Guarding the Princess(8)

“Storm’s coming,” he called over his shoulder. “Need to get the Cessna up and over the Tsholo River before it hits!”

“Where are we going?”

“Botswana.”

“I—” She lurched forward suddenly and slammed to the ground. She cursed, eyes watering as she scrambled back to her feet and ran after him again. “I need to go to Harare! You’ve got to take me to Harare!”

He stopped suddenly, spun round. “Got to?”

“I have to sign a major deal tomorrow.” She was panting now, breath raw in her throat. “For ClearWater. I need to—”

“You don’t get it, do you, Princess?” He pointed back up the ridge. “At first light—if not before—Amal and his men are going to find our tracks, and they’re going to follow them right here! If we don’t get into the air and over the border before that storm hits, or before they arrive, we’re outnumbered and outgunned, and you’re dead. I’m here to see that isn’t going to happen, which means the only place you’re going right now is to Botswana where I can protect you until Omair or his men come and take you off my hands.”

Anxiety, fear, desperation, failure—it all swamped through Dalilah at once, overwhelming her. “This deal,” she said softly, all the fight going out of her. “I’ve been working on it for four years now. If we don’t sign tomorrow...I...the villagers won’t get water....” Her voice cracked and tears spilled down her face. She sunk to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Something seemed to shift in him, because he crouched in front of her and touched her arms, his palms rough against her skin.

“Dalilah,” he said quietly, “Those delegates aren’t signing anything tomorrow. They’re all dead.”

She couldn’t breathe. She started to shake as it truly sunk in what had just happened at the lodge.

“They died because they were there with you—those men mean business. Come, we need to move. Now.”

“Clean water,” she whispered. “Those people need water. This mining-rights deal was our way in to get it to them. It was the one thing—the last thing I could give them. My last mission.”

“Hey, look at me.” He tilted her face up, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were ghostly in the darkness.

“Get up onto those pretty, long legs of yours, and you’ll live to fight another day, because there will be another day, another deal.”

She wanted to say there wouldn’t. She’d be getting married. This had been her very last fight. Her swan song. And she’d lost. She’d lost it all.

“My Cessna is down there, see?”

She looked where he was pointing. Over the grassland in faint moonlight the fuselage of a small single-prop plane glinted. Then a cloud passed over the moon and darkness was complete—the plane seemed to vanish as she felt the hot breeze stiffen. Carefully she got to her knees, and then to her feet. He steadied her by the elbow as wooziness and nausea swept through her again.

“You ready?” he said.

Dalilah nodded. He regarded her for a moment, then said, “Stay right behind me, okay—that’s an order.” He clicked on a flashlight and started to walk.

She stumbled after him in the darkness, her brain reeling as she tried to process it all. For two full years she’d naively believed that peace had finally come to the Al Arif family and their desert kingdom of Al Na’Jar.

Now this.

The thought that her brothers had purposely misled her infuriated Dalilah beyond words. It had been like this all her life—the older alpha males in her family always trying to coddle and protect her, supposedly for her own good. Did they give her absolutely no credit? Did they not understand she could take measures to protect herself? That she held the same fierce allegiance to country as they did—and that she was marrying Haroun because of it?

Now Amal was after her blood and they’d dispatched this brusque brute of a male to “save” her.

“Hurry up!” he yelled over his shoulder as she began to lag behind.

She muttered a curse in Arabic, slowing even further in softer sand.

He stopped, spun round. “Jesus, Princess, do you want me to carry you, or what?” Frustration cut through his voice.

Refusing to dignify him with an answer, she stopped, bracing her hands on her hips as she tried to catch her breath.

“Okay, this is it.” He reached forward to grab her arm, but she jerked free of his grip, standing her ground. “You’re a patronizing misogynist, you know that?” she snapped. “Call me Princess one more time and I’ll take my chances with Amal and his men! Screw you and my brothers!”