Desert Justice

by Valerie Parv

  He spun to face Hamal who’d delivered the news about the ambulance. “Assemble a squad of our most trusted men, including you and Fayed. We’re going into the Lost Quarter. We can’t fly in without alerting the rebels and putting Simone at greater risk, so we’ll do this the hard way.”

  “I must protest your personal involvement in such a mission, Your Highness. The risk is too great. Let me lead the mission. Your people need you alive and well.”

  And I need Simone more than the people need me, Markaz thought, finally accepting the truth. Against all reason, he was in love with her. If he couldn’t have her at his side, he wouldn’t be a fit monarch anyway. “You have your orders,” he told Hamal.

  Less than two hours later, the small convoy was ready to roll.

  Few tracks led into the desert so it wasn’t difficult to follow the most recent ones. At a family compound dug into the hillside, he told Fayed to ask if anyone had seen a woman traveling with two men. An elderly villager admitted she had. When Markaz pressed a reward into her hand, she looked stunned and tried to kiss the sheikh’s hand in return. He shook her off. “You’ve earned the reward by serving your country.” And its ruler, but he kept the thought to himself.

  “What is your plan after we locate Simone?” Fayed asked when one of the cars overheated, forcing a stop in the meager shade of a massive sand dune.

  Markaz drank from a canteen then handed the container to Fayed. “That depends on what we find.” The thought of stumbling across Simone’s body, as they’d done Natalie’s, filled him with horror.

  Fayed’s expression showed that he guessed what was going through the sheikh’s mind. “From the old woman’s description, she’s being kept alive, but for how long?”

  She would be all right until she’d provided the information the rebels needed, Markaz thought. He had to get to her before then.

  “They could hope you’ll do what you’re doing, and try to rescue her,” Fayed pointed out.

  “You think this is a trap?”

  His friend nodded. “Hamal’s squad is handpicked. We could locate Simone and bring her out without risking you.”

  “If your wife was the captive, would you agree to remain in safety?”

  Fayed gave him a considering look. “We think alike, you and I.”

  “Then you understand why I have to lead this mission?”

  “I believe so.”

  Reading his friend’s expression, Markaz smiled thinly. “But you don’t think our relationship has a snowball’s chance in the desert?”

  “Simone is a remarkable woman.”

  A ringing endorsement from his normally taciturn bodyguard. Markaz clasped the big man’s arm. “This love business is hell, isn’t it?”

  He was rewarded by one of Fayed’s rare smiles. “Closer to heaven, when it works.”

  Markaz levered himself away from the car, wincing as his injured arm protested. “Let’s move out.”

  Less than two hours later they approached a region pockmarked with vast canyons. Some had never been fully explored. At Hamal’s signal the convoy halted and the security chief jumped down to study tire marks in the sand. “I recommend proceeding on foot from here,” he told Markaz.

  Markaz nodded. “If the rebels are using the siq as a stronghold, they’ll have sentries to warn of a convoy approaching.” They might also kill Simone if, indeed, she was being held there. He wasn’t about to put her at greater risk than was absolutely necessary.

  For the same reason, Markaz ordered Hamal and his squad to follow at a distance while he and Fayed went ahead on foot. He let Hamal argue all the reasons why the sheikh shouldn’t put himself in danger, then cut off the protestations with a sharp gesture. “Enough. I have decided.”

  He saw Hamal exchange glances with Fayed. Without knowing how the sheikh felt about Simone, Hamal probably thought Markaz had lost his mind. Perhaps he had. He only knew that nothing would keep him back here when the woman he loved was in danger.

  Night fell quickly in the desert. The farther he and Fayed pushed into the canyon, the darker it became until the velvet sky was crowded with stars and the silence pressed against their eardrums. The moon was a thin crescent through a haze of light cloud overhead, turning the dunes a glowing white where they leaned against the cliff walls.

  Aware of how Markaz felt about Simone, Fayed didn’t argue his boss’s insistence on leading the way. He’d make a good best man at the wedding, the sheikh thought.

  Imagining Simone in lavishly embroidered wedding robes, her luscious lips tantalizing behind a gauzy veil, set Markaz’s pulse pounding. He pictured himself moving the veil aside and kissing her, then forced the vision away as too distracting. First he had to find her.

  “Sentry up ahead.”

  Fayed’s whispered warning had Markaz melting against the cliff wall. He gestured his question. How many?

  Fayed held up one finger and Markaz smiled grimly. Only one? The rebels were overconfident. He looked around, spotting another sentry on a cliff top. Markaz pointed the man out to Fayed, gesturing that he would take the nearest man. His friend nodded, and silently started to climb in the direction of the other sentry.

  The cliff provided good cover and Markaz was able to get within striking range before the man realized he was there. A blow to his windpipe stifled the sentry’s cry and he folded like a broken doll. A short time later he was tied up and stowed in a cleft in the rock, and Markaz was changing into the khaki robes.

  “Eat. You must keep up your strength,” Sozar urged Simone.

  They sat beside a blazing fire. The men tore into plates of grilled meat and couscous, washing them down with local beer and traditional date and fig liquors. She’d refused the drinks and had barely touched the food in front of her. “I’m not hungry.”

  “One should not refuse desert hospitality.”

  She held up her hands still tied in front of her. Sozar had loosened the bonds so she could eat, but had refused her plea to untie her altogether. “Hospitality implies a free choice.”

  Sozar wiped his fingers. “Your right to choose ended when you sided with Markaz.”

  “Why are you so jealous of him?”

  He swigged liquor from a bottle. “Why shouldn’t I be jealous? He had the best of everything while I had to drag myself up from poverty, being beaten for every minor mistake by a stepfather who hated the bastard child his wife had insisted on taking in.”

  “Why didn’t your birth mother tell the old sheikh about you?”

  At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he said, “She couldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  As the liquor took effect, Sozar’s words became slurred and thick with anger. “When Kemal was a prince in his teens, my mother was working as a nurse in the household of a princess he admired. Kemal arranged a meeting, but the princess changed her mind and sent the nurse to tell Kemal she wouldn’t meet him.”

  Sozar drank from the bottle, ignoring the liquor dribbling down his hand. “My stupid mother had fallen in love with Kemal herself. Wearing her mistress’s robes and veil, she posed as the princess and permitted Kemal to seduce her, insisting on darkness to protect her secret. She was able to slip away while he was asleep, so that he never learned her true identity. They took precautions, but inexperience made them careless.”

  “Couldn’t she tell him she was pregnant?”

  “She was afraid he would hate her for deceiving him and have her deported. She kept quiet because she wanted to stay near him.”

  “Being young and foolish is hardly a crime,” Simone observed.

  “Unless you’re a foreign woman working in Nazaar.”

  “Don’t you see that’s the kind of situation Markaz is trying to change.”

  Sozar’s enraged look told her she’d said the wrong thing. “He’s thirty-eight years too late. My mother panicked and tried to get rid of me, but she’d left it too long. I was born alive, and survived against all odds.”

 
“Didn’t she know you were alive?”

  “She was admitted under a false name and left immediately after the procedure.” His mouth twisted. “She didn’t wait around to find out what had happened to me.”

  “Then how did you discover who your father was?”

  He downed another swallow of liquor. “The medication she was given had loosened her tongue and she’d confided in one of the staff at the clinic. The staff member later persuaded her husband to take me in. Whenever I displeased him, he taunted me about being the sheikh’s unwanted bastard. One day I asked my adoptive mother why he said such things, and she told me what she knew.”

  His mouth curved into a cruel smile. “I see I’ve shocked you. Good. Now you understand my drive to reclaim my birthright.”

  “I agree that Kemal was as culpable as your mother. A pregnancy takes two people. But none of this is Markaz’s fault.”

  Sozar laughed. “He doesn’t even know I exist. But he will. When you reveal what you saw on the ring, I’ll have the code to his new weapon. I can take what is rightfully mine.”

  And tomorrow, his hypnotist would drag the code out of her mind. She had to escape before then. Perishing in the desert was preferable to letting Sozar use her to unleash his bitterness on Markaz and his people.

  She let herself sway. “I feel dizzy. I need to rest.”

  Leering and increasingly affected by liquor, he patted the cushion beside him. “You can rest against me. The evening’s entertainment is about to begin.”

  She had no interest in any show. And even less in getting closer to him. “The dizziness will pass. I’ll be fine.”

  A few feet away from the campfire, a space had been cleared. She saw why as a group of rebels rode full tilt into the camp, yelling and shooting into the air.

  In the firelight, the riders’ bodies gleamed and their expressions were ferocious. Her breath caught as their Arab mounts stopped dead in their tracks then spun on their hocks and darted off again in a ballet as abandoned as it was spectacular.

  They were engaged in what looked like a primitive game of polo, although no polo she’d ever seen involved firing guns, throwing them into the air and catching them again while standing or kneeling in the saddle and at a full gallop. Some of the players juggled lances longer than their horses.

  Combined with the cheers of the watchers, the noise was unbelievable. She saw Sozar lean drunkenly forward, engrossed in the spectacle.

  Through the chaos she glimpsed two riderless mares, most likely replacements for any animals that became injured. Straight away she saw her chance.

  Although she muttered about needing to visit the bathroom, Sozar focused drunkenly on the game and didn’t respond. She slipped between the tents and edged toward the tethered horses. Hampered by her tied hands, she’d covered less than half the distance when she found a rifle leveled at her.

  “Yusef, it’s me. Don’t shoot.”

  He gestured with the rifle. “Get back to Sozar.”

  “I can’t. Tomorrow he’s going to have me hypnotized to get information. I’d rather take my chances in the desert.”

  “You’ll die out there.”

  “Better than what Sozar has in store for me.”

  Agonizing seconds later, the rifle barrel pointed skyward. “If you run, I’ll shoot.”

  Praying she hadn’t misread Yusef’s message, she took off for the horses at a run. A shot whistled over her head, the report lost among the bedlam. Tears streaked her cheeks and she lifted her tied hands to wipe them away. So blood was thicker than water after all. Omar had taken a long time in choosing his family over his cause, but she wasn’t about to question his decision.

  Only a few yards remained between her and the horses when one of the contestants suddenly wheeled his mount around and rode straight at her, his cries bloodcurdling. The lower half of his face was swathed in a scarf. All she could see were a pair of blazing black eyes reflecting the firelight, and the lance he held as if he meant to run her through.

  As death thundered toward her, she couldn’t make herself move or look away. He was almost upon her when he threw the lance aside, leaned out of the saddle and hooked her off her feet.

  Too winded to scream, she was thrown into the saddle in front of him. Then he hauled the horse’s head around and they plunged into the night, away from the din of the contest.

  Only the man’s hold kept her upright. The powdery sand churned beneath the horse’s hooves and she would have gone under them, had she slipped off. Her bound hands left her no way to save herself. But her abductor made sure she didn’t slip. She’d have bruises tomorrow from his iron grip, if she survived this wild ride.

  Chapter 15

  Gradually the racket from the rebel camp faded behind them. The horse’s pace didn’t slacken, but Simone found herself adjusting to the rhythm and felt less in danger of hurtling off.

  Held in a viselike grip, she was aware of muscular thighs clamped around her, and a chest like a rock wall at her back. The combination put to rest any notion of wrestling the reins away from the rebel and pushing him to the ground.

  “Who are you? Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

  “Would you rather go back to Sozar?” The man said in Arabic, his voice muffled by the scarf.

  “I’d rather you returned me to the royal lodge. Sheikh Markaz will pay well to get me back.”

  “Will he?”

  The laughter she heard through the scarf raised her hackles. If Markaz had known where she was, he could well have offered a reward for her return. “Do you doubt me?”

  “Only that you’re on such intimate terms with the ruler of Nazaar. A short time ago, you were sharing a meal and a fire with the rebel leader.”

  She shook her tied hands at him. “Does this look as if I was his guest? Anyway, aren’t you one of his followers?”

  “I’m no one’s follower.”

  “A mercenary, then?” Please don’t let him be the interrogator Sozar had summoned, she prayed. The rebel leader had said the man used whatever techniques got results. Was this escapade a ploy to disorientate her before he invaded her mind?

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “Tell me where you’re taking me, and I’ll stop asking.”

  “I wish I could count on that.”

  Not sure she’d heard the muttered comment aright, she lapsed into silence, hearing the harness jangle as the man slowed the horse to a walk. Lather flecked the animal’s sides. They would have to stop soon to rest the horse, then she would take off into the desert. This man might not be as uncouth as the other soldiers, but he might still try to take advantage of being alone with her. Perhaps that was his plan all along.

  Her stomach roiled, making her thankful she hadn’t eaten the food Sozar had offered, so she had nothing to bring up. She breathed slowly until the nausea subsided. “Did Sozar tell you to drag me away, hoping to frighten me into telling him what he wants to know.”

  “Are you frightened?”

  Terrified out of her wits, she thought, but lifted her head defiantly. “Not of you, nor of anything Sozar can do to me.” Keeping the fear out of her voice took an effort. She was proud of almost achieving it.

  The man pulled the horse up. As he dismounted, she gripped the saddle with her tied hands to keep from falling off. Then his hands spanned her waist and he lifted her to the ground, steadying her when her legs nearly buckled.

  The sound of running water nearby suggested they had stopped at a spring. Moonlight glinted off metal as the rebel unsheathed a knife. She tensed, but he only used the blade to strip the rope away from her hands. “No one’s following us. You’re safe for the moment,” he said when he finished.

  The rush of restored circulation sent shards of agony flashing into her fingers. She flexed them until the pain eased. “Am I safe from you?”

  “You tell me.” He unwound the scarf from his face and she dragged in a breath as the eerie light fell on his features.

  “Markaz
, what are you doing here?”

  “Rescuing you, I thought.”

  In a surge of fury, she balled her abused hand into a fist and swung at his head. He ducked back barely in time, so the blow glanced off his jaw. He rubbed the spot. “What was that for?”

  “For letting me think I’d been taken by one of Sozar’s men.”

  “I told you I was no one’s man.”

  “You could have added a name, Your Highness.”

  His grin flashed whitely. “I needed to be sure you weren’t there voluntarily. I couldn’t risk being betrayed to the rebels.”

  Stung by his lack of trust, she touched the ropes dangling from his hand. “Doesn’t this tell you anything?”

  “I watched Omar let you escape.”

  “He’s not Omar. He’s Yusef al Hasa, my half uncle. He let me go after I told him what Sozar had planned for me tomorrow.”

  Markaz cupped her face. “Is that why you were running away?”

  Wildfire tore through her veins. “I had to warn you. Natalie’s class ring contains a code to access the weapon your scientists and the Americans have developed. Sozar was bringing in an expert in hypnosis to get the code from my memory. They intend to steal the weapon.”

  “And use it to bring down my government, I know,” Markaz said. “However, the ring won’t help him anymore. When the Americans found out Natalie had been killed, they reprogrammed the weapon with new codes. Another agent couriered them to me yesterday.”

  She must have lost most of one night since being abducted from the royal lodge. “Was that the urgent meeting you left me to attend?”

  His voice roughened as he said, “Do you think I’d have left your bed for anything less critical?”

  Her throat dried. “I wasn’t sure. I…”

  “Then be sure of this.” He bent his head and took her mouth, kissing her so thoroughly that she was left reeling. Without warning he parted her lips with his tongue and plunged, drinking deeply until her mind blanked to everything but his heat and his strength, and how much she needed both.