Sheikh's Blackmailed Love (2 page)

“Do you have room for a passenger? There are a few things I need…”

It was a common enough request. Sometimes she had needed feathers to clean off the artifacts that were found. Other times she had wanted pots to compare. This time, she needed an escape.

“Yeah, if you’re all right riding with some of the gear for repair in your lap.”

It was a hot and dusty ride to the village, one that had no name and only two stores. The men immediately set off for the metalworkers who could help them repair their gear, leaving her to venture through the town alone. It was a busy day, fortunately, with people from all over the area coming to sell their things. Surely there was someone here who might be going to Jabal, who might be able to help her.

She was so busy scanning the crowd that she didn’t notice the tall man in the rider’s clothes until she walked right into him. Bailey squawked with dismay, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t set her upright.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, stepping back, but with a frown, the rider followed her.

He was tall even for this part of the world, she realized. Dressed in the loose indigo blue robes that had been worn by Jabal riders since time out of mind, there was something hawklike about his appearance, about the way his dark eyes bored into her.

“You’re English,” he said, frowning. “Are you a tourist?”

“American,” she corrected. “And who are you?”

It would have done her no good to reveal herself to a man who may have been coming in to be Christensen’s new partner. She couldn’t afford to tip her hand just yet.

“A rider,” he said, a slight smile on his lips. “My friends and I are looking at the area, finding out what might be going on this part of the world.”

“Ah, then you are tourists,” she said, realizing. This man might have been the ticket home she was looking for.

“Something of the sort. You still haven’t told me what I wanted to know,” he said pointedly.

She was still trying to decide what she wanted to tell him when she heard shouting from behind her. When she looked around, Bailey’s heart sank. The men from camp looked frustrated and angry, already loading the parts back into the car.

“Here,” she said, stepping close and pressing her note into the man’s hand. “Please.”

She looked up at him, trying with her eyes to tell him a million things. Then Abdul came up behind her and it was too late.

“You,” he barked. “What are you doing talking to this man?”

“I wasn’t doing anything…”

He turned his sharp eyes to the rider, who was watching everything with a shocking amount of calm. He was alone and Abdul and his men carried their guns openly.

“What are you doing talking with this woman?” he demanded in Arabic. “She’s not meant to have anything to do with you.”

The rider shrugged, supremely uninterested in anything that was being said or done.

“She thought I looked like someone I know,” he responded in the same language. “I don’t really understand what she was talking about.”

Abdul glared, but apparently that was enough for him.

“You, get back in the car. They can’t fix anything for us today.”

With no other choice, Bailey allowed Abdul to push her toward the car again. She wanted nothing more than to look behind her to see if the man had read her note, but she didn’t dare.

Please
,
she thought.
Please, please.

*

Dario maintained his uninterested demeanor until the convoy was nothing more than a cloud of dust on the horizon, and then he made his way back to where they had left the horses. Behind the sheltering bulk of his own black mare, he opened the tiny note. It had been folded until it was a hard pellet in his hand, stained with sweat and fear.

He read the note, and he felt his temper, which had been a low burn for the last several days, rise up higher and hotter.

My name is Bailey Tyler, and I am an American woman. I have been working at a camp run by a man named Christensen for the last eleven months, removing artifacts from the Sinn mountains. I am not allowed to leave, and I am afraid of what might happen to me.

Please tell the American embassy in Jabal that I am here.

Please, I am very afraid.

Bishr, a lean man with a truly impressive mustache, came up behind him.

“You were right,” he said. “The convoy was from the camp after all. The people in the market told me that they come for supplies and repairs every week or so. These are the ones we have been looking for.”

“Things have quickly become a little more complicated, my friend,” Dario said finally. “They seem to have some innocent people on the base.”

He showed the military commander the note, and Bishr swore.

“That does make things more complicated,” he agreed. “And some of the villagers say that they are more well armed than we thought they would be. May I respectfully suggest…”

“You may not,” Dario said shortly. “This is my place here, both as a commander in the Jabal military myself and as the First Among Ten Thousand.”

Bishr might not have liked it, but he knew better than to argue, which Dario decided was a blessing of sorts anyway.

“Yes, sheikh. Your order, then?”

“We wait until the sun is a little lower in the sky. We assess the situation, and if possible, we act as soon as we can. There may be some people who cannot wait much longer.”

He took the note back from Bishr and placed it in his pocket. There had been something so desperate and so afraid about the girl who had bumped into him. She was brave to try to get word out, but from the glare of the man who had come to collect her, she might be punished for that bravery.

What stuck with him, though, were her enormous gray eyes. They were as clear as water, and it felt as if he could see right down into her soul.

Save me, save me please
,
her eyes seemed to say, and he knew that he had to do everything he could.

The other men had appeared, the forward guard for this particular expedition. Outside, waiting behind the rise, were the military vehicles to provide them with the support they would need.

“All right,” he said. “We’re moving out.”

*

Back in her trailer, Bailey couldn’t relax. She stripped off the headdress, but she stayed in the robe, pacing back and forth in her tiny space. Abdul had threatened he would tell Christensen that she had been flirting with men in town, but it was just as likely he would hold the knowledge over her head for some kind of gain.

There was a rough pounding on the door. She knew she should go see who it was, but instead, she picked up a small paring knife that she used to cut fruit, holding it down flat against her thigh. Bailey retreated into the farthest corner of the trailer, which she knew painfully was not very far away from the door at all.

After a few minutes of cursing, the key turned in the lock, and she realized that it was Christensen after all, who had keys to all of the trailers on the site. To her dismay, she realized that he was drunk, and there was that mean glint his eye.

“Abdul tells me you went to town to find yourself a man,” he snarled. “What the hell are you on about, then, Tyler?”

“Abdul is a liar,” she said as calmly as she could. “He hit on me on the way back to the camp, and then he threatened me. I guess this is what he came up with.”

He stilled, glaring at her. She clutched the handle of the paring knife so hard that she knew her knuckles were turning white.

“Is that so?” Christensen asked, suspicious.

“It is.”

He watched her so intently that she thought he must be able to see her pulse, the frantic beating of her heart.

“Abdul needs to learn to keep his damned mouth shut,” Christensen declared.

Instead of leaving, however, he simply closed the door behind him.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, his voice somehow more terrifying when it got quiet. “You’ve got potential. Wouldn’t have brought you out here unless I thought so…”

At that point, Bailey stopped listening to him. There was nothing he said that was important at this point. Right now, she had to watch his body to see what he would do next. She forced herself to breathe, because to do otherwise would mean she would be faint and light-headed when she did have to move.

“Pretty little thing. Very pretty,” Christensen said, drawing closer.

When he moved, he didn’t crowd her like she was prepared for him to do. Instead, his long arm snaked out, and he snagged her wrist, drawing her stumbling into his body with a sharp cry.

“Yes, just keep quiet, Tyler. This is for… for your own good. Show the men to keep their damn hands off of you, right…?”

Somehow, she ended up on her back on the narrow bed, Christensen kneeling over her. He reached for his clothes, and that was enough for her to strike.

With a scream that seemed to echo through the trailer and the very mountains themselves, she jabbed upward at him. The knife sank into… something, and then Christensen threw himself backward, screaming with fury.

Bailey couldn’t figure out how badly she had hurt him, and at the moment she didn’t care. She threw herself across the trailer to the door. To her relief, Christensen hadn’t locked it behind him, and she threw it open, stumbling into the free air.

She had taken two steps to freedom, but then she yelped as he stumbled forward, grabbing her by her long brown hair.

“Come back here, you little bitch, you fucking cut me…”

She turned around, ready to fight, to claw, to do whatever she had to to get away while knowing that it was likely futile. He grabbed her, but when she clawed at him, he pushed her to the hard ground. Bailey gasped with pain, feeling a hard thunk against her temple. For a moment, her vision swam, but then it righted itself again.

Suddenly, there was the quick thunderous smatter of gunshots.

Christensen swore, and in his distraction, Bailey managed to twist away and run into the darkness. She veered away from the sound of the gunfire, into the darkness of the desert. It was miles to get to the village, but it was her only chance. The only ones with guns in this part of the desert were Christensen’s team, poachers, and bandits, and if they caught her…

She pelted into the darkness, moving as fast as she could. For a moment, she thought that the thunderous pounding was the beating of her own heart, but then, with dread, she realized it was hoofbeats. She was running fast, but she was no match for the horse, which gained on her with every stride.

The horse pulled up alongside her, and then with a sharp cry, the rider leaned over the side, wrapping an arm around her torso and lifting her straight up.

“No, no!” she screamed, struggling against his grasp, but he threw her over his hard thighs, holding her in place with one hand.

“Stay calm,” said a voice in English. She was shocked to realize that she recognized the voice. “You’re safe, stay calm, little darling…”

It was the man from the village earlier. He had read her note, and somehow, he had found her. The shock combined with the blessed relief of being finally safe was too much.

Bailey fainted dead away.

CHAPTER TWO

In the same hospital where he had watched his father die, Dario now sat next to a tiny girl who slept soundly in the white bed. She looked almost doll-like under the white covers, so small and frail.

At some point, a nurse had come in to clean her up, washing away the grit and blood from the wound on her temple.

“It could have been much worse,” the doctor had assured him. “She might have a small concussion, and she is definitely malnourished and exhausted, but she should be fine. She’ll likely wake up sometime today.”

He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or not that she was still out like a light when he returned in the late afternoon. Dario had a dozen things to do, but right now, all he wanted was to sit by her bedside.

He could feel the night’s effects on him as well. He slumped down further in the chair next to the bed, his eyelids starting to droop.

“Well, if you’re going to sleep, I should as well,” he murmured, feeling himself drift off.

“You can have the bed if you want,” said a soft voice.

He jerked up to look into that same pair of vivid gray eyes that had stuck in his memory. She sat up in bed, holding her hospital gown around her.

“Where am I?” she asked. When she spoke, she winced, reaching for the bump at her temple. Before he could think about what he was doing, he reached out to grab her wrist before she could touch it.

“You’re at the hospital in Jabal,” he said. “You fainted during the raid on Christensen’s camp, and we brought you here.”

He could see the memories coming back to her, and he could see the moment when she realized who he was.

“You’re… you’re the man from the village! You picked me up on your horse…”

“I did,” Dario said with a slight smile. “In the middle of everything, I saw you running into the desert. I went to get you, but then you fainted on me and… well, here we are.”

“Thank you,” she said. Her words were quiet, but he could feel the depth of her gratitude in those eyes. Could she keep anything a secret with eyes like those, he wondered.

“You’re welcome. I am merely sorry that you became engaged in such an operation.”

She winced.

“I needed the money,” she said, her voice small. “My mom, well, we don’t do so great, and the offer sounded like it was magic, like it was everything that I might have… well. I know better now.”

He nodded sympathetically.

“I understand,” he said, standing. “Now that you are up, I can go notify the people at your embassy. We can get things straightened out for you.”

The smile she gave him, even with the white bandage taped to her head, was tremulous, but as beautiful as the dawn.

“Thank you again,” she said softly. “My name is Bailey. I would really, really like to know the name of the man who helped me out so much.”

He grinned at her from the door.

“Dario,” he said, and for some reason, he didn’t say any more.

*

Things were never simple, Bailey realized. For two days she stayed in the hospital, antsy to get out. She was terrified of the bills she was racking up, before one of the nurses kindly told her that they were being covered by the state. That was fine, but then when she tried to check herself out, she found that she was not able to do so.