blade attached to a short leather hilt, Nikki tried to imagine using such a blade on a human. It was unthinkable—until she considered her son. For his sake, she would use any weapon at her disposal.
Reaching out to take the knife, Nikki froze with her arms stretched wide. One second ago she and the handmaiden had been alone in the harem’s kitchen. The next instant she’d felt another presence behind her back, joining them in the room. Her instincts went on alert.
But before that fact had time to sink in, Nikki was attacked and roughly thrown to the floor. The dagger flew from her hands and clattered against the stone as the fall took her breath. Sucking in air, she fought to move. But as she tried to squirm out of the way, she was pinned underneath the hard planes of a man’s body.
A big man.
Chapter 2
Shakir silently pointed the older woman into a corner, jammed the barrel of his weapon to the base of the young Taj soldier’s skull and ordered the kid to be silent. The soldier kept squirming and moaning. Pressing his advantage with a knee to the kid’s kidney, Shakir tried to quiet the tango. He growled orders in both the Taj Zabbar language and in the few words of Kasht that he could remember.
“You are making a mistake,” the old woman said in French.
He glared at her, flipped the tango to his back and began a rough pat-down. Sweeping his hands across the kid’s shoulders and down his sides and legs, Shakir checked for more weapons. The sight of that ancient dagger had put him on alert. This young Taj soldier could be as deadly to the mission as a scorpion’s sting.
Temporarily stashing his compact MTAR 21 in the pack on his back, Shakir used both hands to search. With his right, he checked between the kid’s legs. While with his left hand, he rolled down under the soldier’s armpits and around the rib cage.
“Bloody hell.” Shocked, Shakir stepped back and stared down into surprised hazel eyes. “Blast it, who the devil are you?”
“I … I …” The female under his hands was at a loss for words. So was he.
Then it hit him—a few minutes too late. “Nicole?” He reached out to take her by the arm and pulled her to her feet.
“Shakir? Shakir Kadir? Oh, my God, what are you doing here? You scared me to death.”
He took a step back and studied the form of the young man standing in front of him. Only now that he knew the truth, the form no longer even vaguely resembled a young man. He should’ve known.
But Nicole’s honey-blond hair had been entirely tucked up under a purple-checked kuffiyah. Her skin beneath the Taj soldier’s garments looked the color of splotchy brown dates. Her tiny feet—the feet should’ve been a dead giveaway—were encased in the smooth leather sandals prevalent in these desert regions.
“What is that ridiculous-looking thing you’ve stuck to your lip?”
She reached up, smoothing her finger along what looked like a line of dirt. “Just a bit of Lalla’s hair. Doesn’t it look like a moustache?”
“Not even a little.”
She grimaced, but immediately recovered her composure. “I don’t understand. This is crazy. Like a bad dream. What are you doing here, Shakir?”
His initial flood of relief at finding her alive gave way to irritation and he, too, grimaced. “We’ve come to bring you home.” She didn’t look injured, but what had they done to her mind?
Where was her gratitude? Where were the tears of joy he had expected to see?
Antsy and ready to move out, Shakir fought his annoyance and reached for her arm. “Let’s go.”
Nicole jerked back. “Where?” She fisted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “How did you find me? Why are you really here?”
Stunned, Shakir saw the mistrust in her eyes and it wounded his pride. Never in their entire relationship had he given her reason not to trust him.
And he didn’t have time to deal with it here. “We’ll hash this out later. The choppers won’t wait.”
She stood her ground. Something odd was going on behind those eyes. Something very odd.
“Now, Nicole.” He started toward her again.
“I was about to leave on my own.” She backed up a step. “What about the other women?”
“I brought in a team. They’re rescuing the other women at this moment. Everyone will leave the country in choppers as a group. Everyone.” His whole body hummed with impatience. “Do I have to carry you?”
“What about Lalla? We can’t leave her behind.”
For the first time, Shakir turned his head to study the old woman in the corner. Speaking to her in French, he asked, “Are you willing to leave?”
“I cannot. I have family who … I cannot, sir.”
The old woman was not Taj. That much was clear. But how long had she been living with them? Long enough to bear Taj children?
Suddenly, the old woman was too much of a liability to leave behind—but killing her was out of the question. “Sorry. You go with us.”
Moving with the speed of lightning, Shakir grabbed the old woman up with one arm, then swung around and picked up Nicole with the other. Neither of the women was a burden. Both weighed less than his backpack. The old woman went limp against his side, but Nicole was another matter.
She didn’t shriek or call out but beat at him with her fists. “Put me down. I can walk.”
He hesitated. “Will you behave? If I set you down, you must keep up. And you must do exactly as I say. Everything. Understood?”
Nicole nodded but kept her mouth closed. Good girl.
He lowered her to her feet. “We don’t have a lot of time left.”
Taking her elbow, he guided her out into the narrow hallway. Once again in darkness, he flipped the NVGs over his eyes. But he didn’t really need infrareds to see. He had memorized every inch of the maze inside this building and they weren’t that far from an exit. He could make it blindfolded.
Moving like a cat, Shakir let his instincts take control. He wanted to blank his mind, to act as he had been trained—without thought. But that look in Nicole’s eyes still bothered him.
He tried to reconcile the tough woman in a makeshift disguise with the sophisticated royal he had once both loved and then hated, but couldn’t make the connection. In a way, he should be impressed with her. Impressed that she would’ve taken the initiative to disguise herself and try to escape on her own. The Nicole he remembered was a follower, not a leader.
Slanting her a glance in the dark, he wondered what kind of person this new Nicole had become. And if he would care for her as much as the Nicole he’d fallen in love with long ago. So far, that seemed highly unlikely.
Nikki let Shakir lead them out of the harem and into the fresh air. She still couldn’t believe it was really him. When he’d first said her name, shock waves of memory blasted right through her system like an earthquake.
Of all the people in the world. Why now?
There’d been a time when she would have given ten years of her life just to see him again. To hear him say her name. To have him tell her what to do.
But that was long ago. A different lifetime.
In this lifetime, he presented a threat. Oh, not that she thought he might hurt her. She knew without question that he would never do such a thing.
No, the biggest threat Shakir posed today was that he had a different agenda from hers. Nikki wasn’t sure exactly what his agenda entailed. But she knew