Sheik's Rule

by Ryshia Kennie

  “I don’t believe it,” Emir said. “Why didn’t I see that before? Morse code.”

  “Interesting,” Kate said as she thought of the eclectic collection of books on Tara’s shelves and looked closer at the video.

  Emir said nothing but his presence seemed to fill the room even as his attention was on the video.

  “Simplistic and yet—” Kate broke off. Tara was surprising her in ways she hadn’t expected. Morse code was not something a young woman of Tara’s generation would have any exposure to. “Or would she?” she asked softly.

  Emir turned. There was a troubled frown on his face as he watched her, his eyes seeming to lock with hers. “What are you thinking?”

  “The implausibility of this...” She remembered the bookshelf. Tara wasn’t just a modern girl with an attitude, she was also a serious student and an avid reader. The books on her shelves had been everything from contemporary novels to history. But one shelf had stood out. The section filled with procedural books and one, she remembered, labeled, “Code This.”

  “She studied Morse code?”

  Emir nodded. “Not so much studied as read some books she’d found in what had been our father’s private library. Like I said, it was nothing serious—goofing around, she called it. She was only fourteen or fifteen. Back then we often practiced it together in English and French. I didn’t think she remembered.”

  Kate looked at the video. Now she watched the subtle, yet clear when you noticed it, up-and-down movement of Tara’s thumb. Because her hand was a bit behind her, it wasn’t something that caught your eye, or, she suspected, the eye of the cameraman. She narrowed her eyes, watching the furtive movements, the rhythm and the pattern in the long and short gestures.

  Around Tara were the canvas walls of what seemed to be a tent but the video was edited enough that what was around her wasn’t clear. It could be a tent anywhere or, from what Kate could see, it could not be a tent at all. But one thing was now clear. She looked closer, but once she’d made the determination, the truth was inescapable.

  Emir’s attention was solely on the video. Kate frowned at the thought of the obsolete code in a time when even cursive writing was almost extinct. But there was no denying that Tara was definitely trying to tell them something. The video cut off just as her thumb lifted again.

  Emir looked at Kate with a frown ridging his brows. He rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek. “T-e-n e-t-e,” he said, spelling it out. “It makes no sense.” He ran the video again, as if going through the series of taps would change anything. The video cut off again before any more information could be divulged and before Tara’s kidnappers could see what she had done. “And there’s nothing more.”

  The room felt suddenly close, as if there were no oxygen. Kate could feel the energy of the man beside her as the tension and fear for his sister seemed to pulse between them and something else.

  “Été,” he said. “French for ‘summer.’ What summer? Where?”

  “Ten,” she murmured, moving what he’d just said to memory for later consideration. “Could refer to anything, but my best guess is that it refers to something about her.”

  “She wasn’t finished. She thought she had more time. That’s why it was cut off the way it was.”

  “Possibly.”

  Kate was quiet, thinking of what it all might mean. When she met his eyes she saw the silent strength and the determination in his chiseled jaw and, for a moment, it was like she forgot to breathe.

  “Do you remember she gave a victory sign at the beginning?”

  He frowned. “She used to do that as a kid on the first day of summer vacation or on the announcement of a family trip.”

  There was silence for a moment before he spoke.

  “Ten,” he repeated just as she had earlier. “Could she have mixed English and French? Tara is fluent in both. She’s stressed. She could have used the languages interchangeably.”

  “Go on,” Kate encouraged.

  “The year Tara was ten, the most notable thing was that that was the summer my parents took her and Faisal for a short tour of the Sahara.” He stood. “Could it be that easy?”

  “She wouldn’t want to make it difficult, yet she didn’t know how much time she’d have. Thus the cut-off words.” She looked at him. Saw the hope in his eyes.

  A thought came to her that, somehow, what Tara’s security, now so critically wounded, and what Tara had just tried to tell them were connected. “Could what Ahmed have been trying to tell you also have been a place?” She looked at him. “Emir? Where in the Sahara did your parents take Tara that summer? What was their final destination?”

  “El Dewar.” He smacked his hand on the desktop. “I’d forgotten about it. I don’t know how I could have.”

  “It was trivial detail at the time, especially since you weren’t involved in the trip,” Kate said. “Understandable.”

  “That was the farthest they went before returning home. But is that the clue?”

  He was quiet for a minute, considering what she had said. “Davar. Could Ahmed been trying to name the place and now she’s trying to tell us the same? That she’s near El Dewar, or there’s information to be had at El Dewar, the same Berber village she saw at ten?”

  “It’s a possibility but it’s also a big stretch,” Kate said. She grabbed the map. “It’s a small place. I doubt if she’s there now. She couldn’t be hidden and there are enough people that not everyone would be complicit. So, could she be near there? Is that possible?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead his fists were clenched, his lips in a straight line, his mind obviously elsewhere. Fighting, she imagined, with long-forgotten memories.

  “Emir!” Her voice was sharp. It was the only way to get through to him. He was ready to hit the desert without a plan, with only guns and rage, and neither of those would be successful in rescuing his sister.

  He looked at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. “I’m sorry. I lost it, I shouldn’t have...” He paused, as if he needed time to breathe. “You have no idea,” he said.

  Time seemed to beat slowly between them and, for a second, all she could do was look at the strong jaw, feel his solid presence, and wish that was all it took—a minute in his arms to make all of this right for him. She shoved the thought away.

  “You’re right, I don’t. But what I do know is that my decisions aren’t clouded by emotion. Yours are.” She took his hand in both of hers and tried not to acknowledge the irony of her words. “Listen to me.” She looked at him. His rich dark eyes were pools of pain. “That’s what the kidnappers want, for you to irrationally follow their demands without thought. That was more than likely part of the purpose behind that video. Maybe...” she began, thinking of the lack of ransom detail. “All of it. You falling for that ploy won’t help Tara. But it might ensure that, if their plan was to kill you at the airport, that scenario will still play out. Only this time, someplace else. You’ve got to let me lead and help you keep a cool head. It’s the only way.”

  This time when she met Emir’s eyes, she saw that, for once, they were dark with hope rather than despair. And something else, as if he were looking at her for the first time. She looked away.

  She let go of his hand as he nodded and turned away from her. The tension seemed to noticeably lift from the room as she blew out a quiet sigh of relief.

  “I’m puzzled. Why did they send the video to me?” Kate murmured. “How did they know about me?”

  “They’ve got some sort of inside information. Or maybe they contacted the others when they saw you at the airport.”

  “How did they find out my name?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking at her in a way that had nothing to do with what she was saying.

  She was unprepared when he bent and kissed her, and even more so for her own re
action, for the need and want that made her put her arms around his neck and, for a few seconds, to allow herself to sink into that kiss.

  It was instinctive and so very wrong. She pushed him back, her hands on his shoulders, creating a distance between them. They were trapped in an emotional situation and it was a natural human reaction to turn from trauma to passion.

  He stood there for a moment then his eyes met hers and a truth seemed to pass between them. That what had happened was real, as real as the tragedy unfolding around them. But now it was Tara who eclipsed all and they both knew it.

  “She’ll die if we don’t get her out of there soon,” he said. “Let’s move.”

  Chapter Ten

  They took off in Emir’s Cessna from a runway at the back of the property that wasn’t visible from the main entrance. The plane had already been loaded by staff with the supplies they’d need, and Emir had arranged for a Jeep they could use to take them from the village of Kaher into the Sahara.

  Now, inside the plane’s darkened cabin, they were each immersed in their own thoughts. The roar of the engine and the endless night sky seemed to wrap around them and was only broken by the occasional lights of communities and vehicles traveling on highways beneath them.

  The golden blanket of lights that had been Marrakech was far behind them. Ahead, the shadowed peaks of the Atlas Mountains punctured the night sky and seemed to challenge them to enter. The steady noise of the engine was all that broke the silence in the cockpit.

  Kate looked to the right, where the dark outline of the wing seemed almost alien, threatening. She shivered. The darkness sheltered many secrets.

  She glanced at Emir, saw the tight grip he had on the wheel and the set of his jaw. She looked at the map in her lap. They’d dropped technology when they’d made the decision to fly to the edge of the desert. Cell towers weren’t the norm as one ventured deeper into a place that in some ways was not only off the grid but on another planet. They were also a means of tracking and that went both ways. After Kaher, they were going in electronically silent with no one able to follow their tracks, at least not easily.

  Her thoughts shifted and she thought of the northern reaches of the Sahara as it penetrated Morocco. The settlements were mapped in her mind for it was there they’d determined as the most likely area the kidnappers had gone. Now they just needed something a little more specific. She glanced at Emir. She’d been aware of him the entire time the plane had been in the air and all the while she’d studied the map.

  “You’re all right?” he asked as he turned to her. “You’ve spent a lot of time studying that map.”

  “I did. It’s calming.” She didn’t look at him. Even in the dark, she only saw his full lips, felt the memory of them on hers and... She couldn’t think of that. It was over, a mistake.

  Still, she was relieved to say even those few words for there had been silence for much of the first part of the flight. She’d rather he had spoken. The silence seemed filled with the memory of the brief intimacy they had shared.

  None of that had promised anything, she told herself. She looked out the window into the night sky, saw the darkened wisps of clouds and the bulk of the mountains. She pulled her gaze away from the uncertainness of the night sky that was so like her feelings for Emir.

  Emir.

  She wanted none of his kisses and yet, if she were truthful, she wanted the little she’d received and more. She looked at the map, pulling her attention from the line of his jaw, his strong yet artistic hands on the wheel—imagining how they would feel...

  “I’ve located every community within a hundred miles of Kaher, as well as between that and El Dewar,” she said as she pushed her unwanted thoughts away.

  “And if they’ve taken her farther?” There was a rough edge in the timbre of his voice. He looked at his instrument panel and adjusted something, she couldn’t say what. Flying in a small plane in the co-pilot seat was not something she did often and never at night.

  “The desert won’t be easy,” Emir said as if another reminder would somehow ease the journey. “I don’t know how long it will take to find her. We may need to set up camp—overnight.”

  It wasn’t optimism she heard so much in his voice as something else. There was something almost suggestive in the words, and a shiver ran through her. Alone in the desert with Emir, under different circumstances... She let the thought trail off. Any attraction they felt meant nothing. Danger often got emotions flaring and that led, given the opportunity, to other things. That’s all their attraction meant. She should have known better.

  “It’s impossible to know,” Kate agreed, ignoring any connotation an overnight trip might have meant or if there had been any connotation at all. “Hopefully we don’t have to enter blind.” But that was the point of this trip—to get more information, to be able to enter the Sahara with something more than that Tara’s message was connected to a childhood trip. Too bad Tara had been cut off.

  Emir glanced at her, his jaw tight, his eyes shadowed in the darkness, and yet she could imagine they were hot and full of passion, a different kind of passion. She believed it was more about finding his sister. None of that was her imagination. His raw emotion filled the cabin with an intensity that caused a shiver to snake down her spine.

  Kate knew there was no outcome that was even conceivable to him other than success. All she could do was provide support, be part of the team that pulled Tara out. She reached instinctively for her handgun and felt some comfort at the bulk at her waist. But her hand shook slightly as she realized her feelings had changed. She was no longer there just to get Tara out. She was deluding herself if she thought there was nothing more to this, especially when being in his arms had felt so right.

  A tick in Emir’s jaw was the only sign of the tension he was under. He flew the small plane with ease, as though flying over treacherous mountains through the dark that seemed to mock them was nothing. She clutched her seat belt and watched for lights, for some sort of indication of civilization, but since they’d entered the mountain range there was nothing. She knew this area of the Atlas Mountains was sparsely settled, mostly by Berber tribes, and that all were remote and distant from each other, including their destination: the village of Kaher.

  Kate’s phone beeped and she looked at it, startled. “It’s a text from Zafir. He wants me to call him,” she said even as she punched in the number. They’d kept her phone and planned to drop it at Kaher as the mobile coverage was limited in the Sahara. To lighten what they carried and to limit the possibility of being tracked, they would take only a satellite phone.

  The plane dipped slightly to the right as she gripped her seat belt with one hand.

  “You’re on speaker,” she said.

  “I didn’t know if I’d catch you—” Zafir began.

  “What do you have?” Emir interrupted. “We’re close to landing.”

  “I just came from the hospital. Ahmed didn’t make it.”

  “Bloody—” Emir broke off as he slapped his open palm against the wheel of the plane. He reached over and took Kate’s free hand, squeezing it. His hand was large and warm, and she felt safe.

  “It was tough. His family was there. His wife’s pretty torn up.”

  “Make sure they have what they need,” Emir said. “Funeral arrangements...and we’ll talk monetary assistance later. Money is the last thing his wife needs to consider, ever.”

  “The usual, retirement settlement, insurance...we can’t bring him back, but she’ll be very comfortable.”

  Kate glanced at Emir, not realizing, or, she supposed, not having a need to know just how much support was available for the families of not only the home compound’s employees but agents, as well. She was impressed by both their compassion and their generosity.

  “He said something else before he passed,” Zafir continued, breaking in
to her thoughts. “Ajeddig.”

  “A name, but who?” Emir asked.

  Kate frowned.

  “It’s not much, I know,” Zafir said. “That’s it, Emir. I’ll use the satellite next time. I assume you’re ditching the cell.”

  “Turning it off after this call and dumping it at Kaher,” Emir confirmed.

  He looked over at Kate, who had opened the map and was running her finger over it.

  “Another place name?” she muttered.

  “Any luck?” Zafir chimed in as Emir looked at her with a question in his eyes.

  “Nothing in Morocco by that name. So, if it’s not a place name, what is it?”

  “It’s got no relevance, at least none that I can find that correlates to anything involving the case,” Zafir said. “I’m at the compound now. Got your phone in my hand. I drove in the gate just as you were taking off. That’s it, all I’ve got.”

  “Thanks, man. I’ll touch base as soon as I can.”

  Kate clicked off just as a strand of lights appeared below. “I thought there was no electricity?”

  “In Kaher, no. There’s some solar power that’s generated and used in parts of the village...the landing strip and a few other buildings. Nothing more.”

  As he arced the plane she found herself looking straight down at the ground for a few slightly disconcerting seconds and gripped the edge of the seat as if that would somehow prevent the plane from sliding into the abyss beneath them.

  The plane leveled off and, as it descended, Kate could see shadowed buildings that seemed to rise from the ground. It was strange, for they weren’t skyscrapers or even remotely tall. Instead they were short and squat and crowded into a small space where the mountains ended and the desert began. As she watched, the buildings disappeared as the plane broke through the low-lying cloud cover.

  “I’ve spoken to one of the leaders in the community. A man by the name of Yuften M’Hidi. He’ll meet us,” Emir said easily as if landing in the dark on the edge of a mountain range was something he did every day.