LITMIR.BIZ

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ready to fight.

      A hyena.

      The animal watched him instead of running away, simply skirted him when he got closer. Tariq shouted and clapped. It growled at him, ribs sticking out under the shaggy fur. Could be trouble yet. They would definitely need that fire during the night. The villa didn’t have a door, nothing to keep uninvited visitors out. And the hyena might not be their biggest problem. Tariq thought of the tire tracks in the sand as he moved on.

      The mangy beast followed.

      If there was to be a fight, he hoped to regain his full strength before it happened. He hadn’t lost a dangerous amount of blood, but enough to slow him down. He didn’t like the feeling.

      He shook the tire iron at the animal and considered throwing the heavy weapon, then thought better of it as the hyena snapped its powerful jaws at him. Leaving himself unarmed didn’t seem smart.

      Those jaws could crush his bones with laughable ease. They went along with the beast’s superacidic stomach, which could digest his whole prey—fur, flesh, bones, down to the last split hoof. If hyenas had a life philosophy, it had to be along the lines of “waste not, want not.”

      Sara would have to be told to stay inside.

      Sara Reeves.

      Tariq had had lovers—both innocent and worldly-wise. But he’d never experienced the instant connection and overpowering attraction he felt for her. From the first moment in that elevator …

      He’d known who she was. He kept a close eye on what business was being conducted at MMPOIL each day. He hadn’t meant to meet her—that had been fate. But once he did, he’d had to join her on the trip to the wells, had to be near her again. He’d been thinking about asking her and Jeff Myers to dinner that evening, just so he could spend time in her company.

      He had her company now. But he regretted the circumstances, and wished more than anything to keep her safe. It would be best for her if she left the country. Which she was eager to do, no doubt.

      First he would get her to the embassy, then mount an investigation. He would find Husam and learn what was going on. He would bring the murderers to justice. But when he was done with that, he would go and find Sara Reeves again.

      He went back to the workers’ trailers and broke open a few more locks, got all the blankets he could find, grabbing a box of nails, too. When he returned to Sara, she was standing at the window as if mesmerized by the darkening horizon to the east.

      “Storm’s almost here.” He dropped his load onto the floor. “See if you can seal up the windows.” He went to the area that would be the bathroom and started shoveling sand out of the sunken tub, got it empty in only a few minutes.

      “What are you doing?” She pulled a blanket from the pile.

      “We’ll be stuck here for a while. And we could both use a bath.” The pool-like tub was four times the size of an ordinary bathtub, designed to be luxurious. It would take him a number of trips, carrying water, but he should be able to fill it at least partially. Cleaning up would give them something to do while they waited out the storm. Her clothes were covered in dry blood, and his wound needed tending.

      “Stay inside and keep this close.” He carried the tire iron to her. “You can use this as a hammer. Or a weapon. There’s a hyena somewhere outside.”

      Her eyes went wide.

      “If it tries to come in, just give me a shout.”

      “Would it attack?”

      “Probably not yet. Assessing us for now. It’s a night hunter, and more likely to make a move then. I’ll get the fire going as soon as I’m done with this.”

      He dumped whatever water was left in the pot into the pool, then went to get more. As he did, he heard the sound of hammering—Sara nailing blankets over the window holes in the walls. She was making good progress. He hoped to do the same. He figured they had fifteen minutes at most before the storm hit.

      THE WIND HOWLED like a wild animal, trying to get into their firelit shelter. The doorway was blanketed off, the fire a safe distance inside, an opening in the ceiling for the not-yet-built staircase providing a way for the smoke to get out.

      Tariq sat on the opposite side of the dividing wall from Sara and the bath. His back flat against the concrete, he stared ahead into the semidarkness.

      The sandstorm had considerably dimmed the sun. Whatever light got through the swirling sands was blocked by the blankets over the windows, and the planks of wood he’d nailed up on the windward side so the blankets wouldn’t be blown off. On the other sides, the nails were sufficient to hold the fabric, which kept the fine sand out.

      “Why were you going to the well?” she asked, hidden from sight by the wall. The sounds of water splashing made his imagination run wild.

      “My youngest brother, Aziz, called. He said he had something important he wanted to talk to me about.” And he hadn’t been willing to say it over the phone. Did he know about the bandits? “I wanted to hear what he had to say,” he said, telling Sara the partial truth. He had gone because of Aziz’s call, but he could have gone in a separate car under separate guard. He hadn’t. He had wanted to see more of the beautiful woman he’d met in the elevator.

      “How many brothers do you have?”

      “Just two. Twins. Five years younger.”

      “I thought a sheik would have his own private chopper.”

      “Aziz took it to the new well this morning.” Tariq had been planning on using the other one. Whoever else needed it would have been simply delayed an hour while the helicopter flew him out, then came back in for another turn. But the corporate chopper had been out of commission, and he’d met Sara in the elevator and been told shortly after about the two Hummers going out. And so, drawn by her, he’d come along for the ride.

      Not the only last-minute addition to the convoy, it seemed.

      He thought about Husam, going over each and every time he’d seen the man the last few months, every word they had exchanged, every project Husam had been involved in. Had he ever mentioned enemies? Had Omar? Tariq couldn’t recall any such instance, so he thought harder. But he still couldn’t completely block out the sounds of water splashing on the other side of the wall.

      It’d been a long while since he’d had time to think about a woman. And the customs of his country made things difficult in the extreme, anyway. Had he spent any time in the company of an unattached Beharrainian of the opposite sex, he would have been expected to marry her. He was sheik, his every movement closely watched.

      He had considered marriage for the sake of his tribe. He was willing to make any sacrifice for his people, even that. Holding an elaborate wedding, experiencing the blessing of children … Would it have been enough to forge them together again, to make them accept him, think of him as one of their own at last?

      Trouble was, he wasn’t thinking of himself as one of them—not always. His mother’s choice to send him out of the country and save his life had also cut him off from his roots, a decision that had been made for him and later proved to be as much a curse as a blessing.

      “I really needed this,” Sara was saying from the other side of the wall.

      Even over the wind’s howling, he could hear when she stood and stepped out of the pool, the water splashing onto the tiles. His groin tightened and he cursed his body’s inconvenient awareness of her. He drew a slow, controlled breath, then let it out.

      “Okay. Your turn,” she called out after a minute.

      He pushed himself to his feet and tried to clear his head as he came around the wall. At the sight of her, he felt as if he’d been thrown from a camel, a blow he had experienced only once, as a child, but still vividly remembered. There was no air in his lungs, none in the room, it seemed.

      She stood by her

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