by Dana Marton
“Not until we have the sheik.”
He didn’t ask questions. Keep your head down and collect the money—that was the game he played.
THEY HAD THE house surrounded. Amir squatted behind a row of boxwood bushes across the road in a neighbor’s yard—waiting for the signal.
“We go in. You observe,” Wolf was saying next to him, his tone all business. “Maybe take this time to give Wade Freeman a call. He’s been checking in with me every couple of days for news of you. He’d been concerned.” Wolf’s tone said he knew of the secret brotherly connection.
“Who else knows?” Introducing his long-lost half brother to the public had to be done delicately. His existence was going to bring about some political complications no doubt.
“Only Saida.” He shifted. “It’s time. You sit tight.”
“I’m going in.”
“With all due respect, Sheik Amir, you’re not.”
He fixed the man with his most authoritative glare. “You cannot stop me.”
“I can handcuff you to the mailbox.”
“And marry my sister?” He gave the guy a level look.
Wolf shot his own level look back. “Are you blackmailing a sheriff?”
“A simple conversation between potential family members.”
“I cannot officially authorize a civilian joining a takedown.” Wolf looked at the house. “Wait at least a minute before you follow me, despite an express order to stay here.”
Amir was starting to like the man. He had a backbone and a sense of humor. Of course, he should have known that. Saida couldn’t abide weak-lings. But before he could give more thought to his sister’s chosen mate, the sheriff gave the signal and rushed forward in a crouch, along with the rest of his men, who were closing in on the disheveled rancher from every direction.
The house was silent and looked abandoned, and for a moment Amir worried that they might have gotten here too late, but then shouting sounded from inside even before Wolf’s men reached the entrances. Then the cops were breaking down the door, pouring in.
To hell with a full minute. Amir stood, ready to charge, just as the black van exploded through the closed garage door, dragging some of the paneling with it. His gun was raised before he realized who was behind the steering wheel.
“It’s all right. It’s her. It’s Isabelle!” he shouted to some of the cops who came rushing back out, and they went back in where gunfire and shouts indicated full-out battle.
The van was next to him, slowing.
He tore the passenger door open and jumped in, not caring one bit if he tore out a couple of stitches. “Keep going!”
She stepped on the gas like she meant it, the tires kicking up gravel behind them, the garage door paneling coming loose as they shot forward.
“Are you hurt?” He was inspecting every inch of her, worried even if there was no visible injury.
“Fine. Where to?” Her hands were shaking. She winced. “I’m not cut out for this. I’m a surgeon, for heaven’s sake. My hands never shake.”
“To the end of the street. I don’t want to switch seats here. Too many bullets flying.” He glanced back. The old him would have never left a fight in progress. The new him…
She was safe. He was content to let the police handle the rest. All right, not content, but willing. He would have liked nothing more than to stand face-to-face with his enemies and teach them a couple of important lessons about messing with him and the people he cared for.
Bloodlust rose in him.
But he cared more about Isabelle than he cared about revenge. His need to see her safe was stronger than his warrior ancestors’ blood, which sang in his veins.
Yes, he cared that much about her. And not just as the mother of his son. Feelings he wasn’t familiar with had taken up residence inside his chest, feelings that squeezed his heart with worry when they were apart and filled him with joy at the sight of her. Feelings that, he suspected, were going to complicate everything.
She drove to the corner, then pulled over, laid her arms on the steering wheel and her head over them. Her face was a shade paler than usual. “That was…close. Just give me a second.”
“Did anyone hurt you?” He put his gun on the dashboard so he could pull her over and into his arms. They could afford a brief pause. Wolf had brought enough men to take care of whomever had kidnapped Isabelle.
She came willingly to his side, sliding over on the bench seat. “They only took me because they thought you might come for me.”
“Of course I would. I know you think that counting on a man is a bad thing. But I am an honorable man. You can count on me.”
He would take her back to the resort, to safety, then go down to the police station and watch as Wolf brought the bastards in, pull whatever strings he could to make sure they stayed incarcerated permanently. He would know who was behind this by the end of today, a thought he found immensely cheering. “Did you recognize any of them?”
“They are the same people who came to the cabin.”
“Hired men. Did you overhear anything?”
“They didn’t talk much in front of me. I was locked up in the basement alone.”
The need to interrogate and punish those men was overwhelming. For the sake of international relations, however, he would leave them to Wolf. But the man who was behind these thugs would answer to him personally; he would see to that. He had every confidence that his friends were on the same page and would put their influence behind him.
The thought that Isabelle could have gotten hurt was unbearable.
“How did you even find me?” she asked. “I didn’t think you would. I had the key to the car.”
She didn’t have those keys now, or her purse, he noticed. “Just as well. They probably put a tracker on the car after we left it in that alley. They couldn’t have tracked us to the hospital otherwise. I found you with some help from my friends. I had the van’s license-plate number.”
“Are your friends back there, in that fight?” A fresh load of worry filled her voice.
“Back at the resort. I’m here with the sheriff’s department.” She felt wonderful in his arms, like she belonged there. And she did. He would do whatever it took to make her see it.
She lifted her head to look at him. “You decided to trust the police? Doesn’t that risk your life and the lives of the other royals? I thought nobody was to be trusted.”
“A risk we had to take.” He had found that he was willing to risk just about everything for Isabelle.
“But you’re all sheiks and princes. I’m just a plain everyday person. I’m not worth all that.”
He held her gaze. He couldn’t understand why nobody had told her yet how far she was from plain. “You are worth everything to me.” The staggering truth of that simple statement caught him off guard.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to wrap me in cotton. I was kidnapped and I got away. I did it.” She bit her bottom lip, making him want to kiss the spot. “Okay, fine, I do admit wishing that you were there with me. I do understand the importance of teamwork. I rely on it in the O.R. to keep patients alive. You and I together managed to keep ourselves alive in the past two days. I can’t argue that we don’t make a decent team.”
That last sentence pleased him inordinately. He might have even grinned. “You’re getting used to me. You’ll barely notice that we’re married.”
She arched one dark, feminine eyebrow. “Somehow I doubt that very sincerely.”
“How about we try and see?”
Before she could shoot his proposal down once again, the small window separating the cab from the rest of the van opened and a gun emerged, the barrel pressing against her head.
“Throw the gun out the window,” a disembodied voice said from the darkness.
Amir’s body clenched. This was not how it was going to end. He silently swore to that.
The blood ran out of Isabelle
’s face, leaving her skin so light, it was practically translucent. Her blue eyes were wide, her gaze hanging on his face.
His first instinct, as always, was to fight. But Isabelle and her son were too important to him to put at risk. “Everything is going to be fine,” he told her. “We are going to do whatever he says.”
He took his gun with his right hand, rolled the window down and tossed the weapon out. And while the man’s attention was on that, with his left hand Amir surreptitiously pocketed a cell phone that someone had left in the cup holder.
A police car flew by them, sirens blaring, heading toward the house. It was gone way too fast for either of them to catch the driver’s attention.
“Pull slowly away from the curb and drive,” the man behind the partition told Isabelle. “And don’t do anything stupid.”
Chapter Eight
She’d been so close to making it. Fear mixed with frustration inside Isabelle as she drove. She’d made it out of the house unseen. She’d gotten the van. Amir was with her. But they were in even more trouble than ever before. She wasn’t sure there was an out this time, any way to escape.
“How badly were you shot?” she asked Amir under her breath, noting the bulging bandages under his shirt.
“It’s nothing.”
“Shut up,” the man in the back yelled, then instructed her to take the first road out of town, and from there an insignificant country road she was barely familiar with.
They even left that after a couple of miles, moving on to dirt roads Isabelle had never seen and that led deep into the woods, probably used only by trappers and hunters. Some Texicano family had moved up from the Austin area and had a farm out this way, on the other side of the woods, she thought, but wasn’t sure.
They were in the middle of nowhere with an armed kidnapper, in a van that smelled like stale beer and cigarette smoke. He had to have been in the back all along. In the excitement of the moment, she had never thought to check. This was so not her world. She didn’t think like some action movie super spy heroine or a Special Forces soldier. She was a soon-to-be mom, bloated and tired, with swollen ankles.
“I demand that you let her go,” Amir said in a tone that would make most men want to automatically obey.
It even made Isabelle snap to.
“I demand that you shut up.” The jerk in the back sneered at him, obviously not affected. He held the only weapon. He had every reason to be cocky.
“She has nothing to do with this. You don’t need her for anything.”
Amir was right about that. They’d kidnapped her in that parking garage in the first place only to draw him out, and now they had him. They wanted him dead. They wouldn’t have blown up his limousine a month ago if they didn’t. And now they wanted her dead, too. She was an asset that had outlived its usefulness, a cumbersome witness. She had no illusions about what would happen next, why they were being taken to an abandoned area. If they survived the next couple of hours, it would be a miracle.
“Faster,” the man barked at her.
Fingers in a death grip around the steering wheel, she pushed harder on the gas pedal, but then eased off again little by little, playing for time. “The road is too rough. If I go any faster, I’ll bust a tire and then we’ll be stuck out here.”
She needed to be ready to grab the slightest opportunity, so she kept her eyes on their surroundings, hoping that they would run into someone, the bird-watcher club, those Texicano farmers, anyone she could use as a distraction, anyone who might help.
Unfortunately, no such opportunity presented itself. Not many people ever came out this way, the road little more than a trail.
Then they came around a bend and she spotted a wooden shack up ahead. The worn wood-plank walls and moss-covered roof completely blended into their surroundings. Looked like the structure had been standing here for decades, overgrown with vines and weeds, forlorn in a spooky kind of way.
All she could think of was, Unabomber’s cabin.
“Stop,” the man in the back ordered. “You get out,” he told Amir. “One wrong move, you camel-jockey terrorist bastard, and I shoot her. You wanna make my day, huh? You wanna make my day?”
“I will do whatever you say.” Amir was the picture of calm, opening the door slowly and leaving it open behind him.
“Inside. Now,” their captor shouted at him.
Amir did as he was told, disappearing from sight into the darkness of the shack.
Blood thrummed loudly in Isabelle’s ears. Why were they being separated?
Keep calm. It’s not over yet. Stress and elevated blood pressure were a danger to the baby. She focused on staying composed. She couldn’t afford to let the fear rule her. She put a shaky hand on her belly. Mommy is going to handle this. We’re going to be fine.
“Don’t you move.” The man kept his gun on her. “I’m getting out the back and comin’ around. Don’t even think about runnin’.”
She wasn’t. She could never outrun him on the uneven ground, not nine-months pregnant. But even if she could outrun him, she couldn’t outrun a bullet.
She used the time while he went around to search the glove compartment, hoping for a weapon of her own. All she found was a Phillips-head screwdriver. Better than nothing. She hid it under her dress just as the man appeared outside her door.
“Get out,” he ordered, revealing stained teeth. His lower lip stuck out from the wad of tobacco he was chewing.
He brushed his thinning, greasy hair back with his free hand in a nervous gesture, his red-rimmed eyes darting around. He was nearly as tall as Amir, but Amir was a lot less gaunt, even with his recent illness. This guy had the look of a man who got most of his daily caloric intake in the form of alcoholic beverages. Completely unstable, was her thought, not exactly reassuring.
She slipped from the car, keeping an eye on him, holding one hand on her belly, surreptitiously clasping the screwdriver in place under her shirt.
“Get inside. Now!”
A fallen branch or a good-size stone in her path to hit him over the head with would come in handy. She could see neither within reach. Of course, whether she could bend over in a hurry was questionable. She waddled to the shack, eager to be with Amir. His presence had become a comfort to her. Was that wrong? Did it mean that she was slipping into the dreaded dependency trap?
No, she decided. These were extraordinary circumstances. The regular rules of conduct could take a break when you were in the middle of the woods, have been kidnapped and were about ready to have a baby.
She stepped into the semidarkness of the shack, was shoved forward impatiently past Amir, who’d been standing by the door. Before she could take a good look around, the door slammed shut with force. The padlock clicked with a grim finality.
A shiver of foreboding ran down her spine. “Oh, God.”
Then Amir was by her side, pulling her into his arms before she could stumble over something. She melted into the familiar scent and shape of him, and remained in his arms, breathing him in, leaning against his strength. They were still alive and the baby was unharmed. For now that was all that mattered.
She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, trying to come up with a plan and failing.
“I got him,” the man said outside their locked room.
So he wasn’t alone. Someone must have been here, hiding, waiting for them. Escape just got another notch more difficult.
The man kept on talking, swearing deliberately. Nobody ever answered.
“He’s talking on the phone,” Amir whispered next to her ear.
She sagged against him in relief as she listened, hoping for a clue, something they could use to get away from this place.
“Damn police raided the house. The pregnant bitch snatched the van. I was sleepin’ in the back, mindin’ my own business. With everyone yappin’ in the house, too damned loud to get any shut-eye in there.”
A moment of silence.
“That’s what I’m sayin’. I hear someone
get in, and next thing I know, the witch is goin’ through the garage door. Then the sheik bastard jumps in. I recognized him from the picture you been showin’.”
Another moment of silence.
“Out at the old McClusky shed. Can I kill ’em yet? No sense in waitin’. Hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night out here.” He waited for the answer.
Amir pushed her behind him with a gentleness that touched her, standing between her and the door, ready to face imminent attack. Ready to take a bullet for her. Her heart turned over in her chest. She pulled out the screwdriver and gripped it in her hand, prepared to help him fight whatever would come next.
“Don’t worry,” the man was saying outside, his tone betraying that he was disappointed with the response he’d gotten. “They ain’t goin’ anywhere. They’ll wait.”
Then there was nothing but silence.
She swallowed hard, lowering the screwdriver as her heartbeat slowed. They’d been granted a reprieve.
She stepped away from Amir, and after a minute or two, when her eyes adjusted to the minimal light, she looked around her new prison. The place was worse than the basement office, dirtier and full of spiders. A nasty, dusty camp bed took up the far wall, the only place to sit. A rusty woodstove hid in the corner. Cigarette butts and candy wrappers littered the floor, along with other indistinguishable old garbage.
She so didn’t want to die in a place like this. She wanted her baby to be born, for them to have a future. She wrapped her arms around her belly and blinked back her tears.
AMIR PULLED OUT THE phone he’d lifted from the van earlier and dialed. He asked for Prince Efraim’s suite in a whisper when the other end was picked up.
“Where the hell are you?” Darek asked.
“We’re out in the woods, at the end of some country road. At the McClusky shed. Jake Wolf should know where it is. If you can’t reach Wolf, get a GPS on this phone signal.”
He wanted to say a lot more, but he didn’t want the kidnapper to hear him, figure out he had the phone. That phone was their lifeline for the time being.
