Yar shoves the girl forward. “Do not just stand there like an idiot.”
Darkness flickers in Shapur’s gaze. “She is not an idiot, and you will not speak to her that way in my home.” He waves to one of the serving girls, who rushes to Hajira’s side. “Esin will show you to your room, my jewel. Then take you to the kitchen for a meal. If you want foranything, you have only to ask her. My wife will always be taken care of.”
Hajira smiles for the first time. As soon as she disappears into the house with Esin, Shapur snaps his fingers. Three of his men surround Yar.
“Bring him to my office. Now. I will pay off the marriage contract tonight and he can find own way back to his home.”
Yar sputters a weak protest as the men prod him in the back with their weapons, but Shapur ignores him and turns to me. “Was he that…disagreeable the entire trip?”
I snort. “That was nothing. Hajira only found out about the marriage this morning. She thinks she’ll never see her mother again.”
Genuine pain fills Shapur’s gaze. “I went to college in England. You knew this, yes?”
I nod. This is a side to him I haven’t seen before. Introspective. Almost…morose.
His shoulders heave with a heavy breath. “This is how we have done things for centuries. But that does not mean it is right. Or best. I knew many couples in England who married for love. I always thought…perhaps one day I would too.”
“So why did you pick Hajira? We could have found a way for you to meet women. Your name holds weight, but not many know your face.”
“A leader without a wife is no leader,” he says, a hint of sadness to his voice. “Thank you for bringing her to me. I will pay her father, sign the marriage contract, and send him home. She will not suffer his anger a moment longer.”
Before he walks away, I clasp his arm. “Shapur? Be gentle with her. If you are…she might one day grow to love you.”
* * *
I waituntil 2:00 a.m. The house is utterly silent. Unlike Amir Faruk, who built his compound in the middle of fucking nowhere, Shapur lives on the outskirts of the city. A tall fence surrounds his property, and he bought the two houses on either side so he could have most of his men close. But there’s only one guard on patrol outside.
His office is dark. There’s just enough light from the hall for me to turn on his laptop. I’ve watched him for eleven months. Carefully. Never staring. Memorizing his password a character or two at a time. He’s never changed it. Why would he? I’m here for the money, and it never stops.
He keeps impeccable records. Spreadsheets for everything. All organized and cataloged. I pop a thumb drive into the laptop and copy two years’ worth of records in seconds.
It’s not enough. I can’t leave without the names of every man who has ever attended one of the auctions. For all I know, the CIA might have freed all of the girls—or none of them. But I fear it’s the latter. Shapur’s reputation would be in the gutter if every girl he’d ever solddisappearedweeks later.
He built the auction site himself, and when I try to access the source database, an error pops up on the screen. Fuck. It’s encrypted, and I don’t have the key.
My tech skills are only passable. I search the desk, but Shapur is too smart to write the key on a Post-it note under his keyboard.
His bedroom is at the other end of the house. This is a huge fucking risk, but I don’t have a choice. Pulling out my phone, I call the one person who might be able to help.
“Hello?” Ford’s voice is wary. Mine would be too if an Afghanistan number showed up on my mobile.
“I don’t have a lot of time, Marine. Any way you can conference in your hacker?”
“If you tell me where we first met, yes.”
I’d laugh, but if Shapur wakes up, I’m dead. “Al-Faw Peninsula. I’ve got less than an hour to disappear. If she’s not available—”
“Wren?” Ford says. “Got a friend who needs your help.”
“All right…Friend. What do you need?”
I’m unprepared for her immediate acceptance. “Uh…I’m looking at a HyperCrypt login screen securing a triple hashed database. And I need in.”
Wren whistles over the line. “I like you, Friend. I haven’t had a challenge like this in a while. If you have internet access on that box, type in the following address…”
I do as she asks, but see only a blank screen with single file in the upper left. “What is this?”
“Double click that file. It’ll give me access to the hard drive. That level of encryption isn’t something I can break in twenty minutes. It’s going to take hours,” she says. “I’ll work as fast as I can, but—”
