Terror gripped Kathleen’s chest. “I know what she’s done!” she whispered to Rashid. “She’s killing them! She couldn’t let it happen—” Suddenly Kathleen saw what her sister was doing with the dagger. Jennie had pulled up her sleeve and was holding her wrist out, putting the blade on it.
“She’s going to kill herself!”
Rashid bashed on the locked door. The guards inside shook their heads, terror in their eyes. Kathleen fumbled in her robes for the gun Rashid had given her. With shaking hands she aimed at the glass and pulled the trigger.
“No!” yelled Rashid.
But it was too late. The glass pane shattered, sliding to the stone floor with an explosive crash. And all hell broke loose as guards spun around and started shooting at Kathleen.
Rashid cursed and yanked out his weapon, returning fire as he shoved Kathleen to the ground. “Crawl out of here,” he yelled. “Go to your right until you get to stairs. Then go down to the dungeons.”
She hesitated. Bullets blew out pieces of rock above her head.
“Now!”
“What about Jennie!”
“I’ll get her. Move. We have fifty-eight minutes!”
Kathleen crawled to the exit.
Rashid edged up to the blown-out window. One of the guards had opened the door, and others were now fleeing, panicked about infection from the bleeding and fallen volunteers. Jennie was lying in the corner, unconscious.
Rashid entered the room and climbed over the bodies toward her. Her wrist was bleeding, but she had not yet cut deep enough to do fatal damage. She must have been hit with flying debris when the glass exploded before she could kill herself.
He scooped her up in his arms. She was light as a bird. Carrying her, Rashid dashed out of the antechamber and ran into the dark, stone passage. Turning on his headlamp, he veered right, and ran for the steps that led into the dungeon.
He could hear men screaming and footsteps on stone.
“Over here!” he heard Kathleen whisper from a small alcove on the stairs.
“Oh, God,” she said as he laid Jennie on the stone. “Is she okay?”
“She’s unconscious.” Under the light of his headlamp, Rashid ripped cloth from his robe and tightly bound Jennie’s cut wrist. Then he gathered her into his arms again. “There’s a way out of here, a tunnel, but first we have to go down. And the route might be blocked, and if it is, we will not make it out alive. You okay with that?”
She nodded fast.
He led the way, carrying Jennie.
They had maybe forty minutes left. Rashid wasn’t sure they’d reach the tunnel in time. He’d scoped it out months ago and was unsure if it had been sealed up in the interim.
“What about those volunteers?” Kathleen asked, running behind him, breathless. “Are they infected? Did I release the virus?”
“Just shut up and run, and next time, follow my goddamn orders!”
Rashid had no idea what Jennie had done to the virus or if those fleeing guards would spread it. Or if he and Kathleen would die from exposure to it. And Jennie sure wasn’t in a position to tell them.
The tunnel was still accessible, but two wrong turns down dead ends had left Rashid and Kathleen exactly two minutes and twenty seconds to reach the Jeep that Bakkar said would be waiting outside.
Rashid’s chest burned as he raced out of the tunnel toward the vehicle. They were lucky it was still where Bakkar said it would be, that one of the fleeing guards hadn’t found it.
Tossing the unconscious Jennie into the back, Rashid leaped into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Kathleen scrambled into the back with her sister. She held Jennie close as Rashid spun the Jeep around in sand and fishtailed over the plateau toward the west.
Kathleen heard jets.
Then she felt the jolt of shock waves as explosions lit the sky.
She held Jennie’s head in her lap and prayed.
Rashid continued driving for what seemed like hours. Kathleen wished there was water for her sister. The sun came up, and heat rippled once more through a bleak Sahara landscape.
Finally, Rashid pulled up behind a rock formation. His features were tight. He hadn’t said a word to her since he’d chided her for shooting the glass.
He reached for his satellite beacon and pressed the button a second time. Then he examined Jennie.
“Do you think the virus got out?” Kathleen said again.
He didn’t answer. He got out of the Jeep and walked into the sand.
Kathleen could hear thudding in the air. The helicopter materialized out of shimmering sky to the northwest. Never had anything looked or sounded more welcome.
Rashid waved his arm in a slow arc.
The chopper aimed for him.
When it set down, the pilot didn’t switch off the bird. He kept the rotors turning. He wore a hazmat suit, as did his passenger. The passenger—a special ops soldier, Kathleen guessed—helped Rashid lift Jennie into the craft. He then helped her up and buckled her in. Rashid hopped out of the chopper and gave a signal.
The helo started to rise.
“Why are we leaving him?”
No one replied. Rashid stood below, getting smaller as they climbed rapidly into the air. Kathleen pressed her hand to the glass, desperate, watching him turn into a tiny speck of brown in a sea of yellow sand. Tears streamed down her face as he disappeared into the landscape
She stroked Jennie’s forehead as they flew. “Please, stay with me, Jenn,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare go dying on me now—not aftner all this.”
Chapter 11
Three months later
After an intensive debriefing in Washington, D.C., Kathleen was finally back at work in Seattle. It was autumn and the gray rains and cool mists of the Pacific Northwest had socked in, bringing the sky low and her mood even lower.
Being at the airport to say goodbye to Jennie didn’t help.
Her sister had come to stay with her in Seattle for a while after her own extensive debriefing and therapy, but now Jennie felt ready to return east and go back to her work at the university.
The two sisters were sharing lunch at a small table beside the large rain-flecked windows as they watched the planes coming and going through the mist, waiting for Jennie’s boarding call.
Jennie had regained some of the weight she’d lost, and although she appeared aged, she was looking as good as might be expected. For that, Kathleen was immensely grateful.
After the helicopter evacuation in the Maghreb, her sister had been treated immediately at a military base, then flown to a hospital in Germany where she’d come out of her coma. Jennie had then managed to tell the U.S. authorities she had not injected the men with a contagious form of Ebola Botou. Instead, she’d modified the virus in a way that it would kill the men almost immediately without spreading. She’d destroyed the earlier version she’d been forced to test on a first batch of volunteers, secretly replacing it with her later version. Jennie had planned to kill the volunteers, then kill herself, rather than be responsible for unleashing a plague on the world.
For that, she should have become an instant hero. Instead, the entire event had been kept under the radar of the press for ongoing security reasons.
“You sure you’re ready to go back to work, Jenn?” Kathleen said, pushing her salad around with her fork, not terribly hungry.
Jennie smiled and placed her hand over Kathleen’s. “I couldn’t be more ready—I need to go back, to focus forward, put this whole thing behind me.”
Emotion swelled behind Kathleen’s eyes and she nodded. “I’ll miss you.”
“Why don’t you come back east with me, Kathleen?” Jennie said. “Maybe the change—a new job, a fresh place—would be good.”
“It would feel too close to him.”
“Rashid?”
Kathleen nodded, pushing her plate to one side.
“He never returned your calls?”
“I really don’t want to speak abou
t it, Jenn—”
“You must.”
“Why? What difference will it make? I was an idiot to have even dared dream it could work with him.”
“Maybe there’s a reason he hasn’t called.”
“Yeah, like he thinks I’m a freak. I know he’s back stateside—the Washington field office told me that. I called his work several times and each time someone told me he was busy or unavailable. I should’ve just taken the hint. But I found a home number for him and called many times, and only ever got voice mail.”
“You leave messages?”
Kathleen snorted. “Plenty. I finally stopped leaving them, but sometimes I just called…you know, to hear his voice. Sometimes I wonder if I hadn’t shot the glass, if I’d obeyed his orders, if things might be different.”
“It saved my life, your disobeying his orders.”
Kathleen nodded, bit her lip, dug into her purse for a tissue. She blew her nose.
“I’m an ass, Jenn. We were both pawns. My mistake was falling for it, for him.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’m going to move on now.”
Jennie’s gaze held hers, and Kathleen could see the doubt in her sister’s eyes. But before she could say anything else, they heard Jennie’s boarding call.
“That’s for me,” Jennie said, getting up.
Tension kicked into Kathleen. She stood up, hugged her sister tight. “I’m going to miss you like hell.”
“I love you, kiddo,” Jennie said. “Thank you. Thank you for coming for me. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for believing you could do this.”
Tears swelled into Kathleen’s eyes and she was unable to speak. She just nodded, hugging her sister one more time before stepping back to watch Jennie walk away. And she’d never felt more lost and lonely in her life.
The Sahara had changed her, opened her, and she no longer felt as if she fit into her own life. Kathleen wondered if she’d ever be happy at home again. Even the job she’d once loved now felt dissatisfying, the library walls too close, everything too dark. Maybe Jennie was right, maybe she did need to move away, think about starting over somewhere fresh.
Kathleen left the airport and, instead of returning to work, she called and told her colleagues she wouldn’t be coming back in today. Instead, she drove down to the sea wall. A walk might clear her mind.
It was late Friday afternoon and the sky was turning a dark battleship-gray. The ocean was stormy. A fine mist dampened her skin and hair and she could feel the first drops of rain beginning to come down. A ship’s foghorn sounded out in the mist. Kathleen pulled her coat closer, thinking of sun, heat. The desert. Big skies.
Of him.
Story of her life, she thought, stupid dreams. Idealistic notions. Romantic ideas that could never live up to reality.
As she neared the end of the wall, a dark figure emerged from thick mist. Kathleen’s pulse quickened. It was desolate here. Getting late and dark. She began to turn around. But something about the shape made her stand still.
The man came closer and her heart began to race with a jolt of familiarity. He walked just like Rashid. He was the same height.
Frozen by memories, translating them into this form, she stood mesmerized. The man came closer, his dark black coat flapping about his calves in the wind. Head bare. Making straight for her.
And shock rippled through her.
It was him—Rashid Al Barrah—walking out of the mist like a dream.
Her throat closed in on itself. Her heart skipped and stammered. Kathleen didn’t dare breathe lest she shatter the vision she seemed to have conjured out of the mist.
But it wasn’t a vision. He was real. And she heard his voice—his rich, deep, rolling baritone. “Kathleen.”
She opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak. He touched her.
“Kathleen, are you all right?”
She shook her head, tears beginning to spill from her eyes.
He took her into his arms, just holding for an eternity. “They told me at your work I’d find you down here,” he whispered against her ear.
Then he pulled back, looked deep into her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “After you left, I was sent right back out into the field. They had a lead on the identity of The Moor, and they needed me. We got him, Kathleen. We got The Moor. He’s an old man, but a very dangerous one.”
“Who is he?”
“Bakkar and Marwan’s father.”
“Your grandfather,” she whispered.
“My grandfather.”
“What about Bakkar and Marwan, Qasim…everyone else?”
“Marwan and Qasim were killed in the raid. Bakkar is in custody. He started talking when he learned who I was. That’s how we got our break on The Moor.”
“I’m pleased, Rashid. I…I missed you. I left messages—” She felt stupid. Of course he knew she’d plugged his machine up with voice mail.
He cupped her face. “I heard your messages.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I should—”
“Kathleen, I heard them only yesterday. I just got back, and I learned that because of the highly sensitive nature of what I was doing, they’d made a decision not to tell you where I was. I’d asked them to let you know, Kathleen.”
“I thought…” Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m so sorry.” He lifted her face to the mist, his black eyes crackling with ferocity. And he kissed her hard. Heat sparked through her body, her knees going weak.
“I’ve come home, Kathleen,” he murmured against her lips. “I want to show you your dream can come true, that I want the very same things you do. If you’ll let me.”
And Kathleen’s world spun. Her girlhood dreams of finding her own dashing desert prince, her knight in shining armor, really had come true.
“Will you let me, Kathleen?”
She nodded, laughing and crying. Then she wrapped her arms tight around him and stood on tiptoe, kissing her own desert knight. And suddenly the mist and rain were no longer cold, and her world felt bright.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0596-3
DESERT KNIGHTS
Copyright © 2011 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
BODYGUARD SHEIK
Copyright © 2011 by Linda Lucas Sankpill
SHEIK’S CAPTIVE
Copyright © 2011 by Loreth Beswetherick
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