Desire In The Desert: Sheikh's Rule

“No!” A minute of silence hung between them before he spoke again. “What are you implying?”

Tara picked up another magazine and thumbed through the pages, deliberately putting off her answer. It was best that he knew now, before this investigation went any further, that she wouldn’t be intimidated. She also knew he was a hard man to convince, considering a gunfight hadn’t done it.

She would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. Instead she continued her perusal of Tara’s living space, finding bits of information that would give her insight the file and Emir hadn’t. Finally, after a minute had passed, and then two, she looked up, met his gaze and saw a hint of what might be admiration.

It was vital that she had his full attention. What she had to say could be very important to who, at least, some of the perpetrators might be. She didn’t expect him to take what she was about to imply well, but it had to be said. “Is it possible that days or even weeks ago, she made first contact, made the culprits aware of her vulnerability?”

This time his look was thunderous as he turned away from her. The tension between them was thick and bleak before he turned back. Now his eyes glimmered with anger, agony—maybe a combination of the two, it was impossible to tell.

“Is that so unbelievable? I’m not saying it was her fault but only that...” She paused.

“Yes, it’s possible. But I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told you and what was in the report.”

“What about that night? What wasn’t in the report, Emir?”

“She was celebrating the beginning of the school year, getting together with some old school pals on a few days’ jaunt home before going back to the States. And...” His full lips thinned and his jaw tensed, and she could see he was struggling with something.

“Sit,” she offered with a wave of her hand to the chair opposite her.

He sat.

“I admit the report is missing some information. It wasn’t all known. I learned it after your plane took off and—” he wasn’t looking at her “—I’ve filled in all the blanks.” He opened his mouth as if to say more.

She cut him off. “I need to know what Tara was doing last night—all of it.”

“I...”

She met his rich, dark eyes, saw the trouble, the doubt, that lurked deep within them, and still she didn’t back down.

“She left the restaurant alone with her security. She managed to ditch them shortly after—no one knows why.” He blinked, as if that would change the words she knew, for whatever reason, he didn’t want to admit.

“It won’t help to hold anything back.”

Silence ticked between them.

“The only thing that matters now is having all the information so we can figure this thing out and find her. What aren’t you telling me?”

“She’d been drinking,” he admitted. “That’s what her friends said.”

“What else did her friends say?” she asked softly.

“I didn’t want this in the report, it...”

“Could ruin her reputation.” She paused. “Look, Emir, we’ve all gone there. A youthful mistake—a bit too much to drink. It happens. Usually it turns out well—we luck out. Let’s make this turn out well. Tell me what happened. Everything you know, including what you screened from the report.”

She looked at him as if he were no different from any other witness.

“You knew this before I left the States and you left the fact that she’d been drinking out of the report. You did that on purpose, thinking it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything or help us find her.”

She sank onto the luxurious softness of the leather couch and thought how she’d love such a piece for her small apartment. Then she turned her focus on Emir. “That’s where you’re wrong—and you know it. Everything matters, every piece of evidence.”

He ran his hand along his brow and his gaze dodged hers. “I’ve never known her to overindulge. Her friends admitted it happened rarely.” He looked at her as if daring her to say otherwise.

“A mistake that many of us have made at one time or another.”

He shook his head.

“Where are they, her friends?”

“I’ve already spoken to them. They left her, from what I can determine, over an hour before she was taken. They didn’t see her after that. That part is in the report.”

“I read it,” Kate admitted as she got up and went over to the window. She didn’t remind him of what hadn’t been in the report. Her fingers skimmed the window frame. “Bulletproof.” She glanced at the door. She’d noted the hinges earlier; the door swung out rather than in, difficult for a man to break down. Not that it mattered. The crime had happened elsewhere.

“Let’s go back to the airport and the attack,” she said. “There’s a connection, but what is it?”

He stood, pacing along the couch to the window and back, and then stopping a few feet from her.

“So we have two bodies and one gives us some clues,” she said when she was met by silence. “Camel hair and his boots—the sand on them, it was caked, not something you get hanging around the city. I’d say he’d recently been in the desert. What better place to get lost in or to request a ransom and remain out of reach of detection? Even the best technology can fail against the might of the Sahara.” She looked away as if regretting having to speak the words they both knew. Extracting Tara was not going to be easy.

“I can’t argue with any of that,” he said in his distinctly low voice. “It kills me to think of her frightened or in pain.” He ran a hand through his dark hair that, despite the short cut, curled wildly and only succeeded in giving his sun-bronzed, chiseled good looks a rakish edge.

This was a difficult case, fraught with emotion and involving the man who was effectively her boss. And yet it was hard to think of him like that when, from the first moment she’d seen him, there had been a connection, an unseen emotion that seemed to pulse between them. She shoved the ridiculous thought from her mind. For now, he was her assigned partner and client rolled into one—nothing else.

Chapter Five

“So far the name Tara’s injured guard gave you—Davar—doesn’t exist. Not as a surname and a given name would be impossible to track. Even in the state he’s in, Ahmed would have known that. No, he was giving us something we could find,” Kate said. “I know we did an initial check, but I’ve gone beyond that search and been through everything. I’ve had the records of anyone who had a vaccination, a driver’s license or even stepped foot in Morocco scoured. Nothing.”

She ran one hand through her hair, bunching it in her hand and pulling the long, silken mass back and away from her face.

“Are you sure that was exactly right? He was mouthing the word, you said. Could you have misunderstood?”

“It’s possible, but it’s all I can get for now and, if it’s not exact, it’s close. He’s in and out of consciousness,” Emir said as a nerve caused his jaw to twitch. Time was wasting and there was nothing they could do but wait and speculate.

“So we use what we have. Both time and evidence,” Kate said as she perched on the edge of the massive rosewood desk that had been his father’s. They’d left Tara’s apartment and entered his office an hour ago.

He knew she was going over the possibilities of that one word, the name the injured guard had provided—Davar. Yet his attention went to her long legs that hung over his desk and the creamy satin of her neck as she leaned her head back against the filing cabinet that butted up to the desk. She had beautiful skin and, for a second, he imagined what it would be like to caress it.

And, as if she read his mind, Kate looked at him with determined eyes and lips that were soft, kissable. His thoughts were out of line, inappropriate and unproductive. But he couldn’t seem to dodge them for, despite his outrage that Adam had sent a woman, he’d been drawn to her since the first moment he’d met her.

“We’ll get her, Emir. We’ll get Tara out and home safe. I promise.” There was grit in her words. It was as though her saying them somehow made them true. He only wished it was going to be that easy.

He strode over to the window. The city sprawled out in front of him. It was the place where he’d been born and where he’d grown up—the city he’d thought to escape in his young adult years and the city that now seemed to promise the secret to saving his family.

The second call had been long enough to be tracked by their office team to within a twenty-five-mile radius of Marrakech. They’d received that information almost immediately after the call had ended. It wasn’t enough. They were still looking for a needle in a haystack.

Kate was now pacing the room, a pensive look on her face. He knew they both felt the passage of time and the frustration of their current inertia, but there was no getting around it. Kidnap victims had died because of ill-prepared rescue attempts. He was determined that Tara would not be one of them. Behind them the office clock ticked, the dull beat of time a passing reminder of everything they could not do.

She looked at him, her eyes seeming to reach out to console, but he couldn’t help noticing instead the long wisp of blond hair that had again escaped the elastic band and curled down her face, caressing her chin, bringing his attention to the soft, seductive rise of her breasts—

What was he doing? He needed to remain focused. His sister’s life was at stake and he was letting a beautiful woman distract him. Again, he was reminded why a woman should not be there, why he should have held firm, why...

“No woman will voluntarily go with a man she doesn’t know. Especially at night, in the dark,” Kate said softly, interrupting his thoughts as he found she was apt to do. This time it had been a good thing.

Kate pressed her forefinger to her lips. “To take someone that quickly and easily, I believe there are only two scenarios that might work.”

“She knew her captor,” he said grimly.

“Exactly. Or she was tricked. A stray animal, a child needing help—another woman.”

“I don’t think anyone we knew would have done this,” he said.

“You mean you don’t want to believe that someone you know would do this.”

She’d called him out again. He met her eyes, saw rock-solid determination, and knew she had his back.

“No matter, Emir. We have to consider all possibilities.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. She was everything Adam had said she would be, except she wasn’t a man. He was beginning to wonder if that mattered.

“I still think she knew them, was at least familiar with them,” Kate persisted in a voice meant to get a man’s attention and a mind that challenged him to keep up.

He pushed the distracting thoughts back and focused on what she had said. It was interesting she’d said “they” instead of “he.” It was another possibility for which he had no answers. He turned to the window, squinting as the setting sun shone across the square, bounced off a distant, copper-topped bell tower and created a glare that was almost impossible to see against. Dusk was fast approaching and soon the call to prayer would taunt them, remind them of passing time. Normally patience was what he was good at, yet patience was what he found impossible to implement in the one case that mattered more than any other.

“Her guards were easily disposed of,” Emir said.

“She might not have seen the violence. They might have been attacked without her even knowing. Then the perpetrator comes up to her, lures her, and she’s not suspicious because she knows who it is.”

The fact that Tara might have known the perpetrator, that someone he had given his trust to, could have betrayed him in the worst way possible almost took him out at the knees, even though the possibility was something Kate had alluded to earlier and one he’d considered himself. Now, for the first time, he was able to entertain an idea that had the potential to make this case, if that were possible, even more gut-wrenching.

“Emir?”

Kate’s voice was calm yet husky in a completely feminine way. She’d taken him out, literally flipping him onto his back, but it was her voice he knew could be his undoing. Now it was all he needed to bring him from his thoughts and into her presence.

“When was the last time you spoke to Tara?”

“Yesterday afternoon. It was a quick call. She told me that she planned to meet some friends—she mentioned the local nightclub. That was it.” He shook his head, his eyes not meeting hers. He didn’t need that distraction, that allure—he needed to focus and she was making it difficult. “All I told her to do was have fun. Instead, I should have...”

“Should have what, Emir?” Kate interrupted. “You’re not psychic. You did what you could—better than most. She’s a grown woman. She made her own decision and, unfortunately, the consequences were nothing anyone could anticipate. The only thing we can do now is get her home safe.”

She was right. He needed to quit thinking in the past unless it was something that would help. Although Kate hadn’t said any of that, he could read it in her tight stance, the accusing spark in her eye and the set of her chin. She wasn’t putting up with any emotional swaying on his part. She was making him toe the line—and it was exactly what he needed. Ironically, he was the most unemotional of his brothers, the least likely to act on emotion despite the circumstances.

But the thoughts wouldn’t be stilled as he contemplated the horrible thought that Tara knew her attacker. That the perpetrator who had planned this crime knew his sister. That he had her trust. It seemed more and more likely that that was the only thing that made sense.

Four questions—who, why, what and where—and no one had the answers.

He glanced at his watch. If his calculations were right, Tara had been gone for over fourteen hours.

They’d hypothesized enough. Time was running out.

* * *

AT THE SOUND of his voice, Tara cringed and pulled her knees up to her chest, as if making herself smaller would make her invisible. She pushed her back against the sand-crusted cliff.

“I should have never listened to him. Cousin or not, he’s an idiot,” the man said, continuing his one-person tirade.

She made herself look at him, at the horrid scar that brutalized one side of his face, at the dark hair slicked with gray—at the person who threatened her very life. She needed to find out everything she could to help her brothers get her out. She’d known since the beginning that this man was in charge. What was frightening was that he was no stranger to her. But he wasn’t the man she remembered, either.

She watched as he wiped the back of his hand across his stubbled chin as another man, slimmer and taller, walked past. He muttered something and the man she had come to loathe, and who led them all, cuffed him across the back of the head.

“Stop that,” he snarled. He spoke in his native Berber and it was unclear to Tara, and she suspected to the man he had just accosted, what it was he should stop.

Silence settled for a few seconds in the small oasis that had become her nightmare. She looked around, conscious that he was sensitive even to her silent scrutiny. She was doing as little as possible to draw attention to herself. The thought of her brothers is what kept her strong and would get her through this. But the leader’s next words frightened her like no others could.

“I’ll bring the bloody house of Al-Nassar to its knees.” He chuckled, the sound as dry as the endless sand that swept around them, flirting with the boundaries of the only greenery for miles. “Soon I will be a rich man.”

He turned so that he partially faced her as he coughed and scowled.

“What are you staring at?” he snarled.

“Nothing,” she said with oomph in her voice. For the one thing she’d learned since her kidnapping was that the man she would now think of only as he, detested weakness.

She stared at him before he finally turned his back to her.

The word he snarled as he stormed away was as evil as all the others he’d cursed at her. She knew the anger wasn’t directed at her but at the house of Al-Nassar and everything he thought it stood for. He’d made that clear in the first miserable hours when they’d taken her and all the hours since.

Tara breathed a sigh of relief and prayed, for she didn’t know how much longer she could keep the evil at bay.

Chapter Six

Monday, September 14, 7:00 p.m.

They had agreed that there was nothing they could do until daylight. The Sahara wasn’t welcoming during the day, never mind at night. There was no need to push the limits, especially as there had been no further communication from the kidnappers.

That worried Emir.

“The airport attack had to be tied to the kidnappers. But why?” Kate asked. “Something doesn’t fit.”

He paced and tried to ignore the pulsing headache. He’d already popped a couple of aspirin and an hour ago he’d admitted to himself that there was no hope for it, the headache was there until Tara was brought home unscathed.

“We should have gotten a final demand by now. None of this makes sense,” he said, knowing it could make perfect sense. But maybe it all made sense and it was that last, unspoken option he didn’t want to contemplate.

“Could their plans have gone somewhat awry?” Kate mused. “We were attacked at the airport by men who we believe were part of Tara’s kidnappers, but why attack us?” She shoved her hands into her pockets as she paced the room. “They’ve got to be connected—the kidnappers and the airport attackers. And they had to have a motive for the attack. Is it possible they’re working at odds with each other?”

Emir heard the reluctance to believe her own theory in her voice. Like him, she knew that if she was right, if there were problems among the kidnappers, that could only mean problems for Tara. It wasn’t the usual kidnapping pattern, but for every norm there was the deviant. These kidnappers were obviously true deviants. And that only made him angry and fearful at the same time, fearful that they wouldn’t find Tara alive.

“She’ll be fine, Emir. We’ll make sure of it.”

He took a breath, focusing on what could be done now.

He had to think about practical things. Things that needed to be done by morning—gathering supplies that would see them through a journey into the desert. He’d already set staff to complete that task. But there were other things. They needed to eat, rest and prepare for what lay ahead.

Whether they heard from the kidnappers or not, whether her abductors returned Tara voluntarily or not, they would face justice and Emir would be the one leading that charge.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him of a more immediate problem. But already that problem was also on the edge of resolution. He’d sent word to the kitchen and ordered Moroccan omelets for both of them. It was a light meal enhanced with the subtle tastes of various herbs, tomato and onion, perfect for not making one so satiated that lethargy set in. They couldn’t afford that.

There was movement in the doorway, followed by a hesitant knock.

He looked up and saw Baz, the son of one of his estate security. The teenager hesitated in the doorway as he held a tray of food Emir had ordered less than twenty minutes ago.

“On the desk would be fine, thanks.” He eyed the boy. “You’re off duty soon?”

The slight yet gangly, dark-haired youth nodded. “I’m sorry about Tara, I...” He dropped his head and backed up, his hands behind his back. “Can I help? Find her, I mean.”

For the first time in hours, Emir had a faint urge to smile. It was a fairly public secret that the boy had a crush on Tara. But, at only seventeen, his youth combined with his current status in life—son of a guard—might mean that life wasn’t going to throw him a chance at his sister’s affections. Too bad. In a few years Emir thought it was a good guess that the boy would mature into a man who could make a woman proud. His jaw tightened. He wanted Tara to live to have the choice. He pushed the thoughts away and met the boy’s concerned gaze.

“No. You don’t want to intimidate them with too big a show of force,” he said, flattering the boy. “We’ll find her,” he assured him as Baz nodded and left.

They ate their meal quickly and in silence. It was sustenance only and, oddly, a moment to collect their thoughts individually before they began brainstorming all over again.

“We’ve still got nothing but assumptions as to where they’ve taken her. For all we know, she could still be in the city, she might never have left,” Emir said as he picked up their plates and utensils and set them on a tray Baz had left on a table by the entrance.

“I’m not so sure,” Kate said.

She looked young and too fresh and pretty to have wielded a gun as efficiently as she did. He’d read in the file that she was twenty-eight years old.

“The evidence on the man in the airport seemed to indicate desert or rural. And Tara’s security indicated the same. That’s what we’ll have to stick to, barring further evidence.”

Emir scowled. “So far it’s the best we have.”

“Exactly,” she agreed.

He watched as she stood, walked into the hallway and over to a white-marble pillar that was just one of many lining the length of the two-hundred-foot hallway. He knew she wouldn’t find any answers there. Only space.

As familiar as he was with all of it, he still, at times, felt the overpowering opulence of the office walls. He’d seen her look of surprise when he’d first brought her into his office. He imagined she thought he’d decorated it to suit his personality rather than realizing what it was: a tribute to the generations that had come before him.

If it were up to him, the office would be simpler, less elegant. The rosewood desk was opulent enough to stand alone. Sitting on a richly vibrant, deep, brown-and-blue Persian rug that covered the majority of the floor made it even more so. And yet neither the opulence of the desk nor the richness of the rug or the elegance of the other accessories fit with the pictures on the office wall. Pictures of his brothers and his sister in various locations—a ski hill, a beach—and at all different ages, and then a picture of all of them together. He knew that it all appeared as if he’d moved into someone else’s home and never added anything to his own liking, except, possibly, the pictures. And it didn’t matter to him. This was his family’s history and he honored it. The decor meant nothing more than that.

He knew she was back, he could sense her before he looked up and saw her. She took a step past the doorway, facing him but not looking at him, obviously focused on her thoughts. He imagined from the expression on her face that she might be replaying in her mind what had been done so far. He waited as minutes passed silently between them before she spoke.

“At least if the tower dump info you requested on the first call would come in...” She walked toward him. “What range are they using?”

“I kept it fairly simple. The city limits and thirty miles out. Fortunately the call came in early in the morning. The traffic was light. There were only a little over six hundred,” he said. “With Barb, we’ve got the best on it. We can’t do more.”

The tower dump had requested cell phone companies in the area to reveal records of users during a specific time frame. It was an invasion of privacy implemented only at the request of law enforcement and, in situations like this, where Nassar Security had pull and reach.

She frowned at him.

“Sorry, you’ve never met Barb Alamy.”

“Not officially,” she agreed. “I’m just curious. Western given name...”

“She’s an American who came to Morocco on vacation. Long story short, she’s been here over a decade, married a local man. Now she’s the office tech guru and has since taken over research.”

“I don’t know how you found her, but Barb’s definitely a tech guru.”

“She found us,” he admitted of his recent addition. “And now we have her working in both offices.”