Under Command Page 19

  All that remained for Gelu was to kill Nikki Hunt so she couldn’t point a finger at him. He’d pretend she was trying to escape. He’d do it as soon as he saw the opportunity. Then he’d call his handler in Al Na’Jar, tell him the news and collect the bonus he’d been promised upon completion.

  Gelu saw the Sheik’s Army soldier approaching too late. Part of his mind thought it was his relief from guard duty, but there was something ominous in the man’s stride, the way he was holding his semiautomatic rifle. Then Gelu saw soldiers coming from the other side. And it slowly dawned on him—they were coming to arrest him.

  But before Gelu could draw his blade, the soldiers had him at gunpoint.

  The shutters in Nikki’s room had been locked and the light filtering in from outside was faint. But she knew from the clock on the wall that over thirty-six hours had passed since Zakir had swallowed the poison.

  If Zakir had died, maybe there was a chance that Samira had been spared. But she’d probably never know.

  Nikki paced the length of her dim chambers again as she’d dazedly been doing since she’d been locked up, her mind beginning to play tricks on her. She’d replayed the final scene in the dining hall over and over again. Zakir had taken her by such surprise that she hadn’t even had time to register what he was doing, let alone react and stop him. She still didn’t understand what game he’d been playing.

  Nikki swung around, retraced her steps again, her breathing shallow, her body drenched in sweat.

  She’d come so damn close to tasting hope again.

  Instead, she’d failed. Herself. Her orphans. Zakir.

  She didn’t care if they executed her now—she had nothing more to live for.

  Nikki stilled at the sound of choppers coming in to land. Men were yelling, screaming. Sporadic gunfire peppered the air. Fighting had started. The country was turning to chaos.

  This was her fault.

  Whichever way the cards had fallen after she’d been dragged from the dining hall, she was responsible for this. She’d aided the insurgents by giving them that document, and she’d brought the poison that had killed Zakir into the palace.

  Who would have thought when she’d marched up that palace boulevard that she’d end up here? Responsible for the downfall of this kingdom, when all she’d wanted was safe passage to the sea.

  Suddenly, things went strangely quiet outside.

  The dead silence grew eerie. Hot.

  Nikki stopped pacing again. It was as if the battle were over. Exhausted, she slumped onto the side of the bed and allowed her body to slide down onto the marble floor. She put her face in her hands.

  Darkness spiraled into her brain as she drifted in and out of consciousness. And then mercifully, she slid into oblivion, her world going black.

  Tariq left his computer for a moment to light the fire in his study. As he listened to the blizzard wind whistling outside, he again thought about the face captured on Zakir’s security footage. And it hit him so hard and sudden that it stole his breath.

  Was it possible?

  Quickly he seated himself at his desk and fired up the Internet, running a search of newspaper stories from six to seven years ago. It was her—Dr. Alexis Etherington. He was sure of it.

  By God…how could this be? He sat back in his chair, ran his hand over his hair. Maybe he was making a mistake, seeing something that wasn’t there. He needed to check, be certain, before he called Zakir. He reached for the phone, dialed the man heading up their private investigation.

  “That file I asked you to work on, cross-reference the information you already have on Nikki Hunt with the name Dr. Alexis Etherington, an ophthalmic surgeon and the wife of Senator Sam Etherington. She disappeared from the D.C. area about six years ago. She and the senator lost twins in a car accident a year before her disappearance. There was a police investigation, allegations of drunk driving. The security footage I forwarded you shows a woman who looks identical to Dr. Etherington, but I can’t be sure. Is it possible to run a biometrics comparison scan of the security footage against an old passport or an ID image or maybe one of the media photographs?”

  “It is,” said the man. “I’ll have an answer for you as soon as we secure an image of Dr. Etherington.”

  Tariq paused. “Look, I know I don’t need to reiterate this, but we’re heading into potential diplomatic conflict here if this is the senator’s wife. I need this information to remain strictly private.”

  “Understood.”

  Tariq hung up, leaned back in his leather chair, thinking of the newspaper and television coverage seven years ago, and how stunned he’d been to hear what had happened to Dr. Etherington.

  Such a tragic story. Such a beautiful and talented doctor, someone he’d admired, respected and whose work had helped him identify the genetic markers of Naveed’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy in his own brother. Tariq had been astounded by the way she’d fallen from grace, then vanished—only to turn up in the court of Al Na’Jar? This was remarkable.

  Tariq’s phone rang, and he grabbed it.

  “Dr. Al Arif, the security images are a one hundred percent biometrics match to old media photographs of Dr. Alexis Etherington. The fingerprints from the medicine jar that your brother forwarded to us are also a match. The person captured on the security footage is Dr. Etherington. It appears she assumed the identity of Nicola Ann Hunt, a deceased infant born in the D.C. area.”

  Tariq signed off, quickly punched in the number for Zakir’s encrypted satellite phone. His fiancée peeked around the door as Tariq listened to the phone ringing in the Sahara.

  She smiled at him, her dark hair falling seductively over her face. “When are you coming to bed, Tariq?” she said softly, her brown eyes sparkling. “It’s getting cold in there.”

  His heart warmed at the sight of Julie’s face and the caress of her voice. “Give me a minute,” he said.

  But there was no answer from Zakir’s private phone.

  “The compound is surrounded, your Highness. We’re ready to strike.”

  “Do it.” Zakir’s heart felt cold, black, empty as he clutched the military radio, unable to see again for a moment. He closed his eyes. “I want as many alive as possible for interrogation purposes.” He hesitated, hearing Nikki’s words.

  They kidnapped Samira. They said they’d kill her if I didn’t take the document.

  “There might be a pregnant girl being held hostage in the compound.” He cursed himself for still wanting to believe Nikki’s words. “If she’s in there I want her unharmed.” Zakir would not be able to live with himself if it were true and his raid caused Samira’s death. He signed off the radio as a Gurkha handed him his satellite phone.

  “Someone’s been repeatedly trying to get through.”

  “Yes!” he barked in Arabic.

  Zakir tensed when he heard Tariq’s voice, and his fist tightened around the phone as he listened to his brother relate the tragic story that had gripped the media seven years ago—the exact same story Nikki had told him before he swallowed the fake pill. Hope flared deep and hot in his gut. “You’re sure?” he whispered.

  “We have a fingerprint and biometrics match. She’s the woman I met at that conference, Zakir.”

  His heart raced. He closed his eyes again. It was easier than straining to see.

  “She’s the one who led me to test you for the markers all those years ago. It is because of Dr. Etherington that we are prepared for your loss of vision.”

  Zakir thought of Nikki’s appearance in his country, how she’d walked right into his life. As if they were ordained to meet.

  He thought of the way she’d watched his eyes so intently, and he recalled how she’d stared at the sight of Tariq’s photo in the dining hall and the subsequent mention of his name. If she remembered what Tariq had approached her about at that conference all those years ago, she’d have put two and two together after she’d seen Zakir stumble. Nikki had known exactly what was happening to him almost from the get-
go.

  “Go on,” he said quietly to his brother.

  And Tariq related how the terrible tragedy had played out in the media, how the doctor’s husband had sued her for allegedly driving drunk and killing his kids.

  It all meshed. Every word.

  He inhaled deeply, recalling her scars, the way her body had moved naked against his, and in his mind he saw every detail of her face, the look in her eyes. And his own eyes filled with hot emotion.

  “She secured the fake identity just before leaving the States, Zakir. Our people are pursuing that angle.”

  She really had come to the Sahara to save children, because she’d been unable to save her own.

  “Get them to rush on it,” he said quickly. “Tell them to contact Mercy Missions again. Get the exact dates she applied, joined them. Everything. Every little piece of that puzzle! I want it!”

  He hung up, heart thudding, and he radioed his general out in the field.

  “Any numbers on captives or injured yet?”

  “We lost only five men—”

  Zakir cut to the chase. “The pregnant girl?”

  “We have her. She’s safe.”

  Emotion, relief surged through him. “Bring her to the Summer Palace at once!”

  Zakir signed off and yelled for his Gurkha. “I want a full medical team flown here stat. There’s already an obstetrician on the way, but I want a psychologist as well, someone with experience in critical incident stress debriefing. Set up the medical rooms in preparation. And get me our top interrogator from Al Na’Jar. I want him here within the next ninety minutes. Understand? I need him to question one of my guards.”

  “Yes, sir, at once your Highness.”

  He ran his hands over his hair, his skin beginning to tingle with exhilaration.

  She was telling the truth.

  He reminded himself to proceed with caution. Samira would be delicately questioned, Gelu more forcibly. Every detail must be verified before he could think of going to her.

  The door to Nikki’s room opened, and a shaft of bright yellow light cut into the room.

  She blinked up from the floor. Zakir’s silhouette loomed into the frame of light. He stood silent, his dogs unmoving at his side, the jewels on his scimitar hilt glimmering.

  For a moment Nikki thought she must be dreaming.

  He stepped into the room using his dogs to guide him, as if he couldn’t see. He wore his black shades.

  Quickly, she tried to get up to her feet, but a sharp wave of dizziness and nausea forced her to sit on the bed for a moment.

  He quieted her with a wave of his hand, and he turned to face the door.

  Another figure, slight, stepped into the shaft of light.

  Samira!

  Nikki couldn’t breathe. Or move. Or even think as she saw the two people who meant the most in her world standing side by side.

  Both alive?

  “Miss Nikki?” Samira said softly, coming up to her. Emotion surged into Nikki’s chest, and tears seared into her eyes. She got up, took hold of Samira’s thin shoulders, then dropping to her knees in front of the teen she urgently felt for broken bones, cuts, bruises, for signs of baby movement. “Did…did they touch you, Samira?” she whispered, voice thick.

  “Not in that way, Miss Nikki.”

  “You…you’re okay….” She choked on the words as exhaustion and emotion welled out of her, tears rolling hot down her face.

  “I missed you, Miss Nikki,” Samira whispered, clamping her arms tightly around Nikki’s neck. “But I knew you would fix things. I knew you would send the king’s men to get me.”

  Nikki shot a glance at Zakir. “You…you found her,” she whispered, still in shock, not quite believing anything.

  Zakir nodded. But she could tell from the way he was holding his head that behind his glasses he wasn’t seeing much. If at all. Her heart wrenched.

  “I’ve brought in a team of doctors for Samira,” Zakir said quietly in Arabic. “One is a psychologist. And the obstetrician is now waiting outside to take Samira in for a proper checkup to see if the baby is all right.”

  She sniffed, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Go, Samira. I’ll come see you again as soon as the doctor is done. So will Solomon and the others.”

  “Thank you, Miss Nikki.”

  Nikki covered her mouth with a shaking hand, tears spilling down her face again as she watched the girl leave the room. Then she turned to Zakir. “Oh, thank you,” she whispered.

  He reached out, took her arm. “It’s my pleasure, too, to see her safe.”

  “You can’t see, Zakir, can you?”

  “Not much. The vision is gone in the left eye. It will be soon now.”

  She led Zakir to the bed and sat beside him. “I am so sorry.”

  “I am prepared for this part.”

  “What…what happened with the poison?”

  “After you were caught on the security camera hiding the bottle, Nikki, I had the capsule replaced with a placebo while I sent the contents to be analyzed in Al Na’Jar.”

  Just as she’d replaced the poison by using a known sedative the first time.

  “I needed to know if you were trying to kill me.”

  “I would never have given it to you, Zakir. I replaced the contents of the first capsule they gave me with a sedative, because I couldn’t be sure what was in it. But when I gave them the document, they kept Samira and tried to force me do it properly the second time around. I was coming to confess. I was going to hand the capsule over to you. Except you brought Gelu. He was—”

  “I know, Nikki,” he said quietly. “I became suspicious of him in the dining hall, the way you were catching his eyes. At first I thought you might be collaborating. I had him immediately imprisoned for questioning. It turns out he’s been freelancing for my enemy on the King’s Council, Fakhir Nasab. I also have him in custody now. Nasab paid Gelu a great deal of money to spy on me and later to attempt an assassination.”

  “Nasab is with the insurgency?”

  “It’s not clear yet. My interrogators believe Nasab might be using the insurgency to create unrest for another reason. He might be working for someone else, possibly even for someone outside the country. We have a lot of work to do still. The danger is not over.”

  “Zakir, in the orchard, the man who gave me the capsule and the orders, he was foreign. Caucasian, I think. He had an accent that might have been European, maybe French.”

  Zakir nodded. “We have him. My men followed him from the orchard after he met with you. He led us to an insurgent cell, a base camp carved into a sandstone cliff. They were holding Samira there.”

  Emotion balled into her throat again. For a moment she couldn’t speak. She touched his hand, his smooth dark skin, her heart swelling and aching with love for this fierce and gentle man. So strong, yet so vulnerable in his impending blindness.

  “Zakir,” she whispered, “can you forgive me for—”

  He touched his fingertips over her lips. “I know you didn’t come here to hurt me, Nikki. My heart was right. You are a healer, not a killer. Tariq helped confirm this. He remembered who you were, and he passed the information to our private investigators in the States. They confirmed it with biometrics and fingerprint matches.”

  She inhaled shakily, Sam snaking back into her thoughts. With it came the cool, dank fear, the memories. “I am not that person anymore, Zakir.”

  “Nor am I the same person you saw written up in the tabloids, Nikki.” He paused. “Sometimes we need to go through a crucible of trials to become the people we are really destined to be.”

  Silently, she reached up, removed his glasses. Nikki touched the sides of his eyes, and her heart sank. His right pupil was showing barely any reaction at all. He was almost completely blind.

  He touched her face in return, his strong fingers so gentle, and as he felt the wetness on her cheeks, emotion began to glisten in his own eyes. “I am thankful that I can see you one last time, before the darkness
is permanent. I’d like to think you were destined to come to me, Nikki,” he whispered. “I think we could be good together. I believe we belong together.”

  She crumpled against his strong body. And he stroked her hair. “Tell me about your twins,” he whispered. “About Hailey and Chase. Tell me everything.”

  And she did. It was the first time Nikki had been able to speak openly about it in this way, without feeling judged, hated, and it was profoundly cathartic.

  Zakir gathered her tightly into his arms. He held and comforted her like she’d needed to be comforted all those years ago after the tragic deaths of her toddlers. Like she’d needed to be loved by the husband who’d betrayed her.

  “What about the senator?” she whispered as her emotions settled. “Does…does he know I am here?”

  “Nikki—” for she’d never be anything else to him “—Senator Etherington will never know. Your identity will remain a secret between us and our private security company. Omair has special contacts who can create you a brand-new identity. One that will withstand exhaustive international scrutiny. But we can keep the name Nikki.” He caressed her face. “I would like this, because you are Nikki to me. And the surname they choose is irrelevant because—if you say yes—when you become my queen you will adopt the Al Arif name and legacy as your own. That is the name that will matter.”

  Tears were streaming down her face again. Zakir could feel the hot wetness. He could feel her shaking. But he could see very little in this light. He leaned down, kissing the tears away, tasting the salt of her emotion, remembering every little detail of her oasis eyes, her features, the memory of her face glowing like a candle—a beacon of light and hope in the darkness that would now become a part of his life.

  “How can this be done, Zakir? How can you just give me an identity that will withstand such scrutiny?”

  He inhaled, thinking no more secrets. What he knew about Omair, she, too, would know. “Omair sometimes contracts to a private military organization based on Sao Diogo, an island off the west coast of Africa. This company occasionally subcontracts to the CIA or the Pentagon. Omair tells us very little about his work, Nikki, but I do know his people can organize this. I have already spoken to him about it. Nikki Hunt will cease to exist. She will have fled the mission in Mauritania and vanished, presumed perished in the Sahara.”