Desert Justice

by Valerie Parv

  His rebel uniform offered the only purchase and she gripped the homespun cloth, holding on as if to reality as the fact of her salvation slammed through her. She could stop acting defiant while falling to pieces inside at the prospect of having her mind plundered. Markaz had come for her. She was safe.

  So why didn’t she feel safe, instead of as if she stood on the edge of a precipice with nothing underneath to break her fall? Because she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything. But the price was too high. So she feasted on his mouth and gloried in his hardness pressing against her, knowing this was all she could allow herself.

  Her shudder was strong enough for Markaz to feel, and his arms tightened around her. “It’s all right to give in. You were strong when it counted.”

  Resting briefly against him, she dragged in a ragged breath then lifted her head. “It’s not all right. The danger isn’t past yet.”

  His lips whispered over her forehead until her shudders became shivers of longing. “The rebels won’t get the weapon. As well as changing the codes, I’ve doubled the guards around the project.”

  She hesitated. Finding herself in his arms after thinking she’d never see him again was playing havoc with her thought processes. Hunger for him churned through her, making her want to spread their robes on the powdery sand and take him inside her under the limitless stars. They were hardly the actions of disengagement, but her body wasn’t getting the message.

  She had actually started to pull him down with her when reason collided with desire. “This isn’t only about the weapon. It’s personal,” she said, hearing her voice thicken with need.

  He listened intently, his frown growing as she told him about Sozar being his father’s illegitimate son by a foreign nurse working in Nazaar. “The woman feared she’d be deported for posing as the princess, so she didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant by your father.”

  “How does Sozar know his mother didn’t make up the story?”

  “What matters is that Sozar believes he’s your half brother and the true heir to the throne. He’s mad with jealousy of you.”

  From his saddlebag Markaz brought out a water bottle and handed it to her. After she drank, he slaked his own thirst. “If he thinks he’s entitled to rule, he’s truly mad. A DNA test might prove he has royal blood, but not that my father sired him. If that could be proven, and Sozar was fit to be sheikh, I’d crown him myself.”

  “Markaz, you can’t. He wants to drag Nazaar back into the Dark Ages.”

  His fingers dug into her arms. “That I will not allow.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Hamal and Fayed and their men aren’t far behind us. When they get here, we’ll strike at the rebel stronghold.”

  “But the rebels have…”

  A hand over her mouth silenced her, and the sheikh pulled her into the shadows. Then she caught the movements his quick hearing had detected. Sozar must have missed her at last, and sent men after them. Until Markaz’s men reached them, they were on their own.

  Swiftly, silently, Markaz retrieved a rifle from his saddlebag. A knife gleamed in his other hand. She held hers out. With only a slight hesitation, he handed her the knife. The ornate hilt felt cold but reassuring against her palm. Sozar’s men would have to kill her to take her back.

  She felt Markaz’s hand clamp on her shoulder. She leaned her cheek lightly against his hand, then crouched, blade at the ready, running through her mind the drills she’d studied, never expecting to need the skills outside simulated combat. Beside her she saw Markaz steady the rifle along a rock.

  Six men approached them. No talk broke their discipline. She hadn’t expected that after the night’s entertainment. They should have been drunk by now. Perhaps some of the rebels were, but Sozar had sent his best, an ironic compliment.

  The cloud cover broke long enough for her to see Sozar himself leading the group. She should have guessed he wouldn’t take kindly to losing her, probably adding to his list of grievances against Markaz. His movements were unsteady as a result of the liquor he’d drunk. That could work to their advantage, she thought.

  “We need to stall Sozar and give Hamal time to get here,” she whispered to Markaz. “Letting him think I’m alone might lower his guard.”

  “It could also get you shot,” Markaz rasped back. “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself.”

  The taut smile she aimed at him was lost in the shadows. “I’m counting on it.” She stood up and lifted her hands. “Sozar, I have the information you want. I’ll give it to you if you call off your men.”

  “Tell your rescuer to stand up and show his hands,” Sozar instructed.

  “He fell from the horse and hit his head. He’s unconscious.” Markaz started to argue, and she nudged him into silence. “I think he’s dead.”

  The quaver in her voice must have sounded convincing. At Sozar’s signal, two of his men emerged from hiding and closed in. Her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. How much longer did Markaz’s men need to get here?

  Markaz must have had the same thought, because he stood up and his rifle clattered against the rock. “I’m the one you want, Sozar, not the woman. She tells me we’re brothers, so we can talk this through.”

  The other man froze. “Clever. A trap within a trap. But I’m not as stupid as you think.” To the rebel closest to him, he said, “Shoot them both.”

  As the soldier raised his weapon, she felt everything inside her turn arctic. “You won’t get the information,” she said.

  “I don’t need the information now that you’ve delivered Markaz to me. A coward as well as a usurper. He’ll be no loss to this country.”

  Beside her she saw Markaz tense like a snake ready to strike. But his tone was mild as he said, “This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed, Sozar. Simone told me how you were wronged at birth. All you have to do is prove your lineage, and the throne is yours.”

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Sozar roared. “Once you and that shameless creature with you are dead, I will take what belongs to me.”

  “You won’t do it without a war.”

  “My men are ready for war.”

  She saw Markaz’s hand move. In one blindingly fast action, his hand closed around the rifle and he fired without lifting the weapon from the rock.

  The sound of the shot ricocheted around the canyon, amplified when the rebels answered with their own fire. She was dragged down beside Markaz as he kept shooting. Muzzle flashes lit the darkness, but she couldn’t see what was happening until a cloud shifted, revealing Sozar slumped on the ground. An ugly black stain bloomed across the front of his robes.

  The battle wasn’t over yet. Four of the rebels surged toward their position. Markaz cut one of them down not a yard from Simone. The man fell forward and she grabbed the rifle as it rolled out of his grasp.

  For as long as she could remember, her father had owned guns, insisting she learn how to use them for her own protection. In all the times she’d shot at targets, she’d never expected to find a human being in her sights. Her first shot went wild, then the rifle jammed as a rebel loomed on the rock above them.

  “Markaz, look out,” she screamed but he was fighting hand-to-hand with another man. Gripping Markaz’s knife, she turned as the rebel leaped from the rock above. In the timelessness of the moment she recognized the attacker as Yusef.

  Seconds later he was on the ground and she was staring at Yusef’s body slumped across the lifeless Sozar. Her knife had been knocked out of her hand. The force of Yusef’s leap must have impaled him on the blade, killing him. She turned away as her stomach emptied. Then she felt Markaz’s arm around her. When she straightened, he wiped her face clean with her veil, then threw the fabric away. “It’s over.”

  She couldn’t look. The image of the man impaled on the knife would be forever etched into her brain. “Yusef is dead. I killed him.”

  “He’s dead, but not by your hand.”

  The look she sh
ot him was bleak. “He landed on my knife as he jumped from the rocks.”

  “Yusef may have knocked the knife out of your hand, but Sozar killed him.”

  “That’s not possible. Sozar was already dead.”

  “He was mortally injured. Before the other man came at me, I saw Sozar groping for his rifle on the ground. Yusef must have seen it, too, and leaped to stop him.”

  “So he saved your life.”

  Markaz nodded. “This time for real.”

  She shuddered as he approached the two bodies, locked together in a fatal embrace. Moonlight glinted off the clean blade he retrieved from the sand a few feet away from them. When he brought her knife to her, she looked at it in stupefaction. “No matter what he did, I couldn’t stand thinking I’d killed him.”

  His hold didn’t slacken. “Killing should never come easily to anyone. I won’t forget that you thought you were saving my life.”

  Then why did she feel so sick and defeated, unable to bring herself to look at the bodies? “Why did you stop me negotiating with Sozar? Didn’t you trust me?” Was trust always going to be the issue between them?

  “Sozar was the one I didn’t trust. While he held your attention, his men were moving up on our flanks.”

  “So that’s why you took over. Not because I’m a woman.”

  His hands played up and down her arms. She wondered if he was aware of how often he touched her, or that he was doing so now. Or that he started a symphony of needs clamoring for release.

  She tamped them down.

  The hunger for his possession was no more than the human need to affirm life in the midst of death, she knew. A biological urge to replace lost genes handed down from the cave days. Not appropriate behavior for civilized beings.

  Not that she felt civilized now, or ever could around Markaz. Fighting at his side had left her charged with adrenaline. She felt ready to leap out of her own skin. Wanted to lose herself in him until they were both sated. Instead, she held still until his hands dropped away.

  Think about returning to Australia, she ordered herself. With Sozar dead, the danger keeping her under Markaz’s protection was past. At least she didn’t have to tell her mother that she’d caused Yusef’s death.

  Markaz guessed her thoughts. “You can tell your mother that her relative died a hero. I can’t damn him for defending his beliefs.”

  She finally made herself look at her half uncle’s body. “How can a country grow strong by denying half its population the chance to reach their full potential?”

  “Short answer? It can’t.” He took her arm again and steered her away from the carnage. She stiffened, but told herself the touch was clinical, for her good. So why did desire leap inside her like a startled gazelle? This was getting crazy. She couldn’t even fight at his side without wanting him. He might agree that women deserved equal opportunity, but he was still the sheikh, the take-charge leader. And she had never wanted him more.

  The growl of car engines made her heartbeat stutter. As if to prove her point, Markaz grabbed the rifle and stepped between her and the new arrivals. But this time it was the cavalry. Hamal and Fayed and their men poured from the vehicles and stared at the downed rebels. “We were closing in when we heard the battle,” Fayed explained. “But it looks as if we aren’t needed.”

  Lowering the weapon, Markaz shook his head. “There’s still the rebel enclave. Simone saw a dozen men in training not far from here. They’ll have heard the gunfire, too, and be expecting trouble. We’ll have our work cut out for us.”

  “It will be a pleasure, Your Highness,” Hamal promised. “I’ll detail a man to escort Sima to safety.”

  Simone stepped around Markaz. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to see this through to the end.”

  Seeing that Simone wouldn’t be swayed, Markaz reached a decision. “We’ll all go. Makes the numbers a bit more even.”

  “I thought you’d have had enough bloodshed for one day,” he said to Simone as they neared the rebel camp. There was no need for stealth since the gun battle would already have alerted the remaining rebels.

  “Isn’t my behavior feminine enough for you?” she asked.

  He restrained a sigh. If she was risking her beautiful neck to prove something to him about women’s lib, there was no need. “As soon as we’re back at the lodge, we’re going to talk,” he stated. This had gone far enough.

  Fighting beside him, she’d demonstrated her equality once and for all. She had nothing to prove to him. But maybe she had something to prove to herself. He massaged his chin thoughtfully. Focusing on his feelings for her, was he missing the point? She had been taken and held hostage by the rebels. Had she chosen to go back to the camp because she needed to face her captors?

  His admiration for her grew. No, damn it. His love for her. He could no longer deny the truth to himself. He loved her. Knowing she despised his country’s ways, the thought was pure agony. Letting her go when this was over would be harder than anything he’d ever done.

  The battle was short and surprisingly unbloody. As Markaz had suspected, the rebels were waiting, guns ready, when his squad approached. But drink and revelry had slowed their response times. Hamal’s men soon had them subdued and disarmed, rounded up in one of their own training corrals.

  Hearing that Sozar was dead also sapped their spirits. Markaz had the feeling most of them would soon renounce their support of the rebel cause.

  “I’ll check the tents to make sure there are no hidden snipers,” he said. He knew better than to tell Simone to stay behind him, but felt happier when she fell into step beside him of her own accord.

  “Feeling better?” he asked her as he jabbed the flap of the first tent open with his rifle barrel.

  “Why should I? You think I enjoyed the fight?”

  The tent was empty. “I think you needed this.”

  Her bewildered expression almost had him taking her in his arms. He resisted, moving on to the next tent. “By turning the tables on your abductors, you’ve proved to yourself that you’re not helpless.”

  She looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you’re right. Most of my life I was coddled by my father. Having lost his home, he was desperate not to lose anything or anyone else precious to him. I went along because I understood, but I always wondered how I’d handle myself in a crisis.”

  He jabbed the next tent flap open. Nothing. “And now you know.”

  “Yes. Markaz, watch out.”

  He’d already caught the stir of movement in the tent, and had the rifle cocked and ready. “Come out with your hands showing,” he ordered.

  The rebel had been trying to escape through the back of the tent. Now he raised his hands and came out.

  Simone gasped. “It’s a woman. While I was a prisoner, I didn’t see any other women in the camp.”

  Markaz gestured with the rifle. “Are you Sozar’s woman? Let us see your face.”

  Slowly the rebel unwound the scarf from her features, and Markaz froze in shock. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for my son,” Princess Norah said calmly.

  The sheikh stared at his mother in disbelief. “What do you mean, you’re waiting for me? Are you a hostage, too? Was this supposed to be a trap?”

  Then clarity struck Simone like lightning. “She doesn’t mean you, Markaz. She means her son, Sozar. You were the foreign nurse who posed as the princess to seduce Sheikh Kemal all those years ago, weren’t you?”

  Norah’s defiant expression softened. “I was in love with him from the first time I saw him. But I was afraid if Kemal found out I’d deceived him, he’d have been angry enough to send me back to America. So I kept my condition secret, not hard to do under these robes. I’d gone to the clinic under a false name, and left without knowing my child still lived. Thinking he was dead, I couldn’t tell Kemal what I’d done because I didn’t want him to hate me as much as I hated myself.”

  Markaz looked thunderstruck. “Sozar was your son?”

  �
��I didn’t know he was alive until I stumbled on him and Omar meeting in secret when I was out walking. At first, when Sozar told me who he was, I didn’t believe him. But his adoptive mother had told him details known only to someone who’d been at the clinic that day. While medicated, I’d apparently blurted out the truth about his conception, except for my identity. At least I had the sense to keep that to myself.” She pulled in a deep breath. “His adopted parents had told him some of his history. They assumed it was a fantasy, but Sozar believed it from the first. He did some checking, and deduced that I had to be his mother.”

  Sozar had needed to believe he was of royal blood, Simone thought. “So he really was the true heir to the throne?”

  Norah paled. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Markaz didn’t flinch from the truth. “I killed him after he attacked Simone and me.”

  “A kind of justice, I suppose. He promised me you wouldn’t be hurt, only tried and exiled. I wouldn’t have helped him otherwise. I love you too much.”

  “Sozar had other plans. Mother, how could you be so ill-advised?”

  Her pale features suggested she was in shock. Markaz looked as if he wasn’t far behind her. “Love makes one do stupid things. Sometimes you spend your whole life paying for them,” she said.

  “But how could you side with the rebels after they killed my father and brother?”

  Norah braced herself against the tent pole. “Sozar swore that he had nothing to do with the violent faction responsible for killing Kemal and Esan. Sozar insisted he wanted peaceful change. I supported him because it’s what I want, too.” She reached to touch her youngest son’s face, but he shied away. “Like your father, you can’t see that Nazaar is perfect as it is.”

  “Nazaar is so perfect you couldn’t keep your baby without being deported,” he said bitterly. “That wouldn’t have happened in a truly free country.”

  The princess covered her face with her hands and her shoulders shook. Simone touched Markaz. “I think she knows.”

  He looked at the silently sobbing woman. “Alert the others. We’re getting out of here.”