Dana Marton - Undercover Sheik

Nasir sat to block the tent’s opening, his rifle laid across his knees. “It’s safer here. Nobody will hurt you now.”

“Why?” Sadie asked cautiously.

“Because you’re mine.” The words fell from Nasir’s lips slowly, distinctly. “I claimed you in front of the others.”

“No.” She squared her body toward him, prepared to fight. If she could disable him, maybe she could stay hidden in his tent until nightfall, then take off.

“It’ll buy you time to find a safe way out. I’m here for some information. As soon as I have it, I’ll take you to the nearest village.”

Was he lying so he could catch her off guard later? She watched him and weighed his words. He hadn’t hurt her, not once. “Are you an undercover policeman or something?”

“Hardly. But you are safe in my tent.”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With many thanks to Allison Lyons and Maggie Scillia.

Dana Marton lives near Wilmington, Delaware. She has been an avid reader since childhood and has a master’s degree in writing popular fiction. When not writing, she can be found either in her garden or her home library. For more information on the author and her other novels, please visit her Web site at www.danamarton.com.

She would love to hear from her readers via e-mail: DanaMarton@yahoo.com.

Nasir ibn Ahmad—The brother of the king of Beharrain, Sheik Nasir is determined to keep Majid from starting a civil war and killing his family to regain the throne. But when he goes undercover among bandits, he finds more than clues to Majid’s whereabouts.

Sadie Kauffman, M.D.—Sadie was kidnapped by bandits from a field hospital in Yemen. Can she trust the most dangerous among them, Nasir, to save her life?

Majid—He swears to regain the king’s throne and kill anyone who stands in his way.

Umman—He is the leader of a group of conscienceless bandits and one of Majid’s supporters.

Saeed ibn Ahmad—Beharrain’s rightful king and Nasir’s brother.

Dara Alexander—The American woman who made headlines around the world by marrying Beharrain’s king.

Ali—He works for the royal stables. Is he involved in something sinister or is he just at the wrong place at the wrong time?

Abbas—A clerk at the royal palace. He owes much to the king, but maybe he’s motivated more by greed than gratitude.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Dr. Sadie Kauffman had been always skeptical of people who, as their death sentence neared, claimed to have changed and reformed. Now she believed it. Time made all the difference, being locked up with nothing to do but think. She’d had forty long days and nights to mull over what her life had been so far—a mad race for things that in hindsight didn’t matter. She would live differently. She rubbed her fingertips together. They tingled from nerves. Today was the day of her execution.

She watched one of the bandits as he plodded toward her makeshift prison, his rifle slung across his shoulder, his face wrapped in the trailing end of his headdress to protect him from the blowing sand. He opened the low door that had been nailed together from pieces of scrap wood, and swore at her as she stumbled out awkwardly, her legs numb from her cramped quarters.

“Move it,” the man said, and although she was limping forward as fast as she could, it wasn’t quick enough for him. He shoved his rifle barrel between her ribs to make her go faster.

She blinked toward the desert horizon. The sun had barely breached it. Her last sunrise. No, she wouldn’t think like that. She had to have hope. If the desert bandits killed her, what would they gain? They had to keep her alive to collect the ransom. She’d spent the night working out different ways to convince Umman, the camp’s leader, to extend the deadline.

It’ll work. They need the money.

She ran her fingers over her black headscarf and attached veil to make sure they exposed nothing but her eyes. The man kept shoving her at every few steps, toward the tents instead of the cooking fires as he would have on any other day.

“It’s as fast as I can go,” she snapped without heat. Did he even understand her? Other than Umman, the rest spoke no more English than the few words they used to order her around.

Her sandals sunk into the hot sand with each step. She still hadn’t learned to balance her weight just right, angle her feet so she could walk the terrain with ease like the men whose tents sprawled like giant, unworldly beasts on the sand ahead. Most had their flaps open—giant, yawning mouths getting ready to swallow their prey whole. She shivered despite the heat that had to be nearing a hundred degrees already.

She halted at the entrance of the largest tent, looked inside with quick, darting glances and kept her head down to make sure her gaze wouldn’t directly meet anyone else’s. Most of the bandits were in there, lounging on worn carpets and sipping spiced coffee.

“So your country cares not if you live or die.” The contemptuous voice was Umman’s.

As far as desert bandits went, they looked the part—Ali Baba and all that—missing teeth, savage faces, murderous weapons. They smelled the part, too.

“The money is coming,” she said with false confidence, knowing the U.S. never paid ransoms. She’d always thought that a reasonable policy—until now. “Today. It’s a lot of money.” Five million dollars.

The men didn’t appear to be impressed with her promise, nor did any of them look like they might be sympathetic to her cause. She was nothing to them, less than nothing—an annoyance, a reminder of a business plan that didn’t work out.

“You think me a fool.” The leader’s voice was low, yet it seemed to thunder across the tent. He was the oldest of the men, his face crackled with scars, his scraggly beard blending into gray as it fell to his worn brown robe.

She had no doubt he would cut her throat without thought, as he would cut a goat. As he had cut one of his own men not two weeks before for some minor insubordination.

“Your people show me great disrespect,” he said.

Her carefully crafted speech had sounded reasonable and convincing in her head in the quiet of the night, but now, faced with a tentful of bandits, the arguments she had prepared suddenly seemed laughably feeble.

“I’m a doctor. You might need me. A few more days—”

“Do not bargain with me.” Umman’s voice rose, thick with anger. “We do not need your kind of medicine. You think I would trust you?”

Apparently not. At first, when she had been kidnapped from the hospital, she’d been convinced they’d taken her to heal some bandit chief and would let her go once she was done. It had taken her days to realize the true severity of her situation.

There had to be words she could say to convince him to do just that. Think. Think!

Something shifted in the darkest corner—a man she hadn’t noticed, sitting away from the rest. She swallowed as she recognized the man she feared the most. Nasir. The sight of him scattered her few gathering thoughts.

Something in the man—an indefinable hardness, a dark purpose to his heart and murder in his eyes—made her get out of his way every time she’d found his gaze on her.

He was new to camp, had prodded in on his small camel two days after she’d been kidnapped from the field hospital. He had quickly gained the respect of the other men. There had been a fight or two at the beginning, testing the newcomer. Since then, most knew enough to steer clear of him.