Читать книгу The Sheikh Who Stole Her: Sheikh Seduction / The Untamed Sheikh / Desert King, Doctor Daddy - Dana Marton - Страница 13

The shah gripped his cell phone so hard the plastic squeaked in protest.

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“It is Sheik Abdullah. He said so himself.”

The man had as many lives as a cat. The attack on the convoy had not been meant for him, hadn’t been planned at all. The oilmen had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of the men had recognized him after the fight, had thought him dead, but was too stupid to make sure. Had the sheik died, it would have been a bonus. But he seemed to have survived, after all, to interfere once again.

Was it a sign? Maybe Sheik Abdullah could be used for something. He was the king’s cousin. No love lost there, but honor would demand that the monarch ransom him. For money or other advantages. It bore thinking about. And then there was the treasure.

The ex-king, Majid, Tariq’s half brother, had amassed incredible wealth, not all of which had been found after his death. Speculation ran wild about where all the gold must be. Who would know better than Tariq, who had succeeded Majid as sheik of their tribe?

“Bring him to me,” he said into the phone, before he flipped the lid closed. He didn’t expect the shipment for another three days. They weren’t far away, but there were no roads where they traveled, which slowed things considerably.

Sheik Abdullah. The shah grinned. Plenty of time to send for Abbas, who was an expert at getting men to talk. If Tariq knew anything about the gold, they would get it out of him. If it turned out he didn’t, they could still ransom him to his cousin, the king.

SHE WAS INSANE. She belonged in a zoo along with the camel and the hyena. Preferably in a separate cage.

Sara held on for dear life as the camel she’d somehow managed to mount swayed under her, progressing forward with undulating movements. Why anyone would ever ride one of these beasts escaped her. They were slow, stinky and uncomfortable in the extreme. And this one had spit on her! Had had to show his disapproval before they’d been able to come to terms.

Every inch of her skin was covered to keep the murderous rays of the sun at bay. Luckily, one of the saddlebags had been full of brand-new kaffiyehs, the traditional headdresses men wore. Maybe the animal’s owner had been on his way to market.

She followed the tire tracks in the sand instead of taking the shortest way out of the desert. She couldn’t leave Tariq.

He had saved her life. She wasn’t the type who could turn her back on him now and live with that decision. The bandits had an hour’s head start. She would follow and see where they took him. Once she had a location, she would call Karim again. He was searching the desert for them already, thanks to the satellite phone. She had called the last number dialed, as soon as she had managed to outwit the hyena.

Beharrain wasn’t a huge country. The desert wasn’t as endless as it seemed. Help would come; she had to believe that. And she would do whatever it took to survive until then. She glanced at the water jugs, at the blanket, the saddlebag where she’d stuffed the food Tariq had brought from the vending machines. Good thing that had been buried under sand, or the bandits would have taken everything.

She looked back and sighed. The hyena was following close behind. Probably waiting for her to fall out of the saddle. A distinct possibility.

“Go away!”

She had hoped to leave the beast in the proverbial dust, but the camel was so slow it would have lost in a race with a snail. Race. Didn’t she read something in her guide book about camel races? Come to think of it, she was sure she’d seen camels on the National Geographic channel that moved faster than this one. So it could go faster. But how to make it?

She kicked the animal in the side gently. “Go!”

It ignored her.

She jiggled her body up and down in the saddle. “Go! Go! Go!”

The animal picked up speed. Marginally.

“Faster!” She slapped its side.

And to her surprise, the camel actually broke into a run. Time to hang on. If she thought her perch in the saddle had been precarious when the animal was walking, this was a hundred times worse. She needed all her skill and concentration to stay in place. She didn’t dare turn and check on the hyena.

“Faster!” she yelled each time the camel thought about slowing, and the animal listened, responding to the tone of her voice.

She might have a chance to catch up with the bandits yet, depending on the camel’s stamina. The trucks had been driving slowly when they’d left, probably due to the uneven terrain. The sandstorm had left drifting dunes behind.

An hour of galloping brought them to a rocky area, one that sloped upward, with mountains in the distance. Sara was fine while there was sand mixed in with the rocks, but once the rocks won out, she could no longer see any tracks.

The camel was slowing now, too, since the ground was harder to run on. It was probably tiring. She untied a new bottle—she had drained one already—and took a long drink, then glanced back. The hyena was a dot in the distance. But it still followed.

“Let’s go.” She urged the camel forward, scanning the mountainous region ahead. Then she noted movement on a ridge far ahead, and made out the silhouette of two trucks against the sky.

Maybe she could catch up a little before they completely disappeared. The camel could go through narrow passages that trucks couldn’t. She gripped the reins with one hand, the saddle with the other, dark spots dancing before her eyes all of a sudden. She blinked them away.

The heat was strong enough now to kill. And there was little shade among the rocks, not even higher up the mountain. The sun was almost directly overhead.

She had two choices. To sit out the noon heat, hiding in the shade of the camel, letting that damn hyena catch up with her, and risk forever losing Tariq. Or to keep going, risking sunstroke and becoming hyena lunch, anyway.

“WHERE IS THE GOLD?” The man sitting by Tariq’s prone body asked the question for the hundredth time, hissing the words through his yellow teeth.

Tariq closed his bloodshot eyes. Maybe he’d already died and was in hell. It seemed unlikely that pain such as this would exist anyplace but there. He turned his face from the blistering heat and blinding light of the flames next to them. Better. That spoke against hell. He didn’t think a place like that would afford any relief.

The man kicked him. “Wake up and talk.”

He opened his eyes and glared into his torturer’s face, until the bastard turned toward the fire to pull out a stick that glowed red at the end. He lowered the hot tip to Tariq’s exposed thigh, and there was nothing Tariq could do. He was bound tight, the man’s foot holding his ankle to the ground. His pant leg had been ripped away a long time ago. Red welts lined his skin where he had been repeatedly burned.

“Where is the gold?”

Tariq turned his head toward the cave’s opening, not wanting to see his flesh seared yet again. He clenched his teeth and stared out into the night. A sole sentry sat by the cave mouth, while sleeping smugglers lay scattered across the floor. They had gotten bored with his torture over an hour ago, and gone to sleep, save the man who held the stick and seemed to have inexhaustible energy for causing him pain.

Fire branded his skin, but Tariq swallowed his groan, fought against the agony. He wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction of crying out loud. “There is no money.” He said the words through gritted teeth, sweating profusely.

His torturer simply laughed and thrust the stick back into the fire.

Tariq kept his gaze on the small patch of sky and stars, trying to focus on them and on Sara’s beautiful face alternately as the sickly smell of his own burned flesh filled the air.

Where was she now? There had been that explosion. And then the smugglers had taken him away, without him seeing Sara again. Had they killed her? Fear of that had tortured him during the long trek, and was more painful than the burns on his thigh.

What had become of Karim? Had he, too, been lost to a trap? Those thoughts bound Tariq more tightly than his ropes. He should have somehow defended Sara and warned his brother.

He watched as the guard at the mouth of the cave raised his head and peered into the darkness. Had he seen or heard something? Was Karim coming? Had he found them somehow? Tariq had been listening for the sound of a chopper, but hadn’t heard it. Then again, torture did have a way of occupying a man’s full attention.

The guard stood and walked away from the opening of the cave.

A shadow appeared a few seconds later and slid inside. Not the guard, and not Karim, either, but someone much more slightly built. He recognized the shape and swore silently in helpless desperation, even though knowing she was alive filled him with relief. She shouldn’t be here.

He watched as Sara moved around, staying away from the area lit by the fire. He knew the exact moment she spotted him, knew when she decided to come out into the light to get to him.

His torturer was pulling the stick from the fire and giving him a demented grin, his focus fixed on his task.

Tariq could do nothing to stop Sara without bringing attention to her. Then she lifted something that in a split second he recognized as the tire iron. If they survived all this, he was going to frame it and hang it in the palace.

She brought the tire iron down hard on the back of the man’s head, and he folded without a sound. Sara immediately dropped to the sand next to Tariq and covered herself with a blanket, in case anyone woke up and looked around.

“Sara,” he said in a barely audible whisper, just to reaffirm that she really was alive and with him.

After a few moments, when no one raised the alarm, she reached out slowly, touched his face and left her hand there for a second. An amazing woman. He could only stare at her and drink in the sight. She was here, she was safe and she was about to save him.

She was already pulling water from somewhere and pouring it over his burns to cool them. She was an angel. His angel, he thought, with an urgent, possessive sense that took him by surprise.

He wished his hands were free so he could draw her into his arms. He inhaled a slow breath and held her troubled gaze in the light of the fire. “You shouldn’t have come.”

She was the one shaking her head now, even as she ran her fingers over the rope that bound him. “Karim is on his way.”

Relief eased Tariq’s tense muscles as she worked quickly, her movements impossibly quiet. He admired her temerity, her honor, that she would risk her life to save him instead of seeking to take the shortest route to safety.

“Thank you.” Loyalty was not something he had experienced a lot of in his life, especially not over the last couple of years. Hers touched him deeply.

“Quick.” He shifted as Sara worked the ropes with nimble fingers. The tension in his chest eased with every millimeter the rope loosened. “You have the phone?”

She nodded.

Allah be blessed. They might make it out of here yet. He lay still, not wanting to make her job any more difficult.

She made no noise. He couldn’t fathom how anyone could have heard her. But as he turned his head, he could see a dark shadow rise behind her, and before he could warn her, the butt of a rifle smashed hard against the back of her head. All he could do was roll forward, so that when she fell, it was on him instead of the rock floor of the cave.

SHE WAS BOUND hand and foot when she awoke. Bound to another person. To Tariq, she realized with considerable relief when she turned her head, the events of the previous night coming back to her. Sun poured in the cave’s opening, and the men around them were going about their business. Nobody paid any attention to the prisoners.

She’d been captured. She had failed. Frustration and disappointment rose like bile in the back of her throat as she recalled her easy defeat hours before. She’d gotten knocked out briefly, and after she’d come to, she’d been too upset that they had caught her. It had taken her forever to calm down enough to fall asleep. She was tired still.

“Are you okay?” Tariq asked her, his voice low and gentle. His gaze burned into hers.

His strength and warmth comforted her. She nodded and wiggled her limbs to get some circulation back into places where the ropes cut off the flow of blood. Although she had managed to grab a few hours of sleep, she still felt exhausted and sore all over. “Where are we going?”

They hadn’t been allowed to talk earlier, had earned some pretty hard kicks for every whispered word. But currently, nobody seemed to be paying attention to her.

“En route to some bandit camp.”

“Still in Beharrain?” She remembered reading that the border between Beharrain and Yemen was fairly flexible in this corner of the desert, moving as the individual tribes moved with their animals from watering hole to watering hole.

He nodded.

She thought of the satellite phone, then remembered that the bandits had taken it after they’d knocked her out, along with the tire iron she’d been growing attached to. “What happened back at the oasis?”

“I slashed three tires before they discovered me. They had spares. And you?”

“Hid upstairs, caught the camel, then followed as fast as I could.”

“You should have saved yourself.”

“Right. I’m sure that’s exactly what you would have done.” She flashed him a skeptical look.

His split lips stretched into a pained smile. “Definitely a lioness.” His gaze darkened and held her spellbound. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you,” he said.

She grew embarrassed at the open admiration in his voice, not sure she really deserved it, and looked away. The uneven stone floor of the cave dug into her back, but she didn’t dare sit up for fear of drawing attention to herself, to Tariq. They were lucky that for the moment they were forgotten. The bandits around them were finishing breakfast, some carrying their sleeping gear out of the cave, probably loading it back onto the truck.

“I think we’ll be moving on.” She scanned them one by one, mainly young men in their twenties. She could see only two or three who seemed older than that. They were all armed, an AK-47 hanging from each man’s shoulder.

One of them yelled something in Arabic as he strode their way.

“What does he want?”

“They are ready to load us onto one of the trucks.” Tariq sat up and helped her do the same. “Can you stand?”

She wobbled, but gave it her best shot. As soon as the bandit reached them, she understood why Tariq wanted to do as much as they could on their own. The man was rough, gripping her much harder than was necessary, his stubby fingers digging into her flesh as he yanked her around.

Tariq said something to him in Arabic, a brief sentence in a deep, harsh voice.

The man’s eyes narrowed as he leveled his gun at Tariq and shoved them forward. But he let go of her arm.

They were at the cave’s entrance, blinded by the sunlight, barely able to see the beat-up Jeep that pulled up to the level area on the hillside before them. It came to a halt between the two trucks, which had their engines idling.

A man in full tribal wear, including a soiled headdress, got out. A moment passed before she recognized him.

“Husam.” The name slipped from her mouth, and a cold shiver ran down her spine as the smugglers nodded to him respectfully.

Although he was too far away to have heard her, the man’s eyes zeroed in on her in the next second.

His face twisted into a frightful smile as he strode toward them. “You are alive,” he said to her with a wide smile. “I had to come and see.”

Tariq spoke rapidly and forcefully in Arabic, lurching forward, but the man behind him held him back. Husam sneered at him and pointed at her, switching to Arabic. One of the older men with the bandits came over, listened to Husam for a while. Tariq was still speaking, as well. She couldn’t understand a word, but from the tone of his voice it sounded like he was alternately threatening and protesting.

The bandit leader shrugged and pulled a curved knife from the sheath on his belt. She shrunk back as he aimed it at her, but he ended up slicing the ropes that tied her to Tariq, instead of slicing into her, as she’d half expected.

Then Husam grabbed her arm, and the gleam in his beady dark eyes left little doubt about his intentions toward her. “I never wanted to do you harm. I meant to save your life. From the moment I saw you, I knew you were a gift.” The look he gave her made it clear that he expected her gratitude.

“Let me go!” She struggled against him.

He seemed confused. “I’m offering you life.” The smile was fading from his face at her resistance.

“You knew that the cars would be attacked.”

“I knew our people would be in the same place that afternoon. I joined you to make sure you were spared.” He sounded angry now at her lack of gratitude.

“Let me go.”

“You will appreciate the honor of being chosen by me. You will respect me,” he warned.

She tried to elbow him in his chest, but underestimated the strength of his grip. He slowed his stride enough to backhand her, hard, across the face. She tasted blood and heard Tariq roar behind her.

Then so many things happened at once that she couldn’t untangle the sequence of events, not even later, when she had time to think about it.

There came a number of shouts, then a sickening thud, and Husam let go, falling face-first into the sand next to her, a dagger protruding from his back. Where had Tariq gotten that? At the same time, gunfire sounded, bullets slamming into the ground all around them. She sprinted forward on reflex, threw herself onto her stomach and slid under the Jeep for cover.

As soon as she was out of sight, she was out of mind, as well. Nobody came after her. Obviously, nobody considered her a threat. She watched with horror as the bandits focused on Tariq, who had drawn back into the cover of the cave, having somehow laid his hands on an AK-47.

The bandit leader and the young guy who’d brought them from the cave lay crumpled on the sand, and more bandits were falling by the second, Tariq’s aim proving to be exceedingly accurate.

The rest of the bandits were lying flat on their stomachs among the rocks, some backing away toward the trucks. Then one appeared in the back of one of the vehicles, with a sinister looking weapon on his shoulder.

A handheld rocket launcher. She hadn’t watched all those action flicks on late-night TV for nothing. The man aimed it straight at the cave’s opening.

She rolled to the other side of the Jeep and came up to a crouch, slid behind the steering wheel. Nobody heard the motor rev over the din of gunfire. She floored the gas pedal and went after her target, who didn’t notice her until too late.

He had time only for a horrified look as he turned the weapon on her. He couldn’t fire, however. The next second the force of the collision knocked him clear off the truck bed.

Sara was stunned for a moment or two, having hit her head pretty hard on the steering wheel. Her vision clouded. She rubbed her eyes, the back of her hand coming away bloody. She reached up and touched her fingers to a gash in her forehead, brushed off shards of glass from the broken windshield. Then spotted the guy’s rifle on the hood, which was crumpled under the truck’s tailgate.

She stretched forward and grabbed the weapon just as the man finally picked himself up from the ground—looking as stunned as she felt—and lunged for her. She pulled the trigger without thinking, feeling more surprise than anything when red bloomed on his camouflage shirt, and he crumpled to the ground, his eyes wide, his mouth open in a shout that got forever stuck in his throat.

She didn’t have time to think about him.

She whipped back to the battle behind her and squeezed the trigger again. Moving the rifle back and forth in a sweeping motion, she pointed in the general direction of the bandits, her index finger frozen to the trigger until the last bullet was spent from the curved magazine, and for seconds after that.

When Tariq came up to her, with his arm bleeding again, but no sign of new injury, he had to pry the gun from her hands.

“Easy now. It’s okay. It’s over. You saved us.” He drew her into his arms and held her as sobs broke free from someplace deep inside and shook her body.

She was a strong woman who prided herself on never falling apart, no matter the circumstances. Well, now she was falling apart spectacularly, and she didn’t care. The events of the past few days, especially the past few minutes, had taxed her beyond bearing. If Tariq hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen.

But he was holding her, his strong arms around her, his lips on her hair, murmuring gentle words of encouragement.

She was sobbing.

“It’s okay. It’s over. I’m going to get you some water. Why don’t you sit?” He was gentle and attentive, looking at her with concern.

“I thought we would die.” Her voice sounded strangely weak. “But I—” She couldn’t finish.

“I remember something my father told me after a battle when I was a child, although I didn’t understand it then. He said for a warrior with a heart, the worst isn’t the threat of dying, it’s the taking of another life, no matter how unworthy the person is of living.” Tariq rested his forehead against hers. “You are a warrior with a heart.”

He overestimated her. She was no warrior, no lioness. She pulled away and sat on a rock ledge, watched him walk away after a moment. She’d managed to regain some measure of self-control by the time he returned, his bloody, shredded clothes replaced by a clean set of traditional pants and robe.

“We’d better get out of here.” He handed her a heavy canteen, then bent to brush shards of glass from her hair while she drank.

“Somebody will come looking for Husam and the trucks sooner or later.”

She handed back the canteen as she stood. They were in this together; she couldn’t expect him to lead her around like some invalid. She drew a deep breath, filling her lungs. “What do you want me to do?”

“You could go back to the cave and rest while I pack for the road.”

She shook her head.

“I didn’t think so, but I had to try.” He gave her a half smile. “Okay. You can gather supplies if you’re up to it. Food, water, blankets, weapons. See if you can find that satellite phone they took from you.”

She nodded and set off, her gait unstable at first before she found sure footing. As she walked around the carnage, she did her best not to look at the dead. Tariq was trying to back the Jeep away from the truck, but the motor wouldn’t turn over.

“Can you fix it?” she shouted, before her attention was drawn to the rocks and the remains of a phone that had been reduced to slivers of black plastic. It had either met with a stray bullet or a hard-heeled boot during the fight. She lifted it and dangled some wires for Tariq to see. “I don’t suppose this can be fixed.”

He shook his head. “The engine looks busted, too.”

“The trucks?” She nodded toward them.

“Probably equipped with locators. Their cargo would be worth over a million dollars on the open market. Whoever owns them isn’t going to let them run around the desert without being able to keep track of his goods.”

An otherworldly laugh sounded from somewhere below them on the hillside. She started before she recognized it. “The hyena.” It had followed her all this way. A shiver ran down her spine. “Are we stuck here?”

But Tariq nodded toward the camel, which was tied to a rock in the shade. The guard she had enticed outside with some odd sounds, so that she could sneak in, must have found it and led it there. She hadn’t even noticed it until now.

“When you’re done gathering supplies, why don’t you give it some water to drink?” Tariq said. He grabbed the bandit closest to him and dragged the body into the cave, then the next, and the next. When he was done, he came for the camel and led it a good distance away. “Hold it here.”

He walked back to the Jeep and came up with the rocket launcher, aiming toward the cave. The explosion blocked up the entrance, sealing in the dead.

Then he dropped that weapon and picked up an AK-47, heading down the hillside. “Stay here.”

Soon, he was out of view of the ledge she was standing on. She heard the sound of a single shot, and a few minutes later Tariq reappeared. “If anything happens to me, I didn’t want the hyena bothering you again.”

He seemed winded. Odd for Tariq. She searched his face and noticed that he was paler than usual. Just how badly injured was he?

“Would you hold this?” She handed him the camel’s reins, making sure to put them in his right hand. Not giving him a chance to protest, she reached for his other sleeve and ripped it to his shoulder, then gasped at the sight.

The bullet hole was infected, the welts an angry red, nearly black. He had to have a fever. She placed her hand against his forehead, and his fiery skin confirmed her suspicions. Sleeping against him, she had thought he’d felt hot because he’d been so close to the fire. But he was in much worse shape than he let show, probably walking by sheer will alone.

“How about your leg?” The thought of the merciless torture she had caught glimpses of when she’d found him sickened her.

“It’s fine.” He tried to hold his shirtsleeve together over his arm as he scowled at her.

“I should take a look.”

“What’s the point? There’s nothing we can do about it right now.”

They had a brief staring contest. Then he pulled up his loose pant leg. “We don’t have time to argue about this.”

She took in the half-dozen raw wounds on his tanned skin, the muscles in his thigh tightening as he bent to examine the damage. She could have wept for him. He had to be in pain, but nothing save the tight set of his lips showed it.

“Your brother will find us,” she said, because they both needed hope, and she could offer no other encouragement. Tariq needed medical help.

“When did you talk to him last?”

“When I reached the cave. I described the hills to him.”

“There are many hills here and hundreds of caves. They might have been setting a trap for him. I overheard them discussing him when I was going for the trucks yesterday.”

“But I’d just talked to him.”

Tariq glanced at the rocket launcher, and she knew what he was thinking. One of those could easily take a chopper out of the sky.

It would have been nice to catch a break somewhere. Just a single one. And who knew … She refused to give up hope. Which didn’t mean she wasn’t going to act as if they had nobody to count on but themselves.

She reached for the saddlebag on the camel and pulled out two headdresses. She wet one from the flask and wrapped it around Tariq’s head, hoping to control his fever somewhat. The other she ripped into pieces, then wrapped around his wounds, once she’d washed them clean. Not nearly enough. He needed disinfectant, antibiotics and several stitches.

Frustration clamped her jaw tight as she stood and took the reins from him. She tugged on them, hard, until the camel knelt in the sand. Then she climbed up, making sure she would be in back, in case Tariq needed an arm around his waist to keep him from falling off.

He headed for the trucks first, however, and did something around the gas tanks. Soon both vehicles were engulfed in flames, along with their sinister cargo.

“We’d better go,” he said as he hurried back. “Before they explode.”

His robe fluttered behind him. In his traditional desert clothing, he looked a lot more like the sheiks of old than ever before.

“Where are we going?” she asked, when he slid into the saddle in front of her and took the reins.

“We are going to try and find the nomadic families of my tribe,” he said, his voice not revealing weakness. But she caught a shiver that ran through him. “You are about to meet the Bedu.”

They were several hundred feet away when the fire reached the gas tanks and twin explosions shook the air. If Karim was anywhere near, he would hear that, would see the smoke, which might act as a guide.

Of course, the same was true for their enemies.

She looked out at the endless hills to her left and the equally barren desert to her right. What were the chances that they would run across a small, wandering group of camel herders before their enemies found them, or before their water ran out? Or before Tariq fell unconscious from blood poisoning?