CAPTURED: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys(77)

Didn't happen. He murmured something that might have been her name and fell back into slumber.

Heart pounding, she dragged the chair over. Inside pocket. That's where he'd kept the key to the cabin. And with any luck...

Yes. The handcuff key was there. Incredible. He seemed like such a smart  guy-but even the most intelligent person could overlook the obvious. Or  maybe he was counting on their supposed relationship to keep her at his  side.         

     



 

Whatever. She unlocked the cuffs, slipped out of the bed and got her  clothes on. If she could have cuffed him to something without risking  waking him, she would have. But there was nothing. She was just going to  have to learn how to drive a motorcycle on the quick, and hope to  outrun him. Once she got back to civilization, she'd see that he got  some help.

When she put on his jacket, the opposite inside pocket seemed heavy. A  wallet, maybe? It didn't feel that bulky, though. More round and solid.

She shouldn't take the time. She should go. She should be on that bike right now.

She trembled as she dipped a hand into the pocket, as if she already knew what she'd find.

A heavy gold chain, designed for a man, trailed from her fingers as she  drew them out. With a jangle, she pulled the medallion free from the  pocket. The golden sphere swung in the darkness of the room.

All thought of escape fled her mind. It didn't matter. She was asleep,  returned to her dream. The ghostly feeling of the endless dunes flowed  over her and she stepped toward the window. She pulled back the curtains  to let the moon shine on the sphere.

This time, when she took it in her hand, the medallion didn't melt away.  She held its solid weight, burning to know its mystery. The moonlight  showed her a seam down its center. Twisting the two halves separated  them to reveal the treasure within.

A round of silver paper the shape of a nickel, but thicker and lighter.  Unable to think, she pushed the folds of paper open to see what it  contained, though in her heart, she already knew.

A translucent beige circle with a hole in the middle. A Butter Rum Life Saver.

She went numb. With her legs threatening to give way, she reached out to  brace herself on the wall. She wasn't even surprised when Sayd put his  arms around her to hold her up.

"Sally," she said to the Life Saver. "They called him Sally. They said  it was because he was like a little girl. That's like Sayd."

"Hayati," he whispered, and kissed her ear.

"What does this mean?" Her voice came out hoarse. She couldn't drag her eyes from the candy. "What does it mean?"

"You know what it means, Max. Somewhere in your mind, in your memory  that they have locked away, you know." His voice was tender. His meaning  was terrifying.

"The Crimson Hand had deposed my father for his liberal reforms. They  wanted a return to the old ways. He sent my mother and I to Newark, to  stay with business partners in the U.S. who supported his efforts to  modernize. I was six years old." Raw emotion tinged his words,  threatened to crack his control. "I tried to forget those dark times in  my life, but your kindness to me glowed like a star in a moonless night.  I could never forget you. Not for eighteen years."

Could it be true? That she was Sayd's wife? That everything he said was real and everything she remembered wrong?

She stared down at her palm, at the candy cradled there, until a glowing  red dot appeared. That didn't seem... right. She blinked at the scarlet  circle, trying to make it make sense.

"Max, down," Sayd screamed, and dove the floor with her just as the  bedroom window exploded into a thousand pieces with a deafening shatter.

"Dammit," he swore, when the shards had stopped falling. "That was meant to be bulletproof."

"The Crimson Hand," she said, weakly. It seemed too late to start  believing, and to worry about things like keeping curtains closed. Then  she saw the red stain spreading on his shirt. "Sayd, you're hurt."

"I don't-" He looked down at himself, at the wound under his rib. "Oh, this is nothing."

It wasn't nothing. There was a hole in him. In this man who might be  more than just a man to her, as incredible as it seemed. But there was  no time to think about that. Things started exploding around the room.  Half a dozen more red dots appeared-the laser sights of rifles. The lamp  by the bed burst and tumbled to the floor. The pillow where her head  had just been sent a frenzy of feathers into the air. Three holes  appeared in the headboard.

In the silence between the shots, she heard a hissing. It came from  Sayd's wound. His face had gone ashen. She pulled him off the floor,  keeping his head below the window frame. She managed to prop him against  the wall.

"Your lung is deflating," she said, that First Aid course from college  kicking in. She grabbed his tee shirt from the floor and pressed it to  his wound

"I have another." The blood on his lips wrecked his joke. His eyes began to close.

"No. Sayd." She put her hand to one of his cheeks. "Tell me where your phone is."

He grunted, beginning to slump to one side.

She pressed his hand to the wadded tee shirt, now seeping crimson.  Desperately, she cupped his jaw between her hands and forced him to look  at her. She touched his forehead with her own in the gesture that had  seemed far too intimate earlier that night. Had they done this a  thousand times before? Would they ever get to again?

"Sayd." She softened her voice, forced a calm she didn't feel with the  bullets flying. "It's your hayati. I need to use your phone. Where is  it?"

He raised a weak finger to the bed stand, on his side where he had slept. Right in the line of fire.

Using the leather jacket to cover the glass, she inched across the floor  on her hands and knees, aware that every second lost could cost Sayd  his life. But he would also die if she didn't make that call-and he'd  better have a security number programmed in.

After what seemed like a painful eternity, she lifted the phone from the  drawer and moved her thumb over the unlock slider, only to face a  password screen.

"Max," Sayd called, his voice weak. "Get under the bed."

Good plan. She crawled under. "What's your password?"

He didn't answer.

Fingers trembling, she typed in desperation.

Maxine. No.

Hayati. No.

One more chance before it locked her out.

Rosalie, she typed. The middle name she hated, never told anyone. That he had once used.

Welcome, said the screen.

She selected the number labeled "Security." The man on the other end  answered in Arabic. She screamed curses at him for his clear  incompetence, and said the word "cabin" over and over.

She swore into the phone as she crawled to Sayd's side. He was  unconscious now. Laying him on the floor, she breathed into his opened  mouth and prayed.

Five minutes later, she heard a helicopter land nearby.



Sayd was on a stretcher. Three Crimson Hand assassins were in body bags.  Burly men in camouflage scrambled around the yard. She sensed, but  never saw, many more of them in the woods.

Sayd was stable, with an oxygen tube under his nose. They were loading  him into the helicopter. They were trying to load her into a car.

Guess what wasn't going to happen? But she had to be sneaky. "Let me say goodbye to him," she pleaded.

The biggest bodyguard in her way-probably the one she'd cussed out on  Sayd's phone-nodded. "As you wish, Princess, but after what you have  endured, you must not go with him."

She nodded and tried to look suitably sad as she sprinted to the helicopter.

Sayd, the man who just might be her husband, looked up at her with  shining grey eyes. He opened his mouth, but his voice didn't even squeak  out.

"I know," she said to him, over the noise of the chopper blades. "I'm a terrible liar."

He smiled with bloodless lips and shifted his hand an inch closer to  her. She grabbed the open handcuff that would shackle her to him and  slammed it around her wrist.

"Tough titties." She glared at the bodyguard. "I'm going with him."





Epilogue

A week later, Max stood with Sayd on the balcony of the palace of Ramadi  for the first time. Or maybe the ten thousandth. She didn't know. But  she was beginning to accept.

After Sayd was out of danger, she'd spoken to her parents and her  sister. They'd all shown her wedding photos. There were invitations.  News stories. YouTube clips.

In the palace, she saw a room filled with her own stuff, including the  quilt her grandma had made so long ago. The people of Ramadi had waved  to her in the streets as if they knew her. The whole country had  thrilled to the news that the leaders of the Crimson Hand had been  arrested in the U.S. After being a threat for so long, they couldn't  hurt anyone now.

She still remembered none of the last two years. Not the first time  she'd made love with Sayd, not their wedding, not anything about their  daily lives-which seemed the saddest part, the little every day moments  erased from her brain.

They could only guess that the Crimson Hand had kidnapped her and  intended some more elaborate scheme, but she'd escaped before they could  implement it. With her brain missing two years, her subconscious had  coped by starting where she left off. She'd gone back to the Dominican  to reboot the machine.