Captured By A Sheikh

Chapter Four

Jazz had come home late one day from high school, proudly displaying the tattoo to which her boyfriend had treated her. It was her namesake, a little bunch of jasmine flowers.

“…appears to have been dead for several weeks,” said the announcer.

Several weeks. Holly’s head buzzed. If she could believe Griff, Jazz had been alive a month ago and had planned to pick up Ben in a few days.

She must have been killed in the interim. All this time that Holly had been searching, and jumping with fear at every ring of the phone or doorbell, her sister had been lying dead in the desert.

Who had done this? Had Jazz taken up with the wrong set of friends? Had Griff gotten greedy?

There was one other possibility she had to face. That Jazz had purposely sent her son to Holly because she was going to meet the one man who could take him from her.

Sheikh Sharif Al-Khalil.

Holly’s throat tightened until she could barely breathe. Could Sharif have done such a thing?

At the table, still in his robe, he lay sleeping harmlessly. Yet she could see the powerful thrust of his shoulders, and the strength in his arms. This was not a man to be trifled with.

She didn’t want to believe that the man who had gazed at Ben with such adoration, and treated her with such kindness this evening, might have killed Jazz. He’d spoken so rationally about hiring a lawyer and going to the police tomorrow, that she wanted to believe him.

But a calm facade could hide a lethal temper. Maybe, if crossed, he exploded into an uncontrollable fury.

In Holly’s mind burned an image of Jazz’s inert body, lying on a stretcher amid the glare of police lights. She’d been cast aside in the desert as if she were nothing. Only one little tattoo announced to the world that this was an individual, a person with friends and dreams of her own.

Through Holly’s grief, one point stood out: Her life might be in the same danger as her sister’s. Danger rose like woodsmoke, filling the cabin and obscuring every thought except that of flight.

When thunder rumbled, she caught her breath. Would it wake Sharif?

At the table, he muttered softly and shifted position, then stilled. His silence felt like a reprieve.

Gently, she lifted the baby. Since she had no coat, she made a cloak of the bedspread and draped it over them both.

She hated to take the baby into the rain, but she couldn’t leave him. If Sharif had a violent temper, he might unleash it on anyone at hand.

To reach the cabin door meant crossing the room. At the moment, it looked as wide as a football field.

Adrenaline and fear powered Holly out of the alcove. One noiseless step followed another.

A board creaked beneath her satin wedding pumps. Holly froze.

The man didn’t stir. She moved forward, acutely aware of the weight of the baby in one arm and the swish of fabric audible above the rain. Outside, the wind rose, and a branch scraped the window so loud that it sounded, to her ears, like a bomb blast.

The door. She turned the knob and pulled. It held stubbornly in place.

There had to be a bolt. She just hoped it didn’t require a key to open from the inside.

With Ben resting against her shoulder, Holly clamped the bedspread beneath one elbow to keep from dropping it as she probed with her free hand. Was the lock above or below the knob?

Next time I get kidnapped, I’ll make sure to check out the door while there’s enough light.

The grim humor steadied her, and she located a small slide-lock about six inches above the knob. Struggling against the stiff device while trying not the jolt the baby, she tugged on it.

The metal rasped, halted, then slid the rest of the way. Breathing hard, Holly grasped the knob.

Icy wind hit her in the face. Ben squirmed beneath the spread.

Trying to let in as little cold air as possible, she edged outside and closed the door. From beyond a small overhang, rain gusted into her face.

Holly could see nothing except sheets of water and the outline of black trees against a charcoal sky. It was as if she stood on an island surrounded by a raging sea.

A flare of lightning showed her a muddy, unpaved clearing overhung by low branches. A rutted path led away through the brush, with no lights or traffic noises to indicate how close a road might be.

Tightening the makeshift cloak, Holly stepped off the porch into the full force of the storm.

A RAW BLAST of air woke Sharif. He came awake instantly, his warrior’s training jolting him to full alert.

The door had opened. Someone had come in or gone out.

Cursing himself for falling asleep on watch, he ducked and dodged in case of attack. Nothing moved, other than a flicker of light from the TV screen. Except for him, the cabin was empty.

The woman had taken his child.

He had promised to deliver her safely to the authorities. She had agreed to tell them the truth. Now she had betrayed that agreement.

He knew better than to assume she was unarmed. Although there were no guns in the cabin, she might have found a knife in a drawer.

A pat of his robe confirmed that the phone was in place, so she hadn’t been able to call for help. She wouldn’t be able to travel fast on foot, either.

If she blundered into the woods, however, she might easily get lost. A few hours of exposure could prove fatal to the child.

Sharif did not wish to injure Holly. Despite his anger, he couldn’t entirely blame her for fleeing. But he must retrieve his son at any cost.

The overriding need to reclaim Ben drove him to action. He yanked open the door and leaped out, to give the woman no chance to react.

Another long step carried him beyond the porch to the dark cloth-covered shape struggling away from him. Their bodies collided, hard.

In the darkness, Sharif must have misjudged the distance, because he shot way over balance. Grabbing Holly, he managed to twist partway beneath her as they fell, to shield the baby from hitting the ground.

A gasp from the woman blended with the squalling of the bundle in her arms. The impact knocked the breath out of Sharif, but he had no time to waste.

Grasping the child, he rolled away through the mud. Raising himself on one knee, he kept the child tight against him and the woman in sight.

Rain poured over them. The sheikh ignored it as he watched for the flash of a blade.

Instead, he found himself staring into a pair of terrified eyes. From the looks of her, Holly was so frightened she couldn’t even scream.

“What on earth are you doing?” he demanded. “I agreed to take you back tomorrow.”

Finally, words choked out of her. “You killed her!”

“Who?” Had lingering traces of Zahad’s medicine given her a nightmare?

“My sister!”

“I’ve never even met her. I told you that.” He stood up, sheltering the baby beneath his robe. The boy was surprisingly wiggly, and he found it hard to support his head as Aunt Selima had taught. “Besides, for all we know, she is sitting in a bar somewhere, having a laugh at our expense.”

“No! How could you…?” As she scrambled to her feet, Holly still didn’t seem capable of finishing a sentence.

“You’re not making sense,” he told her. “I’ve been sitting in the cabin all night, not out marauding!”

“She’s dead.” The pain in her voice convinced him, finally, that she wasn’t referring to some dream. “It was on TV.”

Sharif had left the set on so he could keep track of what information the police were giving out. “They found your sister?”

Beneath the mud-streaked bedspread that half-covered her, Holly nodded. “In the desert. She’s been dead…a few weeks.”

Wind whipped the wet tendrils of her hair, giving her a half-drowned appearance. In a flare of lightning, he saw that she was shivering.

“You’ll make yourself sick,” Sharif said. “Let’s continue this conversation inside.”

“Let me go. Let us both go!”

“We don’t have a car,” he pointed out. “Even if I wanted to, I have no way of taking you anywhere on a night like this. And you certainly can’t walk out of a canyon in your condition.”

Without waiting for a response, he carried the baby up the steps. The woman followed as far as the porch, then stopped in the open doorway.

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