Kay groaned. Basically, she was losing her mind, and they were no closer to an escape plan.
Surely Joe would come back tonight. Had Abdullah killed him? He’d risked his life to save hers. Sweat slicked beneath her blouse, proof of the earlier heat, though now she shivered in the evening’s chill. The water boiled, bubbling one bean after another up to the surface.
The lightbulb flickered and extinguished itself, as it did on an hourly basis. Darkness rushed into the hut. She shivered as death spread its fingers around her throat and fear choked her. She’d die in this terrorist camp.
The door creaked. A cold wind blew into the shack as Joe entered.
“Where were you?” She ran to him.
“Abdullah interrogated me again. Is that food?” Joe looked to the dinged pot lit by the propane’s flickering flame.
“You must be hungry.” She dished the mush she’d managed to make out of mealy beans into a tin bowl. At least she hoped he was hungry. If he wasn’t, they’d have leftovers. Then she’d not need to cook tomorrow, leaving her nothing to do in the insanity-inducing silence.
A spider lowered its body from the roof as she extended the bowl to Joe.
With a nod of thanks, he sat cross-legged on the mattress. The night breeze whipped through the cracks of the battered metal, turning what had been oppressive heat into the blustery desert night.
The light of a single star penetrated the grated window, the star the only piece of nature she’d glimpsed all day.
Out here in the isolated dust and sun one could almost believe in God. In fact, one had to. Who else would one talk to in the ever pervasive solitude? Today, she’d already sung aloud to herself, quoted an entire episode of Friends, and counted backward in Arabic.
She grabbed the burnt bread and moved beside Joe. Avoiding the rusted nails that jutted from the tin structure, she edged closer to the wall. The warmth of Joe’s body made mist in the cold air. She touched his hand.
He shifted. “Cold?”
“Very.” She watched his shoulders rise and fall with each breath he took. With him here, the fear of death retreated, and she felt hope that maybe, just maybe, they might get out of this alive.
He twisted and handed her a ragged blanket.
Throwing the blanket around her shoulders, she rested her head against his shoulder and tried to still her rapid breaths.
Had her parents attempted to contact her? What if Al Qaeda had discovered the passcode on her phone and called them? Had they tried to extort a ransom? Her dad had cried that day in eleventh grade when she’d broken her femur at soccer practice. What must he be feeling now?
“Scared?” Joe rested his hand on her shoulder.
“Terrified.” Her breath stuck in her throat, the sobs pounding behind her eyes.
Joe smelled like ammunition and gunpowder. After thirty-six hours without him, she’d feared the terrorists had murdered him.
She twined her fingers around his. She could hear the beating of his heart. “How do we get out of here?” They had to get out of here. One of these times when Joe left, he wouldn’t come back. If she died, she wanted to die escaping.
“I’d like to say as G. A. Henty does that I’ve planned for this situation since six years of age.” Joe held her hand in his as the faintest of smiles softened the tension lines on his face. “But I never intended to end up almost getting a girl honor-killed and then being abducted to a Yemeni terrorist camp as a result.”
The blanket slid down her shoulders. “Who is G. A. Henty?” She considered herself well-read, but she’d never heard of a Henty.
“Historical fiction author, wrote like a hundred books back in the 1800s. Big in homeschool circles, and the hero always knew a second language. It’s what inspired me to learn Arabic.”
“About that.” Knees drawn up in front of her, she turned on the mattress. “How did you get so fluent? Your Arabic is even better than mine, and I’ve been studying since I was five.”
The steam from the beans rose around his cheekbones. “I was perusing the audio section of the library during second grade. Found some audio tapes on Arabic and checked them out.” He stirred the bean mush with his spoon.
“You’re kidding me.” She stared at him. Her parents had gone on a wait-list before her birth and paid tens of thousands of dollars to enroll her in a dual language prep school that taught Arabic.
“Nope. True as the twelve siblings.” Joe scooped up bean mush.
The guy had taught himself Arabic? Her disheveled hair tangled in a nail. Sitting up, she tugged at the knot. “A little Kansas library wouldn’t have more than one Arabic tape.”
“I used interlibrary loan.”
“In second grade?” She stared at the child prodigy.
“Hey, maybe next time, don’t diss us homeschooled kids.” Joe flicked the end of her skirt, his strong fingers light against the black fabric.
Kay shook her head, hair flapping against her cheeks. “G. A. Henty, excessive library use, it’s like homeschoolers have an entire secret culture.”
“We do.” He summoned half a smile through the grit and the singe marks on his face.
The fear subsided inside her. All too soon another sun would rise, another morning where he’d leave and they both might end up dead. Tonight though, she scooted close to him, the blanket spread between them, and twisted her fingers in its shredded edge. “Does Abdullah have a Jeep we could steal? The Saudi border can’t be too far.”
“Once I get my hands on a cell, I’m going to call the embassy and get us help.” Joe dipped up more bean mush.
“Have you seen Alma? This is all my fault that she’s here.” Guilt twisted in her stomach. How was Alma holding up? The teen was married to a monster. If one could even call it marriage. More like legal rape. She blamed herself for Joe’s presence too. Not many guys would risk their life for a friend.
“Seen Alma?” Joe wrinkled his nose, mock scorn twisting up the left side of his mouth. “Jihadists aren’t allowed to see women.”
“Stupid purdah.” Kay slammed the plate of burnt tazeez bread on the ground.
“Missing the good ol’ USA?” Joe grinned.
“What would you say if I was?” She put her hands behind her head and stretched out on the mattress.
“That maybe some common sense was actually making it through your thick skull.” He tapped his finger against her temple.
She snagged his hand. “Try saying that to my face, soldier.” She jerked him toward her.
He caught himself on his hand, his body over hers on the mattress.
She shoved his shoulder, her skirt riding up to her knees as she twisted. His legs felt solid above her, the security of armored tanks and assault weapons exuding from his broad shoulders.
With a shove, she tried to twist on top. He shot his hand up and grabbed hers.
“Oh!” She let out a shriek.
He jumped off her. “Did I hurt you?”
“An unrelated man just touched my nose.” She clapped her hand over the offending appendage. “I think I scarred him for life. He’ll probably now feel uncontrollably compelled to ambush female strangers and fondle their noses.” Laughter welled inside her.
He fell back on the stained mattress beside her. “Don’t worry. I’ll just marry three more women with exquisite noses and satisfy my desires on them.”
“Hey, can you do that?” She shoved up on her elbow. “At least I wouldn’t be in this house by myself hour, after hour, after hour. Then we can rescue them too.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “I’m not marrying any other women. You are more than enough.”
“Seriously though, we need to start trying to escape.”
“And get shot?” Joe finished off the last of the beans. He laid the bowl down and looked at her. “We need to lay low and wait for reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements from whom? Who do you even work for?” She’d guessed CIA, but then she’d been wrong about a lot of things this week.
�
��Classified.”
“Ugh.” She slumped into the wall. The corrugated metal poked her between the shoulders. “You know that ‘it’s classified’ line is only sexy in the movies. In real life, it’s beyond annoying.”
He touched her shoulder, his fingers warm against her neck as he brushed her hair back from her face. “Sure waiting’s hard, but it’s safer this way.”
She sighed. “I don’t call anything about a terrorist camp safe.” The beans bubbled harder. She needed to turn off the heater so she’d have enough fuel to boil beans tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
“We’re not dead yet. Success?” He flashed a smile.
“I feel dead.” She eyed the space that had become her prison, all ten by fifteen dusty, cold, bug-ridden feet of it.
“Let’s play a game. SERE school teaches the importance of keeping up morale.” Joe smiled again.
“SERE?”
“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It’s an Army training school taught by ex-POWs.”
His presence helped her churning thoughts subside. As he’d said, they both still lived. She couldn’t worry about the rest right now.
“All right.” Kay settled back against the wall and her baggy blouse oozed around her. “How about Jeopardy? Pop music for four hundred dollars. This band’s music was in the top ten hits three years running in ’97, ’98, and ’99.”
“No clue.” Joe scraped the tazeez bread over the remains of the bean broth.
“Come on, you’re a child of the ’90s. At least take a guess.” She elbowed him, a smile on her lips. When he’d walked through that door tonight, not dead, she’d almost thrown her arms around his neck and kissed him. He was a good guy, and she’d be dead in Bahrain right now if not for him.
“How about seventeenth century revivalists for six hundred dollars? I’d win that, no contest. I have John Edwards’s sermon ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ memorized in its entirety.” A sheepish grin tugged at Joe’s mouth as the edges of his ears reddened.
“Do homeschoolers live in caves?” She pushed his shoulder. Her body bumped up against him, the smell of his sweat drifting around her.
“No, caves were much too liberal. The risqué cave drawings, you know.” He smiled that half smile where she never quite knew if he was joking or not.
“Are you serious?” She tilted her chin.
He swatted the back of his fingers against her upper arm, gently, the touch like trickling rain. “Yes, I’m joking.”
The naked lightbulb flickered back on. With a laugh, she tugged her blanket up over her legs and hugged her knees against each other. “How did you amuse yourself as a kid?”
“Read old novels mostly. Men of Iron, Ivanhoe, the Robin Hood legends, lots of stories about knights of old doing glorious deeds and rescuing the oppressed.” He rested one elbow on a wall joist and leaned back on his hand. The edge of his leg brushed hers, his frame mere inches from her.
“The knight and damsel in distress trope is so overdone in fiction. Leads to disempowered women who don’t take initiative and sit back while men rescue them.” She snuck her hand over his. The rough brush of his skin against hers sent tingles through her arm. That buzz cut Joe sported was growing on her. It seemed more elite Special Forces than redneck punk now, though one couldn’t run one’s fingers through a guy’s hair when he cut it that short.
“Really going to condemn that? Because I’ve been rescuing you a lot lately.” He held her hand up. Her sleeve fell back to her elbow, her bare forearm touching the camo of his jacket sleeve.
Heat flushed across her cheeks. She tugged her hand away. “While I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done, I am most certainly not a disempowered damsel in distress.”
He glanced around the metal room this terrorist group had made her jail cell. His blue eyes lit the darkness. “I’d say you’re pretty disempowered.”
“I am not a damsel in distress.” Kay half rose from the mattress, exposing the rip in her polyester skirt that hung on her hips, three inches too low and more than that number of decades out of style.
He bumped the back of her leg with his.
Oldest ploy in the book, but she let herself stumble and fall into his arms. She landed on his lap, her legs on top of his on the soiled mattress. His jacket fell open, revealing a sweat-streaked T-shirt. She circled her arms around his neck. Brushing one hand across his cheek, she smiled. “Was this the conclusion of rescuing the damsel in distress in your G. A. Henty novels?”
A grin raised his dark lips, highlighting the stubble on his unshaven cheeks. “G. A. Henty would never have approved of this scandalous display of non-marital affection.”
“You’re so weird.” Her body fit between his crossed legs as she sat in the circle of his arms. The hair of his arm brushed against her hand. His breath blew in and out, frosty in the now cold air.
With one finger, he made a swirling pattern across the skin of her forearm. Their gazes connected and the heat of passion burned in his. “What did you do in your childhood?”
“Normal child of the ’90s things.” Resting her head on his shoulder, she looked up into his eyes. Tingles fluttered through her stomach, her heart accelerating. “Listened to Spice Girls. Bought toe socks.” Kissed boys. She felt the back of her neck flush.
He slid his hand around hers. She squeezed it with a hand still marked by fading henna. His fingers were so thick. Dirt stained his fingernails and a scratch ran from his third finger to his wrist, proof of a day not spent imprisoned in this jail cell.
“No idea what any of that is.” He grinned. “You know how many conversations I’ve just pretended to know what the heck people were talking about? Homeschoolers don’t have a different skin color or an accent, but we’re from an entirely different culture.”
Rotating in his arms, Kay mock dug her fist in his shoulder. “You don’t look like an alien.” His arms surrounded her, his hand covering hers. His chest felt hard against her arm, his warmth heating her in this barren shack.
“You’re saying I’m normal now?” He twisted his mouth up, light in his blue eyes. “Because that’s an insult. Homeschoolers are a cut above the rest of humanity.”
A laugh rose through her. “You’ll never be normal. Do you even know what to do in a high school’s janitor closet?” She smiled at him. If they’d gone to high school together, she’d have kissed him in that janitor’s closet. Still seated between his legs, she pushed his camo jacket further open and ran her hand up his shirt, feeling every sinew of his chest beneath that horrible Army-issue T-shirt. Oh to tear it off him.
“Yeah, we had a school janitor’s closet. Mom took over a walk-in closet with bleach, ammonia, and brooms. We scrubbed toilets twice a day. I was the janitor.” Joe groaned and leaned his head back on the wall behind him. His gaze still rested on her.
She leaned up to him and slid her hand behind his head. “No, this is what you do in a janitor’s closet.” She kissed him.
In an instant, he jerked upright. His mouth against hers, he returned the kiss. The taste of his sweat lingered on her lips. He circled his arms behind her back, tugging her against him, not tight, but with a flattering eagerness.
She ran her hand over his shoulder, feeling every muscle formed by Army Special Forces or whatever government intelligence entity he worked for now.
She’d lived a privileged life. The best schools money could buy, a car when she turned sixteen, more than that, the freedom to explore her own path. Unlike Alma.
Even Joe had encountered more obstacles than her, likely paid his own way through some online college as he deployed to foreign wars. He placed both hands on her waist as intent on kissing her as if she were some model.
Arms around his neck, she made the kiss last one more moment. Last year, she’d thrown away her privileged Harvard PhD program for a man. She’d scorned the best education money could buy while Joe slaved through online classes during deployments. How irresponsible she’d been. She
broke the kiss, parting her lips from Joe’s.
He touched her cheek with the heel of his hand as he brushed the tips of his fingers through her hair.
“You need to get me gloves and an abaya and some veils. The jihadist woman took mine away.” Then she could leave this jail cell, check on Alma, and start creating a plan to get out of here.
“Ok.” He said the word as if from a thousand miles away. Hand against her skin, he looked lost in reverie.
If she made it through this alive, she’d use her experience with AQAP to write the most sensational dissertation Dr. Benson had ever seen and go on to teach thousands of Harvard students about the beauties, the intricacies, and the appalling lack of women’s rights in Middle Eastern culture.
CHAPTER 23
Thursday, October 13th, 11:45 a.m.
Three veils. Seriously? Kay stared at the pile of black clothes Joe had handed her during the fifteen minutes he’d returned to eat the breakfast meal. She’d break a leg taking a step out of this place in three flipping veils.
Tipping the earthenware cup up, Kay sucked down the last of their water. Joe had promised to bring more after the mandatory morning prayers.
The black cloth of an abaya draped around her shoulders. A headscarf covered her hair and the niqab restricted what little air she had left. Sweat built on her neck already. Kay slid the thick black gloves on her hands. The ever present beans bubbled behind her, the propane cook stove aiding the sun in heating this metal can to scorching levels.
Sucking in one last breath of air, Kay flipped the three veils down over the niqab and plunged herself into darkness.
Today, she’d find Alma then come up with an escape plan to rescue all three of them. Kay pushed the door.
The hinges creaked.
A blast of sunshine so intense she could almost see through the three veils hit her. Sweat dripped down her shoulder blades beneath layer after layer of black. For the first time in five days, she stepped into “freedom.”
Veiled By Privilege (Radical Book 1) Page 24
