Sheik Protector (9 page)

Objective number one: Don’t let the crazies capture and kill her.

Objective number two: Get home.

She drew her lungs full of air, wishing she could draw herself full of confidence as easily. They needed a plan.

Think
.

Karim’s security could get no more information out of the intruder. They were looking for the man who had supposedly paid him for the breakin. But even that guy might just be another link in the chain and not the one who’d actually put a price on Karim’s head.

Okay, here it went. The single idea she’d been able to come up with to get them out of this jam. “What if you found the statues first, and tried to bargain with them?”

Karim stared at her. Not a half-bad idea. He liked that she was always thinking—except when she plotted to get away from him—and liked her intelligence. She was the kind of woman any man would be proud to call his wife. Any man who meant to marry. His life was too complicated to allow for that. He funneled his thoughts back to the problem at hand.

If they could locate the statues, they could pretend to bargain with them. He was not willing to hand them over for real. For one, whoever wanted them destroyed would kill him and Julia afterward anyway. Two, he believed in preserving history, whether it was positive or negative, whether he agreed with it or not. Everything had value in life, even one’s mistakes. Bad or good, there were always things to be learned from the past.

If he had the statues, maybe he could draw his enemies out into the open with them. Draw them out, identify them, take them out. It was the only way to safety for him, for Julia and her child.

His enemies believed that Aziz had the statues. Having seen the collection in the attic, he was inclined to think that they were right. Obviously, Aziz had found a large pre-Islamic cache he had told no one about.

But someone knew. Aziz’s men for one. He hadn’t dug out the statues and moved them to the attic on his own. And this Abdul Nidal guy in the
souk
.

He would start with them, Karim decided, and began to plan.

J
ULIA PACED
while Karim made some calls, hating that she didn’t understand a word of what he said.

“So?” she asked when he finally put the phone down.

“Abdul Nidal is a disreputable antiquities dealer. His name has been connected to smuggling valuable artifacts out of the country in the past, but there was never enough proof to do anything about it. He is from an old, respected family with connections everywhere. Even the police are reluctant to touch him.”

“So there is nothing we can do?” Disappointment tasted bitter on her tongue.

He flashed her an amused look. “I am Sheik Karim.”

Then he said something to one of his men, who took off immediately. Next he sent another man away, who returned within ten or fifteen minutes, with boxes of food.

She could have hugged Karim with gratitude as she inhaled the wonderful aromas, saliva gathering in her mouth. Fresh-baked meat, couscous, seasoned rice, fruits and cheeses found their way onto plates.

His men drew back from the upstairs dining room after setting it right, having picked up overturned chairs and taking out a broken crystal bowl. The two of them were left to eat in private.

Karim seemed preoccupied, but she wasn’t sure he’d be in any better mood later, so she pushed ahead.

“I’d like to have my passport back.”

“You won’t need any identification. While you are here, everywhere you go I’ll be with you.”

“I’d like to go home. I’m not much use to you in finding the statues. You knew Aziz much better. You’d know better where he hid them. You know the country much better. I would only be in your way.”

“You’ve been through a lot. Rest a few days. We’ll talk about this and find a solution.”

He didn’t mean a word of that, she was sure. He was just playing for time. She hated how unreasonably stubborn he could get. “I have to go back and find another job. I have to pay my rent or they’ll kick me out of my apartment and confiscate the furniture.” That had been something she’d worried a lot about just a few days ago. Not so much since the threat of imminent death came into the picture. “I have a life back home and the longer I stay, the more thoroughly that will fall apart.”

He looked up with an expression that said he hadn’t considered that.

“Not everyone lives in their own fully staffed palace.” She couldn’t help the jab.

“I’ll have the apartment taken care of. Just write down the details.”

He would? She’d half expected him to say not to worry about the apartment because she’d be locked up here, a prisoner for the rest of her life. His acknowledging that she would eventually return was a good thing. But he clearly thought it wouldn’t happen for a while yet, which was not. “I don’t want you to take care of my life.”

“If I don’t—” impatience made his voice harsh “—you won’t have it much longer.”

“I’ll be safer at home.” She wanted to believe that and even succeeded from time to time.

“Will you? Because religious extremists never went to the U.S. to do their dirty business there?”

And she could say nothing to that. The bones in her body seemed to go soft all of a sudden with the thought that he was right, that if these maniacs had set their sights on her, there’d be no hiding from them.

She shored up her defenses against the panic. Those men couldn’t want her badly enough to follow her. She had nothing to do with the statues. He was exaggerating. He had to be. He just wanted her scared and compliant so he would get his way.

The words were on her tongue, but she bit them back. If she were to get away from him, it would be better if he thought that she agreed with him, that she’d given up. She went back to her food.

She was just about finished when one of his men came in and said something in Arabic.

“I’ll be right back.” He stood. “Why don’t you stay here and relax for a while.”

She didn’t respond, only scowled after him, feeling slightly juvenile. Not that she wanted to be involved in this any more than she already was. As she’d told him, she could be of no use whatsoever. But if he was so sure that her life was on the line, too, he could have at least told her what was going on.

She finished the last of the food on her plate then looked around, took a deep breath. Okay, so Karim had no intention of letting her go. But she had to go, had to go now before the baby was born. Because once her child was born, they would do the test and would know for sure that the baby was Aziz’s. Then they would never let her go, or would force her to choose between her freedom and her baby.

An escape now, when she was barely showing, had to be easier than later on when she had twenty or thirty extra pounds on her, or with a baby that she had to hide.

The only tempting thing about staying was the high-quality medical care she would get here. From what she’d seen, sheiks and their families got the red-carpet treatment at the Tihrin hospital. She regretted that she didn’t have a job and the health care she could afford from her meager savings was less than stellar. If she didn’t succeed in getting work when she got back to the U.S…. She couldn’t think about that now. She had to stay positive.

Even if she couldn’t get a job right away, everything would be okay. She did have savings. But as a first-time mother, she spent a fair time worrying about what would happen if something went wrong.

She couldn’t afford complications.

She pushed her chair back and stood, went to the door to listen. Couldn’t hear anything. She opened the door a crack. Nobody seemed to be out in the hallway. She stepped out and crossed over to the end of the railing that looked out over the open space below.

Karim sat on the couch with his back to her. Still, she pulled half behind the wall to her right. She didn’t want him to see her if he turned around. Two of his men were standing in front of him. The other two brought a stranger in as she watched.

Karim and his men wore dark suits. The newcomer had traditional robes on and looked decidedly nervous. He bowed to Karim, who offered him a seat, then he said something to his men and they left the room, but somehow the gesture made this seem more threatening than if they had stayed. The visitor must have thought so, too. Julia saw sunlight glint off the beads of sweat on his forehead.

He spoke in rapid Arabic, his eyes shifting to Karim then to the ground, as if he was desperately trying to explain something.

Karim said a single, hard-edged sentence.

Now the man began to protest, his expression wavering between worry and desperation, interspersed with some forced smiles.

Karim asked a question now and then. He didn’t raise his voice. He made no threatening gestures. But even so, there was something in his posture, in the way he directed his focus on the man that even made Julia uneasy.

At long last, the man rose from his chair and collapsed at Karim’s feet. She couldn’t tell from her vantage point if his forehead actually touched Karim’s shoes, but it sure looked like it from here.

Then Karim called for his men and stood as they led the visitor away.

He turned, his gaze unerringly finding hers, his face expressionless. Had he known, once again, that she had watched?

Since there was no point in trying to hide now, she stepped away from the wall and walked down the stairs. And realized as Karim walked forward and waited for her—all wide shoulders and intense looks—that medical coverage was not, in fact, the only tempting thing about remaining in Beharrain.

“Who was that?” she asked him as he reached the floor.

“Abdul Nidal. The man who sent that thief in here to look for the statues.” He was all business now, all hard angles, focused on whatever plans he was assembling in his head.

“What does he know?”

Karim watched her face for a moment, as if debating whether to tell her or not. Which really galled her, but she kept quiet. Fighting him at every turn would just get his dander up.

“He was contacted by someone who received information that my brother unearthed some valuable items and was asked to locate them.”

“Who asked him?”

“The contact was made anonymously, through a carrier.”

Her heart sank. She wanted Karim to catch those bastards who’d killed Aziz and very nearly killed her as well. Plus, if he was busy chasing after them, she might have a better chance of getting away. Things would be much easier if both Karim and the bad guys were distracted long enough for her to get out of the country.

Even if she wouldn’t be much safer from them at home than here, she would rather face any unpleasantness on her home ground with the full power of U.S. laws and law enforcement to protect her.

“He knew nothing else?” she asked.

“He seemed to think that whoever his customer was, he’d gotten his information from someone close to Aziz. He seemed to have a lot of details about the drawing.”

“Do you know who it could have been?”

“Anyone who was there when Aziz made the find. Plus anyone who helped him to move those statues here. He had a regular crew he used when he went out into the desert on one of his treasure hunts.” He looked off into the distance. “He was obsessed the last couple of years. First, the king found our great-grandfather’s treasures that had been raided from the caravans. Then the king’s brother found a whole lost palace.” He shook his head. “Aziz was determined that other things were out there, waiting for him. He never lived to see our brother, Tariq, find the last king’s hidden hoard of gold bars at his oasis resort in the desert.”

“He did have his own find,” Julia said.

“That’s right.” Karim looked up, his face etched with sadness. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell any of us.”

Was that hurt in his voice? Was he close enough to his twin brother that he had expected Aziz to share everything? She had no experience in that department. The last time she had seen her siblings she’d been nine. But losing them still hurt. She couldn’t imagine how much it must have hurt to lose a twin after sharing everything for the past thirty years.

“I’m going to start with Aziz’s security,” Karim said. “They’d been reassigned to the company.” And he was dialing already to summon them.

A
S IT TURNED OUT
, Karim and she returned to Karim’s own home under heavy guard where he interrogated members of Aziz’s security who’d been ordered to report there. She took a bath and ate another little snack while she waited for him to finish. And when he hadn’t come to her quarters to give her an update by noon, she went looking for him on her own, finding him in his office.

He looked up from his computer, his full attention immediately focused on her. “Do you have need of anything? Is everything all right?”

And she blinked for a second, because those weren’t questions she’d heard a whole lot in her life. Certainly not from her parents, and not from any of the foster families, either. She had a few trusted friends now, friends who were probably frantic not having heard from her for days. But that circle was a small one. She had trouble taking relationships from businesslike and superficial—which she had mastered with the donors at work—to a more personal level.

Odd that despite being seriously annoyed at Karim, on some level she felt comfortable with him, and that had happened with lightning speed. Perhaps because he did remind her a little of Aziz and because he was her baby’s uncle, so in that way they were now related.

After all these years she had family. She couldn’t help the grin that split her face.

“Is everything okay?” Karim asked her again, with a look of suspicion this time.

He hadn’t seen her smile a lot, or ever, she realized. But, hey, that was his own fault. He shouldn’t have kidnapped her.

She had a family member who’d kidnapped her. Someone she was ditching at the first opportunity to escape. Another thought occurred to her. Her newfound family was decidedly dysfunctional. It barely dimmed her smile. Even that sounded so wonderfully real.

“I broke the comb in my room. Sorry.” She ran her fingers through her hair to indicate what a tangled mess it was. “Could I have another one? I need industrial strength.”

He looked at her for a moment then opened his top drawer and rifled through it. Didn’t look as if he found what he was looking for, because he moved on to the next drawer after a few seconds.

“Try this.” He held up a shiny object before bringing it over. A pick comb, but not like any she’d seen before. The handle was thick and sturdy, decorated with what looked like turquoise, the whole thing as large as Karim’s hand.

She couldn’t resist taking it. “It’s beautiful. Is it…um…gold?” The piece was obviously handmade, with stunning workmanship.

“I helped the Bedu women of my tribe once with the wool trade. Some of them gave their jewelry, had it melted and remade into this as a thank-you gift.”