Chapter Six
"Mom, are we under arrest?" Ben asked again, and Laurel had to shrug.
"Not as far as I know? In the United States, they have to tell you that you are under arrest, but I don't know what the law is like in Shajae.”
"Doesn't look anything like the prisons we've seen on televisions or in the movies," Ben said dubiously, flipping over one of the brocade pillows, and she had to agree.
The helicopter flight had not taken them to a military office as she had thought it would. Instead, the helicopter had dropped them off on a standard airfield where a pair of men in the black suits of bodyguards had come for them. They had confirmed their identities, and then they had been escorted into a gleaming black Mercedes.
"This is a lot of trouble to go to for detaining us," she had commented to one of the men, and he glanced at her in surprise.
"You are not detainees," he said. "You are guests of the sheikh."
There were many things Laurel might have wanted to say to that, but she decided she could not say them when her son was present.
"That's a new one for me," she finally commented, and then she kept silent.
Ben, on the other hand, had been monumentally bored throughout their sojourn close to the border, and he couldn't stop himself from gazing out of the window, staring in rapt fascination at the skyscrapers around them. He occasionally spelled out words on the Arabic signs that they passed, and she had a moment to be proud of her son for his bilingual prowess.
Laurel was beginning to seriously worry about where they were being taken when the dark car pulled up to a luxury hotel that must have been smack dab in the center of the downtown area. It was an enormously tall building, something that they could take in at their pleasure when all four—mother, son and two guards—entered the glass elevator. With a whoosh, they traveled straight up to the penthouse at the top, and the short foyer there had one door that led into the palatial suite.
"You should make yourself at home," said one of the guards who had escorted them there. "We will be outside the door keeping watch if you need something."
"Keeping watch," Laurel repeated. "Does that mean that you are going to be protecting us or keeping us in?"
The man chuckled as if she had made a very funny joke. He closed the door behind him without an answer.
So that was where things stood. She and Ben had spent some time exploring the suite, being constantly surprised at the luxury of it all.
"I think this is bigger than every place we have lived put together," Ben said with awe, and Laurel flinched a little.
Living with her, Ben had experienced childhood in a variety of different places throughout the world, but when he wasn't actually in school, many of those places would be hotel rooms or one bedroom sublets. This place was closer to a palace, and she couldn't fault him for the slightly envious tone in his voice when they saw the enormous tub in one of the bathrooms, or the movie room with real movie theater seats.
"Can I put on a movie, Mom?" he asked, and she sighed and agreed. No reason not to soak it up while they could, after all, and if Bassam was going to stick them in his penthouse, he could deal with them using it.
Leaving Ben watching the newest shoot-‘em-up action flick, she found her way to the kitchen, her mood turning slightly brooding.
Seeing Bassam had stirred up all sorts of strange feelings, feelings she had thought long since dead and gone. She had been little more than a girl when they had been together, giddy and lively with the new promise of adulthood and a world that had seemed limitless. He was the man who had given her exactly what she had wanted, had made her feel things that she could barely dream of feeling before...and then he had taken it all away when he disappeared.
Her face hardened, and Laurel's hands tightened into fists. She had recovered. She had cried for days in the privacy of her own room, but when it came time to go to classes, she had put on a resolute and unflinching face. Her father had recognized what was going on far sooner than a young woman was happy with him doing so, and one night he had come to sit on her bed.
"Love's hard," he’d said. "But honestly everything in life that is worth doing is hard as well. This is something that will change you, and that is a good thing. It is what important things do. They change you."
She had looked at him, her eyes red and her gaze exhausted from her grief. "Should...should I go after him?"
"God no," her father had responded, his voice a little sharper than she had ever heard it. "He has proved that he is not worthy of a relationship with a bright and intelligent young lady when he fled into the night like a thief. No, there are far better people to offer your heart to."
Despite her depression, his prim remark had made her giggle, and she’d knelt up to give him a hug.
"Thanks, Dad," she had said, and it certainly hadn't fixed everything, but it had helped her get a grip on things.
Her father was right about one thing, however. It had changed her. She knew she smiled less. She knew her heart felt, not as if it had been ripped out of her chest, but as if it was wounded somehow. Laurel found that she was afraid of bruising it, and so set it aside into a dark and cold place, one that she did not have to look at very closely. It had come bursting out when Ben was born, but that was another story.
Laurel shook herself. She was doing absolutely no one any good by lurking around the apartment and brooding. Ben had the right idea. She should make the most of her time here unattended.
She wouldn't call it snooping, exactly. The journalists she had once worked with would have called it simple observational skills, looking at her surroundings and trying to figure out how they fit together. A journalist was not fettered by a client's words. They created a picture for themselves, and that picture could be used to create a far more accurate story than whatever was put on display by the subject.
Laurel observed the bachelor state of the fridge. There were fruit and a plate of vegetables that she deliberately pulled out and started chewing on. Despite the high quality of the kitchen, there was a sense of disuse there, and she wondered if someone came in to cook for him. It would fit, she supposed.
She padded out of the kitchen, making a round of the apartment. There were four bedrooms besides the master suite, as well as the office. To her surprise, the office door swung open, beckoning her in. She kept her hands inside her pockets to make sure she could not be accused of rifling through anything, but eyes left no prints. She took in the laptop, the locked desk drawers and the plainness of it all. Clearly, Bassam was a man who liked things on the plainer side, almost spartan. She cautioned herself that it was a poor idea to think that she knew him. After twenty years, she most certainly did not. Instead, she had memories, and she needed to start superimposing the images of the man she had met today.
The man who had led the raid to capture Amir was strict, military and fierce. There was nothing of the mild-mannered student about him now. The student had made her heart beat faster, so what did it mean that her heart seemed to beat just as fast for the man who had reappeared?
Laurel peeked into each of the bedrooms. They were of a good size and lavishly appointed, but there was a slightly sterile look that made her think of hotel rooms. She had a feeling she would not find anything there, not unless she wanted to look at guest linens and plain but lovely bedding.
Of course, that left the master bedroom. Laurel hesitated, but there was a bright coal of anger burning in her heart. She might not have entered if she hadn't been stewing over the fact that he had essentially arrested her. As far as she was concerned, Bassam could not take prisoners and expect no blow back. When she tried the door there, she found that it swung open easily. Well, that was practically an invitation, wasn't it?
The master suite looked as if it was actually lived in. From the cufflinks dropped carelessly into the small tray on the dresser to the tie slung over one of the posts of the massive bed, there was something terribly male about the whole space. The room was done up in dark wood with a deep, rich blue carpet and bed furnishings. The bed itself seemed a mile wide, and suddenly, Laurel remembered how long it had been since she had slept. She had the mad urge to crawl into the bed, but she pushed it away. How the hell would that look?
Instead, she drifted over to the closets, opening up the first and then the second. There were a variety of clothes, from the richest designer suits to the simplest traditional Shajae robes, and she had the idea that this was just a fraction of what the sheikh had available to him.
Not quite sure why she did it, Laurel leaned in and pressed her face to the wool of a dark red suit. Though she had no doubt that it had been cleaned to within an inch of its life after he had shucked it off his body, there was somehow still a scent to it, one of sandalwood and musk that she associated with Bassam. It wasn't like he had worn cologne on the raid, so she was fairly sure that she was just reaching for something familiar.
Still, the scent was so good. It calmed her down, and Laurel couldn't resist breathing deeply, her cheek pressed against the sleek wool.
After a moment, she pulled back with a surprisingly guilty flush across her cheeks.
God, I am acting like a little idiot. What the heck would it look like if he came up and found me like this? He would never stop laughing, or maybe he would think that I'm some obsessed, desperate stalker.
Laurel closed the closet door firmly, turning away from it. In the living room, she could hear the television going, so that meant Ben was probably doing just fine. With a strange sense of hilarity, she realized that the guards at the door would curtail Ben's explorations, a tendency that could drive her to distraction.
Well, I guess being under professional guard should have its benefits...
That only made Laurel think about the current crop of problems, something that was terribly tiring. She felt as if the weight of the world was pressing down on her. She couldn't do what she wanted to do, which was to go over her notes from the interview with Amir. It had not left her possession, tucked into the hiding place in her bag, and she didn't intend to reach for it until she was safe.
A part of her wanted to go and be with Ben, but her son could be frightfully empathetic sometimes. She didn't want him to pick up on her fear or nervousness, not now. He seemed happy enough, so that meant she had to decide what to do with herself.
Almost without meaning to, she walked to the bed, stroking the dark duvet. It was silky to the touch, instantly welcoming, and she wondered half-derisively what she had expected to find after all. Whips? Chains? Incriminating emails scattered all over the place? He wouldn't have brought someone to his penthouse under guard if he thought he was giving them something to use against him.
With a soft sigh, Laurel fell into the bed. It was as comfortable as it had looked, and kicking off her shoes, she curled up on it. It had the same sandalwood musk smell as his clothes did, and the scent was oddly intoxicating. It made a subtle heat rise up inside her, made her think of what it was like to make love in the back seat of a luxury car, full of a kind of excitement that only being twenty could bring.
She stirred restlessly, but then she forced herself to be still. She wasn't a raw girl under the sensual spell of an older student now. Laurel reminded herself that she was a grown woman, someone who had come into her own, who had seen the world, bled and suffered and delivered a son into the world, mostly on her own.
She wasn't quite sure how it happened, but at some point, Laurel fell into a deep slumber. She always slept lightly when she was on assignment. She wasn't sure that she had really slept well for months with everything that was going on. But the bed was too great a temptation, and she drifted away.
***
Bassam's unit was always efficient, but now, with his uncertain temper on a short leash and lightning in his eyes, they wrapped up even quicker than usual. The operation on the ground in Elsiin was kicked off effectively, the terrorist they had caught was on his way to being processed by intelligence, and Bassam was free to return to his life in Tir.
Not long after he had watched the helicopter take away Laurel and her son—a fact which he still couldn’t believe, because he remembered her as being just a slip of a girl, not old enough to have a son—he had made a call.
By the time he was ready to board his own helicopter for Tir, there was a new message delivered to his secure tablet, ready to be read.
The file was not terribly big, but that wasn't a surprise. Laurel had done very little that would ever threaten or concern the count of Shajae. There were the international files that held more information, showing off some of her solid journalistic work over the last years, though there were some gaps that he assumed must have been her taking time off for Ben's birth. She had been married, the man, one Wilbur Owain, had died in a falling accident.
His own thoughts drowned out the drone of the helicopter blades. The picture presented by the files was standard, what he had expected to see, but still. It was just a hunch, but he had found that it was far better not to ignore those. He placed a quick call to a contact in the States who owed him a favor, and then after he hung up, he resolved to put the matter out of his mind. He knew better than to act without good data, and in this case, there was no harm in waiting until he had some.
Tir rising up out of the Shajae desert was always a beautiful thing, but for perhaps the first time, Bassam felt as if it was merely lovely. His mind was elsewhere, and there were feelings rising up in his heart, feelings he had thought he had put away years ago.
This woman might be a great deal more dangerous than these papers suggest, he told himself. Have you learned nothing while you ruled?
He had ruled over Shajae for almost twenty years. It was a peaceful time, nothing like his father's or grandfather's, but they were the men who had taught him what he knew of statecraft. They had taught him that the best thing he could do for himself and the worst thing he could do for his enemy was to be ready.
Enemy?
There was something in him that cried out against him. No. Laurel, no matter who she had become or what she had done, could never be his enemy, never in a thousand years. Somehow, he felt as if he had seen down into her heart, and there was nothing in that beautiful, clear depth that could hurt him.
Perhaps this is why they always cautioned the great sheikhs to be most wary of women, he thought with a dark humor.
The helicopter signaled that they were getting ready to land, and despite the deep weariness that always accompanied the time after a mission, there was a part of him that was straining at the lead. Laurel, whether he understood the why or how of it, had something that he needed, and now he was going to go find it.