Under Command Read online

  Zakir caught her making hurriedly for her chambers.

  “Nikki!”

  She spun around, eyes wide. Her face was sheened with perspiration.

  “What is it? Where have you been?”

  “I…I was out looking for Samira,” she said, hand pressing to sternum.

  “In the dark, in the olive orchard?”

  She swallowed. “It was where she was last seen. I had to look one more time, Zakir. I am so worried about her.”

  He placed his palm on the side of her face, and Nikki felt herself involuntarily sag into his touch, desperate for relief, comfort. He gathered her into his arms, and held her tight. “You’re trembling,” he whispered as he stroked her hair.

  “I…can’t be alone tonight, Zakir,” she lied, guilt twisting like a knife inside her. And even as she said the words, she knew she couldn’t go through with it. She couldn’t betray Zakir.

  But she couldn’t tell him, either. Not with Samira in his enemy’s hands.

  We do have someone on the inside. He is in direct radio contact with us. If you breathe even one word of this to the Sheik…we will know. The orphan will die at once.

  The image of Samira tied to the chair, knife to her throat, surged into Nikki’s mind. She closed her eyes against it, and Zakir bent down, kissed her lids.

  “You taste of salt,” he murmured. “Come to my chambers, Nikki. I will have a bath of rosewater prepared and fresh robes brought to you. I will hold you all night if you wish.”

  Her heart squeezed in pain. He cared for her. He respected her. He wanted to marry her.

  And she was going to betray him.

  Chapter 16

  Before going to Zakir’s chambers, Nikki went to check on the other orphans, buying herself a few minutes to try to figure things out. In the dark, she softly sang the song to them about the princess, her heart breaking as she thought of Samira in captivity somewhere.

  When she heard the rhythm of the children’s breathing change, she knew they were asleep, and she sat for a while in silence, watching the moon through the long arched windows.

  If she told Zakir about Gelu—and what she’d been asked to do—he’d have no choice but to take immediate action against the traitor in his most intimate circle. Word would get out immediately. And they’d cut Samira’s throat—she didn’t doubt it. Nikki had seen enough terrible things happen on this continent to take those men very, very seriously.

  Perhaps…if she just took that document, and got Samira back, she could then persuade Zakir to let them leave via chopper at once. And as soon as they were safely out of Al Na’Jar—and Gelu’s reach—she’d find a way to call him and tell him about Gelu.

  She dug into the folds of her robe pocket. Fingering the capsule, she listened to the sound of the antique clock ticking.

  It was now or never. And she had to move fast.

  Nikki quietly edged open the bedside drawer where she’d seen Solomon stash the flashlight he’d been given to play with, then she tiptoed to the doctor’s rooms that Zakir had allowed her to use. Quietly she clicked the door shut behind her. In the dark of the doctor’s examining room, she studied the capsule under the flashlight.

  It was opaque white, two halves slotted together—just like common cold medications she’d seen being sold throughout the northern desert. There was no pharmaceutical logo. Again, this was not unusual—certain black market medications were routinely marketed in Africa this way.

  She turned the capsule over in the fingers. Nikki had absolutely no means of telling what powder was inside. The words of Samira’s assailant slithered into her brain.

  Whose life do you value more—Sheik Zakir Al Arif or your little pregnant orphan?

  Why that choice of words—why the “life” of the Sheik? Could there be something other than a narcotic in this capsule?

  She began to perspire all over again.

  She glanced at the clock. He’d be waiting in his chambers for her. Wondering where she was.

  She had to hurry, make a decision.

  Nikki shut her eyes, inhaled deeply. Then she unlocked a smaller door that led into a medicine storage room. Shutting the door behind her, Nikki switched on the light and unlocked the medicine cabinet.

  When Zakir came out of the bathroom, Nikki was sitting tensely on the edge of his large bed. She smiled at him, but light did not reach into her eyes. Zakir felt a pang of remorse at his inability to make things right for her, to make her happy.

  She reached for his wine carafe, poured a glass and came up to him, letting her silk robe fall open as she handed him the drink.

  Zakir went hot at the sight of her bare breasts, stomach, the small and seductive delta of hair at the apex of her thighs that hid her scar. He took the glass. “Are you sure you won’t join me and have some wine, Nikki?”

  She paled, shook her head.

  Zakir frowned. “Nikki—” But she touched his lips with her fingers, quieting him.

  “Drink your wine, Zakir,” she whispered. “Don’t take too long, because I want to make love to you.” She was seducing him even in her sadness and worry.

  He understood this—sex as a means of escape. It distracted one from dark thoughts. Being held by someone was comforting. “My men are still out there looking for her, Nikki,” he said softly. “They have combed the olive groves and the orchards, and in the morning they will move farther afield into the village.”

  She nodded, reached for his hand, drawing him back toward the bed. Above them, through the glass dome, was a sliver of moon. It bathed the bed in a glow of silver. Allowing the silk robe to slip off her shoulders, she lay against the pillows, nude. Her eyes spoke to him, poignant, inviting him to drown in her.

  His groin went rock hard.

  Zakir took a large swallow of wine and plunked his glass down, an exhilarating warmth surging through his chest.

  He opened her thighs and knelt between her legs. Lifting her hips to him, he thrust into her.

  She gasped. Arched. And quickly spun over on top of him.

  Her lovemaking was angry, desperate, fast. Hot. As if she was digging down deep for something she could not quite reach. Not at all like the tenuous exploration of yesterday. And Zakir climaxed so fast it shocked him.

  She closed her eyes as she felt him come beneath her, and then, throwing her head back she shattered around him, sinking down onto him, warm, soft, her gold hair like silk against his naked skin.

  A heavy tiredness descended over Zakir, like a weight stealing into his limbs. He felt strange, almost as though he was floating into darkness. The next instant his world went black.

  Nikki waited until Zakir’s breathing was heavy and regular. Then she felt his pulse to be sure he was okay, and she moved his head slightly to the side so he wouldn’t choke. “I am so, so sorry, Zakir,” she whispered, kissing him softly on the mouth, on his eyes, emotion tearing her soul apart. Then Nikki stood up, slipped into her robe, belted it tight and pressed her hand to her stomach.

  Think of Samira.

  If she could save Samira’s life, she’d deal with the fallout.

  And she wouldn’t blame him if Zakir made her pay. The best-case scenario was that they’d be gone from his country tomorrow.

  Nikki dimmed the lights down low in case he woke up. She hesitated again at the corridor that led to his study, still torn. Running her hands over her hair, she glanced back at his naked sleeping form—all dark, masculine male. So powerful.

  Yet she’d rendered him so vulnerable.

  And in that instant she thought she could come to love him, and the notion cracked her right open. Hot tears filled her eyes. He’d offered her a life here, a marriage, a home for her children. All the things she’d ever wanted.

  Who in hell are you kidding, Nikki? He’s fallen for someone who doesn’t exist. Your chance at happiness died seven years ago. You don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve happiness.

  Nikki allowed the familiar self-loathing to course into her veins, steeli
ng her focus, and she slipped down the corridor and carefully opened the door. She clicked it shut behind her, tiptoed into his study and flicked on a small desk light.

  Zakir awoke in the dark hours before dawn, his head strangely thick. He could see nothing. He reached for Nikki, but the place she had lain in his bed was empty, the sheet cool.

  “Nikki?” he whispered.

  There was no answer from the darkness.

  An edginess bit into Zakir. He clicked on the light.

  She was gone.

  He clicked it off again and lay back in the dark, a small hole forming in his soul. He should expect this. Nikki was going through a challenging night with Samira missing. Why should he anticipate she’d want to spend the whole night in his bed and wake with him in the morning?

  And now that it was morning, what was he going to do? About her? About Samira? About those candidates being flown into Na’Jar? He couldn’t push Nikki on the marriage issue—not while she was distraught over Samira’s disappearance. And Tariq had not yet called with the results of the investigation. Conflict churned inside him.

  Dawn was a peach strip on the horizon when Zakir heard his bedroom door open. He felt Nikki crawl back into his bed.

  Zakir feigned sleep while she settled naked beside him. She smelled faintly of fire smoke, as if from a torch.

  A cool curiosity rustled through him.

  Perhaps she’d been in the private garden off her chambers, or perhaps she’d gone outside to look for Samira again.

  When the sun flooded yellow and bright onto his bed and birds sang in the garden, he turned to her. She smiled sleepily, but her eyes betrayed her, and her features were tense.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a log.”

  “All night?” He watched her face.

  “Yes, why?” Zakir saw a microflash of insecurity in her features, but she smiled at him again, seductively this time, and Zakir felt his loins stir in spite of his puzzlement, his stirring suspicion. Why was she seducing him now? Surely she’d rather be dashing out of bed at first light to resume her search for Samira?

  The hole in his gut gnawed a little deeper.

  He didn’t like the strange sleep state he’d fallen into, either. His brain felt oddly fuzzy. Zakir suddenly lurched up from the bed, reached for his robe, belted it.

  “I’ll have breakfast sent to the garden for you, Nikki. But you must excuse me. I have some urgent work that must be attended to this morning. I need to liaise with my generals to organize ongoing security.”

  A glimmer of something akin to panic raced across her face, and she paled slightly.

  Or was he imagining things? Was the light perhaps playing tricks with him even in sunshine now?

  He went down the hall to his office, unable to cast off the cold sinking of foreboding hardening into him. Was it at all possible that he’d misjudged her? Could she have completely pulled the wool over his eyes with her orphans in order to gain his trust?

  When he got there, he immediately found his documents missing from inside the metal tube he’d locked in his desk.

  Zakir froze, rage surging through him like a tsunami.

  His mind raced back over the night’s events—the odd thickness in his brain, Nikki disappearing during the night, returning before dawn smelling of smoke. The fact she was not dashing out to hunt again for Samira…

  No.

  He could not accept it.

  Zakir instantly went to the bank of monitors, flung open the doors, clicked the screens on. Quickly he rewound the footage from the hidden camera in his office. With a sheer sinking cold nausea, he saw an image of his desk light going on. The time on the bottom of the screen showed 2:00 a.m. Zakir’s heart turned to granite as he watched Nikki opening his desk drawer, removing the papers from inside the metal tube. She replaced the tube in his drawer before clicking off the light.

  White heat erupted in him.

  He did not want to believe his own eyes. But the evidence was on that screen. He’d been such a fool!

  She was a spy. She’d gone straight for the place where he’d stored the sensitive map. She’d duped him. Totally. And more.

  Because once again he had fallen for a lie. And he’d fallen as hard as he possibly could have, even asking for her hand in marriage.

  Just like all those years ago.

  Blood pounded through his veins. Zakir fisted hands at his sides, and suddenly the vision in his left eye darkened to a solid black blot. It was quickly followed by a blurring in his right eye, as well.

  He felt for the back of a chair, inhaled very deeply and blew air out slowly. Then angling his head so he could see through his peripheral vision of his right eye, Zakir clicked on the other screens, tracing Nikki’s movements back through the night to the time Solomon first announced Samira’s disappearance.

  Sickened, he began to piece the images together. The cameras on the patio had caught Nikki going down the steps with a flashlight. She had a document in her hand. Zakir checked the time on the screen—2:40 a.m.

  She must have met with someone in the olive grove and handed it over, because her hand was empty in the next image of her coming back up the stairs.

  Zakir flicked to another camera that had caught her leaving the children’s chambers with a flashlight, not long after midnight—just before she’d come to his bed. He watched as she headed to the doctor’s examining room, glancing back over her shoulder as if leery of being followed.

  Quickly he switched to camera footage from inside the doctor’s examining room. It was dark, difficult to see what she was doing from the angle of her body, but she appeared to be examining something with the flashlight. Then she moved into the medicine storage room. Again her body obscured much of what she was doing, but Zakir could see her putting something in a small bottle. She placed it atop the cabinet, pushing it far back against the wall where no one would see it.

  She then took some things from the cabinet and busied herself on the counter. Zakir zoomed in, the veins at his temple beginning to throb.

  She seemed to be mixing a powder and putting it into a capsule. She then pocketed the capsule in her robe.

  It hit him. The wine. How she’d held it out to him as she distracted him with the promise of sex, her naked body stealing the logic of caution from his mind.

  And his heart turned dark and hard and cold.

  Nikki had drugged him.

  He clicked off the monitors, pressed the intercom on his desk. “Summon the two generals from the guest wing! Send them to my office at once!”

  He walked to the arches that opened out over his garden, his dogs silent shadows beside him.

  He hooked his hands behind his back, stared sightlessly out at his garden.

  He could play the deception game, too.

  Better than her.

  More coldly than her.

  And he held the advantage now. Because Nikki—if that was even her real name—didn’t yet know that Zakir was aware she worked for his enemy. He’d keep it this way. And he’d use her to lead him back to the people who had murdered his father, his mother and Da’ud. The people who were trying to steal his country.

  And once he found them, they would all pay—with their lives.

  Including her.

  Chapter 17

  Before Zakir could order his two generals to mobilize protection for the new satellite installations they were interrupted by radio reports beginning to come in from across Al Na’Jar about bombings at the hidden military sites.

  Zakir’s jaw clenched.

  Those installations were all marked on the map Nikki had stolen.

  “The waves of sabotage will shut down military communications systems across most of the country!” barked one of his generals.

  There was no shred of doubt in Zakir’s mind now—the woman he’d invited into his home and his bed was a traitor. Enemy. Hatred sliced into his heart, and bitterness filled his mouth. He issued a rapid series of orders to his generals, who then
clicked their boots with a slight bow of their heads and departed with staccato steps echoing down the halls.

  Zakir pressed his intercom, called for one of his Gurkhas. While he waited for the man to arrive he poured water into a glass, quickly swallowing a handful of the pills Tariq had prescribed him to reduce blood pressure around the optic nerve.

  When his Gurkha reported, Zakir instructed the guard to retrieve the small bottle Nikki had stashed atop the medicine cupboard in the doctor’s rooms. He ordered him not to touch it with his fingers but to slip it into a paper bag. Zakir wanted to preserve the fingerprints on the glass.

  While he waited for his Gurkha to return, Zakir placed his hands on the back of a chair, bent his head and closed his eyes, trying to gather himself, trying not to self-destruct with the fury of betrayal, or the pain he felt at allowing himself to fall—so damn hard—for another Juliet spy sent to seduce him in order to destroy the Al Arif dynasty.

  How could you be such a fool!

  What truly slayed him was the skill with which Nikki had manipulated his emotions, how she’d touched on the things so dear to him—his family, his love for the desert, his deep loyalty to his country. She’d deceived him with her apparent kindness and compassion, her knowledge of his people. And she’d apparently used innocent children to do it. Zakir had no doubt Samira’s disappearance was now part of some elaborate scheme she’d cooked up once she found out via the Internet that he was going to marry one of those women to secure his rule.

  Plus she’d coaxed him into revealing his Achilles’ heel—his impending blindness.

  Zakir swore softly.

  She’d undoubtedly already passed this information to his enemies. He was going to face a challenge to his throne whether he caught her or not.

  The Gurkha guard returned with the bottle in a paper packet. Zakir removed it using a piece of cloth. He held just the lid, lifting it to the light. Inside was one opaque white capsule.

  “Take this pill and this bottle,” Zakir said very quietly as he replaced the jar in the paper bag. “Have it flown via Black Hawk directly to the royal pathologist in Al Na’Jar. Tell him I want prints lifted from this glass, and I want to know what the powder inside this capsule is. And I want it before nightfall.” He inhaled carefully. “If the pathologist needs laboratory access to identify the powder, get it, but make sure he is isolated. Because no one, understand, no one from the King’s Council—not even my emissaries—can know about this.”