Panther's Prey (9 page)

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. You’re a great humanitarian because you gave your flunkies orders to feed me.”

He strode away from her angrily, but she followed, sweeping in front of him to face him. “You must think I’m a simpleton. You’re taking care of me to get the maximum price when you sell me to some scoundrel like that odious man Halmad. I felt I needed a bath after he had just looked at me. You’re maintaining me the way a farmer maintains the livestock in his pens. And you came after me to safeguard your investment, for no other reason, let’s be clear about that, agha. So you answer me now, do I really have reason to be grateful?”

“Your President is not the only American who makes speeches,” he said disgustedly, striding back to the fire and adding some larger limbs to it. “Come over here, sit down, and be quiet. Have something to eat.”

She didn’t obey but watched him remove a packet of food and a leather bottle of water from his pouch.

“Is that your kidnapping kit?” she said sarcastically.

“I keep it with my horse always, for emergencies,” he replied, taking a long drink. Amy licked her lips and took a step forward hesitantly.

“How exciting to think that I qualify as an emergency,” she said, but took another step.

He saw her movement and held out a woven sack tied with a string. When she didn’t accept it he set it on the ground.
 

“How did you find me?” she asked, finally walking over to the fire and sitting down next to him.

“I’ve been tracking people and animals through these hills since I was five,” he replied, handing her the water bottle. “I had a horse and you left a wide trail. You were very easy to find.”

She took a drink, guzzling the cool water, and he finally ripped the bottle away from her, alarmed.

“Take it easy, too much at once after a thirst is sick making,” he said.

It was strange to hear him using British expressions, stranger still to hear the Oxford accent emerging from his bandit’s mouth. What an odd hybrid creature he was: if the newspaper she had read was correct, the daughter of his sworn enemy, the Sultan, was married to his brother.

And he certainly didn’t speak or smell like her American idea of an outlaw.

“Did I drink it all?” she asked anxiously, the prospect of going thirsty again alarming her.

“There’s a brook just through those trees,” he said, nodding to the left. “I’ll refill it in the morning.”

She opened the sack he had produced and began to eat the contents, strips of dried goat meat mixed with raisins, berries and split hazelnuts.

“This is like pemmican,” she said, chewing.

“What’s that?”

“The western people of my country prepare it for the trail. It’s high in protein and keeps indefinitely without spoiling.”

He grunted.
 

She chewed some more, thinking. “Look, can’t we make a deal?” she finally said, striving for a reasonable tone. “You want money. I can get you money if you let me go.”

He shot her a sidelong glance but said nothing.

“It’s true. I have money, an inheritance from my parents. I’ll be getting it in ten months.”

“Ten months,” he said, as if it were ten years.

“But if you just let me write home to my guardian I can get an advance on it and he will send a bank draft...”

“A bank draft from the United States of America?” he said, laughing. “Why not a cache of diamonds from the mountains of the moon?”

Amy stared at him; she had never seen him laugh, and she was charmed in spite of herself. His teeth were white and even and his chuckle infectious. She looked away.

“My aunt’s husband has an export business in Constantinople. I was coming to stay at his house when you snatched me,” Amy said, trying again. “He is wealthy and I’m sure he would pay a lot of money to get me back.”

Malik continued to eat as if she hadn’t spoken.

“And my uncle’s cousin is married to the, oh, what do you call it? I forget the title, the district commissioner or something...”

He held up his hand. “Enough! You Western women talk too much. Finish eating and go to sleep.” He rose and stoked the fire, adding enough wood to keep it burning for hours. He shook out one of the blankets and tossed it to her.

“You don’t believe me?” Amy asked, catching the woolen square. “It’s the truth! Why do you think I was on that coach in the first place?”

“You could have been on that coach for a hundred different reasons and I am not interested in any of them. What I am interested in is sleep. I’ve been tracking you all day and I’m very tired.” He spread the second blanket on the ground and stretched out on it, closing his eyes.

“Why would you rather sell me into slavery than contact my family? I’m telling you they would pay to get me back!”

He opened his eyes. “If I were your family I would pay to send you away. Now if you don’t be quiet this minute I will leave you here for the leopards.” He rolled over deliberately, turning his back to her.
 

“Aren’t you going to tie me up?” she said tauntingly.

“If you think of taking off during the night, you should know that what you will find out there is far worse than what you will experience here with me.”

Amy threw the remainder of her pemmican to the ground disgustedly and stood.
 

“I’ll just run away again, the first chance I get,” she said to his back.

“No, you won’t,” he replied.

“Really?”

“Really. If I have to keep you chained to my belt twenty-four hours a day, you won’t get away again.”

The certainty in his voice gave her a chill.

“I guess I forgot how valuable I am,” she said spitefully. “Why don’t you raise money for your sacred revolt by working for a living like any other decent person? But selling kidnapped women is just a lot easier, isn’t it?”

“I worked for a living on my father’s farm for ten years,” he replied equably. “Then the Sultan executed my father and brothers, gave my mother and sister to his janissaries to be used before they were killed and confiscated all of our property. Since then I’ve worked to execute him.”

Amy sank to the ground slowly, silenced. “Why?” she finally said.

“My oldest brother Osman eloped with the Sultan’s daughter, Princess Roxalena. Osman sent us a message and money to follow him but he was betrayed and the message was intercepted. The Sultan took out his anger on the remaining members of the family. I was away at the time and so escaped the axe. I went on the run when I heard what had happened and I’ve been on the run ever since.”

“You had done nothing at all to make you a fugitive,” she whispered.

“Exactly. But I’m doing something now. I won’t rest until Abdul Hammid is dead and his government deposed.”

Amy stared at the back of his head, wrapping her arms around her torso.

He turned to look at her, then sighed and sat up, pulling his heavy woolen tunic over his head.

“Put this on,” he said.
 

She shook her head.

“Do as I say,” he barked, rising and settling the tunic over her shoulders. It was warm from his body and she couldn’t resist snuggling into it.
 

“And come closer to the fire.”

She shook her head again.

“You’re in a desert climate, it’s boiling during the day and freezing once the sun sets. You’ve been sleeping a few feet away from me every night in my tent, why does it bother you now?”

“It bothered me then,” she whispered, and he stared at her, his eyes lambent in the firelight. The moment hung between them, the silence filled with things unspoken.

“I’ll move away,” he finally said in a low tone, and did so immediately.

Amy took her blanket and dropped it next to the fire, then lay full length on it, not looking at him.

In three minutes she was asleep.

* * *

Malik looked up at the night sky, picking out the constellations he had learned to identify from his tutor when he was a boy. He was exhausted but could not sleep, the proximity of the woman he had kidnapped keeping him awake.

He smiled to himself as he thought of the stories she had told him. She would have said that her father was President Cleveland and her mother Queen Victoria if she thought that would take her one step closer to freedom. He knew from her appearance that her family was well to do, and she would not have been able to travel so far from home if they weren’t, but only a handful of American families could match what he would be able to get for her in the slave trade. Unless her name was Carnegie or Astor, his best bet was to sell her to a broker, and a Carnegie or an Astor would not have been traveling in a shared passenger coach with a weepy companion. But he had to admire her for trying, just as he admired her escape attempts, even though they left him footsore and mind weary.

She was brave, if not exactly a meticulous planner.

A hyena barked loudly from a safe distance and was answered by a low growl somewhere nearby.

His companion sat up, her eyes huge, and whispered, “What was that?”

Malik rose to his feet, drawing his pistol from his belt. He fired one shot into the air. They both listened to the scrambling sound begin and then diminish as a large animal took off quickly through the brush.

Malik gathered more sticks for the fire, then sat again. Amy picked up her blanket and moved next to him.

He looked at her. “Feeling lonely?” he said, arching one dark brow.

She muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

“I beg your pardon?” he said.

“Do you think that...whatever it was...will come back?” she asked anxiously.

“If it does, I will be here,” he said calmly.

Amy was surprised at how much his capable tone reassured her. No wonder so many people followed him and obeyed his orders without question. He inspired confidence.

“What time is it?” she asked, pulling his tunic closer about her.

He looked up at the sky. “About three. It will be light in a few hours.”

“Do those animals prowl only at night?” she asked, looking around them.

He stared at her. “
Now
you are afraid? You run off from the camp armed with nothing but a pair of shoes and it doesn’t occur to you to worry until a leopard is standing a few feet away from your campfire?”

“Was that a leopard?” she murmured, aghast.

“Maybe an Anatolian wolf, but most likely a panther, a leopard in the black phase before the coat turns color. It’s the season for them.”

She swallowed. He probably
had
saved her life by coming after her, it was true, but she couldn’t forget his venal reason for doing it.
 

She shivered, as much from her bleak thoughts as the night chill.
 

He got up and gave her his blanket.

“I can’t take this, you’ll have none...” she began.

He held up his hand. “I am accustomed to the climate, you are not. Take it and go back to sleep.”

Amy subsided, looking over at him as he sat with his back to a tree. The firelight played over his high cheekbones and arched nose, giving him a fierce aspect that daylight softened and transformed into a dark beauty.

“Your English is very good,” she murmured, trying to get him to talk. She was still skittish about their four legged visitor and the sound of his deep voice had a soothing effect, reminding her that she was not alone. She studied him in the firelight, wondering how he would appear in Western clothing. With his exotic looks he would definitely liven up a tea dance in Boston dressed in a herringbone sack coat and pipestem trousers.

“Thank you,” he said.

“How did you learn to speak it?”

“Before my brother Osman took off with Hammid’s daughter he was the Sultan’s favorite soldier for many years, the captain of his guard and very well paid. When Hammid first came into power he wanted to learn European warfare in order to train his own troops. He sent Osman to England to study with the British for two years and Osman learned to speak English there. He was very impressed with the language and the way of life and when he returned here he hired a British tutor for us at home.”

It was the longest speech she had heard him make, and his admiration for his brother came through in it. “He sounds like an extraordinary person,” Amy said.

“He is,” Malik said shortly.

“Does he know what you are doing now?”

“He does,” Malik replied flatly.
 

Amy dropped the subject. “How do you keep up with your English?” she asked him.

“I have books, and I read the English language newspapers from Damascus and Constantinople.”

“It must be important to you,” she said.

“It’s important to my future plans that I speak and read English competently. I have to be able to talk to the Western powers if I expect their help for my new country.”

“How do you practice conversation?”