26
How do I get out of here, she wondered as she stumbled back to the Royal Palace, not sure what to do next. She’d doubled back after passing the pilot, deciding to confront him and find out what the hell was going on. After getting a closer look while walking past, she was sure it was him. And he didn’t look like he’d just come out of a goddamn helicopter crash—hell, he was chilling there, not a scratch on him, sipping coffee and munching on almond-brittle!
But when she walked to the end of the street and turned around, the pilot was gone. She hurried to the café, wondering for a moment if she’d imagined it. But she saw his table with a half-finished cup of coffee and the broken bits of almond-brittle scattered on a white napkin. He was gone. He must have seen her and taken off, which only confirmed that something was rotten in Sehaar. Perhaps all of it was rotten.
“What do you think of my kingdom and its people?” came the Sheikh’s voice from behind her as she rummaged through the dresser drawers in her chambers, not sure what she was even looking for. She had no money, no passport, not even any damned clothes. She could get to a phone and call Mel, but she had no idea if she could trust Mel right then. As for Hyder . . .
“Who are you?” she hissed at him, turning and backing up against the heavy wooden dresser. “What’s happening here? You come clean now, Hyder. Now, or so help me God, I will fucking kill you.”
Color flashed briefly across the Sheikh’s handsome face, but he stayed silent and calm. Then he shook his head. “No, you won’t. You’ll never kill again, Kathryn. That part of you is dead. You’ve allowed yourself to think of a future with me, and that’s broken you. You’ll never be that person again. You’ve changed forever, just like I have. We’ve lived a lifetime in three days together, and we’re never going to be the same. We can’t. We won’t.”
Kathryn just shook her head, not sure if she was answering his question or just shaking with emotions she couldn’t understand. Some of what he said struck a chord as she thought about how she’d felt taking a bath in a jewel-studded marble tub the size of a swimming pool, selecting her clothes from silks made for a queen, skipping through the streets like a carefree schoolgirl, tasting pastries and exotic delicacies like she was on vacation, not on the run with a man she’d been sent to kill.
“Just stop, Hyder,” she whispered, still shaking her head. “Every word that comes out of you is a goddamn lie. I saw your pilot—our pilot. I saw him clear as day, just like I see you now.”
The Sheikh’s face went flush again, and this time he blinked and looked away. But then he glanced coolly back into her eyes, a strange smile teasing its way onto his dark red lips. “Is there a question in there?” he asked calmly.
“I can’t even . . . I just cannot!” Kathryn shouted, clenching her fists and wishing she had a gun, knife, or goddamn baseball bat in her hand. “Just get me out of here. I don’t care how. Plane, chopper, camel—I don’t care what. Just get me the hell out of here. Or get me to a phone and I’m calling Mel.”
“And what will you say to her? That you’re aborting the mission? That you’ve lost your nerve? Will you ask her why American planes tried to kill us? Why Russian assassins tried to gun us down in bed? How Saudi choppers found us amongst the Hashimi? Of course, if she knows the answer to any of those questions, it would mean she has betrayed you. So who can you trust, Kathryn Krane? Who?”
“Certainly not you!” she screamed, almost spitting into his face as she allowed the rage to boil over.
“No!” he answered, his own voice rising even as those green eyes sparkled with an intensity she’d never seen. “Not me. I have lied to you, and you damned well know it. That is not the question. That is not the riddle. That is not the puzzle. The question is why have I lied to you?! Think, Kathryn! What is the only truth we have found in all of this? The only goddamn truth?! The only thing that feels real?”
Kathryn’s head spun as she felt her body tense up. She caught the scent of the Sheikh’s natural musk, and it took her back to the moments they’d shared, the desperate, raw moments of passion when it was just the two of them in a world that made no sense. No sense at all. In fact it made so little sense that it was almost like someone had been trying to make it as nonsensical as possible. As if someone had been trying to twist everything around to create a puzzle that was impossible to solve, a riddle so full of contradictions and conflicts that it was impossible to answer . . . at least impossible using logic, reason, or common sense.
“Us,” she said, her voice wavering and almost breaking as she felt the tears threaten to flow. “Us,” she said again, her voice so soft she could barely hear herself. “That’s the only thing that felt real, felt true. The only thing that made sense.”
“And do you think it would have felt that intense, that real, that deep if not for what we’ve been through together over these past three days? Running from assassins? Jumping from an exploding helicopter? Riding through the desert with the Hashimi? Dodging Saudi Arabian bullets?”
Kathryn felt like she was choking, and her vision narrowed as she was pulled back into that dream-world where anything was possible and the ridiculous became real. She thought back to those masked Russians with their AK-47s. Yes, she’d heard the gunfire, but did she see the bullets ripping holes in the walls or shattering the glass? And yes, they’d taken off in the helicopter and the pilot had swerved and maneuvered his way out of range, but wouldn’t at least a couple of bullets have hit the chopper, even if they didn’t cause much damage? As for the scene with the F-16s, wasn’t it strange that a helicopter that has seating for six passengers plus two pilots only has two parachutes? And wasn’t it curious that the pilot was so quick to calculate that the two of them needed to eject and let him go down in flames? And speaking of flames, had she actually seen the chopper explode? When they’d jumped, the adrenaline rush was too much for her to remember much of anything, and though she’d noticed that there was no wreckage or debris when they landed, she’d figured they’d drifted while parachuting and that the chopper had crashed some distance from them. And then there was the midnight attack on the Hashimi camp. The Sheikh had grabbed her and pulled her out of there so quick she didn’t have a chance to survey the scene. They’d ridden out of there in a heartbeat. Had she actually seen her new Hashimi friends being gunned down in cold blood? And though she knew that the Saudi government did things its own way, did it really make sense that they allowed their military to fly American-made Blackhawks out into the desert and use men, women, and children as target practice?
“No,” she stammered, trying to back up but hitting that heavy wooden dresser again. “It can’t be. You set it all up? You couldn’t have. There’s no way. No damned way.”
“Really?” the Sheikh said, taking a step toward her, a smile breaking on his face, his eyes locked dead on hers. “A billionaire king with powerful political connections. I had your file several days before our first meeting, enough time for me to plan for all sorts of things. You do not think I could have arranged for a few masked Russian-speaking men with AK-47s firing blanks? A couple of F-16s from the fleet stationed at the USAF base in Qatar? A single Blackhawk from the dozens owned by the Saudis?”
“You’re insane,” Kathryn muttered, shaking her head as her vision narrowed to a single point. It was everything she could do to not pass out. “Why?”
“Is it not obvious? It was our first date, Kathryn. I had to plan something befitting the situation, the person. I didn't think I'd win you over by simply taking you to dinner and a movie.”
“First . . . date?! Win . . . me . . . over,” she repeated, the words coming out slurred as she blinked in disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you not see, Kathryn?” the Sheikh said softly, taking a step closer until he was almost up against her body. “You thought the mission was to convince me to marry you. Well, that was accomplished in about ten minutes after I met you. I knew that if Mel had trusted you to handle Gorka and then sent you to me, you were one in a million. And our first interaction confirmed that. So then the mission changed. Then the mission, Kathryn Krane, became how to convince you to marry me. For real. And the only way to do that was to throw as much chaos as possible at you, to scramble your signals, to destroy that unfeeling, cold-hearted shell that you’ve had to build around yourself over the years. You were indeed being played, Kathryn. Just not in the way you thought.”
“But . . . but Mel, Benson . . . how . . .” she started to say, but the words wouldn’t come as she felt him press against her, those green eyes looking into hers, his scent rising up and overwhelming her.
“It was a gamble forced by the Yuri Gorka situation. See, all these years I was safe from being targeted by the Saudis, because they knew that even if they decided to risk angering the United States by killing me, there was a chance my half-sister would choose to return to Sehaar and claim the throne. But after the Yuri Gorka situation, Nisha’s profile in Russia was raised high enough that the Saudis might believe she would not return to Sehaar. Which meant that I needed to marry an American to make sure the Saudis didn’t think it was safe to eliminate me.”
Kathryn shook her head and tried to look away, but she couldn’t break from the eye contact. “I already knew you needed to marry an American, which was why I was sent in the first place. It doesn’t explain why you needed to win me over or whatever the hell you thought you were doing with all of this. I would have married you simply because it was my assignment.”
“I know,” the Sheikh said quietly, reaching out and touching her hair, then her cheek, making her tremble as he did it. “And that is why I had to do what I did. I had to know that you were marrying me because you wanted to, not because you were ordered to. But more importantly, you needed to know that you were marrying me because you wanted to.”
“But why?” she asked, gasping as he ran his hand along her neck and tugged gently at the top of her robe. “What difference does it make?”
“It makes all the difference. When Nishaani and I started Operation Nightshade, we swore to each other that we’d never sacrifice our humanity along the way. And to be human is to love and be loved. Everything would be pointless if we chose our mates without love.”
“Operation Nightshade was you and your sister?”
“Yes.”
Kathryn shook her head. “I thought your sister wanted you dead. What about the bomb underneath your car. The poison in your hotel room-service?”
“I set those up to make anyone watching—CIA or the Saudis or the Russians—think that Nisha and I were estranged. It would help her rise, and add to the confusion as people tried to figure out what the hell was going on.”
Kathryn frowned, still shaking her head. “I knew that bomb attack was bullshit. And no one screws up with poison, because you always make sure you add more than you need. OK, so you and Nisha planned this decades ago. Maybe I buy that, but regardless, it still doesn’t add up. Are you saying Nishaani loved Yuri Gorka?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“And Mel knew this?”
“Yes. Of course. She would not have allowed her daughter to go through with it otherwise.”
Kathryn snorted. “I doubt that. Especially since Mel herself asked me to kill him. Which I did, by the way.”
“Did you?” the Sheikh said, his smile breaking through her confusion, his eyes piercing her doubt even as things somehow made less sense than before. “Yuri Gorka was not who you thought he was. Mel gave you a fake profile, making him seem like a hardliner when in fact he was a maverick with progressive ideas that the Russian establishment saw as a threat. The CIA got word that he was being targeted for elimination by the Russian secret service, and so they decided to get the jump on them by arranging for his accidental death so they could save his life and keep him in hiding until it was safe.”
“No,” Kathryn said, almost hysterical as she shook her head. “There’s no way his death could have been faked. Especially if you’re saying the Russian government wanted him dead. They would have checked and double-checked and done five autopsies to make sure he was dead. There’s just no way.”
“Unless there are certain factions within the Russian government who secretly support Gorka and who are powerful enough to handle the autopsies and medical reports and funeral arrangements, powerful enough to manage a cover-up at that level.”
Kathryn rubbed her forehead. “So you’re saying Gorka is alive and in hiding. And your sister and he are in love and their marriage is real. And Operation Nightshade has nothing to do with the CIA but is something you and your sister came up with to . . . to do what?”
“To make a difference. To change things. What is the point of being alive if you do not think big? What is the point of being a king, a princess, royalty, if you do not act to make the world a better place? What is the point of having billions in the bank, power beyond measure, if you do not take it upon yourself to use your influence where it actually matters?” The Sheikh held her face in his hands and raised her head so she was forced to look into his eyes, and she almost melted when she saw the sincerity on his face. “And you feel the same way, Kathryn. You understand that feeling, that need to change things, that need to make a difference, to put it all on the line, to put yourself on the line. Not many people think that way, think like us. That’s why it had to be you, Kathryn. You were chosen. We all chose you. Mel, Benson, myself. All of us. You are one in a million. You are my one in a million. Mel and Benson chose you because they knew I would choose you too.” Then he smiled and shook his head. “We just had to make sure you chose me as well! And to do that we had to isolate you, make you doubt everything and everyone, throw so much chaos at you that your cold, analytical, razor-sharp mind finally broke down and gave in to your body, your heart, your soul. That is the only way you’d understand what is real.”
“But how can I know if it’s real, Hyder,” she whispered as he caressed her cheeks and ran his fingers through her hair. “Everything’s been a lie so far. I don’t know who’s telling the truth. I don’t know—”
But the Sheikh stopped her with a kiss, and her world exploded as she felt herself kiss him back. And then she knew he was answering her question, the only question that mattered.
"Marry me. Bloody hell, just marry me," he said.
And she answered it with the only reply that made sense:
"What the hell. Yes. Oh God, yes, Hyder."