by Lia Lee
He smiled a little.
“Home has a good ring to it, doesn’t it? I’ve just landed at home myself.”
Despite herself, she glanced curiously at him. The men who had given her the package had told her that she was to act natural at all costs. Perhaps this was natural? Talking with someone who was simply not involved in this mess was at least a little calming.
“If you’ve just landed at home, you don’t really seem to be in such a hurry to get there,” she observed. “Unless you live at the airport?”
He chuckled ruefully, shaking his head.
“Fortunately for me, I do not,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to live here. The lines for the falafel are simply too long.”
She smiled a little at his joke.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a little shrug. “I’m sure it’s none of my business what you do or where you go…”
“I don’t mind,” he said, and to her surprise, he seemed to be making himself comfortable in the seat next to her. “If you don’t mind my asking, you don’t seem so eager to get home yourself. Or am I reading this wrong and you are simply afraid of flying?”
Irene knew she should have seized on the excuse. She had a fear of flying, and she needed to concentrate on calming herself down before they took off. Could he please leave? That was the natural thing to say, but instead, a strange version of the truth came out.
“My brother’s in trouble,” she said, her voice soft and pitched only for his ears. “He’s… he’s my twin, and he’s always been the one that couldn’t stay out of trouble, and I guess he’s in it again. I need to fly back home and see if I can help.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up, and he regarded her with renewed curiosity.
“That sounds serious,” he observed.
“It’s terribly serious,” she said, then spoke out loud her greatest fear. “And I’m afraid that even if I do all this, it still isn’t going to get him to a good place. He’s dug himself into some serious holes before, but this one feels different. It feels like this one is too deep by far, and I don’t know if I can help.”
To Irene’s horror, she felt tears well up in her eyes. Whatever else tears might be, they were not subtle or inconspicuous, and she blinked them back rapidly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know you didn’t come over her to comfort a woman who must seem insane.”
He smiled at her, pulling out a crisp white handkerchief and handing it to her.
“I’m the one who intruded on your thoughts, and for that I am sorry. I was watching you across the concourse, you see, and when I saw you, something stopped me in my tracks. There was a girl who seemed as if she should have everything going for her. Instead, she sits and looks as if her world has ended.”
“My world hasn’t ended,” she said, a slight smile on her face. “At least, not yet.”
“Yes, because you still have to fly to your brother’s rescue and play hero,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m not a terrible superheroine,” she protested. “I can’t fly, but I can get on a plane, and I don’t have super strength, but I’m pretty darned stubborn.”
He laughed at her, but there was a kindness to it. Despite her success in life, there had been remarkably little kindness, and a part of her bent toward him, like a sunflower turning toward the light.
“I don’t doubt it,” he replied. “I have every faith that you will pull your brother out of whatever hole he has fallen into.”
Somehow, the conversation was helping. The stranger was right; this was simply one more hole that Peter had fallen into. She had saved him many times in the past. She would save him again.
“You said that I was a girl who should have everything going for me,” she said. “What did you mean?”
“It seems shallow perhaps, to say it now, but I simply meant that you looked so lovely sitting here. You’re a beautiful woman, little heroine, all fair hair and pale skin, and those blue eyes of yours could stun a rampaging bull and drop him to his knees. What could a beautiful woman have to be upset by?”
Irene shook her head at him, half-amused and half-frustrated.
“Have you ever talked to women?” she retorted. “Women, whether they are good-looking or not, have plenty of problems.”
“Name one,” he challenged her, and it was such an absurd argument that she simply said the first thing that came to mind.
“Mostly, it begins and ends with men,” she said, and then to Irene’s surprise, they both burst out into laughter.
“All right, all right, I deserve that,” he said. “At least, when I relay it to my female cousins and my aunts later on this week, that is what they will say. And when they ask, who shall I say imparted that particular pearl of wisdom upon me?”
“Irene Bellingham,” she said with a slight smile. “From Kingston, Pennsylvania. And when I’m telling this story to my girlfriends, who did I embarrass myself in front of when I had too much coffee and too little sleep?”
“You can call me Raheem,” he said, and he offered her his hand.
She thought that he was going to shake her hand, but instead he turned it palm down and kissed the knuckles gently.
Somehow, just that little touch sent shivers of electricity bolting through her. The sensation of his skin touching hers, his mouth brushing across her knuckles, was all it took to make her catch her breath.
He pulled back, and the look on his face was just as startled as hers, though he quickly hid it.
“It seems that we have quite a connection, Miss Bellingham. Do you think it is possible to explore that connection later on, when you return to my country?”
For a moment, she wanted nothing more. There was something about this man who called himself Raheem. When she was with him, she didn’t feel afraid or preoccupied with worry about other matters. She hadn’t forgotten what her errand was all about, but somehow, for the last little while, she hadn’t thought about it.
“I’m sorry,” Irene said with genuine regret. “I don’t think I’m going to be returning to Khanour after this.”
Even as she said it, something about it broke her heart. This was a land she had spent more than six months researching, and the art, the culture, and the people called to her, embracing her as nothing ever had before. However, after she had run her dangerous errand, it was simply too likely that she would have to stay in the United States, never to return.
“Ah, a shame, then. Well, if I am ever in Kingston, Pennsylvania, I know that someone who I very much want to get to know better lives there.”
She smiled and then flinched a little as the flight attendant announced her boarding.
“I should go,” she said, standing up and fretting with her bag. “I… thank you for coming over to talk with me.”
He grinned, and there was a little bit of regret and wistfulness there.
“I am glad that I decided to come speak with you as well,” he said softly. “Time spent with someone so lovely is never wasted.”
She smiled, even if it was a little wan.
“Go home,” she said. “You’ve been putting it off long enough.”
He laughed, and then he would have turned to disappear into the crowd if someone hadn’t snatched her bag.
Irene was so startled that she could only shriek, but at the last moment, she managed to wrap her arm around the strap to hang on. The only thing she achieved was getting knocked to her side as the thief regained his footing and kept going.
That’s it, she thought. They’re going to shoot us both, and it will be all my fault…
Then, to her shock, Raheem sprang into action, racing after the thief and seizing the back of his jacket before he had even gone a dozen feet. A crowd gathered to cheer him on as he shook the weedy little thief hard.
“Give it back,” he said, his voice carrying an iron-hard tone of command. “Come on, you little pissant…”
The thief, sullen and furious at his capture, threw her bag to the ground, and to Irene’s
horror, the tightly wrapped paper package rattled out to roll a short distance before catching up next to a railing. She started to reach for it, but Raheem, after handing the thief off to airport security, reached it first. He caught it up in his hand, but in the middle of handing it to her, he froze.
In all of the ruckus, a corner of the paper had peeled away, revealing an unmistakable shine of pure yellow gold.
Instead of handing it to her, he straightened up to his full height, ripping the paper away to reveal what was inside.
Irene had had no idea what she was carrying, and when she saw it, her heart skipped a beat. It was a golden statue of a gorgeous little roe deer, curled up with its legs tucked underneath it and its delicate horns curving from its head. Her well-trained historian’s mind told her that it was a fine example of early Islamic period art, a time when the Middle East led the world in art and science. The deer was delicately rendered by the hand of a skilled artist, and to a trained eye, there was no chance of mistaking what it was. It was nothing less than a national treasure, one that was beyond price when it came to history and importance.
When Irene looked up at Raheem, the fury in his eyes made her take a step back She wanted to run, and she wanted to hide, but she could do nothing besides stand there like a stunned deer herself, waiting for the wolves to come and finish her off.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, his voice vibrating with anger. “Do you have any idea?”
She couldn’t speak. Her throat was closed up with guilt and pain and fear. It was over. Her life was over. Her brother’s life was over. All she could do now was maintain her silence.
He stared at her, and for a moment, she was afraid that he would come and shake her, perhaps even strike her. The men who came to take her by the arms were almost an afterthought. They did not offer the same kind of fear and terror that Raheem did. He looked as if she had personally betrayed his country, offered insult to his relatives. In a very real way, she had.
“What do you want us to do with her, Your Highness?” one of the guards asked deferentially, and for a moment, Irene had no idea what he was saying or who he was addressing. Then she noticed that every eye was on Raheem, who surveyed the situation like a man with infinite control over the world.
A number of emotions flickered over Raheem’s face. She could not track them at all. In the middle of what was one of the lowest points in her life, all she could do was watch Raheem’s face, as if she could see her fate and Peter’s there.
“Take her to the precinct,” he said finally. “I will be in contact with the chief of police and the international crime head.”
When he spoke like that, a part of the puzzle clicked into place. He had told her to call him Raheem, but that was just the start of it. She had thought him handsome, but she had ignored the part of herself that insisted she had seen him before.
As a matter of fact, she had seen his face on the news, on the Internet, and even on the magazine racks on her way through the airport. The man who had been comforting her, flirting with her, soothing away her fears, and making her smile, was none other than Sheikh Raheem ben Ali, the lord of Khanour and ruler of the country from which she was stealing.
As the guards started to lead her away, she twisted her head for one last look at Raheem, who looked as if he were a man carved from stone. He looked after her with a level eye and a stern gaze, but there was something soft there, something that she might only have imagined.
I’m sorry, she mouthed to him before they led her away. I am so sorry.
***
It should have been a good day for Raheem. He had closed negotiations with Dubai early, and though no one had exactly gotten what they wanted, he liked to believe that everyone had at least walked away from the table satisfied.
All he had wanted to do was to get home, kick some of the dust off his well-polished shoes, and spend some time not thinking about anything.
Of course, the comforts of home meant the warm embrace of his family, and that family, though loving, definitely had its own agenda. When his father had died three years ago, Raheem had sworn to himself that he would be happy to take over the task of looking after his mother and aunts. They loved him, they were grateful to him, and they were the ones that knew what was best for him. Of course, what was best for him lined up precisely with traditions that had originated some five hundred years ago in the desert wastes, and they didn’t quite understand that a modern man, let alone the modern ruler of a modern emirate, could not take the same actions as a horse lord might have centuries ago.
He had been heading home, ready to take on the gauntlet of his female relatives, but then something about the small blond sitting in the airport lounge had caught his eye. Even now, he couldn’t say what it was. He knew what the police officers would have said. They would say he had picked out a criminal with the native sharp instincts of his ferocious ancestors. They would say he had picked up on the thousand invisible cues of a wrongdoer and pounced with intent to capture and restrain.
He knew that it hadn’t been that.
There was something about the girl—Irene Bellingham, he remembered, if that was her real name—that had captured his eye, and once she had it, she would not let him go. He had known many women who were far more beautiful, many women who were far more educated and polished, but something about this woman had caught him and held him.
If the thief hadn’t appeared like the righteous hand of providence, he would have simply said goodbye to her and thought of her from time to time. But the thief had intervened, and when that occurred, had revealed a much greater crime.
He had known what the statue was the moment he had seen it, and when he thought about that previously lost treasure leaving his country, he saw red. It was the work of the master craftsman Qebbi ben Faddir, who had made only four such statues some three hundred years ago. Only one had ever been recovered, and this second one was thought have been destroyed decades ago.
He had come home from his talks with the police and with the agents in charge of international matters. He had stalked past his relatives and gone straight to his apartments at the palace. When some ill-advised person had tried to knock on his door, Raheem had roared with anger and thrown a valuable cut glass tumbler at the door. The shattering glass had been satisfying, but only for a moment.
His people had stories of evil spirits that could follow you for all your days. A moment’s carelessness, and suddenly, one of these spirits would appear, following you and bedeviling you so that you never received a moment of peace or rest.
He had never wondered before what one of those monsters might look like, but now he was becoming to believe that it had blond hair and blue eyes that were like falling into the deepest part of an oasis pool.
Even through his fury, her bright blue gaze had cut him right through the heart. The police were leading her away to face her crimes, and when she turned to him, she had not begged for her life. She had not cursed at him or smirked, either one of which would have at least made sense.
No, she had looked at him, and she had apologized. There was grief and sorrow in her heart, but none of it seemed focused on getting caught or in losing a valuable treasure. Instead, Irene had wanted to apologize to him, and that had struck a hard blow against his heart, stunning him.
Even now, hours later, he couldn’t understand it.
He strode to the balcony and cast it open to stand in the cool night air. The sun had set hours ago, but now the glow from the city of Khanour itself could be seen. One of the richest cities in the emirates, and one of the most modern, it shone like a star itself, casting a glow so vivid that someone might believe that the city had turned night into day.
In Khanour, Raheem ruled without question. There was a parliament to govern the city, but when he chose to intervene in civic matters, his word was literally law.
Why now did he feel so powerless? What had happened in that airport, over that scanty hour, that had changed him?
H
e was changed now, no matter how hard he tried to deny it. He felt like a beast brought to bay, something changing without any way to answer or halt it.
Raheem looked down over his kingdom, and he knew what the answer was. It lay with a beautiful girl in one of the darkest places in Khanour, and he had to have her.
CHAPTER TWO
As soon as she was captured, Irene had shut her mouth. She didn’t know what was happening, she knew that things were very bad, and she knew that she could not make them any better by speaking in her own defense.
She was treated gently enough, as these things went. Irene knew that it could have been much worse. The two female guards who held her shoved her roughly into the van on the way to the jail, but she could hardly expect better when she had literally been in the middle of robbing their cultural heritage.
At the jail, they brought her the man who was intended to act as her advocate, but he had quickly become frustrated when she refused to speak at all.
“I cannot help you if you will not talk,” he said over and over again. “We have looked at your history, and we know that you are not a criminal, or at least you have never been before. Who is forcing you to do this? Who is behind this? You need not suffer for the crimes of others!”
He pleaded and argued, bullied and cajoled, but throughout it all, she remained silent. More than once, she was tempted to give in, to tell them everything. Then she remembered the video of her brother in that horrible room, the sound of his voice begging her to help him. No matter what they did to her, she could count on the men who held Peter doing something a dozen times worse to him if she gave them up.
She remained silent. Twenty-four hours later, Irene learned that she had made the right choice. In her narrow cell, food was delivered through a slot in the door. She poked at the meal with a lack of interest until she lifted her small bottle of water and found underneath it a curl of hair that was the exact shade of her own. The message was clear. She had to maintain her silence, or her brother would die.
