Shabina couldn’t help laughing. Vienna hung off cliffs rescuing total strangers. “I doubt that. I think what I’m trying to say is we were treated with kindness. No one hit me or any of theothers. They took us to a place with tents, gave us food and water and explained the rules. We were told we were being held for ransom and once that ransom was paid, we would be freed. It was more or less a profitable business for them, just as we’d been told by our security team.”
“There were others in this camp?”
“Even some of their women. Old and young. The leader was a man named Salman Ahmad. He was soft-spoken, but what he said was law. No one disobeyed him. He didn’t torture or murder, but he meant what he said. He had each of us make a video to plea with our families to pay the ransom. There were no political statements, just simple business transactions. Then the entire camp was moved.”
Shabina rubbed her aching left thigh. The muscle pounded with the throb of her heartbeat. “I should have tried to escape. I don’t know why I didn’t. The truth is, I didn’t feel as if I was in a camp with kidnappers. That first year, I was treated with kindness by the women and mostly ignored by the men. I learned so many things and found everything about their lives fascinating. I was able to help with the children and was taught to sew and cook. I perfected my language skills. Kathryn was the first to go, and even she hugged a couple of the women and me when she was escorted away.”
Tears burned behind her eyes, tears for those women and children she’d come to love. They had been like family to her. “I thought about my parents, but it felt as if I’d been sent to one of the many camps or boarding schools while the two of them went off alone together. This was nicer than the summer camps. I learned to play musical instruments and sing their songs. The birds were so beautiful, and I could coax them to come right to me. I practiced each note any bird would sing until I could duplicate it exactly. Istudied their beliefs and found them to be fascinating. In most ways, they were a quiet, peaceful, loving people. The men always wore the traditional garb, as did the women. I did as well.”
The lump in her throat threatened to choke her. She found she was rocking, self-soothing, something she had tried very hard not to do.
“Shabina.” Raine’s voice was gentle. “You don’t have to tell us.”
“No, I do. I was responsible for what happened. I should have tried to escape. The Frenchwomen were ransomed a few months after the first one. We moved often, but it was always the same: a nice setup and everyone seemed so peaceful. There were two babies born. The three college students left. Salman Ahmad came to me one day and said it would be my turn. He said I was too good with the children, teaching them different languages and playing games with them, and no one wanted me to go. I overheard him telling his men that each time the ransom was to be paid, it was intercepted. He didn’t know if my father was deliberately keeping the money or if they had a traitor among them, someone taking the money before it got into their hands. Either way, he couldn’t keep me much longer. I knew I would be going home.”
She touched her tongue to her suddenly dry lips. “But then they came. He called himself Scorpion.” Without thinking she wrapped her fingers just above her left wrist. “He said his name was Al Aqrab Jabrir Birvul Fareed. He claimed he was likely named after the star, but he prides himself as the Deathstalker Scorpion. He even referred to himself that way. He has a special brand he puts on his captive women to claim to the world they belong to him.”
Shabina realized her friends were watching her closely, and she forced her hands to relax and drop once more to the dogs pressed close to her.
“He wore a mask, but I realized fairly quickly he wasn’t from the Middle East. His name wasn’t really Fareed. The men he surrounded himself with were mercenaries, and they were nearly as sadistic as he was. They used automatic weapons and mowed down the men. It didn’t matter the age of the women; old or young, they were raped before they were killed. They killed every single person in the camp, babies included. Everyone.” She whispered the last word because her voice refused to go any louder. “I thought I would be raped and murdered as well. I was part of them. They had become my family.”
“Oh, Shabina,” Zahra whispered. “How terrible you had to witness such a massacre.”
“I know you might think I have some kind of Stockholm syndrome from being kidnapped and held so long by Salman Ahmad, but I know it isn’t that. To him, kidnapping was simply a business transaction. He was a good man. A wise man. He led his tribe with fairness and kindness. Not just his men but the women and children. They followed their traditional beliefs, and while I was with them, I tried to learn as much as I could and followed them as well. Scorpion was just the opposite, and he is a true sadist.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Stella said. “That name has been in the news numerous times. He’s an international serial killer. Most people suspect he’s an airline pilot because he’s killed in so many countries.”
“There’s little trail left behind,” Raine added, “because he murders everyone he comes into contact with. He usually keeps a young girl for about six months, tortures her and then kills her in some sadistic way, leaving his brand on her arm.”
Shabina resisted rubbing her forearm beneath the long-sleeved shirt she wore.
“He’s killed in the United States,” Stella said. “In France. InArgentina. Costa Rica. Egypt, Belgium and I think one other country besides Saudi Arabia. He was reputed to have massacred several villages or very small towns in each of the countries.”
“He insisted everyone around him address him as Sheik Fareed,” Shabina said. “A sheik is a holy man, wise, an advisor, someone for everyone in the tribe to look up to. Scorpion didn’t earn his title. He took it, when it wasn’t his to take. He doesn’t practice the beliefs he pretended to outsiders to have. He doesn’t have one ounce of respect for any of the people, the land, or even the royal family. He truly is a serial killer, and so far, no one has been able to catch him. When I realized he wasn’t from the Middle East, I did my best to find out his true identity. At least to figure out where he was from.”
She rubbed her aching thigh. It was throbbing now, her heart beating in tune to that pulsing pain. “I heard him speaking French more than once with several of his top commanders. He called them his cabinet. I won’t go into what happened to anyone who dared to cross him, or what he did to me, but he was no holy man. He was a total fraud, and he hated me and yet seemed obsessed with me. I couldn’t do anything right. I pretended not to know his language and made him speak French or English to me. That earned me quite a few punishments, but after a while, the mercenaries he’d hired locally grew careless and talked in front of me. His command of both those languages was excellent.”
“You don’t have to go into detail,” Raine assured. “And no one here thinks you have Stockholm syndrome in regards to Salman Ahmad. He sounds as if he was a good man and did his best for his people.”
She appreciated Raine all the more for being understanding. Not even her parents understood how well she’d been treated or how the tribe had integrated her into their families. They’d shownher respect, and in turn, she respected and grew to love them. It had all started with their leader, Salman Ahmad. She’d seen the difference between a true leader and practitioner of his traditions and a power-hungry sadist out to get everything he could for himself. Scorpion had robbed the tribe and murdered the members.
She knew they weren’t his only victims. She had become aware, through all the questioning she’d been subjected to when she’d been rescued, that the man who called himself Scorpion was an international serial killer determined to create as many headlines as possible with the sadistic massacres. He would disappear for months or a year, and then the killings would start up again in another country. His name was never the same, only Scorpion and the signature brand on the wrist of the young girl he kept for six months before murdering her.
She had to get to the present and push the past far away from her mind. Close the door before it creaked too far open.
“Four days ago, two men came into the café. They said they were from France. That isn’t unusual. We get tourists from all over the world. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have thought too much about it, but they looked familiar to me. Their features. You know I don’t forget faces. I was fairly certain I hadn’t seen either of them before, but I knew I had seen their features. Their eyes and foreheads. Neither of them looked directly at me. That’s unusual too.”
She didn’t want to sound vain—she wasn’t. She dressed modestly at all times. She covered her skin. It was a habit and necessity as far as she was concerned. Her friends had never questioned why she wore the clothes she did—the long sleeves even in the heat. She never wore shorts. But men looked at her. She’d looked in the mirror, and she knew by most people’s standards she was considered beautiful.
She had her mother’s flawless skin and thick, rich gleaminghair so black it could shine nearly blue under the lights. It fell to her narrow waist, usually in a roped braid. Her eyes were large, a deep blue with hints of purple, ringed with thick black lashes. She was on the shorter side, barely reaching five foot four with her shoes on, but she had curves. Men looked at her. Noticed her. It didn’t matter that she dressed modestly.
“They talked quietly, were respectful when they ordered and paid for their food. Nothing about them should have stood out, yet everything did. The longer they were in the café, the more this really bad feeling grew. They spoke to each other in French, but their accent didn’t ring true. I have an ear for sound, and there was just something off.”
“You do realize,” Vienna said very gently, almost soothingly, “you are always going to have triggers. Those men easily could trigger PTSD from the horrific trauma you suffered. You said Scorpion spoke to you in excellent French. That alone could trigger you.”
As if she didn’t already know that. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. Vienna sounded much the same as her therapist. She’d been seeing the therapist for several years, and yet the woman didn’t seem to think Shabina would be able to remember from one session to the next the tools she’d been given to cope when she had a meltdown. And that voice. Soothing. As if Shabina were a child and didn’t understand what was happening to her. It had been happening foryears.
She swallowed every retort, reminding herself these were her friends and they were trying to understand and help. There was no way to explain her built-in radar for deception and danger after six months of living in hell with Scorpion.
