Desire In The Desert. Ryshia Kennie

was quiet, thinking of what it all might mean. When she met his eyes she saw the silent strength and the determination in his chiseled jaw and, for a moment, it was like she forgot to breathe.

      “Do you remember she gave a victory sign at the beginning?”

      He frowned. “She used to do that as a kid on the first day of summer vacation or on the announcement of a family trip.”

      There was silence for a moment before he spoke.

      “Ten,” he repeated just as she had earlier. “Could she have mixed English and French? Tara is fluent in both. She’s stressed. She could have used the languages interchangeably.”

      “Go on,” Kate encouraged.

      “The year Tara was ten, the most notable thing was that that was the summer my parents took her and Faisal for a short tour of the Sahara.” He stood. “Could it be that easy?”

      “She wouldn’t want to make it difficult, yet she didn’t know how much time she’d have. Thus the cut-off words.” She looked at him. Saw the hope in his eyes.

      A thought came to her that, somehow, what Tara’s security, now so critically wounded, and what Tara had just tried to tell them were connected. “Could what Ahmed have been trying to tell you also have been a place?” She looked at him. “Emir? Where in the Sahara did your parents take Tara that summer? What was their final destination?”

      “El Dewar.” He smacked his hand on the desktop. “I’d forgotten about it. I don’t know how I could have.”

      “It was trivial detail at the time, especially since you weren’t involved in the trip,” Kate said. “Understandable.”

      “That was the farthest they went before returning home. But is that the clue?”

      He was quiet for a minute, considering what she had said. “Davar. Could Ahmed been trying to name the place and now she’s trying to tell us the same? That she’s near El Dewar, or there’s information to be had at El Dewar, the same Berber village she saw at ten?”

      “It’s a possibility but it’s also a big stretch,” Kate said. She grabbed the map. “It’s a small place. I doubt if she’s there now. She couldn’t be hidden and there are enough people that not everyone would be complicit. So, could she be near there? Is that possible?”

      He didn’t answer. Instead his fists were clenched, his lips in a straight line, his mind obviously elsewhere. Fighting, she imagined, with long-forgotten memories.

      “Emir!” Her voice was sharp. It was the only way to get through to him. He was ready to hit the desert without a plan, with only guns and rage, and neither of those would be successful in rescuing his sister.

      He looked at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. “I’m sorry. I lost it, I shouldn’t have...” He paused, as if he needed time to breathe. “You have no idea,” he said.

      Time seemed to beat slowly between them and, for a second, all she could do was look at the strong jaw, feel his solid presence, and wish that was all it took—a minute in his arms to make all of this right for him. She shoved the thought away.

      “You’re right, I don’t. But what I do know is that my decisions aren’t clouded by emotion. Yours are.” She took his hand in both of hers and tried not to acknowledge the irony of her words. “Listen to me.” She looked at him. His rich dark eyes were pools of pain. “That’s what the kidnappers want, for you to irrationally follow their demands without thought. That was more than likely part of the purpose behind that video. Maybe...” she began, thinking of the lack of ransom detail. “All of it. You falling for that ploy won’t help Tara. But it might ensure that, if their plan was to kill you at the airport, that scenario will still play out. Only this time, someplace else. You’ve got to let me lead and help you keep a cool head. It’s the only way.”

      This time when she met Emir’s eyes, she saw that, for once, they were dark with hope rather than despair. And something else, as if he were looking at her for the first time. She looked away.

      She let go of his hand as he nodded and turned away from her. The tension seemed to noticeably lift from the room as she blew out a quiet sigh of relief.

      “I’m puzzled. Why did they send the video to me?” Kate murmured. “How did they know about me?”

      “They’ve got some sort of inside information. Or maybe they contacted the others when they saw you at the airport.”

      “How did they find out my name?”

      “I don’t know,” he said, looking at her in a way that had nothing to do with what she was saying.

      She was unprepared when he bent and kissed her, and even more so for her own reaction, for the need and want that made her put her arms around his neck and, for a few seconds, to allow herself to sink into that kiss.

      It was instinctive and so very wrong. She pushed him back, her hands on his shoulders, creating a distance between them. They were trapped in an emotional situation and it was a natural human reaction to turn from trauma to passion.

      He stood there for a moment then his eyes met hers and a truth seemed to pass between them. That what had happened was real, as real as the tragedy unfolding around them. But now it was Tara who eclipsed all and they both knew it.

      “She’ll die if we don’t get her out of there soon,” he said. “Let’s move.”

       Chapter Ten

      They took off in Emir’s Cessna from a runway at the back of the property that wasn’t visible from the main entrance. The plane had already been loaded by staff with the supplies they’d need, and Emir had arranged for a Jeep they could use to take them from the village of Kaher into the Sahara.

      Now, inside the plane’s darkened cabin, they were each immersed in their own thoughts. The roar of the engine and the endless night sky seemed to wrap around them and was only broken by the occasional lights of communities and vehicles traveling on highways beneath them.

      The golden blanket of lights that had been Marrakech was far behind them. Ahead, the shadowed peaks of the Atlas Mountains punctured the night sky and seemed to challenge them to enter. The steady noise of the engine was all that broke the silence in the cockpit.

      Kate looked to the right, where the dark outline of the wing seemed almost alien, threatening. She shivered. The darkness sheltered many secrets.

      She glanced at Emir, saw the tight grip he had on the wheel and the set of his jaw. She looked at the map in her lap. They’d dropped technology when they’d made the decision to fly to the edge of the desert. Cell towers weren’t the norm as one ventured deeper into a place that in some ways was not only off the grid but on another planet. They were also a means of tracking and that went both ways. After Kaher, they were going in electronically silent with no one able to follow their tracks, at least not easily.

      Her thoughts shifted and she thought of the northern reaches of the Sahara as it penetrated Morocco. The settlements were mapped in her mind for it was there they’d determined as the most likely area the kidnappers had gone. Now they just needed something a little more specific. She glanced at Emir. She’d been aware of him the entire time the plane had been in the air and all the while she’d studied the map.

      “You’re all right?” he asked as he turned to her. “You’ve spent a lot of time studying that map.”

      “I did. It’s calming.” She didn’t look at him. Even in the dark, she only saw his full lips, felt the memory of them on hers and... She couldn’t think of that. It was over, a mistake.

      Still, she was relieved to say even those few words for there had been silence for much of the first part of the flight. She’d rather he had spoken. The silence seemed filled with the memory of the brief intimacy they had shared.