Desire In The Desert. Ryshia Kennie

for some hint of who was with her. She was fairly sure that she had a better chance of seeing any of that than Emir, who was too close to be objective.

      Kate looked at Emir, who confirmed everything she had thought, as anger seemed to emanate from him in the tightness in his lips and the intense way he looked at her. She knew that any objectivity he had maintained had been lost in the moment. It wasn’t surprising. Anyone in his situation would have reacted the same, although in her mind he was holding on better than most. Still, objectivity and her skill in these situations, was why she was here. But now she feared that the deeper they got into this, the closer they got to finding Tara, the more difficult it would be for Emir to keep a check on his emotion. She didn’t blame him, it was natural, but she also knew it wasn’t going to help the investigation one bit.

      “They want it in American dollars.” There was no emotion in Tara’s voice.

      The video blurred and garbled and then became clear again.

      “Someone will tell you when and where,” Tara said, her words a monotone, as if she were reading a script.

      There was a sound behind her, a scuffling, and then the video blanked out and came back on. This time Tara was gone and the muffled voice of a man was saying, “Be prepared, you’ll have little time.”

      The video clicked off.

      “What kind of joke is this?” Emir stormed. “They prop her up, ask for money yet again, and don’t give a drop zone, an amount, even a time—nothing?”

      Kate looked at him, at the fire in his dark eyes and the pain that overrode everything, and couldn’t begin to imagine how it might feel. Even if she’d had siblings, she doubted she could imagine such a nightmare. She wished she could fix it, that it wouldn’t carry on any longer. That somehow she could end it.

      “So they want what they asked for earlier or it’s another amount. Whatever it is, will that be enough? Will they let her go?” Emir’s voice was raised and tense.

      Kate didn’t say anything. This was about Emir regaining control. He didn’t need or want anything from her right now.

      Silence flooded the room.

      “Get in touch with Zafir. Now,” she said after a minute had passed.

      She listened to the one-sided conversation as Emir laid out what had happened and what Zafir needed to do.

      He put the phone down and ran splayed fingers through his hair before he looked at her. “He’s already on the way.”

      “Let’s watch that video again. Can you? Is it too much...?”

      “Start it,” he rasped.

      They watched it through two more times before she turned it off and set the phone down.

      “She was in the open. There wasn’t any shelter.” His words were like grim drumbeats of doom.

      “Emir,” she warned as she shook her head, “don’t go there. None of that is relevant, not now. She’s not comfortable but she’s not injured and she’s not—” She bit off the last words.

      “Dead.” He filled the word in for her. “And she’s not going to be, either.” He looked at his watch. “Where the hell is Zafir? It’s been...”

      “Two minutes,” she noted. “Look, let’s review that video one more time. There was something I wanted to mention but I thought it was a nervous tic, considering what was going on. Where she was, what—”

      “Tell me,” he broke in.

      She looked at him, saw the pain in his eyes that he was struggling to contain and her heart almost broke. He was a strong man but even strong men had their limits.

      “I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

      She picked up the phone and pushed Play. The video no sooner began to run before she hit Pause. “Did you see that slight tapping of her finger on her left hand?”

      He frowned. He leaned closer. “Son of a desert stray,” he muttered.

      He hit Rewind again and again.

      “This is difficult,” she said, thinking how hard it was to watch his sister being held captive like that—to see she wasn’t alone but surrounded by her captors. That much was evident based on the fact they could see the boots of two men obviously milling nearby. They were boots that, this time, gave them no clue. They were clean, generic, with no sign of sand or dirt—no evidence of any kind.

      Kate turned her attention back to Tara. When she’d first noticed the thumb tapping on Tara’s left hand, she had thought it might be anxiety. The woman had much to be anxious about.

      “I don’t believe it,” Emir said. “Why didn’t I see that before? Morse code.”

      “Interesting,” Kate said as she thought of the eclectic collection of books on Tara’s shelves and looked closer at the video.

      Emir said nothing but his presence seemed to fill the room even as his attention was on the video.

      “Simplistic and yet—” Kate broke off. Tara was surprising her in ways she hadn’t expected. Morse code was not something a young woman of Tara’s generation would have any exposure to. “Or would she?” she asked softly.

      Emir turned. There was a troubled frown on his face as he watched her, his eyes seeming to lock with hers. “What are you thinking?”

      “The implausibility of this...” She remembered the bookshelf. Tara wasn’t just a modern girl with an attitude, she was also a serious student and an avid reader. The books on her shelves had been everything from contemporary novels to history. But one shelf had stood out. The section filled with procedural books and one, she remembered, labeled, “Code This.”

      “She studied Morse code?”

      Emir nodded. “Not so much studied as read some books she’d found in what had been our father’s private library. Like I said, it was nothing serious—goofing around, she called it. She was only fourteen or fifteen. Back then we often practiced it together in English and French. I didn’t think she remembered.”

      Kate looked at the video. Now she watched the subtle, yet clear when you noticed it, up-and-down movement of Tara’s thumb. Because her hand was a bit behind her, it wasn’t something that caught your eye, or, she suspected, the eye of the cameraman. She narrowed her eyes, watching the furtive movements, the rhythm and the pattern in the long and short gestures.

      Around Tara were the canvas walls of what seemed to be a tent but the video was edited enough that what was around her wasn’t clear. It could be a tent anywhere or, from what Kate could see, it could not be a tent at all. But one thing was now clear. She looked closer, but once she’d made the determination, the truth was inescapable.

      Emir’s attention was solely on the video. Kate frowned at the thought of the obsolete code in a time when even cursive writing was almost extinct. But there was no denying that Tara was definitely trying to tell them something. The video cut off just as her thumb lifted again.

      Emir looked at Kate with a frown ridging his brows. He rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek. “T-e-n e-t-e,” he said, spelling it out. “It makes no sense.” He ran the video again, as if going through the series of taps would change anything. The video cut off again before any more information could be divulged and before Tara’s kidnappers could see what she had done. “And there’s nothing more.”

      The room felt suddenly close, as if there were no oxygen. Kate could feel the energy of the man beside her as the tension and fear for his sister seemed to pulse between them and something else.

      “Été,” he said. “French for ‘summer.’ What summer? Where?”

      “Ten,” she murmured, moving what he’d just said to memory for later consideration. “Could refer to anything, but my best guess is that it refers to something about her.”