Sheik Protector (13 page)

She moved to the bars and shook them. Since the bricks they’d been embedded in were mud, they wiggled a little, but not nearly enough. She needed a tool. She glanced at the water jar again. Nope. Not going there. Then her gaze settled on the lamb bone. She grabbed it up, ran her fingers over the knobby ends. Not exactly the best tool for digging through sun-hardened mud. She’d have better luck with her fingernails, which were growing strong and long from the prenatal vitamins. She needed something sharp.

Running her fingers over the metal bars gave her an idea. They were old and rough, almost like a metal file. She pressed the bone against one and dragged it along the abrasive surface a couple of times, felt again. Better. Ten minutes of work left her with one end of the bone as sharp as a knife. She scraped her new tool against the mud brick and some flakes of clay dropped to the ground. She smiled.

Then stepped away quickly and hid the bone behind her back when she heard her door being unlocked again.

K
ARIM LOOKED AT
his torturers through the miniuscule slit in his swollen good eye. One more hit there and he’d be completely blind, a deep fear that had plagued him all through childhood.

“Who else knows about the idols?” the old man in the black robe asked again. “What do they mean?”

“Where is the woman?” he asked through bleeding, swollen lips.

They’d been through this script a couple of times. Next came the beating. The play did not improve with repetition.

Predictably, the man on his left slammed the butt of his rifle into Karim’s face again. This time it hit his jaw, with nearly enough force to shatter the bone.

As it was, Karim felt his skin split. “I’ll tell you everything I know in exchange for the woman.” His words slurred through his swollen lips. He had no information to give. Mustafa—he’d learned the name the hard way—knew more than he did, had the fifth item in his possession already. It sat on a low table along with the four idols, a webbed globe of gold, enclosing an ancient human skull.

“I’ll tell you everything,” Karim said again. For the last fifteen minutes he had stayed alive by pretending that he had information that was crucial to the idols. “For Julia.”

“There’s no more woman!” the old man shouted, his eyes bulging with fury, the veins standing out at his temples.

Karim saw red, too, and not just from the blood that dripped down his forehead and into his eye. What the hell did he mean, there was no more woman? What in hell had they done to her?

He’d been biding his time, waiting for them to think he’d been beaten enough, waiting for them to let down their guard. One man leaving would have been enough. Or one man taking his damned rifle off him. Then he would move. That was the plan.

There’s no more woman
.

He rose from his knees with an enraged roar. To hell with the plan.

He caught the guy off guard, and managed to bowl him over. They crushed to the floor in a bone-jarring slam. He couldn’t get to the gun at once, had to break the man’s neck first. He didn’t hesitate.

Nor did the others. Bullets flew at him from every direction. He caught sight of Mustafa from the corner of his eye as the man slipped out of the room; the rest of them were coming straight for him.

J
ULIA DROPPED
her makeshift tool to the floor and stepped on it to cover it up. Whatever they did to her, she was not moving from that spot. But it was only the old woman who came in, with a lamp and a scowl on her face.

She pointed at the clothes she’d brought earlier and yelled at Julia. Apparently, she should have gotten changed.

She didn’t want to think of the details of what might happen tonight. Couldn’t afford to get bogged down in the sheer terror of that or it would paralyze her and she wouldn’t have the strength to do what she needed to do to escape.

The old woman yelled at her.

The dress was in the other corner of the room. She couldn’t move there without revealing the sharpened bone, which she was not willing to give up. She shrugged.

The woman hustled over, picked up the dress and tossed it at Julia.

The material was sheer, the golden silk ribbon around the hem and split neckline a little worn, but the fabric was clean. Still, it was such a ridiculous outfit that she held it away in distaste. Just the right thing to do to push the crone over the edge, it seemed, as the next second the woman was coming over, hooking a gnarled finger into the neckline of her tunic and ripping it all the way to the hem.

“Hey!”

The woman glared at her with all sorts of threats in her previously vacant eyes. She was in obvious need of a hit and was going to be as grouchy as she pleased until she got it.

Fine. Julia shook out the dress. If it would make the woman leave, she would put it on. She pulled the dress over her head.
Oh.
It was a lot more sheer than she had thought, leaving little to the imagination. Her bra showed clear through.

The woman clucked her tongue.

Julia wanted her to be gone so she could get back to her work. She could put on her other clothes later. She unhooked her bra and let it drop, crossing her arms in front of her to cover herself.

“Good enough?” she asked when the old crone still didn’t look happy.

The woman glared at her slacks.

Oh, for heavens’ sake. Julia lifted her left leg first, stepped out then let the material pool around her right foot, so when she stepped out of that side, the woman wouldn’t see her secret lamb bone weapon.

And it still wasn’t enough. What else did the hag want?

She made it clear when she stepped closer and reached under Julia’s dress.

“Stop!” She held her hands out and put as much threat onto her face and into her voice as she could. She assumed the fighting stance she’d seen Karim do. She was
not
giving up her panties.

And the old crone must have understood that this here was the end of the line, because she grabbed the rest of Julia’s clothes from the floor with a quick swoop, then disappeared from the room. Since she took her lamp with her, Julia was plunged into darkness again.

One deep breath was all she allowed herself, one second to gather her strength and determination, then another so her eyes could get used to the darkness again. When she could see a little better, she grabbed her tool and went back to work on the mud bricks.

An eternity passed before she got one end of one bar free. Maybe it would have been better to hold her sharp tool to the old woman’s throat and hold her hostage, try to gain her release that way. Except she wasn’t sure just what the old woman’s value might be to her employer. Could be considerably less than the money the guy had just paid for Julia. Which meant, there could hardly be a trade.

She went to work on the next bar, scraping dried mud as quickly and quietly as possible. When she was done, she rattled the whole thing again. It didn’t give much more than before. And her fingers were bleeding in three different places where she’d scraped them. Once, she nearly cut into her own arm when the sharpened bone slipped. But she couldn’t afford to slow down. Even at the frantic pace she worked, she wasn’t going to scrape her way out, she was beginning to realize, not even if she had the whole night, which she seriously doubted.

They had fed and watered her, dressed her. She had a fair idea what was coming next.

Where was Karim? He had promised not to let anything happen to her as long as he lived. He hadn’t come to see her all day. She tried not to dwell much on the thought that chances were good he was already dead.

He couldn’t be. She needed to talk to him. They needed to discuss what had happened at the cave. She had to tell him how she felt about him. She had to get out. She had to call for help. She had to do something to save him.

Something scraped against the lock behind her. Were they coming for her already? Her heartbeat sped as the damn lock scraped again.

Here we go.

She faced the door and hid the sharp bone behind her back. The window was still impassable. She had two choices—fight now and be most likely killed, or go on and let them do whatever they wanted to do to her, in the hopes that later, a few days or weeks from now she might be able to escape and at least save her child. Unless they did something to her in the meanwhile that could cause her to lose her baby.
Oh, God. Please, not that. Anything but that.

She was saved from having to make a choice when Karim burst into the room the next second.

One fleeting moment of hope was all she was allowed.

Then she saw the army of bandits behind him.

Karim slammed the door and turned the key he’d wrested from the guard, knowing it would give them only minutes of safety at best.

“Did they hurt you?” His heart thumped as he took her in, noticing the sheer dress. Black rage filled him. They had her dressed for—He didn’t want to think that he might already be too late.

He focused on the fact that there were no visible signs of injury on her. Looked like they spared her the torture. And he knew why, and fury swirled out of control inside him.

She was staring at him in horror. “What happened to you?”

And he realized he probably looked like something that had come through the meat grinder. “Nothing serious.” He handed her the bag of idols he’d managed to grab, then pushed her behind him and faced the door, holding the rifle, knowing he was dangerously low on ammunition.

Most of the men who’d tortured him were dead, but there were plenty of others in the building to take their place, and their leader in the black robe, Mustafa, was still alive and still wanted his head on a pike.

There were people outside, systematically trying to break down the door. He checked the rifle.

“How many bullets?” she asked from behind him.

“Six.”

She put a slim hand on his shoulder. “I want you to save one for me,” she said with gut-wrenching courage.

He turned around and saw that she was serious. More than anything, he wanted to draw her into his arms and promise her that everything was going to be fine. But he could make no promise beyond the one he had made before, that no harm would come to her as long as he was alive. Which might not be a long time, judging by how the door was creaking and splintering.

“When I run out, I’ll get another weapon,” he said.

“I have this.” She extended a makeshift bone knife.

He looked at it then at her in surprise. “Good. Use it.”

“I was trying for the window but didn’t get far.”

He moved to examine the bars for the first time. He hadn’t paid much attention to them since he’d checked the ones in his own cell before his torture began and they were solid. But here he could see that she’d put serious effort into weakening them.

He handed her his weapon. “Hold this and stand by the door.” Then he grabbed the bars and went to work on them.

Movement. There was definite give. He put all his strength to wiggling the iron rods out of place, chunks of dried clay getting dislodged. He gave it a good shove. Then another. And the first bar came away in his hands. Then the next and the next.

When the hole was large enough to fit his head through, he looked out. There were shacks below, sharpened poles holding up frayed carpets with people settling in for the night underneath. They couldn’t jump without risking being skewered by those poles. He looked up. The distance to the roof wasn’t too bad.

“Come on.” He pulled back into the room and took the rifle from Julia, hooked it over his shoulder and gave her a boost. “We’re going up.”

He didn’t have to explain. She was already scrambling for the roof. He went after her just as the door broke into planks behind them.

“Go, go, go!” He pushed her to the flat clay tiles, grabbed her hand then ran with her. But they ran out of roof too fast, a six-foot gap between their building and the next. “Can you make the jump?”

“You bet.” She pushed away without slowing down, which was the exact right thing to do.

He stumbled when they landed, too focused on keeping her with him. She didn’t. This time, she was the one to tug him after her.

The first bullet coming from behind made them both duck. Then a whole buzz of them followed, and they jumped to a lower roof where they would be temporarily out of sight. They were at the edge of the market that was still not entirely deserted. A couple of people still strolled among the weapon stalls; others drank with their friends or played games of chance with goat-bone dice.

“What is this place?”

“Yanadar. Town of thieves and murderers.” He growled the words as he considered the maze of stalls for a moment before slipping to the ground from the low roof and heading for it, Julia close behind. On the rooftops they had no cover. The maze of the market was what they needed.

A couple of the men loitering around piles of weapons looked up and reached for their guns. But the rifle in Karim’s hand and the look in his nearly swollen-shut eye must have communicated his intent clearly, because not one chose to get involved in his business.

They ducked between stalls, ran through a couple, but their pursuers were close behind them, shooting at them at regular intervals. He knew he couldn’t keep up the pace forever. They were not going to be able to outrun these men on foot, not when those bastards knew every path of the market by heart and he was half-lost already.

Then Julia tugged him to the right suddenly, and he knocked over an oil lamp as he adjusted course. He ran on without slowing to apologize.

“This way.” Urgency rang clear in her voice.

It wasn’t as if he had a better idea. She zigzagged through stalls, and he followed her without hesitation.

“What are we looking for?” he asked at the next turn.

She didn’t respond for a while, and when she did, it was with visible reluctance. “This is the market from my dream. There was a car this way.”

And before he could even finish thinking how crazy that was, they came upon a beat-up pickup truck with two goats in the back. The driver’s-side door was open, the key in the ignition. No owner in sight.

He didn’t hesitate but pushed Julia into the car and over to the passenger side, hopped in behind her and took off before even closing the door.

“Which way out?” Maybe her dream had shown her that, too.

But she shook her head, hanging on to the dashboard for dear life as he flew over the potholes in the road. The trouble with the market was that it consisted of a hodgepodge of buildings, makeshift stalls mixed in with mud homes people clearly lived in, and the occasional large, multistory abode that must have belonged to the more successful thieves.

After a few minutes, he got the distinct feeling that he was driving around in circles. Then his choices became limited as he noticed light in the rearview mirror and realized that a part of the market was on fire, stalls going up in blaze. He drove in the opposite direction.

He reached the edge of the desert within minutes and stepped on the gas, following the makeshift road, having no idea where it led. Away from the fire and the men with guns was good enough for him.

For a while it looked like things were working, that they had successfully left their pursuers behind. Then dark spots dotted the sand behind them, and he realized that they were still being followed. Four vehicles, faster than his ancient pickup, were closing the distance.

When they got close enough, he could see that they were all jam-packed with armed men, at least two dozen of them.

He was outnumbered, outgunned and outsped.

He put all that from his mind and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. He knew what would happen when the men got within shooting range. They were out in the middle of the desert without cover. And those guys probably had fifty bullets to every one he had.

He took Julia’s hand, sharing his attention between her and the barely visible road. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I should have let you go that first day.”

She simply squeezed his fingers.

He would have felt better if she screamed at him.

“We don’t have long, do we?” Her gold-brown eyes were filled not with fear, but with acceptance.

He couldn’t say the word.

“I’m glad I met you,” she said.

“I wanted you from the moment I first saw you. I told you that I kept you close to protect you, but deep down, I kept you for myself. I was selfish, and—”

“Last night at the cave was the best night of my life.”

That shut him up for a few moments. He didn’t deserve her.

“If things were different, I would have asked you to stay. Of your own free will. For me.”

Her fine eyes misted a little. “If things were different, I would have.”

Joy mixed with pain inside his chest until it felt like bursting, then anger at not being able to do anything about this.

He checked the rearview mirror and for a moment thought they had gained some ground, then realized that the reason he couldn’t see the enemy’s cars as good as before wasn’t because they were farther back, but because the sky was darkening behind them.

“Roll up your window,” he told Julia, and did the same.

“What is it?”

“Sandstorm.” He wished he could give more gas, but the pickup was going at maximum speed already.

The storm was upon them in minutes, fast as a tornado and just as violent. He stopped the pickup and hung on to Julia while the wind rocked the car as if it were a toy. The sound of tons of sand hurling through the air was unbearably loud. They could see nothing beyond the windshield, had no idea how much sand had piled on top of them, whether they had been buried alive.

“The goats?” Julia attempted to go for the door.

He held her back. “They’re animals. They have good instincts.” Not that a severe sandstorm had never decimated a herd, but for the most, the animals were better equipped for inclement weather than humans.

He pulled her over to his side, into his arms. He didn’t know how long they had, but every minute was a gift. The storm that stopped them would also stop their enemies, of that he was sure.

“I wish it would last forever.” She snuggled against his chest.

The pain that still raked his body from Mustafa’s torture disappeared as soon as they touched, but a new one was now building behind his breastbone. He was supposed to be able to protect the woman he loved. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to her lips when she lifted her head.

Her lips parted, and he tasted her, and felt the full grief of knowing he would be tasting her for the last time. Her breasts pressed against his chest. He locked his arms around her, not wanting to let her go, not ever.

They broke apart only for a moment, only to refill their lungs with air before coming together again. She pressed kisses along his right eyebrow. When he closed his eyes, she kissed his eyelid, then trailed her lips down his scar.

“I want to kiss all your scars,” she said.

Not long ago, he would have been happy if a woman could just look at his scars without flinching. But those scars no longer mattered. The darkness of the past no longer bound him. And he knew without doubt that, somehow, Julia had done that to him.

“Forget the scars. I have no feeling in them anyway.”

“Where should I kiss you then?” she teased.

“Anywhere you’d like,” he said. “But I was hoping we weren’t done yet with the lips.” He could have kissed those lips of hers forever.

“Make love to me,” she whispered into his ear a while later.

That,
he could hear even over the storm that sounded like it was never going to stop. And when she reached down to pull her dress over her head, he helped her.

He slid over to the passenger side and she straddled him, her glorious breasts in line with his lips. He drank from them as if drinking life itself, and in a way, he was. She was his life, for as long as he had her.

Each caress, each kiss gained special meaning, was a bittersweet greeting and saying goodbye at the same time. His heart was filled to the brim with love he felt for her, with need that he had never felt for any other woman.

She set his body on fire, and he shoved off his clothes, wanting more than anything to be skin to skin. She lifted up, and he grabbed her hips, sheathed himself inside her tight heat, felt like he’d reached heaven and wanted to stay there forever.

They took it slow. The storm showed no signs of abating, and they both knew that this was all they were ever going to have. Their hearts melted together along with their bodies. He could feel all the darkness that had weighed his life down drift away. There was nothing and no one but Julia.

When the pressure built to the point of being beyond his control, his movements sped on their own, and Julia matched them, her head thrown back, her hair spilling down the sweet arch of her naked back, her breasts thrust upward. And they went over the edge together, then held on to each other for an eternity, until he could hear the storm quiet.

When the wind died altogether, he kissed her one last time, then put his clothes back on and gave his door a good shove. A few more were needed before it gave. He got out and looked for their pursuers. He couldn’t see as far as before; there were still trillions of small particles of sand in the air, dimming the sun, making visibility worse. But he could see the men who’d followed them from the lawless bandit town of Yanadar.

They were down to three cars. One had been completely buried in the sand. And when he looked more carefully, he realized another one was at least half-buried. They would have trouble getting that out in a hurry.

He checked on the goats. They were shaking sand off their fur, looking nervous but unharmed. He walked up front and cleared off the windshield, pushing several buckets worth of sand off with his bare hands. Then he got back behind the wheel and gave thanks to Allah when the motor turned over on the first try.

The sandstorm completely covered what little road there had been, so he set out blindly. He couldn’t even navigate by the stars as he couldn’t see them. But they were definitely in better shape than they had been half an hour ago, he confirmed as he looked into his rearview mirror and saw that only two vehicles followed, overflowing with men, Mustafa in the passenger seat of the first car. Everyone from the buried cars had piled into and onto the remaining ones, adding considerable weight and slowing them down. The good news was that now they were matched for speed with Karim. The bad news was that they still outnumbered him a dozen to one.

It would all come down to who had more gas in the tank. He felt the first touch of optimism when he noted that his was three-quarters full. Then a pang of dismay when the first fat raindrop hit the windshield.