Royal's Wedding Secret (13 page)

“Dario…” his father said, his voice thin but strong and clear.

Dario was utterly silent, only nodding to let his father know that he had heard. This was a precious gift, one he had had no right to expect. His heart beat fast in his chest.

“Protect… protect Jabal. Protect its wealth and… and protect its beauty. Its history. That must be your legacy.”

“I will. I swear to you, Father, I will.” Dario’s voice broke on the last word. With every fiber of his being, he tried to convey to his father that he would honor his words.

His last words, as it turned out.

Sandros drew a deep, rough breath before starting to cough violently, and in a matter of seconds, that coughing had turned into convulsions. The machines around them started shrieking in panic, and doctors and nurses filled the room. Dario found himself pushed to one side, but he was already numb.

When the doctor in charge declared that the First Among Ten Thousand was truly gone, his aunt started to wail, the funerary cry that Jabal women had sent up for their beloved men for more than five hundred years. Some of the nurses, traditionalists despite their modern uniforms, joined her. Sandros al-Nejem had been a giant among men, a force to be reckoned with at home and abroad. He had ruled his country with strength and kindness, and now it would honor him when he left it for the last time.

Dario could feel a deep well of coldness open up inside him. The grief would come later. Right now, there was the understanding that he had to fill his father’s place, while knowing that there was no man on earth who could do so.

Sleep well, Father. When we meet again, I pray you will be proud of what I have done.

*

Now

In her tiny trailer in the shadow of the Sinn mountains, Bailey tied back her hair and squinted at the pottery shards in front of her. They were a dusty gray, but she knew that if she took a knife to one edge, she would reveal a natural red color that was as bright now as it was when the pottery was thrown some two hundred years ago.

Across the table, Christensen waited with ill grace. He was a pale man with icy blue eyes, a nose that was almost permanently red from his drinking, and a hard slash of a mouth, which right now was even harder with impatience.

“Well?” he demanded.

Bailey carefully hid her flinch. Christensen was a man known to lash out violently, but so far, over the eleven months she had worked for him, he had never struck her. She had seen him lay around him with fists and slaps for the diggers and even some of the field staff, but so far, he hadn’t lost his temper with her. Sometimes, though, she saw the glint in his eye, and she knew that she was no more safe than anyone else.

What the hell am I doing
? Bailey thought for a moment, and then common sense reasserted itself.

I am testing the provenance of some pottery shards for a grave-robbing lunatic
,
she decided and got back to work.

Finally, she put aside her magnifying glass.

“Better,” she said laconically.

“Better?” he asked, his voice rising dangerously. “What the hell is that that supposed to mean?”

“These shards are of a better quality than the ones you’ve brought before. They’re thinner, more even, drawn from a clay that is not local. That means they might have belonged to people who were substantially better off.”

Christensen’s eyes glimmered with greed.

“Like royalty? Kings, queens?”

“Like people who lived better off than the other people we’ve seen here,” she said bluntly. Though she betrayed no fear, a part of her was always wondering if this was the point when things would deteriorate, when he would lose his temper at her.

Instead, he laughed, a harsh bark.

“All right. Good. That’s what I pay you for, isn’t it? Good work, Tyler.”

She wished she didn’t feel a surge of relief and pleasure at his words. Living and working on the site was beginning to change her in ways she didn’t like.

Bailey had first realized things were not right soon after coming to Jabal. Christensen had taken her passport and her identification (“for safekeeping,” he had said) and then taken her off the major roads from the city to this desolate site among the foothills of the Sinn mountains.

She was getting paid, at least. Her mother still sent her happy and cheerful e-mails about getting the money deposits, but very early on, Bailey realized that she was not allowed to access the one computer with a satellite connection unless someone was watching her. Essentially, she was a prisoner.

To her discomfort, Christensen hadn’t stopped watching her, a speculative look in his eyes.

“You’re a smart girl, Tyler. You know that, I bet. I don’t see you fooling around with the diggers or the other staff…”

“Just antisocial, I guess,” she said warily. “I’m not good with people.”

Christensen’s mouth widened in something she was sure was meant to be a smile. Out here in the mountains, he had dropped the affable gentleman trick as soon as she had signed. The truly terrifying part was that he could put it back on again whenever he liked.

“Well, what a coincidence. I have some time coming up. Perhaps sometime in the next few days, we can be bad at people together. I’ll come see you.”

He tipped an imaginary hat at her and sauntered out, but Bailey’s heart was beating faster. She may not have been very experienced in the way of men, but she knew what that meant. It meant that she had to get out, and she had to get out quick.

Her mind racing, she waited until Christensen was properly gone, and then she picked up the long robe and headdress that were part and parcel of what women were expected to wear this far out in the country. She knew that in Jabal, it was quite westernized, but if she didn’t want to be stared at or harassed, she needed to cover up. She dashed off a note on a small scrap of paper, and she tucked it into the pocket in her sleeve.

Bailey rushed out into the hot dry air, looking around, and to her relief, she noticed men loading up cars nearby. She went up to one that she recognized.

“Abdul, are you going into the village?” she asked.

He nodded, uninterested, and continued to load up.

“Do you have room for a passenger? There are a few things I need…”

It was a common enough request. Sometimes she had needed feathers to clean off the artifacts that were found. Other times she had wanted pots to compare. This time, she needed an escape.

“Yeah, if you’re all right riding with some of the gear for repair in your lap.”

It was a hot and dusty ride to the village, one that had no name and only two stores. The men immediately set off for the metalworkers who could help them repair their gear, leaving her to venture through the town alone. It was a busy day, fortunately, with people from all over the area coming to sell their things. Surely there was someone here who might be going to Jabal, who might be able to help her.

She was so busy scanning the crowd that she didn’t notice the tall man in the rider’s clothes until she walked right into him. Bailey squawked with dismay, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t set her upright.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, stepping back, but with a frown, the rider followed her.

He was tall even for this part of the world, she realized. Dressed in the loose indigo blue robes that had been worn by Jabal riders since time out of mind, there was something hawklike about his appearance, about the way his dark eyes bored into her.

“You’re English,” he said, frowning. “Are you a tourist?”

“American,” she corrected. “And who are you?”

It would have done her no good to reveal herself to a man who may have been coming in to be Christensen’s new partner. She couldn’t afford to tip her hand just yet.

“A rider,” he said, a slight smile on his lips. “My friends and I are looking at the area, finding out what might be going on this part of the world.”

“Ah, then you are tourists,” she said, realizing. This man might have been the ticket home she was looking for.

“Something of the sort. You still haven’t told me what I wanted to know,” he said pointedly.

She was still trying to decide what she wanted to tell him when she heard shouting from behind her. When she looked around, Bailey’s heart sank. The men from camp looked frustrated and angry, already loading the parts back into the car.

“Here,” she said, stepping close and pressing her note into the man’s hand. “Please.”

She looked up at him, trying with her eyes to tell him a million things. Then Abdul came up behind her and it was too late.

“You,” he barked. “What are you doing talking to this man?”

“I wasn’t doing anything…”

He turned his sharp eyes to the rider, who was watching everything with a shocking amount of calm. He was alone and Abdul and his men carried their guns openly.

“What are you doing talking with this woman?” he demanded in Arabic. “She’s not meant to have anything to do with you.”

The rider shrugged, supremely uninterested in anything that was being said or done.

“She thought I looked like someone I know,” he responded in the same language. “I don’t really understand what she was talking about.”

Abdul glared, but apparently that was enough for him.

“You, get back in the car. They can’t fix anything for us today.”

With no other choice, Bailey allowed Abdul to push her toward the car again. She wanted nothing more than to look behind her to see if the man had read her note, but she didn’t dare.

Please
,
she thought.
Please, please.

*

Dario maintained his uninterested demeanor until the convoy was nothing more than a cloud of dust on the horizon, and then he made his way back to where they had left the horses. Behind the sheltering bulk of his own black mare, he opened the tiny note. It had been folded until it was a hard pellet in his hand, stained with sweat and fear.

He read the note, and he felt his temper, which had been a low burn for the last several days, rise up higher and hotter.

My name is Bailey Tyler, and I am an American woman. I have been working at a camp run by a man named Christensen for the last eleven months, removing artifacts from the Sinn mountains. I am not allowed to leave, and I am afraid of what might happen to me.

Please tell the American embassy in Jabal that I am here.

Please, I am very afraid.

Bishr, a lean man with a truly impressive mustache, came up behind him.

“You were right,” he said. “The convoy was from the camp after all. The people in the market told me that they come for supplies and repairs every week or so. These are the ones we have been looking for.”

“Things have quickly become a little more complicated, my friend,” Dario said finally. “They seem to have some innocent people on the base.”

He showed the military commander the note, and Bishr swore.

“That does make things more complicated,” he agreed. “And some of the villagers say that they are more well armed than we thought they would be. May I respectfully suggest…”

“You may not,” Dario said shortly. “This is my place here, both as a commander in the Jabal military myself and as the First Among Ten Thousand.”

Bishr might not have liked it, but he knew better than to argue, which Dario decided was a blessing of sorts anyway.

“Yes, sheikh. Your order, then?”

“We wait until the sun is a little lower in the sky. We assess the situation, and if possible, we act as soon as we can. There may be some people who cannot wait much longer.”

He took the note back from Bishr and placed it in his pocket. There had been something so desperate and so afraid about the girl who had bumped into him. She was brave to try to get word out, but from the glare of the man who had come to collect her, she might be punished for that bravery.

What stuck with him, though, were her enormous gray eyes. They were as clear as water, and it felt as if he could see right down into her soul.

Save me, save me please
,
her eyes seemed to say, and he knew that he had to do everything he could.

The other men had appeared, the forward guard for this particular expedition. Outside, waiting behind the rise, were the military vehicles to provide them with the support they would need.

“All right,” he said. “We’re moving out.”

*

Back in her trailer, Bailey couldn’t relax. She stripped off the headdress, but she stayed in the robe, pacing back and forth in her tiny space. Abdul had threatened he would tell Christensen that she had been flirting with men in town, but it was just as likely he would hold the knowledge over her head for some kind of gain.

There was a rough pounding on the door. She knew she should go see who it was, but instead, she picked up a small paring knife that she used to cut fruit, holding it down flat against her thigh. Bailey retreated into the farthest corner of the trailer, which she knew painfully was not very far away from the door at all.

After a few minutes of cursing, the key turned in the lock, and she realized that it was Christensen after all, who had keys to all of the trailers on the site. To her dismay, she realized that he was drunk, and there was that mean glint his eye.

“Abdul tells me you went to town to find yourself a man,” he snarled. “What the hell are you on about, then, Tyler?”

“Abdul is a liar,” she said as calmly as she could. “He hit on me on the way back to the camp, and then he threatened me. I guess this is what he came up with.”

He stilled, glaring at her. She clutched the handle of the paring knife so hard that she knew her knuckles were turning white.

“Is that so?” Christensen asked, suspicious.

“It is.”

He watched her so intently that she thought he must be able to see her pulse, the frantic beating of her heart.

“Abdul needs to learn to keep his damned mouth shut,” Christensen declared.

Instead of leaving, however, he simply closed the door behind him.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, his voice somehow more terrifying when it got quiet. “You’ve got potential. Wouldn’t have brought you out here unless I thought so…”