Desert Orchid… Chapter Twenty-three…
Copyright © C C MacKenzie 2014
Hello, my darlings,
There’s a storm coming….
Chapter Twenty Three
Storms in the desert were spectacular things.
And this storm was coming fast.
From a high curved balcony in the palace, Charisse turned to the west and watched a silver fork of lightning streak across a sky as black as pitch. Thunder bellowed sending a pounding drumbeat vibrating through the mountains.
An answering shudder rolled through her system, not of excitement, but of dread.
Had she done the right thing?
Two hours earlier she’d helped Arabella leave the white palace. And the place was in an uproar as Sarif interviewed servants and guards, demanding to know how his fiancée had left the palace unnoticed.
Another silver flash had her wince as the air thickened with ozone and the primitive roar of thunder matched the pounding of her blood through her system.
She was on edge as she waited for the storm to build and crash over the land of Onuur, filling it with an alien light. Her fingertips worried the beaded bracelet on her wrist.
This moody introspection had to stop. Depression and dark thoughts were Khalid’s province, not hers.
But yet again, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d done the right thing?
She was having great difficulty getting her head around the news of her best friend’s pregnancy. But Arabella had been desperate—and Charisse knew all about desperation. Her friend needed her family. She needed time to work out what she wanted for her future. And to decide, without pressure being brought to bear, whether or not she wanted to be a mother. Arabella had, Charisse argued with herself, the right to choose.
And who was she to deny her friend that right?
Arabella was like a sister to her.
However, she understood that Sarif El Haribe would never, ever forgive her for helping Arabella leave him. And if he ever discovered she’d known of a pregnancy, well, the entire family may shun her. Guilt slid up Charisse’s spine to wind a tense knot between her shoulder blades. The family had been so kind and supportive to her. And she knew that by helping Arabella flee she’d let them down. But what choice had she?
Earlier Khalid had watched her with that dead-on stare of his, but had said nothing.
He knew something was wrong—she was unable to hide anything from him.
She also knew that Khalid trusted her to share such important news with him immediately. But by keeping quiet she’d also let him down. Plus, she was more than aware that not telling him would cause a rift between them that might never be healed. A baby in the El Haribe family was a monumental deal. In fact, she’d been wondering if she herself might be carrying a child. Her womanly cycle was a regular one. And it was three days late. Too soon to make an announcement, she decided. Khalid had freaked out over dealing with a few little children, heaven only knew what he’d do during nine months of prospective fatherhood. He’d be demented by the end of it. No, it was better to keep the news to herself, for now. After all it might be a false alarm.
Charisse was so involved with her dark thoughts and watching the fast approaching storm that she was totally unaware of Evil entering her rooms or its arrival at her back.
It all happened so fast.
She smelled him, an unwashed body, before she felt him.
A thick arm whipped around her throat, squeezed tight, cutting off her breath.
Instinctively she struggled, both hands clawing against rough fabric as she battled to drag air into her lungs to scream. Until the cold metal of a gun pressed hard against her temple made her go absolutely still.
“One sound.” Omar’s voice was a high whisper in her ear. The heady scent of halitosis made her gag. “And I’ll blast your brains out of that pretty little head. Be very still and I might let your husband live.”
Obediently, Charisse let her arms fall.
However, her mind was racing. Khalid… he wanted Khalid.
“Well done, Highness,” Omar said, and the crush on her windpipe eased. “If you make a sound I will kill your husband, dear old Yasmin, and those hounds you’re so fond of. You don’t want that, do you?” She shook her head. “Excellent. Now…” He cursed and tightened his grip as Khalid opened the doors to her suite and called out for her.
“Charisse?”
“Not a word,” Omar hissed the warning as he dragged her behind a fat sandstone pillar.
Charisse closed her eyes and sent up a swift prayer for deliverance.
Khalid shoved open double doors and entered her bedroom. She heard him swear under breath even as she was dragged further back into a dark corner. Omar’s gun was aimed at Khalid’s back. Her gut appeared to have been turned to solid ice as she stood there, turned to stone, and hardly daring to breath. She silently begged Khalid to turn away and leave. When he did, and she heard him barrelling down the stairs, she had the feeling she would never see him again. Tears hazed her vision, but she’d rather die before she let them fall in front of the monster who held her.
“Good. Now, come with me quietly. There is someone who wants to meet you.”
The arm was still tight around her throat.
Again, the cold metal of the gun pressed above her ear.
“Who wants to see me?”
Charisse knew exactly who it was but still needed to hear it.
“A father who longs to see his daughter,” Omar said. There was a small sigh of pleasure in a sly voice filled with malice.
“You will never get out of the palace alive,” she told him.
And where were her dogs?
“You just leave that up to me.”
As she opened her mouth to cry out the smell, the sweet taste on her tongue from the cloth around her nose and mouth, made her gag.
And then there was only darkness.
“Are they dead?”
Khalid and Sarif stood over the prone bodies of the wolfhounds slumped on the dirt floor. After an exhaustive search of the palace and the grounds for Charisse and Arabella, they’d searched the ancient tunnel network that ran through the mountain and found the dogs.
Thunder boomed.
The earth trembled beneath their feet.
Dressed in black army fatigues, Captain Bruce Monroe, ex-British Special Forces, patted Rufus on the rump and stood with the easy grace of a ballet dancer.
“Nope. Drugged. This proves the women have been taken. I wonder why they left the dogs alive?” he muttered as if to himself. The music of Scotland lilted in his deep voice.
“Probably didn’t want to deal with blood. Knives are a messy business, a gun without a silencer makes too much noise.” This came from his brother, Lieutenant Wallace Monroe. His strong jaw pistoned as he chewed gum and thoughtfully studied the animals.
The men were tall, well over six foot. It was obvious they were brothers. They both had the lean boned features, the very blue eyes and coal black hair of the Celts. They were armed to the teeth. And Khalid decided they were a couple of mean bastards who could give The Rock a run for his money. And he was very grateful that they’d arrived just this afternoon, because he for one felt totally out of his depth. He knew he was barely holding it together and was struggling to keep a lid on the crushing fear that something very bad had happened to his wife.
Charisse had disappeared into thin air.
The Monroes hadn’t come alone, they’d brought a hand-picked team of twenty men and now one of their men drew close. He moved like a ghost. Khalid hadn’t heard him approach, and his gaze dropped to the soldier’s feet. He wore some sort of black crepe soled boots that didn’t make a sound. All of them wore the same basic uniform. Black combats, matching long sleeved muscle shirts under a black armoured vest with pockets jam packed with ammunition and devices. They all wore earpieces.
The soldier was grinning as he held out his hand. “Look what I found twenty feet down the main tunnel.”
Bruce Monroe picked up a couple of sparkling tiny glass beads.
When Khalid made a sound in his throat, he looked at him.
“Recognise these?”
“Yes, it’s from my wife’s bracelet. Some school kids gifted her with it a few days ago. She wouldn’t take it off.”
“Sir, there’s a trail of them taking the fork to the left further down the tunnel.”
Khalid made to move, but Bruce stopped him.
“We won’t go running after her without a plan. The maps of the tunnel routes are old but accurate. There are huge cave formations down there. A man with a grenade or explosives could do a lot of damage. My goal is to recover the women, alive. Hopefully, without losing any of my men or any of you. If Omar has them then we need to be careful. He’s managed to give your guys the run-around for weeks. He’s had time to familiarise himself with all the routes in and out of the palace. He’ll have a safe place to hide, probably more than one. We need to be prepared for anything he might throw at us.”
Khalid knew the man was right, but dammit, he wanted Charisse in his arms.
How the hell had this happened?
Now Wallace Monroe spoke in a soft voice.
“If it is Omar who has them then remember that he is the monkey and not the organ grinder. Someone is giving him instructions. My team are monitoring all satellite phone frequencies and radio frequencies. We’ll find them because he’ll need to inform his master that he has the prize. And he can’t do that from within the mountain. He’ll need to break cover to send the signal. And once he does we’ll get him.”
“Unless he uses a radio, or torch at night, or a mirror during the day to send a signal,” Sarif inserted. “This is the desert. We use basic means of communication.”
Wallace nodded and his teeth flashed white.
“We will find them, Your Highness.”
Copyright © C C MacKenzie 2014
Christine X
