he wouldn’t have to recheck them once she was done.
“Nothing much.”
“Put it on the other camel, the one for the supplies.”
“No.” she simply. “I need to keep this one with me.”
“Why?”
She shot him an odd look. “It’s my personal bag.”
He frowned, watching as she secured a second bag to the camel. A much smaller one. His chest constricted. It was the little bag with Kamilah’s things. His hand shot out in reflex. “I’ll take that one.”
Her eyes flashed to his. She hesitated. “Sure.” She handed it to him. Their fingers brushed as he took the bag from her. The electricity of the touch stilled them both. Their eyes locked. And neither needed words to share what was going on their minds. This little bag was a symbol of why they were both here in the desert. And the magnitude of what still lay ahead hung heavy between them.
They worked in silence to load the rest of the bags. Then David watched again to make certain Jayde knew how to mount these notorious desert beasts.
She slipped into the saddle with ease, pressing her heels into the camel’s neck. She tugged on the rope, made a clicking sound with her tongue, and the beast rose like a wobbly leviathan.
And in spite of himself, a grudging admiration arose in David. The woman knew what she was doing all right. He wasn’t going to have to worry about her abilities. He could now focus solely on the task ahead.
With the three camels loaded and strung together, they left the outskirts of Tabara and made th
eir way down the cascading dunes to a small wadi, a riverbed where dark water pooled and a few date palms straggled in sand as white as snow. There they would water their camels and set out as soon as the sun dipped over the horizon.
A handful of children ran behind them on skinny brown legs as they made their way down to the wadi. Their grubby little faces ranged in shades from dark chocolate to pale coffee. The colors of Africa. And in their eyes, David saw Kamilah’s. And in their laughter, he heard hers.
His stomach clenched violently. His hand fisted around the head rope. He lifted his chin to the distant horizon. And in his heart he said a silent prayer. He prayed the gods of the desert would spare his child from the crazed wrath of his half brother.
By the time the sky turned to purple velvet and only a faint violet streak lingered where the sun had slipped behind distant dunes, they had their camels watered and supplies once again secured.
They set out at a rhythmic pace. David let Jayde take the lead. He followed up the rear, behind the camel that carried supplies and grain. Keeping distance between the two of them had been automatic since the moment their hands had brushed over Kamilah’s belongings.
The air was still viscous with heat, but the wind was now smooth and soft against his face. They settled into the undulating and mesmerizing rhythm of their camels, traveling in absolute mind-numbing silence for hour after hour after hour.
The sky above them was vast. Stars moved across the heavens in a transcendent display as the hours ticked down toward dawn. Every now and then the movement of a falling star caught David’s eye and he began to feel that familiar sensation descend on him as he traveled into the sandy void.
It was a feeling he didn’t really have words for. It was spiritual, one of the reasons the Sahara had kept pulling him back throughout his life. Out here David was acutely aware of the fragility of his humanity. He got a sense of perspective he could only imagine was akin to the feeling space travelers got when they looked back at the brilliant blue marble of a planet they called home.
The Sheik Who Loved Me Page 19