The Sheik Who Loved Me (17 page)

Jayde watched David’s Adam’s apple move as he tried to swallow. His eyes, however, remained emotionless. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “Understood,” he said. And Jayde knew just how torn this man must be in spite of his stolid exterior. It made her heart ache.

“Bien,”
said Sauvage. “At the moment this is a bit of a mug’s game until we know exactly what Tariq’s demands are and where he is. We will adjust as needed.”

David glanced at his watch. Jayde checked hers. One minute to go until midnight. The air seemed suddenly thick. Time stretched, and silence hung ominously over them as they all waited for the phone to ring.

The door behind her swung open. Jayde almost leaped out of her skin at the sudden interruption. But it was only Farouk with tea. She let out a shaky breath as he set the tray on the far end of the table. She hadn’t realized just how tense she was.

The phone rang.

For a nanosecond everyone froze. Then December moved instantly over to the tracing equipment, seated himself in front of a computer screen. He held up three fingers.

David nodded, waited until the third ring, picked the phone up. It clicked over to the speakers.

“Rashid,” he said, the strength and power in his voice belying the angst that most certainly had to be chewing him up from the inside out.

“I have Kamilah.”

David’s body tensed visibly. His knuckles whitened as his hand tightened into fists. Jayde’s heart squeezed. She held her breath. Sauvage watched. December tapped quietly at the computer keys.

“Do what I say if you want to see her alive.” Tariq’s rough voice echoed dissonantly through the speakers, bounced off the mosaic walls and drifted up to the glass dome above them. Jayde could see the sliver of the sickle moon shining down through the reds and oranges of the stained glass high above their heads.

Sauvage made a fast rolling motion with his finger, indicating to David that he must keep talking. David nodded. “Let me speak to her, Tariq.”

“No. You will do as I say. Until then, you will have no contact.”

The muscle in David’s jaw jumped wildly. Jayde could see the veins in his forearms, his neck, popping out. He was visibly straining against violent impulse. But they all knew the plan was to stay steady, to stay in control, to calmly sound Tariq out, to hear his demands without antagonizing him and driving him to make an irrational move. This would set the stage for Gio to take over negotiations. David had to make it clear to Tariq that he would have to deal with Gio and Gio alone.

“What do you want, Tariq? Why are you doing this?”

He laughed, the sound harsh. “You know what I want. My views have never changed. We want what is ours. The oil fields, the mines, Azar, the desert.”

“We?”

“Those of
pure
blood.”

David flinched. Fire began to crackle in his eyes.

Sauvage rolled his finger.

David nodded. He cleared his throat. “You mean the Falal?”

“The people to whom the desert belongs. The people you and my father sold out to the Imperialist West.”

David’s fists clenched. Sauvage made another motion with his hand, telling him to go slow, take it easy, stay calm.

Jayde knew it had to be killing David.

“I have sold out to no one.” His voice leashed his fury. But barely. “You speak the propaganda of Falal, Tariq. You are a fool. A puppet. Nothing but a means for Libya to take control of Azar’s wealth, a wealth that belongs to
my
people.”

Tariq cursed in coarse and guttural Arabic.

Sauvage held up his hand, motioning to David not to inflame Tariq further.

David sucked air deep into his lungs. Jayde could see him straining for control.

“Why take Kamilah? She is innocent. She is harmless. She cannot withstand this. It will destroy her. You know that.”

He laughed. “It will destroy
you.
”

And in that instant Jayde knew Tariq had no intention of ever returning Kamilah alive. They had to move in. And they had to make every second count. She caught Sauvage’s eyes, then Gio’s. And she could see they, too, had reached the same conclusion.

“You would not harm Kamilah! I cannot believe it. Not after what she went through with the death of her mother.”

Tariq snorted, the sound ugly and harsh. It bounced around the cavernous hall mocking them from all angles. “
I
took Aisha’s life. You and Kamilah were meant to die with her.”

Jayde gasped. The blood drained instantly from David’s face. He grabbed the back of a chair, steadied himself. All eyes were on him. The tension in the room was suddenly as thick as pea soup. But David didn’t speak. He didn’t blow his control. He simply waited for Tariq to continue. Jayde’s heart bled for him. She got up, moved around the table and touched his arm. He pulled back.

“It was meant to look like an accident. And in the event of the death of your entire family, I was ready to mount a legal challenge to take control of Rashid International, to take back what my father denied me. Except you didn’t die. And you restructured your company, changed your will to put in place a trust to ensure your plans in Azar would go ahead in the event of your death. Killing you was no longer an option, brother. So I found a new way.”

David’s grip on the chair tightened as the sheer scope of his brother’s betrayal set in. Tariq had never stopped hating him. Not for an instant. He had killed Aisha. He had caused Kamilah untold pain. And he was prepared to do it again.

When David spoke, his voice was rough like gravel rolling through a metal pipe. “What must I do to get my daughter back?”

“You have exactly one week to withdraw
all
Force du Sable troops from Azar. If one soldier is left in the country, Kamilah will be executed.”

Everyone looked up, exchanged glances. Withdrawing Force du Sable troops at this point would amount to a coup. The rebels would move in, and Azar would fall into the hands of the Falal. It would in effect be annexed by Libya, and the international community would be powerless to stop it. Everyone at the table knew that. And everyone knew that the ripple effects of the takeover would shift the balance of power not only in the Middle East but the world.

December shot his fist into the air in victory. He’d pinpointed Tariq’s location. Sauvage jabbed a pin into the map marking the spot. They were right. He was at the old fortress.

“I want the country, David. Or I will take the life of your daughter. Your choice.”

“There is no choice. I will have my daughter back!”

“Then show me you negotiate in good faith. I want the troops in Li’shal gone by nightfall tomorrow. The next day you will remove troops from Benghusi.”

Fury glittered in David’s eyes. “Give your demands to Gio Moriati,” he snapped. “He is my negotiator. From here on, his voice is mine. And may God save your soul, brother. Because I plan to send you to hell!”

David stormed from the room.

Jayde found David down at the cove, where he’d ordered a bonfire lit to keep vigil for Kamilah. It was the same beach Jayde had washed up on. It was where Kamilah herself had kept a vigil for her mother, waiting for a mermaid to come from the sea.

David stood in his daughter’s place now, staring out over the black swells, straining to reach out to his child in every desperate way he could.

Jayde could almost feel the man’s mind calling out over the waters. Calling over the ocean, across the desert sands, to where his Kamilah waited for him. And Jayde knew that the most difficult thing for David to face right now had to be the waiting. He was a man of action. And this must be killing him.

He didn’t hear her approach. The roar and spit of the bonfire drowned even the sound of small waves on the shore. And his mind was focused outward, on his daughter.

“David?”

He jolted, spun around. His eyes shot to hers, then he turned abruptly away from her to face the sea.

But in that brief instant, highlighted by the orange light of the flames, she’d seen the rawness in his eyes. It grabbed her by the throat, tore at her insides.

“I’m going with you to Al Abèche,” she said.

He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t look at her. “No.”

“I have to.”

“I don’t want you there.”

“I can help you.”

“No.”

“David, look at me, listen to me, I can help Kamilah when they bring her out. I know as well as you do how fragile she is. And you know as well as I do how she opened up to me, how she needed
me
to be able to talk. Who knows how she will have regressed, what this trauma will have done to her. She will need me there, David.” Jayde hesitated. “She will need
both
of us there.
Together.
It will make her strong to see us as a unit. After that I swear I will get out of your life. You’ll never have to look at me again.”

His eyes flashed to hers, held. Jayde swallowed. The intensity she saw in his features put her on edge. But she could also see she’d found a chink in his armor.

“Why would she need to see us together?” His voice was cracked. He was a caged and wounded tiger that could strike a lethal blow in an instant. She had to tread carefully.

“It’s part of her fantasy to see us together,” Jayde said softly. “I know how her mind works.”

“How in hell would
you
know how her mind works?” he snapped.

“Because I’ve been there, David. I’ve been through what Kamilah went through. I was the same age when it happened.”

Something shifted in his eyes. But he said nothing.

“I lost my sister and my father to the sea, David. I know what that can do to a child, a family.”

He stared at her, the shadows of flame and night dancing across the angles of his face. She knew she’d snagged something in him. But he was too angry to ask about what it was she’d been through.

So she pressed further. “Kamilah’s fantasy is to see the mermaid and the prince find a happy ending, David. Not the ending she’s read over and over again in Andersen’s tale where the mermaid sacrifices herself. She has a dream of seeing us together.”

“That’s preposterous. It’ll never happen.”

“I don’t doubt it. But seeing the two us together will give her a measure of faith that could end up pulling her through the initial days after her capture. She needs stability, David.”

He glared at her. “Damn you! You’re the one who filled her head with this fantasy nonsense. I should’ve put a stop to it right away.”

She held his eyes. “No. It wasn’t me who put the fantasy in her mind. It was there already. I’m just the one she opened up to.”

“You fueled it! You gave it form. You were a bloody curse brought in with that wretched storm. This is all your fault.”

Her frustration piqued. Her fists clenched at her side and her nails bit into her palms. “This is
not
my fault. This is Tariq’s fault. I refuse to shoulder the blame for his actions. Yes, at first I felt responsible. But not now. Yes, my actions have resulted in disastrous consequences. But I picked up that phone and called in because I couldn’t lie to you, David. I picked it up because I cared, dammit.”

Shock jolted through his body. His eyes widened. She could see the stark question in them.

“That’s right.
I care.
For you. For Kamilah. For everything that is good and true and honest in this world. I lost my mind and I fell for you, David. And by God I’m sorry I did. Because look where it got us. But the reason we’re here is precisely because I could never knowingly lie to you. And I swear on my life my amnesia was real. I swear I never meant to hurt you or Kamilah. When my memory returned, when I realized what was happening, I picked up that damn phone in your office to tell my handler I wouldn’t,
couldn’t
finish the job.”

His features shifted. She was getting through to him. “Whether you like it or not, I’m going with you to Al Abèche. I’m going to do everything in my mortal power to make this right.”

“Jayde—”

“I have nothing else to live for, David.” Her voice wavered. “I’ve lost everything since washing up on your bloody island. Don’t take this away from me, too.”

Chapter 13

H
e clenched his jaw, biting in emotion. Hot orange sparks exploded into the black night and leaped above the flames of the bonfire. His heart hammered in his chest. He stared at her. What did she mean she had nothing left to live for? Was this all just another lie?

Not by the naked anguish in her eyes. But then, she was a trained agent, wasn’t she? It was her job to wear fake emotions, to insinuate herself into peoples lives…into their very souls.

She took a step closer to him. His body braced. His fists clenched. He didn’t trust himself this close to her. He didn’t trust what was raging through his blood.

“You’ve
got
to believe me, David. The amnesia was real.”

Could it be the truth? It sure as hell had looked real to him. Watson had said she could be faking. But he’d also said she may have dissociated from her identity to protect herself from some trauma, and that when her memories did come back she might go through great pain reliving them. Was she feeling that pain now? Was that what he could see shimmering in her eyes?

Guilt stabbed sharply. Deep down he ached to reach out, to touch her, to comfort. But he couldn’t bring himself to crack out of the armor he’d barricaded himself behind. He could not bring himself to ask about her past, to ask about the sister and father she lost to the sea. He didn’t want to know any more, to feel any more. He wanted to shut her out. He wanted to hate her.

So he turned away from her.

“David,” she said softly. “Please don’t hate me for this. The only mistake I made was to fall for you. I regret it deeply. It’s the biggest mistake I’ve made in my entire adult life. But you have to understand, everything that has happened over the last hours relates directly back to that one fatal error. And if you look at it that way, you too must shoulder your share of the blame.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “This is also your fault, David. You made it impossible for me not to…to love you.”

His breath caught sharply in his throat. He clenched his teeth. His head pounded wildly. But he refused to look at her.
Love?
His heart twisted. He tried to breathe.

She was right. It
had
all been a terrible mistake. One that belonged to him as much as to her. The mistake had been not resisting the impossibly powerful force of attraction that simmered between them.

He turned, very slowly. And swallowed. Because it was still there. That force still simmered. It burned fiercer than ever. He only had to look into those emerald eyes to feel the heat of it smouldering deep down in his core. And right at this moment he couldn’t hold on to the hatred he was so desperately trying to direct toward her. In its place was an overpowering urge to grab her and to squeeze her so tight she could barely breathe. He wanted to hold her so close she’d feel his pain right through her skin. He wanted to share the feelings that boiled inside him, the anger and anguish of a betrayed brother, of a man who still was being rendered incapable of resisting the force of the enigmatic woman in front of him, of a father who’d lost his child.

He’d been through a meat grinder. But, hell, so had she. And she was right. Kamilah would need her. No matter what he thought about it, his child had formed a deep bond with this woman.

“I’m coming to Al Abèche, David, whether you like it or not,” she insisted. “I’ll be ready by first light.”

He brushed her statement aside. “What happened…to your family?” He wanted to know. Needed to know.

Her lip twitched. But her eyes held his.

“Tell me…Jayde.” He used her name for the first time, and it stuck in his throat on the way out. “What happened?”

She shivered slightly, in spite of the warm night air. “When I was six…I was in a boating accident off the coast of Cornwall. I…I watched my sister…my twin…”

“Twin?”

“Yes. Identical twin. Her name was Amber. I…I watched the sea swallow them. Amber and my father.” Her eyes were bright with emotion but her voice was flat. “My dad saved me first. He went back for Amber but he…they never made it. My mother wasn’t with us that day, but it destroyed her anyway. She killed herself two years later. That’s…that’s when I had my first amnesia episode. When I was eight. After I found my mother. I lost two whole years, just blanked out, forgot who I was.”

An odd ball of pain expanded in his chest. He knew just what it was like to watch someone you loved being sucked down by the waves. “Is that why you think you connected with Kamilah like you did?”

“Even with my amnesia, a part of me deep down inside must have sensed the similarity of our pasts. I…I didn’t want to see the two of you destroyed by this, David. I…” She looked away quickly, trying to hide the glimmering tear that escaped her eye. “I think that by trying to help you and Kamilah I must have subconsciously been trying to fix my own wretched past. I…I just wanted to put it all right.”

She sniffed and angrily smudged the trail of tears shining on her cheeks, then gave a soft, derisive laugh. “I…I never cry, you know.”

He ached to hold her.

She sniffed again, rubbed her nose and took in a deep, shuddering breath. Then she pulled her shoulders back, lifted her chin. “That’s why I’m going to Al Abèche, David. I have to make it right.”

He studied her in silence, the fire crackling. In spite of what she had done, he could only admire her strength, her determination, her desire to set things right. “It will not be easy,” he said finally.

“I can handle it.”

“The Sahara respects no man…or woman,” he warned.

“I said I can handle it.”

“We will fly into Tabara, the capital. But from there we will have to travel three days and nights by camel in order not to arouse suspicion. Any air or vehicle traffic into Al Abèche will alert Falal or rebel informants.”

“I know.”

“You ever ridden a camel?”

“I can ride camels. I can speak Arabic. I’ve worked in Algiers and in Egypt—”

“Right,” he snapped. “How could I forget? You’re a trained agent.”

“Exactly,” she retorted. “That’s why you need me.”

She spun on the heels of her army boots and stomped over the sand and up to the path that led back to his castle. “I’ll be ready at dawn,” she called out of the dark.

David blew out the pent-up air in his chest and turned to stare back out over the ocean. He felt as if he’d been shoved right up to the very edge of his existence. And beyond was wilderness. Uncharted territory. Tomorrow he would be over the ocean, in that wilderness, in the blistering heat of the desert under a wild, open sky. Alone with Jayde. With no place to hide from each other. He knew they would both be stripped naked by the blistering winds and harsh environment they would have to traverse to reach his child.

Summer in the Sahara held no mercy.

Jayde packed her backpack with grim determination. It was nearly three in the morning, but sleep eluded her. She needed to keep moving. She carefully checked through the supplies Lancaster had shipped to her. Among them she had a military issue compass, knife, binoculars, night-vision gear, pencil flares, sat-phone and cash. She’d also asked for some more serious hardware, and Lancaster had obliged by sending her some small but highly effective weaponry that included thin bricks of malleable plastic explosives along with strips of chemical reactant. He’d also thrown in chemical darts that would render a victim paralytic for several hours, and a small grenade launcher that could be fitted to her rifle. The launcher could be used to deliver an array of both lethal and less-than-lethal munitions including teargas rounds, smoke, signal flares and revolutionary electromagnetic pulse grenades.

Jayde studied the e-grenades. They’d only just come through highly secretive British military trials. They were hand-held versions of the bigger electromagnetic bombs the army now had in its arsenal.

Jayde knew the big electromagnetic pulse bombs could overwhelm the electrical circuitry of an entire city with an intense electromagnetic blast. Instead of simply cutting off power, an e-bomb literally overloaded and fried everything that used electricity. A big enough e-bomb could thrust an entire city back two hundred years or cripple a military unit. These mini versions in her hand would delivery enough power to knock out the communications and security capability of the Falal fortress. Not that she’d need them. That was going to be Sauvage’s job. But she was now prepared for any eventuality. And that’s the way she liked things.

“Thank you, Lancaster,” Jayde whispered as she packed them carefully with the rest of her gear. She checked her watch. In a few hours they’d be on their way.

She prayed Tariq hadn’t harmed Kamilah yet. She wasn’t going to even entertain the negative. They were going to get her out. Safe. And to prove it, she was going to pack a bag for Kamilah. She would need some fresh clothes once they’d extracted her. And maybe something familiar and comforting from home.

Jayde made her way down the corridors to Kamilah’s room. The palace was ablaze with lights even at this hour. David had lit up his castle like a beacon. He was letting nothing rest.

Jayde opened the door to Kamilah’s room, and the instant she saw the unruffled covers on the little girl’s bed, agony clawed at her heart. Where was Kamilah sleeping tonight? How had she reacted to the monstrous change in her uncle? Was there anyone with her to comfort her when she cried?

Jayde set the small bag she’d brought from her own room onto the bed and began going through the closets and drawers sorting out some clothes for Kamilah. She folded them neatly and packed them into the bag with military precision. Some training died hard, she thought ruefully. Well, she might need that training to help get this child back.

Then she caught sight of the small teddy bear lying on Kamilah’s pillow. Jayde hesitated, picked it up and buried her nose in the soft fur. It smelled so innocent. Like sunshine. Like a kitten or puppy…like Kamilah’s hair. Emotion stabbed behind her eyes and ballooned in her throat. She swallowed it down. She tucked the teddy into the bag and began to zip it up, but something peeking out from under the white ruffles of the pillow sham caught her eye. Jayde reached for it. She pulled out a leather-bound book.
The Little Mermaid.

She fingered the embossed gold lettering. This time she couldn’t swallow the emotion away. It spilled hot and furious down her cheeks, and her chest jerked with a powerful sob. “Hold strong, baby,” she whispered clutching the book to her heart. “We’re coming…we’re coming to get you. We’re not going to let you down.”

Jayde Ashton swiped away her tears. This crying business was the pits. She had a sneaking suspicion that this new part of herself wasn’t going to squeeze back into any bottle now that it was out. She turned to search for a scarf or piece of fabric in which to wrap the book…and froze.

He stood in the doorway. Watching her. A dark and silent specter, a strange and unreadable look in his dark features.

“David?”

He stared at the book in her hands, then he looked up into her eyes. He held her gaze, and a current of connection surged between them. In that instant they were bound. She knew it. He knew it. They were in this together. They were joined by a fierce drive to save this child. And the very thing that united them was what also tore them apart.

Jayde swallowed against the sheer oscillating power of it. “I…I was just gathering a few things for Kamilah.”

His eyes shifted to the small bag on the bed. Jayde saw his throat work, the muscle pulse rapidly at the base of his jaw. He nodded. Then he spun on his heels, and she heard the clack of his boots on stone as he marched down the corridor.

She let out a shaky breath. Through the window, dawn was already a peach hint on the distant horizon.

They had to get going.

Heat lay thick like treacle over the dusty desert capital of Tabara, and the air shimmered like a mirage above the ancient buildings. The sand was everywhere. Constantly moving, propelled by the kinetics of wind and gravity. The Sahara literally drifted along the streets, blowing into lobbies of crumbling hotels, frosting traffic lights and piling in drifts in alley corners and ancient doorways. It was so fine in texture it made table salt look coarse by comparison.

After being here only a few hours Jayde had simply given up trying to resist it. It was in her clothes, her hair, her eyelashes, under her fingernails, in her mouth. And the heat slowed her every movement, making her feel sluggish.

David had left her in a small earth-brick hut on the crumbling outskirts of the city where thin goats roamed and children played in ragged clothes. He’d gone to the bustling market in the city center to buy camels and grain.

Her job was to pack the food supplies they’d bought as soon as they’d arrived and to have the bags ready to load onto the camels.

Jayde secured the rice, tins of sardines and dates in the final bag and then she lugged everything outside to wait for David. He wanted to have their camels watered by the evening and he wanted to be gone by nightfall when the oppressive air cooled a little. They would travel through the night. The next day would be tougher because they would continue their trek through the blistering midday heat of the Saharan summer, stopping only briefly to feed and water the camels before pressing on again.

Their goal was to stay low-key and under the radar so as not to alert rebel spies. Jayde was dressed in the manner of an Azarian camel herder, with a loose-fitting muslin shirt that hung to her calves and covered her arms. Under it she wore light muslin pants. On her feet she wore battered old flip-flops and a head cloth hid her hair.

She shaded her eyes and squinted into the haze. The sun was already beginning to dip down toward the distant desert horizon but there was still no sign of David. Jayde felt her jaw beginning to tense. From this last ring of small earth houses that fringed the northern outskirts of Tabara, the Sahara stretched like an undulating ocean in tones of yellow, ochre, cream and amber as far as her eye could see. She felt as if she was standing on the very edge of civilization.