by Donna Young
“Very funny.” She shifted, then winced. Bruises tattooed her arms, blackened her wrists. She reached into her bag, pulled out a few aspirin.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.” She swallowed the aspirin dry. “Which is more than I could have said six hours ago.”
Run-down and empty streets flew past them. Sandra could see the railroad tracks, the warehouses and the Sahara that lay just beyond.
“You’re driving us into the desert,” she commented, frowning.
“Change of plans,” Booker responded. “We’re not going back to the palace.”
“Because of Jarek’s dead guard back there?”
“I hired him several months ago. American. Ex-military. Impeccable record and references. Top security clearance. All of them checked out,” Booker admitted, his neck muscles rigid with anger. “If Trygg can get to him, he can get to others.”
“You said you hired Jarek’s man. Are you still working for Jarek, then? As his head of security?” Sandra asked quietly. She hadn’t seen him in months. Hadn’t talked to him in a year.
“I’m guessing not anymore.” He downshifted, dodged some loose brush and then glanced at the rearview mirror. “I was in a meeting with the Prime Minister of England, Jordan Beck. We were planning his family’s visit to Taer when I got word you were taken.”
“I was flying to Tourlay when Trygg’s men took me.”
“Tourlay’s a border town filled with lowlifes,” Booker stated. “What the hell were you doing traveling there?”
Sandra sighed. “I have...friends in Tourlay who can help me stop Trygg.”
“Friends?” Booker commented, annoyed that she’d turn to someone else for help.
“Actually, they are ex-rebels.”
“By rebels, you mean Al Asheera rebels?”
She nodded. “For the past year, I’ve been smuggling medicine and other supplies to their camps,” she explained. “They live in poverty, Booker. The men are afraid to work for fear of arrest. The women and children starve.”
“Is Jarek aware of your charity work?”
“No. And neither are my parents,” she admitted. “They would forbid it simply because I’m putting myself at risk. But it’s my choice. It’s not Jarek’s—or my father’s decision.”
Booker understood the anger, the bitterness.
Sandra’s father, Doctor Omar Haddad—at one time, a world-renowned genetic research scientist—didn’t approve of the choices she’d made in her life. Her schooling. Her career. Her decision to return to Taer years before.
“Your parents will be sick with worry, Doc.”
Sandra gazed out the window. Streetlamps cast a jaundiced glow against the shadowy buildings.
“My parents will be safer without me around.”
An engine gunned behind them. Booker swore, his eyes focused on the rearview mirror, his grip locked on the steering wheel. “Hold on!”
A sedan darted around a corner, slammed into their back bumper. Sandra flew forward, hit the dash with her shoulder. She gripped the dashboard, then swung around, saw the car.
Two Caucasian men. The one in the passenger seat shifted halfway out the window and pointed a machine gun at their car.
“Gun, Booker!”
He slammed on the brake, jerked the steering wheel left and sent the car skidding around the nearest corner.
The sedan whipped around the corner behind them, its tires screeching.
Booker hit the gas, broke free of the city and headed out to the desert.
He glanced at the dashboard gauges. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”
He swerved off the road onto the sandy plains. Brush banged against the hood, scraped the underbelly and shook the frame until Sandra’s teeth rattled.
“Hold on.” He spotted the ravine between two sand dunes in the distance.
Sandra followed his eyes. “Going fast in a narrow space might not be the best idea.”
Booker cut the wheel into a tight turn and headed straight into the ravine. “If you have a better one, now would be the time to share it.”
The sedan turned off the road, following them.
“Where’s your gun?” Sandra lowered the passenger window. Wind slapped at her face, kicked grit and dust into the car. “I can stop them with a few well-placed bullets.”
“There is no way you are going to shoot at them hanging out the damn window!”
“It’s my better idea.” She held out her hand. “Give me your pistol.”
“Killing people goes against the Hippocratic oath.”
“I don’t have to shoot them. I can take out their tires.”
“Not today.” Even if she could, it would only increase the chance she’d get shot or thrown from the vehicle.
Their car hit a rut, slammed them both back in their seats. Booker forced the car onto a flat path, hugged the right side of the ravine.
“Switch with me!” he ordered, then unsnapped his seat belt.
“What?”
“You’re small. Unbuckle, and scoot over.” He pushed the seat back as far as it could go. “Then place your right foot on the accelerator.
“Of all the stupid...” she muttered. “My shooting them would be easier than this.” Still, she unsnapped her seat belt.
Gritting his teeth, he hooked one arm around her back and lifted her onto his thighs. “Put your foot on the gas, and your hands on the steering wheel.”
“Got it.”
Dodging the steering wheel, she wiggled down between his thighs.
“Okay,” she breathed, her knuckles white, her eyes focused on the landscape.
He slid out from under her, ignoring the jab of the middle console, then maneuvered to the other seat. “Keep clear of the brush and walls. I don’t want to dodge anything but bullets, got me?” he ordered, his harsh voice cutting across the air rushing through the open passenger window.
Gunfire pelted their back window, shattering the glass.
* * *
SANDRA DIDN’T SCREAM. Instead she hit the gas.
“Hold on!” She swerved the car, barely missing twin boulders. Booker grabbed the window frame.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Trying to keep us alive. This ravine is like a minefield.”
“Just keep this damn thing steady and ahead of them. Without pitching me out the window.” He aimed his pistol through the back window and emptied the clip into the other car’s windshield.
The driver slumped forward. The car skidded, hit the wall, then flipped on its back. Spinning. Once, twice. Its belly burst into flames.
“Hit the accelerator. We just created a bonfire for all their friends to see.” Booker turned back and settled in the passenger seat. “Not bad, Doc. Not bad at all.”
“Thanks.” But a fear was there, one that creased her forehead. “I think.”
“Drive back to the road.” He glanced at the gas gauge. Full. Perfect. “Then head east.”
“East?” Sandra asked, suspicious. “Why?”
“We need a place to lie low for a while,” Booker replied.
“What place?”
“Omasto.” He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “Don’t worry, Doc, you’ll fit right in.”
“And why is that?”
“Your friends the Al Asheera might be there.”
* * *
TRYGG SHOVED HIS FOOT against the nearest of the two dead men. Years of self-restraint made him hold back the disgust that threatened to let loose.
These men were lucky McKnight killed them. Trygg would’ve done much worse had they survived without Sandra Haddad in hand.
At his sentencing, the judge told him he wasn’t God. But the judge was wrong. They were all wrong.
On the battlefield, he was God. And the men who’d serve him would be indestructible.
Archangels.
Colonel Jim Rayo took the nearest man’s chin and tilted it until he could see his features. “Can�
��t be dead more than a few hours, General.”
Trygg glanced at the second body, badly burned by the car fire. “How about the others from the apartment? Are they also dead?”
“Yes, sir,” Jim replied, frowning. “One man at the apartment was King Jarek’s. If McKnight killed him, he’ll suspect we have others in the palace.” Jim stood and grimly faced the open desert.
“What’s on your mind, Jim?”
“Booker McKnight is a top military man. He just killed nine of our men and took Sandra Haddad.”
“They weren’t our best men. We chose these men specifically. We wanted her to escape. We need her to retrieve the cylinders.”
“Yes, sir,” Jim responded slowly, knowing he was walking a minefield. “But we still may have underestimated Booker McKnight.”
“You might be right,” Trygg said after a moment. “I want you to inform our Al Asheera allies that there is a bounty of one million dollars on Sandra Haddad. Alive. Another million on McKnight. Dead.” Trygg walked beside him and slapped his shoulder. “Let’s keep the pressure on.”
But the uneasiness didn’t shake itself from between Jim’s shoulders. He understood Booker’s grief, his drive to find the men responsible. Glancing back, he found the general studying him.
“Everything okay, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir,” Jim answered in a short, clipped tone. His jaw tight, his features carefully blank.
The general’s strategies had never failed them.
Yet, came the whispered thought.
“Let me know if anything changes, Colonel.”
Understanding Booker’s grief didn’t change twenty years of loyalty to Trygg.
“I will, sir.”
* * *
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY SANDRA’S adrenaline wore off. Her eyes blinked with fatigue while Booker drove through the night in relative silence. Sandra eventually pushed her seat back and slept.
Dawn broke over the horizon a few hours later. The heat of the morning sun drove up the temperature.
Booker clicked on the air conditioner, felt immediate relief.
They were at less then a quarter of a tank, but only twenty miles from the settlement of Omasto.
Most desert towns were little more than encampments of canvas tents and stick. Some, the more permanent residents, made their homes of stone and animal skins.
Many only stopped to rest, drink water, buy food or fuel. Most used the settlement for trade. Cloth, spices and cookware crowded makeshift tables, spilled over onto blankets covering the sand.
But there were a few, the more corrupt, who bartered in the shadows. Their wares of weapons turned a larger profit out of the hot sun. Away from the inquisitive, the talkative.
Booker needed the latter if he were to keep Sandra safe.
And he knew the man who’d deal with him. The same man who’d tipped him off about her kidnapping. Aaron Sabra. Ex-con. Black-market dealer.
Sandra shifted; her breath deepened.
He’d watched her sleep a hundred times, tangled in the comforter and sheets. Most times, he kissed her awake until the comforter slipped to the floor and tangled limbs took its place.
Now a silk curtain of hair covered part of her face. The dark strands were stark against her pale skin, deepening the shadows beneath her eyes.
Sleep softened the stubborn chin, the feminine pride. Left the vulnerability bare in the soft, delicate lines of her face.
For a moment he ignored the sand, the danger.
The responsibility to his deceased wife and his men.
And he remembered the last time he’d seen Sandra exhausted.
Trygg’s trial.
Weeks of waiting. Days of testimony. Her humiliation over her gullibility. Her guilt over the deaths.
Still, Sandra sat in the courtroom, chin out, back rigid, her brown eyes wide but leveled. She bared her soul to condemn Trygg’s.
When Cain MacAlister insisted she enter witness protection, she refused. But Booker wasn’t surprised. Being a doctor meant everything to her. She wouldn’t walk away from it or her family for any reason.
“How far are we out?” Her eyes slowly opened, heavy with sleep.
“Less than twenty miles.”
She scooted upright and stretched her shoulders. Her hair tumbled in soft waves around her shoulders. With a careless hand, she pushed it back.
“And then?”
“I take you back to the palace,” Booker stated. “Jarek has guards that have been loyal to him through the years. I’ll make sure he assigns several to you.”
“And my family?”
“If we need to.”
“Trygg wants my formula, Booker,” Sandra said almost sadly. “He wants CIRCADIAN. And he won’t let anyone stop him from getting it.”
“I thought the government destroyed everything related to project CIRCADIAN. Including the formula and research notes.”
“I took four cylinders of the serum before I turned in Trygg.” Sandra sighed. She rubbed the knot of tension from the back of her neck, felt a spot of dried blood at the hairline. From her skirmish at the airport, she was sure. “I hid them in the mountain near Tourlay for safekeeping.”
For a moment Booker said nothing, but the muscle on his jaw worked overtime. “This is the real reason you left me, isn’t it? To protect your serum.”
Sandra stiffened against the sting of his words. “That’s not true.”
“Think about it,” Booker replied. “I’ve always said I trusted you. But you decided that once your secret was out, I really wouldn’t trust you. And I’d be the one to walk away. So you walked first.”
Something in his words hit a chord deep within her. Was he right? Was it her defense mechanism against Booker?
She shook her head, pushing the thought away. “I was protecting my research.”
“You were protecting a biochemical weapon.”
“It isn’t a weapon,” she argued. “I took the serum because my research wasn’t completed. I hadn’t found the solution to advance a subject’s healing.”
“You can’t bring my men back, Doc.”
“But I might have been able to save others, if I’d been able to complete my research,” she stated. “I couldn’t tell you any of this, Booker, not without involving you further.”
When he raised an eyebrow, she crossed her arms. “It’s the truth, damn it.”
“Well, I’m involved now.” Booker’s jaw tightened. “Trygg released one cylinder on my men. What would he do with four?”
“Two is enough to take out a small country.”
“Like Taer.”
“Yes.”
“Given the opportunity, you think Trygg will destroy your country for revenge?”
“You know he will.”
“Yes,” Booker admitted, then swore. “Trygg is strictly about the bottom line, but it’s driven by ego. Everything he does moves him closer to one end.”
“The Super Soldier,” Sandra acknowledged.
“With an army like that, he can win any war. Does he know about the four cylinders?”
“I didn’t think so. But now I’m not so sure,” she admitted. “That’s why we need to get them.”
“And destroy them,” Booker added.
“Yes,” she agreed, for the moment. She needed time to really think that step through before deciding.
Booker parked the car in front of a small hutted mercantile. His eyes scanned the perimeter, focused on the people moving about.
Women mostly, some watching their children play. Others napping with the smaller ones under makeshift lean-tos.
He took out his pistol, checked the clip. “I want you to stay in the car, Doc. Until I’m sure it’s safe.”
“No,” Sandra answered, more worried about the anger set in his granite features than her own safety. Booker might have spent most of his career walking into hostile situations, but she refused to believe these people were hostile.
“I’ve traveled here on my own.” She sho
ved the door open. The air was thin and brittle with the heat. It sucked what little moisture she had from her pores. “These people are mostly women and children. They have nothing to do with Trygg.”
“More friends of yours?”
“Look, McKnight. I’m tired, I’m hungry and I have a full bladder,” she said defensively. They’d driven all morning, only taking a break to relieve themselves. “You do not want to mess with me right now.”
He caught her hand before she stepped out of the car. Sandra’s chest tightened. His fingers interlocked with hers, squeezing gently.
She’d forgotten how it felt, the intimacy, the simple slide of skin on skin. Without thinking, she gripped his hand back.
“This is not a game, Doc,” Booker reminded her.
Maybe it was the low and even tone of his voice, the touch of his fingers, the fact he tilted her chin up until their eyes locked.
The familiarity of all three.
“Considering what I’ve been living with these past six years, I’m more aware of that than you might think,” Sandra pointed out softly.
“You’re not the only one who has been living with it,” Booker murmured, but his fingers tightened on hers to soften the reminder.
Sadness swept over her. “I know.” She breathed out the words. “And I am sorry.”
Something broke loose inside her, something she’d held back for almost a year.
“You protect. I heal, Booker.” She touched a finger to the lock of hair on his forehead. Then brushed it back, testing his limits. “Let me try to do my job.”
When he didn’t move, she leaned in, then up until their lips almost touched. “Maybe I’ll heal us both in the process,” she whispered.
With a groan, he pulled her to him. His mouth covered hers, just as she wanted, just as she remembered.
Desire tumbled free, caught between them, pushed and pulled by longing, need...months of loneliness.
He took, she gave, until the air thickened, the edges of reality blurred.
She’d missed him. Missed this. His arms tightened, drawing her into his lap as if he missed her, too.
Suddenly, Booker broke away, his gun raised behind her back, pointed at the window. “That’s a good way to get shot, Sabra.”
