Captured By A Sheikh

Instead, he found himself staring into a pair of terrified eyes. From the looks of her, Holly was so frightened she couldn’t even scream.

“What on earth are you doing?” he demanded. “I agreed to take you back tomorrow.”

Finally, words choked out of her. “You killed her!”

“Who?” Had lingering traces of Zahad’s medicine given her a nightmare?

“My sister!”

“I’ve never even met her. I told you that.” He stood up, sheltering the baby beneath his robe. The boy was surprisingly wiggly, and he found it hard to support his head as Aunt Selima had taught. “Besides, for all we know, she is sitting in a bar somewhere, having a laugh at our expense.”

“No! How could you…?” As she scrambled to her feet, Holly still didn’t seem capable of finishing a sentence.

“You’re not making sense,” he told her. “I’ve been sitting in the cabin all night, not out marauding!”

“She’s dead.” The pain in her voice convinced him, finally, that she wasn’t referring to some dream. “It was on TV.”

Sharif had left the set on so he could keep track of what information the police were giving out. “They found your sister?”

Beneath the mud-streaked bedspread that half-covered her, Holly nodded. “In the desert. She’s been dead…a few weeks.”

Wind whipped the wet tendrils of her hair, giving her a half-drowned appearance. In a flare of lightning, he saw that she was shivering.

“You’ll make yourself sick,” Sharif said. “Let’s continue this conversation inside.”

“Let me go. Let us both go!”

“We don’t have a car,” he pointed out. “Even if I wanted to, I have no way of taking you anywhere on a night like this. And you certainly can’t walk out of a canyon in your condition.”

Without waiting for a response, he carried the baby up the steps. The woman followed as far as the porch, then stopped in the open doorway.