“The baby was born—a girl, Atia—and I hid her.”
“That’s the name you called out in your dreams.”
She gave a slow nod. “It is. Nobody has spoken of the baby or the pregnancy since … but he somehow found out this last time he was back in America. Sent me all sorts of crazy texts demanding his child. To know what happened to the baby, what sex.”
There had to be a point, and he would wait for it.
Kasra shuddered. “Knowing his evil nature, I could never let him get her. That’s when I put the escape into play. Knew when he returned, he would hound us.” She drew her feet up onto the dash and hugged her legs, which made her look so very small. “I want to go to Saudi Arabia. That is where I hid her.”
Range jerked. “Saudi? Do you have any idea how far—”
“Only a little farther than the UAE.” She tucked her chin. “Take me to the child so I can be sure she is safe, and—”
“That wasn’t the deal. What? Now you’re withholding the name of the Number Two guy until this girl?”
“I am sorry for all that has happened,” she said, her voice barely audible. “The … mosque … but our deal was always that you would prove the girls were safe and I would give you the name. I have not altered anything.”
The anger he usually clung to, the grudges that bolstered his attitude seemed to wash away like sugar in water. “Except my entire life.”
She cast him a furtive glance. “I … told you not to do it. I’m not worth—”
“Andwhat?” he barked. “Stand there and watch them put you down like a dog? Is that what you think of me?”
“No,” she said, her words pitching. “You came … You could have just walked out of Zaki’s house and left when you knew they’d taken me. But … you came.”
The emotion in her words, the way her eyes seemed to puddle undid him. The last tether on his reserve strength. “Remember what you said to me about being nice?” He nodded at her. “Goes both ways.”
She swallowed. “You told Butrus I was your prisoner. Is that the real reason you came to the mosque?”
Vulnerability skated through her expression warning him to be careful what words he spoke next. In truth, when the teen had come, Range hadn’t given a thought to her being his prisoner. “No.” He’d just charged right into the night. And though he didn’t look at her just now, he felt the sorrow she wafted at that thought. He hated it, though he could not say why. “It never even crossed my mind.”
Her gaze darted to his, then away. She sat there, hands on her knees, feet on the dash. Sitting up, she set her feet on the floorboard. “Are you hungry?”
He just admitted he hadn’t thought about her being his prisoner—a gamechanger for him—and she asks about eating? “No.” His stomach contradicted him—loudly.
“Just grumpy then.”
He gave her a look and found a wry smile cutting through all the bruises and swollen eyes as she dug into the satchel and pulled out a protein bar. She tore the wrapper and handed it to him.
He couldn’t voice his thanks because this was too … domestic. Weird.
Why? It wasn’t any different than the way they’d traveled before.
Before, they hadn’t been married. Or whatever this was.
Man, he didn’t want her being nice. Didn’t want comfortableness between them. Because he didn’t know what to do with it. Or her.
* * *
Gwadar Port, Pakistan
By nightfall, she could smell the sea. At first, she had not recognized the smell but the thickening air and the salty tinge finally made her wonder. “Are we near the water?”
Range smirked and navigated around a bend—and there, splayed before them, glittering beneath the full moon was a great expanse of water.
Kasra gasped. “It is massive!”
“You’ve never seen it?” He veered around another corner.
