A fresh flood of tears cascaded, and Rainier shifted her in his arms, careful to keep her close to his chest but where he could tip up her face to his. She tried to avoid his piercing gray eyes by burrowing tight against his chest.
“Keep going, baby. This sounds important.”
Rainier, willing to listen when it was too late. He would try to make sense of her garbled ramblings. Of her guilt. Of the reason she couldn’t call him.
“It didn’t occur to me to try to escape because I really grew to think of many of the women and children as family. I saw others leave when the ransom was paid and waited my turn. I honestly didn’t want to go. I was learning so many things. Not just that, I felt like I actually had a home.”
That confession would tell him too much about her home life with her parents. She felt as if she was betraying them all over again. She moaned and tried to cover her face, but Rainier caught her wrist and held her hand down.
“Don’t,Qadri. I need to see your face when you tell me this. It’s clearly important.”
Only Rainier would realize how important it really was. He would see her with those eyes that could see right into a person’s heart. She had too many sins to want him to see her so clearly.
“If I had just escaped then, Rainier, Salman Ahmad, Mama Ahmad and all the members of his tribe, men, women and children, all of them, would still be alive today. There would have been no reason for Scorpion to attack them.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” she said decisively. “I can barely look at my parents, I’m so weighed down with guilt. They want me to live with them, and I just can’t do it. I can’t live in that environment with the two of them so sad and depressed. I’ve ruined their lives, Rainier.”
“I disagree that Scorpion wouldn’t have attacked them. They had money. He’s a sadist, and he targets smaller towns or villages. They were most likely on his radar.”
She shook her head. “He knew about the ransom my father tried to pay and he prevented that money from reaching the sheik. He didn’t stop any of the other ransoms. And the things he did to me were very personal.”
She knew she wasn’t the first teenage girl he had taken prisoner and tortured, but his hatred of her was far too acute to be anything but personal. She fell silent, biting her lip, not knowing how to convince him or even if it mattered.
His fingers began a slow massage of the nape of her neck. “Keep going, Shabina. You haven’t gotten to the part where you feel you can’t call me when you’re in trouble.”
“You’re a brilliant man, a brilliant doctor. You could have done anything, but that night, when you came for me, I was such a mess. You knew what I planned to do. You caught me crawling across the sand in the middle of the sandstorm. They were giving me antibiotics and blood and even trying to feed me intravenously. I’d pulled the tubes out because for the first time, Scorpion had made a mistake.”
He remained silent, his fingers continuing that strong massage on the nape of her neck. She wiped her tears on his shirt.
“He’d taken the two mercenaries with him that had been good to me. I knew when he came back and found me dead, he’d kill some of the men he’d left behind. He’s truly insane. Iyad had given me a knife, and I was going to kill as many as I could before one of them killed me or I died from loss of blood. I’d planned my death out very carefully.”
She raised her gaze to his, her eyes meeting his. Her heart stuttered. Clenched hard in her chest. “You came out of the storm like an apparition. An angel of death.Rainier.” She breathed his name, once again caught up in the terrible memory of that night.
Scorpion’s mercenaries had forgotten all about her, busy protecting themselves against the sandstorm. They hadn’t thought—or cared—to protect a helpless girl.
“You’re here with me now,Qadri. You’re safe, far from him.”
She shook her head. “I’m terrified Scorpion will make goodon his vow to me—that I can never escape him. That he’ll come for me and anyone around me will be in danger. My friends. My parents. Now I know I’m bringing that same danger to you.”
“He’s the one afraid for his life.”
Rainier’s assurance was delivered in that same calm, steady voice he’d used when he’d taken her to his safe house and meticulously addressed each of her wounds. He didn’t sugarcoat anything when he talked to her about her wounds or the infection she had or what she would experience in the future with the trauma she’d suffered. He didn’t do that now.
“You’ve always believed you influenced my decision to kill those men holding you prisoner because you were so determined to do it, but that isn’t the truth, Shabina. I cut off all emotion when I’m sent out. That’s the only way I function in the field. Finding a sixteen-year-old girl nearly dead, tortured beyond what I’d seen in some of the worst cases, I was grateful I didn’t feel. Knowing your guards abandoned you in that sandstorm while they protected their own skin would have made anyone go a little insane, but I don’t operate that way.”
He trailed his lips down her cheek following the path of tears. Her heart clenched and then pounded in reaction. He’d never done that before in all the times he’d held her. That was new, and she liked it far more than she should.
“I had already planned to kill those men. I had taken a contract to find and kill Scorpion and any of his associates. That contract was with several countries, none of which, at that time, was the United States. It just so happened that my rescue mission brought me straight to his camp. Unfortunately, he was gone and so was his inner circle.”
Shabina frowned, trying to think back. Her memories were hazy. She’d been so ill. “He was so angry. He often was, but he’dgotten a message and told everyone that he had to leave immediately. He usually left behind at least two of the men he called his cabinet, but this time he ordered all of them to go with him. At one point, I think he considered taking me, but I was so far gone, he was afraid if he moved me, I’d die.”
“You know for certain he received a message before he left?” There was speculation in Rainier’s voice.
She nodded. The tears were beginning to finally slow, leaving her hiccupping. She wassucha mess. She took the tissue he handed her. Rainier always seemed to be prepared for any emergency.
“He was so angry after reading it. Most of his men were afraid of him, and as soon as he began to rage at everyone, they got as far from him as possible. I wanted to make him angrier. I hoped he would kill me. When he was that angry, he looked for any target, and I was often his favorite. I did manage to draw his attention, which normally would have brought him straight to me. He would have beat me with his fists, but he’d already stabbed me multiple times in the thigh and had his men take turns with a whip.”
