LITMIR.BIZ

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briefly lifted but she didn’t look at him.

      “You are Miss Olivia Morse, aren’t you?” he persisted, his voice pitched low.

      Liv sat on the cot, legs pulled up against her, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, trying to make herself smaller.

      Maybe she wasn’t really here, and maybe there wasn’t another bad man standing outside her cell demanding information, threatening another interrogation, interrogations that always ended with a beating.

      Didn’t they understand yet that she had no answers? Didn’t they understand she was as confused as they were? She’d been had. Duped. Destroyed.

      Liv closed her eyes, bent her head and pressed her forehead against the bony curve of her knees. Maybe if she just kept her eyes closed she’d disappear. Dissolve. Wake up in Alabama again.

      God, she missed home. God, she missed Jake and Mom and everyone.

      She should have never dreamed of pyramids and beautiful waves of sand, shouldn’t have wanted to ride a camel or explore the ancient tombs.

      She should have been happy staying home. She should have been happy just being a travel agent, booking other people’s exotic vacations.

       “Olivia.”

      The man spoke her name quietly, urgently, and fear rose up in her, fear that something bad was going to happen again.

      Turning her head away, she choked in broken Arabic, Arabic she’d learned to protect herself from another blow during the endless interrogations, “I don’t know. I don’t know who she was—”

      “We’ll discuss the charges later,” he interrupted, speaking flawless English, English without a hint of an accent. “There are a few things we need to settle first.”

      Liv shivered. The fact that he spoke English only made her more afraid, and fear and fatigue were the only things she understood anymore.

      “If I knew who she was, I’d tell you, I would. Because I want to go home—” She broke off, took a quick, unsteady breath, exhausted from the interrogations. The guards came for her at all hours of the night and then they’d skip her meals, trying to break her, trying to get the information they wanted. “I want to help you. I’m trying to help you. Believe me.”

      “I do,” he said almost gently, and his tone, so different from the others, was her undoing.

      Scalding tears filled her eyes, tears so hot they stung and burned as if filled with salt and sand.

      Reaching up, she swiftly wiped her eyes dry. “I want to go home,” she whispered, her voice shaky.

      “And I want to see you return home.”

      No one had said that to her since she arrived. No one had given her the slightest bit of hope that she’d ever leave this horrible place.

      Liv slowly turned her head and looked at him. The corridor was dark, shadowy, but the shadows couldn’t hide his height or size. He wasn’t a small man, or a stout man, not like the ones who’d interrogated her before. He was considerably younger, too.

      He was robed, but his robe was black and embroidered heavily with gold. His head covering was white, pristine-white, and while the cloth concealed much of his hair it only served to emphasize his hard, strong features.

      “I’m here to get you out,” he continued, “but we don’t have much time.”

      Torn between hope and dread, Liv clutched her knees to her chest, her thin back robe rough against her skin. All of her clothes had been confiscated with the rest of her things at the time of her arrest. In place of her skirts and jeans and T-shirts she’d been given this robe, and the thin, stiff linen garment she wore beneath the robe, which was little more than a slip. “Who sent you?”

      The man’s expression was neither friendly nor encouraging. “Your brother.”

       “Jake?”

      “He asked me to check on you.”

      She lurched to her feet and then grabbed the wall for support. “Jake knows I’m here?”

      “Jake knows I’m looking for you.”

      Liv exhaled in a dizzy rush, her fingers pressed to the damp stone wall. “They said I’d never leave here. They said I’d never get out, not until I confessed, and gave up the names of the others.”

      “They didn’t know you were connected to powerful people,” he replied.

      Liv blinked, her head swimming. “Am I?”

      “You are now.”

      She moved to the front of the cell and grabbed the bars. “How? Why?”

      “I am Sheikh Khalid Fehr, and I’m here representing the royal family of Sarq.”

      “Sarq borders Jabal,” she said.

      “And Egypt,” he answered. “It will be a diplomatic feat to get you out of here today, and time is short. I need to have the paperwork finalized, but I will return—”

      “No!” Liv didn’t mean to shout, she hadn’t intended her voice to be loud at all, but panic melted her bones, turning her blood to ice. “No,” she said more softly. “Please. Don’t leave me here.”

      “It’s just for a few minutes, maybe a half hour at the most—”

      “No,” she begged, her voice breaking, her hand snaking through the bars of the prison cell to clasp the sleeve of his robe. “Don’t leave me.”

      For a long moment he said nothing, just stared down at her hand, his thick black lashes fanning the hard thrust of cheekbone, his skin the color of burnished gold. “They won’t free you without my completing the necessary paperwork.”

      Her fingers tightened in his robe. “Don’t go.”

      “I’ll be back, I promise.”

      “I’m afraid here,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of the guards. I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of what happens when prisoners disappear.” Her gaze clung to his, desperate, pleading. “The prisoners don’t come back sometimes. They don’t and I hear screaming, terrible screaming.”

      “I’m only going down the hall,” he said. “I will be back soon.”

      “But they won’t let you back. They won’t. I know how this place works. The American ambassador came once and he never returned.”

      “There is no American ambassador in Jabal,” he answered. “It was a trick they played on you, a trick to try to break you.”

      She gripped his robe tighter. “Are you a trick, too?”

      Deep grooves bracketed his mouth. For a long moment he didn’t speak and then when he did, his voice dropped, deepened. “It depends on your definition of a trick.”

      An icy shaft chilled her. She jerked her head up, stared at him, stared hard as if she could somehow see the truth. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

      “Just know I will be back. As soon as I can.”

      “Don’t forget me,” she whispered.

      “I won’t, and I will be back sooner than you think.”

      She couldn’t look away from his eyes, couldn’t look away in case he was making promises he didn’t intend to keep. She’d been duped once more. She was beginning to think she’d never leave Ozr, never see her family again. “What if they take me away first?”

      “They won’t.”

      “They have other entrances, and different rooms. They might take me—”

      “They won’t.”

      “How do you know?”

      His

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