Читать книгу Desire In The Desert: Sheikh's Rule - Ryshia Kennie - Страница 17

Chapter Nine

“Kaher is on the fringe of the Sahara, like Zafir said. Not well used by tourists and hikers, but that might be to our benefit.” Even Kate could hear the trace of excitement in her voice. “What incredible luck that they have an airstrip.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and looked at him. His dark eyes were both grim and determined. “That information certainly came out of nowhere,” she added. “Let’s hope someone knew this guy. Like, who he was hanging with, what he was doing...”

“And we can find out who and what they know quickly,” Emir said.

“At least before first light,” she agreed, grimacing. “You’ve flown at night? I mean, you have experience at this sort of thing?”

“You doubt me?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Of course not. I was just surprised.”

“I’m a qualified pilot and I’ve flown at night often,” he assured her. “I’ll get us there in one piece, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Did I say I was worried?” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Let’s get moving.”

But before either of them could act on those words, her phone dinged, signaling a text message. She looked at it with a frown then back up at him. “It’s a blocked text—no identification.” She held up her index finger, warning him to silence. “This is odd.”

Outside, a siren broke the quiet; the distant sound knifing in through an open window. The flashing lights seemed to pulse through the night, as if forewarning them of something even more threatening than what they already faced.

Seconds seemed to tick away and the silence within the room wrapped around them in a thick, almost choking veil.

Her eyes met his and she pushed a button on the phone.

“It’s a video.”

She looked up, saw the perspiration dotting his forehead and wondered if the pressure of it all was finally getting to him. She dismissed the thought. He was strong, too strong. There were other words for men such as him... Just his nearness could take a woman’s breath away. She’d bet that he’d never had a woman turn him down. She remembered how, earlier, he had been outlined in his office by the city lights as he’d stood by the window, how his well-muscled form had been clearly defined by his T-shirt.

She was always in control and now, at a completely inappropriate time, her mind was running amuck thinking of...

She frowned and clutched the phone tighter. “It might be nothing—”

“Or it might be from them,” he said, cutting her off.

And they both knew what he meant. Tara’s kidnappers.

Her finger lifted from the phone as if that were a deal-breaker. “Maybe I should watch it without you.”

“No, start it. We need to see it and see it now.”

They didn’t know what was on the video. It could be anything or anyone. But in this situation, with everything that had happened, the possibility that it wasn’t a ransom demand in some form, that Tara wasn’t involved, was slight.

“Start it,” he said thickly as he leaned over her shoulder.

They watched the video begin with no prelude but, rather immediately, a woman’s face dominated the screen.

“Tara,” he said, an edge to his voice.

Her hands were tied and she was kneeling, looking right at them or, more aptly, at the camera or at whoever was filming her.

“Please, Emir,” Tara said, her voice pleading. But the words didn’t seem as panicked as they seemed forced. It was as if she wasn’t saying them voluntarily but instead was being coached. She hesitated and stumbled over what she was saying, sounding reluctant.

Kate swallowed. It was tough to watch. There was a flashlight on her face and Tara blinked frequently, squinting against the light. Her dark hair was long and loose, curling wildly around her dusty face. Her faded jeans were torn, not as a fashion statement, Kate suspected, but more a result of her ordeal. Her flowered, peasant-style cotton blouse had chalk-colored streaks running through it. There were numerous thin, red scratches on her hands and across one cheek, but she met the camera with fire in her eyes despite the tears on her cheeks.

“Tara,” Emir murmured. “Hang in there. I’m coming.”

In the video, Tara turned slightly, as if she might have heard him.

She sat on her heels on what looked like a burgundy blanket, but it was faded with age and dusty with sand. It was hard to tell if the blanket might have some sort of ethnic origin, a clue to who she was with or where she was, but that clue was lost as the camera never went near enough to give them a clear visual.

Kate tried to remain objective as she watched an animated, if you could call it that, Tara. This was the first time she’d seen her in anything other than a still photo. She made a mental note of her mannerisms and listened to what she said as she looked for signs of coaching and for some hint of who was with her. She was fairly sure that she had a better chance of seeing any of that than Emir, who was too close to be objective.

Kate looked at Emir, who confirmed everything she had thought, as anger seemed to emanate from him in the tightness in his lips and the intense way he looked at her. She knew that any objectivity he had maintained had been lost in the moment. It wasn’t surprising. Anyone in his situation would have reacted the same, although in her mind he was holding on better than most. Still, objectivity and her skill in these situations, was why she was here. But now she feared that the deeper they got into this, the closer they got to finding Tara, the more difficult it would be for Emir to keep a check on his emotion. She didn’t blame him, it was natural, but she also knew it wasn’t going to help the investigation one bit.

“They want it in American dollars.” There was no emotion in Tara’s voice.

The video blurred and garbled and then became clear again.

“Someone will tell you when and where,” Tara said, her words a monotone, as if she were reading a script.

There was a sound behind her, a scuffling, and then the video blanked out and came back on. This time Tara was gone and the muffled voice of a man was saying, “Be prepared, you’ll have little time.”

The video clicked off.

“What kind of joke is this?” Emir stormed. “They prop her up, ask for money yet again, and don’t give a drop zone, an amount, even a time—nothing?”

Kate looked at him, at the fire in his dark eyes and the pain that overrode everything, and couldn’t begin to imagine how it might feel. Even if she’d had siblings, she doubted she could imagine such a nightmare. She wished she could fix it, that it wouldn’t carry on any longer. That somehow she could end it.

“So they want what they asked for earlier or it’s another amount. Whatever it is, will that be enough? Will they let her go?” Emir’s voice was raised and tense.

Kate didn’t say anything. This was about Emir regaining control. He didn’t need or want anything from her right now.

Silence flooded the room.

“Get in touch with Zafir. Now,” she said after a minute had passed.

She listened to the one-sided conversation as Emir laid out what had happened and what Zafir needed to do.

He put the phone down and ran splayed fingers through his hair before he looked at her. “He’s already on the way.”

“Let’s watch that video again. Can you? Is it too much...?”

“Start it,” he rasped.

They watched it through two more times before she turned it off and set the phone down.

“She was in the open. There wasn’t any shelter.” His words were like grim drumbeats of doom.

“Emir,” she warned as she shook her head, “don’t go there. None of that is relevant, not now. She’s not comfortable but she’s not injured and she’s not—” She bit off the last words.

“Dead.” He filled the word in for her. “And she’s not going to be, either.” He looked at his watch. “Where the hell is Zafir? It’s been...”

“Two minutes,” she noted. “Look, let’s review that video one more time. There was something I wanted to mention but I thought it was a nervous tic, considering what was going on. Where she was, what—”

“Tell me,” he broke in.

She looked at him, saw the pain in his eyes that he was struggling to contain and her heart almost broke. He was a strong man but even strong men had their limits.

“I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

She picked up the phone and pushed Play. The video no sooner began to run before she hit Pause. “Did you see that slight tapping of her finger on her left hand?”

He frowned. He leaned closer. “Son of a desert stray,” he muttered.

He hit Rewind again and again.

“This is difficult,” she said, thinking how hard it was to watch his sister being held captive like that—to see she wasn’t alone but surrounded by her captors. That much was evident based on the fact they could see the boots of two men obviously milling nearby. They were boots that, this time, gave them no clue. They were clean, generic, with no sign of sand or dirt—no evidence of any kind.

Kate turned her attention back to Tara. When she’d first noticed the thumb tapping on Tara’s left hand, she had thought it might be anxiety. The woman had much to be anxious about.

“I don’t believe it,” Emir said. “Why didn’t I see that before? Morse code.”

“Interesting,” Kate said as she thought of the eclectic collection of books on Tara’s shelves and looked closer at the video.

Emir said nothing but his presence seemed to fill the room even as his attention was on the video.

“Simplistic and yet—” Kate broke off. Tara was surprising her in ways she hadn’t expected. Morse code was not something a young woman of Tara’s generation would have any exposure to. “Or would she?” she asked softly.

Emir turned. There was a troubled frown on his face as he watched her, his eyes seeming to lock with hers. “What are you thinking?”

“The implausibility of this...” She remembered the bookshelf. Tara wasn’t just a modern girl with an attitude, she was also a serious student and an avid reader. The books on her shelves had been everything from contemporary novels to history. But one shelf had stood out. The section filled with procedural books and one, she remembered, labeled, “Code This.”

“She studied Morse code?”

Emir nodded. “Not so much studied as read some books she’d found in what had been our father’s private library. Like I said, it was nothing serious—goofing around, she called it. She was only fourteen or fifteen. Back then we often practiced it together in English and French. I didn’t think she remembered.”

Kate looked at the video. Now she watched the subtle, yet clear when you noticed it, up-and-down movement of Tara’s thumb. Because her hand was a bit behind her, it wasn’t something that caught your eye, or, she suspected, the eye of the cameraman. She narrowed her eyes, watching the furtive movements, the rhythm and the pattern in the long and short gestures.

Around Tara were the canvas walls of what seemed to be a tent but the video was edited enough that what was around her wasn’t clear. It could be a tent anywhere or, from what Kate could see, it could not be a tent at all. But one thing was now clear. She looked closer, but once she’d made the determination, the truth was inescapable.

Emir’s attention was solely on the video. Kate frowned at the thought of the obsolete code in a time when even cursive writing was almost extinct. But there was no denying that Tara was definitely trying to tell them something. The video cut off just as her thumb lifted again.

Emir looked at Kate with a frown ridging his brows. He rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek. “T-e-n e-t-e,” he said, spelling it out. “It makes no sense.” He ran the video again, as if going through the series of taps would change anything. The video cut off again before any more information could be divulged and before Tara’s kidnappers could see what she had done. “And there’s nothing more.”

The room felt suddenly close, as if there were no oxygen. Kate could feel the energy of the man beside her as the tension and fear for his sister seemed to pulse between them and something else.

“Été,” he said. “French for ‘summer.’ What summer? Where?”

“Ten,” she murmured, moving what he’d just said to memory for later consideration. “Could refer to anything, but my best guess is that it refers to something about her.”

“She wasn’t finished. She thought she had more time. That’s why it was cut off the way it was.”

“Possibly.”

Kate was quiet, thinking of what it all might mean. When she met his eyes she saw the silent strength and the determination in his chiseled jaw and, for a moment, it was like she forgot to breathe.

“Do you remember she gave a victory sign at the beginning?”

He frowned. “She used to do that as a kid on the first day of summer vacation or on the announcement of a family trip.”

There was silence for a moment before he spoke.

“Ten,” he repeated just as she had earlier. “Could she have mixed English and French? Tara is fluent in both. She’s stressed. She could have used the languages interchangeably.”

“Go on,” Kate encouraged.

“The year Tara was ten, the most notable thing was that that was the summer my parents took her and Faisal for a short tour of the Sahara.” He stood. “Could it be that easy?”

“She wouldn’t want to make it difficult, yet she didn’t know how much time she’d have. Thus the cut-off words.” She looked at him. Saw the hope in his eyes.

A thought came to her that, somehow, what Tara’s security, now so critically wounded, and what Tara had just tried to tell them were connected. “Could what Ahmed have been trying to tell you also have been a place?” She looked at him. “Emir? Where in the Sahara did your parents take Tara that summer? What was their final destination?”

“El Dewar.” He smacked his hand on the desktop. “I’d forgotten about it. I don’t know how I could have.”

“It was trivial detail at the time, especially since you weren’t involved in the trip,” Kate said. “Understandable.”

“That was the farthest they went before returning home. But is that the clue?”

He was quiet for a minute, considering what she had said. “Davar. Could Ahmed been trying to name the place and now she’s trying to tell us the same? That she’s near El Dewar, or there’s information to be had at El Dewar, the same Berber village she saw at ten?”

“It’s a possibility but it’s also a big stretch,” Kate said. She grabbed the map. “It’s a small place. I doubt if she’s there now. She couldn’t be hidden and there are enough people that not everyone would be complicit. So, could she be near there? Is that possible?”

He didn’t answer. Instead his fists were clenched, his lips in a straight line, his mind obviously elsewhere. Fighting, she imagined, with long-forgotten memories.

“Emir!” Her voice was sharp. It was the only way to get through to him. He was ready to hit the desert without a plan, with only guns and rage, and neither of those would be successful in rescuing his sister.

He looked at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. “I’m sorry. I lost it, I shouldn’t have...” He paused, as if he needed time to breathe. “You have no idea,” he said.

Time seemed to beat slowly between them and, for a second, all she could do was look at the strong jaw, feel his solid presence, and wish that was all it took—a minute in his arms to make all of this right for him. She shoved the thought away.

“You’re right, I don’t. But what I do know is that my decisions aren’t clouded by emotion. Yours are.” She took his hand in both of hers and tried not to acknowledge the irony of her words. “Listen to me.” She looked at him. His rich dark eyes were pools of pain. “That’s what the kidnappers want, for you to irrationally follow their demands without thought. That was more than likely part of the purpose behind that video. Maybe...” she began, thinking of the lack of ransom detail. “All of it. You falling for that ploy won’t help Tara. But it might ensure that, if their plan was to kill you at the airport, that scenario will still play out. Only this time, someplace else. You’ve got to let me lead and help you keep a cool head. It’s the only way.”

This time when she met Emir’s eyes, she saw that, for once, they were dark with hope rather than despair. And something else, as if he were looking at her for the first time. She looked away.

She let go of his hand as he nodded and turned away from her. The tension seemed to noticeably lift from the room as she blew out a quiet sigh of relief.

“I’m puzzled. Why did they send the video to me?” Kate murmured. “How did they know about me?”

“They’ve got some sort of inside information. Or maybe they contacted the others when they saw you at the airport.”

“How did they find out my name?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking at her in a way that had nothing to do with what she was saying.

She was unprepared when he bent and kissed her, and even more so for her own reaction, for the need and want that made her put her arms around his neck and, for a few seconds, to allow herself to sink into that kiss.

It was instinctive and so very wrong. She pushed him back, her hands on his shoulders, creating a distance between them. They were trapped in an emotional situation and it was a natural human reaction to turn from trauma to passion.

He stood there for a moment then his eyes met hers and a truth seemed to pass between them. That what had happened was real, as real as the tragedy unfolding around them. But now it was Tara who eclipsed all and they both knew it.

“She’ll die if we don’t get her out of there soon,” he said. “Let’s move.”