by Jade Kerrion
Moments later, her uncle accepted the call. “Zara. Thank you for sorting out the mess in Beqaa Valley.”
“Glad I could help.”
“We would not have wanted a fight with Americans.”
“It looks like someone’s determined to start it anyway. Uncle, I need help evacuating the girls back to Beirut.”
He sighed heavily. “I would not have wanted to get involved further, Zara.”
“I did send Hakim back to you, alive and intact.” Except for his ego.
He chortled. “Yes, you did, and I am grateful for your restraint. What can I do for you?”
“Tour buses. Four of them. I need them at the temple complex tomorrow morning, and I need men who look like tourists coming off those buses to wander through the ruins.”
“Ah. We have done this before. Fooled those damned Israelis once too.” Her uncle roared with laughter. “My clever Zara. The buses will be there tomorrow.”
“At dawn.”
“At dawn,” he confirmed.
She hung up the phone. “I wish I’d thought about this sooner.”
“Twenty-four hours ago, there hadn’t been any need to,” Klah said grimly.
Zara gritted her teeth. He was right. Twenty-four hours ago, the SEAL team was still alive and planning their assault on Alhassan’s manor.
“Where will we take the girls?” Klah asked.
“The embassy,” Zara said. “The Venezuelan embassy.”
“What?”
“There isn’t a single Venezuelan girl in that group. The embassy won’t be watched, but it is close to Martyrs’ Square. It’s a major tourist destination; nothing’s more natural than stopping several tour buses out there.”
“And why would they let the girls in?”
“Because I’m going to make a few more calls. I have lots of friends in Venezuela who could make things unpleasant for the embassy staff if they don’t.” She glanced at the time on her smartphone. “The girls have to be at the ruins before dawn.”
Klah and Nazrol exchanged a glance. “We’ll figure something out. You rest.”
“I’m coming.”
“You’ll come in with the last group. I’ll wake you; I promise.”
“Klah—”
He stared at her. “You have to rest. You may not want your child, but I guarantee, Danyael does.”
She sucked in an unsteady breath. Did Danyael really want the child, her child?
It’s not Danyael’s, a voice whispered in her mind, but the quick leap of emotions had torn the lid off the pack of lies she had told even herself.
She wanted the child to be Danyael’s.
She caressed the flutter of motion in her lower abdomen. If only you were Danyael’s and not Galahad’s…
19
A hand upon her shoulder jerked Zara out of hazy dreams. She blinked back sleep and focused on Klah’s face. “Is it time to go?”
Klah nodded. “Ten minutes. Amal wouldn’t let me wake you any sooner. I cleaned your gun.” He gestured at the case at the foot of the bed. “Reloaded your handgun and extra clips. How do you feel?”
She sat up slowly and pressed a hand to her aching ribs. “Grateful to be alive.”
“Your bulletproof vest is toast. Do you have another?”
“Not here.”
“The baby? Have the contractions stopped?”
She shook her head.
“You shouldn’t even be out of bed. Nazrol and I can handle this.”
“And what happens after the girls are safe?”
“I help you find your friends, as I promised.”
She sighed. “You’re field operators, you and Nazrol. Once this stops being urban warfare and starts becoming politics, it’s no longer your game.”
“And it’s yours?”
“Not really. I handle life better when guns and sharp blades are involved, but if there’s a choice here, I’m not seeing it.”
Klah grunted. “All right, let’s go then, but I want you to know, I don’t like the risks you’re taking with yourself or your baby.”
“Neither does Danyael, I bet.”
“What part wouldn’t he like?”
“Oh, all of it. He disapproved of me.”
“I doubt it.” Klah turned toward the door.
Zara frowned. “What makes you say that?”
He paused and looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“You scarcely know Danyael. You hardly know me. How would you know what Danyael approves or disapproves of? He’s a healer and a doctor. I’m an assassin.”
“He’s an empath, and he sees the world differently.”
“What do you mean?”
Klah expelled his breath. “It’s hard to explain. Empathy gives a different lens. When I focus on others’ emotions, colors emerge. Each person’s different.”
Zara frowned. “It’s like seeing through a third eye. Do all empaths do that?”
“I don’t know, but Danyael does. He taught me how. As an alpha empath, the colors he sees are even more vivid.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
Klah looked steadily at her. “When I first met you and learned you were an assassin, I expected a muddy gray color to match your ambiguous moral code, but you’re not gray. You’re every color under the sun. Your facets—they’re dazzling. Imagine what I see, then multiply it a hundredfold.” He shook his head. “Danyael probably couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”
“Color?”
“Emotions—powerful and always in stark contrast. You’re not an easy person, Zara, and I think that’s why Danyael fell in love with you, probably in spite of his better judgment. There’s enough in you to fascinate him for the rest of his life.”
Color? Zara scowled as she dressed, taking care not to overextend herself. Was that all she was to Danyael? A walking art canvas? It would have been cheaper and easier on everyone if Danyael had bought a Van Gogh or something equally ridiculous. She walked downstairs to find her home strangely quiet. Klah waited for her in the kitchen. Amal was there too with another cup of herbal tea.
“Where are the girls?” Zara asked as she accepted the cup Amal held out.
“They’re all at the ruins with Nazrol and his men, except Yasmin,” Klah said. “She’s upstairs. What did you want to do with her?”
Yasmin. Damn it! She’d forgotten about Yasmin. The young woman had been the connection between Nakob and Hezbollah. Was she more than that? “Yasmin stays here. I’m not done with her. I’ll have Nazrol send some of his men back to the house to guard her. If she tries to run, they’ll kill her.”
“Zara, she’s hardly more than a girl.”
“I was just a girl once too. Let’s go.”
Dressed in local garb, she and Klah made their way down to the temple complex. Nazrol loitered about twenty feet into the complex. The girls were nowhere to be seen, but after several moments, Zara caught a glimpse of pale faces peeking out from behind the large stones.
“Where are the buses?” Klah asked.
“They’ll be here.”
“And your uncle. He’s Hezbollah.”
“Completely trustworthy,” she said without any sarcasm. She looked up at him. “In a world without labels, some women are more dangerous than men, and some terrorists are more trustworthy than legitimate governments.” She glanced over her shoulder as four buses wound their way toward the complex. “Here they are.”
The men who disembarked from the buses were not visibly armed. They inclined their heads as a gesture of respect to Zara and then to Nazrol as they meandered into the ruins and spread out casually as tourists might have done.
“Do you know them all?” Klah asked under his breath.
Zara shook her head. “Just their top lieutenants, but the commandant has drummed good manners into them, especially where I’m concerned.” She counted heads, pleased that her uncle had complied with her plan. “The buses arrived half empty, and they’ll return to Beirut full, each girl escor
ted by an armed Hezbollah warrior. Anyone who tries to stop a bus will find twelve or more guns pointed at them.”
“You’ve done this before. Has it worked?”
“Frequently, unless you’re trying to fool Israelis, in which case, no.”
Nazrol, who stood beside Zara, frowned. “There was that one time—”
“So says my uncle, but I think it was only because the bus was leaving Israel, not trying to enter it.” She glanced toward the shadows of the temple complex. “The girls are over here. I’ll need to talk to them and assure them this isn’t Nakob all over again.”
“Do you think they’ll listen to you?” Nazrol shuffled his feet. “We’re not good with hysterical women.”
Zara stifled the chuckle but the smile leaked through. “I’ll do my best.” She moved to the first cluster of girls crouched behind a large column and spoke in English. “My friends, the ones who captured Nakob and helped free you, are here to escort you back to Beirut.”
The girls exchanged wide-eyed glances. “Why-why can’t the American soldiers do it?”
“Because there aren’t enough of them.” And I don’t trust the Americans anymore.
“But what about you?”
“I’ll be on one of the buses. I know you’re uncomfortable and scared. I know these men—” She gestured at Nazrol. “—look just like the men who took you from your school. They have the same skin tone. They wear the same clothes. They speak the same language.” She paused. “But they’re different.”
“But—”
“Sixteen years ago, men who looked just like them tried to rape me. When my mother fought them off, they killed her. Yet, last night, the son of one of those men risked his life to protect all of you.” The tightening around her lower abdomen heralded another contraction. She placed her hand over her stomach and caressed her child. “Appearances mean nothing. It’s the things we do that make all the difference.” She glanced over her shoulder at Nazrol. “I vouch for this man, and the men who accompany him under his command. They’ll do the right thing because they’re good people and because they know to behave if they want to come and work for me later and earn lots of money.”
The girls’ quiet laughter broke the nervous tension.
“After about ten minutes of polite milling around the ruins, they’ll escort you back to the buses. Go with them. Don’t attract attention. We’re not entirely safe yet.”
She met each girls’ eyes and waited until each girl nodded her acquiescence, before moving on to the next cluster of girls to deliver the same message. She had just completed her rounds when the Hezbollah warriors began moving through the ruins. Nazrol had spent his time assigning his men to each girl, and when it came time to evacuate, it was executed with swift, silent coordination.
Eye contact and a polite nod were enough to get the girls moving. With veils drawn over their faces and heads lowered, the girls appeared like observant Muslim women following their husband back to the tour buses. The first bus filled, and then the second.
Zara’s gaze swept across the ruins as Klah and Nazrol, standing beside her, counted heads to make sure no one was left behind. “Other tour buses are coming. We’re running out of time.”
“Can they move faster?”
She shook her head. “I think we have observers.”
Klah followed her gaze to a small group of men coming up from the village. They were too far to make out faces. “Locals?”
“Unlikely. Locals would come with women. It’s the one big flaw of American military action out here in the Middle East. It’s almost always all men, and men traveling in groups attract attention, even when they’re disguised as locals.”
He nodded. “You don’t just think like a local. You are local. It’s the reason you’re so successful out here.”
“I do things here I could never pull off in America. Do you have any idea how many weapons I can hide under this?” She tugged at her black robes. “The veil keeps me anonymous. Here, I’m as bland as the scenery. I can go anywhere and not be noticed. It’s perfect.”
Klah chuckled. “And to think I imagined you and Danyael had nothing in common.”
“Danyael?”
“He does it too—that anonymity thing—only he uses his empathic powers and his psychic shields to push people away.”
Zara gritted her teeth. “Yes, I’d noticed.”
“He just wants to be left alone, and if people would just let him be, no one would get hurt.”
Get hurt? “Get hurt” was a ridiculous understatement for what Danyael could do when he extended his powers. Her many memories of Danyael using his empathic powers to heal drooped like pale ghosts behind the vivid memory of the one time he used his empathic powers to kill.
Hunted by mercenaries hired by the Mutant Assault Group, Danyael had gone on the run. Against her better sense, Zara had chosen to accompany him to protect him. Compelled through close contact, their friendship had tottered to a rocky start and then smashed up against the rocks when she had accused him of rape.
Perhaps they should have gone their separate ways then, but circumstances kept them together when Danyael’s best friend, Lucien, was kidnapped in an attempt to lure Danyael into a trap. Even knowing it was a trap, Danyael had walked into it—it had been the only way to free Lucien—and she had followed him.
She could still recall the faces of the ten mercenaries, armed with rifles, who had stood across from her and Danyael. The mercenary leader had assessed them with the steady gaze of an experienced soldier. The corner of his mouth had tugged up in a dismissive smirk. “Secure Danyael; kill the woman.”
Zara’s eyes had narrowed as her grip tightened on her gun and loosened on her dagger. She could take down two of the men. What she was going to do with the other eight, she didn’t know. Of course, Danyael, goddamned pacifist that he was—he had probably never fired a gun in his entire life—would be of no help—
But Danyael spun, threw his arms around her and pulled her to the floor, covering her body with his own. “Hold me,” he whispered. “Trust me.”
The men advanced. Damn it! What the hell was he doing? She was staring into Danyael’s eyes at the exact moment when he lowered his psychic shields. His gaze held her as the world dropped out from beneath her.
Some distant part of her mind shrieked with mindless terror as the devastating power of an alpha empath swept out like a tsunami, crushing everything in its path. Every heartache, every misery, every loss Danyael had ever suffered amplified into a wrenching empathic scream that could have wrung tears out of a rock. The men stiffened and their faces contorted with the unbearable agony of Danyael’s anguish as it became their anguish.
The magnified pain of an alpha empath was more than any person could handle. The men turned their weapons on themselves; suicide offered their only escape.
Zara watched in silence as blood splattered on walls and bodies dropped like marionettes, their strings cut. The maelstrom of Danyael’s devastating emotions pounded into her, but so did other emotions Danyael channeled through physical contact. Peace wrapped like a warm blanket secured by Danyael’s arms around her trembling body. She absorbed love through the steady beating of their hearts against each other.
How could so little that was good be enough to counter the madness of so much pain?
She clung to him as he cradled her in the eye of the empathic storm screaming around them. Death, like a familiar lover, beckoned to her, but Danyael anchored her to life.
It was over in seconds.
The sounds of gunfire fell silent. The emotions evaporated from the room as Danyael’s psychic shields locked around his empathic powers. He stood slowly and helped her to her feet, but did not look over his shoulder to confirm what they both knew he had done.
He had killed ten men to save her life.
She stared at him, her perspective of him forever changed. He was still Danyael—a man with too much pain in his eyes, a man who had erected impenetrable barriers to keep ot
hers at arm’s length. The only difference was she finally understood why.
Zara shook her head, dismissing the memories, as she looked up and met Klah’s gaze. “Danyael’s emotions—the stuff in him—can kill.”
“Of course,” Klah said, apparently unfazed. “He’s an alpha empath. He amplifies emotions. If he’s happy, the world’s ecstatic.”
“And when had that ever happened?”
“As far as I know, never. His childhood scarred him. The people who should have protected him and loved him abused him and tried to kill him. He knows he’s emotionally damaged, and he knows that his emotions—his conditioned fear of physical contact—escalates the cycle of violence and abuse, but he can’t, or doesn’t know how to break through his fear. So he does the only thing he can to keep himself safe, to keep others safe from him. He shields his emotions. He pushes people away.” Klah shrugged. “It’s not a great solution, but it’s worked for him. Under the circumstances, it’s probably the best he can do.”
“It’s not good enough. Why would anyone want a relationship with someone who walls himself off?”
“No one would. Don’t you think he knows it? But what’s the alternative? Find someone brave enough to break down those walls? Someone strong enough to weather his emotional storms with him without hurting him in the process?”
But Zara had weathered Danyael’s emotional storms. She had spent interminably long nights outside his bedroom, propping the door open with a tiny finger and more willpower than she ever thought she possessed.
As he slept, his unchecked emotions, too tangled to tease apart, bombarded her. Hardened by the death of her mother, she had believed herself beyond tears. Danyael proved her wrong. His emotions became hers. The forced emotional isolation he disguised as a desire for privacy amplified into a gaping wound—constantly bleeding, never healing. The raw agony stole her breath and wrung tears from her eyes. An insidious whisper wrapped around her mind. End it. The pain won’t stop until it’s all over. It will never stop. You are lost and alone in your world. No one will find you. No one even knows you’re missing. There is no one to wait for, no one to hope for. All you have left is the power to make the pain stop.
