A Sulta's Ransom Read online

  Blood trickled down the inside of her calf as Paige half limped, half ran, her body snug against his solid frame.

  They reached the 10-foot-high electrified fence trimmed with razor wire, and he stopped. Thankful, she dug her hands into her waist, bent over, trying to catch her breath. She was panting hard, her lungs raw. She looked slowly up at the fence. What now?

  “Go under.” He jerked his chin toward the base of the wire. She followed the movement, saw the hole in the sand. Her eyes shot back to his. He couldn’t possibly expect her to crawl through that? It was too shallow. She’d connect with the wire. She knew just what kind of voltage pulsed through this thing. It would fry her.

  “Now! On your stomach.” He shoved her to the ground, forced her flat onto the damp soil. “Stay low.” He growled, increasing pressure against the small of her back so that her belly pressed down hard into the sand. She didn’t dare fight back for fear of connecting with the fence.

  Paige took a deep, shaky breath, closed her eyes, and began to squirm carefully through the sand. Her long skirt had other ideas. It tangled around her legs, making forward movement close to impossible. She paused for a moment, trying to think this through. She managed to work a system of wiggling her hips sideways, then forward, using her pelvis, inching her body through the sand until she could claw her way out the other side.

  She got to her knees, pushed her hair out of her face and the sheer black vastness of the desert ahead hit her. Terror clawed through her heart. She had to do something. Now. Before they left the safety of the compound. She saw the rock at her side. She could bash him on the head while he was crawling under the fence, exposed, vulnerable. If she was lucky, he’d jerk up and electrocute himself and the alarms would go off. Help would come.

  She edged her hand out sideways and slowly fingered the sand. She found the rock, closed her fist over it. She sucked in her breath sharply, flung her arm high into the air, and spun round, bringing the rock down with all her might.

  It slammed dully into sand as he rolled to the side. He was on his feet before she could even blink. He hauled her up, twisting her arm sharply.

  “You want to play hardball, Doctor?” His voice was rough in his throat. Her eyes watered in pain and frustration.

  “Well, you’ve made your choice.” He forced her wrists together and bound them so tightly she feared he was cutting off blood supply. He gave a low whistle, and a hobbled camel materialized from the blackness. Almost instantly Paige could detect the scent of the worn leather saddle, the faint aroma of spice and incense that permeated the woven saddle cloths—the same scents she’d identified on his clothing in the lab. She had an acute sense of smell. Fear only sharpened it.

  He untied the camel’s legs, and couched the beast with a sharp cluck of his tongue.

  “Get on.”

  Paige hesitated. She could ride horses, but she’d never mounted a camel.

  “Just climb into the saddle.”

  She shot a last and desperate look at the perimeter fence and saw his hand going for his jambiya as she did. She gritted her teeth and climbed awkwardly into the saddle, her long skirt riding up her thighs, her bound wrists making her clumsy. The camel sensed her inexperience and fear instantly. He grunted and began to spit in protest. But her assailant took firm hold of the rope attached to the animal’s nose ring, and he whispered in soft Arabic, gently stroking the beast’s neck, calming him.

  His sudden tenderness took Paige by surprise.

  The way he was handling this beast showed he had capacity for compassion, and that gave her a small spark of hope.

  Maybe if she played her cards right, just maybe if she stopped fighting him, she’d be okay…at least until she figured out what in hell he wanted with her.

  Once he had the camel settled, he strapped her hands to the saddle horn and he left her sitting there, straddled over the animal, while he worked quickly to refill the hole they’d just crawled through. Paige watched him smooth sand over it using a soft brush from his camel bag. She noted that in spite of his haste, his movements were economical, calm and methodical. He was in complete control. She related to that, and in some strange way his control calmed her a little.

  He secured his shovel to the camel bag, climbed up into the saddle and wedged himself in behind her in a disturbingly intimate fashion—his iron-hard thighs bracketing her bare legs, his groin pushing hard into her butt. Paige swallowed sharply.

  This was clearly a saddle made for one.

  His reached around her, his arms and scent enveloping her as he picked up the reins. She could feel the hilt of his jambiya against her hip and the steady beat of his heart against her back. He nudged the camel’s neck with his heels, the motion squeezing his thighs tighter around her. An unwelcome frisson of sexual energy shot through her body from head to toe. Paige blinked.

  This was absurd. The man was kidnapping her. How could she possibly feel turned on by his touch? It had to be a chemical reaction to the intimate seating arrangements, pure and simple. Didn’t mean she had to like it.

  But every nerve in her body was suddenly acutely aware of him. It had to be the fear, she told herself in panic. The adrenaline. But she could no more bury her own sudden physical awareness than she could the raw fear of facing this vast desert with this fearsomely attractive—and dangerous—underground rebel.

  He nudged the camel again and it rose like a wobbly leviathan. He flicked the reins and the animal rocked forward, lolling from side to side like a giraffe as it moved. Paige hung on, trying to adapt to the awkward rolling motion. No wonder they called these animals ships of the desert—she’d be seasick in minutes at this rate. Thinking of her stomach made her realize she hadn’t eaten since morning—yesterday morning. She wondered if she’d ever see the inside of the Nexus cafeteria again, if she’d ever see Western civilization again.

  He flicked the reins, urging their mount straight into a gallop. Paige inhaled sharply as she lurched sideways in the seat, her skirt riding higher up her thighs. But he clenched her even tighter between his legs, holding her steady with his body, giving her his rhythm. She realized that fighting the movement only made things worse. She forced herself to clear her mind and to relax into the motion, into him, flowing with his rhythmic pace, the movement of his warm body against hers, the tempo of the camels hooves over the sand…until all three of them operated as one smooth unit, racing across the vast expanse of sand and darkness.

  Their speed made the hot desert air move like velvet over her skin. Paige closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation, and for a wild fleeting instant her heart soared, free. But she sobered instantly, almost losing the rhythm again as she did. She’d just been kidnapped. And she had no idea why.

  Rafiq kept a steady pace over the next twenty miles, using the stars as his guide. He’d forgotten just how damn good it felt to ride the desert at night. And he was certainly not complaining about how good it felt to have a beautiful woman between his thighs.

  He loved women, everything about them—as long as he was always in control, as long as he never engaged his heart. That had happened only once.

  It would never happen again.

  But this—this was just pure sensual pleasure. He allowed himself to lean forward to feel her soft hair against his cheek, to drink in her fragrance. It was soapy, clean, underlaid with the faint hint of chemicals from the decontamination showers. But in her clothes he could detect lingering perfume—something lemony with a touch of gardenia and frankincense. It surprised him slightly, that this cool and calculating scientist was not above feminine wiles. And the fact that she’d chosen a local Arabian scent was even more intriguing. Curiosity rustled through him.

  The doctor was all his for the next few days. Her secrets were his to discover.

  He slowed the camel as they neared the paved road that would lead them to Na’jif. He needed to give the animal a break. It would be at least another hour before they arrived at the gates of the ancient walled city where he’d rented
a suite of rooms and stashed his gear for the uplink.

  But the instant he slowed, Paige struggled to turn around in the seat but couldn’t, not with her hands tied to the saddle horn. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

  He raised his brow. That was not fear in her voice, it was determination laced with frustration. This was a woman accustomed to getting her own way, just as he was a man accustomed to getting his.

  “To Na’jif,” he said

  “Why?” she snapped. “Who are you? What do you want from me? Industrial secrets? Is that what this about? You want ransom money from Nexus?”

  A soft snort escaped him. “Ransom money?” He leaned forward, placed his mouth against her ear where he could feel the soft fuzz of her lobe against his bottom lip. “You honestly think I want money, Doctor?” he whispered against her ear, feeling a shudder chase through her body as he did.

  “What…is it that you want, then?” She sounded nervous now.

  “I want the antidote, Paige,” he whispered into her ear, deliberately using her first name for the first time, pushing familiarity as a power ploy. “I came for the antidote.”

  Her body tensed instantly. “What antidote?” she asked quietly.

  “The antidote to the bioweapon you created.”

  “Bioweapon? Are you crazy?” She struggled desperately to turn around again, but he held her firmly in place with his thighs.

  “Do not play games with me, Dr. Sterling,” he growled. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  She strained against her bonds. “No, I do not! Why don’t you tell me? Can…can you just untie me so that I can talk to you properly?”

  He ignored her request. “I want the vaccine for the disease you engineered in your lab, the one that eats into human brains, makes people violent, makes them kill, leaves them dead within days.”

  She went dead silent. She stopped struggling and stared out over the dark desert. “I engineered no such agent,” she said finally, her voice quiet and level.

  Irritation flared in him. “This game will only get you hurt, Doctor. We know what you did. We know that what you made is neither virus, nor bacteria. It’s a recombinant form of a rare TSE found only in pygmy chimps from the Blacklands region of the Congo. And you genetically manipulated it. You took your parents’ discovery and used it to create a whole new subset of lethal TSEs. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

  This was what their intel had pointed to, the reason he’d been dispatched to the Nexus lab. But his orders had been simply to get data from the computers, not take the doctor herself. But now that he had her, he was going to pump her for as much information as he could.

  She didn’t say a word. She sat there, her body strangely limp, rocked only by the motion of the camel. The minutes stretched. Finally she spoke. “I…I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said very softly. Too softly. He could hear raw fear in her tone now.

  He gave a forced laugh. “You created a monster, Paige. And you are going to help us stop it.”

  Panic licked through her. What did he mean? Did he know her pathogen had appeared in a human population in the Congo? And how did this Hamnian rebel know this? The country was almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Even phones were outlawed.

  Paige felt dizzy. Somehow this man knew exactly what she’d been working on all her life. He knew about her parents. He knew what she’d believed to be top secret…and more. He appeared to know something about what was happening in Quadrant 3, because tonight was the first time in her life she’d seen her recombinant pathogen in the brains of humans. To her knowledge, her work had never been tested on humans, and neither had her vaccine—only in primates. It was theory, meant for extrapolation. For research. That was the Nexus Research and Development Corporation’s mandate—create the diseases, find the cures, then patent them and store them until the time arose to profit from them through their U.S. division, BioMed Pharmaceutical. It was a high-tech game of medical futures and it was a mercenary approach that didn’t always sit easily on Paige’s shoulders, but she reasoned that, given the new world order, it was highly unlikely that the next emerging virus was going to come from a jungle.

  It was going to come from a man-made bioreactor, and it could well be an enemy that created it.

  To think that this kind of science was not being bent toward weapons and crime, would be to ignore the reality of human nature in the modern world. The Nexus goal was to be prepared for that eventuality, to have the cutting-edge scientific tools and weapons—in this case, antidotes—to combat any new biological threat developed by the wrong hands. And to sell those antidotes—at a high price, of course—to a populace or government that would be more than desperate to pay for them. But that was just the way of the corporate world and the pharmaceutical industry. Without the private sector, the kind of ground-breaking work she was doing wouldn’t be possible. She’d never have had the funding.

  But this…this made her feel sick. Her work was supposed to be for the greater good. Not evil.

  “Do you need to hear more, Dr. Sterling?” His voice had taken on a rough and patronizing tone. “Or has your memory been sufficiently jogged?”

  She said nothing. She didn’t know how this man knew what she was doing, who he was working for, or why she’d been kidnapped. She only knew that he was dangerous, and she didn’t want to give him any more information. Right now silence was her best defense, at least until she could figure out who he worked for, and why he really wanted her.

  But suddenly his body went rigid against hers. Paige glanced up, and she saw what he’d seen. Headlights. From three jeeps on the road up ahead. Soldiers stood around them.

  The Royal Land Command.

  Her heart began to race. She wasn’t wearing the legislated chador! Her legs were exposed.

  Both were crimes punishable by death in Hamn.

  And her hands were bound—she couldn’t even begin to pull her skirt down over her naked legs. Panic clawed through her. Paige wriggled frantically in the saddle, trying to get her skirt to move down her thighs and cover her nakedness. But it was impossible. And even if she did manage to cover herself, it would be of no use. The man she was traveling with bore the mark of the Silent Revolution. They would slit his throat on the spot. And hers, too.

  A spotlight swept over the desert catching them briefly. It panned back, settling on them. Paige began to shake. She closed her eyes, and said a silent prayer.

  Chapter 3

  05:00 Charlie, Hamnian desert, Thursday, October 2

  Her assailant reached around her with his jambiya, and slashed the rope that bound her wrists to the saddle horn. “Quick, throw your leg over the horn,” he hissed as he flipped his turban over his face. “Sit sidesaddle so you can pull your skirt down.” He held her by the waist as she swung her leg over the horn, and wriggled her skirt down.

  He pulled her scarf up over her hair. “Wrap the end over your face,” he whispered hotly. “You are my wife, understand? Keep your eyes averted at all times. Look only at the ground, never at anyone’s face. Do not open your mouth.”

  She did as he said. She knew it was in her own best interests, but his commands were the kind of thing women in Hamn had to endure on a daily basis, thanks to the sick whims of Sultan Sadiq bin Zafir bin Omar al-Qaadr—or the Scarred Sultan, as they called him.

  Everyone in Hamn knew the sultan’s laws had less to do with upholding ancient tradition and culture than they had to do with oppressing his people, instilling a culture of fear and insuring his tyrannical hold on power. The soldiers of the Royal Land Command were his henchmen, his personal police force. They had unprecedented powers and a dark reputation for abusing them.

  Her wrists throbbed badly where rope had cut into her skin. But she couldn’t think about that. She clutched her scarf tightly over her face as they neared the jeeps. Turning away was not an option now. It would guarantee chase—even she could see that.

  Paige could hear snatches o
f conversation as they drew closer, and she could feel the slow, steady thud of her captor’s heart against her back. This man was not afraid, yet his limbs were hard with tension, braced for a fight. And she was between a rock and one very tough place—because right now her kidnapper was the lesser of two evils.

  The soldiers adjusted their weapons as they neared. One stepped forward. “Halt!”

  He reined in the camel.

  The soldier approached them. The desert had gone so quiet she could hear his boots squeak in the sand. He shone a flashlight up into their faces. She blinked, kept her eyes cast down.

  “Papers!” he demanded in Arabic.

  Oh God, please, please let him have papers.

  She felt her captor move behind her. She stared at the soldier’s boots, praying he wouldn’t kill her on the spot for not wearing the regulation garment.

  Paige heard the rustle of papers being handed down, saw the soldier’s hand take them. She hoped they were in order.

  She heard the policeman flipping through the documents, and she tried to force herself to breathe. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She didn’t dare tell these men she’d been kidnapped at knifepoint. As a woman, they would consider it her fault, U.S. citizen or not. Such was the law in this country. There wasn’t even a U.S. embassy she could turn to for help. The closest was in Saudi Arabia, over the border and oceans of sand.

  The policeman stopped flipping. Paige slanted her eyes cautiously toward his hands. He was studying a photograph. “Quasim Rashid.” He shone his flashlight into her captor’s eyes. “You are Bedouin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are doing here, off the road?”

  “My wife and I, we are going to Na’jif, sir.” There was no hint of subservience in his voice. He probably couldn’t be submissive if he tried.

  The policeman picked up on it, too. It provoked him. He stepped closer to the camel.

  Paige heard the click of a safety as one of the soldiers on the road trained his rifle on them. Her heart began to palpitate. The camel shuffled.