The Sheik's Safety Read online

  “Where did Saeed go?”

  The man looked at her as if she were crazy. “Please return to house, miss.”

  “Listen to me—” she began to say, but was cut off by a loud banging on the gate.

  The guard turned from her to slide open the cover of a small opening to peer outside. He exchanged a few words with whomever was trying to gain entrance, then opened the door wide and stood aside.

  Two dozen or so men poured in, all soldiers. One of them took the guard’s rifle at once. The rest spread out, disarming men they came in contact with, ignoring the women, issuing orders, entering the house.

  “What’s going on?” Dara whispered to the guard, not wanting her English to be overheard.

  He remained silent for a while before responding. “They had a royal warrant.”

  She took off for the house, hugging the walls, making sure she looked as scared as the other servant women. She made her way toward Saeed’s offices, slinked by and saw the soldiers go through his files, dumping everything on the floor, seizing what they pleased.

  They grilled one of the male servants, but she could not understand what they were trying to get out of him. Then one of the soldiers caught her watching, said something to her.

  Now what? She stood, rooted to the spot. What did he want? She bowed her head, tried to back away. The man advanced on her, waving his gun. He wasn’t big, but he was armed, and she didn’t have anything. The pistol she’d taken from Saeed’s desk had disappeared by the time she woke that morning.

  The soldier yelled at her. She began to tremble, whimper loudly, and covered her face with shaking hands. When the man reached her, she crumbled to the floor sobbing.

  He looked at her with contempt, said something in a harsh voice then turned and let her be.

  She moved away, half crawling, not standing fully until she was out of sight. She had to find out what the hell was happening.

  She made her way back to the guard at the gate as fast as she could without raising anyone’s suspicions. At least he spoke English.

  “Somebody must tell Saeed what’s going on here. Warn him not to come home. I can do it. I’m a woman, the soldiers are paying no attention to me. I must know where he went.”

  The guard did not respond.

  “Your sheik’s life is at stake.” She wanted to shake the man, put him in a headlock if she had to, but she couldn’t draw attention.

  “I do not know where he went,” the guard said at last, appearing more upset now. “He did not take a driver.”

  She went back to the house and questioned any servant she came across, but they would not respond to her. Some, she suspected, because they did not trust a foreigner, others because they did not speak English.

  And then, as soon as it began, the invasion was over. Half the soldiers left, carrying boxes of Saeed’s papers, the other half remained, guarding all entrances from the street.

  She came upon a group of Saeed’s guards gathered in the kitchen. They argued. A couple of older servant women wept.

  “What happened?” Dara would not let them ignore her.

  They looked at her with disapproval, but the guard who’d been at the front gate earlier, Umbarak, answered her. “Sheik Saeed was arrested this morning for treason.”

  She felt the blood run out of her face. Damn. Keeping the sheik safe was her responsibility. “We must get him at once.”

  “Inshallah. It is now in Allah’s hand.” The man tried to brush her off.

  Anger filled her, anger and worry. “So you’ll leave him to his fate?”

  “We have sent news to Nasir. It is his place to decide what to do.”

  “And if it is too late?”

  Umbarak looked stricken at the suggestion, but turned from her. He probably thought her rude for speaking out of place. No amount of argument could make him see her point, could make them understand how much danger Saeed was in, could make them accept her as an equal and work with her.

  It was painfully frustrating, but she had to accept it and move on to find another solution. She could not change a millennia of tradition in one afternoon. And she didn’t have an afternoon. King Majid wanted Saeed dead, and now he had him in his clutches.

  “Where would Sheik Saeed be kept?” she asked, ignoring the disapproval of the men.

  “There are many prisons in Tihrin, but he would be held at the palace,” Umbarak answered.

  “Do you not care if he lives or dies?”

  Anger flared in the man’s eyes. Good. So he did care. She stepped closer, ready to press her advantage.

  DARA WALKED AROUND THE PALACE for the third time, noting the position of the guards, the height of the walls, the security cameras. She could have walked around the building a hundred times and not be noticed, thanks to the black abaya that made women indistinguishable from each other.

  She looked at Umbarak, sitting in the car in the parking lot of a ministry building across the road. He was waiting for her; at last he had finally understood the gravity of the situation. That was something. She turned down a side street, circled the palace again, from farther this time, then again one more street down, then again, in concentric circles, mapping possible escape routes from every exit.

  Darkness fell by the time she was satisfied. She walked back toward the palace, noted the locked gate, walked down the street, looking at vehicles until she spotted a truck that was high enough. Popping the lock and hot-wiring took less than three minutes—she’d paid attention during her training. She drove the short distance to the back of the palace compound where the wall was the lowest, waited for the night patrol to pass by. She had a few minutes before they would loop back again.

  She parked the truck as close to the wall as she could, climbed on top and jumped, aiming at the spot where two security cameras stood back to back. She landed exactly between them, out of the range of both. She crouched on the wall and looked around at the flat-roofed building under her, then dropped soundlessly.

  She ran across the roof, looked down at the ground, jumped and rolled into the shadow of the building. Garages, she realized, catching a glimpse of a row of luxury cars through the window.

  She could see six guards from where she was, all of them relaxed, probably bored, smoking. A servant woman crossed the yard, carrying a small wooden box. Nobody paid her any attention. Dara stood and stepped out of the shadows. The guards looked up for a second before returning to their conversation. She walked toward the same door where she’d seen the woman disappear. Her finger was on the knob when it opened from the inside.

  She kept her head down, stepped out of the way of the exiting man hastily. He glanced at her, said something. As if not hearing him, she slipped in the door and kept walking. He stepped back in after her. Damn.

  She could not play the woman-scared-into-hysteria here. The royal servants would be used to demands from the royal guard.

  He shouted something at her and came closer. She waited until he was no more than two feet away, then she pulled her gun, pointed it at his head with her right hand, put a finger to her lips with the left.

  He froze.

  “Sheik Saeed.” She said the words carefully to make sure he understood her.

  He stepped back.

  She took the safety off.

  He said something on a low voice, stepped closer, and reached for the gun.

  The trouble with this country was that nobody believed a woman could be dangerous. And she couldn’t even give a warning shot to show him she was. Gunfire would have drawn attention. She rushed him instead, gun to temple, knife to throat, she pressed it just hard enough to draw a little blood. She had his attention now.

  “Sheik Saeed,” she repeated, satisfied when he pointed down the hallway to the left.

  She took the knife from his throat and shoved him in front of her, the pistol in his back. He understood her and moved forward.

  Two doors to the left, then a flight of stairs down. She kept track of their approximate location in th
e building. The corridor down here was narrower, darker. They were coming to a T at the end. She stopped the man, stepped in front of him while keeping her gun trained at his head, peeked around the corner. A row of doors each way, a soldier standing in front of one on her left.

  Dara turned around, swung at the man’s temple with the butt of the gun, caught him so he wouldn’t make too much noise falling to the ground, lowered him slowly.

  She tucked his handgun next to hers into her belt under the abaya and stepped forward, walked toward the guard without looking at him. He said something, probably ordering her out of the prison. She walked on. He spoke again, his voice angry this time. But she was close enough now. A chop to the man’s windpipe dropped him to his knees.

  “Keys,” she said and pulled her gun, pointed it between his eyes.

  He gasped for air, shook his head. Probably didn’t even understand her. Too bad for him. She didn’t have time to play around. She knocked him out same as the first man, searched his uniform. He didn’t have the key. Okay, maybe that was what he had tried to tell her.

  She looked the door over, pulled her knife and went to work on the pins in the hinges. Damn, it wasn’t easy. She forced the blade into the tiny gap between the top of one pin and the doorjamb, wiggled it. Her efforts were working but too slow. She glanced around—still alone—then wiped her forehead as she focused on the pin again.

  When it was out far enough, she popped it free with the butt of her knife and went to work on the second pin. It was even more tightly stuck than the first. Come on, come on, come on. She put all she had into it. She hadn’t come all this way to fail. She wiggled the pin up with the tip of the knife, wishing she could see through the door, see what shape Saeed was in. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that she might not find him alive. He was charged with treason. There must be an official execution. King Majid would want that to legitimize the whole charade. He had to keep Saeed alive for that.

  But it didn’t mean he hadn’t been tortured. She pushed harder, the pin moved up another fraction of an inch, but then the blade slipped and scraped against the door. She didn’t worry about the noise, just went back to what she was doing.

  If there was someone in the room with Saeed, they would have heard her by now. She was pretty sure he was alone.

  The sound of boots scraping the floor came from above her head, people going somewhere on the upper level. She popped the pin, jammed the knife between the door and its frame, put all her weight into it and moved the door enough to get her fingers in the gap, then pulled with all her strength. Damn, that didn’t feel good on her bad shoulder.

  Saeed sat on a metal bed in a small dingy room, handcuffed to the frame. She took her first deep, real breath since he’d gone missing that morning. Relief rushed blood to her head, drumming through her ears.

  “Are you okay?” She leaned the wooden door against the wall to make sure it wouldn’t fall and draw attention.

  “Dara?”

  If she ever saw a man more surprised, she couldn’t remember it. Good. Maybe now he would start taking her seriously. “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head.

  She handed him the knife before she left to get the guard outside the door. She tied and gagged him before pulling the listless body into the cell, then went and dragged in the other man the same way. He was heavy, made her work up a sweat, starting to come to and fight against his ropes.

  Saeed was still trying to open the handcuffs, not easy with his hands bound together. She took the knife from him, tried, and didn’t seem to manage any better. Damn. She looked around the room for another tool.

  “Your gun,” Saeed said.

  “They’ll hear us.”

  “Use the pillow.”

  There was no time to hesitate. “Stand back.”

  She placed the pillow over the barrel of the gun, pushed it against the chain that held the cuffs together, then squeezed the trigger. The sound echoed through the room, but not as badly as she’d expected, no more than a door slamming shut.

  She stripped off her abaya, veil and headscarf then tossed them at him. He understood at once and handed her his kaffiyeh from around his neck. She tucked her pistol into her belt, flung the guard’s rifle on her shoulder, handed Saeed the extra gun. He hid it under the abaya that unfortunately came only to midcalf, and revealed his black suit pants and shoes that obviously belonged to a man. Still, it was the middle of the night. Not many were awake, and she hoped those who were wouldn’t be looking too closely.

  “We gotta go.” She turned, ready to make a run for it, but he caught her by the arm.

  “Dara,” he said, then crushed her to him and kissed the soul out of her.

  And she kissed him back as fiercely as she felt, angry with him for having gone out alone, angry at herself for not knowing better and letting her guard down in more ways than one. And then the anger and fear melted away, and there was nothing but sweet pleasure and the relief that he was alive and she was back in his arms once again.

  She smiled when he let her go, and fastened the veil and headscarf in place to cover his face. He gave her a we-will-never-speak-of-this-once-it’s-over look, and strode out of the room, pulling her behind him. And it occurred to her how annoyed she used to be when in movies the hero and heroine stopped to come together in a heated kiss in the middle of a chase scene, when every second might mean the difference between life and death. And she wanted to stop him and kiss him again. Because if this was it, if they were going to get nailed on the way out, she wanted to take at least that much with her.

  He went up, but in a different direction than she’d come. She followed him, figuring he knew the palace better than she did. Her path of entry wouldn’t have worked for a way out anyway. The two of them scaling the garage wall would be bound to draw the guards’ attention.

  They were in the servants’ quarters—small rooms, narrow hallways, not nearly as neat as the rest of the palace. The few who were awake and about paid little attention to the young soldier and the tall woman he escorted.

  They reached the door he was apparently looking for. He shot off the lock with a loud bang that raised some shouts behind them. They didn’t stick around to see whom they woke, but spilled out into the street.

  Straight into the night patrol.

  Chapter Six

  Saeed heard Dara swear as he blocked her and shot at the men. But if he had hoped she would take the hint and stay safe, he was mistaken. She pushed around him and took out her share of the patrol. The fight was over in seconds.

  He ripped the veil and burka from his head as he ran between the bodies out to the street, looking back as much as forward, making sure she was okay.

  “You should think about letting me do my job now and then.” She caught up with him finally. “Umbarak is on the other side by the east gate. He probably heard the gunfire.”

  “We don’t have time to wait for him.”

  Few cars were on the street at this hour of the night. He stepped in front of a large luxury sedan and pointed his gun at the driver as more guards poured out of the palace, letting some bullets fly now.

  Saeed banged his palm on the hood of the car when it screeched to a halt in front of him, nearly knocking him over. Then he was at the driver’s door, pulling the man out. Dara was already in the passenger seat returning fire by the time he got in. And they were off, flying down the four-lane boulevard named after his legendary great-grandfather, about a dozen royal guards pursuing them.

  The good news was that traffic was sparse, making driving easier. The bad news was that the royal guards were shooting as freely as if they were in the middle of the desert, not caring whom or what they hit. And yet he had no choice but to lead them through a densely populated area, the fastest way out of the city.

  Dara knelt on her seat, firing back at the guards.

  “We cannot harm the people.”

  She threw him an offended look. “I hit what I aim at.”

  He turned d
own a side street, moving away from the highly developed areas and into the outskirts of the city. The farther out they got, the less common streetlights were and the worse the condition of the roads. He wove in and out of a jumble of little alleys, knocking over a jar or a small cart now and then, the turns tight for the car.

  A couple of times he got ahead enough so their pursuers were out of sight, but the royal guards were persistent and caught up with them over and over again.

  “Hang on,” he said the next time they temporarily shook off the men.

  He pulled off the road and across a dirt yard, aiming straight at a shack. He drove through the palm-frond side without trouble and stopped, killing the motor.

  “Not bad for a sheik, considering you have two chauffeurs.”

  He saw only the outline of Dara’s head in the dark, but could hear the smile in her voice. “You should see me on a camel.” He pulled off the abaya and tossed it on the back seat.

  Sheik Saeed ibn Ahmad ibn Salim had run from his cousin dressed like a woman. He swallowed the humiliation of it. He would not have done so to save his own life. But from the moment Dara had stepped through the cell door, he knew he would do anything to get her out of there alive. Even sacrifice his dignity.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he said.

  “Shoot back at people who are shooting at me? In my line of work, you turn the other cheek, you go home in a body bag.”

  “Not that,” he said, impatient. He was glad she was strong and competent enough to defend herself. He admired her for it. “Don’t ever put your life in danger for mine.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I refuse protection.”

  “Because I’m a woman?”

  “Because I can take care of myself.”

  “Me, too,” she said, and they both fell silent for a while.

  “If things were reversed, if I was arrested for some reason, would you have let me be executed?” she asked.