Ryshia Kennie - Desire In The Desert

“No. You don’t want to intimidate them with too big a show of force,” he said, flattering the boy. “We’ll find her,” he assured him as Baz nodded and left.

They ate their meal quickly and in silence. It was sustenance only and, oddly, a moment to collect their thoughts individually before they began brainstorming all over again.

“We’ve still got nothing but assumptions as to where they’ve taken her. For all we know, she could still be in the city, she might never have left,” Emir said as he picked up their plates and utensils and set them on a tray Baz had left on a table by the entrance.

“I’m not so sure,” Kate said.

She looked young and too fresh and pretty to have wielded a gun as efficiently as she did. He’d read in the file that she was twenty-eight years old.

“The evidence on the man in the airport seemed to indicate desert or rural. And Tara’s security indicated the same. That’s what we’ll have to stick to, barring further evidence.”

Emir scowled. “So far it’s the best we have.”

“Exactly,” she agreed.

He watched as she stood, walked into the hallway and over to a white-marble pillar that was just one of many lining the length of the two-hundred-foot hallway. He knew she wouldn’t find any answers there. Only space.

As familiar as he was with all of it, he still, at times, felt the overpowering opulence of the office walls. He’d seen her look of surprise when he’d first brought her into his office. He imagined she thought he’d decorated it to suit his personality rather than realizing what it was: a tribute to the generations that had come before him.

If it were up to him, the office would be simpler, less elegant. The rosewood desk was opulent enough to stand alone. Sitting on a richly vibrant, deep, brown-and-blue Persian rug that covered the majority of the floor made it even more so. And yet neither the opulence of the desk nor the richness of the rug or the elegance of the other accessories fit with the pictures on the office wall. Pictures of his brothers and his sister in various locations—a ski hill, a beach—and at all different ages, and then a picture of all of them together. He knew that it all appeared as if he’d moved into someone else’s home and never added anything to his own liking, except, possibly, the pictures. And it didn’t matter to him. This was his family’s history and he honored it. The decor meant nothing more than that.

He knew she was back, he could sense her before he looked up and saw her. She took a step past the doorway, facing him but not looking at him, obviously focused on her thoughts. He imagined from the expression on her face that she might be replaying in her mind what had been done so far. He waited as minutes passed silently between them before she spoke.

“At least if the tower dump info you requested on the first call would come in...” She walked toward him. “What range are they using?”

“I kept it fairly simple. The city limits and thirty miles out. Fortunately the call came in early in the morning. The traffic was light. There were only a little over six hundred,” he said. “With Barb, we’ve got the best on it. We can’t do more.”

The tower dump had requested cell phone companies in the area to reveal records of users during a specific time frame. It was an invasion of privacy implemented only at the request of law enforcement and, in situations like this, where Nassar Security had pull and reach.

She frowned at him.

“Sorry, you’ve never met Barb Alamy.”

“Not officially,” she agreed. “I’m just curious. Western given name...”

“She’s an American who came to Morocco on vacation. Long story short, she’s been here over a decade, married a local man. Now she’s the office tech guru and has since taken over research.”

“I don’t know how you found her, but Barb’s definitely a tech guru.”

“She found us,” he admitted of his recent addition. “And now we have her working in both offices.”

“She’ll be busy on this one.”

A minute later she yawned. “We should get some sleep. Or at least try,” she said.

She was right. He’d woken this morning into a nightmare and hadn’t had time or thought to even run a comb through his hair. His only consideration for the last fourteen hours had been Tara and he knew she would be his purpose until she was home safe. Yet, as he met the blue smoke of Kate’s eyes, he felt oddly connected, calm.

Minutes seemed to tick by like hours. She yawned again and stretched out on one of two leather sofas that rested against opposing corners of the sprawling office. He got up and brought a blanket to her, laying it gently over her.

“You should get some sleep, too,” she suggested.

But fifteen minutes later he knew she wasn’t going to sleep, either. He could hear her turn this way and that. He stood at the window, the thought of sleep an impossibility. He leaned against the ledge. There was nothing for them to do and nowhere for them to go, and it was killing him.

Suddenly her phone buzzed a warning for an incoming text message. He turned around and switched on a nearby light as she sat up, the blanket spilling around her waist, and pulled her phone from her pocket. There was something oddly erotic at seeing her in that state, sleepy, although she hadn’t slept, her hair mussed, as if she’d just had a passionate... He bit back the thought.

“I didn’t know that you left my number for the tower dump info,” she said.

“My phone stays here,” he said, his voice husky with conflicting emotion, fear for Tara, desire for Kate. Only one of those emotions was acceptable and it seemed he could control neither. “I’ll take the satellite phone.”

“I suppose I should have assumed that as we’re not taking your phone with us.”

“Right. Zafir will be acting in my stead. Pretending to be me.”

She paused as she read the message. She frowned. “The location changed slightly. Barb says the original call came from thirty miles southeast of Marrakech.” She scrolled down and then looked up.

“We head out at first light exactly as we planned, nothing changes,” he said. “Anything else?”

“I’d suggest we leave earlier. We could be going deep into the desert or not.” She shrugged. “It’s a crap shoot at this point and we don’t know what we might encounter. We can make up time on the highway at night, head in the general direction of that call. That way, if anything goes wrong or changes—we’re already on the road. I’d feel better about that. I’m sure you would, too.”

Minutes passed and turned into an hour. The silence was becoming unbearable.

Then Emir’s phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket and looked at the caller ID.

“Faisal.”

He was surprised, and yet oddly not, to see that it was his brother. Faisal was the only one in the family who hadn’t known about Tara. He guessed that was no longer the case.

“Yeah,” he answered, thinking how few telephone conversations he had with Faisal except on a business level. They usually communicated by text. That fact alone told him that Faisal knew what had happened.

“I heard about Tara, man.” There was tension and worry straining Faisal’s voice.

Emir gripped the phone, wishing he had news, something to give his brother, hope for all of them. Faisal was close to Tara in ways neither he nor the rest of his brothers were. For Zafir and Emir, and even Talib, she had been the child they had raised. For Faisal, who was nearest in age, she was his childhood playmate and friend, and even now, as adults, they were close to each other. That was one of the key reasons why Emir didn’t trust Faisal not to go off on a mission to kill those who had taken his sister. As a result, they had delayed telling him.