Bound To Her Desert Captor. Michelle Conder

goes to the bathroom. If the woman so much as buys a packet of gum I want to know about it. Is that clear?’

      ‘Crystal, Your Majesty.’

      * * *

      Regan knew as soon as she walked into the shisha bar that she should turn right back around and walk out again. All day she’d trudged around the city of Aran looking for information on Chad, but the only thing she’d learned was that there was hot and then there was desert hot.

      Despite that, she knew that she would have fallen in love with the ancient walled city if she were here for any other reason than to find out what had happened to her brother. Unfortunately the more she had searched the city for him the more worried she had become. Which was why she couldn’t follow her instinct now and leave the small, dimly lit bar Chad had frequented, no matter how tempting that might be.

      The dinky little bar was dressed with various-sized wooden tables and chairs that looked to be filled with mostly local men playing cards or smoking a hookah. Sometimes both. Lilting Arabic music played from some unknown source and the air seemed to be perfumed with a fruity scent she couldn’t place. Not wanting to be caught staring, she straightened the scarf she had draped over her head and shoulders in deference to the local custom, and wound her way to the scarred wooden bar lined with faded red leather stools.

      The truth was this place was almost her last resort. All day she’d been stymied either by her own sense of inadequacy in trying to navigate the confusing streets of Aran, or by the local people she met who were nowhere near as approachable as the travel-friendly propaganda would suggest. Especially Chad’s weasel-like landlord, who had flicked her with a dismissive gaze and informed her that he would not open the apartment without permission from the tenant himself. Having just come from GlobalTech Industries, where she couldn’t get anyone at all to answer her questions, Regan hadn’t been in the mood to be told no. She’d threatened to sue the shifty little man and when he’d responded by informing her that he would call the police she had said not to bother—she’d go there herself.

      Unfortunately the officer on duty had told her that Chad hadn’t been missing long enough to warrant an investigation and that she should come back the next day. Everything in Santara functioned at a much slower pace than she was used to. She remembered it was one of the things Chad enjoyed most about the country, but when you were desperate it was hard to appreciate.

      Utterly spent and weighed down by both jet lag and worry, she’d nearly cried all over the unhelpful officer. Then she’d remembered Chad mentioning this shisha bar so after a quick shower she had asked for directions from one of the hotel staff. Usually when she went out in New York it was with Penny, and right now she wished she’d persuaded Penny to come with her because she didn’t feel completely comfortable arriving at an unknown bar alone. She felt as though everyone was watching her and, truth be told, she’d felt like that all day.

      Most likely she was being overly dramatic because she was weighed down by a deep-seated sense of dread that something awful had happened to her brother. She’d felt it as soon as she’d received his off-the-cuff email a week ago warning her not to try and contact him over the next little while because he would be unreachable.

      For a man who was so attached to his phone that she often joked it was his ‘best friend’, that was enough to raise a number of red flags in her head and, try as she might, she hadn’t been able to dispel them. A spill-over effect, no doubt, from when she’d had to take over parenting him when he was fourteen. Still, she might have been able to set her worry aside if it hadn’t been for her friend and work colleague, Penny, who had regaled her with every morbid story she could remember about how travellers and foreign workers went missing in faraway lands, never to be heard from again.

      For two days Regan had ignored her growing fear and tried to contact Chad, but when she’d continued to have no luck Penny had almost bought her the plane ticket to Santara herself. ‘Go and make sure everything is okay,’ Penny had insisted. ‘You won’t be any good to the kids here until you do. Plus, you’ve never been on a decent holiday in the whole time I’ve known you. At best you’ll have a great adventure, at worst...’ She’d left the statement unfinished other than to say ‘And for God’s sake be careful,’ which hadn’t exactly filled Regan with a lot of confidence.

      As she cast a quick glance around the bar as if she knew exactly what she was doing, her gaze was momentarily snagged by a shadowy figure in the far right corner. He was dressed all in black with a keffiyeh or shemagh of some sort on his head, his wide-shouldered frame relaxed and unmoving in a rickety wooden chair, his long legs extending out from beneath the table. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that gave her pause but nor could she shake the feeling that he was dangerous.

      A shiver raced down her spine and she told herself not to be paranoid. Still, she felt for the can of mace in her handbag and, satisfied that it was there, pinned a smile on her face and turned towards the bar. A man as big as a fridge stood behind the counter, drying a glass, his expression one of utter boredom.

      ‘What’ll it be?’ he asked, his voice as rough as chipped cement. As far as greetings went it fell far short of the welcome mark.

      ‘I don’t need anything,’ Regan began politely. ‘I’m looking for a man.’

      The bartender’s brow rose slowly over black beetled eyes. ‘Many men here.’

      ‘Oh, no.’ Regan fumbled in her pocket when she realised how that had sounded and pulled out a recent photo of Chad. ‘I’m looking for this man.’

      The bartender eyed the photo. ‘Never seen him before.’

      ‘Are you sure?’ She frowned. ‘I know he comes here. He said so.’

      ‘I’m sure,’ he said, clearly unamused at being questioned. He reached for another glass and started drying it with a dishtowel that looked as if it hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine for days. Maybe weeks. ‘You want hookah? I have strawberry, blackberry and peach.’ Which would explain the fruity scent she’d noticed when she’d first walked in.

      ‘No, I don’t want a hookah,’ she said with a note of defeat in her voice. What she needed, she realised, was some sort of guide. Someone who could help her navigate the streets and widen her search for Chad.

      She’d thought about hiring a car while she was here but the Santarians drove on the opposite side of the road to what she was used to and, anyway, Regan’s sense of direction was not one of her strong points. Some might even call it one of her worst. At least Chad would. Remembering how he had often teased her about how he could turn her in a circle and she wouldn’t know which way was north made a lump form in her throat. The thought of never seeing her brother again was too much to bear. He’d been her lifeline after their parents had died. The one thing that had kept her total despair at losing them at bay.

      ‘Suit yourself,’ the human fridge grumbled, ambling back down the bar to a waiting customer in local dress. In fact, most of the patrons were dressed in various forms of Arabic clothing. Everyone except the man in the corner. She cast a covetous glance in his direction to find that he was still watching her. And he hadn’t moved a muscle. Was he even breathing?

      Determined to ignore him, she strengthened her resolve and shoved a dizzying sense of tiredness aside. She was here to find Chad and no oversized bartender, or man in black, was going to put her off. Feeling better, she clutched Chad’s photo tightly in her hand and started to move from table to table, asking if anyone knew him or had seen him recently. Of course, no one knew anything, but then, what had she expected? It was just a continuation of the theme of the day. As she grew more and more despondent it wasn’t until she had stopped at a large table of men playing baccarat that she realised that the low-level conversation in the bar had dwindled to almost nothing.

      Suddenly nervous, she smiled at the men and asked if any of them knew Chad. A couple of them smiled back, their eyes wandering over her. Regan felt the need to cover herself with her hands but knew that she looked perfectly respectable in cotton trousers and a white blouse, the scarf covering her unruly brown hair. One of the men leaned back in his chair,