Date with a Surgeon Prince(47)

He’d kill those two.

‘There are two or three old hunting shelters they use as bases when they’re hunting.’

Nimr was striding into the room, his mobile phone in his hand. He crossed to Ghazi and put an arm around his shoulder.

‘I was in the palace when Mazur called. Man, I’m sorry about this. We’ll get them back. The one thing we can he sure of, they won’t hurt the women. They might be stupid and infantile in their pranks but they would never hurt a woman.’

Ghazi acknowledged his cousin’s words with an abrupt nod, but Nimr’s arrival had brought more than hope.

‘Did you want the job?’ Ghazi had to ask, although he’d been sure they’d discussed this many times and Nimr’s answer had always been the same.

‘No way,’ Nimr assured him now. ‘And those two lamebrains know that! I’ve told them times without number that I’ve other things I want to do with my life and, besides, I’ve always known, just as my father did, that you’re the best man to rule our country at this time.’

He gave Ghazi another hug, then bent over the map he’d asked Mazur to find.

‘A helicopter, flying low,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll pilot it and you be the lookout. We’ll take the little four-seater Bell. It can fly lower without disturbing the sand too much so we’ll still be able to see.’

He nodded to Mazur, who left to arrange the helicopter while Nimr pored over the map then glanced up at Ghazi.

‘What about Tasnim? How do you think she’ll be holding up?’ He grinned then added, ‘Are your obstetric skills up to date?’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Ghazi said, watching as Nimr traced a line across the map with a red pen.

Obstetric skills? The words echoed in Ghazi’s head.

Tasnim was eight months pregnant and had been through a major upset. He phoned the hospital and asked if they could have a midwife with her obstetrics bag standing by on the heliport in twenty minutes.

The little aircraft lifted lightly into the air, Nimr confident at the controls, Ghazi already working out logistics. He would send Marni, Tasnim and the nurse out on the first flight and Nimr could return for him.

Once they found the women…

If they found the women…


Marni had expected Tasnim to be asleep again when she returned from planting her flag on the dune. Tasnim dozed on and off all day because her sleep at night was restless.

But Tasnim was awake—not only awake but naked.

‘There must be something in the clothes, either some kind of bug or they’ve been washed in something that disagrees with my skin. Look!’

She pointed to where little red weals were showing on her belly.

‘They’re itchy and they’re driving me mad.’

Marni examined them, wishing she knew more about general medicine than she did.

‘They look more like an allergy than a bug of some kind,’ she said. ‘And I’ve not been bitten by anything. Lie down on the bed with just the sheet on you and I’ll see what there is in the supplies that might help soothe the itches.’

Cold mint tea? she wondered.

But Tasmin refused to lie down, believing now that whatever had bitten her could be in the mattress. She went outside and sat on the sand in the small amount of shade offered by their shelter, scratching at the weals and crying softly to herself.

Aware just how brave and held-together Tasnim had been so far, Marni knew she had to do something to help her friend before she fell apart.

She poured cold tea into a cup and tore a clean strip of cloth off a wuzar, then went outside.

‘Let’s try this to see if it helps, otherwise there’s salt—we can try salt and water—or oil perhaps. She kept thinking of bicarbonate of soda, which had been Nelson’s panacea for all ills. Bathing in it when she’d had chickenpox had definitely eased the itchiness. But their little hut didn’t provide bicarbonate of soda…

And Nelson wasn’t here…

Ignoring her own momentary weakness, Marni concentrated on Tasnim.

The rash was spreading, and Tasnim was getting more and more upset, undoubtedly because she was becoming more and more uncomfortable.

Ignoring the dune where she’d raised her flag, Marni climbed another dune, back in the direction they’d come in from. Once at the top she shouted for the boys, alternating their names, yelling that Tasnim needed help, they had to come.

Her voice seemed a pitifully weak instrument out there in the vastness of the desert and she was certain they wouldn’t hear her. She slid and slithered back down the dune, persuaded Tasnim to come inside and put on her own abaya, which she’d been wearing over her clothes when they’d been kidnapped.