by Cherry Adair
Sand shifted beneath her feet and blew against the back of her legs as he drew her more tightly against him. The heat from his body warmed her everywhere they touched. Waves of pleasure rose like a tide inside her, the swells getting incrementally bigger as the kiss deepened.
The kiss, the embrace, was an affirmation of life in this desolate place and Isis soaked it up like rain on the parched desert sands. She needed this right now. Needed him.
She sighed, slipping her hand around his neck, and up into the short strands of his hair at his nape. She used her other hand to cup his firm butt, which flexed as her fingers tightened. She felt the small twitch of his lips at the contact.
God, he smelled so—male. The smell of his sweat, the scent of cold desert air on his skin, and the welcome heat of his hard body pressed tightly against hers turned her on like nothing else.
She knew what it felt like to have him buried deep inside her, knew the pull and pulse of her internal muscles in response to his every thrust and parry. She knew the sounds he made, and the feel of his hair-roughed chest against her sensitive breasts. She knew the sounds he made when he climaxed, and the weight of his body when he was replete.
And she wanted to feel all those things now. It was only when he brushed his fingers over her cheeks that she realized how cold she was everywhere they weren’t touching. He disengaged slowly, leaving her lips damp and chilled. “Fortunately,” he told her, his broad hands sliding down to cup her upper arms to hold her steady as she swayed unsteadily, “we have a lodestone that will take us straight back to your Valley of the Scorpions.”
“We do?” She blinked back her good sense. “Oh! We do!” She dug it out of her back pocket and handed him the little chamois pouch.
He took it and stuck it in his front pocket, then stepped back, scanning the area. “Unless they left us with my GPS or watch, which I doubt, it’ll be a little harder to pinpoint the location, but I know when I’m heading in the right direction.”
“You’re right, let’s gather everything we can use, then get a good night’s sleep. We can set out at first light.”
“Sorry.” Thorne cupped her cool cheek. “No good night’s sleep for us tonight. We don’t know if or when they might come back. We’ll do better walking while it’s cool. Hopefully we’ll reach civilization at sunup.”
Briskly she rubbed the goose bumps on her bare arms, the cold invading more than just the surface of her skin. She’d had other plans in mind that had nothing to do with sleep or walking through the wilderness. “Seriously? Wasn’t it enough to dump us out here? Now you think they’re coming back to finish the job.” Wrapping her arms around her body, she shivered. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.”
“Tuck your pants into your socks to discourage wildlife, then grab that bag over there, and let’s see what they’ve given us to work with.”
“I still have my camera bag. There’s a little money if we need to pay someone for transportation or food.” That was, if they didn’t end up walking in circles until the vultures or heatstroke got them.
“Water’s our priority. Okay, let’s see what we have to work with.”
Glad to have something constructive to do, Isis stuffed her pant legs into her socks, then hauled the light duffel bag over to where Thorne was dumping the other two. Heavy boots would better serve them out in the desert than running shoes, but at least they hadn’t been wearing sandals when they’d been taken. She was grateful for small mercies.
Unzipping the bags, they tossed the contents onto the sleeping bag. Some clothing, his and hers. Isis held up a familiar T-shirt. “Isn’t this the shirt you wore in London? It is! And here’s my bra! This is the stuff from our suitcases that we left in the cab from the airport.”
“I suspected it might be. They’d want it to look as though we came prepared to stay for several days.”
Isis shuddered. “Dear God. They’ve set up a perfect crime scene.”
“Yes, well, the only thing missing will be the bodies.” He handed her a wad of fabric. “Layer. Put on what you can.”
“These bastards have been tracking us for days.” Her voice rose as she pulled a long-sleeved T-shirt over the short-sleeved one she was wearing. She wasn’t just surprised at the bad guys’ forethought. She was furious. Each incident had blended with the fright of the one before it, but now, in the quiet and darkness of the barren desert, the realization of the machinations that swirled around them put the fear of God in her. They hadn’t just been followed. They’d been relentlessly hunted.
“That certainly appears to be the case.” Thorne sounded calm, his voice strong and even.
She shot him an annoyed glance from where she knelt beside the bag of clothes. “I guess you’re used to people trying to kill you.”
“It never gets old.” His attempt at levity was replaced with concern. He crouched beside her, taking her in his arms. “Hey, you remember I’m a professional, right? We’ll figure this out and live to see another day.”
“It’s a good thing you’re a man of your word.”
“Depend on it. Isis, I—”
He was so close, his face etched in black-and-white. Starlight glinted in his eyes and cast a silver sheen on the stubble on his chin. Her heart clutched because Isis saw him in fifty years, and she wanted to be with him in that distant future when he was stooped, his hair silver. She brushed his jaw with her fingertip. The hair was springy and tickled her hand. “What is it?”
“I’ve had extensive wilderness training. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”
She was pretty sure that hadn’t been what he’d been about to say. But whatever it was, it could wait. Extensive wilderness training right this second was probably more important. When he started to rise, she placed her hand on his wrist. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you, either.”
He smiled, then pushed to his feet stiffly. The man’s leg was mangled. It must be painful to walk on the uneven, shifting sand, but he didn’t show it. How the hell did he think he could walk them out of the desert?
Upending a heavy bag, he said briskly, “Nice of them to give us a frying pan. Too bad they didn’t include anything we could cook in it.”
“Three bottles of water,” Isis said, relieved. Three bottles wasn’t enough, but it might mean the difference between life and death. Food they could do without, but not water. As soon as the sun came up and started baking the sand, dehydration would kill them. She’d heard of an archaeologist who’d been so excited by his find he’d forgotten to drink. He’d been dead within hours.
Three bottles of water was good.
“I found this.” He turned on a small flashlight, and a thin stream of yellow light illuminated the dancing sand blowing around them. He turned it off. “Anything in any of those packages?” Thorne asked, as Isis picked up a handful of candy and food wrappers.
“No, but people will wonder that we didn’t die of diabetic shock considering how much crap we’re supposed to have eaten. This is a pretty damned elaborate plan to kill us. They thought of everything.”
“It took a lot of planning and forethought, yeah.” He jerked his head, indicating the contents in her hand. “Put that pencil aside,” he said absently. “We can use it as a weapon.”
“To do what? Write a rude note? If someone is close enough to me that I could use a freaking pencil as a weapon, I’ll be in big trouble.”
He grinned. It was a confident, boyish grin that made heat reignite in her belly. If nothing else, he could take her mind off dying when they ran out of water by charming her to death. “Haven’t you heard? The pen is mightier than the sword.”
“Cute. We have a pencil and a small frying pan. What we need is an Uzi and a helicopter.” She glanced up. “At least it seems to be getting warmer, but the wind is picking up as well, which isn’t a good thing.”
“Too late in the year for khamsin.”
“God, I hope so.” The hot, dusty southwesterly winds could blow fiercely for w
eeks on end, obliterating landmarks, eroding the paint off vehicles and the skin off people. The punishing winds made travel impossible and kept people indoors until it passed. Out here, it would kill them without protection.
“I experienced my first khamsin with my father when I was about thirteen.” She pulled another T-shirt over the first two, then shook out her hair and rewrapped the long scarf around her neck a couple of times. “That terrifying dark wall of dust and sand coming at us in a suffocating blanket totally freaked me out. Have you seen it?”
She needed to get a grip here. This wasn’t khamsin, but merely a bit of wind kicking up sand particles. It was the wrong time of year for the devil winds. High winds weren’t uncommon out here in the desert, though, and even a mild windstorm would make finding their way to civilization tricky, if not downright impossible. She looked across the sea of sand as particles danced and swirled on the surface.
“A couple of times. A sandstorm is kicking up, but it won’t be of that magnitude. Keep that scarf handy, and cover your face. If this wind gets any worse, we won’t be able to walk in it, and we’ll need better shelter than the tent. Let’s get the lead out. Finish going through our supplies; I want to go up on that tall dune to look around before we wander off. Hopefully I can see signs of life from a higher elevation and we can start walking. If not we’ll hunker down and wait it out.”
“Good idea.” She stood with him, winding his long blue and white scarf loosely around his throat a couple of times the way Beniti al-Atrash had taught her when she was a little girl. A protection against the sun, flies, and sand. “How long will you be gone?” She sounded like a worried wife.
“Twenty, thirty minutes. You can watch me all the way up that dune.”
She patted his chest and rearranged the scarf. Needing to touch him. “Good, I like watching you. You have a very nice butt.”
He bent to brush her lips with his. “I’m extremely partial to all your parts as well.”
“They’ll be waiting for you to hurry back. Be careful walking in the sand; it can be—”
“Twenty minutes.”
She dug through several layers to find her front pockets, and shoved her hands into them to prevent herself from grabbing on to him like a baby monkey on its mother’s back. “I’ll be right here.”
Isis didn’t relish being apart from him, even if he wouldn’t be gone long. She felt as though she had a target painted on her back. But separating so he could see where they were was expedient.
Gait slightly uneven but unhesitant, Thorne strode off across the sand, lifting a hand in farewell without turning around. Isis watched him for several minutes, then went back to rifle through their supplies, setting aside anything she thought could be useful. It was a dangerously small pile. Clearly whoever had left them there wanted them to die sooner rather than later.
Shivering in earnest, Isis retrieved the brand-new sleeping bag and, taking the frying pan with her as a makeshift weapon, settled in the sand with the down bag around her shoulders to wait for Thorne. She ignored the rumble of her stomach. Being hungry was the least of her problems. In the vast open space, hearing the rough sigh of the wind, and with the dusty smell of the breeze swirling around her, Isis had never felt so alone in her life.
The black bowl of the sky, studded with millions of crisp white stars, seemed close enough to touch, but its vastness made her feel very, very small. If she died out here, her father wouldn’t even know she was gone. It was a terrifying realization that her death wouldn’t have an impact on anyone. She’d traveled so much growing up that she hadn’t formed lasting friendships, and the friends she’d made as an adult would wonder what wild adventure she was on—maybe even miss her—but would eventually get on with their busy lives. Perhaps the only person who might miss her return would be Zak, and that would be because she still owed him the other half she’d agreed upon for Thorne’s services.
No, that depressing thought was unfair and untrue. Her cousin Acadia wouldn’t rest until she was found, and she had friends who would ask questions relentlessly. That was a small comfort.
With the frying pan clutched in one hand, she folded her arms on her updrawn knees. Putting her head down on her arms, she squeezed her eyes shut, glad Thorne wasn’t there to witness her pity party in all its glory. She gave herself five minutes to wallow, then she’d get up and pull on a few more T-shirts and pants to ward off the chill. He could warm her when he got back.
She refused to even consider that he might not come back at all. That whoever had abandoned them there was lying in wait for him over that dune. That they’d finished him off, and were coming to do the same to her. But her fingers tightened around her weapon.
THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES LATER, THORNE returned to camp to find Isis huddled inside the downy folds of a sleeping bag. She got to her feet when she saw him, her camera bag slung across her body, a frying pan in one hand, her feet spread. Ready for battle.
“I found a cave or partial excavation in the hillside about ten minutes away,” he told her, picking up the down bag from the sand and wrapping it around her shoulders like a cape. “The wind’s picking up. We need to get out of it before it gets worse and visibility is shot. Ready?”
Strands of her hair lifted on the fingers of the wind, then danced around her head. In the starlight she looked like a pagan goddess. Snugging the bag around her throat, she gave him a small smile. “I was worried.”
“You didn’t think I’d wander away and leave you out here, did you?”
“I was worried about you, not myself,” she told him, wrapping her long scarf around her head and face so just her eyes, protected some by her glasses, showed. “You didn’t take any water. That’s dangerous.
“Here.” She handed him a full bottle. “Wet your scarf before you tie it over your face; it’ll help from inhaling particles, then drink the rest. I’ve done the same.”
“Okay.”
Her eyes were hidden behind the reflection of the starlight on her glasses, but he felt her watching him chug down the better part of the warm water before using the rest to dampen a portion of the scarf, then lifted it to cover his mouth and nose and wrapped the rest around his head.
“We have one bottle left. This”—she indicated a duffel at her feet—“is the smallest of the three. I’ve packed anything useful in it. Which way?”
He loved her take-charge attitude. Bossy? Sure. But he knew it was her way of handling stress. She’d been put through situations no one should have to endure and she’d taken each event, if not in stride, then at least with admirable bravery.
Picking up the heavy bag, Thorne pointed, then fell into step as she immediately started walking the way he’d come. “Isis Magee, you are one hell of a woman.” He didn’t bother hiding his limp—didn’t bother, and couldn’t have disguised it even if he tried. Recent activities, coupled with trudging through shifting sand, had done a number on his thigh. The sharp, biting pain held his leg in a searing grip that lay somewhere between an animal trap and a rabid British bulldog.
“We’re actually fairly close to the Valley of the Scorpions.” He didn’t believe in coincidence. Certainly not at this juncture. Was their location intentional, or had their kidnappers merely driven them randomly into the desert and dropped them where they were unlikely to be found?
“That’s fantastic!”
“Don’t get too excited. I didn’t have a visual, nor did I see the dam. My calculation might be off.”
“Your calculations are never off. If you say we’re near the valley, then we are. We just have to figure out how to get from here to there.”
“Pollyanna.”
She smiled, unrepentant. “Cynic.”
Yeah, he was. But he was also a realist. Thorne hadn’t seen the valley from his vantage point, but knowing his present position, and having the mental, running GPS numbers in his mind, indicating the original location of Isis’s amulet, he could make an educated guess on the distance between the two. A handful of mile
s as the crow flew, at the most.
Walkable if necessary. Unfortunately, the wind was steadily increasing, blowing hard against them, pushing them back as they needed to move forward. He was glad for the face covering, and the clothing Isis had insisted they put on before leaving.
“As soon as the wind stops, or it’s light, we can follow the heading. Once we’re in the valley, we’ll be able to hitch a ride into Cairo.”
“And go to the police.” Her tone was grim. She was panting slightly from the exertion, and the sounds she was making reminded Thorne of the sounds she’d made when they made love.
The sound of her and the smell of her sweat-dampened skin turned him on, even here and now in the middle of nowhere, facing death head-on. It seemed that pain, trying circumstances, and exhaustion couldn’t keep a good boner down.
“I’ll get in touch with my contacts at MI5,” he amended, cursing his body’s response to her, which made walking even more of a challenge. One stiff leg was more than enough. Thorne concentrated on not thinking about it as he dug one foot in front of the other while they climbed a steep hill of shifting sand. He hoped he didn’t have to climb or descend it again. Up, down, and up again was more than his leg wanted to deal with.
Isis slithered backward on all fours, and he backtracked to grab her arm and help her climb. The wind-driven sand flayed every bit of exposed skin, and he tugged her scarf up as it threatened to blow off her hair. Trudging up a steep dune, Thorne held on to her arm to assist her so she didn’t tumble head-over-heels back down the hill again. It was heavy going in the dry, shifting sand and they had to lean into the persistent wind to make progress.
There was no point talking—they didn’t even try. Just kept moving, backsliding, grappling to remain upright, and moving again.
