Desire In The Desert: Sheikh's Rule

“Contrary?” Kate frowned.

“I didn’t mean that,” Emir said. “We are all more Western in our thoughts—the family, I mean—but Tara wanted to change the thinking, the old ways, that exist elsewhere. Chauvinism that still hasn’t disappeared. She wasn’t content to let modern ideas remain within the walls of this compound or within the boundaries of Marrakech, for that matter.”

The pain in his voice was palpable.

“We’ll get her home.” She met the troubled look in his eyes and hesitated, feeling the need to comfort. She dropped the thought when she saw the anger in his eyes. Anger was not something she could change with simple words or a touch and, at this stage, she suspected it would be unwelcome.

As they entered Tara’s quarters, it was as if facts were his safety net as he commentated as they walked. “Built almost two hundred years ago, this area is pretty much impenetrable to outsiders. Always has been. We’ve upgraded, of course. This section was built in the mid-1800s. We’ve put in a computer-monitored surveillance system in the last few years, added motion detectors and thermal laser-heat detectors. It was all we needed without going overboard. At least, so we thought...” He shook his head, lines bracketing his mouth.

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Don’t placate me,” he growled. “I should have known. It was my job to know.”

The security keypad was imbedded in a teak panel arched into a design that looked rather like a small pseudo door set alongside the door frame.

Emir punched in a code.

The doors in front of them opened with the whir of a hidden motor, leading to a smaller teak doorway and a wooden door that, while arched like the first set of doors, was smaller, singular and, as a result, much less imposing than the first set. Emir unlocked the door, flicked on the light and stood aside for Kate to enter first. Inside was the sleek metal lines and modernity of a penthouse apartment without the extravagantly opulent touches of the entranceway.

His hand was on the small of her back as she hesitated, taking it all in. Her heart beat just a little faster as his hand rested there for just a few seconds longer before the intimate touch was gone and it was as if it had never happened.

She was being ridiculous and, worse, unprofessional, she chastised herself, dragging her thoughts to what was important—learning about Tara and finding anything that might help to bring her home, safely, to her family.

“Tara detests the old look. It reminds her of the old ways and the customs that still impact women. She left some of the original touches, the original door and entranceway, because they amused or maybe, more aptly, intrigued her.”

Kate walked the length of the cool, ivory tile that matched the rest of the mansion and straight through a kitchen and sitting area to a bank of windows that looked out to a gleaming infinity pool surrounded by palm trees. She turned back to Emir.

“If she wasn’t so smart, this wouldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t have pushed the rules, tested her limits,” Emir protested. “She’d have been inside and safe.” His lips were taut, his eyes dark and troubled. Kate held back the urge to put a hand on his shoulder, to offer what little comfort she could.

“You can’t turn back the clock,” she said softly.

Her gaze went to the sofa as she walked over to the bookcase. “She’s very serious,” she said, her eyes skimming the titles. “And yet she has a lighter side, fun-loving.” There were characteristics of Tara that were obvious in her choice of furnishings. The sleek, butter-yellow leather sofa hinted at a lighter side. The heavy, teak desk with generations of wear marring the surface and the three volumes of Wells’s The Outline of History leaning against an economic text were testament to her seriousness.

Kate glanced at a collection of graphic novels but picked up an archeological magazine from a pile and thumbed through it. It was a unique collection for a young woman whose major was computer science with a minor in psychology. She put the magazine back on the stack that seemed to cover the prior year.

“Did she just read about archeology or had she gone on a dig?”

“What does it matter?” he asked.

“Anything you remember could help, you know that.”

He nodded. “You’re right. She wanted to go check out a new find. It was a day trip into the desert and another back.”

“And you told her no?” Kate guessed and got her answer from his silence. “That must have been hard for her to take. Maybe impossible, considering she’s legally an adult. Is it possible that she planned to go anyway, that maybe...?”

“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.